Life Happens (6 page)

The lamp was on in the corner, and Elle lay on her side on the double bed, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling evenly. Kaylie stood clutching the rails of her new crib like a miniature prisoner intent upon making a break for freedom.

“I thought babies were supposed to sleep all the time,” Mya whispered.

Normally a serious baby, Kaylie up and grinned. She looked adorable in white cotton pajamas with a row of pink bunnies on the collar and cuffs. Mya couldn’t resist moving closer. “What do you need?” she whispered.

Kaylie lifted her hands to Mya.

Suddenly, Mya couldn’t even manage
shallow
breathing. Carefully, she grasped Kaylie beneath both arms, painstakingly lifting her from the crib. “If you had any sense at all you would be put off by my lack of efficiency.”

Kaylie saw everything, and often wanted what she saw. For now, she seemed utterly content to rest her head on Mya’s shoulder.

Mya inhaled the scent of baby shampoo and something as pure and indescribable as the scent of morning dew. A lingering sadness crowded into her chest, and with it, a persistent, haunting, clawing question. What had she missed?

Closing her eyes on an old sorrow, she rested her hand upon Kaylie’s back. Spreading her fingers wide, she held the baby close. She swore Kaylie sighed. Emotion swelled, bringing the question again. Dear God, what had she missed?

Folding Kaylie’s blanket over one arm, she eased away from the crib. Across the room, Elle shifted in her sleep, drawing their attention. Mya could only wonder what the baby was thinking as she studied her young mother’s face. Mya noted the mussed blond hair and the shadow Elle’s eyelashes cast on her pale cheeks. Her full mouth was soft in sleep, and completely lacked the usual smirk.

What had she missed?

Mya squeezed her eyes shut, aching, because she’d missed everything, every ordinary day, every milestone, every breath, every memory, every moment. The lack of it, of all of it, haunted her to the center of her soul.

“Da,” Kaylie said, pointing a chubby finger at Elle.

“Not Da,” Mya said softly. “Mama.” It slipped out on a gentle breath, uncurling in the air like wisps of fog.

She said the word again, to herself this time. Reaching down tentatively with the tips of her fingers, she smoothed the hair off Elle’s brow, her touch so light the girl didn’t stir. She’d held Elle once, briefly. Only hours old, she’d been crying, and Mya had been terrified. That hadn’t changed.

Mya’s chest heaved, but it wasn’t a monster that reared up after all. It was far more powerful and so strong it was as if something made of steel inside her was bending. And then, with a final, forceful heave, the steel broke, and emotion surged over her like a tidal wave, dousing her with something fierce, something instinctive, something protective. Something maternal.

Love.

A lone tear ran down her cheek. She loved her daughter. She always had.

“Da,” Kaylie said.

For absolutely no reason at all, Mya chuckled. “We’re going to have to work on your vocabulary,” she whispered.

Kaylie smiled at her own cleverness, showing all seven of her teeth.

“For now, what do you say we go find a cat for you to terrorize? Better yet, how about a bottle?”

“Da,” Kaylie said as Mya carried her from the room.

Elle waited until they left to open her eyes. She lay in
the drowsy warmth of her bed for a long time, listening and thinking. And planning.

This was it. The moment Mya had feared.

It had been an emotionally charged week. She and her mother had come the moment Jeffrey called to say the results from Mya’s bone-marrow compatibility test were back. Millicent waited in the outer lounge while Mya went to Jeff’s office. The room was the size of a broom closet and smelled of latex and medicine. Mya felt the walls closing in on her as she read the test results.

There it was spelled out in black and white. It might as well have been Greek.

Jeffrey explained what it all meant, using terms she’d never heard, such as HLA haplotypes and phenotypes, genotypes and Locus A and B. One line contained Elle’s information, one Mya’s. The two were poles apart.

The excruciating wait was over. Mya didn’t match. She wasn’t even close.

“But Elle looks so much like me. Everyone says so.”

“The intricate components that make up bone marrow have little to do with hair color,” he said, his voice quiet, calm, compassionate.

She wanted to crush the paper into a ball and fling it against the wall. She wanted to rail, to rant, to stomp her feet and shake her fists. And all she could do was stand there, blank and shaken, fighting for self-control.

Elle’s adoptive father had called several times this past week. His concern for Elle was palpable. Sadly, he wasn’t a close enough match, either. That wasn’t surprising since he wasn’t blood related. But Mya was!

