The Awakening of Dr. Brown

Chapter 9

“It’s a bit of a mess,” Ethan said with grand understatement, lunging forward to snatch at the several pairs of sweats draped over the couch, and the socks, running shoes and three days worth of newspapers on the floor beside it. “I, uh…didn’t know when I left here this afternoon that I was…having company.”

He heaved the gathered armload through the nearest doorway and pulled the door firmly shut upon the disasters lurking within. Then, in a heated and breathless state he could not recall having experienced since adolescence, he turned back to Phoenix.

The world-renowned legend of rock and roll was wandering through the clutter in his living room, gazing with undisguised curiosity-even fascination-at the overflowing bookshelves, the tower of CDs that had recently fallen over, strewing plastic cases like toppled dominoes across the floor beside the stereo…his old acoustic guitar propped against the wall. The untidy piles of medical journals that covered every flat surface-except for the top of the television and stereo system, which were unavailable due to the jumble of framed photographs already there-snapshots, mostly, except for Lauren’s professional wedding portrait. They were all there, his whole family: his dad and Dixie-a snapshot of the two of them laughing together, taken while his dad was still governor of Iowa. A photo of Lauren and John and their two boys on horses, with the Arizona scenery spread out behind them. A series of several beautifully composed pictures of Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike Lanagan and their daughter, Ethan’s cousin Rose Ellen, taken on their Iowa farm by their son, Eric, who was on his way to becoming a photojournalist. One stunningly beautiful portrait done in black-and-white-also by Eric-of Great-great-aunt Gwen, who’d died peacefully the year before at the age of one hundred and five. There were others-Uncle Wood and Aunt Chris, their daughter, Kaitlin. Even a snapshot of Ethan’s mother, Elaine, with her husband, taken during a vacation somewhere in the South Seas.

Watching Phoenix as she studied the photographs one by one, Ethan was struck suddenly by a memory of her loft…its elegance, its emptiness…its loneliness. He felt his sense of dismay and embarrassment leave him, like sand running out of a sack.

Relaxed, now, quiet inside, he walked to the couch and placed the bags of Chinese food on the cushions while he cleared the coffee table of medical journals, books, newspapers and the remnants of this morning’s breakfast.

“I thought we’d eat out here, if that’s okay,” he said, setting out white cartons, paper napkins and paper-wrapped chopsticks. “The kitchen’s pretty small.” He did not add, “And very messy,” which he figured by this time she’d know was a given.

Phoenix nodded, but went on looking at the arrangement of photographs. Then, in an impulsive, uncharacteristically awkward motion, she picked one up and tilted it to show him. “This your mother?” Her voice was gruff, almost harsh.

Ethan straightened, looked and said, “Yup.” He walked toward her, breathing suspended, moving carefully and slowly, the way he might have approached an unexpectedly tame fawn in the woods.

She watched him come, her eyes never leaving his face. When he was within touching distance she turned back to the snapshot in her hands. “You look like her.”

“Well, I have her coloring, anyway. Both my sister and I got the blond hair.”

She said nothing for a while, though he sensed she wanted to; he could almost see the unasked questions hovering on the tip of her tongue. Then, abruptly, she put the snapshot back on the stereo. “Big family,” she remarked, lightly touching several of the photos as if setting them to rights.

“I guess.” Though it had never seemed so to him. Still with that feeling that he was about to attempt to pet a wild creature, he murmured, “What about you?”

“No family.” She said it lightly, blowing it away like dandelion fluff in a summer wind. She pivoted and moved away from him, a moment later pouncing on his guitar with a pleased cry, as if she’d only just discovered it.

“You did tell me you play.” She settled herself on the arm of the couch with her ankle propped on her knee, cradling his guitar across her lap. Her fingers moved on the strings, playing seemingly random chords as she looked up at him. “You said Dixie taught you, right?”

“Right.” It occurred to him as he looked at her that he ought to be feeling wonderment of some sort-this was Phoenix, sitting in his living room, playing his guitar. Instead, he felt an indefinable tenderness that was intertwined somehow with sorrow, and a frustrating sense that he was close…so close to understanding something of profound importance about this woman named Joanna Dunn.

