Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour (149 page)

Ellie made a second cup of tea and took it out to the porch.

Julia took the drink with a quiet “Thanks” and “have a seat.”

Ellie grabbed one of the old quilts from the trunk on the porch and wrapped it around her. Sitting on the porch swing, she put her feet on the trunk. “Where’s Max?”

Julia shook her head. “He had an emergency at the hospital. He wanted to stay … but I sort of needed to be alone. Alice is asleep.”

Ellie started to rise. “Should I—”

“No. Please. Stay.” At that, Julia smiled sadly. “I sound like Alice. Brittany, I mean.”

“She’ll never really be Brittany to us.”

“No.” Julia sipped her tea.

“What will you do?”

“Without her?” Julia stared out at their backyard. In the darkness, they couldn’t see much past the river. Moonlight brightened the water. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer.” Her voice softened, trembled. “It’s like watching Mom die all over again.”

She started to say more, but fell suddenly silent. “Sorry. Sometimes …” She stood up, turned away. “I need to be with her now,” she said in a small, breaking voice, and then she was gone.

Ellie felt the start of tears. She tossed the blanket aside and got up. What good would it do to sit here by herself and cry?

She walked down into the damp grass toward the river. Across the black field she saw the twinkling yellow lights of Cal’s house.
Someday you should think about all the people who love you, El,
Peanut had said. Cal had always been on that list. Through both her marriages, all her disastrous affairs, and the deaths of her parents, Cal had always been the one constant man in her life.

Even though he was mad at her for something, he was the one man on the planet who saw her as she was and loved her anyway. She needed a friend like that now.

She was at his door in no time. She knocked.

And waited.

No one answered.

Frowning, she glanced behind her. Cal’s GTO was there, hidden beneath a tan canvas cover and a smattering of fallen leaves.

She opened the door, poked her head in, and said, “Hello?”

Again, there was no answer, but she saw a light on down the hall. She followed it to the closed door of Lisa’s study.

Suddenly she wondered if Lisa was back. The thought made her frown deepen. Nerves twisted her stomach, made her feel panicky, but that made no sense. She knocked on the door, “Hello?”

“Ellie?”

She pushed the door open and saw that Cal was there alone, sitting behind a drafting-like table with papers spread out all around him.

For no reason she could quite touch, Ellie felt a rush of relief. “Where are the girls?”

“Peanut took them to dinner and a movie so that I could work.”

“Work?”

“I thought you’d be out with George tonight.”

“I need new friends.” She sighed. “He was wrong for me. What do I need to do? Take out a billboard?”

“Wrong for you?” Cal leaned against his desk, studying her. “Usually you don’t figure that out until you’re married.”

“Very funny. Now, really, what are you doing?”

She crossed the room toward him, noticing the smudges on his cheek and hands. When she sidled up behind him, felt the touch of his arm against hers, she immediately felt less alone, less shaky.

There was a pile of papers in front of him. On the top page was a faded, working sketch of a boy and girl holding hands, running. Overhead, a giant pterodactyl-type bird blotted out the sun with its enormous wingspan.

He pushed the sketch aside; beneath it was a full-color drawing—almost a painting—of the same two kids huddled around a pale, glowing ball. The caption beneath them read:
How can we hide if they see our every move?

Ellie was stunned by the quality of his artwork, the vibrant colors and strong lines. The characters looked somehow both stylized and real. There was no mistaking the fear in their eyes.

“You’re a talented artist,” she said, rather dumbly, she thought, but it was so
surprising.
All those days while she’d been sitting at her desk, doing paperwork or reading her magazines or talking to Peanut, Cal had been creating Art. She’d blithely assumed it was the same doodling he’d been doing since Mr. Chee’s chemistry class. She felt suddenly as if she were losing her hold on herself. How could she have been with him every day and not known this? “Now I know why you said I was selfish, Cal. I’m sorry.”

