Raina's Story (3 page)

R
AINA QUICKLY TUGGED
at her clothing, sat up and scooted next to Hunter. “I—I'm sorry. I lost my head and forgot about the Promise.”

Hunter turned toward her and shards of moonlight glanced across the planes of his face. He looked haunted, wounded. “You have nothing to be sorry about. It's
my
promise. I'm the one who has to keep it. We shouldn't have come here.”

She took a deep shuddering breath, trying to calm her racing heart and douse the fire of passion still roaring through her veins. Years before, at a church camp, Hunter had pledged to remain chaste until he married. Raina had always known this, and it had been one of the things that had attracted her to him. Hunter wasn't like other boys she'd dated, who often figured they were entitled to have sex with her simply because they were dating. The irony was that she would have given herself to Hunter gladly because she loved him so much. And although they didn't share
the same religious beliefs—she rarely went to church, while Hunter and his family attended faithfully—she respected his.

Raina said, “We hardly ever get to be alone, Hunter, and I wanted us to be alone.”

“And now we know why we shouldn't be alone.”

She stood abruptly. “Look, I didn't mean to get us to the edge of a meltdown by coming out here. I don't want you feeling bad about us. Besides, we seem to always be able to stop before… well, before we go too far.”

He rose quickly and took her by the arms. “What scares me is what if I'm not able to stop? I don't want us to give ourselves away to each other on some blanket in the woods. I want it to be right when it happens. I want to be married.”

“To me?”

“Of course to you. We love each other and we should be willing to declare it in front of God, and our families and friends. Then we can have all the sex we want, wherever we want.”

“Aren't there rules about ‘wherever’?” She attempted to lighten the mood.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Yes. We'll be very careful to stay out of public elevators.”

Looking into his eyes, she knew that his way did seem best, but it could be years before they would be able to marry. She said so to him,
adding, “In the meantime, what are we supposed to do? Break up? Burn up? Dry up?”

A smile turned up the corners of his mouth, and he put his arms around her and pulled her close. “No to all three. We just have to stay in crowds, I guess. Do you think we can do that?”

She nodded, feeling hollow. “Just so long as we don't give up.”

“That won't happen.”

“No matter what?”

“What matters is doing things right,” he said. “It's important to me, you know it is.”

“I know,” she said, holding him tightly, while an overwhelming sadness swept through her that she could not explain. Not to her own heart. Not to him.

Hunter told her goodbye at her front door, and Raina slunk inside. To her surprise, her mother was sitting at the countertop that jutted into the great room, poring over a pile of paperwork. Vicki looked up. Her eyes narrowed. “You all right? You looked bedraggled.”

Raina had hoped to get up the stairs and into her room and wished she hadn't run into her mother. “Why are you up so late?”

“Catching up on reports I can't get to at work.” Vicki laid down her pen. “Have you been with Hunter?”

“None other.” Raina dropped the old blanket
on the floor and headed toward the refrigerator.

She had no reason to be secretive now.

“Raina, you are being careful, aren't you?”

“
Hunter
's being careful,” Raina said, retrieving an apple from the fruit bin and shutting the door. “I'd go for the gold if it was up to me.”

“Don't say that. Teenage pregnancy is no joking matter.”

“Why are you forever warning me about not getting pregnant? Don't forget, I got my very own prescription of birth control pills when I was fourteen. Why, I was the first girl in school to receive such a thoughtful gift. And from my mother too.” Raina bit into the apple, well aware of how sarcastic she sounded. She didn't know why she was being hateful. It wasn't her mother's fault that she felt frustrated.

Vicki's mouth formed a thin, tight line. “That was for your own protection. Do you think some guy is going to stop in the middle of everything and take precautions?”

“Hunter isn't ‘some guy.#x2019; He's a
perfect
guy.”

Vicki arched her eyebrow. “In other words, he's not a loser, like your father, the guy
I
picked.”

“I didn't say that.”

“But you were thinking it.”

That was the trouble with having a mother who was so much like her, Raina thought. They had no secrets from each other. “Well, he didn't stick around, did he?”

Vicki returned to the stool and her stack of papers. “No, he didn't. But I assure you, we're a whole lot better off without him.”

“So you've always said.”

Vicki pulled her reading glasses from where she had positioned them atop her head and set them on her nose. “Go to bed, Raina. I'm really too tired to spar with you tonight.”

Raina teetered indecisively, her bad mood morphing into one of remorse. Her mother had worked hard and long to achieve her goals, all the while raising Raina alone without financial or emotional help from the father who'd walked out when Raina had been two. “Mom, I'm sorry,” she said softly.

Vicki looked up. “I know. Trust me, I'm not keeping score, Raina. I'm glad we can talk to each other about anything. So many women on staff at the hospital tell me real horror stories about their relationships with their daughters.” She blew out a breath. “I want your life to be better than mine. Easier. You'll want the same thing for your kids someday.”

Raina dropped her half-eaten apple in the garbage can, walked out into the great room and flipped on the TV with the remote. She sank into the couch and surfed until she found
Saturday Night Live
.

“Why don't you go on to bed?” Vicki said.

“I'll wait for you.”

Vicki closed the file she was working on and shoved it aside. “My eyes are crossing.” She opened the pantry, found a bag of popcorn and put it into the microwave, then came and sat beside Raina on the sofa. “Can I watch with you?”

“Sure.”

They settled into the cushions, one on each end of the pillow-strewn sofa, while the bag of popcorn exploded in the oven and the homey aroma of fresh buttery kernels filled the room.

