The Second Heart (3 page)

Rob had come out of the office and was
standing in the kitchen talking with Amelia. When he saw Meredith,
he rushed over and enveloped her in a crushing hug. Amelia stood
next to the sink, looking distraught.

Her voice muffled, Meredith said, “I take it
Mom filled you in.”

Rob kissed the top of her head and relaxed
his embrace. “Your neighbor’s lucky you were there,” he
remarked.

“Just goes to show you, lava lamps are never
a good design choice.” Meredith smiled and stepped back. “What’s
for lunch, folks? I can’t eat adoration, you know.”

Amelia gathered herself with a deep breath.
“Well, we can have chicken salad sandwiches or there is some
leftover roast from last night.”

“Mmmm, definitely the roast.” Meredith’s
mouth practically watered in anticipation.

While Amelia prepared their lunch, Meredith
called Vi to check on Josh and to invite her to stay the night with
Meredith’s parents. Vi’s own parents had moved to northern
California three years earlier, when the company Vi’s father worked
for had decided to consolidate its operations. As a result, Vi
spent most holidays with Meredith’s family, and they often joked
that Vi was their adopted daughter.

“Hey, Mere.” Vi answered on the third
ring.

“How’s Josh?”

“We’re still waiting. The ER is packed, and
he isn’t exactly a top priority since he’s not bleeding or
screaming from unbearable pain.” Vi sounded slightly irritated.

“Maybe he should start,” Meredith suggested
helpfully.

“Bleeding or screaming?”

“Your choice.”

Meredith and Vi both chuckled, and then on
the other end, Vi said to Josh, “I’m going to go to the ladies’
room.” Once she was out of earshot, Vi came back on the phone.
“Okay, I seriously want to leave. Can I leave him here? Or is that
rude?”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Oh shut up. Turns out Josh has a girlfriend
that he neglected to mention all morning. Which left me wondering,
why am I here? Where is she? Which I then, of course, asked
him.”

“What’d he say?”

Vi scoffed. “That they’d gotten in a fight
and he doesn’t want to call her yet. So basically he flirted with
me up one side and down the other to apply a nice soothing balm to
his own bruised, self-involved ego. I’m kinda speechless.”

“Ouch. Sorry, Vi,” Meredith sympathized.
Hearing about Josh’s girlfriend reminded her that she still hadn’t
returned Miguel’s call. She briefly felt guilty and then figured
she’d call him after lunch.

“So can I?” Vi asked again.

“Can you what?”

“Leave.” Vi sounded exasperated.

Meredith considered. “Well now that romance
is off the table, would you stay for a friend?”

Vi grumbled, “I have plenty of friends,” but
her tone indicated that she knew she should probably stay with
Josh.

Meredith grinned. “Just remember, I did offer
to come with you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Wait!” Meredith issued the invitation to
come stay with her parents. “You really should consider it. Our
apartment smells like something died.”

“Okay, tell ‘em thanks for me. I’ll let you
know when I’m on my way there.”

Meredith ended the call and joined her
parents at the dining table for lunch. The food was delicious, as
always. Afterward, Meredith helped her mother with the dishes, and
then they sat down in the living room to watch a movie. They chose
Sleepless in Seattle
, which was one of Amelia’s favorites.
While Meredith was growing up, Amelia had often lamented
half-jokingly that the way she’d met Rob was so mundane. They had
met in college, gone on a date, liked each other, and that was it.
Love, marriage, and babies had all followed, and they were still
blissfully happy together.

While the movie played, Meredith
absentmindedly sat on the floor stretching. She liked the way it
felt to see how far she could bend her body, enjoying the loose,
almost achy feeling afterward. After a little while, Amelia got
down and joined her.

“Watching you made me feel guilty,” she
explained.

Meredith smiled and enjoyed the companionable
moment with her mother. Though Meredith had gotten her coloring
from her father, her features closely resembled Amelia’s. They both
had a straight, bold nose and wide set eyes above a full mouth and
square jaw. However, where Amelia’s shoulder length hair was wavy
and the color of chestnuts, Meredith’s was long and pin straight
strawberry blonde.

