We said hi. She leaped up and hugged both of us. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Mrs. Somerset had no further news on her husband’s prognosis, and she still hadn’t heard back from Bennett. But she’d managed to get in touch with her other children. Imogene would be getting on a red-eye flight that landed early in the morning. Prescott, halfway around the world, wasn’t expected to reach New York until late the next evening.
“Have you had any dinner?” I asked. “Can I get you something?”
“No, we were on our way to a fund-raiser when Rowland—when we had to come to the hospital. But please don’t trouble yourself. I don’t want anything.”
I got a coffee for her, tea for Zelda and me, and a couple of muffins—Mrs. Somerset might not want to eat now, but hunger caught up to everyone sooner or later, no matter the circumstances.
We waited. From time to time Mrs. Somerset would give us an update from her far-flung children. Prescott is at the airport, about to go through security. Imogene has boarded—her boyfriend is coming with her. I hope Prescott doesn’t miss his connecting flight—the layover in Taipei is less than two hours.
Around midnight Zelda moved to a seat in the corner—she was dropping off. I draped both our coats over her and went back to my chair. Two TVs were mounted on opposite walls of the waiting room, their volume muted. The one I happened to face had been set on a cooking channel. Chefs ran about frantically, mopping their foreheads with towels, shouting soundless commands at their underlings.
“Evangeline,” came Mrs. Somerset’s soft voice.
I glanced toward her. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Do you happen to know why Bennett set up the meeting with his dad, just the two of them?”
After a moment of hesitation, I nodded.
“Did he…Does he want a reconciliation?”
I thought of Mr. Somerset on the operating table, his chest open, his fate in the hands of strangers. “Yes.”
Mrs. Somerset covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God. If only he’d made that appointment for one day earlier.”
“Maybe Mr. Somerset guessed. Maybe—”
I forgot what I was about to say. Bennett stood in the doorway, looking tired, grim, and more than a little scared. Mrs. Somerset exclaimed and rushed up to him. He enfolded her tightly in his arms and murmured, “It’s okay. Everything will be fine.”
Since the news of the heart attack, I hadn’t thought too much about our breakup or my unfortunate texts. But the moment he looked my way, embarrassment pummeled me.
Especially since I hadn’t come clean about my sexual obsession solely because I went a little crazy. There had been an ulterior motive: I’d wanted to turn him on and stick a knife in his heart at the same time, to make an already painful separation even more difficult for him.
To punish him, because he wouldn’t let me have my cake and eat it too.
Because he, the one who had made every mistake in the book, had turned out to be the braver, wiser, and more principled of the two of us.
By far.
“Thanks for staying with my mom,” he said, and hugged me too.
His strong arms, his wintry scent, the feeling of being safely enclosed—yet another memory to torment me when I was alone again.
He didn’t wake up Zelda, but spoke in whispers with his mom. Then they sat down together, her hands holding tightly on to his, her head on his shoulder.
I left and returned with a coffee for Bennett. “There are couple of muffins here, in case you’re hungry.”
He accepted the coffee. “Thanks. I’m okay for now.”
I sat down cattycorner from mother and son and wished I’d taken Zelda home at midnight, before I turned into a pumpkin. Without thinking I reached for my phone, only to feel my face scald. Hurriedly I put it away and looked up at the TV.
On-screen a chef was crying, wiping ineffectually at the corners of his eyes. I really thought, read the closed-captioning, I really thought I had a chance. Not just to go past this round, but to go all the way, win the big prize. My mom thought so too. My friends. Everybody.
If broken dreams were an actual substance, we could build a six-lane highway to the moon every day of the week.
Something made me glance in Bennett’s direction. His mother seemed to have fallen asleep, her eyes closed. His gaze was on me. But I couldn’t tell whether he was looking at me or merely happened to be staring in my direction.
“I was at a coronary bypass too,” he said.
I remembered that he’d been in surgery, except on the operating end. “How did it go?”
“It went fine. But during the previous major bypass at the hospital, the patient died midprocedure.”
My hands tightened around each other. “I’m sure your dad will pull through.”
“I hope so,” he said, his voice so low I almost couldn’t hear. “I really hope so.”
The One In My Heart
Sherry Thomas's books
- A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)
- Claiming the Duchess (Fitzhugh Trilogy 0.5)
- Delicious (The Marsdens #1)
- Private Arrangements (The London Trilogy #2)
- Ravishing the Heiress (Fitzhugh Trilogy #2)
- The Bride of Larkspear: A Fitzhugh Trilogy Erotic Novella (Fitzhugh Trilogy #3.5)
- The Burning Sky (The Elemental Trilogy #1)