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“Okay,” Anne said now, looking up with an apologetic smile as if realizing how quickly she’d shifted gears. “So I’ll be in Chicago by dark. But, listen, if you want time alone with Rafe, you don’t have to give me the house tour yet. I can see it next time I come out.”
“No, you have to see it! You’ll love how I did the guest room like an office, and next time you visit it’ll be like having your own desk right there.”
Anne grinned at her. “Humor the workaholic, right? I did pretty good this week, though.”
If you counted phoning the business manager twice a day as pretty good, then she had.
“You did,” Beth agreed. “And we even found time for shopping.” Her sister had insisted on new clothes to complement Beth’s midvacation makeover at San Diego’s trendiest salon, which had left them looking more like twins than they’d looked since seventh grade.
“Wasn’t that fun? The waiter just now, I could tell, was dying to ask.”
Anne always enjoyed fielding questions about what it was like to have an identical twin, and Beth had always been glad to let her sister do the talking. “You can tell him when he comes back with the coffee,” she offered, returning her gaze to the list of pros and cons. “I wish we had another few days of vacation.”
Sometimes a sympathetic look spoke more loudly than words, and Beth felt a flicker of dismay as she caught Anne’s expression. Her sister evidently suspected that a few extra days of vacation wouldn’t make any difference to the Montoyas’ marriage, but she was too tactful for such an observation.
“Listen,” Anne offered instead, “you know you can always come visit me. Actually, it’d be wonderful to have you looking out for things.”
“What, at the office?” That wasn’t Beth’s domain, even though they shared ownership and responsibility for their nonprofit company. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“But you could learn. I mean, if you decide you want a change in your life.”
Regardless of what happened with Rafe, though, she couldn’t imagine trading roles with her five-minutes-older sister. Anne was born to run a Dolls-Like-Me business that had blossomed ever since she took it over, while Beth was happy to work at home, designing look-alike dolls for Down syndrome children.
“Not that big a change,” she said. “But thanks, anyway.”
“All right, then, think about your list. You’ve only got three hours to finish it.”
Three hours to decide whether she wanted her marriage to last? “I can’t decide anything that fast,” Beth protested.
“You’re not making any decisions yet,” Anne explained, lifting her coffee cup and nodding at the waiter. “You’re just listing the pros and cons.”
“All right,” she conceded, and as soon as the waiter returned for the kind of conversation that men everywhere seemed to enjoy with her sister, Beth set to work on her list.
There wasn’t nearly enough space on the page, though, to describe what had happened over the past two years. Ever since she’d turned over the management of her home-based business to Anne, who’d returned from Harvard with an MBA, Beth had been ready to start a family ahead of schedule.
And Rafe wasn’t.
Not last year.
Not six months ago.
Not now.
No, all his passion was reserved for the legal clinic. All his fierce energy, all his intensity, all his time was devoted to helping kids escape the kind of life he’d survived with his crusading spirit aglow. The knight-in-shining-armor spirit which had captivated her the first time they’d met.
Back before she realized that it was far easier to love a knight in shining armor than to live with one.
“Tell you what,” Anne said, jolting Beth out of her reverie as the waiter departed. “You look like you need a break. Let’s go check out the observation car.”
They hadn’t toured the train last night, settling into their bunk-bedded sleeper compartment as soon as they’d pulled out of Los Angeles, but a view from the upper level would be a nice change of pace.
“Okay,” Beth agreed, and folded her list in half. She stuffed it into the side pocket of her suitcase as they passed the luggage area, hoping that’d help her forget the entire problem.
At least for the last few hours of the trip.
After all, the whole point of a “Sisters’ Vacation” was to enjoy spending time with her sister.
“Where shall we go next year?” she asked as they settled down in the observation car’s last pair of up-holstered seats, with a floor-to-ceiling view of the wide open desert. “It’s your turn to pick.”
“New York,” Anne said immediately. “You’ve never been, and you’re way overdue. Besides, if I’m still in touch with Marc, he’ll get us tickets to any Broadway show we want.”
Marc was the Italian architect her sister had met a few months ago, the latest in a string of eligible men whom Anne attracted and discarded with astonishing ease. But the idea of him being around next year implied more than the usual duration.
“You think he might be…” Beth hesitated, searching for the right word. “Is he special?”
