Marking Time (25 page)

“Warm enough?”

She nodded, and he sat next to her.

“I need to tell you something.”

His handsome face was serious, and a ripple of fear went through her. At some point during her fevered state, she’d fallen in love with him and didn’t want to hear anything that would spoil it. She reached for him.

He seemed relieved to move into her embrace and rested against her for several long minutes. When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were sad. “I lied to you about something, and I need to tell you the truth.”

His distress touched her heart. “You don’t have to,” she said, caressing his cheek.

He kissed the palm of her hand, sending a jolt of desire through her. His eyes found hers. “Yes, I do. I need to tell you because I love you, Clare. For the first time in a very long time, something matters to me.
You
matter to me, and I don’t want to mess this up.”

She leaned in to kiss him and was startled by the hunger she felt in his kiss.

“Wait,” he said against her lips. “We need to talk.”

She kissed his forehead and cheek. “I love you, too, Aidan, and there’s nothing you can tell me that will change that.”

“Thank you,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion. “Hold that thought for a moment.” He got up, walked over to his desk, and came back holding a picture frame against his chest. “This is Sarah. She was my wife.” He sat down and handed the photo to Clare.

Hiding her surprise, she studied the photo of the young woman with long dark hair and gentle eyes. “She’s lovely,” Clare said, giving it back to him. The pain on his face made his lie unimportant.

Lost in memories, he ran his thumbs over the frame. “I met her when I was twelve, and her family came to Chatham for the summer. She’d been coming for years, but somehow we’d never met before. She and her sister hung out with us at the beach all that summer, and by the time she went back to Boston, we were best friends.” He turned the frame over. Taped to the back was a yellowed snapshot of twelve-year-old Aidan and Sarah, arm in arm at the beach.

“We wrote letters during the school year, and once in a while, we’d get to talk on the phone. She came back the next summer, and we picked up right where we’d left off. My brothers used to tease me something awful about her, but I didn’t care. She was my favorite person in the world. They liked her, too, but they had to be jerks to me.”

Clare smiled. “Of course they did.”

Aidan put the photo on the table. “By the time we were fifteen, she was my girlfriend. We were stealing kisses every chance we got, and I was desperately in love with her. During that school year, my parents started letting me take the bus into the city one Saturday a month to see her. I lived for those days, and I worked the rest of the month to save the money for the bus fare.”

Clare could see he was struggling to get through the story, so she took his hand.

“Sarah’s dad was a doctor in Boston. He was always very nice to me and took an interest in my education. I hadn’t planned to go to college because my dad wanted me to work with him. But Dr. Sweeny knew I was a straight-A student, and he encouraged me to aim higher. By then Sarah and I were doing a whole lot more than kissing, and neither of us ever looked at anyone else all through high school. The summer before our senior year, we hatched a plan to go to college together. She had her heart set on Yale, so I applied, too. It was a total shock to me—and my whole family—when I got in. My dad was disappointed about the business, but he didn’t try to stop me from going to school, probably because I had three brothers coming up behind me.”

“You went to Yale,” Clare said in a whisper as it set in that this man was so much more than a carpenter.

He pointed to the framed diploma over his desk, above a second one just like it. “Dr. Sweeny encouraged me to try pre-med, and I was surprised to find I liked it. Sarah and I lived together after our freshman year in an apartment in New Haven. We thought we were getting away with it, but I found out much later that our parents knew but chose to ignore it. They’d learned by then not to fight what’d been happening between us since we were kids.”

“It’s so sweet,” Clare said, touched by his story but filled with anxiety about where it was leading.

His face twisted into a small, sad smile. “We got married in Chatham right after we graduated from Yale. It was the very best day of my life, and it was almost ten years to the day after we first met. I went on to medical school at Yale. She’d gotten her degree in fine arts, and she worked in the university’s art department. We were poor but happy. I decided to follow Dr. Sweeny into cardiology. I got through my internship at Yale-New Haven and applied for a residency at Mass General in Boston. We wanted to move closer to home because Sarah was finally pregnant. We’d been trying to have a baby for a long time.”

