Woman in Black (30 page)

“I'm fine,” he said, keeping his voice light. Gillian tended to hover—she had the kind of kinetic energy that, when not channeled into creative endeavors, had a way of consuming everything in its path—and Vaughn had had about all the hovering he could take.

“You're sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. Relax, okay?” All right, so he was tired and felt a little sick to his stomach, but that was pretty much the norm these days. No need to drag everyone else down with him.

“I'll breathe a lot easier once we have the results from your next CT scan,” she said. In a few more weeks he'd be done with this round of chemo and they would know if it had had the desired effect. He just wished that he felt as optimistic as Gillian clearly did. “What did Dr. Grossman say about the fevers?”

“I haven't told him. He's away for the holidays, so I thought I'd wait until my next appointment. Anyway, it's not that big a deal.” Weren't the mild spikes in temperature he'd been experiencing part of the territory, along with other fun side effects, such as throwing up and having his hair fall out in clumps?

Gillian darted a stern look at him. “Vaughn, this isn't something to fool around with, you know. You have
cancer
. Even with all the stuff they're giving you, half the time I wonder if these doctors know what they're doing. You can't take any chances.” She frowned, her small hands knotting around the wheel.

“I'm sure Dr. Grossman knows what he's doing.”

She gave a snort of contempt. “Yeah, right. And if you were a friend or relative of his who was sick, he wouldn't be too busy off skiing in Aspen to take the call.”

“This isn't exactly what I'd call an emergency. Let's not blow it out of proportion, okay?” Vaughn was doing his best to curb his impatience. Gillian meant well, he knew, and she'd been terrific about letting him crash at her place, not to mention tending to him on those days when he was too sick to crawl out of bed. It wasn't limited to home care, either. The one time Lila couldn't make it into the city for his regular Wednesday appointment, Gillian hadn't hesitated to drop everything to accompany him to the hospital, even though it had meant two hours of sitting around outside the infusion suite, killing time, while he'd undergone his chemo treatment. If she got a little extreme at times, he knew that her concern was to a large degree justified. “I promise I'll call Dr. Grossman the minute he gets back—before then if it gets any worse.” In her face, he caught a glimpse of the fear she normally kept under wraps, and he felt himself soften toward her. “Look, Gil, I know I'd probably be dead by now if it weren't for you. Lying out in the desert with vultures picking at my bones. But you've gotta lighten up. Please. It's Christmas.”

She gave a dry little laugh. “You're not going anywhere. You're too stubborn to die.”

“Me, stubborn? Look who's talking.”

Gillian was the most persistent person he knew. And like a limpet to a rock, she'd attached herself to him. Not that he was in any position to object. She'd taken him in, sick as he was, no questions asked and no time limit set. Not only that, she was a regular Florence Nightingale. She read to him when he was too ill to focus on the printed page; she gave him
ice
cubes to suck on when he was so dehydrated from vomiting he could scarcely lift his head off the pillow; she brought him chicken soup from Eisenberg's Deli and Rice Krispy treats from City Bakery to stimulate his appetite. He knew she'd fallen behind on her work as a result, though she didn't seem too bothered by it. In fact, she almost seemed to be …
enjoying herself
.

The thought slithered in like a snake to coil about his heart, a heart normally filled with charitable feelings toward his ex-girlfriend. The snake hissed,
Pretty convenient for her, don't you think, your being grounded like a trussed calf?
His itinerant lifestyle, after all, was the main reason they'd broken up. Gillian had gotten tired of waiting around for him to show up between gigs. She'd accused him of using his work as an excuse to avoid being in a real relationship. Now here he was, pinned down by an adversary even stronger than the love of a good woman, and while he didn't doubt that Gillian genuinely wished for him to get better, wasn't there a small part of her that was glad she had him right where she wanted him?

It was a discomfiting thought. Pushing it from his mind, he turned his attention to the MapQuest printout in his hand. “Make a right at the next light,” he directed. “That should put us onto Main Street. According to this, we're only a few miles from Abby's.”

