The Year of Luminous Love (17 page)

The nurse walked Arie to Cory’s private room, where a woman in her midtwenties sat beside the hospital bed. The girl, looking panicked, jumped up when Arie entered the room. She turned out to be Maria, the au pair, a Columbian girl hired to watch Cory during Lotty’s short tour. Maria was not faring well under the circumstances. Arie took her hand. No one expected this to happen now. “If you want to go back to the house, I’ll stay here until Lotty arrives.”

Maria looked conflicted. Her job was to stay with Cory. “I … I don’t know.”

Just then, Cory opened his eyes. When he saw Arie, his pale face struggled to make a smile. “Arie, you’re here,” he said through cracked lips.

She snapped on latex gloves from a nearby box, knowing that his immune system was compromised because of his chemo and the gloves guarded against germs. “I’m right here, sweetie.” She took the child’s hand.

“Where’s Mama?”

“She’s flying home right now.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“Of course I will.” Arie saw relief in Maria’s expression.

“I’m thirsty.”

Arie grabbed a cup of ice chips from the bedside table and
fished out a small wedge, placing it on Cory’s tongue. “You know these will make your mouth feel better.” Arie picked up a sterile cotton-tipped stick and rolled it in a jar of lemon-flavored petroleum jelly and smoothed it over his lips. “Don’t lick it off,” she said when his tongue darted out of his mouth.

“Tastes yucky.” Cory screwed up his face.

“Pretend it’s a greasy French fry,” she urged with a smile.

Cory’s eyelids half closed and pain racked his little body. Arie pressed the button on his morphine drip to bring him relief. As a child, she’d learned to press the button for herself, and she knew the drip was set to ease pain quickly.

Soon his face relaxed. His eyes opened but held the glaze of the drug. “You’ll hold my hand till Mama comes?”

“Absolutely.” She looked to Maria, who turned over her bedside chair to Arie. Tears had flooded the girl’s eyes, and Arie gestured that she didn’t have to stay. Maria nodded and mimed that she’d be down the hall in the waiting room. Arie watched her go, wishing she could do the same.

Cory asked, “You won’t let go?”

“Course not.” She smoothed his damp hair off his forehead, curling tendrils with her fingers.

“Even if the angels come for me?”

A lump rose in Arie’s throat. Lotty must have told him as much, not realizing that he might be afraid of leaving this earth before he could say goodbye to her. “I’ll shoo them away,” Arie told him.

She watched him drift into sleep and thought about how her family had sat diligently by her bed when she’d been younger. She’d never been alone. Someone was always beside her bed to pat her, talk to her, give her ice chips, calm her fears. Chemo had come a long way since those earlier days—she’d done well through the last round during her senior year.
Mercifully she’d kept her hair, but now the murderous cancer had returned, this time so fast. At least previous treatments had allowed her a few years of normalcy in between.

Dr. Austin had called her several times since her CT scan results, pushing her to come in and get into a treatment protocol. She still had not told anyone, not her friends, not her family. Jon knew because he’d caught her that day crying in the rain. She wasn’t sure why she was holding out. What difference did it make if another treatment program ruined her freshman year of college as it had her last year of high school? Maybe it was the sense of pity she’d invoke from everyone. The pity party had gotten old.
Been there. Done that
.

Cory groaned and Arie patted his arm. “I’m right here, honey. You rest.” The child settled down and her thoughts drifted to Jon. She melted inside every time she saw him. She loved him so much! A one-sided love, she realized, but it hardly mattered. Just being near him made her heart sing. Yet in the beginning when she’d dared to hope he would want her, one-sided love hadn’t mattered to her. Now it was beginning to matter because he was kind to her, but there was no passion for her in his eyes. She knew it but lived with hope.

His job with Pickins would last until October. She’d asked him if he might stay on, as she knew about his father’s stroke and the old man’s refusal to leave his run-down trailer out in the boonies for an assisted-living facility. Jon had told her, “He’s a stubborn old cuss, but I can’t force him to move. So I’ll head to Texas when this job’s finished.”

Crestfallen, she’d forced herself to smile all the while realizing that she wasn’t a strong enough attraction to keep him in Tennessee. And once she went back into treatment, she’d be less of one. Her first college classes started soon. Ciana’s too. Except Ciana would move to the Vanderbilt Nashville
campus. And with Eden focused 100 percent on Tony—well, life as she’d known it was changing forever. And facing another round of radiation and chemo wasn’t something she wanted to do.

Her eyelids grew heavy. Keeping hold of Cory’s hand, she laid her cheek across her outstretched arm on the bed. In minutes, she fell asleep.

The bustle of activity awakened Arie.

“Sorry to wake you,” Lotty said in a whispery voice.

Arie bolted upright, stiff and groggy with her arm numb. She yawned, shook her arms as pinpricks of feeling returned. “You’re here … He’ll be so happy. He’s been asking for you.”

“Got here as soon as I could. I never should have left him, but he’d seemed okay.” Lotty was wearing jeans and an oversized shirt but was still in stage makeup. Face glitter caught in the dim light and the hair piled on her head was studded with glimmers of sparkling jewels. She looked every bit the star that she was. “How can I ever thank you for staying with my son?”

Arie stood on wobbly legs. “He wanted you. He substituted me.” She stretched. “What time is it?”