“What now?” she implored.

Jeffrey came around from the other side of his cluttered desk. He reached for her hand, saying nothing at first. When he finally spoke, his voice was filled with compassion. “I know how difficult this is for you, sweetheart.”

That monster inside her reared up again, because he
didn’t
know. No one did.

“This isn’t fair,” she said, rigidly holding her tears in check.

“No, it isn’t.”

“I can’t lose her again.”

He didn’t say that she might not have a choice, but it hung in the air between them. It seemed like a long time before either of them continued, and then they did so simultaneously.

“Jeffrey, you—”

“Mya, I—”

They stared at each other.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I suppose Eleanor will be returning to Pennsylvania now.”

He’d just come off a twelve-hour shift, and Mya tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. “And do what?”

“And continue her treatment at home with her family.”

“What am I?” She realized her tone of voice hadn’t been nice. She didn’t have it in her to care.

“Mya, I’m not the enemy here. You don’t have to open Brynn’s for another hour. Let’s get out of here.”

She wound up staring at him.

He continued speaking in soothing tones. “You’re worried, sad and upset. We don’t even know what Eleanor’s condition is for sure, let alone her prognosis. She could live for years. Hopefully longer. Everything doesn’t have to change.”

Staring at him, she wondered how he could not see that everything had already changed. Suddenly, she knew exactly what she had to do. She slipped her engagement ring over her knuckle.

“Mya, what are you doing?”

She shook her head.

“You win,” he said. “We can take Kaylie. If the need arises.”

She blinked, refocusing on Jeff. His hair had been cut recently. He looked urban and professional, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous.

“I didn’t know you wanted children. But we probably would have had a couple of kids eventually anyway, right?” he said. Obviously he’d been perplexed about having a ready-made family, justifiably so. And yet he’d sanely and
rationally agreed to one. “It would be nice if we knew Kaylie’s father wasn’t a drug addict.”

“This isn’t about Kaylie!” Everyone in the surrounding offices probably heard that.

She’d surprised them both, and yet it was all so clear suddenly. The relationship had been destined to fail from the beginning. Jeffrey was intelligent and kind and would undoubtedly make some woman a wonderful husband. But not her. He wasn’t her type. He was too sane, too rational, too nice, at least for her.

She finished removing her ring.

“Don’t do this, Mya. I love you. No other woman has ever excited me the way you do.”

“I’m not the right woman for you.”

He grasped both her hands. “We’re good together, you and I.”

He looked so earnest just then, that she smiled, albeit sadly. “The person you’ve known these past six months isn’t really me. Believe me, you wouldn’t like the real Mya Donahue.”

He had little choice but to take the expensive, though uninspiring diamond ring.

“Besides,” she said, “I hate hospitals. What was I thinking?”

“That you loved me?” There was a long, brittle silence.

With a dawning look of realization, he said, “Oh, no. I
know that look. And I know what you’re thinking. You love me but you’re not in love with me, right?”

She shook her head.

And he said, “That’s my best breakup line.”

“It’s a good one.”

A look of innate sadness entered his eyes. If she’d been in his shoes, she would have been spitting mad, more proof that they were completely wrong for each other. Not that she needed more proof.

“I believe you have more experience at this sort of thing, Jeff. The last time I broke an engagement was nineteen years ago. Has the protocol changed? Never mind. I think I should be going.”

“That last engagement. Was it to Eleanor’s father?”

“Yes. And her name is Elle!” More shaken than she cared to admit, she walked to the door.

“I’ll be here if you change your mind, Mya.”

“No you won’t. I give Tammy or one of the other night nurses two shifts, and they’ll have you snapped up.”

She left him with his ring, and whether he realized it yet or not, with his pride.

Millicent stood as soon as Mya entered the outer waiting area. “Well?”

Mya shook her head.

“Oh, no. I was so sure you’d match.” The bout of scar
let fever Millie had lived through when she’d been a girl ruled her out as a potential donor. “What did Jeffrey say?”

Mya didn’t reply until they’d reached the elevators. “What could he say?” She pressed the down button. If she’d been thinking, she would have used her right hand.

“Where’s your diamond engagement ring?”

The three other women waiting for the elevator looked at Mya’s bare hand as she said, “I believe Jeff put it in his pocket.”

“Mya, what are you doing?”

The doors slid open. The three strangers got in. Before following them, Mya said, “I’ve already done it.”