Clare gasped as it registered that whatever had happened to his beloved wife had taken a child from him, too.
Oh, God
.
I can’t hear this
. The tortured look on his face broke her heart. “Aidan, honey, maybe that’s enough for now.”

He shook his head. “I need to finish this.” After a deep breath, he said, “She was two months pregnant when she found a lump in her breast.”

Clare whimpered.

“Her father pulled strings to get her in with the best oncologist in the city. Within a day, we knew it was bad—stage-three breast cancer. She was twenty-nine.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it, even all these years later. “It was aggressive. They wanted to admit her right away and start her on chemo, but they’d have to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Oh, Aidan.” Tears spilled down Clare’s cheeks.

“She wouldn’t do it. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t kill the child we’d wanted so badly. I told her it was
her
I couldn’t live without, and we could have other babies when she got well.” He shook his head and brushed at a tear on his face. “I yelled and screamed until I was hoarse, and then I begged, but I couldn’t change her mind. Over time, I’ve come to understand that she knew she was going to die, and she didn’t want me to be alone.”

Clare wanted to touch him, but he was so far from her just then that she was afraid she would startle him.

He stood up and walked over to the window. “So I had to sit back and watch as our child grew and she slowly slipped away from me. She insisted I keep up with my residency. The people at the hospital knew what I was going through, and they were good to me. We moved in with her parents because she couldn’t be alone when I was working. I kept hoping I’d wake up from the nightmare my life had become. I was all churned up and frantic, but Sarah was so calm and serene. She loved feeling the baby grow inside her. He was busy, moving all the time.” Smiling at the memory, Aidan turned back to Clare.

“What happened to him?” she asked in a small voice.

“She got to thirty-six weeks and was having trouble breathing because the cancer had spread to her lungs. Her OB scheduled a C-section, but the night before, she started to bleed. I rushed her to the hospital, and they took her right into the OR. They whisked her away so fast I can’t remember the last thing I said to her or what she said to me. It’s a total blank. They put her under to do an emergency C-section. The baby…” Aidan’s chin dropped to his chest, and he shook his head.

Clare got up to go to him. A wave of dizziness hit her when she stood up too fast, but she fought it off and put her arms around him.

Sobs racked through him. She held him until he finally pulled himself together and looked down at her with shattered eyes. “He was stillborn.”

“No,” Clare whispered.

“He was perfect with all his fingers and toes. They let me hold him, and I tried to convince myself he was only asleep. We’d already decided to name him after Colin—he was Sarah’s favorite of my brothers. She never came out of the anesthesia, and she died two days later. The only comfort was she didn’t know her sacrifice had been for nothing.”

Clare led him back to the sofa.

After a long period of silence, he took a deep shuddering breath. “They were buried together, but I wasn’t there,” he said, his voice reduced to a whisper. “I couldn’t go. My parents and hers took care of everything. I’ve never even been to the cemetery, which drives my mother crazy, but they go for me. I quit the residency. I couldn’t stand the smell of the hospital or knowing that even with all my training I hadn’t been able to save the two people I loved the most. It was just as well, because I spent most of the next year drunk anyway.”

“How did you end up here?”

“Sarah’s grandmother left her some money, and we bought this land a year before she got sick. We were going to build a weekend place up here eventually. She made me promise I’d use the money to build the house. When I failed to drink myself to death, I didn’t know what else to do, so I came up here and built this place. I had planned to sell it when it was done.”

“How come?”

“I figured it’d be too painful to be here without her, but we hadn’t spent much time together here, and no one in town knew her. By the time the house was finished, I’d started to feel at home. I did a few construction jobs on the side, and before long word got out that I knew what I was doing. I had a business and a house, so I stayed put. The only person here who knows I was once a doctor and that I lost my wife and son is Bea. She’s been a good friend, but even she doesn’t know the whole story.”

“Thank you for telling me. I’m so terribly sorry for all that you lost.”

