Beside a Dreamswept Sea (29 page)

Surely not or she wouldn’t be missing him. Should Cally tell her he was here? That he was a ghost? Would that comfort her and give her a measure of peace?

She knows, Cally.

Tony.
Her fingers stiffened on the glass, but she was determined not to fall into another faint. He was good. Real and good, and that was a blessing. A miracle even.
If Miss Hattie knows you’re here, then why is she missing you? And why is she so worried?

I can’t explain that to you. I know the answers, and I would explain if I could, but I can’t. I am doing everything I can, Cally. I swear I am.

Miss Hattie wasn’t the only one worrying here. Tony’s voice fairly reeked of fear. Whatever this was about, it was bad, bad news for both of them.
I see.

Not yet. But you’re beginning to. Look, I don’t want to intrude on your chat with Hattie, but I wanted you to know I’m doing all I can for Hattie and to ask you not to mention me hanging around to her. It upsets her, because we can’t really be together. Frankly, it upsets me, too.

I’m sure it does.
They had that kind of love Lucy Baker and Miss Millie had talked about Cecelia and Collin sharing. That rare and mystical, forever-after kind of love that Cally hadn’t so much as glimpsed and doubted she ever would.

I wanted to also tell you that I’m proud of you.

Tony, proud of her?
For what?

Dreaming with Bryce. No, don’t be embarrassed. I didn’t play voyeur, Cally. That’s a promise. I just waited to see if you’d dare to dream. When you did, I left. That leap took a lot of courage on your part, and you did it. You’ve beaten yourself half to death for it ever since, though. Because you have and you shouldn’t, I figured I’d best point that out to you—that you should be feeling great about your progress. That’s what’s important, Cally. You took the leap. When next you doubt you have courage, you remember that, okay?

Choked up, Cally swallowed hard.
I’ll try.

And quit telling yourself you’re forty kinds of fool for indulging in a little fantasy. Reality is a hell of a taskmaster at times. Dreaming a little is a blessing that can get you through a lot of really rough spots.

It can be a curse and create some rough spots, too—if you’re foolish enough to forget you’re dreaming.

Talk to Hattie about that, hmm? I’ve got a few chains to rattle.

She gasped.

Criminy, Cally. I was just kidding.

Miss Hattie claimed Cally’s attention. “I don’t want to intrude, dear heart, but you seem troubled.”

Maybe she should take Tony’s suggestion and talk with Miss Hattie. What could it hurt? “I am troubled.” Nervous at opening herself up to anyone besides Mary Beth, Cally fidgeted with the daffodil petals on the porcelain bisque centerpiece.

“If I can help, I will. I hope you know that.”

An angel if one ever walked the earth. “Thank you, Miss Hattie. I do know it. But I’m afraid there is no easy answer.” Cally made herself meet Miss Hattie’s gaze. The gentle concern there totally unraveled her. “I’ve done the most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life, Miss Hattie. And there’s been a lengthy list of stupid things. But this is the worst. Even worse than marrying Gregory.”

“Nothing can be that awful.” She dropped her sewing into a black bag with yellow flowers on it, then set the bag to the floor beside her rocker. “You sound devastated.”

“I am devastated.”

“Whatever it is, we can work through it.”

Close to tears, Cally shook her head that they couldn’t. “I’m afraid we can’t.”

She pressed her fingertips over her lips, and a creased formed in the smooth skin between her brows. “Oh, my. You’ve taken the leap.”

The same words Tony had used. “What leap?”

“You’ve fallen in love with the children.” Miss Hattie cast the ceiling a worried glance, then looked back at Cally.

Her heart wrenched. “It’s even worse than that.”

She stopped cold, mid-rock.

“I’ve fallen in love with the kids
and,
God help me, with Bryce.”

Miss Hattie’s mouth rounded. “Oh. Oh, my.”

A tear slipped out from the corner of Cally’s eye. She swatted at it. “Isn’t that just the most stupid thing you’ve ever heard of? I’m supposed to be getting my life back together. Building a life for myself alone. I just got divorced, for God’s sake, and I know that loving a man doesn’t do a thing but bring a woman pain.”

