After All These Years (37 page)

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.

Isabel stood on Michigan Avenue across from the
Chicago Tribune
Tower, the sky a brilliant blue against the nearly white stone that soared heavenward.

She closed her jaw. At the radio station where she interviewed, they teased her about behaving like a tourist. She wondered now if Lia could help her develop a big-city air about herself. Teach her how to dress and walk, how not to gawk with her mouth hanging open.

But this was procrastinating. She wanted to see Tony, to apologize, to…well, to just
see
him.

Swallowing the intimidation that kept welling up, she made her way across the busy boulevard, dodging people in the crosswalk. Where in the world did all these people come from? Where did they all live? And park their cars? And buy groceries?

She went inside the building and eventually found herself standing before a security guard.

“Anthony Ward,” the woman said, reaching for a telephone. “That smart-alecky reporter. You sure you want to talk to him, honey? You look way too sweet for the likes of him.” She pressed the phone pad buttons. “Used to be I could send you right on up. Too many threats these days. I seem to remember one or two against him in particular. What's your name?”

“Isa—Izzy. Tell him Izzy is here.”

“Mr. Ward, this is Sheila downstairs. There's an Izzy here to see you. Oh! He hung up. Rude, rude, rude! You'd think he'd at least—”

Isabel somehow made her way back out to the sidewalk, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from falling. Now that certainly manifested a big-city attitude. She dug in her bag for sunglasses and a tissue. Well, she had tried. If he didn't want to see her… Sunglasses in place, she glanced to the right and left in what she thought was a nonchalant manner. Where was her car again? The people at the radio station had given her directions to the
Tribune
building, just a short distance across town. There was no reason to stay and so much to do at home. And she had promised to work early tomorrow—

“Izzy!”

She turned to see Tony running toward her.

“Izzy! What are you doing here?” He didn't smile, but he wrapped her in a brief hug.

“Um, looking for you.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you want to walk a bit? We can find a bench.”

“You have time?” She tried to sniffle unobtrusively.

“Sure.” He grasped her elbow and steered her toward the river, across a type of courtyard and away from the avenue.

They walked without speaking for a few minutes. After descending a stairway, they reached a sunny bench in a quiet area overlooking the river. Across the way, skyscrapers rose, the early afternoon sun glinting off their black windows.

“Izzy, you're the last person I would expect to show up here.”

“Guess what? I'm taking your challenge.”

He shook his head and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “And which one would that be?”

“The one about not hiding away in Valley Oaks.”

“Iz, you know I'm full of hot air. You shouldn't take me literally. It's bad for your health.”

“Tony, I'm sorry for not telling you about being pregnant. I should have told you years ago. I certainly should have told you before now.”

“I'm sorry for jumping down your throat. I had no right to get nasty with you. If I were you,
I
wouldn't have tried to tell me. Once a jerk, always a jerk. I pushed you so far out of my consciousness that after one feeble attempt to call you that summer, I forgot about you. I mean, I totally forgot about you. Now I know I did that consciously, because I was falling in love with you. And that, above all, gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

You loved me?
She fought down the emotions his confession ignited. “I've blamed you all these years for not coming after me and making an honest woman out of me.”

He looked back at her. “I should have. I'm sorry.”

“You didn't know.”

“I'm sorry you had to go through it alone. I'm sorry you never finished college.”

“I survived. I can always go back if I want.”

“I'd pay for it.”

“Hey, it wasn't entirely your fault.” She smiled. “You can pay for half.”

He turned again toward the river. “I feel like I've lost a sister and a child.”

She rubbed his hunched shoulders.

He sat quietly for a while. She wondered if he blinked away his own tears. “Iz, I can't write the article. Every time I try to work on it, I have this image of you walking away. And you're walking with my sister. My mind goes blank.” He straightened, put an arm across the bench behind her, and smiled in that crooked, self-deprecating way with his head tilted. “Heavy, huh?”

“What does it mean to you?”

“God's leaving old Tony Ward out in the cold.”

“Why don't you come in?”

“Hmm. Like that song you sang to me at breakfast. Just come in and leave all that guilt outside.”

“That's all there is to it.”

He drew her closer and hid his face in her hair. “You are so beautiful, Isabel Mendoza.” He let her go and crossed his arms. “Now tell me why you really came to Chicago.”

“To see you.” She smiled. “I came for a job interview, but I think I came for that because you were here. I needed to apologize before any more time passed.”

“Job interview? In Chicago?”

“Mm-hmm. Radio announcer for a Christian Spanish-speaking station. Enough of a challenge to meet your standards?”

“I'd say so. Did they like you? Silly question. Of course they loved you.”

She shrugged. “They have to think about it. I have to think about it.”

“You'd leave Valley Oaks?”

“It may be time. I'm also considering missions work in Mexico. My heart is still there.”

“If you moved here, I'd be like your only friend in a hundred-mile radius.” He winked. “So how are things in Valley Oaks? Cal solve the pharmacy thefts yet?”

“Oh, you haven't heard!” She filled him in on details of the attack and fire. “He got out of the hospital yesterday.”

“Poor guy. I'll give him a call. How are the lovebirds?”

“Well, not so good. Tammy has sort of moved in and claimed her territory.” She decided not to fill him in on all the sordid details. “I should go. Don't you have a deadline or something?”

“Actually, all of my writing seems to be a bit off these days, but yes, I do have work to do.”

“Tony.”

“Uh-oh. It's her serious tone.”

“There's a Spanish-speaking church here.” She pulled a pamphlet from her bag. “I went last night with the family who let me stay with them. There's a pastor visiting here all week from…Colombia.”

He went still.

“He knows about your sister and her friends. Some of the people he ministers to met her.” Isabel folded the pamphlet in half. Pushing aside his crossed arms, she opened his sport coat and stuffed it into his inside pocket. “Go. Listen to him; they have interpreters. Stay after and meet him.” She met his deep-set blue gaze. “My challenge to you.”