Ransomed Dreams (11 page)

Sheridan wrapped her in a hug. Whatever else was going on would have to wait. There was no choice but to submit to Calissa’s agenda.

* * *

Gangplank
came to mind, that thing mutineers were forced to march along just before plunging themselves into murky ocean depths.

Sheridan had often considered herself a mutineer in the Cole family. Long before she met Eliot and moved physically from Chicago, she moved away from her father and sister in every other sense. At seventeen she moved in with a friend’s family for the summer, that autumn to a college dorm, and she never looked back except when holidays rolled around and the coercion overwhelmed her. Congressmen had to keep up appearances. The least she could do was stop by for turkey with important constituents.

Now, walking beside Calissa toward the ICU, she felt a familiar adolescent pressure to conform to her family’s lead even if it meant certain . . . death?

She rolled her eyes at the high drama and reminded herself that she was not a child.

Calissa, her composure regained, kept a steady pace through the corridors. Her pumps clicked smartly against the linoleum. With nods and gestures, she directed Luke to a waiting area and Sheridan through a set of double doors. The sisters breezed past the ICU nurses’ station.

“They know you’re family,” Calissa murmured and stopped outside a room.

Large windows afforded a view into the room. Sheridan didn’t look inside.

Calissa said, “He looks so awful.”

Sheridan nodded, familiar enough with the results of physical trauma. “The stroke.”

“More than that. His entire person is . . . gone. I don’t know how to prepare you.”

Again Sheridan nodded, puzzled at her sister’s hesitancy.

“I really believe he’s held on just for you.”

“Meaning when he stops holding on, it’ll be my fault? Give me a break, Liss.”

“Oh, Sher. You don’t believe that’s what I mean. The thing is, he needs to make his peace with you.”

“Now that he can’t speak? Whoop-de-do.” Too late, Sheridan bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to do a thing.” Calissa squeezed Sheridan’s shoulder and smiled gently. “Except come all the way from Mexico.”

They stepped into the dimly lit room. Machines hissed; monitors blipped. Tubes all but buried the figure in the bed.

Sheridan halted at the foot of the bed, unwilling to move closer. A wave of nausea rolled through her at the sight of him.

Gone was the handsome, magnetic Mr. Cole who wooed thousands of voters and served for decades in the United States House of Representatives. As Calissa had said, the change in him wasn’t simply physical. It went beyond his inability to speak or open his eyes or breathe on his own. It was as if he’d been turned inside out and his inner self exposed in an indescribable aura of vileness.

Sheridan nearly gagged.

“Dad,” Calissa said a little too loudly, smoothing the blanket at his shoulder. “Sher’s here. Remember I told you she was coming?”

Sheridan stared at her sister. Was she oblivious to it?

“We couldn’t get a direct flight for her from, um . . . She looks good, Dad. Healthy. I think she’s even gained a few pounds.” Calissa looked at Sheridan and mouthed,
Talk to him.

Only a small cry came out of Sheridan. She spun on her heels and raced from the room.

Chapter 19

Topala

Eliot eyed the array of pill bottles on the tiled kitchen countertop. Every system and organ and gland of his body was coddled, corrected, or anesthetized by the chemicals encased in gelatin or chalky tablet. Because of them he ate, slept, felt a heartbeat, and rarely considered throwing himself onto the street in hopes a burro would trample him to death.

Mercedes nimbly picked up one bottle after another, opened and shut them, shook pills into a tiny yellow bowl. Sheridan should have been doing it. Sheridan never used the yellow crockery. He preferred the dull brown one to hold these incessant reminders of his prison sentence.

In an infantile attempt to nettle Mercedes, he spoke quickly and in English. “If you laid these containers end to end, they would stretch from here to the moon.”

“Or to Chicago.” She responded without hesitation in English. “And back.”

“I prefer one way to the moon.”

She shook her head once, placed hands on her hips, and squinted.

Eliot thought he was looking at a squatty Aztec version of his wife. “We are not going to do this.”

“Do what, señor?”

He switched to her native tongue to ensure she understood. “We are not going to pretend that you are taking the place of my wife.”

