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“Come in. ”
He opened the door and found her exactly as he’d expected: on the telephone. She said good-bye and hung up. “Hi, Dad. ”
Dad.
“Hey, kiddo. ”
“How is she?”
“The same. ” He sat down beside her and gently took hold of her hand. “How are you doing?”
She bravely hoisted a smile onto her pale face. “Okay. ”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. All he could think about was what would happen to all of them when Julian True came into their lives. Jacey, like Liam, had been told only that Mike had been married too young, to a man who wasn’t ready to settle down. Two kids … a marriage that didn’t work out. It was an ordinary story Mike had devised. There was no room in it for the possibility of Julian True.
Liam knew that in all the days and weeks and years that lay ahead, he would divide his life into two neat pieces. Before the coma, and after.
Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon’s blade. Even if Mikaela recovered, their lives would be changed. He was afraid that the secrets she’d kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would—for one heartbeat—flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.
Now, as he looked into Jacey’s sad brown eyes, he knew he should tell her the truth about Julian. He knew, too, that he wouldn’t do it. He would lay down his life before causing her such pain.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
A smile was beyond him. “Right as Seattle rain. ” He leaned toward her and pulled her into his arms. She clung to him, and for a brief and shining moment, everything was forgotten except that he loved her … and she loved him back.
When he pulled back, he could see it in her eyes, this mixture of grief and fear that had changed them all. “Dad?”
He felt fragile suddenly; one touch and he could shatter into a dozen pieces. “I love you, Jacey. That’s all I came up here to say. ”
She smiled easily, relieved. “I love you, too, Dad. Remember when I had appendicitis?”
He stroked her hair. “Of course. ”
“You gave me a sucker and told me you’d take the pain away … and you did. ”
“I wish it were that simple now. ”
She lost her smile. “I wish I were little again. ”
He pulled her into his arms again.
If she wondered why he held her a bit too tightly, she never said a word.
Chapter Fourteen
The town looked like a damned movie set. Pleasantville at night.
Julian stared through the limousine’s smoked-glass windows. He couldn’
t remember ever seeing a place this … cute. Any minute he expected to see Disney characters skipping along the sidewalks.
He lowered the privacy screen so he could talk to the driver. “We’re looking for the Country Haus Bed and Breakfast. It’s probably right next door to the Drift On Inn. ”
“I’ve got the address, sir. ”
“Thank God. In a town this size, we could miss it by what, a block? Two?”
The driver turned off Main Street onto Glacier. Halfway down the road, they came to a barricade. Several cars were parked in the center of the road, behind the orange dividers. The driver stopped and started to turn the car around.