She smiled to herself as she played; her eyes, shielded from him by the heavy fall of her lashes, were only an elusive twinkle, like stars glimpsed through a canopy of trees. No longer just random wanderings, the melody she was playing was familiar to him-a lullaby, if he wasn’t mistaken, something about a mockingbird. An odd and unexpected song for Phoenix to choose, he thought. Out of all the songs in the world, an old folk lullaby.

He hummed along, then sang a few bars very softly, and felt the quiver of a powerful but nameless emotion deep inside his chest when after a moment she joined him.

“Did your mother sing that to you when you were small?” he asked when the words he could remember ran out. Reaching…reaching with a gentle and reassuring hand toward the fawn in the forest.

Still softly playing, she said without looking up, “I don’t remember my mother.”

“No photographs?”

She shook her head. There was silence…the fawn trembled. A lump formed in Ethan’s throat. Then, with a final thump of her hand on the chords to still their vibrations, she set the guitar aside…and the fawn scampered away into leafy shadows. “Nope,” she said lightly, “not a one.”

She slipped off the arm of the couch onto the cushions and reached for a carton. “Mmm…this must be the kung pow chicken.”

“Who did you learn that song from?” he persisted as he sat on the couch beside her, careful to match her casual tone. Still searching hopefully in the shadows for the vanished fawn, unwilling yet to concede the moment lost.

She shrugged. “Who knows?” She handed him one of the sets of chopsticks and tore the paper wrapping off hers. “Could have been anywhere-once I hear a song I usually don’t forget it.” She bit her lip, concentrating on breaking the chopsticks apart.

Mission accomplished. Her eyes flashed silver, the first time she’d looked directly at him since she’d held his mother’s picture in her hands. “What about you? Dixie, I suppose.”

“Probably.” Suddenly short on breath, he snapped apart his chopsticks and dug into the nearest carton.

Watching him, eyes gleaming, she speared something that trailed long strands of vegetables and lifted it to her mouth. Her lips parted…her tongue came out to snare the stragglers…the bite disappeared. She chewed with her eyes closed, making soft pleasure sounds…

“How old were you when your folks split?”

“Beg pardon?” Ethan mumbled through a mouthful of something he absolutely could not taste.

Her eyes were studying him, glowing with the intensity of her curiosity and a purpose he couldn’t begin to understand. The question had caught him by surprise in more ways than one. For one thing, he was only just adjusting to the loss of his fawn; he hadn’t expected her to turn back into a tiger. And then, at that moment his parents in any context were the farthest thing from his mind.

Asking her to repeat the question at least gave him time to find his way out of the sensual quagmire he’d wandered into. He was moderately pleased when he was able to swallow without choking and say calmly, “My mother left when I was five.”

“Did you miss her?”

It should have been a silly question. What five-year-old child wouldn’t miss his mother? But she asked it with childlike curiosity mingled with an element of wistfulness, so that it seemed to him unbearably touching…almost heartbreaking. As if a blind child had asked him what it was like to see.

“I did,” he said quietly. “Terribly, at first. I was only five, after all. After Dixie came to take care of us, things were much better. Eventually I hardly missed my mother at all, except after a visit, or talking to her on the phone. That would sort of bring it all back. But…the visits and the calls came farther and farther apart.”

“I take it you don’t see much of her?”

“I saw her fairly often when I was in California, since that’s where she and her husband live. Other than that…no. She calls me on my birthday. Christmas. Things like that.” He paused, chopsticks poised. “What?” Through some sort of shimmering veil, he could see her watching him the way a cat watches a particularly interesting species of mouse. “What?”

Still she said nothing. Roughly two seconds into the silence it occurred to Ethan that the shimmering veil he was having trouble seeing through was tears. And that they were present because someone had apparently ignited a blowtorch inside his sinus cavities. His body temperature, he estimated, must be somewhere near boiling.

“Holy cow,” he wheezed, staring incredulously into the carton he was holding. “What is this stuff?”

“Oh, dear me,” Phoenix said in a tiny and tightly controlled voice, “I think you might have gotten hold of some of my Szechuan by mistake.” She barely made it through the sentence before dissolving into gales of helpless laughter.

