The Swallow's Nest. Emilie Richards

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       4

      From the master bedroom addition over the sunroom Lilia listened as the last of the guests fled. At first she had simply trembled with her back to the door and stared out the windows. But by the time someone called her name from the hallway she had positioned a carry-on suitcase on the Hawaiian appliqué quilt her mother had given her on her wedding day and begun to pack. She didn’t answer, but the door opened, and Carrick appeared in the doorway.

      He was the first to speak. “Regan has an extra bed at her place. And you know I have a spare bedroom.”

      She glanced over her shoulder. “You should be with your date.”

      “We drove separately. Julie’s gone.”

      “Thanks for the offer, but I’m going home.” She was torn between continuing to pack so she could leave faster, or asking him the question she hadn’t outside. The question won. She faced him.

      “Did you know, Carrick? About Toby? I hope to God you weren’t keeping Graham’s secret, too.”

      “I had no idea.”

      She studied his expression. Carrick looked both furious and wounded, but she knew her question wasn’t the cause of either. “Okay.”

      “He knew what I would say if he’d told me. Maybe he was trying to use every bit of strength just to stay alive.”

      “Don’t make excuses for him!”

      “I’m not.”

      “He was your best friend before I even met you. I’m not going to ask you to choose. I’ll make it easy. I won’t be here.”

      When she turned away he joined her at the bedside where she had begun packing again. He perched on the edge, long denim-clad legs stretched out in front of him, but his posture wasn’t relaxed. Carrick was holding himself like a man walking a tightrope.

      “Lilia, these past awful months I’ve been right there with you. I know what you’ve gone through. Days, even nights at the hospital, then home to change clothes and go out to design appointments, or work on the website, or head out to your storage unit to be sure The Swallow’s Nest orders were being processed correctly. Dealing with your employees and doing whatever you could with Graham’s. You hardly ate or slept. Nobody could have done more to keep everything going until Graham recovered. If he did.”

      She remembered an evening when Carrick had asked if she was experiencing sympathy lymphoma. He’d offered to shave her head if she wanted to enhance the effect. Then he’d marched her out of Graham’s hospital room for fish tacos and a chopped salad and sat with her to make sure she ate every bite.

      Her hands hovered over the suitcase, but she couldn’t force herself to fold the T-shirt she was holding. “How could he have done this to me? To us?”

      He touched her shoulder, his fingers warm against her skin, but he removed his hand quickly. He didn’t move closer, aware, she supposed, that she would either fall completely apart if he held her or, worse, she would shove him away. “I don’t know. I really don’t, but you need an answer. I don’t think you can leave without knowing.”

      “Do you know what she said to me? What Marina said? She said I might hate her, or something to that effect, but at least she’d given that baby life—” her voice broke “—when I couldn’t even be bothered to have Graham’s baby.”

      “Lilia...”

      She cleared her throat. “I wanted children. Before he got sick I thought we were ready. Graham was the one who held back. We had that possibility of a television show, and he kept saying the time should be exactly right. Then when it wasn’t, when it was the worst possible time to have a baby, when we had absolutely no idea whether he would live or die, he begged me to get pregnant. Just like that. After the diagnosis and before chemo. Out of nowhere. He wanted me to do everything to keep us going and have a baby, too. And we had no idea if he would even live to see it born!”

      She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Although I guess that question was answered. He did live to see his son, didn’t he?”

      “You have to talk to him.”

      “No, I’m going home. I stayed in San Jose the whole time he was sick. I missed a wedding, a christening. I need my family.”

      “Plan to come back.”

      “Are СКАЧАТЬ