Honest illusions(BookZZ.org) (54 page)

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, she had it on while Lily was helping your father eat dinner—”

Lily interrupted by putting her hands over her face and sobbing. Roxanne clicked into panic mode.

“Daddy?” Still gripping Nate, she turned and would have bolted up the stairs if Alice hadn’t stopped her.

“No, Roxanne, he’s fine. Just fine.” For a small, fragile-looking woman, she had a strong grip. She clamped her fingers over Roxanne’s arm and held on. “Let me tell you the rest before you go up.”

“He started talking,” Lily said behind her hands. “About—about San Francisco. Oh, Roxy, he remembered me. He remembered everything.”

Nate was so touched by her tears he reached out. Lily gathered him close, rocking and sniffling while Nate patted her cheek. “He kissed my hand—just like he used to. And he talked about a week we’d spent in San Francisco and how we had champagne and caviar on the terrace of our hotel room and

watched the fog roll in on the bay. And how—how he tried to teach me card tricks.”

“Oh.” Roxanne pressed a hand to her lips. She knew he could have moments of clarity but she couldn’t quite tamp out that stubborn spark of hope that this one would last. “I should have been here.”

“You couldn’t know.” LeClerc took her hand. He could only think of how it hurt and healed to have sat for a moment with his old friend. “Alice had just gotten off the phone to Luke when you walked in.”

“I’ll go up.” She leaned over to where Nate had tucked his head on Lily’s shoulder to comfort. “I’ll be in to kiss you good night, knucklehead.”

“Can I have a story?”

“Yes.”

“A
really
long one, with monsters in it.”

“An epic one, with horrible monsters in it.” She kissed him and watched his smile bloom.

“Grandpa said I grew a foot. But I only have two.”

Tears swam in her eyes as she lowered her brow to her son’s. “The third’s invisible.”

“How come he could see it then?”

“Because he’s a magician.” She kissed the tip of his nose, then turned to go to her father.

He was wearing a silk robe of royal purple. His hair, a glinting steel gray, was freshly combed. He sat at his desk, much as he had day after day when she visited him. But this time he was writing, using the long, flourishing strokes she remembered.

Roxanne glanced at the nurse who was standing at the foot of the bed filling out the chart. They exchanged nods before the nurse carried the chart out of the room and left them alone.

There were so many things racing through Max’s mind. They crashed and boomed together like music.

He had to rush to keep up with the notes, to write them down before they faded and were lost to him.

He knew they would fade, and that was his hell. The effort it cost him to fight off the fog, to hold the pen in fingers that cramped with the movement would have exhausted a younger man. But there was a burning in him, bright and hot, that seared beyond the physical. If it hulled out his body, so be it. His mind was his own again. If it lasted for an hour or a day, he wouldn’t waste a moment.

Roxanne stepped closer. She was afraid to speak. Afraid that he would look up and that his eyes would pass over her as if she were a stranger. Or worse, as if she were a shade, some transparent illusion that meant nothing more to him than a trick of the eye.

When he did look up, alarm came first. He looked exhausted, so pale and drawn, so horribly thin. His eyes were bright, perhaps overbright, but in them she saw something beyond beauty. She saw recognition.

“Daddy.” She tumbled the last few feet to him to fall on her knees with her head pressed to the thin wall

of his chest. She hadn’t known, hadn’t allowed herself to know how much she’d needed to feel his arms around her again. How much she’d missed the feel of his hands stroking through her hair.

Her chest heaved once in an attempt to throw off the pressure building there with a sob. But she wouldn’t greet him with tears. “Talk to me, please. Talk to me. Tell me how you feel?”

“Sorry.” He bent his head to brush a cheek against her hair. His little girl. It was hard, much too hard to try to remember all the years that had passed between his child and the woman who held him now. They were a mist, a maze, and so he contented himself with accepting her as his little girl.

“So sorry, Roxy.”

“No. No.” Her eyes were fierce as she sat back on her heels. Her hands squeezed his until they ached, but the pain was sweet. “I don’t want you to feel sorry.”

She was so unbelievably lovely, he thought. His child, his daughter, her face flushed with determination, tears trembling in her eyes. The strength of her love, the sheer demand of it nearly felled him.

