Rules of Negotiation (19 page)

Chapter Twenty

Chest heaving, despair clawing at her throat, Tori watched Brit drive away. The phone began to ring even as the enormity of what had happened settled like a cold weight on her shoulders. The terrible, painful things he had said swirled in her mind. She walked back to the living room in a daze, barely registering the fact that the answering machine had picked up.

“Miss Anderson? This is Chad from Langston Estate. Can you please call me as soon as possible? Thanks.”

She froze. A horrible rush of terror left her momentarily dizzy. Struggling with a wave of nausea, she bolted to the phone and picked it up, but it was too late. With trembling fingers, she hit the speed dial and heard Chad’s voice on the other line.

“Chad? This is Tori.”

“Tori, I’m so sorry.” His voice was warm and soft, as if he meant to envelop her in a blanket. “So very sorry.”

She knew what he was going to say. Sinking down on the floor in the middle of the living room, she pressed a trembling hand to her forehead. “What happened?” she managed to say, the words coming from a great distance.

She recalled her cell phone ringing while she fought with Brit. Chad had never called her before, on either her cell or landline.

“We aren’t sure. They think perhaps a stroke. We found her in her bed this evening. You had a DNR, so they didn’t try to revive her.”

He kept talking then, about a death certificate and the funeral arrangements, how she should come down to say good-bye before they had to move the body. How they had paperwork on file that said she wanted to be cremated and was that still what Tori wanted. And all she could do was nod and breathe. Nod and breathe. Until the breathing became too difficult and she had to say a muffled good-bye and throw down the phone and suck in air like she was drowning.

Panic started next, panic in thick, heavy waves that curled her fingernails into her palm until the pain in her hand startled her into release. With an effort she stood up, grabbed her keys, and walked outside.

She needed to go to Langston. To say good-bye to the empty shell of the woman who had once been her mother. The only person who understood why she worked the way she did. The only person who would have appreciated the sacrifice she had just made.

The space in front of the house looked empty without Brit’s sleek black car. Her Mini sat at the end of the driveway, and she walked over to it, staring down at the pile of documents sitting on the passenger seat.

She should read them tonight. Maybe she could bring them to Langston. She’d spent enough time around doctors to know that they always kept you waiting. Even to pronounce death, surely they would keep her waiting. No sense wasting time.

The thought brought a rush of bile to her throat. Was Brit right? Had she lost her soul completely? Her mother lay dead and all she could think of was work?

Where were the tears?

What had she become?

…

The moon had set and the night sky filled with stars when Tori stumbled back into the house, her head spinning, her breath coming in a thin whistle through clenched teeth. The nervous rhythm of her heart pounded through her sweatshirt, but still no tears clogged her throat.

She was a monster. She’d sat through hours of shoulder patting and sorrowful looks, said good-bye to her mother’s calm, peaceful face, and still her eyes remained dry. Perhaps that was because the frail, white-haired body did not look like it belonged to the woman who had raised her. Over the past year, she had gotten used to thinking Jeanne’s body housed a nervous stranger. It was hard to believe she was really saying good-bye.

In some ways, she had said good-bye a long time ago. In other ways, she wasn’t sure she ever could.

Tori retraced her steps up the porch and into the house, moving without thinking toward her mother’s bedroom. She threw open the closet doors and buried her face in her mother’s clothes, which still bore the faint smell of the heavy perfume she loved. From the floor of the closet Tori retrieved pairs of shoes, and tossed them in a pile in the middle of the room. For a moment, she held each one individually, imagined the shoe on her mother’s foot, and imagined her mother in the room, straightening her stockings as she got ready for work.

It was time to clean out the room. Her mother was never coming back.

A roaring sound in her ears made it difficult to concentrate, but the tears still would not come. She began to shiver, suddenly as cold as she had ever been before, her legs covered with goose bumps, her body frigid under her clothes.

Lurching to her feet, her body shaking, Tori yanked back the covers of the bed and huddled under a thin wedding ring quilt. Once, Tori had seen Jeanne crying into this quilt, great hulking sobs she could not hide from her young daughter. It was soon after her father had left them, when Jeanne was still trying to pretend she could keep it all together, and her heart hadn’t been ripped out and left for dead. Now, as Tori wrapped the quilt around her shaking body, she remembered that dark time, her fear that her mother would never regain her sanity and that she, Tori, would never be loved or safe, ever again.

