Reunion (36 page)

Peter caught up with Blue backstage. “It’ll be better tomorrow. The forecast is good, and the lineup may be our most crowd-pleasing of the season.”

“Remind me,” Blue said.

He frowned at her. “Do the remaining
American Idol
finalists ring a bell?”

“Don’t use that tone with me. I have a lot on my mind.”

He raised his hands in supplication. “I was trying for levity, geez. I think I’ll go find our comedienne and knock back a couple empathy drinks.”

In her office, Blue cancelled her gym session and got ready to head home. A hot bath, two glasses of wine, and a review of her Idol file was her plan—there were worse ways to spend an evening. Tired as she was, before she left she spent a few minutes watching the contestants’ recent performances online and tried to commit faces, names, and songs to memory.

Finally, she checked her email and saw the odd numbers and letters that she now knew identified Julian, standing out amidst the dozen other sender names. There was nothing in the subject line, no attachment—no more bird photos, too bad.

She clicked open the message. There was no salutation, either, which she thought odd—and then she read,

No salutation was the least of it.

She read it again, then clicked
REPLY
, hands poised on keys as she watched the cursor blinking, blinking, on the white screen. But she could not write back when her heart was in her throat and her hands were shaking, when the things she yearned to say would be as confusing and upsetting to him as they were to her.

She printed the email, folded it and put it in her bag, and then when she was in the car a few minutes later, she took it out to read again.

If I get out of here
, he’d written.
If. If was
not possible.
If she
could not bear.

Please, God.

On first read, she’d interpreted
what matters most
as referring to his relationship with his father. And he didn’t want his negative attitude about her to be a wedge between her and Mitch. He wanted to apologize, wouldn’t interfere with them even if it was possible—in essence, he saw her and Mitch as a fated pair.

On this read, that meaning wasn’t so definite.

I’d like to see you …

Suppose … suppose
what matters most meant her?

But how could it? His disdain was no secret.

Still, she read the printout again, the paper trembling in her hands.

No. No, she had it right the first time—much as she wished otherwise. Such wishful thinking was foolishness, a rapid and direct path to humiliation both private and public; she could not afford to be a fool again.

She folded the paper and pressed it between her palms, a prayer for his well-being, and hers.

lue paced her apartment Thursday night feeling powerless, unsettled, unable to distract herself with a book or the TV. She couldn’t call Mitch to find out Julian’s status without raising unanswerable questions and abusing Julian’s trust. And she had no other legitimate reason to call.

There was nothing more she could do, so she went to bed—but her mind refused to rest. Surely Julian was fine. Surely the danger was less than it seemed. She might have misinterpreted everything. Maybe the danger was already past when he sent the email. Maybe
If I get out of here
meant, if the Army sent him home sooner than planned.

There were so many possibilities.

And so few.

She sat up and rearranged the pillows, straightened the blanket, straightened her nightshirt. Laid down again. Examined how the dim light from the nighttime city made a long line across the ceiling. Counted sirens wailing. Counted buttons on her shirt. Counted her breaths, in, out… She did not
want
to think of him; she could not drive him from her mind.

When she finally closed her eyes, tears leaked from them. Whether they were for Julian or for herself, she would not have been able to say.

At three am she gave up on sleep. At three twenty she gave up on pacing. At three forty she searched all the drawers in her kitchen and then the ones in her den until she located the Yellow Pages. She couldn’t recall which charter company they’d used for the trip to Key West and
so she chose the one with the largest ad; in ten minutes she had a confirmed departure time of five thirty
AM
.

At nine o’clock eastern time, she was on the phone with Lynn Forrester, asking for landscaper recommendations. “I’ll be down over the weekend to start making plans,” she said, which if not the full truth—she was there already, taxiing to the terminal—was not exactly a lie. “And listen, I want to apologize for having brought such chaos into Mitch’s life, especially now that we aren’t, you know—”

“Yes, he told us. No need for apologies,” Lynn said. “He’s fine—and as I told him, I’m sure a little more name recognition will only be a good thing later on when the series is made.”

“That’s magnanimous, thank you.” This all seemed good. Lynn wouldn’t be chatty if Julian had been harmed. Still, she needed to be sure. “Incidentally … what do you hear from Julian?”

“Seems he ran into a little trouble while out on a patrol—we don’t have too many details. He gave us a scare, but apparently he’s all right. He says he is.” Her tone said she wasn’t convinced. “It’s been quite the week for the Forresters.”

Blue closed her eyes, cool relief filling her. “I’ll say.”

“But all’s well that ends well, right?”

n Friday afternoon, Key West welcomed Julian with soft rainfall. The air was rich with the smell of it as he got out of his grandparents’ car. Everything was so lush, so green that he wanted to cry.

