Petals on the Pillow (23 page)

Kelly was close enough to feel the heat of Kendra’s breath on her face as the other woman shrieked out her indignation. She couldn’t wait any longer, she was too afraid of what Kendra would do next and unsure of her power to distract her any
more. Kelly reached out and grabbed Betsy with one hand while grabbing Kendra’s hair with the other. The speed of her movement was enough to surprise Kendra into loosening her grasp on Betsy for a moment. The girl broke free.

“Run, Betsy, run!” Kelly yelled and was rewarded with see
ing the little girl dart off the dock in the direction of the Manor. Her relief was short-lived, however. Kendra recovered quickly. In seconds her fingers were locked in Kelly’s hair, whipping her head back and forth until Kelly was so dizzy she could barely see.

“You bitch,” Kendra hissed into her ear. “I’ll make you pay for that.”

Kelly twisted in her grip, fighting hard against the hands that threatened to rip her hair right out of her scalp. Kendra had the advantage of a longer reach and a surprisingly ferocious strength that shocked Kelly. She twisted again, hoping to break Kendra’s hold on her, not realizing her mistake until she heard Kendra’s triumphant laugh.

Kelly’s feet stood at the very edge of the dock. The waves lapped up behind her, soaking her in a particularly strong gust of wind.

“You really should have caught the ferry, Kelly. It would have been so much simpler for both of us—although I have to admit a certain pleasure in watching you drown. Good-bye, Kelly,” Kendra whispered and then shoved.

Kelly’s arms windmilled for a moment, but there was no way for her to regain her balance. She went over backwards, and within seconds was under the frozen waves of the Puget Sound.

Cold water closed over her head. She fought against it, fought against her trailing clothes and fought against the frigid temperatures. She tried to kick off her shoes. She thought she managed to do it, but her feet felt so wooden and numb that she couldn’t really tell anymore.

For one blessed second she broke free of the pounding waves and gasped air into her screaming lungs. The relief was incredible as the oxygen rushed into her body, the sensation nearly indescribable. Then the water pulled her under again to fight the cold some more.

She dragged herself upward again with arms already leaden from the cold, hoping against hope to pull another breath into her desperate body, to somehow make it back to the dock or to see someone besides Kendra coming toward her. With a little bit of hope, she might be able to convince herself to keep fighting.

Instead, below her, down in the depths of the water, a light began to glow. It flickered and with each flash grew in strength. It circled her legs, dragging her downward. She felts its pull even as she stretched her aching arms toward the surface. She fought the light, too, now, along with the cold and the waves, but she was so cold, so incredibly bone-achingly cold and she could tell that the light was wonderfully warm. Its heat reached her even as she broke through the surface once more.

The cold of the water doubled her over in a powerful cramp before she could fill her lungs. The circle of luminescence beneath her grew.

Her lungs burned. Blood pounded in her ears. Her body screamed for oxygen. Over the roar in her own head, a sound reached her. It came from the light below her. Warm and sooth
ing sounds drifted up to her ears. Whispers of comfort rose from the light. “What is it?” she wondered. Her arms and legs paused in their twisting and windmilling to try and catch what voices came from the light.

The voice that hit her ears was at once both familiar and strange. Kelly had not heard that laughing lilt since she was a little girl, except in her dreams perhaps. Even so, she recognized it immediately.

“Keep fighting, Kelly, dear. Keep swimming. It’s not your time yet. You must swim,” Nancy Donovan’s voice said to her daughter.

“Mother?” Kelly’s mind quested forth tor the source of the voice.

“Yes, dear. It’s me. You must swim now. Don’t stop.” The light rose to her and began to buoy her toward the surface.

“Where are you, Mother?” Kelly whipped around in the water, searching for an explanation she could grasp.

“Where I’ve always been, dear. Here beside you when you needed me.”

Kelly could practically see the soft smile in the voice. The tenderness nearly broke her heart in two. “Oh, Mother, you’re here when I need you, but where was I when you needed me? I abandoned you. I’m so sorry.”

“You never abandoned me,” the voice said. “It was simply my time to go. Just as it is now your time to live, Kelly. You must live now. You have much to do.”