Tonight, after she viewed the body, the counselors at Langston had sat down with Tori. They told her grief could take many forms. They said when an Alzheimer’s patient dies, the family may feel relief that the struggle is over, and then guilt for having such a feeling. Tori understood that, had even expected it.

But they hadn’t told her about the cold.

They hadn’t mentioned the feeling that her breath would be forever stolen from her chest, her lungs perpetually half-filled, her body wrapped in sheets of ice. When she exhaled into the quilt, her breath created a tiny pocket of warmth, and she pressed her cheek against it.

Her mother had always loved this room. She said this house made up for all those years when they’d lived in tiny apartments without any soul. She thought the flowered wallpaper, beautiful woodwork, and fifties linoleum had soul. Even if Tori always felt like a visitor here, her mother felt at home, and that’s what had mattered. All her life, the only thing that had really mattered was trying to make up for all the hurt her mother had suffered.

And now she was gone.

Her gaze fell on the nightstand, where a small leather-bound book sat by a lamp with a ceramic base decorated with soft blue forget-me-nots and tiny pink roses.

Pushing herself to sitting, Tori took the battered volume off the table. The smell of leather and musty pages emerged as pulled back the cover and flipped through the worn pages. The first page was dated eight years before, when Tori had first bought the house. It was a diary, in her mother’s unmistakable loopy handwriting.

Feeling like an interloper, but unable to put it down, Tori began to read. At first, she huddled under the blankets, struggling for breath and warmth, but something about the process of reading soothed her. The sound of her mother’s voice, echoing in her ear, eased the pressure on her chest.

Most of the early entries focused on Jeanne’s struggle to accept her diagnosis.

“I’m keeping this journal because they tell me it’s good to write, to keep your mind active. It terrifies me, the thought of what that means, so here I am, writing away…”

Many of the pieces were short accounts of daily life, of places she had been and worried she would forget. Others were complaints—about her nurse, her medications, and especially the restrictions Tori placed on her from cooking, from driving, and eventually from leaving the house by herself.

Tori skimmed most of it quickly, lingering only for a moment on the passages filled with good memories before moving on to what came next. There was a rhythm to the writing, good days mixed with bad, handwriting slowly losing its shape and the entries becoming shorter over the years. The dates were sporadic—for a few weeks she’d write every day, and then months would go by without an entry.

Toward the back of the book, an entry caught her eye. The pages were watermarked and the writing smeared. Tori sat up and spread the pages of the book as she read. It began,

Tori is working late again tonight, and the house seems dark and empty. I wish there was some way I could tell her how lonely I am. But I don’t want to burden her more than she already is…

Tori closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. Steeling herself, she opened her eyes and stared back down at the painful words.

I can’t help but think that this is partly my fault. After Thad left, I worried about everything. I worried about paying the bills. I worried about being able to send her to college. And I missed him so much it was like a hole in my heart. I know I overreacted. I tried to steer Tori away from men who would be like him and to push her to focus on her career. And I still believe that I did the right thing. I’m so proud of her, of how hard she works and how successful she’s been. But at some point I forgot that the most important thing was that she was happy. Is she happy now? Is she happy with Phil? I don’t know but somehow I can’t help but think that I failed her. I only wish I could talk to her about this. I try and try but the words will never come. Oh, how I wish the words would come!

A scratchy, sandpaper feeling tickled the back of Tori’s throat. She cleared it, but everything had become tight and thick.

Two months later, she stopped at another entry:

I can’t help but wonder if someday Tori will read this. Tori, if you do read this, I hope you aren’t mourning for me, but know that I am in a better place. I hope you know that I loved you with all my heart and every ounce of my being. I hope that I didn’t send you down the wrong path. I hope that you know how proud I am of you. I hope you could feel my love, even if I could never say it. I hope most of all that you don’t make the same mistakes that I made. I hope that you are happy.

Tori closed the book and hugged it to her heart. An unfamiliar wetness rolled down her cheeks and she pushed it aside with the faded quilt. But it kept coming and coming, until painful noises rattled in her chest. Finally, she dropped her head into her hands and sobbed.

Chapter Twenty-One

Tori threw her purse down on the conveyor belt, removed her shoes, and threw them into a gray plastic tub. After pushing both into the X-ray machine, she walked through the security gate and was relieved not to hear the buzz of the metal detector.