He kissed her hand. “I’m sorry I lied to you when I said I’ve never been married. I feel so disloyal to Sarah when I tell people that, but it’s easier than talking about it. After all these years, the lie just comes so easily. When I lied to you, though, it was the first time it ever felt wrong. Forgive me?”

Clare reached out to hug him. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

He held on to her, seeming to need the comfort she offered after sharing his painful story.

“You must be getting tired,” he said after a long period of quiet. “Let’s get you back to bed.” He took her hand to help her up and lead her upstairs.

She made it to the first landing before dizziness forced her to grip the railing.

Aidan picked her up and carried her the rest of the way. “You still need to take it easy,” he said as he helped her into bed.

“I can probably go home, though. I’ve put you out enough.”

“I like having you here. I probably shouldn’t tell you that you’re the first woman who’s ever been here.”

She smiled. “Really?”

“As you would say, don’t let it go to your fat head,” he said with a weak grin that was in sharp contrast to his earlier sorrow.

“Too late.”

He got into bed and rolled over to face her. “Stay here for a while. Until you feel stronger.”

When she ran her fingers through his hair and leaned in to kiss him, a wildfire erupted between them. His kiss was full of love and longing and need—a need so powerful it should have frightened her, but it didn’t because she knew he loved her.

He pulled back to look at her, his eyes heated. “Not like this, Clare. When we make love, and we will, soon, it’ll be for us. Not for comfort and not out of sympathy.” He settled her into the shelter of his arms. “Stay with me for now?”

“Okay,” she said, hoping she would be able to overcome her own demons when the time came.

K
ate checked the address on the business card again and looked up at the dilapidated building with dismay. This wasn’t Music Row. This was so far from Music Row it might’ve been in another city. Harvey Welshiemer, the producer who’d given her his card at a party before Christmas, had been delighted to hear from her and insisted she come right over to his office.

She pushed the door open and was hit by the odor of greasy food and what might’ve been urine. The stairs creaked as she made her way to the second floor where a small plastic sign next to a wooden door said “Harvey Welshiemer, Decade Records.” Kate looked around at the dingy hallway with the chipping light green paint. The blare of a television came through one of the other wooden doors. She thought about turning around, but he was a producer, so she forced herself to knock.

Harvey answered the door, and his ugly face lit up.

“Kate, honey, you made it. Come on in.”

With a wistful look over her shoulder at the stairwell, she stepped inside, suddenly aware that no one in the world knew where she was at that moment. She could tell right away this was his home, not his office.

“Um, I thought we were meeting at your office,” she said as he ran around grabbing discarded clothes and scooping up dirty dishes.

“We are. Have a seat.”

She cast her eyes around for a spot where she could sit without fear of contracting a disease. “I’ll stand, thanks.”

He pushed the front half of his comb-over back into place and lowered his pear-shaped body into a cracked vinyl chair. “I’m awfully glad you came by. You’re just the kind of young talent Decade Records is looking for. I’m going to make you a big star, little girl.”

Kate took a step back toward the door. “I’m not so sure about this.”

He jumped to his feet faster than he should’ve been able to. “Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t even told you what I’ve got in mind for you.”

She leaned against the door with her hand on the doorknob behind her back, knowing with every fiber of her being that she wanted nothing to do with whatever he had in mind for her.

“We’ll start you off at the Grand Ole Opry. Get your name out there. Do you have your own material?” He rattled on before she could answer. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got a guy who’d love to write for a voice like yours.”

“Mr. Welshiemer—”

“Call me Harvey, honey. We’re going to be good friends. Now, let me get the contract I need you to sign before we go any further—”

“Mr. Welshiemer—”

His eyes flashed with anger. “Now, darlin’, you’ll hurt my feelings if you don’t call me Harvey.” He reached under a pile of magazines on an uneven coffee table, and pulled out a legal-size sheet of paper. “This is your standard entertainment industry contract that lays out all the ways I’ll be working on your behalf to make you a star.” He produced a pen from the depths of his stained shirt pocket. “Sign right here, and we’ll get to work.”