Finishing her stretches, Meredith relaxed on
the floor with her back up against the couch. Amelia sat behind her
watching the movie and doing a crossword. Meredith tried to
remember the last time that she had just hung out with her mom like
this, and she couldn’t. As she resolved to try to make more time
for her family, her phone started to ring.

Glancing down, Meredith saw that it was
Miguel. She silenced the call without answering it.

“Who was that?” Amelia asked.

“Oh, just Miguel. I’ll call him back after
the movie.”

Amelia was silent for a moment. “You two
getting serious?”

“I don’t know, we might. We’re a good fit for
each other. He understands how busy I am with school, which is
nice.”

“Wow, high praise,” Amelia laughed.

“You know what I mean.”

“The sad part is, I think I do.” Amelia
reached over and patted Meredith on the arm gently.

“What?” Meredith turned and frowned at her
mother.

“Let me put it this way, sweetheart. If that
were your father calling me, I wouldn’t be ignoring it to watch a
twenty-year-old movie that I’ve seen a dozen times before.” She
smiled wistfully. “When your dad used to call me, I would drop
everything to talk to him.”

Meredith shifted uncomfortably. The thing she
liked about her non-relationship with Miguel was that it was easy,
and it fit in with her other goals in life. It didn’t get in the
way. Meredith didn’t really expect that dating Miguel would blossom
into a full-fledged romance, but mostly because she had never
really thought about it seriously. Finally she said, “He’s happy,
I’m happy. This works for us. Besides, things are different from
how it was for you with Dad.” Smiling provokingly, she added,
“
I
have a life.”

Amelia laughed and threw a pillow at her.
Meredith caught it and stuffed it behind her head, making a show of
reclining against it. “Thanks,” Meredith teased.

“Oh shut up and watch the movie.”

They watched the rest of the movie in
silence, and when the credits began to scroll on the screen,
Meredith dragged her phone out of her pocket and dialed Miguel’s
number. He answered on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey Miguel.” Out of the corner of her eye,
Meredith noticed that Amelia perked up to eavesdrop. Meredith
glanced over at her accusingly. Amelia stared down at her crossword
with a little too much intensity, which confirmed Meredith’s
suspicions that her mother was listening with all her might.

“Where’ve you been, girl? I’ve been trying to
call you,” Miguel said.

“I know--it’s been a crazy day.” For the
second time, Meredith recounted the events of the morning. She
concluded, “And now I’m at my parents’ house. I am going to stay
here tonight.”

“You could come stay with me, instead,”
Miguel suggested with a smile in his voice.

Meredith’s eyes slid over to her mother, who
sat completely still. Feeling Meredith’s gaze, Amelia looked up and
said with a grin, “Don’t mind me.”

Rolling her eyes, Meredith stood and walked
down the hall and into the guest room, shutting the door. She
flopped down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. This room had
been her brother’s when they were growing up, and the ceiling still
had constellations of glow-in-the-dark stars glued to it. In the
late afternoon sun, they looked pale yellowish-green against the
white ceiling. To Miguel, she said, “Vi is going to stay here, too.
It would be weird if she were here and I wasn’t.”

Miguel was silent for a long moment. “So when
will I see you, then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow? Have you
checked your email? Have they reopened the university yet?”

“Damn it, Meredith. I’m not talking about
school!” Miguel’s frustration was palpable.

Surprised at his outburst, it was Meredith’s
turn to be quiet. Perhaps Miguel wasn’t as content with their
casual arrangement as Meredith had thought. Finally, she said,
“What do you want me to say?”

Meredith could practically hear Miguel
gritting his teeth. “If I have to tell you, then it doesn’t
matter.”

“Look, I want to see you, okay? Today has
been totally weird, and I don’t even know what tomorrow’s gonna be
like. Would you rather I made promises that I’m not sure I can even
keep?”

“Well at least making promises would show me
that I’m more than a back-up plan to you,” Miguel retorted.

Flustered, Meredith blurted, “Fine, I promise
you’re not a back-up plan.”

Miguel laughed, dispelling the tension
between them. “Did you really just say that?”

Meredith let out a long sigh. “Miguel, I
really like you, and I like spending time with you. But finishing
school is really important to me, and that’s where my focus is
right now.”

