Look to the Rainbow (33 page)

     He had long since taken to buying almost all of his Christmas gifts over the internet, but he’d gone in person to buy the gift he sent Tara and he was certain that he was photographed doing so, but he didn’t care. He’d sent it to her parent’s home in Atlanta, knowing she would be there for the holidays. He wanted to ask her to attend Lily’s famous New Year’s Eve party with him, but something made him hold back from doing that. He had, however, after much consideration, put her name on the list of people to be invited to the Inauguration and inaugural balls. Lily had cornered him a week ago and given him his mother’s engagement ring, “just in case” he decided to do anything with it.

     “Just before Fiona died, she told me she wanted me to have it. She didn’t want to choose between her granddaughters or Kim or Molly, so she gave it to me.”

      “Don’t you want to keep it, then?” He wasn’t sure he would ever need it.

     “ I would rather see you with a wife who would love to wear it.” Lily said gently.

     “So would I, Lily,” Kel said. “But I don’t really think that’s going to happen.”

      She handed it to him, a beautiful square cut diamond surrounded by emeralds. “Take it anyway, just in case.”

      He had, and put it in a safe place, and hoped that he might have reason in the new year to take it back out again.

     A box arrived for her at Julia and Michael’s house in Atlanta and Jack brought it in and handed it to her. She opened it and found inside two wrapped gifts, one in a signature Tiffany blue and the other in more traditional Christmas paper, both labeled to her from Kel. She took them and placed them under the tree with the family gifts.

     “Aren’t you going to open them now?” Julia asked.

     “No. I’m going to wait until Christmas,” she said. “It’s only a couple of days.”

      “But they’re from
Kel
,” Julia said.

      Everyone laughed at her, even Michael, and they settled in for a family favorite tradition, watching “
It’s A Wonderful Life
.” The reporters still stayed close, but at least here, while she was inside, she could pretend that they weren’t there, where in Washington, she couldn’t. Tara found she wasn’t really paying attention to the movie, but rather was wondering what Kel was doing instead.

     She opened his gifts last. The first was a DVD of
Finian’s Rainbow
and that made her smile. No matter what, they would always have a song. The second one, the box from Tiffany, revealed a beautiful bracelet made of double strands of pearls with a pave diamond clasp shaped to look like a bow. It was simple enough to wear every day, but dressy enough to wear to a special event. She put it on and wondered if she would ever want to take it off. It was beautiful, and even more than that, exactly the kind of thing that she would pick out for herself.

     “I hope you got him something nice,” Julia said, admiring it.

      “A first edition of his favorite book,” Tara said.
“The Fountainhead
.”

     “Isn’t that one of your favorites too?”

      “It is.” She stretched out her arm and admired the bracelet again, and then helped her mother set the table for Christmas night dinner with extended family.

     Kel waited until late on Christmas night to open the gift she’d sent. That she’d remembered this was his favorite book wasn’t lost on him. It was one of the first things they’d ever talked about. It seemed so long ago now, but in actual time it hadn’t been that long. He just
felt
as if they had known each other forever. He took the book upstairs with him and laid it on the bedside table and prayed for patience.

Chapter Thirty

     Everything was packed in the moving van and it left for Atlanta where all her furniture would be put in storage. Her father was flying in the next morning to drive back to Georgia with her and her suitcase was packed to spend the night at Casey’s apartment.

     “Let’s go have some lunch,” Casey suggested, “and then maybe we can go to the exhibit at the National Gallery you wanted to see.”

    “Maybe they won’t follow us all the way to the Mall,” Tara said, hoping that as the inauguration drew closer and she and Kel weren’t seen together that the media attention would decline. So far it hadn’t, if anything it was worse, with articles speculating on what she would wear to the inaugural balls, when she wasn’t even attending.

     They decided on a favorite bistro and at the last minute decided to walk to lunch and return after for the car before they went into DC. Tara thought that they might lose some of the inevitable reporters following them if they broke up the trip. As they walked to the restaurant, which was two blocks from Casey’s apartment, Tara noticed two long lenses pointed at them but tried to pretend they weren’t there.

            They managed to eat lunch relatively undisturbed, even though their server asked, “Are you who I think you are?” But when they started to leave, there was a crowd of reporters and photographers waiting outside the door. They exited, but the cameras were disturbingly close and they only walked a few feet before going in to Starbucks and taking refuge in the ladies’ room.

     “What are we going to do?” Tara asked. “We can’t hide out in here forever.”

     Casey pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to call Evan to come and rescue us.”

     “Can he do that? Just leave?”

      Casey grinned. “I sure hope so.” He answered on the first ring and Casey told him where they were and what the problem was. “But we can’t just go home, Ev, they’ll probably be waiting for us there.” He told her would be there in five minutes and they would figure out something.

