Among the Ducklings (11 page)

She
couldn't explain to Isabel why she had hired a private investigator
to follow her fiancé.
 
She knew that
Isabel would not be happy about it. She hoped that Isabel would find out about
Richard's indiscretions on her own.

“Isabel, I
hope you know what you're doing.
 
You're
with Richard, yet, you have feelings for Phil,” Marcia said.

“It's not
like that. You know that.
 
I have known
Richard for years. I don't know much about Phil.
 
I only met him a couple of weeks ago.”

“How do you
expect to know about Phil if you refuse to talk to him?” Marcia asked.

“Richard
has been good to me. I will get over Phil and I am sure he will get over me
also,” Isabel said firmly.

“I hope
you're right. If not, you will be making the biggest mistake of your life,”
Marcia said.
 
“I’ve got to go now. I will
talk to you when you get here.”

After
speaking to her aunt, Isabel realized the enormity of her mistake. She might
never see Phil again. She loved Phil.
  
But was it really a mistake? She wasn't the type to betray a person's
trust.
She would never betray Richard. She would marry Richard.

Chapter
Eight

When Marcia
asked Isabel if something had happened to cause Phil to decide on a different
center, she did not expect that to be the case.
  
Now that Marcia knew, she would have to tread
carefully when she called Phil. She had been embarrassed by the whole
situation. She was the one who convinced Phil's doctor to send him to the
Center to continue his therapy for the injured ankle. Now that Phil had gone to
his doctor to say he wanted to make a change, it would make the doctor think
twice before referring another client to her.

As she was
dialing Phil's number, she reminded herself that her goal was simple, to get
Phil to change his mind. Beneath it all, however, she also hoped that it would
be an opportunity for Phil and Isabel to get together again. Maybe the second
time could be the charm.

“Mr.
Pierce?” this is Marcia.

“Dr.
Gomez?” Phil said, surprised that she would call him herself at home.

“No,
Marcia.”

“OK, Phil
not Mr. Pierce.”

“Got
it.
  
How are you?”

“OK, I
guess,” Phil replied.
 
 

“I spoke to
Dr. Klein who told me of your decision to leave the Center, and I wanted to
know if I or any of my staff had done something that led you to make this
decision.”

“All of you
have been great,” Phil replied.

“I am glad
to know that,” Marcia said. Phil had not expected to receive this phone call
and did not know where this was going. He could not tell her it was because of
her niece. How could he?

“I just
spoke to my niece Isabel and she seemed to blame herself, thinking she might
have been the reason for your decision.”

“
huhh
”, Phil was thinking.
 
Things were taking a turn he didn't expect.
What's wrong with this family?
he thought.
Everyone seemed to know about everyone's
business
.

“I was
calling to ask you to reconsider,” Marcia continued, “We want you back at the
Center.
 
You were making good
progress.
 
Besides, although she didn't
come out and say it, I know that Isabel would want to see you again.”

“My
decision may have seemed childish. The fact is I just didn't want Isabel to
feel uncomfortable knowing I was around, after she told me that she didn't want
to ever talk to or see me again,” Phil said.

“Well, you
don't know much about women, do you?” Marcia said. “We don't always say what we
mean.
 
Sometimes, you cannot just give
up.
 
If you love someone, sometimes you
have to fight for her. ”

“She told
me that she loved Richard,” Phil said.

“As I said,
you have a lot to learn about women,” Marcia said. Then she told him a joke
that she once heard, about a man who went to see God, after God had agreed to
answer one question for him.

The man
then asked God, “Tell me about the meaning of life.”

“This is a
very complicated question,” God responded. “Ask me another one.”

“Tell me
how to understand women.”

“Well,” God
said, “the meaning of life is.....”

The story
caused Phil to laugh and Marcia said, “What did you expect a woman who is
engaged to say?
 
That she didn't love her
fiancé?
 
All I am saying is that if you are
making this decision to leave because of what happened between you and Isabel,
you might not have gotten the complete picture of the whole situation.
 
If you love her, you should not give up so
easily.”

“OK, let me
think about it,” Phil said. “I thought I was doing what was best for Isabel,
what she would want me to do.”

“I hope you
decide to stay with us.
 
Even you do not,
I hope you give yourself a second chance with Isabel,” Marcia said before she
hung up.

Phil didn't
know what Marcia had against Richard. But a jolt of happiness ran through his
body.
 
Could it be that Marcia was
right?
 
Could it be that Isabel shared
his feelings?
 
If so, he would know soon,
because it was time to go watch the ducklings play again.
 

##

Stacy
always thought that it was easy to love someone like her. She was very
beautiful and could be nice and charming when she wanted to. In Phil's case, it
would take a little work because she had hurt him. Now that she was in Miami,
she was not going to leave any stones unturned.

Before, she
could move to the next step in her plan, she needed to have Phil's full
attention.
 
Michelle had told her that
she overheard Jeremy talk about a woman who was paralyzed that Phil liked, who
was receiving treatment at the rehabilitation center that Phil was
attending.
 
