Reclaiming Lily (24 page)

“No, nothing like that, Kai. Just . . . things.”

Kai’s scalp pricked. “I see.” Of course she did not see at all.

“Hey.” A phony ring shrilled David’s voice. “I double-checked your flight.”

Thank you, Mr. Secretary
.

“Three thirty tomorrow, right?”

“I have not had time to study my itinerary.”

David cleared his throat. “Tell you what. If the ETA changes, I’ll call. Okay?”

“That would be wonderful, David.” Kai battled to keep bitterness from her voice. Perhaps a critical patient forestalled David gifting her with a nice long chat.
Just because this was your expectation does not mean it was his.
“If I cannot pick up, you can always leave a message.” She winced at the irony of her comment.

David exhaled. “I’m sorry to sound abrupt, but I really can’t talk right now.”

Kai relaxed her death hold on the phone.
Even a perfect gentleman deserves a break. He does not know what I have endured. . . .

They said good-bye. Kai pressed
Messages
and retrieved one from Cheryl, who was just “checking in.” Curious about David’s message, Kai again punched a button.

“Kai, glad you made it through okay. I’ll pick you up, as we agreed, tomorrow at three thirty. Let me know if plans change.”

Five times, Kai listened to three Yankee sentences. Was this caller the doctor with the heart, the man who usually hung on her every word? Had the heart doctor, in a matter of two days, had a change of heart?

The thought sent Kai reeling to the bathroom. Or was it the beef?

16

Can I drop by Tuesday?
Another emotionless voice mail from David. As Kai bustled about her brownstone, straightening the glossy jackets of Cheryl’s art books, she mentally replayed David’s message, as if there were deep import in five clipped words. Was a terse message better than none—which is what she’d gotten Sunday and Monday  . . .
But who’s counting?

Kai clipped daisy stems at an angle and rearranged them after filling a vase with fresh water. She’d make the den warm, inviting . . . everything that airport encounter lacked.
Encounter.
An unsuitable word for moments spent with one she . . . loved.

David, a skilled conversationalist, had been a monosyllabic valet when he picked her up Friday at Logan, then begged out of a date Saturday, pleading emergencies. Suddenly David had many emergencies. Coincidence, or excuse? She would ask him that very question . . . when he arrived for a chat.
The likelihood of having a cozy chat with David in his present state ranks up there with me finding a cure for PKD.
A miracle
.

The teapot whistled. A siren joined the shrill and split the midmorning Tuesday calm that had settled over their Back Bay neighborhood. Loosing her tense fingers, Kai shook leaves into a French press and steeped the tea. Could an inviting room and fragrant aroma transform David into his old self? His
loving
self?

Someone knocked on the door with hollow booms. So unlike David’s staccato raps, followed by, “Kai! I’m here!”

David might be standing on the other side of the door, but if Kai trusted her instincts, it wasn’t the man who’d given her his phone number, his time, his heart.

She unbolted the door. Opened it.

There stood David, wearing the scrubs he usually stowed in his locker, the scrubs that he said reminded him of illness, of work. Where were his khakis, his loafers? With effort, Kai brushed away negativity. He was on call. Living a doctor’s life. He’d traded shifts with a partner so they could have this chat. That showed concern.

Despite internal gongs that cautioned reserve, Kai rushed into David’s fresh-scrubbed and lime scent and cradled her head just so . . .

As if he were a kind uncle, David patted her head.

Kai snapped to attention and tried to swallow a sickening feeling. She had diagnosed David, all right.
All wrong.
“Come in.” She let him walk past her and enter the room, where he stood under the light fixture, his head swiveling, his shoulders hunched, instead of beelining to his usual spot: the glider rocker near the stereo.

Clamping down tears, Kai walked to the kitchen, pressed the leaves, and poured tea. “Make yourself at home,” she managed, though every cell screamed that was impossible. As she carried the cups, tea sloshed onto her hand.

