A Minute to Smile Read online

  She gasped and clutched him, her head falling backward as she quivered in passion. Alexander held her, drove harder and met the truth as he left his body to merge with hers once again.

  After a moment, she lifted her head from his shoulder. A haze of pleasure softened her features. His emotions welled up and finally spilled over. He took her face in his hands. “I love you, Esther,” he said at last. “Don’t go home again. Stay with me, bring your children.”

  Her dark eyes went wide. “Don’t say this now, Alexander. You’re drunk with passion.”

  “Yes.” He combed his fingers through the cloud of hair and spoke again, very deliberately. “I love you.”

  As she had once before, she pressed her fingers to his lips. “Shh.”

  He’d waited too long, he thought with sorrow. Now she didn’t believe him. As he gathered her close, smelling lavender on her shoulders, he thought he would simply have to show her he meant what he said.

  “Let’s go back to your house,” she said as they dressed. “I’ll make some chocolate fondue and feed you strawberries.”

  “Mmm. I can think of a few interesting things to do with chocolate.”

  She laughed, the sound wicked and warm and inviting. “You’re insatiable, Dr. Stone.”

  He caught her hand. “I’ll never have enough of you, Esther.”

  Her reply was lost in the sound of a violent rapping at his office door. “Esther!” It was Abe’s voice, urgent and loud.

  Esther’s eyes flew to Alexander’s. He frowned and switched on a light as she smoothed her dress. She opened the door. “What’s wrong, Abe?”

  “It’s Jeremy,” he said without preamble. “He got kicked by a horse. They’re flying him to Children’s Hospital in Denver.”

  Alexander froze.

  “How bad is it?” Esther asked, her voice remarkably calm.

  “Bad,” Abe said and licked his lips. “It’s his head.” Esther looked over her shoulder at Alexander. “Will you drive me?”

  And in spite of the panic suddenly flaring in his nerves, the dread that surrounded him like the fires of hell, he replied quite calmly. “Of course.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The drive seemed endless, although it was less than thirty miles. Overhead, the moon that had seemed so beautiful only minutes before now seemed to flood the fields with grim, cold light. At the wheel, Alexander was utterly silent, his attention focused on the road ahead. Esther felt his tension as palpably as if it were alive. He didn’t speak.

  She sat in the passenger seat, twisting her hands together, remembering the night before the children left and her odd sense of dread. Why hadn’t she paid attention to that intuition? It had never led her wrong. When it told her to check on Jeremy, she always found him in trouble or about to get into it.

  As the almost endless skyline of Denver came into view, fear clenched her heart and squeezed. Everything she’d ever learned about head wounds in almost four years of nurses’ training came back to her. Concussions, contusions, hemorrhage, skull fractures. A dry, hollow thudding chased the words and their symptoms around in her mind.

  Please, she begged silently.

  The instant they passed through the hospital doors, however, a steely calm overtook Esther. The familiar sharp scents of ammonia and minty alcohol, the pale green fluorescent lighting and the intermittent growl of the overhead paging system were familiar, somehow welcoming. She approached the admissions desk briskly and located Jeremy, then led Alexander to the elevators. As the doors swooshed closed, she took his hand. His fingers were icy cold. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He gave her a quick nod, his eyes fastened firmly on the numbers over the door.

  “Alexander, if you’re one of those people who hates hospitals, I’ll understand. You don’t have to come up with me. I’ll be okay.”

  He still didn’t look at her, but his voice was oddly strangled when he spoke. “I want to see him.” He finally looked at her, and Esther felt a pang at the bleak gray in his eyes. “Please.”

  She nodded.

  John was hovering near the nurses’ station when they came out of the elevators, his face drawn, shoulders hunched. Esther saw that he was struggling with tears. Forgetting Alexander, she rushed forward. “John! Where is he? How bad is it?”

  “They’ve got him down the hall, looking him over,” he said brokenly and bent his head. “I don’t know. I don’t understand all this crap.”

  “Is he conscious. Is his head bleeding?” She took his hand urgently. “Think.”