“Have a nice flight, ma’am,” the burly TSA agent said with a polite nod.

“Thanks.” She snatched her purse and shoes and pulled the wrinkled boarding pass from her back pocket. Gate E5. She squinted at the glowing departure screen to make sure the gate hadn’t changed and then set off at a grim pace.

E23…E22…adrenaline had already sent her pulse through the roof and she began to pant. Had it really been a week since her mother died? Was it possible that so much time had elapsed? It seemed as if she’d been living in an alternate universe since then, with time moving slower and faster all at the same time.

E18…E17…what would he think when he saw her there? Would he even speak to her? Had she truly lost him forever when he walked out her door?

E10…E9…E8.

Tori hitched her bag over her shoulder and began to jog. She was going to throw up. She needed to get this over with, and she refused to have this conversation on a plane to England. Though she had bought the ticket, she didn’t intend to use it unless he wanted her there. Really wanted her there.

She was moving so fast that she almost plowed into the tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark blue polo shirt and faded blue jeans, walking away from the gate. Blue-black hair curled obediently back from his forehead. Tori caught her breath when she saw the familiar crooked nose.

“Brit.” The words died in her throat. For a moment she considered turning around and running back the other direction. But she had come too far, learned too much about herself in the week since her mother’s death to do any such thing. Squaring her shoulders, she cleared her throat and tried again.

“You’re going the wrong way,” she said.

He drew back when he saw her, shock widening his eyes. “Tori? What are you doing here?”

His eyes were guarded, the gray sky of a snowy day. Better not to think about what that meant, she thought. Better to simply press on without thinking.

“Do you have a minute? I have something I need to tell you.”

He cocked his head, studying her from head to toe. “I was about to get on a plane. Are you sure it will only take a minute?”

“My mother died,” she blurted out. “Right after you left. It was a massive stroke.”

He drew back. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“Of course you didn’t. How could you?”

He inclined his head toward a row of seats. “Perhaps we should sit down?”

“I think I better stand up,” she said, a nervous smile creasing her lips. “I may need to pace.”

“I see.” He took her elbow and steered her away from the crowd. “I’m sorry, Tori. I really am.”

Polite. He sounded excruciatingly polite and concerned. The kind of concern you’d have for a stranger. She bit her lip.

“I would have called to tell you but I didn’t want to do it over the phone, and it was impossible to get away.”

Something flickered in those inscrutable eyes. He adjusted a brown leather satchel on his shoulder and started to turn away. “Of course. You could hardly use your mother’s death as an excuse to take a few days off. Listen, I don’t mean to seem unfeeling but I’ve got to get on my plane.”

“No, no.” She grabbed his elbow and spun him back to face her. “I did take a few days off, mostly because I was crying so hard I couldn’t see the ground in front of me. But then I had to go in to make contingency plans.”

“Contingency plans? For what?”

“For my quitting.” She took a deep breath. “I quit my job. I realized something. I realized a lot of things. I realized that I’ve been using my job as an excuse not to let myself care about anything. My mom had me so scared that I’d be deserted by someone I loved that I wasn’t loving at all. I dated men I didn’t care about so they couldn’t hurt me. Hell, I didn’t even care about my fiancé—I was more upset when my cat left me than when he did!”

Brit’s mouth twitched at the corner. “Your cat left you?”

She brushed it aside. “Long story.”

“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.”

Was that a crack? A hint of emotion in his blank facade? Encouraged, she pressed on.

“I thought if I made partner, then I’d have finally done what she wanted, and she’d be happy and I’d be able to relax. But it wouldn’t have been enough. That’s what I realized. It would never have been enough. When I met you, Brit, I was starving, and I didn’t even know it. I thought maybe I could satisfy my hunger by sleeping with you, but that only made it worse. Because along the way, despite all my efforts, I fell in love.”

Wringing her hands together, she forced herself to look at him, full and square in the face, holding nothing back. “I love you, Brit. I know you don’t feel the same way, and maybe never will. But I’m tired of giving up before I start. I’m tired of spending more time with my damn BlackBerry than the only person in the world who makes me feel alive. I want to go to Scotland with you, if the offer still stands.”

He didn’t respond. His face had frozen into an expressionless mask.