“Not for a lifetime or anything,” Anne said, handing the newspaper on the table between them to a passenger who had evidently been hoping for a seat. “But for a few months, I think he’s a lot of fun.”
If only she could borrow her sister’s confidence as easily as she’d borrowed her claddagh ring. If only she could view the man in her life as “fun” and nothing more….
But that was no way to start a family!
And without a family, she might as well give up on mattering to anyone.
“You know what we need?” Anne asked, evidently noticing the distress on her face. “Coffee with brandy in it. Make the last part of the trip a little more bearable, what do you say?”
Coffee with brandy wouldn’t make her homecoming any easier, Beth suspected, but if Anne was dreading the end of the trip, as well, it would be no problem to run down to the bar car.
“I’ll get it,” she offered, scanning the aisle and realizing there were already passengers waiting for someone to leave. “If you want to save our seats, I’ll be right back.”
“Well, at least let me pay for it,” Anne said, handing over her wallet-size purse and moving Beth’s handbag into the empty chair beside her as a placeholder. “I’ll be right here unless some better seats open up.”
Such confidence was typical of her sister, Beth decided as she made her way down the narrow staircase with Anne’s flame-red purse in hand. Some people were born with the kind of certainty it took to make things go exactly the way they wanted…which made them even more attractive to everyone they met.
And that observation was confirmed as soon as she reached the bar car, where a man with a briefcase looked up from one of the tables and greeted her with an exuberant smile.
“Anne Farrell! Jake Roth, from Boston. How’ve you been?”
She hadn’t been mistaken for her sister since high school, and it was as disconcerting as ever. Flattering, yes, but also embarrassing when someone refused to believe they’d gotten the wrong twin.
Jake Roth was already standing up to shake hands, looking so pleased that she hated to disappoint him. “Actually,” Beth began, “Anne is my—”
“Great to see you!” he interrupted, offering a hearty handshake before she could continue her explanation. “Mindy still asks about you, I’ve gotta tell her we were on the same train. Where you heading?”
“Uh, Tucson.” It was hard to keep her balance, for some reason, the train felt shakier than usual. “But, Mr. Roth—”
“Jake,” he protested, when suddenly the floor jerked underfoot and Beth felt herself lurching sideways. He caught her, then stumbled himself, and the floor seemed to sway in the other direction.
She grabbed the table, which felt solid for a fleeting moment, until something slammed into the man beside her and sent them both staggering back. Then, as another passenger cried out in alarm, she heard a harsh, grinding shriek of metal and his warning shout, “Anne, hold on, we’re gonna crash!”
No, surely they’d just hit a rock or something—but even as she fought for such reassurance there came a heart-wrenching scream. Beth froze in panic, felt the floor give way beneath her, and looked up to see the wall of the train collapsing on top of Jake.
And herself.
Would Beth be smiling?
Maybe, Rafe decided as he unlocked the scarred wooden door with its Legalismo sign, he should hold the flowers in plain sight when she got off the train. He’d stopped on his way to work for the kind of bouquet people gave visiting celebrities, a comparison she’d probably blush at…but he needed to show her how much she mattered.
After their grim parting last week, without even a phone call since her plane landed in California, he needed to prove to Beth she was still the most important person in his life.
So he’d made reservations for a homecoming dinner tonight, and—
“Hey.”
The kid’s voice was elaborately casual, but he recognized the desperation that would lead someone to camp outside a law office at this hour of the morning. And he’d be glad at any hour to talk with Oscar Ortiz, who reminded him so acutely of himself at fifteen.
“Bueno,” Rafe greeted him, then saw the gun in his waistband. Rather than risk losing the kid again, he made a show of fighting a yawn. “I was just thinking about getting some coffee. Walk with me?”
He wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee in spite of the August heat, because as long as they stayed on the street he could avoid enforcing the No Drugs/No Weapons policy that ruled the clinic. So when Oscar shrugged, he locked the door and started down the cracked sidewalk toward the nearest bodega.
If he could ease Oscar out of Los Lobos the same way he’d gotten himself out of the Bloods…
“You still lookin’ to meet Cholo?” the boy asked, and Rafe shot a quick glance at his watch. This could be tight, because he had to leave for the train station in plenty of time to meet Beth. Yet he couldn’t ignore the chance to strengthen a potential bond with the leader of the second biggest gang in the area.
Oscar evidently saw the glance, though, because he immediately withdrew the offer. “Lawyer’s got places to be.”
