The You I Never Knew Part 26

"Would that be so bad?"

She lifted her face to his in a way he remembered from many years before. No other face, no other eyes had that particular softness, that vulnerability. "He'd never get to see the filly."

"Never?"

She blinked, long lashes sweeping down with a tragic knowing that chilled Sam to the bone. "After the transplant, I don't see us coming back here too often. Before long, Cody'll be off to college, and I'll-" She broke off and her gaze slid away from his.

"What'll you be doing, Mich.e.l.le?"

She was quiet for a long time. The only sounds came from Natalie and Edward's chattering and the occasional blowing of the mare.

"When I first came out here," she said, "I had some wild notion that my father and I would finally connect. That we'd finally get to know each other the way a father and daughter should know each other. Maybe I bought into some of that cellular memory stuff, thinking that if we shared our own flesh and blood, a perfect relations.h.i.+p would surely follow." She loosed a small, bitter laugh. "Instead, I think we're proof that there's nothing particularly special about a living related donor except maybe a few antigens in common."

"You're making up your mind about a lot of things in a short period of time," Sam pointed out. "Slow down, Mich.e.l.le. You-" A s...o...b..ll exploded square in the middle of his chest. "Hey!"

Edward and Natalie were both armed, hurling s...o...b..a.l.l.s as fast as they could make them. Cody jumped the rail of the paddock and joined the attack. "Be careful of your head," Mich.e.l.le called.

Cody barely acknowledged the warning. Sam aimed low with a s...o...b..ll, missing. The kid was quick, a hard target.

Mich.e.l.le took one in the shoulder before ducking to make some s...o...b..a.l.l.s of her own.

The war drove off all thoughts of lunch. Natalie's wild squeals filled the air. Sam got in a few good shots, glad to ease the tension. Mich.e.l.le, complaining of snow down her neck, grabbed his shoulders and held him in front of her like a s.h.i.+eld.

"Wait a minute," he said, though her grip on him felt eerily right. "What's wrong with this picture?"

Cody took advantage, pelting him in the face and laughing so hard that Sam laughed, too.

Sam scooped up another handful of snow. The pager clipped to his belt went off.

"What's that?" Mich.e.l.le held up her hand to signal a truce. Her face was wet from snow and beautifully flushed. Sam felt a strong surge of desire. If they were alone, he knew just where he'd kiss her, taste her....

He checked the digital readout on the pager. His skin chilled at the code. "Mich.e.l.le, your father's gone to the hospital."

Chapter 26.

I hate it that I know the way to the hospital," Mich.e.l.le said as the landscape whizzed past. She ran a finger around her collar, feeling the damp spots from the s...o...b..ll fight. "It's sort of ghoulish, knowing the way to the hospital."

"Not if you work there." Sam's voice was calm, doctorly.

She pressed her knuckles to her mouth to keep the questions in. What happened? Why? Does this mean the transplant has to be postponed?

She didn't want to ask those questions yet. She was not ready to hear the answers. She wanted to see her father. Wanted to hear his voice again, take his hand in hers. Wanted to let him know she loved him.

I love you, Daddy.

How hard was that to say? Why hadn't she said it before? Because she wasn't sure she meant it, or was she afraid it would be one-sided?

"Almost there," Sam said, his truck veering around the snow-covered Salish statue in the middle of the town square. They arrived at the hospital, and under the awning she jammed her shoulder against the car door and opened it, feet racing as they hit the ground. The electronic doors hissed open.

"Gavin Slade," she told the clerk, the same one who was there for Cody's accident. "I'm his daughter, Mich.e.l.le."

"In the exam room."

She rushed in to find her father with a stocky, gray-haired physician. Gavin looked haggard, a yellowish cast to his skin and the whites of his eyes.

"I'm Mich.e.l.le Turner," she told the doctor, not taking her eyes off Gavin.

I love you, Daddy.

"Hey, Mich.e.l.le. This is my doctor, Karl Schenk." His voice was gravelly, tired, thin.

"What happened?"

"Toxemia. The dialyzing fluid failed."

"But it's going to be fixed, right? He's going to be fine?"

Schenk stayed busy with the monitoring equipment.

Sam walked in, bringing the smell of snow and wind with him. She thought about what he'd said to her earlier, that her father had known about them as kids.

Is it true, Daddy? Are you the reason Sam disappeared?

She cast away the thought. This was hardly the time or place. She wanted to touch her father, but she didn't know where. He had an IV stuck in the top of one hand and another in the crook of the opposite arm. Tubes snaked from his midsection. She settled for laying her hand on his leg, covered in a thin aqua-colored sheet.

Time for the questions. She took a deep breath. "Will this have any effect on the transplant?"

Schenk regarded her with a level look. "I've got a call in to his nephrologist."

"And?"

"If Gavin stabilizes, he can proceed."

She looked her father severely in the eye. "So stabilize."

He tried to smile. She could tell he felt crummy, but the attempt encouraged her. "I'm trying."

Then Sam took charge. It didn't surprise her. In the past few days she had come to realize that the attractive, serious boy she'd once known had turned into a calm, decisive-still-attractive-man. So when he started going over the tests Schenk ordered, then switched to making sure someone called Edward to tell him to send Natalie and Cody home in the Rover, and then called her father's nutritionist, Tadao, she just stood back and let him work.

It felt good. Sinfully good. To have someone else in charge for a while. To have someone else say, "This is how it's going to be," was a luxury.

She watched Sam with a phone cradled on his shoulder and a metal clipboard in hand. Why did it feel so good when he took charge?

She felt vaguely disloyal, having such thoughts. Brad was a take-charge guy, too. But the things he took charge of were... different. The vacation plans, his next real-estate investment, country-club dues. He never burdened her with that sort of thing, because he knew it wasn't that important to her.

