Past Imperfect

With an innocent smile, Rachel controlled the thrum of her heartbeat, then focused on a man who was speaking decisively into a cell phone. Nate Williams, her boss and fellow Saunders alumni.

An attorney who was on fire with the news Rachel had just given him.

“I need access to the Saunders board’s hearing guidelines,” he was saying. “I’ll be back in the office after Katie’s testimony, so have everything ready for me to tear Broadstreet a new… Yeah, you’ve got it. Thank you.”

Rachel knew that he was having one of the paralegals do the grunt work. Normally, Nate depended on her to be his right hand, but since they were both involved in the hearing and she had rearranged her days off to be here, that was impossible.

As he ended the call, he grumbled, “It’s not bad enough that Broadstreet scheduled this on a Friday, knowing the hearing would go for more than one day and Gilbert would have to stew over the weekend. Now he has to invite the world. Bastard.”

His girlfriend, Kathryn Price, a former model whose incandescence wasn’t at all marred by scarring from an awful accident, laid a comforting hand on Nate’s arm. The powerful lawyer, so revered in the courtroom, practically melted under her gentle touch.

Rachel had to glance away, deeply affected by the sight. Once upon a time, she’d had love, too, and she knew how easily it could disappear, stranding you.

“Rachel?” Jane repeated her name. “Kind of distracted today, huh? But…what am I saying? You’ve been a walking zombie lately.”

Pulling her coat tighter around her body, Rachel anticipated Jane’s next question, which would no doubt contain the words what and is and wrong.

“I just wish Gilbert would get here,” she said, finding a decent explanation for her spaciness. “I want this hearing to be done and over with.”

“Don’t we all.” Jane paused, then jerked her chin toward Ian Beck, who was mingling with the students over by the hall’s entrance, chatting them up. “You and the reporter were having some kind of exchange back there.”

Rachel shrugged, trying to play it cool, to deny her association with Ian. “He was getting my reaction the news about Alex Broadstreet and how he’s found yet another way to mess with Gilbert. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Jane paused. “I thought maybe it was something else. You know, like hormones.”

“Jane.” Rachel didn’t mean to sound like a first-grade teacher talking to a kid who was about to dump a bottle of finger paint onto the table, but she had to dispel that notion before it got out of hand. “He’s just doing his job. That’s it.”

“Ri-ight.”

“Don’t give me that grin. I’m serious.”

“Of course you are. When he touched your coat and gave you that hot look, it was all business.”

Hunger waved down Rachel’s body, even as she searched for a comeback. But, thankfully, the conversation was cut short by the arrival of Sandra and David Westport.

The ex-athlete and his blond, blue-eyed wife, a local reporter in her north end neighborhood, hugged Rachel in greeting, as if she were a prodigal child they hadn’t seen for years. Silly, really, because she’d just run into them on campus the other day. Granted, she’d made an excuse to leave right away, but it wasn’t like she was…

Okay, yeah. She was avoiding them. Those adoption papers from Gilbert’s safe had thrown Rachel into a tail-spin, jetting her back into the confusion of her youth—a time when her adoptive parents had made her feel so isolated, so confused. A time when she’d been taught that retreat was the safest option.

And now with Ian Beck asking questions about the benefactor…

Sandra kept her arm around Rachel’s shoulders. Was her friend restraining her in case she ran away again?

“We were thinking,” Sandra said, “that, after the hearing, some of us would go down to Brewster’s for a recap.”

“Or a nightcap,” David, her husband, added.

Jane smiled. “Or, in our case, it’ll be an afternoon cap.”

The attempted joke made them laugh softly, but the sound was stilted, colored by the anxiety they were all feeling for Gilbert. Rachel had already told Jane about Ian’s benefactor queries, and she knew that this tavern meeting would just be another group discussion about what to do with their secret information regarding Gilbert. As usual, the meeting would go nowhere, because no one wanted to pile more stress on their mentor by revealing what they knew. In fact, the gang would probably spend more time asking Rachel what was wrong than anything else.

So why should she go?

Instinctively, Rachel patted Sandra’s arm and started to remove herself. “I can’t. I’m…”

Before she could say “Busy,” she saw the looks on everyone’s faces. The traded I-told-you-she’d-refuse glances.

She didn’t bother to finish the excuse.

Instead, she changed the subject. “Where’s the rest of the crowd?”

David glanced at his watch. “Jacob and Ella are running late because of the little bun in the oven, but they’ll be here. Eric and Cassidy are bringing Gilbert. They went over to his place early, just to steady him.”

Biting her lip, Rachel held back a rush of sorrow. She should have been the one who volunteered to drive him, to perk him up.

And from the way everyone was watching her, Rachel knew that they knew it, too. Knew that they were all dying to ask her what had happened to make her so standoffish.

Only you and I know, Rosemary, she thought, addressing the woman whose name had been burned into Rachel’s memory. The name of a woman Gilbert, the benefactor, had no doubt helped along the way, too.

Rosemary Johnson, her birth mother, a woman Rachel had never known. Was she dead? Alive? All Rachel wanted was to find out more about the mysterious lady, even if she might not like what she discovered. But she didn’t have the courage. How could she when Rosemary had deserted her in the first place? And what about the empty spot on those papers, the glaring space where her birth father’s name should have been?

Rachel could imagine the worst—Rosemary, single and pregnant, relieved to give up the unwanted baby that had been forced upon her. It wasn’t as if finding Rosemary and learning the truth was going to bring happiness to Rachel’s life.

Right?

For the next few minutes, everyone made small talk, giving Rachel peace. Then Eric Barnes and Cassidy Maxwell arrived, holding hands as they followed Gilbert.

Professor Harrison, neatly dressed in a long tweed coat and scarf, was accepting a lot of love from the young students who flanked him, students who adored him as much as Rachel did.

Students who were still fresh-faced and eager to listen to all his advice.

For a second, Rachel saw him as the man he used to be: filled with enthusiasm and pep, his brown eyes sparkling with wit and affection. But then he glanced over at her, and she saw the reality: the bent shoulders, the gray in his hair, the fading energy.

Still, Rachel’s emotions overwhelmed her, bringing a brilliant smile to her face as she chanced a wave at her beloved mentor.

He brightened at this, and she realized how much she affected him, how happy she made him when she was around.

Yet she’d always known that, ever since the day she’d quit college and he’d practically begged her to come back.

Just as she was about to take her first hesitant step toward Gilbert, the press surrounded him. In their ranks she saw Ian Beck, his pen poised above his notebook as he observed Rachel.

She could tell he knew that she was hanging back, too riddled with doubts to go to Gilbert.

Turning aside from the journalist’s measuring gaze, she entered Lumley Hall with her friends, feeling as if they were about to step into a fighting ring.

The spacious lecture hall was filled with observers and echoing with Alex Broadstreet’s voice as he spoke into the standing microphone. He was reading the board’s charges against Professor Gilbert Harrison, his tone as rich and full of crap as a senator on the campaign trail.

Ian was tuning the man out because he was more than familiar with Broadstreet’s complaints. Instead, he inspected the faces.