Ethan stared at her through his tears in utter disbelief. His head was on fire, his eyes and nose were running like faucets, he could barely draw breath, and she was laughing?

“Water,” he croaked, and lurching to his feet, staggered off to the kitchen.

She found him there a few minutes later, hunched over a sink piled full of haphazardly rinsed dishes, refilling a coffee mug with water straight from the tap. She went up behind him and put her hands on his waist.

“Hey, Doc, come here…let me.” Her voice felt low in her throat and still warm with the laughter. She felt warm all through her insides, in fact. As if she’d downed a straight shot of whiskey.

He drew back from the sink to give her a look of dark reproach. From the beard on his chin to the roots of his hair, his normally golden tanned skin had a distinctly ruddy cast. For some reason when she looked at him the warmth inside her seemed to gather itself into a hot ball, right in the middle of her chest.

She steered him firmly toward the kitchen table until his backside come against its edge. He leaned on it, folded his arms across his chest, closed his eyes and gave a sigh of surrender. When Phoenix heard that sound, the ball of heat in her chest melted…pooled in the lowest part of her body.

She moved closer to him. When the cold water touched his face he started and caught her wrist, his eyes crossing slightly as he focused on the wet towel in her hand. She saw a flash of dismay in their nut-brown depths before he closed them again. “You’ve been in my bathroom,” he said in a thickened murmur, and gave another small sigh. “I suppose you know, this means you have to marry me. I have no secrets from you now.”

Laughter tumbled again through her chest, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth to hold it back. Doc’s defenses must really have been laid low, she thought, for him to say such a thing. She felt sure it wasn’t the sort of joking around that came naturally to him.

“I’m sorry,” she said in an unreliable voice, left ragged by the recent excesses of mirth. “I…truly am.” A residual bubble of laughter burst from her in spite of her best efforts to stifle it.

“Oh, yeah,” Ethan said dryly, “I can see that.”

“No-really. I am. I was going to say something when you first picked up that carton, but then you started eating, and you didn’t say anything, so I thought…you…liked it…” Her voice had grown softer with each word until finally it just sort of…faded away.

Slowly, she raised the damp towel to his face. When she touched his forehead with it, just above one eyebrow, he closed his eyes. And that was her undoing. Such a small thing. Such an enormous thing-an expression of total trust. What it did to her was so unexpected, so sudden, she could neither prepare herself nor defend against it. Wanting struck her like a rogue wave, nearly knocking her off her feet. The laughter and the warmth inside her were washed clean away, leaving her cold and shivering with a need to be held, to be wrapped in his arms and pressed close to his warm, solid body.

“Like it?” he murmured, eyes closed. “I couldn’t even taste it, not at first. Next thing I know, I’ve got tears streaming down my face.”

“It does sort of sneak up on you…” Shaken, she drew the towel across his eyebrow, then pressed it, oh, so gently against his eyelid. She heard the soft rush of his breath, released in careful measures through his nose. The tender, shadowed skin beneath his eye flinched, and she felt an overpowering desire to kiss him there.

But…in another moment her hands would tremble, and she couldn’t have him know how fragile she was, how undone by his nearness. So, to keep them from betraying her, she set them in motion once more, laying one lightly on his shoulder to steady herself while the other drew the towel downward over his cheek to where the boundaries of his beard began. Framed in neatly trimmed honey-brown, his lips seemed utterly defenseless, and tempting as forbidden fruit.

So focused was she on his mouth, so steeped in the imagined feel and warmth and taste of it, that she didn’t even know at first when his hands intercepted hers. Lost in a fog of uncertainty, not knowing which way to go, afraid to take even the smallest step lest she stumble over a terrifying precipice from which she knew there would be no return, she stood helplessly while he removed the towel from her hand.

Slowly, warming her cold hand in both of his, he drew her fingers to his lips.

Fascinated, she watched her fingertips press the satiny cushion of his lips, while tears inexplicably gathered in the back of her throat and she braced herself in utter panic, certain she wasn’t going to be able to hold them off. Then…she felt his breath flow like heated oil over her fingertips, seep between them…into her palm. A glorious warmth spread over her hand and all through her, poured deep inside her-the sweetest and most intense pleasure she had ever known. The fog lifted; lightness filled her. She caught her breath and smiled.