“Are you afraid that I want you to quit
school and become my ‘little woman’? ‘Cause trust me, if I wanted
that, my mom’s got about nine girls from back home lined up.”
Miguel’s parents were Mexican immigrants who currently lived in Los
Angeles. Miguel had moved to Phoenix to attend school.

Meredith chuckled. She didn’t doubt that Mrs.
Alvarez was sorely disappointed that Miguel hadn’t provided her
with eight or nine grandchildren yet. The woman loved babies, and
had made a career out of taking care of them. She had nannied for
several different well-to-do families in L.A. over the years.

In stark contrast was Miguel’s father, who
burst with pride at his well-educated son. Miguel was the first of
his family to go to college, let alone get a professional degree.
Mr. Alvarez was the one who had pushed Miguel to come out to
Arizona for vet school, working long nights to help Miguel pay the
tuition. For that reason alone, Meredith knew that Miguel wouldn’t
allow himself to be distracted from his studies, either.

Miguel spoke again. “I’ll call you tomorrow,
okay? Let’s get some dinner. My treat.”

Meredith smiled. “That sounds good. I’ll wear
my fancy shoes.”

Ending the call, Meredith gazed at the
ceiling, noticing that the fan needed to be dusted. She realized
that she was quite tired as her eyelids started to droop. The
excitement of the day, combined with her upcoming cold, must have
worn her down. Her eyelids became heavy, and she drifted off to
sleep.

Meredith had
only been asleep a few moments when her cell phone chimed at her,
startling her out of her doze. Sighing, Meredith looked at the
screen. She had a text from Vi saying that she was on her way.

Meredith rolled off the bed and walked to the
window, looking out at the hazy sky. For a moment, she had almost
forgotten that the day was so out of the ordinary.

Turning back into the room, she looked
around. The only things left of her brother, James, in this room
were the stars on the ceiling. Ever practical, their parents had
converted the room to a guest room as soon as James had moved out
to go to college, several years before. In similar fashion,
Meredith’s own room had been converted to a sewing room for
Amelia.

Meredith went back into the living room and
found it empty. She could hear her mother buzzing around in the
kitchen, so Meredith joined her, letting her know that Vi would be
there soon.

“Oh, good. What do you want for dinner? We
weren’t expecting company, so I didn’t go to the store.” Amelia
opened the refrigerator and peered in. “We could make some lasagna
out of this leftover spaghetti sauce. Is that okay?”

“That sounds fine to me. What can I get
out?”

Meredith pulled the ricotta and Parmesan
cheeses out of the fridge and mixed them together in a bowl with
eggs while Amelia put a pot of water on the stove to boil. Soon the
noodles were cooked, and they layered the cheese mixture, spaghetti
sauce, some spinach, and the noodles into a large casserole dish.
Amelia spread some mozzarella cheese over the top and stuck it in
the oven. Just as they were finishing, the doorbell rang.

Vi stood on the doorstep with an overnight
bag slung over her shoulder. She had showered, and her dark hair
hung in damp waves around her shoulders. Her face was free of
makeup, and for a moment it felt like they were in seventh grade
again. Meredith smiled at her friend and opened the door wider to
allow her to pass, raising an eyebrow at the overstuffed bag.

Vi rolled her eyes. “I have stuff in here for
you, too.”

Meredith thanked her and took the overnight
bag, walking down the hall toward the guest bedroom. She glanced
over her shoulder to ensure that Vi was behind her. “So, will Josh
live?”

“He has a broken ankle. They put him in a
cast and told him to follow up with an orthopedist, which he has no
intention of doing. The stairs up to his place are gonna be brutal
for him.” Vi sat on the guest bed while Meredith put the overnight
bag on the dresser. “Hopefully his
girlfriend
will be around
to help carry groceries,” Vi added snidely.

Meredith joined Vi on the bed. “Did she ever
show up?”

“Finally at the end. Nothing like getting to
play nurse to help couples get through a rough patch.”

“I think that would depend on what kind of
patient Josh is.” Gesturing to the overnight bag, Meredith asked,
“Do you need to wash any of that stuff?”

“Yeah, that would be awesome. I flipped your
laundry when I stopped back home, by the way. You’re right, our
place really does smell awful.” Vi looked around the room
thoughtfully. “Man, I can’t remember the last time I spent the
night at your folks’ house. And never in here.”