“Swim, Kelly,” another voice chimed in. Smoky and mel
low, Kelly felt she knew it, too.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes, I’m here, too,” Elizabeth replied. “Hang on a few moments longer. Only a few. Help is on its way.”

Kelly felt a pair of strong arms grasp her roughly around the middle and then she was being dragged through the water. She wanted to help, but couldn’t muster the strength or the will. Regardless, within seconds she was gasping air, her cheek pressed against the rough wood of the dock.

She raised herself on one arm. Harrison stood, panting and dripping, over her. On the lawn, Kendra lay face down. David Clark had his knee pressed firmly into the small of her back and one of her arms twisted up behind her.

Betsy knelt down next to Kelly, peering directly into her face. “Kelly, are you all right?”

“Fine, Munchkin, never better,” Kelly answered right before she fainted.

Chapter Sixteen

Harrison squinted into the spray as the ferry pulled away from the dock. He searched the faces in the windows, looking for Kelly’s unruly tangle of curls. He’d lost her in the crowd as soon as she’d crossed the gangplank. Maybe he’d simply lost her. Period. It amazed him that the thought could send a jagged flash of pain through him so sharp and intense he had to fight the urge to double over.

The ferry had pulled out far enough to turn. Harrison straightened. For a second, he thought he’d caught a glimpse of her moving through the upper deck. He leaned forward, peer
ing intently. Sun winked like diamonds on the water.

A hand clapped onto his shoulder and a voice spoke behind him. “You’re an idiot.”

“Nice to see you, too, David,” Harrison said dryly without turning around. He gave up scanning the crowd for Kelly.

“Seriously. You’re a four-star idiot.” David stood next to him, hands jammed in trouser pockets and windbreaker zipped against the freshening breeze. “I can’t beli
eve you’re going to let her go like that.”

“I’m not sure I had much choice. She didn’t give any indi
cation of wanting to stay.”

“Did you ask her?”

“No.”

David sighed and shook his head. “I was wrong. You’re not a four-star idiot, Harrison. You’re a five-star idiot.”

“Come on, David. What was I supposed to do?” Harrison hunched his shoulders more. He still didn’t turn to look at David.

“A couple things come readily to mind. Ask her to stay. Tell her you love her. You do love her, don’t you?”

Harrison shot David a sidelong glance from the corner of his eye then turned back to the water again.

“Thought so.” David whistled between his teeth. “I don’t suppose you did bother to tell her that, though.”

Harrison shook his head. “It seemed ... unfair.”

“Unfair? Telling the woman you love that you have feelings for her is somehow unfair?”

Harrison’s shoulders rose and fell in a heavy shrug that spoke volumes. “What do I have to offer her out here, all alone in that big old house? She’s got so much ahead of her right now. So much talent and energy and ... life. What could I give that could compete with that?”

“If it was another woman, I might be tempted to point out fabulous wealth and social position, but I honestly don’t think Kelly cares about those things.”

“I don’t think so either,” Harrison said quietly. “I almost wish she did.”

The ferry was far out into the water now, the people on it no more than colorful specks ranged along its decks. Harrison turned his back on it and headed toward the car.

David fell into step beside him. “She loves you, Harrison. Now why she’d go for an old mope like you I can’t say, but there’s no accounting for tastes. It’s written all over her face. She’s crazy about you. And about Betsy.”

They stopped in front of Harrison’s Mercedes. “She’s young. She’ll get over it,” he said as he fished his keys from his pocket.

David grabbed his arm, his face suddenly serious. “Give the girl some credit, Harrison. Sure she’s young. Sure she wants to get someplace, but that doesn’t mean her feelings aren’t real or lasting.”

Harrison turned and leaned his back against the car. “Look, David, I need some time to sort things out. I’ve spent the past two years teaching myself to shut everyone and everything out. Up until a few weeks ago, I thought the people I loved and trusted most in this world had betrayed me.”

A shadow of pain passed over David’s handsome features. “I wish I’d known, Harrison. I thought that time was hard for me. I can’t imagine what you must have been feeling.”

