CHAPTER 25
C HAPTER 25
C urtis left to begin making plans with the contractors on-site. In order for the demolition to start first thing tomorrow, he needed to handle this in person. Make them understand he was paying for their time. Whatever it took, this had to happen.
Before departing, he passed on Jiyan’s text with their arrival details. Amiya suggested she remain at the hotel, try and speak with her father, see if there was anything of a personal nature she might do for him. Curtis said it was a good idea and left.
He had still not met Amiya’s gaze.
When the door shut and it was just the two of them, Rae said, “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“You told Curtis.” It was not a question.
“I went one better. I asked him to marry me.”
“You proposed to him?”
“What did you expect? That I would say I held him in high regard?”
“No, of course not, it’s just . . . You proposed. ” Rae marveled at Amiya’s matter-of-fact tone. “And?”
“Just as you saw. He hasn’t responded.”
“To me, he looked absolutely shattered.”
“Which is the best thing I could have hoped for.” Amiya managed a weak smile. “Correction. The second best.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Curtis did not dismiss my proposal out of hand. He is taking this seriously. He is examining himself. Facing the terrors he still carries. Asking himself if he is ready to step into a tomorrow shared with me.”
Rae shivered. The risk that Curtis might refuse was there in her voice. Amiya did not quite sing the words. More like a poetic lament. “You are the bravest woman I have ever met.”
Amiya was seated in a padded chair facing the ocean. She was calm, subdued in a manner that only heightened the woman’s regal nature. Rae thought in a world where rest came easy, where her hours weren’t shattered by events beyond her control, Amiya might very well be the most alluring woman she had ever known.
Rae was still searching for something more to say when Amiya changed subjects. “I wish you could have known his wife.”
That was enough to drive Rae over and settle into a chair of her own.
Amiya was silent so long, Rae thought the woman wasn’t going to continue. Then, “Lorna was my very closest friend. A sister I never had. Losing her and the baby robbed the air from both our worlds.”
She stared at the ocean, the sky, and scenes lost to Rae. “It happened so fast. When I arrived at the hospital and heard the news, I didn’t believe them. I thought the doctors were playing a cruel joke. Two days before, we were shopping for a stroller. She started having cramps while we were driving back. Lorna reluctantly called the doctor, only because I insisted. When I spoke with Curtis that evening, he said she had gone to the hospital for a couple of tests. As unconcerned as I felt. The next thing I heard, she’d been kept there for observation. Nothing more. And then I arrived, thinking I would drive her home. And the doctor told me she was gone. This simply wasn’t possible. Lorna and the baby were stolen away? No.”
Rae felt as if she had been granted an unwanted glimpse into the transition that had reforged the man she had once loved. The words opened a wound that was not even hers to claim. She watched Amiya because she could not turn away.
“When I went over to help prepare for their funeral, the breakfast Curtis hadn’t eaten three and a half days before was still there on the table. Smelling Lorna’s perfume in the air left me collapsed on the floor.” A struggle; then, “I recovered because I had to.”
Rae could no longer see Amiya. Not clearly. “For him. For Curtis.”
“My dearest friend could not go forward unless I gave him strength I did not have.”
“He loved her so much,” Rae said. The words might as well have been scripted in the blurred sunlight.
“In the weeks that followed, he tried to quit, leave our company. I don’t even know how many times he submitted his resignation. But my father wouldn’t let him. I really didn’t understand how important he was to us both, what a role he played in our lives, until my Curtis was not there.”
“How long?”
“Four hard and endless months. I almost lost hope. Finally we spoke, and he let me in. And we turned that dreadful corner together.” A very hard swallow. “He and Lorna helped me rebuild my world after my divorce. I felt as though I had survived that awful time for this. So I could be there when she was gone from us.”
Amiya’s words dislodged any number of crystal tears.
“For him to even consider my proposal, my prayer for our tomorrow, Curtis is the brave one. Not me.”