“You’re under a lot of stress. You’re sad and worried. This isn’t a good time to be making life-altering decisions.”

The elevator started to move. Feeling several pairs of eyes on her, Mya said, “That’s the only time people make life-altering decisions, Mom.”

“That explains why so many of them turn out badly.”

The remainder of their descent was steeped in silence. That silence followed them through the lobby. Out in the parking lot, the sun shone gloriously, the air a balmy seventy-five degrees. It was warm for April in Maine. Everyone knew it could turn around and snow tomorrow out of spite. There was nothing spiteful in the breeze, or in the scent it carried. It was the scent of the ocean, and of homesickness.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Millicent said.

Mya stared straight ahead.

“You’re going to call Dean.”

“I’m going to do better than that, Mom.”

She was going to Keepers Island to see him. And her mind was made up.

D
ean Laker spread the large blueprints out on his makeshift workstation. When the wind whipped up a corner of the top page, he slammed a brick down on one edge, then groped his shirt pocket for the cigarettes he hadn’t smoked in ten years.

Stinking April wind, anyway.

April.

He scowled. April showers, April wind.
April fool.

From the corner of his eye, he saw his foreman, who also happened to be his brother Grady speak to their newest employee. Great. Grady was ambling this way.

Stopping directly in Dean’s line of vision, Grady removed his Red Sox cap, ran a hand through his hair, then replaced the cap precisely where it had been. “Next time you decide to give one of the guys a good reaming, run it by me first.”

The least Grady could do was
pretend
to show a little respect and maybe attempt to hide his open disapproval. “Last I looked,” Dean said, holding the rustling print down with both hands, “I owned this company.”

“Last I looked, Jeremy was doing a good job.”

Dean folded the blueprint to the next page. This project was an intricate building restoration that incorporated an open-beamed addition and included a major renovation of the rest of the house. It was exactly the type of work Laker Construction was known for, a reputation he’d worked damn hard to build. “Jeremy’s hungover.”

“He turned twenty-one yesterday,” Grady said. “What? Now you don’t remember how it felt to be young?”

Dean scowled again, because truth be told, he couldn’t think of anything else today.

But Grady was on a roll. That was the problem with employing family. They didn’t know when to shut up.

“The kid wasn’t late for work. So he’s moving a little slow. I’ll keep him off a ladder and work him into the ground and he’ll think twice before doing it again. Good help’s hard to find, Dean.”

“You’re telling me?”

“Why don’t you tell me? What’s going on?”

Dean took out his calculator and refigured the truss system for the addition. “Who says anything’s going on?”

“I do. You’re ornery as sin from time to time, but you’re rarely unfair.”

Dean recalled the look on that poor kid’s face. Oh, hell, he was going to have to apologize. And Dean Laker was even worse at asking for forgiveness than he was at asking for permission.

His brother squared off opposite him, hands on his tool belt, his back to the Atlantic. “April’s almost over, Dean.”

Dean tensed. That didn’t mean he had to admit how close Grady was to a nerve and to the truth.

“You’ve been acting strange ever since you got back from lunch at Mom’s. What did she say that set you off?”

“Leave it, Grady.”

A change came over his brother. No longer looking at Dean, the younger Laker stared at a place over Dean’s left shoulder. His quietly spoken “You’ve got company, bro,” was completely unnecessary, because five seconds earlier the air had become so charged with electricity it raised the hair on Dean’s arms. He knew without turning what he would find. Or who.

He turned anyway, doing a slow one-eighty. His mother had heard right. Mya Donahue was here on Keepers Island.

“You okay?” Grady asked quietly.

Since any answer was pointless, Dean said, “I’ll make it right with Jeremy.”

“You do that. Hey, Mya.”

“Hello, Grady.” Her gaze didn’t leave Dean’s face for long.

Dean knew, because his didn’t leave hers at all. Evidently, Grady noticed, too. He took the blueprints from Dean and made noises about going to see a man about a sawhorse. On a good day, Dean would have told him it was a lame joke. But Dean wasn’t having a good day.

Mya didn’t look real happy, either. The incessant wind dragged at her short blond hair. It had been long the last time he’d seen her four or five years ago. Who was he kidding? The last time she’d been to the island was four and a half years ago, exactly. Before that, it had been three years. She came for funerals and weddings. She’d never bothered to look him up, and that was fine with Dean. It was better that way, because looking at her brought out feelings he wasn’t proud of, and memories better left in the past.

