Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [124]
“Okay,” Chuck said, rising and tossing the magazine on the chair. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hey, has anyone called my mother to say I’m okay?” Lee asked.
“She was here earlier, while you were asleep. She’ll be back tomorrow. Oh, and Dr. Azarian stopped by too,” he added. “She said she’d come by later.”
He darted out the door, followed by a gloomy-faced Dr. Patel.
Lee’s stomach took a little hop of anticipation at the mention of Kathy’s name. He longed to talk to Chuck about her, but the subject of women was a strained one between them, since things turned out the way they had with Susan. On the rebound from Lee after college, Susan Beaumont had gravitated to Chuck for many reasons, both good and bad. Lee knew this because she had told him as much after a few too many glasses of eggnog at a Christmas party a few years ago. Marrying Chuck was another way to stay close to Lee, she had said. Instead of feeling flattered, as she had perhaps expected, he reacted with guilt and dismay. He begged her never to repeat this to anyone—least of all Chuck—but he had no idea what went on between them in private. He prayed she had taken his advice. She wasn’t an unkind woman, just a chronically immature one.
Susan Beaumont was exactly the kind of woman Chuck Morton was drawn to: one who seemed to need protecting. Lee thought she was an emotional vampire, but Chuck needed to be needed, and like every man who saw Susan, he was floored by her beauty—the kind of effortless, shimmering beauty that struck other women as unfair, and left men helpless and weak-kneed before her. Susan Beaumont Morton was the kind of woman who wore her good looks so casually and yet so consciously that it was hard for anyone—man or woman—to think of anything else when talking to her. But Lee sensed Circe’s touch in Susan from the beginning, and just hoped she had been kind to Chuck, who still adored her after all these years of marriage, with an eager devotion Lee found touching. Chuck had always been in love with her, and Lee hoped that she had come to care for Chuck the way he deserved.
She needed things Lee couldn’t give her—things he suspected no one could give another person, but Chuck Morton’s mission in life regarding women was unchanging ever since Lee had known him: rescue, protect, and serve. Lee knew Chuck’s protectiveness extended to him as well, and he was touched by it. He could tease Chuck about that, but he would never tease his friend about his relationship to women. Chuck believed to this day that Susan had left Lee for him. Lee allowed him to believe this fiction because it was easier on everyone—or so he hoped.
But Kathy Azarian was different. He had dated more beautiful women, others besides Susan, but no one who touched him quite the way Kathy did. Was it the way she wrinkled her forehead when she was thinking hard, or the way she pursed her lips to one side, the single lock of curly hair that fell over her eyes? It was that and more—the sound of her low, throaty voice, the slight lisp in her speech, the way she wrapped her fingers around his arm as they walked, a hundred little things and yet no one thing in particular.
As if in answer to his thoughts, there was a soft knock on the door, and Kathy’s face appeared between the parted curtains in the hall outside.
“Come in!” Lee called, and struggled to sit up in bed. The effort caused a wave of dizziness.
Kathy entered the room and sat on the chair Chuck had vacated. She put a hand on Lee’s arm. Her fingers were cool and soft.
“How are you feeling?”
“Not bad. Hungry.”
“That’s a good sign.” He could tell she was trying to camouflage any concern she felt, so as not to frighten him.
“I’m going to be fine,” he said.
“I never doubted it for a minute,” she replied too quickly. “Oh, I brought you a proper suitcase,” she said, holding up a leather satchel. “For when you come home. It’s a girl thing,” she added with a laugh. “We love shoes and suitcases—very Freudian, right?”
“Right,” he agreed. Just having her in the room cheered him up.
“Oh, and I also brought you