The Miles Between Us (14 page)

She looked nothing like Katie.

Casey stopped dead, hand still stretched out, grasping emptiness. The mother turned, met her eyes, and undoubtedly saw the crazy there, for she yanked her daughter’s arm and herded her away from the lunatic who’d tried to snatch her away on a busy Manhattan sidewalk in the broad light of day. She turned back once, scowled, and disappeared into the crowd.

Her heart hammering, Casey stood,
her chest aching from her mad dash, adrenalin racing through her veins as she slammed up against a hard wall of Truth:  Katie wasn’t coming back.

Ever.

The gaping hole inside her widened. Teetering at the edge of it, her arms crossed and her eyes filling with tears, she wondered, frantically, whether she was losing her mind.

Behind her, Paige said, “What
in bloody hell was that about?”

“Shut up,” she said, without turning around
. Then added, “Please.”

“
Maybe you need to—”

She
swiped furiously at a tear. Spun around to face her stepdaughter and said, “This never happened. Do you understand? Your father is not to hear about this.”

“But I think—”

“I don’t care what you think. Do you hear me, Paige? He can’t know about this.” Suddenly depleted, she stumbled to a nearby granite stoop, sank onto it, and buried her face in her hands.

While she struggled to regain control, h
er stepdaughter sat quietly beside her and awkwardly patted her back. In an attempt to slow her galloping pulse, Casey practiced the breathing exercises she’d been taught in Lamaze class. Gradually, she began to return to herself. Paige took Emma from the stroller, kissed the top of her fuzzy blond head, and placed her in her mother’s arms. “This,” she said, with a wisdom far beyond her years, “this is what matters. The only thing that matters.”

A tear escaped from the corner of Casey’s eye
. She thumbed it away, nodded, and took a deep breath. Her baby daughter cradled to her chest, she rocked back and forth, her cheek resting against Emma’s soft head. “You okay now, chief?” Paige said.

“Better
. Not quite over it, but better.” Over Emmy’s duck-fuzz hair, she smiled at her stepdaughter. It was a wispy smile, but sincere. “Thank you,” she said.

“We’re family,” Paige said
. “Family takes care of family.”

* * *

“So he said to me—” Rob’s black-lacquered chopsticks hovered over her plate, and he took his time selecting the choicest bite of shrimp. “He told me, ‘I suppose that back in your day, it was different. But nowadays, if it doesn’t have a good dance beat, we don’t call it music.’”

Merriment danced in his eyes
. A swirl of evening breeze, disappearing as quickly as it had come, tossed a strand of dark hair into her face. She shook it back over her shoulder and propped her chin on her hand. “Cocky little SOB,” she said.

“
Oh, he’s not so bad. He’s actually starting to grow on me.”

Above their heads, twinkle lights
dangled from the wooden ribs of a huge red umbrella. “This is why I love New York,” he said. “Try doing this at nine-thirty at night in Jackson Falls.”

“Try doing anything
at nine-thirty at night in Jackson Falls.” She took a bite of his subgum rice and said, “I still don’t understand why you put up with it. It’s appalling, the way he treats you, like you’re something he’d scrape off the bottom of his shoe.”

He reached for another shrimp, and Casey pushed her plate across the table to him
. “They’re paying me
beaucoup
bucks to babysit,” he said.

“And
you care less about money than anyone else I know.”

“
But there’s the entertainment value, and you can’t put a price on that.” He leaned back in his wrought-iron chair and rested a bony ankle on his knee. “He’s desperate to one-up me. But, you see, I’m not desperate. There’s a certain satisfaction in watching him flit around my head like an annoying little gnat. Sure, he’s a pain in the ass. But he’s not mature enough to understand that just by engaging in those behaviors, he’s already lost the battle.”

“If I live to be a hundred, MacKenzie, I don’t think I’ll ever completely understand you.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Gotta keep the mystery alive.”

She
coughed, picked up her napkin and covered her mouth while she choked on a mouthful of food.

“Fiore?” he said
. “Please don’t choke to death. I never did learn the Heimlich maneuver.”

“I’m sure…somebody in this place…
did.”

He briefly surveyed the other diners and said, “This is New York
. If you were sprawled out dead on the sidewalk, they’d just step over you.”

She dabbed at her mouth, her eyes,
and said, “You’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right.
” He reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a small box wrapped in paper covered with bright red balloons and finished off with a sparkly red ribbon. “Happy anniversary,” he said.

His face
taut with anticipation, he watched her reach into her purse and pull out a starched white envelope. She set it on the table and said, “Happy anniversary.”

Rob picked up his beer, took a long, slow sip
. Set the bottle back down and said, “You first.”

She took the box in her hands
. Shook it, sniffed it, flipped it. A small box usually meant jewelry and, although she wasn’t a woman who coveted baubles, Rob MacKenzie was a wizard at choosing pieces she found immensely appealing.

“Open it,” he ordered, a
nd she gave him a saucy smile before slowly, meticulously untying the bow. While he waited, feet dancing restlessly beneath the table, she set aside the ribbon and carefully unwrapped the package.

Inside the box
she found another, smaller box. A jeweler’s box. Casey glanced at him, and he nodded encouragement. She opened the hinged lid. Inside, on a bed of burgundy velvet, sat the most beautiful ring she’d ever seen. A single, oval-cut emerald, polished to a shine, nestled in a setting of delicate gold filigree. The gold wore the patina of age. “Oh, babe,” she said, “it’s beautiful. And an antique.” New jewelry didn’t wear the burnished dignity of this piece. “Where’d you get it?”

“It belonged to my great-grandmother
. It’s a family heirloom.”

Her eyes questioned him
. “I asked Mom for it when we got married,” he said. “Take it as a token of her esteem, the fact that she’d be willing to part with it for you.”

