The Year of Luminous Love (40 page)

That part was going to be harder than hearing the news herself. They would be devastated. “Mom and Dad are both working. Eric and Abbie are still on their honeymoon. The bad news can wait.”

“Don’t wait too long. The news will be around the hospital in no time despite patient confidentiality rules. You’re a favorite with the staff, you know.”

She reached for the door and suddenly turned and hugged Dr. Austin hard. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

His face crumpled as she left the room.

Arie had asked Ciana and Eden to come to her house, and they were on their way. She knew the visit would be difficult. She knew they wouldn’t like hearing what she was going to say. Still, she had to say it, hoped they’d understand, if not today, then eventually.

Outside the kitchen window, February rain sheeted down the glass, and the skies looked as dull as gunmetal. She disliked this shortest of months for its dreariness, loved the coming spring for its riot of color, knowing that this spring would certainly be her last. Arie pushed away from the kitchen counter, grumbling for allowing herself to fall into such a morose state of mind. She wanted to greet her friends with smiles, not tears.

She’d put on makeup, styled her hair, and dressed in ice pink, her favorite color. The sweater’s high neck hid her jutting collarbones and frail arms. She needed the camouflage after the ongoing chemo treatments, which had been stopped. Through the rain-streaked window, she watched Ciana’s old truck turn into the driveway, and Eden’s small car arrived from
the opposite direction. Arie took a few deep breaths, went to the front door, and opened it wide.

The girls rushed inside in a spray of rainwater, laughing, shaking umbrellas, and slipping off rain boots in the tiled foyer. “Nasty day,” Ciana said.

“Glad you came in spite of the weather,” Arie said.

“A little rain can’t stop us from making a command appearance before the queen.” Eden placed her forefinger beneath her chin and curtsied.

“You may kiss my ring,” Arie said, holding out her hand.

“When pigs fly.”

They laughed together and Arie hugged each one. Ciana felt Arie’s thinness through the pink sweater.

“Living room fireplace is fired up and I’ve laid out coffee and homemade chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table.” Arie turned toward the formal room her mother kept pristine and used “only for company.”

The room was cozy, warm from the fire burning in the hearth, the scent of coffee and chocolate mingling with that of the crackling wood. Ciana and Eden sank into the thick cushions of the like-new sofa, and Arie took a comfy side chair pulled across from the sofa and coffee table. Eden picked up a cookie, bit into it. “Skipped lunch,” she said. She still worked at the boutique, where she had been made the manager.

Ciana said nothing, but she felt the weight of the meeting on her heart. Something was up. Why else would Arie insist she and Eden come together in the middle of the day?

Arie leaned forward, her gaze tenderly lingering on their faces. “I have something to tell you both,” she said. “Something you’re not going to want to hear.”

Ciana drove to a screeching halt in front of the barn, ripping up grass and throwing debris with the truck’s tires. She leaped out and as the cold rain pelted her, she hurdled through the side door and slammed it shut. “Jon!” she yelled. “Jon, where are you?”

He was filing Caramel’s hooves while the horse stood tied between two posts. Startled by Ciana’s shout and sudden entry, the mustang tried to rear. “Whoa, whoa, girl!” Jon steadied the horse, calming her. Caramel settled, and Jon turned to Ciana. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve got to stop her! You’ve got to make Arie go back into treatment.”

He calmly moved away from the spooked horse and toward the stack of straw bales, where he tossed the file and smoothed antibacterial gel on his hands. “She told you.”

Arie had confessed she’d told her parents, Eric, and Abbie, and asked that they not tell the rest of the relatives yet, but she hadn’t mentioned that she’d told Jon. She drew up short. “When did she tell you?”

“When she dropped by to see her horse a few days ago.”

Somehow the revelation offended Ciana. She and Eden should have been told before Jon! Yet she accepted the fact, turned it to suit her argument. “You can stop her. You can
make
her go back into treatment. She’ll listen to you. She’ll do it if you ask her.” Ciana was shaking hard, her teeth chattering, in spite of the portable heaters blasting hot air through the barn.

Jon measured Ciana with somber eyes. “I can’t, Ciana. The cancer’s too far advanced. There are no more treatments. Her doctors can’t turn her around. I’m sure she told you as much.”

Of course that was what Arie had said. But white-hot anger swelled inside Ciana, blinding her, fracturing all logic.
She bolted across the barn and hurled herself at him, screaming, “I hate you, Jon Mercer! I hate you!”

Caramel whinnied, stretched the ropes tight, but Jon ignored the horse. Ciana slammed into Jon again, striking him with her fists. He took it for a few seconds before grabbing her wrists with both hands. “Knock it off!”

Ciana kicked at him, landing the toes of her boots against his shins, all the while yelling that she hated him.

In a swift move, he turned her and pulled her against his chest. She shouted, “Let me go!” He didn’t. She shoved backward, throwing him off balance and they both went down to the floor. She tried to scramble away, but he caught her, pulled her again so that her back was pressed tightly against him. He put his back against the stack of straw bales, crossed her arms over her chest, and held them in an iron grip; then he wrapped his legs around hers, sprawled out from the fall. In seconds, she was completely immobilized.

Ciana screamed in frustration, bucked, tried to twist out of his body lock but couldn’t. Behind her, Jon said, “Stop fighting me, Ciana. Stop it!”

