Angel Falls (35 page)

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?”

“Last night I had the dream again—only I wasn’t alone on the beach anymore. I was sitting with Liam, watching our grandchildren play in the water.” She gazed up at him. “I love him more than you can imagine, Jules. I only hope it’s not too late to tell him that.”

“I know he loves you, Kayla.”

She felt an aching sadness for all the things that could have been, for all the things she’d lost while waiting for what could never be. “There is no Kayla, Jules. There never was. And you were never Melvin.”

His voice was thick. “It sounds like you’re saying good-bye.”

“Oh, Jules, we said good-bye a long, long time ago. I’m only just now getting around to leaving.” She caressed
his cheek, let her fingers linger there for a moment, then slowly she drew back her hand and headed for the door.

“Wait! You can’t just walk out of here. The press is waiting at the front door. I’ll go make a statement, then I’ll pick you up at the back door and take you …” He paused, said softly, “Home.”

She turned back to him. “What will you tell them?”

He looked sad. “I’ll tell them the story’s over. That Sleeping Beauty found her Prince. They might … follow you for a while.”

She smiled. “And cover my glamorous life? After ten minutes, they’ll realize that the ordinary life of a small-town doctor’s wife is hardly front-page news.”

“I’ll be right back with the limo. I’ll meet you around back.” He gave her a last, heavy look, then turned and left.

Mikaela reached for her suitcase, then decided to leave it in the closet. It was too unwieldy for her to carry, and it would only arouse suspicion. She called and canceled the cab. Empty-handed, she left her room. She kept her head down, and her side brushed against the wall as she made her slow, limping way down the hospital corridors.

When she opened the door, the first thing she noticed was the evergreen smell of Christmas. Green pine needles and fresh snow. A dark purple sky filled with the first few evening stars made her feel small. She smiled; that was what she expected from the sky. All her life, she’d gone out at night and stood beneath all that blue velvet darkness. It was her temple, the
true house of her God, and it never failed to remind her of her place.

She liked feeling small. It had been the wanting to feel big that had led her to Julian.

The limousine pulled up, the door opened, and she got inside.

The limo crawled through town at the posted speed limit of ten miles per hour. Outside, there were people everywhere, moving in gray clouds of exhaled breath, walking beneath banners that read:
WELCOME TO GLACIER DAYS
.

Julian couldn’t take his eyes off Mikaela, although she rarely looked at him. She directed the driver out of town, onto a back road where trees outnumbered houses a thousand to one. They turned into a driveway, passed beneath an arch announcing
ANGEL FALLS RANCH.

Acres of white pastures rolled away from the road on either side, bracketed by four-rail fencing. Beneath a huge old tree, a dozen horses stood, their big butts turned into the wind.

Mikaela touched the smoked-glass windows. “Hi, babies,” she murmured to the horses. “I missed you.”

At last the house came into view; it was a beautiful log structure set against the serrated black mountains.
White icicle Christmas lights hung from the eaves and made the house look like a princess’s castle.

The car pulled up in front of the house and stopped. The driver—Julian could never remember his name—hurried around to their door.

“Thank you,” she said to the young man as she got out.

Julian realized that not once in all these weeks had he offered the driver those simple words. He got out of the car and stood beside Kayla. She shivered with cold and he put an arm around her.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, speaking of the house.

He looked down at her, only her. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

The driver got back into the car and shut the door, giving them privacy.

Kayla turned to him. “Come in with me, Jules. Meet your daughter.”

He saw the sorrow in her eyes, and he knew that she understood what hadn’t yet been said. Still, as always, she expected the best of him. It was, he knew now, one of the things he loved most about her. In all the world, she was the only one who had ever wanted him to reach for the man he could be.

He hated to hurt her again, to remind her of the painful truth. “You know I can’t.”

“Oh, Julian …” She said his name on a sigh of disappointment, a sound more intimate and knowing than any kiss they ever shared.

“If I walked through those doors, it would be a lie. We both know that. I don’t want to do to Jacey what I did to you.”

She looked at him and tried to smile.

It broke his heart, that soft realization in her beautiful eyes. “Tell me you’ll always love me,” he whispered.

She touched his cheek. In the coldness, her touch was a brand that burned his flesh. “I’ll always love who we were.”

He felt and heard the continent that lay between his question and her answer. He knew as certainly as he’d ever known anything that this time he would miss her forever. When his fans had died and the women no longer followed him, he would sit in a leather chair in his lonely house and dream of this woman who had once and truly loved him.

He reached down for her left hand. The plain gold band glittered in the pale glow of the limo’s headlights. “Do you still have the wedding ring I gave you?”

“Of course.”

“Give it to Jacey. Tell her …”

“What, Jules?”

“Tell her that out here, somewhere, is a man who wishes he were different.”

“
Be
different, Jules. Come in with me. You know Liam, he’ll make a place for you.”

“Liam’s not the problem. I wish …” He couldn’t say it.

“What do you wish?”

Somewhere a branch snapped in the breeze, and it sounded dangerously like the breaking of his own brittle heart. “I wish I could love you the way he does.”

