Where There's Smoke (75 page)

Clark was wrong to deed me this place.
 
I was wrong to accept it."

She was touched to see tears in Janellen's eyes.
 
"The people in this town can be so stupid!
 
You're the best doctor we've ever had."

"Their opinion of me had nothing to do with my qualifications as a physician.
 
They bowed to pressure."
 
It was unnecessary to cite Jody Tackett as the party responsible for the shunning.

Janellen already knew, and felt guilty by association.
 
"I'm sorry."

"I know you are.
 
Thank you."
 
The two women smiled at each other.
 
If circumstances had been different, they could have become very good friends.
 
"How is your mother doing?
 
Has the medication been effective?"

Janellen told her about Jody's marked improvement.
 
Lara didn't want to dampen her optimism, but felt it was her professional duty to interject some realism.
 
"I'm glad to hear that she's feeling better, but stay vigilant.
 
She must continue taking the medication until her doctor instructs otherwise.
 
I recommend frequent, periodic checkups.
 
And before you completely reject the idea of angioplasty to dilate the carotid, I recommend another round of extensive testing."

"I don't think Mama would agree to it, but if I notice signs of stress or heaven forbid another seizure, I'll insist."

They chatted for a few minutes more, then Janellen rose to leave.

At the door she said, "I saw your husband on The Today Show this morning.
 
They had videotape of him being greeted by the president."

"Yes, I saw it, too."

"The interviewer asked why you weren't with him.
 
He said you were so overwrought from your experiences in Montesangre that you were unable to accompany him to Washington."

It rankled that Randall was serving as her mouthpiece and giving out false information.
 
She had made her position unequivocally clear to him when they were in Houston and had remained locked in her bedroom of the suite until she was certain he had left the hotel for the airport to catch his Washington flight.
 
They hadn't said goodbye.

His excuses for her absence in Washington were self-serving, but, other than confronting him about it, there was nothing she could do to stop him.
 
The issue wasn't worth having another private encounter.
 
Their next one would be in a divorce court, and then she would have an attorney speaking for her.

"It must have been .
 
. ."
 
Janellen hesitated, then plunged ahead.

"Well I can't even imagine how you felt when you discovered that he had been alive all this "No, I'm sure you can't imagine."

Introspectively, Lara again saw Randall lying in the bathtub.
 
She heard her screams echoing off the gaudy tile walls, heard the crunch of breaking wood as Key kicked his way through the door, felt his arms closing around her.
 
She had buried her face against his chest.

At first they had thought Randall was dead.

But he'd come back to life.

Key hadn't touched her since, not even casually.

There were no words to describe the enormity of the shock caused by Randall's resurrection, so she simply said, "I was astounded to see him alive."

"I'm sure you were, but you don't appear overwrought.
 
Why didn't you go to Washington with him?"
 
On the heels of her blunt question, Janellen quickly withdrew it.
 
"I'm sorry.
 
That was unforgivably rude."

"No need to apologize.
 
You asked a legitimate question.
 
The answer is simply that I chose not to go.
 
Politics is Randall's arena, not mine.

What he does with his recent celebrity is up to him.
 
I want to ignore mine, and I wish that everyone else would."

"So does Key."

The arrow in her heart twisted.
 
"He seemed extremely uncomfortable to find himself suddenly in the spotlight."

Janellen's sweet face puckered with anguish as she blurted out, "He's going away again.
 
To Alaska.
 
He told me this morning.
 
He's been offered a job as a spotter along the pipeline.
 
That's a pilot who checks for leaks."

Lara nodded vaguely.

"He says it's good money and that he needs a change of scenery.

I reminded him that he'd just had a change of scenery, but he said the trip to Central America didn't count.
 
I don't want him to go," she said, her anxiety plain.
 
"But now that Mama's in better health, I guess there's nothing to keep him here."

"I guess not."
 
Her voice had a hollow ring.

"I'm so worried about him," Janellen went on.
 
"At first I thought he was just tired from the ordeal, but you've been back a week and he hasn't snapped out of it yet."

Lara was instantly alarmed.
 
"Is he ill?"

"No, he's not sick.
 
Not physically.
 
He's withdrawn.
 
His eyes don't sparkle anymore.
 
He doesn't even yell when he gets mad.
 
That's not like him."

"No, it isn't."

"It's like somebody pulled the plug on the electricity that kept him charged."

Lara didn't know how to respond.

"Well," Janellen concluded awkwardly.
 
"I just thought I'd tell you.

She hesitated, as though there was more she wanted to say.
 
Lara wondered if she knew that they'd slept together.
 
Surely she couldn't know .
 
