Quinn - Iris Johansen [3]
“Eve is always the exception,” Jane said. “You obviously have a close relationship with her now.”
Catherine smiled as she started to back out of the parking place. “You’re right. You and I are more alike than I would have believed. Eve is the sun we all revolve around.”
Jane watched her drive out of the parking lot before she started to walk across the parking lot toward the front entrance. She could feel the tension increase with every step. She was going to Joe, who might well be dying. She was going to Eve, who could lose the man who made her life worth living.
How did she feel about the search for Bonnie? Jane had said all the right things, and they had all been true. What she hadn’t told Catherine was the agony she felt when Eve and Joe were put in danger by that search. She could accept it. But she couldn’t stop wishing that the search would end.
And she couldn’t stop wishing that Eve would release Bonnie.
Or, dear God, that Bonnie would release Eve.
* * *
EVE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the corridor toward the ICU.
Soon she would be able to see Joe again. He’d be pale and drawn, his features appearing as cleanly carved and beautiful as the visage on a tomb. It would scare her to death as it always did.
But it scared her more not to see him and to imagine him slipping away with her not by his side.
That was where she should always be. Next to Joe.
If God would let him stay with her. And if Joe still wanted her if he did come back. The memory of that last day at the lake house was suddenly before her. His eyes looking down at her as she sat in the swing.
“I can’t be easy. It’s not my nature. But it’s my nature to love you.”
And it was her nature to love Joe.
Please be better, Joe. Be awake. At least, have more color.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Duncan.” The ICU nurse was coming out of the unit. “May I get you anything?”
“Yes, permission to go sit with him.”
She shook her head. “Not yet.” She hesitated. “But the doctor said that maybe we should let you go to him soon.”
She stiffened, her heart leaping. “He’s better.”
The nurse shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said quickly. “Dr. Jarlin will talk to you.”
Fear surged through her. “You talk to me, dammit. He’s worse?”
The nurse was looking at Eve with that same sympathy and kindness that had struck terror in her heart since she’d brought Joe to the hospital. “Dr. Jarlin will talk to you. I’ll call him and tell him that you’re concerned.” She hurried back toward the nurses’ station.
Concerned? She was sick with fear.
Joe was dying, and they weren’t going to be able to save him. That was why they were going to let Eve go to him. To say good-bye.
She couldn’t say good-bye. He had to stay with her.
She leaned her head on the plate-glass window and closed her eyes. She felt the tears running down her cheeks as the agony flowed through her.
Look at him. Surely she’d be able to know, to sense some change. Maybe they were wrong. Doctors didn’t know everything.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She stiffened in shock.
Bonnie.
Through the years she had often had visions and dreams of her daughter. Then she had come to believe they weren’t visions at all. It didn’t matter. Real or not, having Bonnie come to her had made life worth living and let her come alive in so many ways.
But now something was different.
Bonnie, in her Bugs Bunny T-shirt, her red-brown hair shining in the lights of the ICU, as she stood by Joe’s bed, looking down at him.
Her expression … Love. Perfect love.
Why was she here?
The fear became terror.
To take him away, to ease the transition from this life to the next?
“No, Bonnie!”
Her daughter looked across the room at Eve standing behind the glass.
She smiled luminously. But then turned back again to gaze down at Joe with that same expression of love.
What did that smile mean? Could she help him to live?
Or could she only help him to die?
Eve’s palms pressed against the cold glass as tension and sorrow tore through her.
“Joe!”
*