The Color of Destiny (The Color of Heaven Series Book 2) (2 page)

I wondered about her family. Did she have a husband? Children?

As I walked out of the hospital, a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me. It’s not easy to do chest compressions for extended periods of time, and I’d really wanted to bring this woman back. There were moments in the ambulance when I could almost hear her pleading with me to stay hopeful.
Don’t... give... up.

I unlocked my car and climbed into the driver’s seat, then sat for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel. Staring straight ahead, I wondered if that voice in my head had less to do with saving that woman’s life, and more to do with saving my own.

Chapter Four

The house was dark when I walked through the front door, except for the eerie glow of the television in the family room off the kitchen. It flashed like a strobe light at a dance club.

With a heavy pang of dread, I set my purse and keys on the table in the foyer, shrugged out of my jacket, hung it on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, and quietly made my way toward the kitchen.

I lived in an older home with a formal living room and dining room along the east side, but we had built an addition at the back, beyond the kitchen—a room for our flat screen TV and for more casual lounging about. I don’t know why we thought we needed more space. It was just the two of us in the house. We had given up trying to have children a number of years ago.

I flicked on the light over the kitchen table, then stood in the doorway. My husband, Glenn, was asleep on the sofa. We had been together since ninth grade, and he was the great love of my life.

I still believed it to be so, even then, because we had been through some rough times in our relationship. Maybe that’s why I was so tightly bonded to him.

My footfalls were silent across the wall-to-wall carpeting in the family room. I picked up the vodka bottle from the end table and checked to see if it was empty. Of course it was.

With a sigh of disappointment, I covered Glenn with the fleecy throw from the back of the sofa, though I knew I shouldn’t be doing it.

I was a paramedic. I had seen this before. It was a mistake to cover an addict so that he wouldn’t be cold, and it was a mistake to try and protect him from himself, even though all my instincts and the love I felt for him willed me to take care of him. Ours was a love not many of us are fortunate enough to experience, and before I tell you the rest of my story, I need you to understand that.

Chapter Five

1987

The first time I saw Glenn, my legs nearly gave way beneath me. It was as if I were being reunited with a lost loved one. I felt an inexplicable connection, though I couldn’t fully comprehend it at the time. All I knew was that I was drawn to this person—both emotionally and sexually—and I wanted him in my life. How could I know, intellectually, that I was happy because I had just found my soul mate?

Yes, I now believe in soul mates. After everything I’ve seen and experienced, it’s impossible not to believe it—but I am getting ahead of myself.

It was lunch hour during the month of October, and I was fifteen years old. My family had only recently moved from Canada, where I was born, to Bar Harbor, Maine, so my sister and I were the new girls in town. Mia was seventeen and a senior. She received most of the attention because she was tall, blond, and had perfect bone structure beneath a clear, dewy complexion. She was constantly told she should be a model, but laughed it off with a flip of her silky hair and an eye roll.

As for me, I wasn’t unattractive. My hair was long, thick, wavy, and red, and there was nothing wrong with my bone structure and complexion—though I wore foundation to cover my freckles.

I wasn’t as tall as Mia. She towered over me a good six inches, which usually made me feel invisible around her. Heads turned for Mia, while gazes whisked quickly over me. I wasn’t jealous, mind you. I had my own friends and my own interests, and luckily Mom always made me feel beautiful. ‘You are so pretty,’ she would say to me when I arrived at the breakfast table dressed for school, or she might say, ‘You are so creative,’ when I painted a new landscape.

But let’s get back to my story. The first time I saw Glenn...

o0o

I was sitting on the bleachers in the gymnasium with my new friends, watching pick-up basketball. We knew some of the boys who were playing, so we were there to ogle them, but as soon as my eyes settled on Glenn in his navy basketball shorts and baggy white T-shirt, I was captivated. There’s no other word for it. Everyone else simply disappeared.

It wasn’t because he was the most attractive boy, either. In fact, my friends didn’t understand my obsession with him at all. Glenn was of medium height with a medium build. His hair and eyes were brown, and like me, he had freckles. His face wasn’t exactly what one would call handsome. He had a rather large nose, but there was something manly and mature about him, and he walked with a swagger that made my stomach do flips and dives through flaming hoops.

I dragged my friends to the gym at lunch hour every day after that, and eventually Glenn began saying hi to us in the hallways. Even
that
was enough to send me into a swoon.

As luck would have it, we ran into him and a few of his friends at the mall one Saturday afternoon and hung out for a few hours.

Over the next few weeks my friends and I were blissfully absorbed into his older crowd, and were even invited to parties.

“So what’s happening between you and Glenn Murphy?” Mia asked me one night while we were watching TV. “He’s the one you like, right?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “but we’re just friends right now.”

“Does he know you like him?”

“I think so. I mean, I haven’t said anything, but sometimes he catches me staring at him.”

“What does he do when he catches you?”

I shrugged. “He smiles at me. We talk about stuff.”

I exhaled heavily. I won’t call it a sigh because there was nothing dreamy about it. To the contrary, it was an expression of my frustration.

“I think you should tell him how you feel,” Mia suggested.

She was a senior and had more experience with boys, but that didn’t mean I had to take her advice.

“Umm. No,” I scoffed. “That might work for you, but it won’t work for me.”

“Why? Are you afraid he doesn’t feel the same way?”

“I don’t know yet. We’re all just friends right now.”

