Someone Like Her

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to hear Lucy’s voice when he walked in the open door.

She wasn’t reading this morning, just talking.

“Yesterday, I saw some early daffodils opening. I know you’d have been as excited as I was. Well, they might have been narcissus or some species daffodil. Is there such a thing? These had orange centers and were small. But they were beautiful and bright.” She paused, as if listening to an answer. When she went on, Lucy sounded regretful. “I wish I had time to garden. Every time I lug out the mower and tackle the lawn, I think about where I’d put flower beds. You know how much I’d like to grow old roses. I love to get out my books and think, too bad the China roses couldn’t stand the cold here, but I’ll definitely grow some of the really old ones. Rosamunde and Cardinal de Richelieu and Autumn Damask. Oh, and Celestial. And a moss rose. Have you ever seen one, with the fuzz all over the bud? I think they look fascinating. Even the names of the roses are beautiful. Fantin-Latour.” She made every syllable sensuous. “Comte Chambord. Ispahan. ” She laughed. “Of course, I’m undoubtedly butchering them, since I don’t speak French.”

So she was sentimental. Why wasn’t he surprised?

Adrian continued in, brushing the curtain as he rounded it. “Good morning.”

She looked up, startled. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

Irrelevantly, he noticed what beautiful skin she had, almost translucent. Tiny freckles scattered from the bridge of her nose to her cheekbones. They hadn’t been noticeable until now, with sunlight falling across her.

“I heard you talking about gardening.”

Her cheeks pinkened, but Lucy only nodded. “Your mother told me spring was her favorite season. She loved to walk around town and look at everyone’s gardens. Sometimes we dreamed together.”

What a way to put it. Had he ever in his life dreamed together with anyone?

He knew the answer: with his mother.

Almost against his will, his gaze was drawn to her, looking like a marble effigy lying in that hospital bed. It was hard to believe this was the vivacious woman of his memory.

“We had a garden when I was growing up,” he said abruptly. “In Edmonds. We didn’t have a big yard, but it was beautiful. She spent hours out there every day on her knees digging in flower beds. I remember the hollyhocks, a row of them in front of the dining-room windows. Delphinium and foxgloves and climbing roses. Mom said she liked flowers that grew toward the sky instead of hugging the ground.”

“Oh,” Lucy breathed. “What a lovely thing to say.”

“She talked like that a lot. My father would grunt and ignore her.” Damn it, why had he said that? Adrian wondered, disconcerted. Reminiscing about his mother was one thing, about the tensions in his family another thing altogether.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said softly. Perhaps she saw his face tighten, because instead of asking more about his father or when his mother had disappeared from his life, she said, “I thought about starting a small flower bed under my front windows this spring.” Almost apologetically, she told him, “I don’t have very much time to work in my yard. I wanted to take Elizabeth with me to the nursery to pick out the plants. She has such a good eye.” Her hand crept onto the coverlet and squeezed the inert, gnarled hand of his mother. “I wish she’d wake up and say, ‘When shall we go?’”

She sounded so unhappy, he thought with faint shock, she loves Mom. How did that happen?

“I’m surprised to see you here again this morning.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Because Dr. Slater tried to bully me into staying away?”

His mouth twitched. He doubted Ben Slater knew how to bully anyone. Although…“I have a friend who took a class from him in med school. Tom says he’s a tough grader.”

“You checked up on him.”

“Wouldn’t you have?” he countered.

The pause was long enough to tell him how reluctant she was when she conceded, “I suppose so. Did he get a satisfactory rating?”

“A gold star. He’s the best, Tom says.”

“I could have told you that.”

But he wouldn’t have believed her. They both knew that.

When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Have you made a plan yet?”

He looked back at his mother, watching as her chest rose and fell, the stirring of the covers so subtle he had to watch carefully to see it. “Move her to Seattle. What else can I do?”

As if he’d asked quite seriously, Lucy said, “Leave her here for now. Until Dr. Slater says she can go to a nursing home. And we even have one of those here in Middleton, you know.”

God, he was tempted. Leave her to people who cared. Whose faces she’d recognized if she opened her eyes.

Abdicate.

He shook his head reluctantly. “I don’t have time to be running over here constantly. And it sounds as if the chances are good she won’t be waking up.”

Lucy pinched her lips together. After a long time, she said, “I suppose that’s true.” She gazed at his mother, not him. “How soon will you be taking her?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get my assistant hunting for a place with an open bed.”

Now she did turn a cool look on him. “Won’t you want to check it out yourself?”

“Why do you dislike me?” he surprised himself by asking.

With a flash of alarm in her eyes, she drew back. “What would make you think—”

“Come on. It’s obvious. You think I should have found her. Taken care of her.”

Her chin rose fractionally. “I suppose I do.”

Adrian shoved his hands in his pockets. “I did look for her some years back.” He rotated his shoulders in discomfiture. “I suppose…not that hard. I thought she was dead.”

Her brow crinkled. “Why?”

“Even as a kid, I knew there was something wrong with her. My father claimed she’d gone to a hospital to be treated. Then he told me she’d checked herself out because she didn’t want to get well. I was young enough to believe that if she was alive, she wouldn’t have left me.”

She stared at him, and prompted, “Young enough to believe…? Does that mean, now that you’re an adult, you don’t have any trouble believing she’d ditch you without a second thought?”

God. He felt sick. That rich breakfast wasn’t settling well in his stomach.

“Apparently she did,” he said flatly.

He felt himself reddening as her extraordinary eyes studied him like a bug under a microscope.

She surprised him, though, by sounding gentle. “How old were you?”

His jaw tightened. “Ten.”

“And you never saw her or heard from her again?”

He shook his head.