“I meant to seduce you, you know,” she whispered.

He opened his eyes, looked deep into hers and gravely replied, “I know.”

A laugh spiked through her chest and emerged in a sharp little cry, more like a whimper. Had she been so obvious? She must have been-it surely couldn’t have been his ego that had led him to such a certainty. She’d never met a man with less ego.

She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t want to say anything, afraid even one more word would alter the course they seemed set on, like a pebble beneath the wheel of a runaway wagon. But it was impossible to be silent. “This isn’t the way I planned it,” she murmured, frowning.

Again he replied, “I know.” And this time, it was he who smiled.

Still holding her hand in both of his, he turned it and pressed his mouth against her palm. His eyes narrowed slightly in that way he had, but didn’t close, instead clinging to hers in silent question. Her heart gave a painful leap. She was afraid, so afraid, that he wouldn’t find the answers he wanted, afraid that if her eyes were indeed the windows to her soul, he would look inside and might not like what he found there. That he would stop. And she desperately did not want him to stop.

Almost without her conscious will, her fingers unfurled against his cheek. When they met the warm and slightly sandy texture of his smooth-shaven skin her whole arm tingled. Desire was a crushing weight inside her; her legs trembled with it.

Though she was never conscious of having given it permission, she felt her body sway toward his…bow into his embrace, powerless as a willow in the wind. His hands were like breath on her skin…his breath a caressing touch. His lips pressed melting warmth into the hollow of her throat…his hands brushed shivers across her back. Her hands found their way to the warm, strong column of his neck like fledglings coming home to roost.

Wanting came to her now, not as a weight but like a song, like the inspiration that sometimes brought her out of a sound sleep late in the night with the words already clear in her mind and the music true and right on her tongue. Wanting, and certainty… Bursting with awe, trembling with the terrifying wonder of it, she closed her eyes and leaned into him, silently pleading. Praying. Let this be. Just…please…let this…be.

His lips began to move in short sweet paces along the side of her neck, his beard the barest whisper on her skin. She shivered, nerve endings prickling as if a thousand Fourth of July sparklers had exploded at once inside her. A soft moan came from her throat, a sound she’d never heard herself make before. His gentleness was exquisite torture…both delicious and intolerable. She was torn between sensual ecstacy, wanting to roll and wallow in it like a cat in a puddle of sunshine, and a passion so urgent and intense she felt almost angry-and much more tiger than pussycat. She wanted to rake at his clothes and hurl herself against him, feel his weight bearing her down, crushing the breath from her; she wanted to encircle his body with her legs and feel his heat and strength deep inside her.

Her moan became a growl. She rocked against him, passion making her movements jerky and graceless as her hands clutched first at his shoulders, then pushed upward, fingers driving through the dense thicket of his hair. She turned her head, not to give him access to her neck, now, but to deny it, instead frantically seeking…no, demanding. Her heart gave another leap, this one of joy. Her body sang, her whole being danced when she felt his chest harden against her breasts, when his muscles tightened beneath her belly and thighs. When his hands swept down to grasp her buttocks and his mouth came, at last, to cover hers.

Seduce? This man? How foolish she felt now to ever have imagined that she could-like reaching with supreme confidence to pet a kitten and instead finding herself holding on for dear life to a tiger’s tail. She felt scared to death, exhilarated, out of control, and with no idea in the world how to let go. For Phoenix-the Phoenix she knew-it should have been a terrifying, completely intolerable place to be, and it was. Oh, it was. And at the same time, she never wanted to leave. She ricocheted between helpless wanting and total panic, her heart knocking in syncopated rhythms. So much feeling. Too much. She wasn’t used to it. Had spent a lifetime insulating herself against it…hiding from it behind various disguises. Her responses felt raw and trembly, like parts of the body that haven’t been used in a long, long time.

As if he understood that-the physician always-he withdrew from the kiss gently, holding her against him for a few moments longer and pressing short fervent kisses into her hair, almost as if in apology. She drew back from him, some sort of light remark balanced on her lips. And as the thunder of her own heartbeat receded, she heard it, too, and understood the reason for the apology. The telephone was ringing.