He didn’t want her to answer, so he pulled her into his arms and kissed her for the last time. “Goodbye … Mikaela.”

She turned away from him and limped through the snow. One last time, she stopped at looked at him. “Good-bye, Julian True.” It was spoken so softly, he wondered later if he’d imagined it.

The house smelled of evergreen boughs and baking apple pie, of hollyberry candles and a newly stoked fire. Mikaela paused in the doorway, breathing in the welcoming scent of
home
. She could see her mother in the kitchen, alone, wiping down the tile countertops. Rose looked up suddenly. Mikaela pressed a finger to her lips and moved silently forward. As she passed the living room, she saw Liam sitting at the piano. Last year’s Sasquatch costume lay heaped on the floor by his feet.

“Where are the kids?” Mike whispered to her mother.

Rosa pointed upstairs. “They are cleaning their bedrooms for you.”

Mike nodded. She could imagine how their bedrooms must look. No doubt Bret had at least a thousand chewy-bar wrappers strung across his desk. He’d probably talked Rosa into buying him Twinkies and
Ding Dongs. “Keep them busy for a few minutes, will you?”

“Si.”
Rosa started to turn away.

Mikaela touched her mother’s arm. “
Gracias
, Mama. For everything.”

“De nada, mi hija.”
With a quick smile, Rosa headed out of the kitchen and hurried upstairs.

Mikaela took a deep breath. It disconcerted her to see Liam at the piano, with his hands in his lap. She’d missed his music. She hadn’t realized until this moment how much a part of her it had become. Every moment and memory in her life seemed to be accompanied by some piece of music drawn from her husband’s heart.

She tiptoed into the living room. A brightly lit Christmas tree stood in the corner, a thousand sparkling lights reflected in the black picture window. It was the first year ever that she hadn’t chosen the tree and directed the placement of each ornament; it saddened her, this evidence that somehow her family had … gone on.

When she was directly behind Liam, she paused and closed her eyes.
Please, God, don’t let it be too late
.

“Liam?”

He spun around so fast his knees cracked into the piano bench. When he saw her, he frowned, running a hand through his too-long hair. “You should be at the hospital,” he said, looking awkward and uncertain.

“Tell me it’s not too late.”

He looked confused. “What do you mean?”

She sat down beside him, laid her hand on his
forearm. She needed to be touching him, and yet she was afraid to do more. “I wish I were smarter. I know there are words I need right now and I can’t find them. For twelve years, you loved the woman I wanted to be. I used to look at you sometimes, especially when you were with the kids, and the ache in my heart … I
wanted
to be the kind of wife you deserved. I just … couldn’t.”

He stroked her hair, and she knew that the tenderness of his touch was as natural as breathing. “I know that, Mike, but—”

“I love you.” She flung the words at him, wincing at the high, tinny edge of desperation in her voice.

He yanked his hand back. “Mike, please …”

“I love you,” she said, softer this time. “I want to grow old with you, Liam Campbell. I want to sit on our porch and sip lemonade and watch our children grow up and go on and have children of their own. I want to fix holiday dinners for all of us, and watch our grandchildren learn to walk and talk and have them fall asleep in our arms.” She gazed up at him.

For the first time, she knew it was in her eyes, all the bits and pieces and scraps of love she’d collected over the years. Love, as pure and clean as rainwater, as complex as memories themselves. It was all for him, for this gentle, steady man who’d always been there for her, whose heart she had so carelessly broken in a thousand little ways, in the things she hadn’t said. Hadn’t felt.

“What about Julian?” he asked quietly.

For once, the beloved name hit the hard shell of her
rib cage and clattered away. No piece of it reached the tender walls of her heart. “He will always be a part of me … but now, I can put him where he belongs—in the past. Part of my wayward youth that was lived too hard and too fast and in a world that wasn’t real.” She caressed his cheek; it was a soft, fleeting touch. She hadn’t the courage for more. “It was real, what I felt for Jules; I’ll never deny that. No more lying to myself or to you or the kids. I loved Julian True. But it was a fragile love that didn’t pass the test of time. When it broke apart, I never let it go. I held the pieces together, thinking—dreaming—that they’d magically fuse again. I was so busy holding them, I never noticed the emptiness in my hands.” Tears stung her eyes. “I was a fool, Liam. And it took a smack upside the head to make me see the truth.
You’re
the one I love, and if you’ll give me another chance, I’ll love you until the day I die. You’ll never, ever wonder again.”

“I’ve always loved you, Mike,” he said simply.

Tears blurred her vision. “I know.”

Slowly he smiled, and now it was in his eyes, too, that love they’d built together over all these years. She could see it, feel it warming her. “I missed you. God, for twelve years, I missed you.”

How was it that the profound simplicity of those words had the power to rock her world? Never again would she lose sight of what mattered, not for a day or an hour or even a minute. She would treasure every instant of her life from now on, for she knew something now, a deep truth that had eluded her all of her life. Love wasn’t a great, burning brushfire that swept
across your soul and charred you beyond recognition. It was being there, simply that. It was a few people, standing together in a living room, trimming a Christmas tree with the decorations that represented the sum total of who they were, where they’d been, what they believed in.