“Does she know you're coming?” Gillian asked, meaning Abigail, of course. She'd taken an instant dislike to Abigail and wasn't shy about reminding him of it every chance she got. It wasn't anything Abigail had said or done, as far as he could tell; just, he suspected, that Gillian wanted him all to herself.

“I may have mentioned it to her. But I'm sure she'll be busy with her own family.” Vaughn struck a casual tone, but his heart rate picked up at the mention of Abigail. Her visits had come to mean more to him than a chance to see a fresh face now and then—someone who wasn't part of his new, constricted orbit, which mainly comprised of Gillian, his sister, and the staff and fellow patients on the hematology floor at New York—Presbyterian, with whom he was now on a first-name basis.

Gillian made the turn onto a street lined with quaint shops and cafés decked in seasonal finery. “I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you,” she said, a caustic edge creeping into her voice. “I doubt she'll want to miss this chance to wish you a
very
merry, up-close-and-personal Christmas.”

“Come on, Gil. We're just friends.” Vaughn maintained a light tone, though the words sounded disingenuous to his ears.

Gillian must have thought so, too, because she gave a contemptuous snort. “Is that so? Well, someone ought to tell
her
that. She seems to have other ideas.”

“You're imagining things.”

But even as he dismissed the idea, Vaughn knew there was some truth to Gillian's words. He sensed that Abigail's feelings for him were more than platonic. Not that anything could come of it. She was married. And Vaughn—call it high moral ground or the legacy of his philandering dad, or simply the fact that the supply of single ladies had always been more than plentiful—had made it a rule never to get involved with married women.

Still, the power of that old connection wasn't easily denied. Never mind that everything about her lifestyle was antithetical to his: the showpiece house, the car and driver, the designer clothes, the expensive scents she trailed whenever she came walking through the door. There was Abigail's public persona as well, as airy and artful as the confections she spun. If he hadn't known the
real
Abigail—the part she kept concealed from others like a bruise on an otherwise perfect piece of fruit—he wouldn't have encouraged her visits. Where Gillian saw only a stuck-up bitch and Lila a vengeful one, he saw a woman who, beneath all the trappings of her success and despite the wounds she'd suffered along the way, was good and decent and hungering for more out of life. It made her appealing to him in a way that none of her beauty or artifices, fame or money, ever could.

It was when she talked to him about her daughter that her vulnerable side came through the most. She worried about the fact that Phoebe was so withdrawn, and though her worry was occasionally accompanied by flashes of irritation—sometimes downright anger, as when Phoebe had stood her up on the night of her big event—he could see how hard she was trying. She wanted for her and Phoebe the kind of relationship she'd had with her own mother.

“Do you know, I was the same age as Phoebe when Mom died,” she'd said to him the other day when she'd been confiding to him about her latest fight with Phoebe—something to do with Phoebe refusing to eat breakfast. “It hurts sometimes to think of all the years we could have had together. I just wish Phoebe could know that the people you love aren't necessarily going to be in your life forever.”

She'd given him a look that had cut right through him, and he'd known then that she was thinking of him as well. It had occurred to him that, for her, these visits were more loaded than he'd realized—watching him battle cancer, as she had Rosalie, knowing that he might not make it. And yet, unlike Gillian, she never let on. She didn't pressure him for details of his symptoms or test results, always waiting until he was ready to share that information. She didn't burden him with her own fears; she allowed him to simply
be
. On the days he wasn't feeling up to going out or even offering much in the way of conversation, she would simply sit with him, reading a book or working on her laptop while he napped. Sometimes he would wake to find her gazing at him with a furrowed brow, a pained look in her eyes, and he would know that she was reliving the torment of seeing her mother die, but she was always quick to cover it up with a smile or a lighthearted remark. She seemed to understand that a restful presence was what he needed most.

Now Gillian broke in. “
Am
I imagining things? Or is it just that you don't want to admit I'm right?”

Finally he growled, “Cut me some slack, okay? Could you do that?”