She widened her eyes in surprise. “Oh, I would never pretend that! Señora is irreplaceable. That’s why we need seven of us to fill in for her. Javier and my aunt and cousins and our neighbors here and Padre Miguel and—”

“The padre!”

“Why, yes, of course. He fills in the prayer gaps.”

“Prayer gaps?”

“The ones left by señora. She will be busy traveling and praying for her dying father and not so much for us.” She smiled. “So padre does his part and we all do ours. Javier drives. My family brings us messages from señora. I cook and give you the pills.” She slid the bowl toward him. “But you have to swallow them all by yourself, señor.”

Eliot Logan Montgomery III, former United States ambassador, had lived and breathed diplomacy since childhood. The son of an ambassador, he grew up overseas. He had a front-row seat watching others serve the needs of humanity. It developed in him a deep respect for all peoples regardless of race, creed, age, or gender. It served him well in his life’s work.

But negotiating with an eighteen-year-old, uneducated Nahua squaw about taking his meds was absolutely preposterous.

“I’ll take them in the study.” He tightened his grip on the walker, whipped it into position, and spun on his heel.

The next moment he was on the floor, arms and legs entangled with the walker.

“Señor!” Mercedes knelt beside him and attempted to set limbs and aluminum aright. “Señor!”

He jerked away from her grasp.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” Fiery darts ripped through every inch of his body. Pinpricks of light exploded in his head. That idiotic little bell cut into his side. His eyes stung.

The bloody bullet should have killed him.

Chapter 20

Chicago

“And there she goes.” Calissa watched Sheridan flee and patted the tiny space on her dad’s shoulder that was not covered by a tube. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring her so soon to see you. Sorry about that, Dad. I should have thought about her all-night flight. She’s exhausted. Not to mention you don’t quite look like yourself with all this paraphernalia around you. It was too much for her to take in. The hospital smells probably got to her too.”

Fighting every urge to race after her sister and ream her out, Calissa forced calm into her voice and sat in a chair, close enough to keep one hand on Harrison’s arm.

“She’ll be back.” Full of doubt, she pumped conviction into her tone.

Or maybe it was just a bunch of hot air.

Whatever. She was determined to do all that it took to foster hope in her father and in herself. Certain things had to happen before he checked out, and as usual, it fell to her to make sure they happened.

While Sheridan scampered away like some scared rabbit, Calissa held down the fort. Again,
as usual
.

But fort holding came with the territory of being the eldest child. She understood that. She accepted that as her lot in life. No, it wasn’t fair. It just was, period. Bitterness didn’t help. Harboring resentment was a dead end.

But still . . .

How long had she been doing it?

She hit the speed dial for Bram’s number.

“Darling?” he answered.

Instantly her shoulders lowered several inches, the tight muscles released at the sound of his rumbling voice. “Hi.”

“Hi. Let me guess. According to my watch, not enough time has passed for things to have gone according to schedule.”

“Mm.” She glanced at the monitors on the other side of the bed. Her dad’s heart rate had escalated soon after she said, “Sher’s here.” It had not yet come down to anywhere near what they told her was necessary. She avoided looking at the blood pressure number.
Don’t die. Don’t die.

Bram said, “And you can’t talk.” He knew how she measured her words in Harrison’s room, being extra careful not to upset him or the nurses, who had forbidden her to use her cell in his room.

“Mm,” she replied.

“Plan B?”

“Okay.”

“Say, one hour?”

“Okay.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too. And, uh, thank you for not saying, ‘I told you so.’”

“I’m saving it for in person.” He chuckled. “You’re adorable when you’re flustered. I wouldn’t miss seeing your face for the world when I say it.”

Calissa closed up the phone on his laughter.

But, listening to its echo, she smiled. Unlike any other sound, it soothed and bolstered her. Why was it she kept telling this man no?

She gazed at her father and saw the answer.

Her smile disappeared.

Chapter 21

Topala

“Señor!” Mercedes’s anxious voice came through the closed bathroom door. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Eliot snapped, dripping wet beside the shower stall. He toed the bath towel hopelessly tangled under the legs of his walker. Why he had even dragged the blasted thing into the small space was beyond him. If Sheridan were there, he would not have bothered with it.