Why couldn’t Mya Donahue be like other women whose bodies thickened and whose complexions grew ruddy over time? Her clothes looked soft, trendy, upscale. Her face was thinner than he remembered, her brown eyes dark and appraising. As if realizing she’d been caught staring, her chin came up, her shoulders back.

Why the hell that rankled, he didn’t know, but he said, “It looks like you’re still pissed off at the world.”

For an instant, her glance sharpened, but she kept her voice quiet as she said, “I’ve narrowed the field down to an even thousand. What about you?”

“I’m only pissed at you.” He cringed a little inside, for he couldn’t have proven that to the twenty-one-year-old kid he’d laid into earlier.

Mya stood six feet away, breathing between parted lips. Potential rejoinders flashed through her mind at break-neck speed. And yet she didn’t know what to say. Dean
didn’t seem terribly surprised to see her. Ticked and slightly put out, but not surprised. Which meant word was out. She’d expected as much, for she hadn’t been the only passenger on the ferry to Keepers Island. The handful of islanders who’d accompanied her on the three-mile jaunt out to sea hadn’t joined her on the upper deck. She was thankful for that, for small talk would have been beyond her capabilities today. Still, the fact that she was here would have been too great a discovery to keep to themselves. And when had anyone on the island kept anything to themselves? Mya wasn’t certain who’d told Dean, but he’d been duly warned that she was here. She wished there was an easy way to tell him the rest.

Either the years had been good to him, or the ravages of time were apparent only on the inside. Unless he’d changed, it was more than likely the latter, for as a kid he’d internalized everything, his thoughts, his dreams, his emotions.

Today he wore his dark hair shorter, his faded jeans a little looser, his emotions every bit as hidden from view. He’d always reminded her of a geyser, calm until the steam started rolling. He’d been furious when she’d flung his engagement ring at him the day she’d told him once and for all that she was placing their baby for adoption. For the life of her, she hadn’t known of a decent alternative. He hadn’t seen it that way. She wasn’t naive enough to be
lieve he’d gotten over it. After all, he was the only person she knew who held a grudge longer than she did.

She sighed anyway. “Nineteen years is a long time, Dean.”

His eyes narrowed, as blue and changeable as the Atlantic behind him. Before he blurted something he would regret and she would react to, she said, “Would you care to go someplace and maybe grab a cup of coffee?”

Although he didn’t shake his head, she knew what his answer would be. He raised his voice in order to be heard over the scream of a power saw. “Just say whatever you came to say. As you can see, I have things to do.”

A thin chill hung on the edge of his words, and yet she felt her ears heating. She wanted to tell him to forget it, among other things. She spun around to retrace her steps down the hill, only to stop in her tracks. This wasn’t about her. It wasn’t even about Dean.

Facing him again, she said, “All right. I’ll say what I came to say, if you’re willing to listen, that is.”

His nod barely qualified as a nod at all, his stance strong and rigid. In that moment she saw him with such clarity, and knew he was bracing for a storm.

It took some of the storm out of her. “I was wondering if you would like to meet your daughter.”

Braced or not, he staggered as if he’d taken a two-by-four to the backs of the knees.

“She’s staying with me at my house for the time being.
The next ferry to Portland leaves in an hour. If you care to hear more, I’ll be at the dock until then.” There was nothing she could do about the quaver in her voice as she added, “She needs us, Dean. You know I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Dean stood there blank and obviously shaken, and watched her walk away.

“What the hell do you mean she needs us?”

Mya hadn’t taken fifteen steps. She knew, because she’d counted.

Inhaling a fortifying breath, she looked around for a place to sit. She hadn’t brought her car over from the mainland, and had asked someone at the ferry dock where she might find Dean. The man had pointed her in this direction. Half an hour later she’d spotted Dean’s blue-and-yellow Laker Construction sign from the harbor, and had walked up the hill.

Jagged rocks and cliffs and countless bays and inlets made up the rugged coastline of Maine. The shoreline of Keepers Island was much the same. The summer people would be arriving in five or six weeks. Then, the slip would be full of sailboats with colorful sails and motorboats of all sizes. For now, the locals still had the island to themselves.

They called this Coopers Hill, for it overlooked Coopers Harbor, and was the second-highest point on the island. Most of the houses here were large and expensive and belonged to the summer people. She understood the
allure, for the view was breathtaking. Unfortunately, she saw no place to seek shelter from the strong ocean breeze.