  “He wasn’t bleeding,” he said, “but he’s out cold.” A doctor came toward them, her white coat flapping around her. “Mrs. Lucas?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You can come in and see your son if you like. There isn’t much we can do except watch him for the next twenty-four hours.”

  Esther looked at Alexander and gestured toward him. Grimly, his jaw set, he took her hand. In spite of the rigidness of his grip, she took strength from his presence and nodded toward the doctor. “I’d like to see him.”

  As they headed toward the room, the doctor explained the injury. “He evidently crawled under a stall and startled one of the horses. It caught him on the top of the skull, but luckily he was on the ground and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.” She paused before opening the door, her eyes compassionate. “I want to warn you—”

  Esther touched her arm. “I know,” she said quietly, and went in.

  But all the training in the world didn’t make any difference when it was her own son lying beneath a crisp white sheet, face bruised and swollen, eyes black, lip swollen from a secondary injury; not when it was her wild Jeremy with such a pallor over his features who lay so deathly still in the big bed. She stepped forward, feeling the tears finally fill her eyes as she bent to press a gentle kiss to his brown little cheek. “Hi, honey,” she whispered. “Mommy’s here.”

  She took his small hand, and brushing away her tears, looked back to the doctor.

  “There’s no fracture,” the doctor said. “No sign of hemorrhage, either. At the moment, we have to treat it like a concussion, but since he hasn’t regained consciousness. . .“ She frowned. “It may be a little more serious.”

  Esther nodded, her eyes on her son. Contusion was the official word for the concern she saw expressed. The brain swelled from its jostling, sometimes requiring surgery to relieve the pressure. It might lead to convulsions, to learning disabilities, to—“I understand.”

  “I’ll leave you alone, then, for a few minutes.”

  Alexander stepped forward as the doctor departed, his eyes trained on Jeremy’s face. With a hand that visibly trembled, he reached out to trace a gentle line over Jeremy’s cheek and jaw. Then, as if he couldn’t resist, he bent and placed a kiss on the bruised forehead. “Get well, little one,” he said.

  Then he stepped back from the bed and looked at Esther. “I’ll let you be with him a while,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll take John down for a cup of coffee. He looked like he needed one.”

  Gratefully Esther smiled through the tears. “Thank you, Alexander.”

  He nodded.

  * * *

  The night crawled by, a vast silent night that saw Esther, Alexander and John holding vigil. As the hours passed, there was no change. The rambunctious Jeremy lay unmoving, his eyes closed, his breath soughing in and out.

  Somehow, Esther managed to hold on to the sense of calm that had overtaken her the moment she walked through the hospital doors. Except for the small break in her composure upon seeing him the first time, she felt no panic at all. She checked him often, sitting with him as long as the nurses would let her, talking quietly about whatever came to mind in a calm, cheerful voice, all the while holding his hand.

  Abe came in toward morning, carrying several of Jeremy’s favorite stuffed animals. He settled them in next to the boy. “I knew he’d be upset that he didn’t have his blanket,” he said. “So I went by and got some of his othe
r stuff.”

  “Thanks.”

  Toward morning, John caught Esther as she left Jeremy’s room to find a cup of coffee. He was haggard in the harsh fluorescent light and circles of weariness looped around his eyes. “I told Daniel I’d get back as soon as I could. Abe’s gonna drive me out there.”

  “Okay.”

  He bowed his head. “Esther, I’m so damned sorry. If anything happens to him—” he broke off and swallowed. “I don’t think I could ever forgive myself.”

  “He’s going to be okay,” Esther said, touching his face. She didn’t know that for a fact—no one did. But right now, John needed to believe it. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Thanks.” He took a breath and blew it out. “I’ll send Jeremy’s blanket with Abe.”

  Esther nodded. “I’ll call Daniel as soon as I can. He’s probably pretty upset.”