Water dripped from the heavy palm fronds overhead and he stood still, letting it stream down his hair and into his collar. A pair of Saffron Finches flitted past him, landing on the porch rail and shaking the water from their golden feathers before flitting off again.

“Coming, J?” Lynn asked, standing beneath her umbrella.

“In a sec.”

“All right. I’ll tell Daniel we’re here. Come in whenever you’re ready.”

He feared he would never be ready, that he would lie down on the flagstone driveway and close his eyes and when they came to find him later, he would have melted away.

Wishful thinking?

There had been, after all, no reply from Blue.

He’d heard she would be here for the weekend to start planning the work she wanted done to her house. Lynn said they’d spoken early this morning, that Blue had inquired about him.

He was glad of that, and glad that she had, apparently, kept his email in confidence. It was even possible she’d never received it. His hope that she’d never received it was almost as strong as his fear that she had. From the moment he’d sent it, he’d vacillated about whether he’d done
the right thing. It had seemed right when he didn’t know for certain he’d leave that Golan alive. It seemed less so when he was strapped into the helicopter for the long, loud ride back to the base. What had he hoped to accomplish, really?

Rain was dripping from his nose; how long had he been standing here? He should get his gear and go in. He looked toward the house and saw Daniel waiting there on the porch, watching him.

Daniel said, “Wha’cha doing?”

“Nothing.”

“That I can see. Lynn’s got a towel warming in the dryer for you.”

Julian wiped the rain from his face, slicking his hair back. “Tell her I’ll be in soon. I … I think I’m going to take a walk first.”

“Right now? I thought you might want to call your dad. Hey, did your grandmother tell you that your dad and Blue—”

“I just need to get a little exercise,” he interrupted, heading off any chat about Blue. “Too much sitting, you know?”

“All right, then. Take an umbrella.”

Julian shook his head. He was already backing down the driveway. “This feels good to me.”

“Well, you have to do what feels good, I’ve always said so, haven’t I?”

Julian nodded, waved, and turned to go.

Daniel’s support was the thing that had many times before kept him standing, moving forward. Sometimes that forward motion was down a questionable path, yet Daniel had let him go, trusting him to know his own mind or to be able to determine it along the way. It had worked before; now, though, he half wished Daniel would lasso him and pull him back because he could see already that the path was entirely dark.

He went anyway.

As he left the driveway and began walking west, he tried to let go of the questions in his mind and just absorb the warmth and weight of the falling rain. The questions, however, would not let go of him. What, for example, was he doing with his life? Yes, he was a working photojournalist; he was, sometimes, a documentary filmmaker. What he’d been
doing, though, was roaming from one natural disaster or political or social train wreck to another, documenting, cataloging, moving on, sometimes illuminating things for others but never, it seemed, for himself.

All these years he’d been photographing people in order to connect them with others, all the while remaining disconnected himself. There was, he thought ruefully, something wrong with that picture.

And this bit about Blue: wasn’t that just one more example of how he set himself up to remain disconnected? A psychiatrist—or Alec, who’d been as good as one over the years—would probably say so. An attraction to yet another woman with whom there was no chance of forming a permanent bond, or at least not the sort of bond he’d had in mind.

He crossed a street, not avoiding the puddles, hardly hearing the rooster crowing from a nearby shed’s roof. He wiped the water from his face and walked on, thinking that his attraction to Blue might be an unconscious strategy of distancing himself from his father—maybe he’d created a certain impossibility that guaranteed he’d
continue
to keep away, and for what? He thought he wanted to be closer to him, but if that was true, how could he have let himself fall for Blue?

If he could answer that question, he might be able to escape the lunacy that had him out here psychoanalyzing himself in what was now rumbling thunder and a steady rain.

Not until he heard a squawk, saw the flutter of bright red wings as a macaw disappeared into a nearby tree, did he see that he’d come to the corner across from Blue’s house. The macaw, possibly the one she’d mentioned before, perched itself on the high branch of a mango tree in the middle of her yard. He crossed the street slowly, keeping his eye on the macaw, wishing he had brought his camera. The bird’s colors were as vibrant and saturated as he could ever hope to make them appear after the fact.

The wall surrounding her yard, when he was next to it, was too high to see over, so he went to the gate—and discovered he was not the only one watching the bird.

There was a moment, then, just before Blue, on her porch, turned and saw him. A moment when he might have been able to back away without being seen. A moment when he had a clear and brilliant view of where that escape path would lead. A clear, brilliant view, where there was nothing to see.

he couldn’t hide her surprise and didn’t try. “What are you doing here?” It came out sounding all wrong, like an accusation. It was the shock of it, the assault to her senses; he was drenched, and gaunt, and more beautiful, with those wide, searching eyes, than she recalled.