Heat scalded. Kai winced at the rush of fire. A bad omen, spilling
Zhu Ye Qing
, tea meant for special occasions. Something this would not be.

David sat on the edge of the loveseat and rested his elbows on his knees. His robust athlete’s complexion had taken on a sallow cast.

Kai’s right hand tingled. Had David taken ill? As Kai knew, physicians rarely took time to heal themselves. She handed David his cup and sat in the rocker that bore his aftershave scent. With effort, she cast off late-night memories of cuddling here, watching John Wayne save the West, and then strolling to the harbor to watch the moon surrender to silvery water.

She affected a casual pose, curling her legs beneath her. “What is it, David?” Pain radiated from her heart. “You don’t seem like yourself.”
I’m worried sick about you . . . about us.

David set his cup on an end table and stared at steam curls as though they revealed the mysteries of the world.

All she wanted to understand were the mysteries of this man.

“That’s the thing, Kai. I am myself. Therein lies the problem.”

David, using rhetoric?
So unlike him
. She warmed her hands on her cup and vowed to mask emotions and words. David asked for this chat. He should do the talking.

David met her gaze.
Finally.
“Kai, I’ve never met anyone like you.” His perfectly sculpted hands batted the air. “When we met, I thought God had answered my prayers.”

Kai blinked away bitter tears. Religion erected this wall. She should have known.

“How could one person—a beautiful woman—share my love for music and medicine, movies and art . . . and respect my commitment to remain chaste until marriage?”

Even as he talked of purity, desire trembled Kai. When this man so much as pressed his lips to her temples, her whole body throbbed. Yet the weariness in his voice, the tension in his jaw, signaled she must quell her emotions or lose face. “We do share many common interests.” The dry words and dousing of passion nearly choked her. She longed to add,
including sexual attraction
, but a Chang could not broach such a taboo subject.

David edged forward on his seat, leaning so close to his cup that tea steam added sheen to his face. “But not the main interest.”

Kai nodded despite a wave of nausea. Intuiting this did not salve the pain. She sipped tea, her eyes on David.
Get a good look at your love. It may be the last.
She, a Chang sister, would suffer another blow. Would this one prove fatal to her soul?

“I can’t see you anymore, Kai.” The anguish on David’s face wrenched Kai’s heart. Oh, that he would suffer. She gripped her teacup and stared at the green-gold contents, unable to look at his quivering lip, the hollowness about his eyes. “It kills me to say that,” she heard, “but God’s made it clear what I need to do. My parents concurred.”

Resentment tensed Kai’s muscles as she thought of David’s father, always pointing out flaws in the Chinese character, always lambasting “the heathens” that flocked through Boston Harbor. She bit back the comment sticking in her throat like a chicken bone:
Who swayed you most, David? The Christian God . . . or your family?

“Please know that I care for you.”

David’s voice floated close. To keep calm, Kai focused on specks of tea leaves floating in her cup.
Things from China are beneath this heart doctor . . . and his family. Including me. But I will not play the victim.

“Yes, David. I know that.” Kai set down her cup and struggled to her feet, though the pain in her abdomen, in her heart, made it a struggle. She stepped close enough to clasp David’s hand, stayed far enough away to avoid his scent, the feel of his breath against her cheek . . . the essence of David that she loved. Others might ask him to expound on his reasoning, try to sway him, but she would not press the issue. It was not the Chinese way. It was not the Chang way.
It is not my way
.

“How . . . how was Joy?”

Kai bristled.
He did not bother to ask when I radiated “Joy” at the airport.
“She is fine.” Kai rose to her feet, now unwilling to share life-changing confidences with this man who did not want to share his life. “Thank you for asking.”

David’s mouth went slack. With jerky movements, so uncharacteristic of the graceful man she’d known, she’d loved, he rose and jabbed his hands into his pockets. “Take . . . take care, Kai.” Without another glance, he left 348 Beacon Street, which seemed to sag the minute the door quietly shut.