“Four in the morning.” Lotty leaned over the bed to trail kisses down Cory’s cheeks. “Hey big boy, Mama’s here.”

His eyes flickered open and he grinned. “Arie said you’d come.”

“And so I have.”

“She kept the angels away so I could hug you.” He lifted one arm; the other, laced with IV lines, was strapped to the bed. She leaned into his embrace. “Your hair’s all scratchy.”

“Hairspray. I’ll wash it out after we eat breakfast together.”

Arie backed out of the room. Watching the tender reunion
from the doorway, she saw the electronic lines on Cory’s monitor strengthen. Love could do that, bring someone back from the brink of the precipice.

A nurse touched Arie’s elbow. “I’ve made up a cot for you in a private room. Get some sleep.”

“I should go home—”

“After you’ve slept awhile. No need to leave in the dark.”

Arie agreed and followed the nurse to a small quiet room where she lay in the dark, still in a quandary about further treatment for a cancer that hunted her like a merciless enemy.

Once she returned home, Ciana walked the floor, stretched out on her bed, stared at the ceiling, got up, paced the floor again, and trembled with memories of what she’d almost allowed to happen between her and Jon Mercer. She’d been on fire for him, was still on fire. But passion alone couldn’t explain away all the things she’d felt in his arms. The connection, the bond she’d experienced with him went much deeper than simple passion.

She kept remembering her reaction to his gaze, to how his eyes had swept her face, to how his heat had soaked into her skin, and to his voice whispering, “I want you. I love you.” She wanted him too. All of him.

Only the sudden shock of guilt had saved her from taking what she’d wanted. Hours later, guilt stalked her still. She’d come dangerously close to betraying her best friend. The code of honor stated that friends don’t betray friends. Arie loved Jon. How could Ciana take someone so precious from Arie? Hadn’t her friend been through medical hell most of her life?
And now that Arie was finally healthy, what kind of a person took away another’s hope for happiness?

Ciana would give anything to talk to her grandmother. Once during the long night, she’d closed her eyes and saw herself sitting at Olivia’s feet, resting her head in Olivia’s lap.
“What can I do, Grandmother?”
In the vision, Olivia stroked her tangled cinnamon-colored hair, making soothing sounds with her honeyed voice.
“It will be all right, child. Don’t fret. Doing the right thing is always the best thing. It’s the Beauchamp way.”

For the first time in her life, Ciana didn’t want to be a Beauchamp, bound by rules of duty and honor. She wanted to be wild and carefree. She wanted to have what she wanted and damn the consequences. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t.

She forced her exhausted thoughts onto Eden. A text message earlier had told her about the death of a girl they both knew from high school—Meghan Oden. Was Eden afraid of dying too? Tony’s possessive form of “love” was insane. Would Tony be the one to destroy Eden while no one did anything to help her? How could Ciana live with that on her conscience?

When the long night ended, she went to the stables, saddled Firecracker, and rode the fields of the Beauchamp property. In the breaking light, a low mist clung to the dirt. In every direction the land looked desolate. There was a time when crops had been plentiful and a fall harvest awaited machinery and workers. Not now. Between Olivia’s illnesses and confinement to an assisted living center, Alice Faye’s alcoholic indifference, and Ciana’s youth, the fields of thriving crops had vanished. What a sad commentary on the Beauchamps’ once-grand homestead.

Ciana reined in her horse and watched the sun rise over the haze. The sky glowed with yellow and blue streaks—autumn
was knocking at the door. By mid-October, the whole countryside would be ablaze with color. Then winter would come and the land would turn frosty, and after that spring and summer. A farmer chased the seasons, a slave to sun and rainfall, a victim of hail and wind. Attending college meant that planting season for her would supply only enough alfalfa to feed her two horses. Without time and money, most of the land would remain dormant. Once, she’d had direction, a purpose, commitment to the certainty of her life. Now her heart felt like an empty cup. If only she’d never met Jon Mercer. He had awakened things inside her she didn’t know were there, never suspected she wanted.

She watched the sun climb higher, watched it melt away the morning shadows. She had things to do back at the barn. She should take Sonata out for a ride too. She needed to check on Arie and see how the little boy she’d sat with throughout the night before was doing. She’d already decided she would only give the barest mention of going to see Jon after Pickens’s call.
I went because you couldn’t
, was what she’d say. She should think about packing up for college. In truth, she didn’t want to go, but she didn’t want to stay either. A conundrum.

Firecracker stepped sideways, restless and hungry. Ciana lifted her face to the sun. It shone down on everything.
Everything
. Even on the far side of the world. And that was when a half-remembered conversation returned to her. She and Arie standing on a hot July sidewalk staring at a poster of Italy. And in the same instant, she thought of her college fund. Hers alone. She, Ciana Beauchamp, had the power; she had the means to change her life and the lives of her friends. Simple. Why had she not thought of it before now, when she was punch-drunk with fatigue?

With the plan still taking shape in her head, she jabbed Firecracker in the flanks, shouted, “Yah!” and gave her full rein. At a gallop, the horse carried her across the fields toward the barn. Looking up, she shouted, “Thank you, Grandmother!” Olivia Beauchamp had given her the perfect answer from beyond the grave.