“Oh, Cally. I understand you’re upset—honestly I do, dear heart—but that’s just not true. Love—”

“It
is
true,” Cally interrupted, her emotions exploding. “I lived it, Miss Hattie. I know it’s true—and, as stupid as I surely am, I let it happen anyway. Love just isn’t enough. It just isn’t . . . enough.”

“Sometimes it’s not,” Miss Hattie agreed. “But love isn’t always painful, dear. I know it was in your case. I mean, in your case with Gregory.”

“It wasn’t him, it was me.” She dragged her hands through her hair, slicking back the tangles. “I can’t believe I let this happen to me again. I just can’t believe it.”

Miss Hattie gave her a sober look. “Cally dear, you know as well as I do that you don’t let love happen. It just happens. If a woman could choose to love, then I’d have chosen to fall in love again and married years ago.” She sighed softly. “No, we can’t choose. When the heart knows, it knows, and nothing convinces it otherwise. Regardless of what we want to do, what our heads and logical thoughts tell us to do, we love. We just . . . love.”

Cally pulled herself stiff. Tears streamed down her face. “We just love, and the men we just love go on without us.” Bryce could never love her back. No more than Gregory could have kept on loving her. But at least Bryce hadn’t broken promises and sacred vows to her. He’d been honest. He’d told her from the start that he could never love again. For Bryce, there had been and only ever would be one woman: Meriam.

“Yes, sometimes they do.” Miss Hattie pulled her lacy hankie from the pocket of her robe then dabbed it against her soft cheek. “Sometimes they just go on without us.”

Cally permitted herself a Class A cry. So did Miss Hattie.

When she’d cried herself out, and Miss Hattie’s soft sniffles had stopped, Cally grabbed two paper towels, passed one to Miss Hattie, then blew her own nose. “I won’t do it, Miss Hattie.”

“How can you stop loving him and the babies?”

Cally’s chin trembled and, though she felt bone-dry, she feared a fresh surge of tears would come anyway. “I don’t know.” She stiffened her shoulders, then tossed the soggy paper towel into the trash bin, in the cabinet under the sink. “But I’m going to do something. I have to do something.”

Suzie stared at her for a long moment, then turned away and headed toward the door. Her hand on the knob, she paused and leveled Cally with an accusing look. “You just had to say you don’t want us.” Her chin trembled, and she fought tears hard. “That’s all you had to say.”

Cally grabbed the desk’s ledge to keep from running to Suzie and locking her in a protective, loving embrace. An empty ache inside her cut so deep, but she had to stay put. To not move and do any of them more damage than she’d already done. She’d suffer—God, but she’d suffer—but she couldn’t cause any of them more pain.

Her heart ripping apart in her chest, she pressed her hands over it to help hold in all the hurt. Tears flooding her eyes, she stumbled over the rug to the little turret room, then plopped down onto the window seat. Damn it, why did love have to hurt so badly?
Why?

She shoved aside the filmy white curtains billowing in the breeze, then stared through the open window out onto the angry, dark blue ocean. Boats rocked on huge swells and whitecaps streaked over the water’s surface like jagged lightning tearing through a storm-swollen sky. Being lonely royally sucked. Sometimes life did, too. Sometimes doing the right thing felt so wrong, and it tore you up from your toenails to your earlobes, but you had to be strong enough to do what was right anyway, because it was right, because it was the only thing you could do without hating yourself. And sometimes you had to hurt people you love, people you’d rather die than hurt, because only by hurting them could you help them.

You didn’t have to like it. But you had to do it. All of it.

For them.

And for you.

Cally swatted at her tear-soaked cheeks. But who was there to help her? To reassure her that what she was doing
was
the right thing? Who would talk to her, hug her, hold her, and keep the demons of fear and doubt from sinking their razor-sharp talons into her soul and ripping it to shreds? Who would ever be there to help her?

Not Bryce. Never Bryce.

The salt-tinged breeze chilled her skin to ice and dried her angry, hopeless tears almost before they fell to her cheeks. The peace and comfort she’d felt during her stay here eluded her now, when she needed it most. And swearing she was cried out, that she just didn’t have another tear left inside her, she propped her elbows on the window ledge, then cupped her chin in her palms, and cried some more.