“That’s the thing, David. I didn’t feel. Couldn’t let myself feel. It hurt too damn much.” Harrison grimaced. “And now ... well, it’s hard to open those doors again once they’ve been shut for so long. I can’t ask her to wait when I don’t know what other skeletons are lurking in there. Besides there are some things about my relationship with Kelly that are frankly pretty unclear at this point. Things were pretty intense here for a while. I think we both need some time to figure out what our real feelings are.”

David turned to look out at the water again. “So what now?” he asked.

“Now?” Harrison snorted. “Now I have a foundering com
pany without a leader that needs to be set back on course.”

“That so? Anything I might help with?” David grinned.

“Funny you should ask.” Harrison felt his lips twist into a smile. “I’m in desperate need of a manager with a good knowledge of aviation who thinks he can work with a curmudgeonly old hermit.”

“You’re in luck! I happen to know just the candidate, and by sheer luck he’s available.”

Harrison unlocked the car. “Hop in. I’ll give you a ride to the house. We can talk while I get on the Internet. I’ve got some stock to sell.”

***

Kelly had lingered on the dock for as long as she could stand it. She’d almost burst out and asked to stay at least a dozen times, but the frail shreds of her pride barred the words from tumbling out. She hadn’t really expected Harrison to ask her to stay, anyway. Since that night on the dock, Harrison had barely spoken to her at all, and he’d certainly never touched her. Instead, he’d cut a wide berth around her, saying he wanted to let her heal.

It would almost be funny, she mused. If only her heart did
n’t feel like it was being ripped in two, it could have a comical bent to it. She’d spent hours thinking Elizabeth’s presence between them would keep them apart, when apparently it was all that held them together.

At least it seemed it was all that had held Harrison to her.

The leaving of Elizabeth’s spirit had been a very physical and tangible occurrence for Kelly. She’d suffered alternating bouts of fever and chills for days afterward. Dr. McIntyre had assured everyone that it was probably just the aftereffects of her near-drowning, but Kelly knew different. For whatever reason, their two spirits had twined so tightly that releasing each other had sent aftershocks through her whole system.

That the letting go was a mutual process was painfully clear to Kelly. As disturbing as it had been to not always know whose needs she was acting on, by the time Kendra threw her into the Sound, a sisterly warmth had developed between Kelly and Elizabeth without Kelly ever being fully conscious of it. Until its loss had made its existence acutely apparent to her, that is.

In the emotional chill that followed, Kelly had warmed herself with the memory of the two voices that had spoken to her during those awful moments under the water. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell anyone else about it, about what she’d heard or the intense feeling of closure and peace it had given her, but she folded the thoughts around her like a warm blanket to keep out the cold.

The ferry began to pull away from the dock. Kelly found her way to the middle of the boat. She didn’t want to know if Harrison was watching her or not, didn’t think she could bear seeing that impassive, chiseled profile as the ferry swept by, and didn’t want to think that her leaving held so little meaning to him that he might not even watch her go.

One thing that had become patently clear to Kelly since Elizabeth’s spirit had found its rest was that when it came to Harrison, Kelly had acted on no one’s desires but her own. The other thing that was clear was that her feelings toward Betsy were no less intense. Saying good-bye to her had been almost as painful as saying good-bye to Harrison.

Kelly pulled a sleeve of saltines from her bag. She bit into one, hoping the hard dry cracker would quell the nausea she was pretty sure had nothing to do with seasickness. The ferry rocked gently along while she chewed and swallowed past the lump in her throat.

Betsy hadn’t come to see Kelly off on the ferry. They’d said good-bye in her room in front of the mural that had brought them together in the first place. Kelly had pulled out her favorite pointed Chinese brush, dipped it in velvety black India ink and signed her initials, KED, and the date in the lower right hand corner of the mural.

Betsy had watched in silence from the bed, knees pulled to chin and arms banded tightly around her shins. “Do you have to go?” she asked after Kelly came back from washing her brush.

“You know I do.” Kelly slid the brush and ink back into the case and climbed onto the bed next to Betsy. She nodded to the wall. “What do you think?”

Betsy wiggled in beside her. “I think I’m going to miss you.”

Kelly hugged her. “I’ll miss you, too, squirt, but we’ll talk on the phone and you’ll come visit me, right?”

“Right.” Betsy’s reply came with a sniffle.