     Tara was relieved to be in the backseat of Evan’s car, but she knew they would be followed wherever they went. Evan said, “I called Mary Katherine, and she’s just coming back in from meeting with her gallery in Baltimore. She’s going to meet us at my office and then maybe you can slip out the back somehow. This is ridiculous.” Even as he spoke cameras were flashing outside the car windows.

     “Just be careful, Evan,” Tara said. “They get dangerously close.”

      As soon as he pulled away from the curb the press jumped into action and started the chase. When Evan stopped at a traffic light, the cars beside and behind him pulled up within an inch of his car.

     “You weren’t kidding, were you?” He looked in his rear view mirror.

     “It’s been pretty awful since Christmas. They all seem to think Kel and I are about to announce we’re getting married.”

    “I’ll try to take a detour and lose them, but no promises,” Evan said. He made a turn and left some of them when the light changed. Evan knew the streets of Georgetown like the back of his hand from running around it for so many years and knew a dozen ways to get back to the hospital. He just hoped the paparazzi didn’t know all of them. They caught up with them at the next intersection and Evan tried to lose them again, but finally just decided to take the straightest course.

     Four blocks from the hospital they got stopped by another light. When it changed Evan started to cross the intersection when one of the cars that had been following them headed toward them, the wrong way down a one way street, at an alarmingly high speed.

     There was nothing he could do but pray as the car crashed into them. In the back seat Tara was doing the same as Evan’s car spun out of control and was hit again by the car following too closely behind them.

     When Tara opened her eyes, after the car had stopped spinning, the first thing she heard was a multitude of sirens coming closer and closer. She looked to her left and realized that the other side of the back seat had been crushed in toward her, stopping just before it reached her. Looking forward, she saw that the front end of the car was crumpled toward the windshield, which had been shattered, and that both airbags had deployed. In front of her, Casey was crying, and Evan was face down across the steering wheel. What she noticed next was that they were
still
taking photographs.

     “Casey?” She realized that Casey had her hands over face, afraid to look and see what had happened. Tara could almost see her if she leaned to the right and forward. Casey turned toward her voice.

      “Tara, are you okay?”

      “I think so. What about you?”

      “My left arm hurts really bad and I have a few cuts but I think I’m okay. I’m afraid to look over at Evan. He’s hurt, isn’t he?”

      Tara said gently, and braver than she felt, “I’m afraid so.”

      Before they could speak again, the paramedics were prying the car door open and one of them leaned in over Casey and asked if she thought she could stand. She said she thought she could and he helped her out. She looked at the mangled car and finally at Evan and her legs buckled and she fainted. The paramedic lifted her onto a stretcher and another said, “Miss McCaffrey, are you hurt?”

      How did he know who she was? She asked in a shaking voice how he knew her name. “We all watch television.” He offered his hand, and said “Do you think you have any injuries? Does anything specifically hurt?”

     She told him she didn’t think she was injured, but he still held onto her as she climbed out of the car. She felt a little lightheaded and she was shaking all over, but she could stand. A police officer came over and asked her very kindly if she felt she could give him a report. The EMTs were taking Evan out of the car and the photographers were all taking photographs of that and suddenly Tara couldn’t take them any longer. “Please,” she begged the police officer. “Make them stop. Isn’t enough that they caused an accident and injured him? Do they have to take pictures of Evan while he’s hurt?” She burst into tears and the policeman walked over to the photographers .

     “No more pictures, please. This is now a scene under investigation and this is a major invasion of privacy. Anyone else who takes a photograph will be arrested.” Another officer stepped forward and blocked their view of Evan and the paramedics and they began to move away. The officer who had spoken came back to Tara again.

     “Obviously you are Tara McCaffrey. Can you tell me who’s with you?”

     Tara was still shaking and crying but she gave him Casey’s and Evan’s names. He asked her to tell how the accident happened and somehow she managed to get that out. He told her that he might have to talk to all of them later, but that he would let her go for now. One of the paramedics gently touched her on the shoulder and asked her to come with him to one of the ambulances. “We think it would be best to check you out too, ma’am,” he said. “And Miss Lansing is asking to see you.”

     “What about Evan?” she asked, afraid but needing to know.

      “Dr. Jones is unconscious, but we don’t think he’s in grave danger. He’s breathing just fine and has a steady pulse. Hopefully it’s not too serious.”

      She climbed into the ambulance and hugged Casey who dissolved in tears again. “Where’s Evan?” she asked as a siren began to wail.

      “On his way to the hospital,” Tara said. “They seem to think he’s going to be okay. We’ll find out more when we get there.”