Chapter 1 #2
No. Not Clare. She loved him. They’d loved each other from the start and had a marriage and family others envied. She’d never leave him. But looking down at the battered woman in the hospital bed and remembering how she’d gotten there, suddenly he wasn’t so sure.
Jill stepped into the room, and Jack forced a smile for his oldest daughter.
“Hi, honey.”
“Hey.” She stared at her mother with gray-blue eyes that were just like his. “No change?”
Since he couldn’t bear to tell her what the neurologist had said, he shook his head. “Could I ask you something?”
Jill moved to the other side of the bed and rested a hand on her mother’s arm. At fifteen, she moved with the poise of a woman twice her age. “Sure.”
“Before this happened, did you notice anything…you know…different about Mom?”
“Well, yeah.” Her sarcastic reply surprised him.
“Like what?”
“That she was totally distracted, disorganized, scattered? And she was always forgetting stuff—like getting Maggie from school. That happened a bunch of times. They’d call the house, and I’d have to go get her because we couldn’t reach Mom.”
Astounded, Jack stared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her shrug was full of teenage insolence. “We didn’t think you’d care.”
“Why in the world would you think that?”
“Because! All you care about is work! And making money! You don’t care about us.”
Jack stared at her, his heart aching. “Everything I do is for you and your sisters.” He glanced down at Clare. “And your mother.”
“When was the last time you came to one of my lacrosse games or watched Maggie play soccer? Do you even know that Maggie plays soccer now?”
Where was this coming from? How long had she wanted to say this to him? “I’m sorry you think I don’t care about you. I love you more than anything. I’ve always tried to show you that.”
The cold, hard look she sent his way let him know he’d failed miserably.
“I tried to talk to her about what was bothering her, but she refused to tell me,” he said.
“I wonder if we’ll ever know.”
Jack couldn’t bring himself to tell her that the doctor had said her mother would probably never recover.
Frannie held back the tears until she reached the parking lot and couldn’t contain them any longer.
“Fran,” Jamie called from the next row. As he jogged over to her, tall, blond, and so handsome, she brushed frantically at the dampness on her face.
He stopped short in front of her. “Hey,” he said, cupping her face and forcing her to meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?”
Telling him what the doctor had said brought new tears to her eyes.
“Shit,” he muttered as he gathered her into his arms.
Frannie relaxed against his muscular chest, wishing she could stay there forever. “Why’d this have to happen to her? To them?”
“I wish I knew.” His ragged sigh told her he was upset, too. As Jack’s best friend and business partner as well as the girls’ godfather, he’d always been close with Clare. Telling herself this embrace was all about comfort, Frannie put her arms around his waist.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked after they’d held each other for a long time.
“What choice do I have?” Reluctantly, she released him and took a step back. “My brother needs me.”
He reached for her hand. “I’m here if you need me. You know that, don’t you?”
She wished she had the nerve to tell him all the ways she needed him, but she never had before, and now was certainly not the time. “Thanks. I may take you up on that. I’m moving in with Jack and the girls.”
“Really?” He seemed to brighten at that news.
“I can’t keep running back and forth between here and New York, and the girls need someone they can count on.”
“They’re lucky to have you.” Tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear, he surprised her when he pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “Whatever you need, whenever you need it. I’m here.”
His softly spoken words nearly reduced her once again to tears. “I’d better go. Maggie’s waiting for me.”
“Take care, Fran.” He opened the car door and held it for her as she got in.
She waved to him as she drove past him. Glancing in the mirror, she saw that he was still watching her. Now what did that mean?
Frannie moved in lock, stock, and easel to care for the girls while Jack made phone calls, searched the Internet, and consulted with doctors around the country. They all said the same thing—the longer the coma lasted, the less likely it became that Clare would recover.
Since he refused to put Clare in a nursing home, Jack brought her home to the large contemporary house he’d designed and built as a surprise for her five years earlier.
He had the first-floor dining room converted to accommodate a hospital bed and the equipment needed by the team of round-the-clock nurses.
Most nights he slept on a sofa he’d dragged into the room so she’d never be alone.
A week after Clare came home from the hospital, Jack received a call from Sergeant Curtis, the Newport police officer who’d investigated the accident.
The driver had suffered a fatal heart attack, which explained why the car had been so out of control in the mall parking lot.
Jack had thought the case was closed as far as the police were concerned.
“I was wondering if I could come by for a few minutes,” Curtis said.
“Is there something new with the case?”
“I have something you need to see.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jack opened the door to the tall, blond cop, and they shook hands.
“What’ve you got there?” He nodded at the disk in Curtis’s hand.
“I was finally able to get a copy of the security video from the mall parking lot. I think you need to see it, but I have to warn you, it’s tough to watch.”
Jack swallowed hard and gestured for Curtis to follow him into the family room.
He fed the disk into the DVD player, turned on the television, and watched in stunned silence as his daughters jumped out of the way of the speeding car and then turned to scream at their mother to do the same.
They’d had time to turn and scream. Clare had time to move, but she didn’t.
She stood there and let the car hit her as her horrified daughters looked on.
“I just don’t understand,” Jack whispered as he watched it a second time. “Why in the world would she do that?”
“Can you, um, think of any reason why she’d want to end her life?”
“Of course not,” he said, but after his conversation with Jill he wasn’t so sure anymore. “She’d never do that, especially in front of her children. They were her whole world.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply—”
“That my wife was suicidal?”
“It’s just, well… Why didn’t she move?”
Crushed by yet another wave of helpless despair, Jack shook his head. “I don’t know.”