Kelly jumped up and pulled Betsy with her off the bed. “So you still haven’t said what you think of your mural.”

“I think it’s great!” Betsy slipped off the bed and crouched down to squint at Kelly’s signature. “What does the ‘E’ stand for?”

Kelly had smiled at the irony of it all. “The ‘E’ stands for Elizabeth.”

***

“Kelly Elizabeth Donovan, get down from that ladder this instant!”

Kelly finished shoving the books in her hands onto the shelf before she backed carefully down the ladder. “I’m more likely to get hurt from you scaring me half to death than I am from falling off a ladder, Lisa.”

Lisa tossed her knapsack onto the couch in their apartment. It rolled into the slight depression caused by a broken spring. She flung herself down next to it. “My grandmother said you aren’t supposed to climb things or lift your arms up over your head like that.”

“Why exactly did she say that?”

“She said that you could tangle the umbilical chord around the baby’s neck.”

“I’m less than three months pregnant. I’m not sure the baby even has a neck yet. Besides she also told me I was supposed to sit in a darkened room with a penny on my stomach during solar eclipses. I’m not sure her advice has a strong medical basis.” Kelly’s hand strayed to the slight bulge of her abdomen. At this point, it was no more than a pressure against the top button of her jeans. She plopped down across from Lisa and propped her feet up on the scarred wooden coffee table.

“Tonight’s the Art for the Whole Planet Ball,” Lisa said, her gaze intent on Kelly’s face.

“I know.”

“Do you suppose he’s going?” she asked.

“He who?” Kelly countered, in the hopes that the conversa
tion could somehow be derailed.

Lisa snorted. “You know who. Harrison. The guy you’re still mooning over. The father of your baby. That he who.”

“Oh.”

“Well?” Lisa pushed.

“Well what?”

“Do you think he’s going to the ball?”

“I don’t know, Lisa.” Kelly sighed. “He hasn’t exactly been keeping me posted about his plans.”

Lisa looked pointedly at Kelly’s stomach. “You haven’t been completely forthcoming either, have you?”

Kelly leaned her head back in her chair and closed her eyes. “Don’t start.”

“I think you ought to at least let him know. The guy is rolling in money. He wouldn’t even miss the little it would take to move you from scraping by to living comfortable.”

“I don’t need his help, Lisa. We’ve been over this before. With the money from my parents’ insurance, I can go to school full time this semester. The Academy has practically guaranteed me a teaching position in the fall. I’ll have the whole summer off for a maternity leave, with enough money to get by quite comfortably. I don’t need or want Harrison St. John’s money.”

“Don’t you think he at least has the right to know? About the baby, I mean.” Lisa’s voice was quieter now.

Kelly groaned. “We’ve covered this before, too, Lisa.”

“
I know. I know. You want him to come to you because he truly wants to be with you, not because he feels like he owes you something because of the baby.”

“And since I haven’t heard from him since
I left Hawk Manor and I don’t want any financial help from him, what’s the point?” Kelly smiled, although it hurt to say the words.

Lisa got up and came over to kneel beside Kelly’s chair. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I really am.”

“Me, too, Lisa. Me, too.”

***

It was after nine o’clock when Kelly heard the knock at the door. Lisa was in her room working on a drawing. Kelly was curled up with a book in the big armchair in the living room. She got up and peered through the peephole in the door. She leaned her back against the door and took two deep breaths and looked again. Finally she opened it.

He still looks devastating in a tux
, she thought to herself, as she looked Harrison up and down. Just seeing him standing there in her doorway was enough to start her heart beating at twice its normal rate.

“Well, well, well, what brings you to this neck of the woods, Harrison?” she asked. She couldn’t believe how cool her voice sounded, considering the way the blood was racing through her body.

“I thought we had a date for tonight,” he said with a tentative smile. He stuck out an absolutely exquisite bouquet, which trailed tendrils of greenery all around, with all the grace and subtlety of a kid picking up his date for the junior prom.

“These are for you. Jenkins put them together. Betsy helped.” Kelly took the bouquet in one hand and glanced at her watch. “The flowers are beautiful, but you’re late. I think the festivities started a couple hours ago.”