She needed now to have a talk
with her. But first, she needed to know who she was. It was like going for a
movie audition. Always take your rival actors seriously. You don't always win a
part in a movie by simply repeating lines in front of a casting director.
Sometimes you have to bend the rules.
 
She didn't get to where she was by being nice.
 
She didn't play nice in business and she
didn't intend to play nice in love either.
 
The way Stacy saw it, if two women wanted the same man, one would have
to lose him.
 
Stacy was not going to lose
to an invalid.

##

That
afternoon, when Isabel rolled her wheelchair in front of the lake after her
therapy, she was surprised to see Phil sitting on the end of the bench.
 
She knew that her aunt was good at handling
people and she wondered what Marcia might have told Phil to make Phil change
his mind.
 

Phil turned
when she pulled her wheelchair on his left, and said, “the
ducklings are having more fun today than usual.”

Isabel
turned to look at the ducklings playing in the lake.
 
But in reality, she was not seeing them.
 
Her mind was racing, her palms sweating, and
her heart palpitating. She was so happy to see him. She wondered whether she
would ever be able to resist him.
 
She
tried it before and had to endure a long and sleeplessness and painful night.

“Phil, I'm
sorry for what I said to you yesterday,” she said.
 
Phil could see the pain in her face and
wished he could hold her.
 
How do you
hold someone in a wheelchair?
 
He didn't
know how. Even if he managed to, would she push him away?

“It wasn't
you, Isabel.
 
It was me.
 
I realized that telling you how I felt about
you when you don't know much about me might have been overwhelming to you and
I’m sorry,” Phil said.

“You are
the last person that I would want to be mean to. I really felt very bad about
what happened. I should have told you that I was engaged, and when I heard this
morning that you might never come back, I wanted to take back everything I said
to you,” Isabel said.

Then Phil
grabbed Isabel's hands and held them in his palm, Isabel fidgeted. She felt her
fingers burning from his touch. “Isabel, I love you and I know that you're
engaged to be married.
 
But I want the
person you marry to be me.
 
I will not
rest until I know I've earned your love.”

“The thing
is that I love you, too,” Isabel said. “But it's complicated. I am engaged and
we don't even know anything about each other.”

“Well let's
start,” said a happy Phil.
  
They didn't
kiss, but Isabel felt good to be next to him, to feel his love for her. She
wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by him. She knew that she was
still engaged.
 
She was feeling guilty
about the situation. But she was happy that her hands were in his hands, the
hands of the man she loved.

Isabel
and Phil spent the next few hours talking about Isabel's family and how Isabel
had to become a mother to Rebecca after the passing of Isabel's own mother.
They talked about Isabel's college years and how she started her computer
company.
 
Isabel didn't talk to Phil
about Rebecca's pregnancy.
 
She felt that
she would be violating Rebecca's privacy.
 
Isabel, on the other hand, also learned that Phil searched for his real
parents, but never found them, and also how he created a company that provided
trial expertise to law firms.
 
They felt
so much at ease that neither one wanted to leave.
 

It was very
late when both decided to depart from the Center.
 
Phil had never felt such happiness before,
and Isabel was feeling drowsy from so much love and so much fear of the
future.
 
Richard was spending a couple
days in Orlando.
 
What was she going to
tell Richard when he got back?
 

Unbeknownst
to Phil and Isabel, someone had spent the past hour watching them from a car in
a parking lot across the lake.
 
As Phil
and Isabel left, Stacy started the car.
 
Stacy had seen enough. It was now time for her to act.
 
A smile spread across Stacy's face. She only
acted when it mattered. Like an academy award winner in a blockbuster movie,
she was going to rise to the occasion.

##

When Isabel
reached home that evening, all she wanted was to take a quick shower and go to
bed.
 
She had had a wonderful afternoon
with Phil.
 
But overall it was a bad day.
 
She could not simply walk away and hurt
Richard who had treated her well, but yet she didn't want to lose Phil.
 
By the time she fell asleep, she was tired of
thinking, tired of all of the emotions flooding her heart.

The next
morning, she was still distraught over what took place between her and
Phil.
 
Some people viewed cheating as
sleeping with someone who is not your partner or spouse.
  
To her, loving someone else was also
cheating. She felt like she had cheated on Richard with Phil.

##

When Phil
woke up the next day, he was still very ecstatic about the day before. He never
knew that sitting and holding hands could feel so good.
 
He was still in deep thought about Isabel,
when the phone rang.
 
It was Jeremy.

“Hi
old buddy.”

“Hi Jeremy,
how are you?”

“Fine.
Guess what?”

“What?”
Phil asked.

“I'm on my
way to the airport.”

“Good. Are
they kicking you out of the country?” Phil joked.

“Don't be
funny,” Jeremy responded. “I am flying to Miami today.”

“Cool,”
Phil said. “What time do you think you'll be here?”

“My flight
leaves at 11:00 in the morning and I should be in Miami in about an hour and a
half.
 
After that, I have a meeting at
3:00 pm.
 
So, I should be at your place
by 6:00 pm.”