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Rosa swallowed hard. “What are you going to do, Mikita?”
“Please, Mama. ”
Rosa sighed. “Sí. But, Mikaela, stay away from the front doors. The reporters, they are waiting for you. ”
Jacey moved toward Mikaela. “I don’t want to leave you, Mom. ”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, honey. I’ll be home soon. ”
“You promise?”
Mikaela smiled. “I promise. ”
After they left, Mikaela decided not to bother checking out of the hospital right now. There would be time enough for technicalities tomorrow. She called for a cab, then carefully packed up all the photographs from the bedside tables and windowsills. At the last minute, she folded up her hospital gown and placed it gently on top of the things in the suitcase—to remind her always of this time. She didn’t ever want to forget any part of it. It was the coma that had saved her life. She prayed only that she had not awakened too late. That was one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.
She’d been unconscious for over a month. In reality, she had slept through the last fifteen years of her life.
Someone knocked at her door.
She froze, her heart thumping in her chest. Her gaze darted to the packed suitcase and empty table. Please don’t let it be a nurse—
Julian strode into the room as if he belonged there. “I started sneezing this morning. I think I’m developing an allergy to this Podunk town. ” He grinned. “You should see the hoopla goin’ on on Main Street. Grown men are walking around in Sasquatch costumes. ”
Glacier Days. She’d forgotten all about it.
In ordinary times, Liam would have been dressed in one of the Bigfoot costumes Mikaela spent hours putting together. Every year he grumbled about his dignity, and every year he ran in the race for charity.
“Kayla?”
She limped toward Julian. When she was close enough to touch him, she stopped. Finally she saw him, the man and not the myth. He was still devastatingly handsome, still a shooting star in a dark sky that wasn’t quite big enough to contain his magic. But when she looked past that, she saw what had been there all along, what had swept her up and then broken her to bits. She didn’t need to see Julian and Liam side by side to recognize the difference between tinfoil and sterling silver.
“Oh, Julian. ” She said his name in a soft and tender voice that held a lifetime’s regret.
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. ”
“Of course you don’t. You want to be watched, not seen. ” It was true, she realized. His was the magician’s life, full of illusion and sleight of hand, where only one man saw what was behind the curtain.
“Kayla, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I realized how much I’ve missed you. ”
“Oh, Jules. ” She sighed. It saddened her that she’d given up so much of her life waiting for this cubic zirconia moment. As if they could simply ride off into the sunset together. She’d forgotten that they’d already gone that direction once. It had taken them to a place so bright and hot that everything they were burned down to ash.
He flashed her the grin she’d seen a million times, the one that used to curl her toes and make her heart lurch into overdrive. “I know you’ve missed me, too. ”
At her look, his smile faded.
“What?” he asked, his voice uncharacteristically uncertain.
How did you tell a man that at last you’d grown up, that you’d learned true love wasn’t a night of passionate sex under a sky lit up by fireworks, but an ordinary Sunday morning when your husband brought you a glass of water, two aspirins, and a heating pad for your cramps?
“I used to have a dream,” she began, gazing up at him. “It started right after I left you. It changed a little over the years, but the point of it was always the same. In the dream, I’m an old woman with flowing white hair. My children have grown up and moved on and had children of their own. Liam is gone; he’s been dead for many, many years.
“I imagine myself on a pink-sand beach. There is a white cottage behind me, and I know it is my home, where I live alone. I am sitting on the beach in a portable chair, as I do every day, all day. And one day I look up and an old man is coming for me. It’s you, Jules. I realize then that I’ve waited fifty years for you to show up. You tell me that you’ve given it all up for me. You’re not Julian True anymore. You’re the other man, an ordinary man, the one whose name you never gave me. ”
“Mel,” he answered softly. “My name is Melvin Atwood Coddington the Third. ” He tried to smile, as if anything about this moment were funny. “Who would have guessed that Gibson would do so well with it?”
She touched his face. “You should have been Melvin. ”
“What are you saying?”