Unable to bear the sudden silence, Tori hurried on. “You probably don’t want anything to do with me right about now. I know when you left you said you weren’t coming back and I understand if you don’t want me to come now that you know how I feel. But I had to tell you. Even if you don’t love me back, I still want to be with you. Pathetic, huh?” She tried for a smile, but it came out pinched, scared. “I had to tell you. I had to take a chance that you wouldn’t push me away.”

He blinked and set down his bag. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Once again, Tori sailed into the void. “Look, I can see how you feel. They’re boarding first class now. You better go.” She turned, her legs trembling so badly she wondered if she would make it thirty feet, let alone all the way back to Philadelphia.

His hand closed around her arm. “Stop. Stop for one minute. You lawyers spend so much time talking I think you forget how to listen.”

“Well that’s uncalled for,” she said. “I listen plenty. And besides, I’m not a lawyer anymore. I don’t now what I am, exactly, but it isn’t a lawyer.”

“You’ll be a lawyer until the day you die, my love.”

“No I won’t. Did you hear me? I quit my job. As in quit, terminate—” The sound of the endearment finally penetrated her brain, and her mouth fell open. “What did you call me?”

“I thought you said you were a good listener.”

She punched him in the arm. “Don’t you dare tease me, you oaf!”

A tender smile curved his lips. “I wouldn’t dream of it. You’d have me for breakfast.”

“If you call me a tough nut, I’m turning around and walking right back out of this airport,” she said, voice quavering, tears filling her eyes. She had cried more in the past week than she’d ever thought possible. Once the dam broke, the tears seemed to linger behind her eyes, reappearing at a moment’s notice.

“You’ve got me over a barrel then, counselor. Because I would do anything to keep that from happening.”

That was when the first hint of cautious optimism hit her. Like a flower stretching its petals toward the warmth of an early morning sun, she let her body sway toward him. “Why?”

“Because I love you, too.” He wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up so their eyes were on the same level, and her feet dangled helplessly above the floor. “I realized it that night at your house when you stood in that kitchen, surrounded by your mother’s things but so determinedly yourself. You’re belligerent and temperamental. You make me laugh and you make me think. You understand me better than anyone. Do you know, before you came along, I didn’t even realize I don’t like my apartment? It’s a beautiful place, but it’s not me. I want a house, like you have—except with more furniture, and maybe a few rugs.”

Tori smiled through her tears, as Brit continued. “I want a dog and a family. I want you, darling. Leaving you that night was one of the hardest and stupidest things I’ve ever done. I thought I could bully you into caring about me. When you turned me away, I thought I had lost you forever.”

He leaned his face against her cheek as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I wasn’t going to get on the plane. I couldn’t. I was coming back to find you, to beg you to give me one more chance. We’ve both been living someone else’s life, Tori. What do you say we start living our own? Together?”

Her heart, struggling to comprehend what he had already said, fluttered unsteadily. “What do you mean?”

He lowered her to the ground and pressed tiny kisses on her eyes, her nose, and her lips. “We can start with Scotland. I need a vacation and I think you do, too. When we’re ready to come back we can find a new place—a house somewhere that doesn’t look like your mother’s or like my sisters decorated it. It will look like us. You can practice law, but I promise to interfere whenever you start working more than sixty hours a week.”

“And what about you?”

Brit shrugged. “I’m not sure what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll find someone like your friend Jerry who needs help starting up a new company. It wasn’t until I talked to you and Jerry that I realized that was what I missed. My passion is starting from scratch and building something out of nothing. I’d like to do that again. Then again, we’ll have a wedding to plan, so that will take some time. Of course we could elope, but I think my family would kill us—”

She hit him on the arm. An enormous, ridiculous smile threatened to split her face in half even as fat, watery tears slid down her cheeks. “Don’t you dare think you’re going to get away without proposing to me, you cretin.”

Without missing a beat he dropped onto one knee. “Tori Anderson, love of my life, I have no ring to slip on your finger. I have no job and a lousy apartment that feels like a movie set. The only thing I have to offer is my heart and my love. Will you accept?”

A fresh wave of tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh yes. Yes!”

He jumped to his feet and kissed her with all the passion and love she never thought she’d have. The tears slid down her cheeks, healing her, making her whole.

“We will create something new together,” he said. “Just the two of us.”

She nodded and held him close. Tori’s Rules of Negotiation Number Six: When you’re offered the deal of a lifetime, smile. And never let it go.