“I’d better take this,” he murmured, his eyes calmly searching hers. “It rings in downstairs. There’s only a few people they put through up here.”

She nodded and shifted to one side, a hand going casually to the tabletop to help steady her. She wondered if he’d noticed she was trembling. Of course he had. She hoped not.

His hands slipped from her waist to her arms…rubbed lightly over her goose bumps, igniting fresh shivers. He kissed her once more, softly, on the lips, then left her. She watched him walk out of the kitchen without a trace of a wobble in his step, but it was several minutes before she trusted her own legs enough to follow.

In the living room, Ethan located the cordless phone amongst the clutter of food containers on the coffee table and cleared his throat in an experimental sort of way before he punched the on button. “This is Dr. Brown.”

“Hey, Ethan-honey…”

A smile spread across his face as he answered in the Texas style, “Hey, Dixie, how’re you?”

“Didn’t mean to call so late-I just never can remember which nights you’re home. Anyway, I won’t keep you long, and I know you can’t talk-Tom said you had company…?” He heard the eager curiosity in his stepmother’s voice, though he knew she respected his privacy too much to ask outright.

“That’s right,” he said in a neutral voice, watching Phoenix as she came toward him, not with her patented Phoenix stride, but tentatively, as if she wasn’t certain of her welcome or her place.

It came to him suddenly that it must be he who had robbed her of her customary self-confidence and presence, and he knew a shameful moment of pure masculine elation at the thought that he could have that kind of power over such a woman. But that feeling was followed quickly by a sense of sorrow and loss that surprised him. Because he suddenly knew that, whatever it was he was trying to accomplish with this woman, whatever it was he wanted from her, changing her in any fundamental way was not part of it.

“I thought you’d want to know what we found out-about that information you wanted?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Well, I have to tell you, so far there isn’t much. There isn’t any history on Phoenix at all prior to when she was about fourteen. We have a date of birth, but no place, no family, no nothing.”

“What about the other one?” Ethan’s eyes were following Phoenix’s movements as she poked in a desultory way among the cartons of Chinese food, selected a sweet and sour shrimp-one of his selections-and put it in her mouth.

“Joanna Dunn? I’m still workin’ on that.” He heard the sigh of exhaled breath. “It would help a lot if you could narrow it down some, sugar. This is a great big ol’ country.”

“How about here?” he said without inflection. Phoenix had wandered over to the stereo and was squatting beside the toppled stack of CDs, slowly putting them to rights, stopping to read a label now and then.

“Here…? Oh-you mean where you… Well, sure. Okay, that’ll help. Give me a couple days-I’ve got some things on my calendar, and I have to tell you, I am not lookin’ forward to entertainin’ the Japanese prime minister and his wife. They make me go through these trainin’ sessions to make sure I get all the protocol right, but it never seems to help, I’m still bowin’ when I’m supposed to be smilin’, know what I mean?”

“Dixie, you’ll do fine,” Ethan said, laughing. They both knew there wasn’t a soul on the planet who didn’t love the First Lady, in spite of-perhaps because of-her breezy Texas ways.

“Well, let’s hope so. Anyway, I’ll get back to you if I find out anything, okay?”

“Thanks, Dixie. Very much.” He paused. “Is…Dad there?”

“’Fraid not-he’s downstairs goin’ over his ‘remarks’ for the prime minister.” There was regret in his stepmother’s voice.

“Well, tell him I said hello. And that everything’s fine.”

“I sure will.” There was a pause, and then, “You’d tell us if it wasn’t, right?”

“Of course,” he murmured, and wondered if it was true. He could tell by his stepmother’s exhalation that she wondered, too.

“Well, okay, sugar, I’ll say bye-bye then. You have fun, and take care now.”

“I will, Dixie.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Phoenix didn’t look up when he placed the phone back on the coffee table. She’d put a CD on the stereo, the volume turned so low he couldn’t tell which one it was until he walked over to stand behind her, close enough to touch her but not doing so.