Still slightly winded from the uphill climb, she led the way to a park-style picnic table on a grassy knoll away from the screech of power tools and curious onlookers. When Dean was seated, she folded her hands on the table in front of her and tried not to fidget. As kids, she and Dean had come together with fierce and unbridled enthusiasm and not an ounce of shyness. Neither of them had grown shy over the years, therefore it wasn’t reticence that made them both feel awkward today.

“I’m listening,” he prodded.

Calling on the insight she’d garnered from all the self-help books she’d read, she tamped down her temper and said, “She knocked on my front door just after midnight on the eve of her birthday.”

“Out of the blue?” he asked.

Mya nodded.

“What did she say?”

“Something like, ‘Hey Mom, long time no see.’” Staring beyond Dean at the waves in the distance, Mya said, “Her name is Eleanor, but she prefers Elle.”

“What is she—” His voice had been deep, and deepened even more when he began again, speaking their daughter’s name for the first time. “What is Elle like?”

“She looks like me and acts like both of us.”

He stared at her, absorbing the implications.

And Mya said, “Our mothers would say we deserve that, wouldn’t they?”

In another lifetime, they would have smiled.

“She has more than one
visible
tattoo, a smart mouth, and before she ditched her semifinals last month, she was earning a four point at Penn State.”

“She’s not attending college in Maine?” he asked.

“The couple that adopted her moved to Pennsylvania when Elle was a baby.”

Mya wondered if Dean was thinking what she was thinking—that all those times over the years, when she’d glimpsed a child the age their child would have been and had wondered if she might be theirs, had been for nothing, for Elle hadn’t been in Maine in eighteen years.

“Her adoptive mother died when Elle was ten. I’ve spoken to her adoptive father. He seems like a decent man. Evidently there’s a stepmother in the picture, with all the cliché ramifications. Since she’s been a full-time student until recently, Elle still qualifies for her adoptive father’s health insurance.”

“What does health insurance have to do with anything?”

Mya was doing this badly. Trying again, she said, “A week ago I walked in on her while she was taking pills. It’s the reason she came to Maine, why she looked me up. The pills are chemotherapy.”

He made it halfway to his feet, then sat heavily again.

Feeling ill-equipped to explain, Mya simply said, “She has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

“She’s dying?”

“No!” Waves broke far below, reminding her of an old saying about voices whispering in the desert and yelling near the ocean. Suddenly, Mya didn’t have it in her to yell anymore today. “If her cancer spreads from her lymph system, a bone marrow transplant will most likely be necessary. My bone marrow doesn’t match, but I’m not going to let her die.” She’d issued the words like a decree, daring him to make something of it.

In the awkward silence that followed, they both stood. Hooking the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she said, “There’s one more thing you should know.”

She supposed she couldn’t blame him for watching her the way a wary fisherman watched a tidal wave.

“Elle didn’t come to Maine by herself. She brought her nine-and-a-half-month-old baby, Kaylie.” Mya removed a business card from her purse and handed it to him. His expression told her nothing of what he was thinking as he read the name on the front.
Brynn’s.
It was the name they’d planned to give their baby, if it was a girl. Instead, she’d been named by someone else.

He flipped the card over with deft fingers, scanning the back where Mya had written her home address and phone number. “Elle wants to meet you, Dean. Are you busy tonight?”

He shook his head.

“Stop over about seven. She and Kaylie will be waiting.”

Needing suddenly to escape his probing gaze, she started along the path toward the harbor below.

“And what about you, Mya?”

His voice stopped her in her tracks, and held her there.

“Will you be there, too?” he asked.

Glancing over her shoulder, she gave him a nod that might have meant everything or nothing, then walked away.

“You almost made it an entire minute that time, Mya,” Elle said.

“Very funny.”

It was after seven on every clock in the house. The interminable day dragged on.

Elle sat cross-legged on the floor opposite Kaylie, who banged a wooden spoon lustily on an upside-down spaghetti pot. While Mya had been paying Dean a visit on the island, Elle had spoken with her doctors in Pennsylvania, who had arranged for her to have her blood tested at Portland Memorial. It meant more waiting, more worrying and a lot more praying. Mya paced, wondering how people did this.

“Bottom line,” Elle said, tying Kaylie’s shoe. “Do you think he’ll show?”