Kit wandered around the cafeteria searching for Cole, trying to remember where they’d agreed to meet. Finally she spotted him, waving to her from one of the small tables by the windows. All morning she’d thought about a quiet, private lunch with him. Rennie had been in the Chapel House for only three weeks, but she already owned the rooms and the air that filled them.
She liked Rennie, maybe even loved her. Still, she couldn’t shake this irritable feeling that had been dogging her for the past few weeks. Maybe it had more to do with Cole than Rennie. Since Estelle left, he’d thrown himself into his work. She felt more cut off from him now than before.
She’d been thinking again about moving out of the house. It was too late to give her tenants notice that she wanted to move into the Point Pleasant house—she’d let that deadline slip by without a second thought. And what good would it do her to move out of the house when she’d still be working here at Blair, still seeing him each day, still wondering exactly how he was spending his nights? No, if she moved, it would have to be away from the shore, maybe out of New Jersey. But she couldn’t leave yet, she told herself, not when Rennie’s situation was so uncertain. She was Rennie’s main lifeline right now. It wouldn’t be fair.
“Do you realize how long it’s been since we’ve had a chance to talk, just the two of us?” she said, setting down her tray.
“I don’t have time to think anymore, much less talk.”
“How’s the fetal surgery training going?”
“Fantastic.” He brightened. “Really well. We’ll be ready to open the doors March first.”
She watched him cut the liver and onions on his plate. His eyelashes were long and straight, his face full of concentration. It had been weeks since she’d let herself study him and she was filled with sadness. She guessed that any attraction he’d felt for her had vanished. After all, he’d had her now, in the flesh, and it had left him with nothing but regret.
He looked over at her tray. “That’s all you’re eating?” he asked.
She looked down at the tomato soup and corn muffin. “I don’t have my usual appetite lately. Haven’t been running hard enough, I guess.”
“When does the serious training begin?”
“Saturday. Three weeks of speed, then three of hills, three of endurance, and three of putting them all together.” And then Boston. Finally.
A nurse dressed in blue scrubs nipped at the waist walked by their table, drawing her hand across Cole’s shoulders as she passed. “Hello, Cole,” she said, her voice so breathy she sounded winded.
He glanced up. “Hi, Lynn,” he said absently.
Kit watched the nurse walk away from them. “Are you ready for someone new?” she asked.
He wrinkled his nose. “No.”
“They’re ready for you. That nurse and a hundred like her.” Women had been calling the house for him since Christmas.
“Lynn is a doctor, Kit.”
“She is? She looks about twenty-five.”
“Twenty-eight, I think.”
That depressed her. Where did these women get their role models? How come she’d missed out? She watched Cole take a bite of liver off his fork, and her stomach lurched.
“I have to compliment you on the way you’ve handled Rennie,” she said, trying to get her mind off food.
“I like having her around. I hope it takes them a long time to find a foster placement for her. The whole situation has kept my mind off . . . other things.”
She knew he meant Estelle.
“Do you miss her?”
He sighed. “I miss knowing I had someone to talk with and go out with and sleep with. But I don’t actually miss Estelle herself, not the way she was at the end, anyway. I think about her, though. I wonder if she’ll ever be happy.”
Kit thought Estelle’s concept of happiness was nothing like Cole’s or her own. Pure joy and pure sorrow would never exist for her.
Cole took a swallow of milk and leaned back in his chair. “I wish Rennie wasn’t still afraid of me. I feel like an ogre around her. She’s such a little waif, and life is so overwhelming for her. If she were my daughter, I’d tuck her away in a closet until she turned twenty-one.”
“And when she got out she’d have had no experience coping with anything. You’d have to take care of her for the rest of your life.”
“Fine.” He smiled.
She picked up a piece of the corn muffin and put it in her mouth. She swallowed it and made a face. “Nothing tastes good to me these days.” She pushed her tray away. “I really don’t understand why no one ever told me I could be a doctor.”
She got up early on Saturday and looked out her window. Good. No snow on the beach. It was January twenty-fourth, twelve weeks before the Boston Marathon. Eight miles to run this morning. She shivered. It must have been the cold that made that task seem monumental.
She dressed painstakingly, wanting everything to be perfect. First the T-shirt, then the sweatshirt, then the sweater. The jacket on top of all that. She smeared Vaseline on her face and pulled her cap low over her ears.
The sand was hard and firm under her feet. Her lungs had gradually adjusted to the cold, but today they were tight. Every breath felt like fire in her chest. She wished she had goggles. Something to protect her eyes. They were watering, and the beach was a blur. Damn it. Her nose was running and she had forgotten a tissue. What was wrong with her today?
Maybe the winter would be too much for her after all. But an indoor track? For the Boston Marathon? She envied those runners with the money to move to a warmer climate while they trained.
She zipped her jacket up to her chin. Stop being such a baby.
But something was very wrong. She’d run six miles when she knew she had to stop. She tried to slow down gradually, but a wave of nausea came over her and she dropped to her knees and vomited into the sand. She knelt there for several minutes, shaking and breathless. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten sick to her stomach.
She rinsed her mouth with ice-cold salt water and headed home slowly. Was she that out of shape? Pushing too hard too fast? Or maybe it was the flu. She wasn’t sure which condition to hope for.
The Chapel House was in sight when she began to retch again. Oh fine, she thought, annoyed with herself. Off to a great start.
A week later, she felt even worse, barely able to summon the energy to get up in the morning, much less run. That Saturday morning, she stayed in bed, watching her night table clock tick its way to ten-thirty. She was sleeping all the time these days. Janni and Maris thought she must be depressed. Why aren’t you eating? they’d asked her. How come you’re not training harder? She laughed their questions off. She had no answers.
She jumped at the sound of a knock on her door and sat up quickly. She’d hate for anyone to catch her still in bed. But it was only Rennie.
She sat down on the very edge of Kit’s bed, her American history book in her lap. “Are you sick?” she asked.
Kit smoothed the blanket over her knees, hoping Rennie wasn’t looking for help with her history homework. “I’m just tired and I’m not running well. I’m wondering if I’ll ever be able to run a marathon again.” She caught herself—she hadn’t meant to give words to her fear. “But enough about my problems. What’s on your mind?”
Rennie had confided in her the past few weeks. About the times Craig beat her, how his threats of sex kept her in a state of terror. And about her grandmother, but that wound was deep and the words hadn’t come easily. She’d told her about the rapists, about their taunting and the pain. She’d told her enough to make Kit sleep fitfully for a week.
“I think Cole thinks it’s my fault that I was raped,” she said now.
“That’s crazy. He doesn’t think any such thing.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. You always know what he’s thinking. It’s like you and Cole are two people with one mind.”
Kit liked the description. “He cares about you a lot.”
Rennie looked down at her history book. “Is there something wrong with his eyes?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re so weird. It’s like you can see the white through the colored part or something.”
Kit laughed. “His eyes are unusual but they’re normal eyes. His mother’s are like that, too.”
It was a few seconds before Rennie spoke again. “I just don’t understand why a man would want to be a doctor for women.”
So that was it.
“Could you ask him, Kit? Why he’s a . . . you know, that kind of doctor, and then tell me his answer?”
“I know his answer, but it won’t do you any good coming from me. Why don’t I tell him you’d like to talk to him when he gets home today?”
“No.”
Kit leaned toward her. She was going to have to get tough on this. It was the only way. “You have to,” she said. “You can’t continue to live in this house for who knows how long pretending he doesn’t exist.”