From the Beginning (9 page)

“Nobody asked you to. You could have gone on your merry way. God knows, you’re good at that.”

“Damn it, Amanda. I want to help you!” His voice was raw, impassioned. “When are you going to see that? When are you going to let me in?”

“Damn it, Simon,” she mimicked him, but her voice was as devoid of feeling as his was overwrought. “I don’t want your help. When are you going to figure that out? When are you going to leave me alone?”

It was his turn to lock his jaw. His turn to face the window and the seemingly infinite sky.

She knew he was angry. Knew that, even more, he was hurt by his inability to reach her. For a brief second, she tried to care. She’d never been one to take pleasure in someone else’s pain. But when she reached down inside of herself, tried to find some remnant of the feelings she’d once had for him, there was nothing left. Only a terrible numbness.

She went back to looking out the window herself. Started counting clouds. It was going to be a long few hours until they landed in Georgia.

SIMON UNFASTENED HIS SEAT BELT with combined feelings of relief and unease. Relief because they were finally in Atlanta after what had been one of the most emotionally uncomfortable flights of his life, with the exception of the one after Amanda had called to inform him that Gabby was dead.

He was uneasy, though, because these past few hours of silence between them had been colder than the temperatures he’d endured in Antarctica covering a story on climate change. The emotional chill and Amanda’s total and complete introspection made him wonder what she had planned. Because if he knew anything, it was that Amanda Jacobs was not the type to accept her fate—especially if that fate had anything to do with him.

Crossing to the rear of the plane, Simon retrieved her backpack from where he’d stashed it. She accepted it without a word, then walked toward the front and waited patiently for the door to be opened. Simon grabbed his bag and followed her.

In only a couple of minutes, they’d collected her suitcase and then headed toward customs. More than once, he tried to start a conversation, but she shut him down every time with her absolute refusal to speak. He might have thought her voice box had suffered some terrible calamity if she hadn’t spoken clearly and politely, if a little woodenly, to the customs officer who questioned her.

After checking out her American passport and welcoming her home, he let her enter. She walked through and then it was Simon’s turn to hand his documentation to the man. After answering questions about the stories that had taken him to four continents in three weeks, he, too, was allowed in.

Amanda wasn’t waiting for him on the other side of the gate. Instead, she’d taken off, using the extra time he’d spent dealing with the customs agent to put some distance between them.

Swearing bitterly, he set off running. It was evening, so the terminal wasn’t as crowded as it could have been, but it was still busy enough that he had trouble finding her, dressed as she was in simple baggy jeans and a black tank top.

When he got to the exit doors with still no sign of her, he paused, looked around wildly. Had he overreacted, jumped to conclusions? Maybe she’d had to use the restroom? But that didn’t make sense. She would have told him if that was the case. Wouldn’t she?

Walking slowly back the way he’d come, he scanned the exiting masses carefully. If he lost Amanda here, in Atlanta, he might never find her again. No cell phone, no address to go on, nothing at all. And while he’d spent the past eighteen months without her, he’d always known where she was. The idea of never finding her again was a sucker punch to the chest. Besides, how was he supposed to put his plans into action if he didn’t know where she was?

It was on his third scan of the area that his gaze fell on a sign that read Ground Transportation, Taxis. His heart kicked up its rhythm as he took off in the direction of the arrow. Why hadn’t he thought of it right away? Of course she would try to get a taxi.

As he burst into the steamy Atlanta night, he prayed he wasn’t too late. Not that he didn’t deserve to be left behind after his total and complete stupidity. But still, he couldn’t help hoping—

There. There she was. Thank God for the delay at the taxi stand. Amanda was still five people away from getting a cab.

Weaving through the crowd, he came up on her left side. “Thanks for getting in line,” he told her nonchalantly, as he cupped her elbow with his hand.

She whirled to face him, lips tight and eyes completely blank. The blankness frightened him. He’d always been able to tell where he stood, where Amanda was emotionally, by looking into her eyes. She’d never been one to hide her emotions away, so whatever she felt—happiness, anger, sorrow, confusion—shone brightly in the varying shades of gray.

Now there was nothing. He didn’t know if it was because she’d finally found a way to lock her emotions down deep inside her or if it was because she really didn’t feel anything. Either way, it didn’t bode well for her or the tattered remnants of the relationship he’d been hoping to salvage.

“I would suggest going to the back of the line,” she told him woodenly. “Because you are
not
sharing a cab with me.”

“Of course I am. How else are you going to find my apartment?”

A flash of surprise in those glorious eyes. Finally. “Why exactly would I need to know where your apartment is?”

“Because you’ll be staying with me.”

As they talked, the people in front of them slowly filed into cabs until, too soon, it was their turn. Simon slipped his hand from her elbow to her upper arm, tightening his fingers almost imperceptibly as he did so. Definitely not enough to hurt her, just enough that he’d have some warning if she decided to jerk away. He really didn’t relish the idea of explaining this whole scenario to airport police.

“How many riders?” the taxi regulator asked.

