Lia sat beside Chloe on the bed in Isabel’s spare room, snuggling. It was Tuesday night, just over a week since they had been alone, but it felt like months.
Her mother and Isabel were gone: her mother back home after nourishing them for five days with her marvelous cooking and infectious laugh; Isabel to Chicago for a job interview. The healing had begun.
She opened the pharmacy on Saturday. It was a drugstore in the strictest sense. There were only drugs available. Smoke and water from the sprinklers had ruined everything. The Christmas inventory stacked in the back room had been destroyed by the fire.
Insurance money would carry her for a while, hopefully long enough to sell the business and at least break even. After closing Saturday afternoon, she let Dot go. She couldn’t afford her financially. That morning she realized that neither could she afford her emotionally. The woman informed her that Tammy had suffered a miscarriage, but Cal was sure to stay loyal.
Lia hugged Chloe tightly, shutting out those details. “So tell me. How was the visit with your dad?”
“He was nice.”
Well, that wasn’t much information. “Did you meet his family?”
“No. Just the two of us went to dinner and the zoo. He said his other kids were busy, but maybe next time they could meet me.”
Next time? Lia groaned to herself.
“Aunt Lia. I’ve been thinking. Do you think I can call Mommy Mom? Mandy doesn’t say mommy anymore.”
“That’s a good idea. Your mom would like that.”
“Aunt Lia?” She raised her face, those big blue eyes boring into Lia.
“Hmm?”
“Sometimes I call you my mom when I talk to the other kids. Is that okay?”
“Sure, honey. I’m your adopted mom, even though I’ll always be your aunt.” She hugged her silently for a few moments. “Did your dad say he would call you?”
“Yeah. Can I see him again?”
“Do you want to?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes.”
“We’ll see. You better get to sleep now.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“Love you, too, sweetpea.”
Lia carried bed pillows to the front room. In an effort to keep Isabel’s home neat, her mother had folded up the hide-a-bed every day and stacked the pillows in Chloe’s room. Lia wasn’t sure how long she could keep up the chore. Hopefully they could move back into the apartment in a few weeks. The workers had allowed her upstairs that day. The smoke stench gagged her. Could it ever be washed out?
A knock on the front door startled her. She knew Mitch Conway was locked up and that the deputy guard no longer needed to park on the street overnight. Like the smoke odor, though, she wondered if the fear would ever subside.
She turned on the outside light and looked through the door’s peephole. It was Cal. Another kind of fear rooted her feet to the floor. He knocked again.
She knew she would have to face him sooner or later. Dear Lord, give me grace!
She slowly opened the door. “Hi. Isabel’s not home.”
“I wanted to see you. Mind if I come in?”
She stood aside and let him pass, and then she shut the door. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. “Cal, it’s 40 degrees and you’re sweating!”
He sank onto the nearest chair, his face pale behind the full beard that had grown during his hospital stay. More than ever he resembled a teddy bear with his bristly face matching his light brown hair. He panted.
“Are you all right?”
He waved a hand. “I’ll be fine. Walking across the yards felt like a major hike. The back doors are closer, but I didn’t want to frighten you by banging on the porch window.”
“You just got home today!” Naturally she had heard the news. “You shouldn’t be out at all!”
“No choice. My thanks are long past due. Lia, thank you for saving my life.”
She sat on the couch. “You’re welcome. You’re not taking very good care of it right now.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m a tough cop.” He paused, his breathing more even. “Except when it comes to you.”
She allowed herself to meet his eyes. What would be his excuse? It didn’t matter. There was no place for him in her life now.
“Lia, I about went nuts when you didn’t come visit. Then on Saturday Brady told me what Tammy said. No wonder you hadn’t shown up! But I’ve been going crazy since then, not being able to come and explain.”
“Cal, save the effort. At this point, it doesn’t matter. We had a good friendship. You helped me out a lot, and I got you away from the fire. I guess you could say we’re even. There’s nothing else between us.”
“Lia! Tammy’s not pregnant!”
“I know that. Dot told me she lost the baby.”
“There never was a baby!”
She blinked, trying to process this information.
Cal heaved himself from the chair and lumbered over to the couch. He sank onto his knees before her. “Lia, I have to explain something. Growing up, playing football, Brady was always my quarterback. After I became a Christian, he kind of became that again, only in real life ways. He’s always telling me what plays to run. Which ones not to run because they won’t work.”
He stopped to catch his breath. “The point is, as far as I know, there’s only one natural way to make a baby, and it just didn’t happen. Tammy thought she could trick us into being engaged, get the whole town assuming we were together. She figured no one would tell me since I supposedly didn’t know. If I did hear, she could chalk it up to gossip. In the meantime she conveniently had a ‘miscarriage.’ What she didn’t figure on was me breaking things off. She didn’t really love me. I guess she thought I was a good catch or something.”
Lia’s throat tightened. She touched his beard and whispered, “You are, Cal. You’re a very good catch. But I’m not fishing.”
Cal stumbled back across the darkened lawns to his house, his head swimming. He knew Lia watched, concerned that he had pushed himself beyond the limit of endurance.
He had, but it wasn’t physical. He felt a fierce loathing toward Tammy, which scared him. He desperately wanted to turn back time, to spin the earth backwards until he sat again in Lia’s apartment, kissing her goodnight, deciding against searching, deciding to sit and simply watch her sleep.
He climbed his front steps and leaned against a porch post, panting and sweating.
It didn’t feel as though he’d been stabbed. Instead it felt as if that knife had filleted him open, exposing his heart to damage he never would have imagined possible.
Oh, God!
He went inside and made his way to the kitchen and the bottle of pain pills, which he told the doc he didn’t need. He swallowed two.
He had talked with Lia for over an hour. She explained that circumstances made her realize that Valley Oaks wasn’t working out for her. She was selling the business as soon as possible and leaving no later than the end of December. There wasn’t enough space in her life for a relationship. As she had said when they first met, she wasn’t looking for one.
“But I love you, Lia.”
“It’s only infatuation, Cal. There hasn’t been time for love to develop.”
She wasn’t the soft woman he remembered.
Now he realized she was running scared. She had been thrown off course, choosing Chloe over her own dreams, working hard to carve out a new life for them. She was impressively independent and not about to give that up to some guy she wasn’t sure she could trust. Where should he start? Would flowers help?
Try prayer, bud.
He didn’t know if it was his own consciousness or Brady or the voice of Jesus Himself, but he recognized it as the place to begin.