But there were burdens she had never asked him to share.

The sorts of things Sam was helping with, and she hadn't even asked.

As the afternoon headed on toward evening, she stood back in a daze of dissipating worry. Gavin's tests came back, indicating that he was stabilizing. Orderlies arrived to take him to a private room, and she stood by his bed while attendants checked all the monitoring equipment.

"Don't scare me like this again, Daddy." She tried to sound stern.

"Go on home to supper. I'll call for Jake when they decide to release me."

"I'd rather stay-"

"Mich.e.l.le, I'm trying to tell you politely that I'm tired as h.e.l.l, and as soon as you leave, I'm going to sleep. Okay?"

She peered at his thin face. It was a wonderful face, full of character and experience. He had such a stunning aura of charisma that even lying sick in bed, he still qualified for People magazine's "most beautiful" issue.

"Okay." It was awkward to kiss his cheek because of all the tubes and monitors. The cool, medicinal smell hung thick in the air. " 'Bye, Daddy. See you tomorrow."

"First thing in the morning, I'm out of here."

"I hope so."

Sam was waiting in the corridor as she came out, quietly closing the door behind her.

"Never a dull moment," she said, trying to lighten the mood.

"That's Crystal City, all right."

They walked outside to find that it was sunset already. A glaze of orange tinted the mountains, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. A gleaming black sport-utility vehicle drove by, slowing down as it pa.s.sed the hospital. "Someone you know?" she asked Sam.

"Nope. Car's too new. Probably a rental." He opened the truck door for her. "You'd be a great candidate for primal-scream therapy."

"Why do you say that?"

"The tension. You're so d.a.m.ned tense even I can feel it. I think it's contagious."

"Sorry. You think it'll affect my kidney tests if I drink myself into oblivion tonight?"

"Most definitely."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"I'm not a big fan of drinking to oblivion on any night."

She climbed into the truck, s.h.i.+vering against the chill vinyl seat. "Sorry, Sam. I know it was awful for you, dealing with your mother's problem."

The streetlights blinked on, just a few along Main and Aspen. There was a certain coziness to this town that tugged at her. Some people thought it would be oppressive to live in a place where everyone knew everyone else's name. But after years in the big city, she understood the appeal.

"Cody mentioned meeting your mom," she said, uncomfortable with Sam's silence.

"Yeah?"

"He's curious. I think he wouldn't mind getting to know her."

"She'd like that. No idea what they have in common, though."

They pa.s.sed the movie house. When they were teenagers, they had gone to the movies there. She remembered sitting in the popcorn-flavored darkness with Sam, holding hands and watching An Officer and a Gentleman.

"Too bad the Lynwood folded," she said, bothered by the sight of the unlit marquee. The movable letters gaped like rotting teeth, spelling out the imperfect message, "CL SED."

"I think it had its last season about three years ago."

"My father wants to reopen it, but everything's on hold until after the surgery."

Sam pulled around to the side of the old building. "Want to go in?"

"Can we? It's not locked?"

In the lowering light she could see his smile as he rummaged in the glove box for a flashlight. "I've sneaked into a few picture shows in my day. Come on."

She felt a little furtive as they headed for the back of the building. She saw the gleam of headlights on Main Street, but no one was likely to notice the truck parked in the alley by the theater. As Sam had predicted, the rear fire exit wasn't locked. They went in, and he switched on the flashlight.

The s.h.i.+fting beam illuminated an eerie scene straight out of Phantom of the Opera. Mich.e.l.le gazed at the old-fas.h.i.+oned chandeliers draped in cobwebs, peeling fleur-de-lis wallpaper, the s.h.i.+rred-velvet curtain over the screen in shreds.

"Creepy," she said, her breath making frozen puffs.

"You want to leave?"

"No, let's look around."

Floorboards creaked as they walked up the aisle. The box office and concession stand were dusty and deserted, the lobby empty, lined with vintage movie posters. The ones featuring her father bore his autograph. Sam beamed the flashlight on Act of G.o.d, a disaster epic that set box-office records and blasted her father into the ranks of the highest-paid stars of his day.

In the thirty-odd years since the poster had been printed, Gavin Slade had changed very little. He had a cla.s.sic, timeless bone structure that weathered well despite the years.

"I've always been ambivalent about his career," she confessed to Sam. "On the one hand, how could I look at something like this, or watch his performance in The Face of Battle and not be proud? On the other hand, he put his career before me-at least, until he needed something only I can give him. How can I not resent that?"

He was silent, and she hugged herself against a chill. "I'm a terrible person. I shouldn't think things like that."

Sam touched her shoulder. "You're not a terrible person. I figure it's pretty normal to feel that way, given the circ.u.mstances."

"Now you're sounding like Temple. The one who thought we had too many 'issues' to sort out."

An electric heater hung over the concession stand. Sam plugged it in, and Mich.e.l.le was gratified when the coils took on a comforting red-orange glow. Evidently her father still kept up the utilities on the old place. Within a few minutes, the overhead heater bathed the lobby in faint light and a pleasant heat. She remembered the funky old furnis.h.i.+ngs from long ago: a musty club chair and chaise, marble ashtrays yellowed by the years. She took a seat on the old velvet-covered chaise lounge with rolled ends and fringe. Its springs creaked as she settled in.

"The way I figure," Sam said, turning to her, "your 'issues' will work out a lot better after the surgery's behind you."

So simple. She felt as if someone had taken a forklift and moved the weight that had been pressing on her chest. Why hadn't she thought of that? Why hadn't she made herself look beyond the surgery and understand that the real healing would take place if she simply let it happen?