  He rubbed his face. “Better get going, I guess.” He started forward, then stopped. “Alexander’s a hell of a guy, Esther. I’m real glad for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He wandered away, presumably to find Abe. Esther stood in the middle of the hall for a long time, only startled out of her daze by an orderly carrying a tray. Shaking herself awake, she realized she was extremely tired. Soon she would have to get a little sleep or fall over on her face.

  She’d been about to get a cup of coffee. That would help. There was a perpetual pot in the waiting room.

  But as she went into the small room, she saw Alexander standing by the window. One elbow was braced on the sill, the other on his hip. A ruddy glow of sunrise washed over him, lending a spirit of joy that was entirely false.

  For Esther had never seen such hopelessness in all her life. His back was rigidly erect, his pose casual to the less discerning eye, but with the part of her that had become irretrievably linked to him, she knew.

  He had walled himself off. Before he even turned to show her the aching loneliness in his eyes, she knew he was lost to her. When he spoke, his voice was extraordinarily calm. “How is he?”

  “About the same,” she said abruptly and crossed to the coffee machine in the corner.

  “What will happen now?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Alexander.” Not daring to look at him, she opened packets of sugar and cream and dumped them into the paper cup. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be a while before we know.” She swallowed. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”

  “No.” His jaw was rigid. “I’ll stay until they know what’s next. Maybe then.”

  A sense of relief rippled through her and she closed her eyes. Maybe he wouldn’t shut her out after all. Maybe he’d learned that life never stayed simple or sweet, that it ran a hilly course.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, he quoted quietly, “‘A minute to smile and an hour to weep in.’” His voice roughened and he paused, his face still turned toward the sun that rose slowly in the east, throwing sparklers of orange and red over the glass of the buildings below. “‘And never a laugh but the moans come double.’” He turned to Esther, raising cynical eyebrows. “‘And that is life.’”

  “Paul Laurence Dunbar,” she said, holding her cup to her lips. “I did a paper on him in college.”

  The doctor appeared in the doorway. “Mrs. Lucas, Jeremy is stirring.”

  Both of them hurried after her, and nearly ran to Jeremy’s room. A small cry came from his lips when he saw her. “Mommy!”

  Esther rushed forward, taking his hand in joy. “I’m here, honey.”

  His eyes were droopy and swollen, and the pupils were unmatched, but Esther had never seen so beautiful a sight as those deep brown irises, looking at her, seeing her. A joyful rush of tears blurred her vision.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his lips turning down. “I climbed the tree.”

  “It’s okay, honey.” Gently she smoothed his curls away from his forehead. “It’s okay. You just rest now.’

  Alexander had been standing back, but he stepped forward now to stand next to Esther. He didn’t say a word, but Esther saw the relief in his dark blue eyes, saw the trembling in his hands as he touched the small body below the sheets.

  Jeremy’s eyes had drifted closed again, but at Alexander’s touch, he opened them. “Hi,” he said.

  Alexander smiled. “Shh. You get some sleep now.”

  “I have a headache,” he said, a frown flitting over the bruised brow. But his eyelids drifted down again.

  The doctor nodded at them and they left him alone again. In the hallway, Alexander said, “Why did he say that about the tree?”

  “He probably won’t remember about the horses. Just that he hurt himself. Since I made a big impression with the cantaloupe and the tree, he probably put that in the hole.”

  Suddenly she was dizzy with relief and exhaustion. “I have to sit down for a few minutes.”

  For the first time since leaving his office an eternity before, he touched her. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and led her to the waiting room, seeing her settled before he left to find food and juice.

  By the time he returned, Esther had come to two conclusions. Jeremy would recover. Alexander would not. His honor would see that he stood by her in this crisis, but his heart was truly buried.

  Because for the first time since she’d known him, his touch had carried no current. He’d shut the generator down.

  * * *

  By the time Alexander got home late Friday afternoon, he was grimy with the sweaty worry of the long night and disoriented with a lack of sleep. The bright hot sunlight falling in yellow bands on the porch surprised him oddly. Everything looked just as it should have: a wind had caught the curtain upstairs and pulled it out to flap against the house, Piwacket slept in the shade of a bush, the mountains stood burly guard against the horizon.