“The Parish Family-good choice,” he murmured, faintly surprised. His eyes had begun to follow the path of the braid he’d woven into her hair…thick and loose between her shoulder blades…tapering to the knot she’d tied, bumping now against the place a bra strap would cross if she’d been wearing one…the loose end curling slightly as it brushed the strip of tiger print material at her waist. He thought how close he’d been just a few minutes ago to loosing that knot…unraveling his own handiwork and filling his hands with the vibrant mass…his nostrils with the scent of it. He still could. The knowledge made his stomach churn.

She threw him a look, a sardonic little smile, over her shoulder. “Dinner interruptus?”

His laughter felt uncomfortable and no doubt sounded as false as he felt. “There seems to be plenty of food. Would you care to join me?”

She shook her head and looked away, the corners of her mouth pinching with the strain of maintaining the smile. “I seem to have lost my appetite.” Along with the moment, she thought. Because she’d seen by the quietness in his eyes that they weren’t going to be picking up where they’d left off in the kitchen. Obviously, the doc had come to his senses, and she was damned if she’d be the one to bring it up. Desire was one thing; pride was another. Phoenix did not beg.

She snatched at a breath as she moved away from him, like a diver coming up for air. “It’s getting late. Maybe we’d better see if Mr. Tall Dark and Dangerous down there has worked out those logistics yet.”

“Sure.” She watched him retrieve the cordless phone from the coffee table mess and press a single button. He mumbled into the phone for a few moments, then punched the button and put the phone back among the cartons. He looked at her and said in a neutral voice, “Any time you’re ready.”

She lifted her hands and shoulders together-an elaborate “couldn’t care less” gesture. “I’m ready.”

Propelled by some sort of flight instinct, she crossed the room in a few effortless strides. Even so, they got to the door at the same time and she barely managed to snatch her hand away in time to avoid making contact with his when he reached to open it for her. Frozen, heart knocking, she said in a muffled voice, “You don’t have to come.”

“Yeah,” he said, quietly wry, “I do. Tom won’t leave me here unguarded.”

She glanced at him…then looked a longer moment, and saw what she’d somehow missed before. Behind the quietness…acknowledgment, and deep regret. She felt something warm and soften inside her, and the jittery coldness of wounded pride give way to a trembling, yearning ache. Slowly she reached out and touched two fingers to his lips. Her fingers warmed instantly, as if they remembered…

“Bye Bye Leroy Brown,” she whispered.

His lips curved under her fingertips; his breath blew soft sweet memories of his taste and warmth against her skin. “Bye bye, Joanna…”

She gave a little hiccup of laughter. “At the stroke of midnight the scullery maid turns back into a princess…”

“…And the bad boy into First Son.”

“Cinderella in reverse.” How was it that she could still laugh, when the trembling ache had become a shudder of longing? “Now it’s back to the real world…”

Once again he’d taken her hand in both of his, enfolding it as though it were a precious treasure he wanted to protect. For a moment, just a moment, while his lips hovered between a word and a kiss, she allowed herself to think…to hope… But then he slowly lowered her hand. “I had a good time tonight.”

“Yeah, me, too.” And oh, how proud she was that her voice was light and no more scratchy than normal.

Why, tell me, why…is it so hard to say goodbye?

The lyric blew through her mind like a train whistle in the night, and she felt her entire being shudder with the suddenness of understanding, as if rocked by the gust of the train’s passing. Doveman, you were right-goodbye is hard, and it’s what comes between hello and goodbye that matters.

And this, she was all at once determined, would not be goodbye. If Phoenix had anything to say about it-and she sure as hell did-there was going to be a whole lot more “between” to come before she and Dr. Ethan Brown said goodbye.

“By the way,” she purred as he was reaching across to open the door for her, “if you still want that report on those apartment buildings…” He paused; she heard a soft but unmistakable catch in his breathing, and felt a nice little glow of triumph at the thought that she might actually have made him forget his precious agenda, for even a little while. “I should have it by tomorrow, if you want to stop by.”

“Can’t tomorrow.” He gave a smile and shrug of apology as he turned the knob and pushed the door open. “My ride-along night.”

“Oh-right.” She went ahead of him onto the landing, quelling small twinges of annoyance. Phoenix was not accustomed to having to bend her schedule around someone else’s. “Saturday, then.”