“Señor!”

“I’m fine!”

“You don’t sound fine.” She spoke, as he did, in English, her rhythm an annoying singsong.

“I am fine! I can manage a simple shower by myself.” He could. He did so most days. The bathroom screamed
handicap accessible
. They’d had all the special effects installed. He didn’t have to climb into a tub or even over a threshold. He simply walked into the shower, holding on to strategically placed handrails.

It was the idiotic towel that posed problems. Given his defective sense of balance, he could not bend to the floor and retrieve it. He glanced around. Surely there were other bath towels available, not just the one laid out by Mercedes.

“Señor, what—”

“Mercedes, please, please stop hovering and just tell me where the bloody towels are!”

He took a deep breath. He simply must settle down. Why did he continue to fight it? Bottom line, he was not the man he had been and he never would be again. Kicking a towel and yelling at the help was not going to change that fact. It was not going to bring back his career. It was not going to bring his wife home any sooner than ten days.

Sheridan’s absence loomed before him—a long, dark, airless tomb. How was he supposed to survive in such an environment? It was too soon, far too soon for him to be without her. She held him together, kept him from fraying apart at the edges. And the thought of her in Chicago, where memories would be unearthed, threatened to send him right back to bed.

The door clicked open and bumped against the walker.

“Mercedes!” He’d endured untold humiliations due to his physical limitations. He was not about to add helpless and naked before an eighteen-year-old girl.

“It’s me, señor.” An aged face appeared in the opening. Padre Miguel smiled and pushed the door wider. “Forgive me for barging in. Mercedes heard you say ‘bloody towel’ and became quite upset. I was in the kitchen.” He shrugged. “Are you hurt?”

Bloody towel?
The priest’s Spanish rendition of his English phrase missed the point. “Good heavens.” He switched to Spanish, where he should probably stay put. “No, I am not hurt. I simply wanted a towel.”

Padre Miguel swept a glance over the room. “There.”

Eliot followed his nod to a wicker shelving unit and saw a stack of neatly folded towels on the top shelf. About waist height. In plain view.

He grabbed one and wrapped it around himself. “Thank you.”

Grinning, the short man resembled an ancient friar in his brown priestly frock with knotted rope belt. He wriggled through the small opening. “Funny how often answers stare us in the face and we don’t see them, isn’t it?” He righted the walker and pushed the door completely open. “It is a puzzle. Do you think our subconscious refuses to let them in? Like some sort of self-inflicted blindness?”

Eliot gaped at him. He was one bizarre little man and vexing to the core. “Padre, do you mind?”

“Oh.” He let go of the walker and stepped back. “You’ll want to get dressed. Let’s continue this discussion in the courtyard, shall we? Mercedes has prepared a marvelous lunch for us. See you there.” With a wave and a smile, he turned and strode away.

Eliot cursed under his breath. He began with the day he was born and didn’t stop until he reached the point yesterday when he watched Sheridan walk down the hill, her luggage in Luke Traynor’s strong, capable hands.

Chapter 22

Wilmette, Illinois

“Nice house.” Luke climbed the wide, open staircase with Sheridan, her bag in his hand. “Did you grow up here?”

She cocked her eyebrows at him.

He shrugged, the image of innocence.

So, okay, maybe he didn’t know everything about her.

“Yes, I grew up here. My parents bought it before I was born. I can’t understand why my father has kept it all these years just for himself. It’s too big for one person to need or to take care of.”

She touched the wallpaper. The large floral print had a tired appearance. It was the same with the old-fashioned draperies on the floor-to-ceiling front windows below.

They reached the landing with its turn in the stairway and a window.

Luke stopped, gazed outside, and whistled softly. “Lake Michigan meets your backyard?”

She glanced at the scene. The sloping expanse of grass hinted at a greening spring, but there was no horizon. Only whitecaps differentiated the pewter sky from the pewter water. “Yes, that’s the lake.”

“In your backyard.” He smiled at her. “Funny. I never saw you as a spoiled brat.”

She let his teasing remark go and continued up the steps. Hers was a story so typical it bored. Poor little white girl has everything she could ever want except an emotionally healthy, loving family.