  And yet, once again, everything had changed.

  Wearily he went inside his still house, feeling the emptiness Esther’s absence created in its wake. He’d grown used to coming home to find her in the kitchen or kneeling in the garden cutting flowers, had grown used to holding her through the night, her lavender-scented skin warm against his own.

  Without bothering to open a bottle of ale or check the cat’s food dish, he collapsed in a chair, hearing the silence roar in his ears.

  He remembered the last time he had come home from a hospital. A wintery day where this one was hot, and an early dark had closed him inside the house. Then, too, everything had looked just the same. But Susan had breathed her last in the hospital, holding his hand.

  Shattered, he’d come home in a daze, unable to gather himself enough to even fix a meal. His hunger had driven him out to find food, and as he’d walked through the crowded streets, he’d been distraught to find the world continued on just as it had before. It didn’t come to a screeching halt in stunned horror. The world didn’t know, and most of it didn’t care, that a single life had passed from its realm.

  That night, he had retreated back to the silence of his house where at least the passing was noted.

  It had been the same with his mother—the world chattered on its way. Birds didn’t fall from the trees, but continued to sing. The sun rose and set as it had for millions upon millions of years. The wind blew, the snow fell.

  He groaned, now, fighting the despair he so despised. He wanted to cry like a boy, cry out at the injustice. But as he closed his eyes, he saw Jeremy’s pale face, drained of life and energy.

  Jeremy, the wild one, the vital one—the one who surged forward heedlessly to meet life with arms outstretched, head flung back. And as if in punishment, life had slapped him down. As it had Susan and Juliette.

  Esther. Esther who glowed with vibrancy and health and energy enough for ten women, Esther who wept with the fullness life gave her, Esther who dared life to give her everything it had. Even in the midst of the crisis, he’d seen her excitement over being in the hospital, the way she inhaled the acrid scents into her body like perfume. Even under th
e threat of losing her beloved child, she dared to live, almost in defiance.

  It terrified him.

  As a teenager, grappling with the sudden death of his mother, Alexander had tried to imagine himself as a tree—a young sapling bent almost in half by the fierce winds of life. He’d borne that death, gone on, and in time found Susan. Her death buffeted him once again, breaking limbs of faith and hope.

  Last night, the hurricane howl of a threat to Jeremy had chilled his soul. He knew that another great loss would kill him, the way a tornado destroyed the trees in its path.

  Until last night, he had not realized that loving Esther meant also risking his heart on her children, that instead of risking the loss of one, he would love and risk three times that number.

  He couldn’t bear it. The night Esther had told him losing a spouse was not the same as losing a child, he’d thought she simply didn’t understand. But it had been he who didn’t understand.

  For as he’d taken Jeremy’s small hand into his own, a thousand bright memories had flitted through his mind. He’d seen the laughing child in the stream, the concentrated scowl of karate practice, seen the little raven cawing on the sidewalk—and his heart had nearly burst. In that instant, he would have traded his soul for a promise of Jeremy’s health.

  All the way home, he’d grappled with the dark fear, but nothing assuaged it. Everyone he’d loved had been taken from him. To avoid that loss, he simply could not love.

  He could not love.

  * * *

  His recovery was slow, but Jeremy gradually improved. His speech at times slurred somewhat and his emotional state was erratic, veering from hysterical giggling to sharp irritation to vague apathy within hours. Esther stayed with him, sleeping on a cot provided for parents by the hospital. Often Abe or Alexander or Melissa came to relieve her, taking turns reading aloud or watching television or telling him stories. On those breaks, Esther walked outside or went to a nearby café for a solid meal, knowing she had to keep up her strength.

  In the meantime, she hurried the electricians by phone, promising a bonus if they could finish their work on time. The carpenters she’d hired were less cooperative, but they, too, finally agreed to finish their repairs by Wednesday. By then, Jeremy would be getting ready to come home. She wanted him in his own environment in order to heal.