Gillian darted an apprehensive look at him, as if realizing she'd gone too far this time. “All right. For you. And because it's Christmas,” she allowed generously, though not generously enough to refrain from adding, “But that doesn't mean I'm changing my opinion.”

Vaughn wished he didn't have to deal with her jealousy on top of everything else. Though they hadn't been intimate in years—otherwise he never would have taken her up on her offer—it had become apparent soon after he'd moved in that she still had feelings for him. He knew she wouldn't rebuff him if he were to suggest that, instead of his sleeping on the sofa, they share her bed. If she'd known that Abigail's interest in him wasn't one-sided, she'd have been hurt.

Attempting to throw her off the scent, he commented jokingly, “Abby might feel differently once she sees me without my hair.”

It had begun falling out the week before, just a few strands at first, then noticeable clumps, so Vaughn had decided to spare himself the grief of watching it go bit by bit and had had it shaved off all at once. He still wasn't quite used to the new look. Each time he idly reached up to run a hand over his head in response to an odd sense of weightlessness on top or an overly cool breeze, it always came as a little shock to find it hairless.

This coaxed a smile out of Gillian. “I think you look sexy bald.”

“The last time I had a buzz cut was back in the fourth grade,” he told her. “And believe me, no one thought I was sexy then.”

“You remind me of Bruce Willis.”

“Yeah, and look what happened to him. His wife dumped him and married a guy half his age.”

“I think it was the other way around. Bruce dumped her,” she said on a more dyspeptic note. Male abandonment was a touchy subject with Gillian.

Vaughn was quick to move to a lighter subject. “Either way, I'm not going to sit here mourning my dear, departed hair. At least the rest of me is still here. That's something to celebrate.”

“You're right.” She loosened her grip on the steering wheel, her face relaxing in a smile. When Gillian smiled,
really
smiled, it was a wonder to behold: Her face lit up like a supernova. “And here we are dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh … oops, make that a Chevrolet.”

“Did you know that in the Netherlands they have a mythical figure called Black Pieter? He's to St. Nicholas what the elves are to Santa,” Vaughn said, hoping to sustain this new, lighter mood. “The Dutch folks parading in the streets in blackface don't seem to realize how politically incorrect it's become.”

“You've witnessed this firsthand, of course,” she commented dryly.

He smiled, recalling the Christmas in Amsterdam, which had come on the heels of a weeklong assignment in the fjords of Greenland, filming a show on extreme skiing for the Discovery channel. It was during the time he and Gillian had been lovers, and he could have flown home to be with her, but instead he'd selfishly opted to spend the holiday hanging out with his fellow crew members, taking in the sights and drinking too much glogg. Now, feeling a stab of guilt, he reached over to pluck one of Gillian's hands from the wheel and cover it with his.

“Thanks, Gil,” he said softly.

“For what?” she asked him somewhat warily.

“For everything. And for coming with me today.”

This time her smile was more cautious, as if she suspected he was only softening her up before some sort of blow. “You're welcome. Anyway, it's not like I was planning on flying home for Christmas.” Gillian's family all lived in Duluth, where she'd grown up, and she had about as much in common with them, she'd once told him, as a diehard agnostic with a Baptist preacher. “Besides, I like your sister.”

“She likes you, too.”

“It must be hard for her. This being her first Christmas without her husband,” Gillian reflected aloud after a moment of silence.

“I'm sure it is.” Vaughn sighed, thinking about his late brother-in-law. He'd liked Gordon, though he hadn't spent enough time around him to get to know him all that well. And although he'd lost all respect for Gordon over the Vertex scandal, he was still sorry for the way things had ended. Mostly because of the devastating effect it had had on his sister and nephew. “Thank God for Neal,” he said. “I don't know what she'd do without him.”

“In that case, let's hope he doesn't follow in your footsteps. Lila would never forgive you,” Gillian said.

Vaughn laughed. “Knowing her, she'd probably spare me the agony of a slow death.”