“I
really shouldn’t—”

“Of course
you should. You’re my wife. It’s been passed down through the family, and you have every bit as much right to it as any other family member.” He took her fingers in his. “I had it cleaned and sized. I originally intended to give it to you as a wedding present, but I decided to wait. So Mom’s been holding it for me until I thought the moment was right. You planning to put it on, or just sit and look at it?”

He had a way about him, had always had a way about him
, that could banish any dark clouds surrounding her and allow the sun to pour through. Casey took the ring from the box, slipped it on her right ring finger, held up her hand and admired it. “I wish I’d known your great-grandmother,” she said.

He picked up his napkin, leaned over the table, and dabbed a tear away from the corner of her eye
. “I don’t remember much about her,” he said. “She died when I was six. But if you believe the stories, she was quite the feisty old broad. I think you’d get along. You like?”

“I like
. Your turn.”

He picked up the envelope from the center of the table, ran a finger under the flap, tore
open the seal. Pulled out the airline tickets and squinted as he read them. “Nassau,” he said.

“
A week. In February. By that time, we should be good and tired of winter.”

He fingered the brochure that was tucked into the envelope with the tickets
. “This is the same place—”

“
You took me to back in ‘87. I made the reservations a couple of months ago.”

They both understood,
both pretended they didn’t understand, the significance of that time frame. Two months ago. Before the miscarriage. Before she started losing her mind.

“First time I kissed yo
u,” he said, redirecting the conversation back to the topic at hand.

She picked up the ball and ran with it
. “You did more than kiss me, MacKenzie. You were randy, impertinent, and wildly inappropriate.”

“And you
, my gorgeous sexy woman, loved every minute of it.”

“I did
. But the timing was terrible.”

“
It was. And yet, here we are.”

“Yes,” she said softly. She picked up his hand, brought it to her mouth, and kissed the knuckles
. “Here we are.”

They finished dinner
. Before continuing with the plans he’d made for the rest of the evening, she insisted on finding a pay phone and calling the girls. Just to check in, to soothe her maternal anxiety.

“We’re
doing great,” Paige told her. “We’re just sitting around, getting stoned with my drug dealer while we watch
The Shining
. Since I didn’t have any cash on me, Vito agreed to take Emmy into white slavery as payment for the drugs. He promises to take really good care of her.”

“
Not. Even. Remotely. Funny.” Casey rolled her eyes and handed Rob the phone. “Here,” she said. “You talk to her. If I ever had any question in my mind that Paige is your daughter, she just removed all doubt. She is clearly your kid.”

Rob took the phone, raised his eyebrows
. “Okay,” he said into the receiver, “what did you say to my wife?” He listened, smirked, caught Casey’s eye and quickly rearranged his face into an expression of extreme gravity. “Uh huh. Okay. Yeah, put her on…hey there, Miss Emmy Lou Who! Are you having fun with Sissy? You are? Love you, baby. Hold on, here’s Mom.”

She took the phone from him and said, “Hi, precious
. Is Sissy taking good care of you?”

“Da.”

“You be a good girl, now, okay? Mom will see you in the morning. Big kiss?” She and Emma both made kissing sounds. “Love you,” she said, and then Paige was back. “Don’t keep her up too late,” Casey said. “It’s already past nine-thirty. She’ll be cranky tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we’re about to hit the sack
. There’s nothing decent to watch on TV anyway. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Enveloped in light and color and sound, s
he and Rob walked the streets of Manhattan hand in hand. Times Square was an amusement park, a Disneyland for adults. Fingers linked with his, she squeezed between clots of people blocking the sidewalks: groups of teenage girls talking trash; wide-eyed tourists carrying maps and pointing. Snippets of conversation, in a variety of languages, drifted on the night air. French, Italian, Japanese. They passed a record store that was blasting Springsteen’s
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
onto the street. Above their heads, in a cornucopia of color and motion, lights twinkled and dazzled, touting products, promoting Broadway shows, scrolling the latest news headlines.

Rob
was a calming presence, his touch keeping the anxiety at bay. That feeling of claustrophobia, that otherworldliness she’d been experiencing, subsided. Although it still lay simmering beneath the surface, as long as they maintained contact, she could survive Manhattan—even Times Square—with equanimity. Holding his hand, she felt somehow larger, more significant. Less likely to be trampled under harried, indifferent feet.

Hand in hand, they window-shopped
. Unlike other men she knew, Rob MacKenzie enjoyed shopping. His tastes were eclectic and a little funky, and Casey was happy to be along for the ride. For the first time since they’d arrived in New York, she felt energized, instead of flattened. For a few hours, she could convince herself that nothing was amiss, that everything was normal, whatever normal meant. They joked about the blown-glass pipes in the window of a head shop, laughed at the antics of a trio of Welsh Corgi puppies in another. Paused in front of a hobby shop where an antique Lionel train set was on display. The train chugged along past a water tower, crossed a narrow bridge, and disappeared into a tunnel before reappearing at the other end, circling around, and repeating its journey.

“I always wanted a toy train,” he said.

Was that wistfulness in his voice? Who knew? “You should have told me,” she said. “I would’ve bought one for you years ago. Want to go inside?”

“Nah
. Not tonight. Maybe another time.”

“You
’re never too old for toys. Or to wonder what might show up under the Christmas tree.”

He
turned away from the window, flashed her one of those zillion-megawatt smiles, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her, deeply and thoroughly, right there on the sidewalk. As a stream of pedestrians flowed around them, they might as well have been invisible. He broke the kiss, leaving her breathless. A frisson of excitement shot through her, the first she’d felt since before she lost the baby. She reached up and brushed soft fingertips across the bridge of his nose, down his jaw to his ear. “Hey,” she said softly.