“Yeah,” Rafe said. No sense trying to save the conversation now, and as long as he kept things straightforward there might be another chance later. “I’m picking up my wife. She’s taking the train in from L.A.”
The kid gave him a suspicious glance, even as he swiped his hand across a bench with a rival gang’s chalk-marked emblem. “That’s not the one that crashed, is it?”
A train crash? No, he would’ve heard.
“It was on the radio,” Oscar reported, evidently seeing his disbelief. “Some big wreck out in the desert.”
No. Not Beth’s train. There had to be, what, half a dozen trains between here and Los Angeles? More than that. There had to be.
But even so, he felt a cramp of fear in his chest before reminding himself that Beth was surely fine, that he wasn’t losing anyone he loved.
Not again.
Never again.
“She can’t be on that train,” Rafe told Oscar, who shrugged and looked past him toward the police car at the corner. “Not Beth.” Not his wife. “She’s fine.”
The kid shrugged again, as if unwilling to comment, and Rafe felt his body tightening with the same reflex he used to feel before an attack.
“It’s a mistake, that’s all,” he said. The radio probably reported things wrong all the time, and some station must’ve been trying to stir up excitement by announcing a train wreck that had never taken place. “I just need to straighten it out.” A simple phone call would do the trick, and for the first time he found himself wishing he’d given in to Beth’s request that he carry a phone for those nights he worked late.
“The radio—” Oscar began, and Rafe cut him off.
“I’ve gotta find out what happened.” There, a pay phone across the street. No one there, either, which—if the phone still worked—would save him the two minutes it’d take to run back to the office. He sprinted for the phone and felt a surge of relief at the sound of a dial tone, then fumbled in his pocket for change.
Beth was fine.
He just had to—
Damn! Two nickels and a couple of bills, which meant he’d have to hit the bodega for change and then—
“Here.” Oscar dropped a handful of coins on the ledge beside him, then sauntered away as Rafe fumbled with the quarters. Where to call, somebody, who, the train station? Right, they would know, and from memory he dialed the number he’d called at dawn to confirm the nine-thirty arrival from Los Angeles.
Somebody had to know, he told himself as he listened to the phone ring. Somebody there would tell him everything was fine, that Beth was fine—she had to be fine, he wasn’t losing her. She had to be safe.
“The nine-thirty from Los Angeles,” Rafe barked at the clerk who answered the phone. “My wife is on there, and—”
“Sir,” came the reply, “there’s been a…a delay…and we’ll have all the information here. If you’ll please come—”
“No, I just need to know, is she all right?”
A hesitation.
“Sir, please come to the station and—”
He slammed down the phone. This wasn’t working, but everything would be fine. Beth would be fine. Okay, maybe they were having some problems, but he could fix that. Get everything straightened out, make her understand they still had plenty of time for a baby. He could fix anything, he just needed to find out what was—who could—
Morton, he remembered. The cop who’d helped him, under the radar, a few months ago when those kids needed a word.
Morton could find out. Except, damn it, he’d left the number back at the office.
Rafe took off running, fueled by the same panic that had once filled his nights as a matter of routine, back when you never knew who was coming after you. Nobody after him now, the streets were almost empty—although that didn’t necessarily mean anything—but all he had to do was reach the clinic, fumble with the door key, shaking, damn it! and there was nobody waiting for him, good, because he couldn’t protect anyone else right now, not until he found Beth.
There, the phone. Morton’s number, direct line, if the cop would just pick up, okay, no time for conversation, just identify himself and ask—
“Can you find out about a train wreck?”
“What, the derailment?” The cop’s voice was more curious than bewildered, which meant Oscar’s radio report might’ve been accurate after all. But that still didn’t mean there was anything wrong. Beth was fine.
“The one from Los Angeles,” Rafe said over a short, tight breath. “My wife’s on there.”
“Oh, man.” Morton sounded alarmed, but that was probably just the phone connection. Because everything was fine. “Hold on, let me see what—hold on.”
Beth was fine, he repeated to himself as he gripped the phone with a fist too numb to release, and paced the six-foot gap between his desk and the door.
Beth was safe.
She was on her way home right now.
Right. Right, although people didn’t always come home—look at Mom, look at Carlos, look at Nita and Gramp and Rose—but this wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t like he depended on Beth.
Never had, never would.