She was quiet for a long time. “Maybe just turn the heat up a notch,” she said. “There’s a way to let a guy know you like him without actually saying it. You just have to look at him a certain way. Maybe lay your hand on his arm or his chest. Be flirty.”

I chuckled, because I knew she was only trying to help. “There is no question that
you
have a special talent for flirting,” I said, “but it’s not my way. I don’t want to wreck this.”

“You won’t. He likes you.”

My gaze shot to hers. “Why do you say that? Did you hear something?”

She sipped her orange juice. “No, but you guys have been hanging out a lot lately. Obviously you all like each other.”

Yes, but I wanted it to be more. My sister knew that, too, which is exactly what drove the wedge into our relationship three days later, when I saw something I didn’t want to see.

Chapter Six

The wedge came down at a party that got so out of hand, the neighbors called the cops to come and break it up.

It wasn’t the sirens and flashing lights that started the tension between my sister and me, however. No, that particular incident occurred shortly beforehand, when everyone was still having a good time.

Naturally, the parents of the kid hosting the party weren’t home. They had traveled to Jamaica for a week, trusting their seventeen-year-old son to take care of the house and water the plants. It became the running joke of the night. By the time two paddy wagons arrived on the scene, every plant-holder in the house was spilling over with beer. The floors were covered with potting soil from the runoff, and the dirt had been tracked up the carpeted stairs and into the bedrooms.

The music was blaring. I admit, I’d had a few drinks when my friend Janice took hold of my arm and said, “Come this way. There’s something you need to see.”

I followed her to the crowded kitchen. Janice pointed toward the sliding glass doors at the far end of the room.

There she was. My sister, Mia, throwing her head back and laughing. My stomach turned over with sickening horror when I saw that she was talking to Glenn.

They stood very close to each other in the corner. When she laughed again and laid her hand on his chest, my pulse began to race. I felt an intense hatred. I was filled incomprehensible rage.

Glenn was mine. She knew I liked him. Why was she flirting with him?

“I want to kill her right now,” I said.

“Maybe she’s talking to him about
you
,” Janice replied. “Maybe she’s trying to help get the two of you together.”

At that moment, Mia grabbed hold of Glenn’s shirt in her slender fist and pulled him closer.

They proceeded to French kiss for about six hours. Or at least that’s how it seemed. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t look away, though it disgusted me, because he was most definitely kissing her back.

“Let’s go,” I finally said, turning away and shouldering my way through the crowd. Janice hurried to grab our coats. She followed me onto the front lawn.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, you did the right thing.”

We started walking to her house, where—lucky for Mia—I was spending the night.

o0o

I apologize for telling you this story. It must seem trite and immature. That’s how it sounds to me now as I recall it.
Boo hoo. My sister stole the boy I liked in high school. Woe is me
.

I realize that there are far worse things going on in the world. People are dying of terminal illnesses and starving in developing countries. But on that night, when I was only fifteen years old, the betrayal felt like a meat cleaver in my chest. I adored Glenn and I wanted desperately to be with him. It was a powerful desire, and nothing about it felt childish at the time.

To this day, I don’t believe in that phrase: It’s only puppy love. The feelings were real, and the agony was excruciating, because it had two prongs.

Glenn didn’t want me. He wanted my older sister. And Mia was equally to blame. She had betrayed my trust and taken something—some
one—
she knew I wanted. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive her.

Chapter Seven

“He’s not right for you anyway,” Mia argued the next day when I confronted her in the backyard. She was raking the leaves for Dad in exchange for ten dollars. She wanted to buy a purse she had seen at the mall the day before.

“How do
you
know?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest.

She wouldn’t look at me. She kept her eyes focused on the pile of leaves she had raked into the center of the yard. “You’re a junior, and he’s a senior. He’ll be gone after this year anyway.”

“And so will
you
,” I reminded her. “God willing.”

I returned to the house and slammed the screen door behind me.

I will always regret saying that to her.

o0o

My friends and I didn’t see much of Glenn’s crowd over the next few weeks. The spontaneous invitations ceased completely. I suppose everyone knew it would be awkward between Glenn, Mia, and me, with all of us in the same room.

Glenn must have known I felt rejected, and I certainly couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing them together. I hated to imagine that they were talking about me. Feeling sorry for me.

What exactly did they talk about on the phone every night? I couldn’t fathom it. Glenn was into alternative music and books, while Mia was into the hit parade and shopping. It made no sense to me. I knew she was all wrong for him, and part of me couldn’t wait for him to realize it.

My friends and I stopped going to the gymnasium at lunch hour to watch basketball. I often wondered if Mia was there in my place, sitting in the bleachers, cheering for Glenn. I didn’t ask her about that. In fact, I didn’t talk to her about anything. At dinner I stuck to small talk. Homework, chores, and whatever my parents wanted to talk about.

They recognized the tension between my sister and me, but thankfully they didn’t force us to work it out at the table.

o0o

“This will pass,” my mother said to me one night while I sat at my desk doing homework.

I laid my pencil down on my math book and swiveled to face her. “No, it won’t.”

I hated the fact that I sounded like an emotional teenager, overdramatizing a situation that involved a boy.

But it was so much more than that. No one else realized it. At least not yet.

“You’ll get over him,” Mom said.

“No, I won’t.”

Her brow furrowed with concern. “You’re only fifteen, Kate. There will be plenty of other boys.”

“No, there
won’t
be,” I firmly argued.

Mom cleared her throat. I doubt she expected to encounter such strong opposition from me.