She ignored him, but after minutes of fruitless struggling, she gave up. Breathing hard and crying, she demanded, “Let go of me.”

“Not until you listen.”

Her hair was pulled back on one side, exposing the side of her neck and ear. She felt his warm breath on her skin, heard his drawl soft and husky in her ear. “I’d give anything if I could stop what’s happening to Arie. I can’t change her mind, because she’s out of options.”

Ciana jerked, but his grip held. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

“I can’t change what’s happening to her,” he insisted. He
took a ragged breath and softly added, “No more than I can change what happened between us in Italy.”

Ciana went still and became deathly quiet. His words had pierced her heart, and along with it came real-life images of him and Arie leaving the hotel suite together, of her own seemingly endless wait for Arie to return to the hotel, of crying until she thought she’d turn inside out, of Arie returning and telling her and Eden nothing at all. And she saw imagined images, too, of Jon and Arie entwined, of moonlight spilling across bedsheets and … and …

“The dumbest thing I ever did,” Jon continued into her ear, “was to agree not to tell her about us. About you and me and what I felt for you. Not telling her was wrong, Ciana. It was wrong. And it wasn’t fair to any of us.”

Fresh tears ran down Ciana’s cheeks, but they were no longer tears of fury. Her anger was gone. What remained was pain and the cold hard truth of his words. Her effort to protect Arie had wounded all of them. “Please let me go.”

He released her slowly, ready to imprison her again if she bolted.

But the fight was gone out of her. Only bitter tears remained. She wiped her face on her shirttail, ripped from her jeans during the tussle. “You … hurt … me,” she said hoarsely, each of them understanding she wasn’t talking about the wrestling match and his bruising grip on her wrists.

“I know I did,” he said with a hitch in his voice. “But what happened in Italy wasn’t about you or me. It was about her. If you have to hate someone, go ahead and hate me. She did nothing wrong, because she never knew the truth.”

Hadn’t Eden told her as much that night in Italy?
“Jon wanted you and you gave him to Arie.”

“I let go of blaming her while we were still in Italy,” Ciana managed in a thick whisper. “I could never hate her.”

“That’s good.” He took her at her word. Ciana felt the roughness of his jaw on her cheek, then the tenderness of his mouth on her skin. “I loved you, Ciana. You were the one I wanted.”

Loved. Past tense. Once upon a time
. She slumped. His arms slid around her, but not in restraint. She didn’t try to move away but leaned into his body. Caramel stared at Ciana and Jon, her ears pricked forward, her brown eyes calm. The space heaters hissed out warmth, and smells of leather, horseflesh, and fresh straw blended together. Outside the wind moaned, echoing the sadness in Ciana’s soul. Arie was dying … dying, and there was nothing she could do about it. Nor had there ever been. She said, “I don’t hate you, Jon.”

“Good. Because I don’t think I can take another beat-down from you. You hit hard. For a girl.”

She managed a half smile and closed her eyes, and he held her for a long time, neither of them moving.

Eden crossed the kitchen, tossing her car keys and purse onto the new kitchen island. The clunking sound broke the quiet and made her feel even lonelier. Now that her mother had split, Eden found herself missing having another warm body in the empty house. Just then, the house phone rang. Eden started to ignore it but realized she’d like to hear the sound of another human voice. She answered, only to be asked, “Is Ms. Gwen McLauren there?”

“She’s out, and I can’t say when she’ll return.”

“Well, then, are you her daughter? She said I should ask for you if I couldn’t reach her.”

“Who’s calling?”

The woman’s bubbly voice said, “I’m Sharon Weber, an agent with Farm Care Realty. I have an offer on your house and need to set up an appointment to discuss it with you all.”

Eden’s chest tightened. What was she supposed to do?

“How about tomorrow at eleven?” the realtor pressed. “The offer has a deadline on it.”

Eden agreed with the appointment time and hung up. She leaned against the counter, catching her breath and shaking her head. Why had Gwen cut out before the house sold? “Thanks a lot, Mom,” she said aloud. “The perfect ending to a crappy day.”

Today Eden had learned that her dear friend had no hope of recovery, her mother had left her no instructions about the house, and now she might soon be homeless. A triple play. A
trifecta
of rotten news. She wondered if it was even possible to reach her mother. Gwen rarely chose to answer her new cell phone. Eden left a message, but who knew if Gwen would respond, especially before the scheduled meeting?

Eden went up to Gwen’s bedroom, still full of Gwen’s stuff. Until now, she’d stayed out of the space. She looked again to where the missing blue duffel usually sat on the shelf. How was it possible to pack so few things in such a small piece of luggage?

Maybe she should call Ciana, take her up on her offer to move in with her. Maybe she should begin breaking down the house’s contents before it sold. She was leaving the room, mentally listing her options, when she saw the large brown envelope on her mother’s dresser. She grabbed it up, ripped it open, pulled out a sheaf of paperwork, and riffled through it. Several pages looked legal. A short stack paper-clipped together was headed
DURABLE GENERAL POWER OF ATTORNEY
.
Another short stack was labeled
DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE FOR GWENDOLYN MCLAUREN
. Eden’s hands shook, and her heart thumped hard.