“One,” Amanda answered at the same time Simon said, “Two.”

The tired-looking woman glanced between them, no alarm on her face but a definite perking up of her ears. “What’s it going to be?” she asked.

“Two,” Simon said firmly, guiding Amanda toward the waiting car.

“I am not going to your apartment,” she insisted. “And I suggest you let go of my arm or I’m going to scream to the whole world how you managed to get me here.”

“Get in the cab, Amanda.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and the wrong tone to use. Every muscle in her body tightened with what he was sure was a painful intensity, and she said, very quietly, “Go to hell, Simon.”

“I’m not going to let you wander around downtown Atlanta on your own, especially not at night.”

“I am not your problem and haven’t been for a very long time.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve made you my problem.”

“Well, that’s too bad for you, isn’t it?”

Simon gritted his teeth, shoveling a hand through his hair in frustration as the taxi driver came around to get Amanda’s suitcase. “Is there a problem?” the round little man asked in heavily accented English.

“No problem,” Simon said. “We’re going downtown. I’m about—”

“We are not going anywhere.
I
am going to a hotel.” It was the most forceful Simon had heard her sound, and he was so relieved to see any expression of emotion from her that he conceded defeat. At least temporarily.

“Take us to the Loews.” He turned to Amanda. “Okay? I’ll get you settled for tonight and be back tomorrow so we can talk.’

She shook her head, a twisted smile on her lips. “I’ve been to a lot of places more dangerous than downtown Atlanta, Simon. I think I can handle this on my own.”

He didn’t like it, but short of kidnapping her again—something he didn’t think would fly a second time—he didn’t see that he had a choice. He felt the click of a sudden shift in the power dynamic between them and nearly choked as he firmly repeated, “The Loews,” to both her and the cabdriver. Maybe if he didn’t acknowledge his loss of control over the situation, no one else would notice.

“Fine. The Loews,” she agreed.

He stepped back, angry and confused and more than a little worried, as Amanda settled herself into the back of the taxi. As it eased from the curb, he rushed to the first of the three cars that had pulled up behind hers.

“Follow that cab,” he told the driver, feeling like a total idiot. “They should be going to the Loews, but I want to make sure she gets there safely.”

Point of fact, he wanted to ensure that Amanda didn’t change her mind halfway to the hotel and decide to go somewhere else. Or worse, back to the airport to catch a flight to God only knew where. After years of living in areas where it was almost impossible for her to spend her salary, she had the cash to disappear if that’s what she wanted to do.

But much to his relief, her cab didn’t stop until it deposited her outside the hotel. And still he made his driver wait outside the huge glass doors as he watched her walk through the lobby, toward the registration desk. Only after she was engaged in conversation with one of the desk clerks did he return to his own taxi.

He’d give her some space tonight. God knew, she deserved it. But by tomorrow, all bets were off. One way or the other, Amanda was going to learn that, though their daughter was dead, she was still very much alive.

CHAPTER SIX

AMANDA DROPPED HER SUITCASE by the door and then spent a minute studying her hotel room as if she’d never seen one before. It was large and luxurious, as rooms at the Loews usually were, and the bed was as big as a lake. Part of her longed to curl up on it and sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep. It had been eighteen months since she’d slept in a real bed, longer if you counted the fact that she’d spent much of the six months before Gabby’s death sleeping in a chair beside her daughter’s bed—at the hospital and at home.

Images of Gabby from those last days—frail, emaciated, but still smiling—flipped through her mind and she knew she wasn’t going to sleep. Not now, despite the bone-deep weariness that dogged her every step.

Walking farther into the room, she laid her backpack on the dresser and crossed to the huge picture windows that looked out over downtown Atlanta. Business hours had ended long ago, so the city was relatively quiet—or at least as quiet as a place this size could get. It was still too loud, too bright, too crowded for her. But then, she always felt that way after a stint in Africa, as if the world she had been born into was too vibrant for her. As if she’d never really belonged here.

She knew she didn’t belong in this hotel in Atlanta. She’d been born and raised in Massachussetts, had gone to medical school at Harvard. Had established her own home there as an adult, as well. Her home and Gabby’s.

The smart thing to do, she told herself as she walked into the bathroom to take a shower, would be to catch a flight to Boston. She knew the city and her stuff was there, even if her life no longer was. It would be so much easier to start over in Boston than Atlanta, a place that felt more foreign to her than Africa ever had.

But just the thought of returning to Boston without Gabby had her hands shaking and the blessed detachment that had enveloped her for the past few hours threatening to wear off. Anger cracked through her—at Jack, at Simon, but mostly at herself for being so stupid. For not anticipating that they would come up with drugging her to get her on that plane.

She hadn’t planned on returning to the States, not now when the past was still so alive to her. When Jack had issued his ultimatum, she’d figured she would drift around Europe for a while. Find some low-income clinic to help out in until her friend decided to lift his ban. Not once had it occurred to her to come back here and face the cataclysm of agony that seemed to wait for her around every lamppost and street corner.