“Grateful, too.” His moustache twitched as his lips curved up. “For you. For all of you. Now.” He kissed her hands, sighed. He couldn’t talk. There was really so little he could talk about. But he could listen. “Tell me what new magic you’ve conjured.”

She curled up at his feet, keeping her fingers linked with his. “I’m doing a variation on the Indian Rope Trick. Very moody and dramatic. It plays well. We set up a videotape so I could review it myself.” She laughed up at him. “I amaze myself.”

“I’d like to see it.” He shifted, tucking a hand under her chin so he could watch her eyes. “Lily tells me you’re working on a broomstick illusion.”

It took all her will to hold her gaze steady. “You know he’s back then.”

“I dreamed he was—” And the dream and reality swirled together so that he couldn’t be sure. Simply couldn’t be sure. “Right here, sitting beside me.”

“He comes to see you, almost every day.” She wanted to get up, to pace, but couldn’t bear to separate her hand from her father’s. “We’re working together again, temporarily. It was too intriguing a job to pass on. There’s to be an auction in D.C.—”

“Roxanne,” he interrupted. “What does it mean to you—Luke’s coming back?”

“I don’t know. I want it to mean nothing.”

“Nothing’s a poor thing to wish for,” he murmured, smiled again. “Has he told you why he left?”

“No. I haven’t let him.” Restless, she did rise, but couldn’t bring herself to move away. “What difference could it make? He left me. He left all of us. Once this job is done, he’ll leave again. It won’t matter this time, because I won’t let it.”

“There isn’t a magic trick in the book that can shield a heart, Roxy. You have a child between you this time. My grandchild.” It pained Max more than he could say that he only had dim memories of the boy.

“I haven’t told him.” At her father’s silence, she whirled around, surprised how ready she was to battle.

“You disapprove?”

He only sighed. “You’ve always made your own decisions. Right or wrong, it’s your choice. But nothing you can do will alter the fact that Luke is Nathaniel’s father.” He lifted a hand to her. “There’s nothing you’d want to do to change that.”

The muscles in her stomach loosened. The sharp fingers squeezing the base of her neck vanished.

Magic, she thought, letting out a long clear breath. Say the magic words. “No, there’s nothing I would do to change that.”
Oh, I’ve missed you, Daddy.
She didn’t say it, afraid it would hurt him. “It’s so hard to be in charge, Max. So bloody hard.”

“Easy’s boring, Roxy. Who wants to spend their life with easy?”

“Well, maybe just a passing acquaintance.”

He was smiling again, shaking his head. “Roxy, Roxy, you can’t con me. You thrive on being in charge.

The plum doesn’t roll far from the tree.”

She chuckled, kneeling beside him again. “Okay, maybe. But I wouldn’t mind being told what to do—now and again.”

“You’d still do what you want.”

“Sure.” Swamped with love, she threw her arms around him. “But it’s more satisfying if someone tries to tell me what to do first.”

“Then I’ll tell you this. Grudges are bridges with faulty spans. Falling off one is a lot more rewarding then getting stuck on the other side.”

“Free lesson?” she murmured and, with a sigh, pressed her cheek to his.

Roxanne was a little wobbly when she left her father sleeping and started back downstairs. He’d been so tired, and with his encroaching fatigue she’d all but been able to see the clouds rolling in again. When she’d tucked him into bed much as she would do for her son, he’d called her Lily.

She had to accept that he might remember nothing in the morning when he awakened. The hour she’d had with him would have to be enough.

Weary and weepy, she paused at the base of the stairs to straighten her shoulders. She owed her family a solid front, a show of strength. As she walked toward the kitchen, she fixed an easy smile on her face.

“I could smell the coffee all the way . . .” She fumbled to a halt as her tumbling emotions took one more roll. There, gathered with her family, was Luke, leaning back against the kitchen counter with his hands tucked in his pockets.

Once again, everyone spoke at once. Roxanne only shook her head and marched to the stove to pour coffee. “He’s sleeping. Talking all this time tired him out.”

“Maybe he’ll be fine now.” Lily twisted the beads she wore around and around her fingers. “Maybe it’s all going to go away.” The look in Roxanne’s eyes had her glancing away. It was so hard to bury hope, then unearth it again only to feel it die. “It was so good to talk to him again.”

“I know.” Roxanne cradled the coffee cup in both hands but didn’t drink. “We can schedule more tests.”

