6. Chapter Six #2
And she was. Yet I couldn’t help but notice the way Marcie’s hand gripped that bag, like she was making sure she still had her good luck charm by her side. My angel might have prepared for this moment, but that didn’t mean she still wasn’t nervous as hell about it.
“I hope so,” she said, looking out the window. “I mean, Kiki’s the genius. And Samantha’s the sorority queen.”
“And you are Daniel Ramsey’s daughter,” Caroline said.
“Yeah, but I’m not like him,” she said, nibbling on the inside of one cheek.
“I never wanted to take over the family business. I didn’t need to be the one who went out and conquered the world, or won awards, or anything like that.
” Now she glanced at me, her expression brightening.
“I’m happy enough being Jack’s wife. Being a… ”
Her gaze slid down to her stomach, and her expression darkened.
“Starting a family,” she muttered.
“Babygirl,” I said, slipping into the old habit. “It’s going to happen. It just takes time.”
Her fingers found the strap of the purse and pulled it into her lap.
“What if I don’t have what it takes?” she asked, the words tearing out of her.
“What if I walk in there and she takes one look at me and laughs, because she knows I’m just the girl who fixes the coffee and keeps the kitchen clean and bakes cookies while everyone else is going out there and solving the Avery Company’s problems? ”
I opened my mouth to tell her how wrong she was.
And Caroline beat me to it.
“And just what,” she said, sounding offended, “is wrong with that?”
Marcie glanced back at her. “Huh?”
“What the hell is wrong with supporting the people you love?” Caroline asked. “With building a place where they can feel safe and encouraged, where they can raise a family and love each other in peace?”
The words were kind, but the tone came out surprisingly heated. Both Marcie and I knew that, as much as she meant it for us, Caroline was not talking about the Avery family when she said that. We weren’t the people she was thinking about.
“You should be proud of what you are,” the makeup artist told Marcie. “This family wouldn’t function without you, angel.” A smile. “I mean, could you imagine poor Jack trying to manage in the mornings?”
That brought a laugh out of Marcie. The tension eased.
“You’re going to do great, angel,” I promised her. “We’ve got this.”
Conversation stilled for a while in the car.
I stopped at a gas station, even though the McLaren didn’t need it, and let my passengers load up on drinks and snacks.
About a half-hour later, as we were passing old-growth pines and Gord Downie was singing on the stereo about being ahead by a century, the music cut off and a name appeared across the Bluetooth on my dashboard.
Vanessa Ramsey.
Marcie went very still. Both of us knew her mother wouldn’t call in the middle of a workday for no reason.
I answered on the car’s speaker. “Vanessa. It’s Jack. Everything okay?”
Marcie leaned forward. Caroline straightened up in the back, craning her neck.
“Everything’s fine, Jack.”
The car relaxed.
Marcie’s mother sounded tired, but in the quiet, satisfied way of someone who’s finished a difficult task and is proud of themselves for it.
“I’m at the rehab facility. A certain someone found out where the two of you were headed today, and he’s been absolutely adamant that I call you before you get there. ”
Now it was my turn to go still. “Daniel. He wants to talk to me?”
“He wants to talk to his daughter, actually,” Vanessa said, and I could hear the smile in it. “Give me just a second—he still has a little bit of trouble with his hands…”
I heard the sound of fumbling; a bit of static. Then the line cleared.
“Marcie?”
“Dad?” There was a catch in Marcie’s voice. “Is that you?”
“Hey, angel.” Daniel’s voice was slower than I remembered, and a hell of a lot more tired.
But it was still recognizably him. The words took a lot more effort, like he was having to reassemble them out of parts before shuffling them down the assembly line of his brain.
But the man underneath was still thinking, still working. “You’re going to see Lula?”
Marcie’s composure dissolved. “Yeah,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes. “Jack and I, we’re… we’re on our way to her place right now. We’re having dinner.” She paused. “I, uh, I brought your Rolodex to show her.”
There was a pause so long I wondered if Daniel had dropped the phone.
Then booming, gut-level laughter came over the line.
“That old thing?” Daniel sounded more like himself than I’d heard from him since the stroke. “Oh God. That thing’s almost as much of a… a…”
His brain skipped on the word. My heart sank.
“…fossil as I am,” he finished, finding the right syllables with an audible effort.
Marcie laughed to keep from sobbing. “You’re not a fossil, Dad.”
“I’m no… no spring chicken, either,” he said. “Listen, angel. Lula, she… something you’ve gotta know…”
We waited. “What about her, Dad?”