. . but maybe she'd guessed.

"Well, uh .
 
. . When are you leaving town?"

"I don't have a timetable, just whenever I get everything packed.

I haven't yet made arrangements with a realtor to handle the sale of this building."

"Will you be moving to Washington?"

"No," she answered sharply.
 
Ameliorating her tone, she added, "I haven't made any specific plans."

"You're going to pack up and leave, and you don't even know where you're going?"

"That's the gist of it," Lara replied with a weak smile.

Janellen was flabbergasted, but common courtesy kept her from prying further.
 
"When you know your new address, would you please send it to me?
 
I realize there's bad blood between you and us Tacketts, but I'd like to stay in touch."

"You had nothing to do with the bad blood,' "Lara said gently.

"I'd love to hear from you."

Janellen seemed to debate whether it was the proper thing to do, but in the end she gave Lara a quick hug before rushing down the walk to her car.

Lara watched until she drove out of sight.
 
Slowly she closed the door, symbolically ending a chapter of her life.
 
This visit with Janellen was probably the last contact she'd have with the Tacketts.

Later, Janellen and Bowie were cuddled up on the parlor sofa.
 
All the lights were out.
 
Jody had retired to her room hours earlier.
 
Key, as usual, was out.

Bowie was semireclined on the corner cushions with Janellen sprawled across his lap.
 
She was using his shoulder as a pillow for her head while she mindlessly strummed his bare chest through his unbuttoned shirt.

"It was so sad," she whispered.
 
"She was standing there surrounded by all those boxes, looking like she was at a complete loss about what to do next."

"Maybe you read her wrong.

"I don't think so, Bowie.
 
She looked like she didn't have a friend in the world."

"Doesn't make sense.
 
She just found out her dead husband is alive."

"It doesn't make sense to me, either.
 
Why isn't she with him?
 
If I had believed you were dead, and discovered you weren't, I never would let you out of my sight again.
 
I love you so much that "She raised her head.
 
"Well, I'll be.
 
That's it.
 
Dr. Mallory doesn't love her husband anymore.
 
Maybe she's fallen in love with somebody else."

"Calm down now.
 
You're cooking up something in your mind that ain't necessarily so."

"Like what?"

"Like there s something brewing between the doctor and your brother."

"You think so too?"
 
she asked excitedly.

"I don't think anything.
 
I think that's what you think.
 
Flying off to Central America alone together and getting captured by guerrilla fighters is pretty romantic stuff.
 
Sounds like a movie.
 
But don't go reading anything into it that's not there."

She looked chagrined and admitted that a romance between Key and Lara had crossed her mind.
 
"Both of them seem so wretchedly unhappy since they got back.
 
Key's itching to leave."

"He's always been a drifter.
 
You told me so yourself."

"It's more than wanderlust this time.
 
He's not rushing toward a new adventure, he's running away from something.
 
And that describes Dr.

Mallory, too.
 
She didn't act like a woman who's beloved has suddenly returned from the dead."
 
She made a face.
 
"From what I saw of him on TV, I can't say I blame her.
 
He sounded like a real jerk.
 
Besides, he's not nearly as handsome as Key."

Bowie chuckled.
 
"You've got a romantic streak a mile wide, you know that?"

"Key said that I'm in love and want everybody else to be as happy as I am.
 
He was right."

"About you wanting everybody to be happy?"

"About my being in love."
 
She gazed into his soulful eyes, her love exposed.
 
Cupping his face, she asked earnestly, "When, Bowie?"

This subject often came up.
 
Each time it did, it either fanned their passions or squelched them.
 
Tonight it caused a physical breach.

Frowning, he disengaged himself from her embrace, stood, and began rebuttoning his shirt.

"We have to talk, Janellen."

"I don't want to talk anymore.
 
I want to be with you.
 
I don't care where it has to be as long as we can be together."

He averted his eyes self-consciously.
 
"I found a place I think might do."

"Bowie.!"
 
She had a hard time keeping her voice to an excited stage whisper.
 
"Where is it?
 
When can we go?
 
Why didn't you tell me?"

Choosing to answer her last question first, he said, "Because it isn't right, Janellen."

"You don't like the room?"

"No, the room is all right.
 
It's .
 
."
 
He paused and shook his head with exasperation.
 
"I hate sneaking in here every night like a damn kid, fumbling around in the dark, copping feels, having to whisper like we're in the goddamn library, then leaving by the back door.
 
It's no damn good."

"But if you've found a place where we can go "It would only be worse.

You're too fine a woman to be snuck through the back doors of motels for a quick toss."
 
He held up his hands to stave off her protests.