On Labor Day, Kathleen went over to Carson's house, on Davis Island, for a barbecue around the pool with his parents. She remembered the first time she had gone there for dinner and how scared she'd been of the two heart surgeons, but now they seemed like old friends, and not only because Dr. Chris Kiefer had saved her mother's life. Kathleen genuinely liked Carson's parents. Carson's mother, Dr. Teresa, as Kathleen called her, was open and warm, with a great deal of charm and grace. Kathleen felt at ease around her.

Kathleen was lounging in the bright aqua water on a hot pink float when Carson rose up and grabbed the side of the float. “Yikes, don't dunk me,” she said. “I just put on sunscreen.”

His brown eyes glinted with mischief and the sun danced across his tanned shoulders. He slung water off his dark hair. “It'll cost you.”

“What?” She eyed him warily.

“How about a kiss?”

“Your parents are watching us,” Kathleen hissed.

“I'm sure they suspect that we kiss each other.”

Kathleen felt her face getting red. Teresa was sitting on a lounger at the far end of the pool reading a medical journal. Carson's father was busy basting something that smelled succulent on the mammoth grill under the porch awning. “I'd be too embarrassed,” she said.

“We can't have you embarrassed,” Carson said, wiggling the float.

“Carson, don't!”

But her plea was in vain. With a heave, Carson turned the float over and Kathleen tumbled into the cool water. In a second, he was underwater beside her. He pulled her close and kissed her. She came up sputtering. “Resistance is futile,” he said.

She splashed him full in the face. He laughed, arched backward and dove under. Kathleen swam to the side of the pool and raised herself out of the water. Teresa smiled and waved her over. “Men are little children. Why they think it is funny to partially drown their girlfriends is a mystery, but they all do. When Christopher first dated me, he did the same thing.” She handed Kathleen a fluffy white towel.

“It's all about the hair,” Kathleen confessed. “It just dries weird.”

“Your hair is lovely. You should not fight it so.”

“That's what my mother says.”

“How is she doing? I know that medically she is doing well, but I mean otherwise.”

“She is
so
ready to come home. And…and I really want her to.” Unbidden, tears welled up in Kathleen's eyes. She dabbed them away with the edge of the towel. “I'm sorry.”

Teresa patted Kathleen's arm. “No apologies. It is good to miss your mother. I still miss mine, although she died years ago.”

“Mom has a nice room at the rehab center,” Kathleen said, regaining her composure. “She goes to therapy twice a day. I think things would go faster if it weren't for her MS.”

The facility where Mary Ellen was staying was a block away from Parker-Sloan. It had one wing for patients who needed therapy but couldn't yet live alone at home, a pool for water exercises and several large gymlike rooms filled with equipment. Physical therapists on staff worked with both inpatients and outpatients. Many who went there were victims of strokes and accidents. Kathleen could see that her mother was getting better every day but that she still had a way to go before being allowed to
return home. Even when she did, Mary Ellen would have to return for therapy twice a week.

Kathleen said, “Mom's attitude is better… more positive.”

“Well, certainly repairing her heart valve improved blood flow, and this gave her more energy,” Teresa said. “She was truly very sick.”

Kathleen thought that her mother's close brush with death had somehow strengthened her, helped her see beyond her illness and the terrible loss of her husband and Kathleen's father in a car wreck years before. “She's better now. In a lot of ways,” Kathleen said.

“Hey, watch this!” Carson called from the diving board.

Kathleen and Teresa turned to see Carson execute a perfect dive into the sparkling water. A feeling of contentment spread through Kathleen. She cared about Carson more than she admitted to him, and spending time with him and his family gave her a sense of belonging.

A noise at the side gate and Dr. Kiefer calling out “Hello there” from his position at the grill made Kathleen swivel around and shield her eyes from the sun. Her heart skipped a beat and her stomach fell to her toes. Coming through the yard and across the brick patio toward them was none other than her nemesis, the beautiful Stephanie Marlow.

S
TEPHANIE CLAPPED
when Carson surfaced and then went straight over to Teresa's chair, bent and kissed her on the cheek. They greeted each other warmly in Spanish while Kathleen sank lower into her lounge chair.

“Have you met Kathleen?” Teresa asked.

Stephanie gave Kathleen a cursory glance. “Carson's little friend. Yes, we've met,” she said, then turned her back to Kathleen.

Little friend?
Kathleen felt her cheeks grow hot and her temper flare.

Kathleen listened as Teresa and Stephanie carried on a conversation in fluent Spanish. If awards for rudeness were passed out, Stephanie would win one hands down. It seemed obvious to her that Stephanie was flaunting her language expertise to show Kathleen up, for Kathleen understood very little Spanish and couldn't speak much of it outside of ordering tacos at a restaurant.

Carson's father strolled over holding a tray
with several choices of soft drinks. “Want one?” he asked the three of them.

Kathleen took a can of diet cola, and so did Stephanie. Carson swam laps in the pool, making Kathleen assume that he didn't want to face both of them just yet.
Coward!

“How are your parents?” Dr. Kiefer asked.

“Dad's in Switzerland on business. Mom's in Brazil.” Stephanie didn't elaborate.

“Are you staying alone?” Dr. Teresa asked, in a tone that made Kathleen wonder if she might invite Stephanie to stay over for a few days.

“The housekeeper and the cook are there. So is the groundskeeper. I have company. And I have school. And”—Stephanie flashed a smile— “I have friends.”

Gag me,
Kathleen thought, hoping it didn't show in her expression.

“You must stay for dinner,” Teresa said. “There's plenty because Chris always cooks for an army.”

Kathleen's stomach knotted. This wasn't the way she wanted to spend the evening.

“Absolutely,” Carson's father said.

“I'd like to stay. Thank you.”

Carson pulled himself out of the water and padded over. To Kathleen's dismay, he chose to stand next to his father and not beside her chair. She longed to have him put his hands on her
shoulders in a possessive gesture that would speak volumes to Stephanie. “What's up?” he asked.