Questions about miracles, about that voice, penetrated Kai’s stiff pose of resentment. Ironically, religious issues, the very subject that precipitated this event, remained unexplored. Untasted. Like David’s full cup of tea.

Kai returned to her seat and sipped the soothing elixir that had provided antioxidants and sustenance and warmth to Chinese for generations. Yet the tea’s lively bouquet failed to assuage her wounded soul.

How could a sizzling romance end faster than it took China’s best tea to go stone cold?

Joy agreed to a date.
Gloria peeked out the window by their booth in Jimmy’s Café.
And the sun hasn’t fallen from the sky!

“Hey, Mom.” Joy munched on thick-cut chips, gulped her Coke, set down her glass, and checked out pictures of local celebrities tacked on a water-stained wall.
A place to see and be seen . . . when I was Joy’s age. An eon ago!

“This was a good idea.” Joy tucked a strand of hair into her French braid and dabbed her lips with a napkin.

Gloria’s half of an egg salad sandwich hovered in the air, then plopped onto her plate.
I had a good idea?
What a difference six days makes!
“I just thought, since you had to get out early anyway, it might be nice to celebrate.” Gloria fanned herself with her hands. “I mean, not really celebrate. Like Nicole said in that e-mail—set little goals.”

“Mom, you can just say thanks.” Joy plunked her elbows on the plastic tablecloth and propped her chin on her hands. “You don’t have to explain.”

The smell of eggs assailed Gloria’s nostrils and sent her senses reeling. She’d felt crampy and bloated all morning. Not PMS—thank goodness—but still . . . whatever had led her to order a mayonnaise-laden sandwich defied explanation—as did her inability to talk with her only child and make sense. Lord, may that change! “I’m sorry. It’s just that . . .” Gloria dug into her palms. Dared she tell Joy how she really felt? It might set off bad thoughts, heighten Joy’s insecurity.

“What, Mother?”

Gloria twisted her hands. Joy was . . . transparent now, from her well-scrubbed face to her pink Keds. That tornado had swept away the debris cluttering Joy’s life and let her real self shine through.

“It’s just that . . .” Words became hard as marbles and clunked in Gloria’s mouth. What else should she expect? She hadn’t talked to Joy like this in years.

Joy flipped her braid over her shoulder and settled back in the booth like she had no qualms about today’s appointments with Carl and Nicole.
My qualms make up for it!
And I haven’t even quizzed her about that shrink appointment yesterday
.

“C’mon, Mom. Just spit it out.” Despite the brash words, Joy’s tone, and yawn, showed a girl at ease with herself.
Trying to be at ease with me
.

Gloria licked her lips, as if testing the words, then took a breath.
Hey, if she can do this, so can I
. “I’m worried.” She swallowed. She’d finish this. For Joy.
For me
. “But I’m proud at how you’ve responded.”

The dark eyes gleamed despite a quirky frown. “It’s only been, like, four days.”

“Actually, six. But who’s counting?”

Joy rolled her eyes, but her hand darted across the table and brushed Gloria’s sleeve. “Oh,
Moth-
er.” They smiled shyly, as if just meeting.
In a way, that’s true.

They settled into their booth . . . and into a good talk.

Finally Gloria checked her watch, surprised at how an hour had fluttered by. They’d done lunch, like real mothers and daughters. “Hey, we’ve gone an hour without a fight” came out before she realized what she’d said. But Joy just nodded, like it was okay. “Now we’ve got to scoot.” Though the last thing Gloria wanted to do was move.

A frown creased Joy’s forehead. “You haven’t eaten, like, anything.”

Queasiness struck at the mention of food. Why was she surprised? Since Sunday, even dry toast caused dry heaves. Strange how food issues had started only after her positive pregnancy test. Psychosomatic for sure. She rubbed her middle. Tenderness radiated to her breasts, but the empathy on Joy’s face carried her past discomfort. “If you had morning, noon, and night sickness, you wouldn’t eat, either.”