Mirabella nodded, and then they were both quiet, thinking of Mirabella’s dad, who had survived his recent heart attack, undergone multiple-bypass surgery and was currently doing fine, and of Jimmy Joe’s dad, who hadn’t done any of those things.
“Were Charly and her dad close?” Jimmy Joe asked after a while.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I told you, remember? She ran away from home when she was very young.”
He held her tighter. “Sometimes that makes it worse.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mirabella muffled another sniffle against his chest. After a moment she took a breath and said casually, “Troy’s at the hospital with her.”
“Oh, yeah?” She could feel his smile against her hair, and tilted her head back so she could give him a scolding glare.
“I know what you’re thinking. And you can stop thinking it, because I’m telling you, I know Charly, and it doesn’t mean a thing. So Troy’s at the hospital. Big deal. He’s your brother. If he’s anything like you, where else would he be?”
“You got me there,” murmured Jimmy Joe, rocking her gently with his chuckle.
Mollified, Mirabella relaxed against him once more. But her mind was anything but relaxed. It was busy, as usual, chewing over this latest development, weighing options, making plans. Presently she drew herself up and declared, “We’ll have to postpone the wedding.”
“Well, now,” said Jimmy Joe cautiously, “let’s not get carried away. You really think that’s what she’d want? With your sisters comin’ all the way from California, and your mom and dad up from Pensacola and all?”
“I
Which, of course, Jimmy Joe was well aware of. So he just chuckled and wrapped her up once more in his arms and said, “Tell you what-it’s early yet. Instead of goin’ off half-cocked, why don’t we just wait a bit and see what happens?”
Charly walked slowly down the hospital corridor, following signs and arrows that would lead her back to the CICU waiting room. She was feeling numb, maybe a little giddy, and thinking about ironies. Thinking that the corridors, signs and arrows all looked familiar to her, like some kind of
Except that this wasn’t a TV fantasy or a nightmare she could expect to wake up from eventually. This was real. The fact was, twenty years ago she had walked down these same corridors after giving birth to a son. She’d walked out the front door that day and stepped onto a Greyhound bus and never looked back. Now here she was twenty years later, back where she’d started from, and the man she’d tried so hard to run away from all those years was the one who’d brought her here. How was this possible? It was as if she’d spent her whole life believing she was really getting someplace, only to find that all the time she’d been wandering in a circle.
Circle of life. Birth…to death.
“You get a hold of her?” Troy was at her side, holding a foam cup full of coffee in one hand and a large soft drink cup with water in it in the other.
She nodded, and was conscious of an enormous sense of relief as she took the coffee he held out to her, as if she’d just been given a pillow to lean back on. “They’d just gotten back from lunch, and were about to head out to do some more shopping.” She smiled thinly. “I was lucky to catch them-Bella’s a world-class shopper.”
She gestured toward the cup of water he still held in his hand. “That for Bubba?”
“Yeah, I think I’m gonna go see if I can find a better place to park. I tied him to the door handle so he can lie underneath the truck for shade, but I think I saw a place just down the hill where I can pull in close to some trees. Besides-” his grin flashed briefly “-it’s farther away from here in case he decides to cut loose and start howlin’.” He touched her arm and lowered his voice. “You gonna be okay here?” His eyes were dark and solicitous.
He has such incredible eyes.
The impropriety of the thought startled her. She nodded, her throat tightening with guilt, and said, “Sure.”
“Okay, then. Be right back.”
He turned, almost bumping into Dobrina, who was coming from the nurses’ station. “Any news?” Charly asked without much hope as she and Troy moved from the doorway of the waiting room to let her pass.
Dobrina shook her head while giving Troy a measuring look. Then she drew herself up to her full height, which was considerable, and thrust out her hand. “I’m Dobrina,” she announced before Charly had a chance to make the introductions. “And you’d be…?”
Charly couldn’t help but be amused by the way Troy practically snapped to attention. Dobrina had that effect on people. “Troy Starr, ma’am. Charly’s friend.”
“The one she called on to get her out of jail.”
Thus relegated to the position of mannerless child, Charly rolled her eyes and threw up her hands, while Troy said humbly, “Yes, ma’am.”
Dobrina was giving him what Charly had always called her supermom look-the one she’d swear could see straight through a person, or at least down to what was deep inside. Apparently in Troy’s case she approved of what she saw, although
A warm wave of memory soaked through the numbness inside her to settle around her heart, and she had to look away.
“Humph,” said Dobrina, still looking at Troy down the length of her nose as if he were a truant schoolboy and the apple he was offering her had a worm in it. “Where you from?”
“I’m from Georgia, ma’am. U.S. Navy, recently retired.”
“Georgia.” She gave a dubious sniff. “Retired, you say? Look pretty young to be retired, to me. What you plannin’ to do with the rest of your life?”
Troy rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, ma’am, I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”
“Well, you best get to figuring.” Dobrina leaned forward and tapped him on the chest. “You got to do something worthwhile with your life.”
Troy gave Charly a look of appeal. She knew how he felt, but could only offer him a shrug of sympathy. When it came to Aunt Dobie, it was every man, woman or child for him- or herself.
A moment later, though, inspiration came to his rescue. Holding up the cup full of water, he said, “Yes, ma‘am. Uh, would you excuse me? Gotta go tend to my dog. Nice meetin’ you.” And he fled, visibly perspiring.
“Seems like a nice young man,” said Dobrina with a judicious sniff, looking after him.
“A regular Boy Scout,” Charly murmured, frowning as she watched Troy’s classically masculine, broad- shouldered, narrow-hipped form turn a corner far down the corridor and disappear from view, her thoughts so far removed from anything remotely Boy Scout-ish she considered it a wonder Dobrina’s God didn’t smite her on the spot.
She was experiencing two very different but equally perplexing emotions. First there was the old flip-flop feeling in her chest, the unmistakable symptom of sexual attraction, and the stomach-churning guilt that went along with that. Her father had just had a heart attack, for God’s sake-this was no time to be falling wildly, head over heels in lust!
But it was the second feeling she found most worrisome, even frightening. Certainly the most difficult to understand. For twenty years she’d existed, rising and falling, succeeding and failing, pretty much on her own resources, dependent on no one. So why was it only now she should feel this sense of weakness, disorientation and fear, as if she were blind and her trusted guide dog had just walked off and left her in the middle of a catwalk with no handrails?
Realizing that Dobrina was giving her one of her looks, she shrugged and added, “I haven’t known him very long.” And she thought, My God, what an understatement. I only met him yesterday. How can that be?