He smiled slowly. It transformed his face, that smile, reminded her of a dozen times long past. “It’s a graphic novel about a pair of best friends. Kids. He’s a good kid from the wrong side of the tracks with a mean drunk for a dad. She hides him in her barn. Their friendship, it turns out, is the last true innocence, and it falls to them to destroy the wizard’s ball before the darkness falls. But if they kiss—or go farther—they’ll lose their power and be ruined. I just started submitting it to publishers.”

“It’s about us,” she said. At the realization, it felt as if a doorway somewhere opened, showed her a glimpse of a hallway she’d never seen. “Why didn’t you show me before?”

He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and stood up to face her. “You stopped seeing me a long time ago, El. You saw the gangly, screwed-up kid I used to be, and the quiet always-there-for-you guy I became. But you haven’t really looked at me in a long time.”

“I see you, Cal.”

“Good. Because I’ve waited a long time to tell you something.”

“What?”

He took her by the shoulders, held her firmly.

And he kissed her.

Not a friendly peck or an I-hope-you-feel-better brushing of the lips. An honest to God, send the blood rushing to her head, kiss. Tongue and all.

Ellie resisted at first—it was all so unexpected—but Cal wasn’t letting her run the show this time. He backed her up against the wall and kept kissing her until her breathing was ragged and her heart was beating so fast she thought she’d faint. It was a kiss that held back nothing and promised everything.

When he finally drew back, making her whimper at the sudden loss, he wasn’t smiling. “You get it now?”

“Oh my
God.
”

“Everyone in town knows how I feel about you.” He kissed her again, then drew back. “I was beginning to think you were stupid.”

She didn’t know how a nearly forty-year-old twice-divorced woman could feel like a teenage girl again, but that was exactly how she felt. All giddy and breathless. In an instant her whole life had clicked into place. It all fit now.
Cal.

Behind them the door opened. Ellie turned around slowly, still feeling dazed.

Peanut stood in the doorway. Like flowers from a single stem, three little faces hovered beside her. Peanut said, “Go put on your jammies. Daddy will be up in a minute to put you to bed.” When they were gone and their footsteps on the stairs had faded to nothing, Peanut’s gaze moved from Cal to Ellie and back to Cal.

A smile finally tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You kiss her?”

Ellie had the thought:
Peanut knew?
and felt a flash of irritation. Then Cal was pulling her toward him and she forgot about everything else. In those eyes she’d known forever, she saw love. True, this time; the kind that began on a cold day between two kids and lasted for a lifetime. He squeezed her hand. “I did.”

Peanut laughed. “It’s about damn time.”

Ellie put her arms around Cal and kissed him. She didn’t care if Peanut was watching. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been on Main Street, in uniform, during a traffic stop. All her life she’d been looking for love and it had been there all along, across the field, waiting for her. “It is,” she whispered against his lips. “About damn time.”

Julia knew she was holding Alice too tightly, but she couldn’t seem to let go. Neither could she think of her as Brittany. For the last hour, no matter what she did—or appeared to be doing—Julia was also watching the clock, thinking
Not yet.
But time kept moving on, slipping past her. Every second that passed brought her closer to the time when George would drive up to the house and knock on the door and demand his daughter.

“Read Alice.” The child thumped her finger on the page. Somehow she knew exactly where they’d left off.

Julia knew she should close the book quietly, say that it was time to talk of other things, of families that had been split up and fathers who came back, but she couldn’t do it. Instead she let herself hold her little Alice and keep reading, as if this were any other rainy January day. “ ‘Weeks passed,’ ” she read, “ ‘and the little rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore except to the boy.’ ” Julia’s voice gave out on her. She sat there, staring at the words, watching them blur and dance on the page.

“Want Alice real.”

She touched Alice’s velvety cheek. Every time they read this story, Alice said the same thing. Somehow the poor little girl thought she wasn’t real. And now there was no time to prove otherwise to her. “You’re real, Alice. And so many people love you.”

“Love.” Alice whispered it softly, as she always did, with a kind of reverence.

Julia closed the book and set it aside, then pulled Alice onto her lap so they were looking at each other.

Alice immediately looped her arms around Julia’s neck and gave her a butterfly kiss. Then she giggled.