Lily made a tiny sound of distress and immediately began to fiddle with the cow-shaped creamer on the kitchen table. They all knew how difficult and disorienting the tests were for Max. How wrenching they were for those who loved him. “We can hope that the new medication is helping,” Roxanne continued.

“Or we can leave things as they are.”

It was LeClerc who spoke, laying his spindly hand on Roxanne’s shoulder to knead out some of the tension. “What do you want to do,
chère?
”

“Nothing,” she said on a half sigh. “What I want to do is nothing. But what I think we should do is agree to whatever tests the doctors recommend.” She took a deep breath, scanning faces. “Whatever the outcome, we had this evening. We’ll have to be grateful for that.”

“Can I go sit with him?” Mouse stared down at the toes of his shoes. “I won’t wake him up.”

“Of course you can.” Roxanne waited until Mouse and Alice had left before she turned to Luke. “Why are you here?”

“Why do you think?”

“We agreed you wouldn’t drop by for casual visits,” she began, only to have the fury in his eyes stop her cold.

“This isn’t casual. If you’d like to discuss why, here and now, I’d be glad to.” She could still blush, he noted. It was fascinating to watch the color rise, blooming high on her cheeks while her eyes showed temper that had nothing to do with embarrassment. “Added to that,” he continued blandly, “when Lily called about Max I wasn’t about to sit home marking cards.”

“Honey.” Lily reached out a tentative hand. “I think Max would want Luke here.”

“Max is asleep,” she snapped back. “There’s no need for you to stay. If he’s up to it in the morning, you can have all the time you want with him.”

“Damn generous of you, Roxanne.”

The weakness showed through only briefly when she pressed her fingers to the thudding in her left temple. “I have to think of Max first. No matter what’s between us you have to know I wouldn’t keep you from him.”

“Just what is between us?”

“I’m hardly going to discuss that now.”

Whistling quietly between his teeth, LeClerc began to wipe the stove. He knew he should leave, give them privacy. But it was much too interesting. Lily didn’t bother with a diversion. She clasped her hands

and watched avidly.

“You climbed out of bed with me and walked away.” He pushed away from the counter. “There’s no way I’m leaving this unresolved.”

“Unresolved?” The irony of it was so sharp she was amazed it didn’t slice him into little pieces. But that was fine. She’d do the cutting herself. “You have the nerve to talk to me about leaving something—anything—unresolved? You walked out to do a job one night and never came back. A real clever variation on the old going-out-to-buy-a-pack-of-cigarettes, Callahan. But damn if I can claim to be impressed.”

“I had reasons,” he tossed out while Lily shifted her eyes from face to face with the eagerness of a tennis buff at Wimbledon.

“I don’t give a shit about reasons.”

“No, all you care about is making me crawl.” He advanced another step and gave serious consideration to strangling her. “Well, I won’t.”

“I’m not interested in seeing you crawl. Unless it’s naked, over broken glass. I went to bed with you, okay?” She pinwheeled her arms to make her point. “It was a mistake, abject stupidity, a moment of mindless lust.”

He took a fistful of her sweatshirt. “It may have been stupid and it may have been lust, on both parts, babe. But it wasn’t a mistake.” His voice had risen to a boom that made her aching head reel. “And we’re going to settle this, once and for all, if I have to gag you and cuff you to get you to listen.”

“Just try it, Callahan, and all that’ll be left of those hands you’re so proud of is bloody stumps. So take your threats, and your pitiful . . .”

But he wasn’t listening to her anymore. Fascinated, Roxanne watched the color drain out of his face until it was as white and lax as melted wax. The eyes that were staring over her shoulder darkened to cobalt.

“Oh, God,” was all he said, and the hand gripping her shirt went limp.

“Mama.”

Roxanne’s heart stopped, simply stopped at the sound of her son’s voice. She turned, certain she heard her bones creak like rusty hinges with the slow, dreamlike movement. Nate was standing in the kitchen doorway, knuckling sleepy eyes with one hand and dragging his battered stuffed basset hound with the other.

“You didn’t come kiss me good night.”

“Oh, Nate.” Cold, she was suddenly so cold, even as she bent to scoop her child into her arms. “I’m sorry. I would have come up soon.”

“I didn’t hear the end of the story Alice read, either,” he complained, yawning and tucking his head in the familiar curve of her shoulder. “I fell asleep before the dog party.”