“Uh…can’t Saturday, either.” He closed the door with a tug and a click, then paused with his hand still on the doorknob. She turned to look at him and caught the shadow of evasion in his eyes. “I have plans…sorry.”

“Ah. I see.” Both her nice little glow and the annoyance abruptly faded and were replaced by a cold green greasy lump she had no trouble recognizing as jealousy. Phoenix-jealous? The thought was appalling.

Even more so was her mortification when his eyes softened with understanding. And his smile…oh, how she resented his confidence, especially since she seemed to have so little of it herself, lately.

“Nothing like that. I promised…someone…I’d take him to the park on Saturday. I really can’t cancel on him. Sunday, maybe?”

What could she say to that? The regret in his eyes was real. “Maybe,” she said lightly, turning toward the stairs. And then, trying hard to sound amused, “The park…sounds like so much fun. Especially for your bodyguards. Where is it? Somewhere around here?” The beginnings of an idea were forming in her mind.

The doc looked startled, then frowned. “What? No-over near the clinic, I think.” He gave her a crooked smile. “To tell you the truth, I forgot to ask-how many parks can there be?”

“Right…” Phoenix purred.

They went down the stairs together, side by side but carefully not touching, both very much aware that ever-vigilant Secret Service Agent Tom Applegate was waiting for them at the bottom.

They rode home in the back seat of the SUV, mostly in silence, with Tom driving. And when they left each other, what they both said was not goodbye, but simply, “Good night.”

Piano music greeted Phoenix as she made her way through the darkened studio, the notes floating down from above as if they were a gift come straight from Heaven. Partly she thought that because to her the person making the music had indeed been a gift, whether from God or Fate or some other power she had no way of knowing; and partly because the music itself was so lovely, she thought it might very well have been divinely inspired. Listening to it made her swell inside with an unutterable sadness.

And so, of course, she was smiling as she stepped out of the cage.

“Hey, Doveman-you’re up late.” She crossed to the piano and gave his bony shoulders a squeeze as she dropped a quick kiss onto the bare spot on top of his head. “You shouldn’t have waited for me. I’m a big girl.”

The old piano man chuckled as he shifted on the bench to make room for her the way he always did. “Now, you know ol’ Doveman don’t close his eyes ’til he knows his chick is back safe and sound in her nest.”

Phoenix was silent for a moment, rocking her body slightly to the rhythm of the music. Then she said softly, “You were right-it needed the minor key.”

Doveman nodded, watching his fingers work their magic. “Ain’t nothing harder or sadder than sayin’ goodbye. And it don’t matter how many times you do it, it don’t get any easier. I think maybe it’s even harder when you get old…”

Old… Doveman is old.

Fear came unexpectedly, clutched at her stomach and turned her body cold. Doveman. He’d been both mother and father to her for most of her life. She couldn’t imagine how she would ever do without him. Panic-stricken, she wanted to throw her arms around him and hold on to him so tightly that nothing-not even Death-would dare to take him from her. At the very least, she wanted to put her arm across his shoulders, kiss his white-stubbled cheek. Tell him she loved him.

So, of course, she got up from the piano bench and walked away from him. She went toward the windows, silently rubbing her arms.

Behind her she heard Doveman say softly, “Well, I’ll be goin’ on to bed now.”

She nodded without turning. “’Night… And thanks…for waiting.”

His chuckle was lost in the clanking and groaning of the cage as it sank slowly from view.

Oh, but it’s so hard…hard…hard to say goodbye.

Phoenix stood alone looking out on the spangled city, with the song playing in her mind, at last complete, lyrics a perfect blend with the music…absolutely right. She should have felt a sense of elation. Instead she just felt frightened and lonely.

How could she ever say goodbye to Doveman? When the time came, would she somehow find the strength? The courage? She’d never had to do so hard a thing before.

She hadn’t said goodbye to her mother. She’d never had the chance.

Beyond the window the city lights wavered and blurred. Tears spilled over and ran warm down her cheeks. “Doveman,” she whispered, though she knew he’d long since gone, “I can’t remember my momma’s face.”