Be strong,
Julia thought.

“You remember Mary and the secret garden and the man who loved her so much? The man who was her father? He’d been gone, remember?” Julia lost steam. She stared into Alice’s worried face and felt as if she’d fallen into the turquoise pools of her eyes. “There’s a man. George. He’s
your
father. He wants to love you.”

“Alice loves Jewlee.”

“I’m trying to tell you about your father, Alice. Brittany. You have to be ready for this. He’ll be here soon. You
have
to understand.”

“Be Mommy?”

Julia almost gave in, but a glance at the clock reminded her how short time was. She had to try again.

Alice had to understand that she wasn’t abandoning her, that she had no choice. She glanced over at the suitcase she’d packed so carefully last night. In it were all of the clothes and toys the town had gathered for “their” girl. Additionally, Julia had packed all of Alice’s favorite books and a few of her own childhood favorites that they hadn’t gotten around to yet. And there were the boxes that had been donated by the local families. Everyone in town had given their Alice something.

How would she button Alice’s—
Brittany’s
—coat, kiss her on the cheek, and say good-bye?
You’ll be fine. Go off with this man you don’t know and who doesn’t know you. Go live in a big house on a street you can’t cross without help in a city where you’ll never quite be understood.

How could she do it?

And how could she not? No matter how she tussled with all of this, she couldn’t escape the fact that George Azelle was a victim in this, too. He’d lost his daughter and found her again, against all odds. Of course he wanted to take her home. And he’d hired all the best medical professionals to care for her. Julia was terrified that it wouldn’t be enough, but she didn’t know how to stop the inevitable.

She drew in a ragged breath and tightened her hold on Alice. Outside, she heard a car drive up.

“Mommy?” Alice said again. This time it was her little girl’s voice that sounded wobbly and afraid.

“Oh, Alice,” she whispered, touching her soft, pink cheek. “I wish I could be that for you.”

Alice has a very bad feeling. It is like the time when Him first left and she was so hungry that she ate the red berries off the bush by the river and threw up.

Jewlee is saying things that Alice can’t make herself understand. She is trying hard; she knows these words are important. Father. Chance. Daughter. Jewlee says them all slowly, as if they weigh down her tongue. Alice knows they mean something important.

But she cannot understand and the trying is hurting now.

Jewlee’s eyes keep watering.

Alice knows this means Jewlee is sad. But why? What has Alice done wrong?

She has tried so hard to be Good. She showed the grown-ups the Bad Place in the woods, even went to the rocks that covered Her, even though it made Alice feel so sad. She let herself remember things she’d tried to forget. She’d learned to use forks and spoons and the toilet. She’d let them call her Alice, and had even learned to love that word, to smile inside when someone said it and meant her.

So what is left, what has she not done?

She knows about Leaving. Mommies who are soon to be DEAD have pale cheeks and shaking voices and leaking eyes. They try to tell you things you don’t understand, hug you so tightly you can’t breathe.

And then one day they’re gone and you’re alone and you wish your eyes would leak and someone would hold you again, but you’re alone now and you don’t know what you did wrong.

Alice feels that sick stomach feeling coming back, the panic that makes breathing hurt. She keeps trying to figure out what she has done wrong.

“Shoes!” she says suddenly. Maybe that is it. She never wants to wear her shoes. They pinch her toes and squish her feet, but she will
sleep
in them if Jewlee will keep loving her. “Shoes.”

Jewlee gives Alice a sad, sorry smile. From outside comes a sound, like a car driving into the yard. “No shoes now, honey. We’re inside.”

How can she say
I’ll be good, Jewlee?
Always. Always.
I’ll do everything you say.

“Good girl.” She whispers it as a promise, meaning it with every piece of her.

Jewlee smiles again. “Yes. You’re a very good girl, honey. That’s why all this hurts so much.”

It isn’t enough, being a good girl. That much she understands.

“No leave Alice,” she says desperately.

Jewlee looks toward the glass box that holds the outside. The
window
.