Redemption 03 - Return Read online

  “You’re a brilliant artist.” He hesitated. “I told Erin months ago you were crazy to keep those paintings in your living room when they’d make such a hit out in the world. I’d love to build you a Web site.”

  “You would? You did…you told Erin that?” She ran her fingers through her short hair. Why hadn’t he ever told her? “You really think that?”

  “The whole family thinks that.” He chuckled. “But no one wanted to tell you.”

  Ashley’s mouth dropped open. “The whole family?”

  “Sure.” Sam gave a loud exhale. “We’ve talked about it a lot, whenever you’re not around.”

  “How come no one ever told me?”

  Sam paused. “Want the truth?”

  “Definitely.” Ashley felt the color drain from her face. Her family had believed in her all along, but none of them had ever said a word.

  “Because, Ashley, whatever happened to you in Paris must have been terrible. You came back a different person.” The sincerity ringing in his voice made her grip the phone tighter. “If painting did that to you once, it could do it again. I guess none of us wanted to see that happen.”

  They finished the phone call, and Ashley stood and stared out the window at Cole. Painting hadn’t made her unhappy in Paris. Her bad choices had. And now…now it was almost more than she could imagine. Her family liked her artwork, even thought it belonged in a gallery or a museum. But they’d never said anything for fear of harming her.

  Ashley wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. How much sooner might she have chased this dream if she’d thought they were even a little interested? Ryan liked her work, and Landon, of course. But it was easy to believe they were just trying to be nice. Her parents—those were her critics. And if they’d ever told her, even once, that she was good enough to make it, maybe she wouldn’t have gone to Paris in the first place. Maybe she would’ve known she didn’t need a year abroad, what with some of the finest galleries in the world right here in the United States.

  She was still thinking about the craziness of it all that evening as she waited for Erin and Sam to arrive. They were five minutes late when the phone rang.

  “Hello?” She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder and leaned over to light a candle at the center of her dining-room table. Cole was playing with a Lego set a few feet away, and she gestured for him to pick it up and take it to his room.

  “Ms. Baxter?” The voice had a New York accent. “I believe we spoke earlier today.”

  Ashley had spoken to more than fifty people that morning. She swallowed hard and carried the phone into the kitchen. “Yes…how can I help you?”

  “You sent me an E-mail. I’m Ms. Wellington.” She paused. “I must say, we were very impressed with the pictures of your artwork.”

  Ashley groped around for a barstool and somehow managed to sit down without passing out. The woman had said she wouldn’t call for a few weeks. “Thank you, Ms. Wellington.”

  “My husband and I own a gallery here in Manhattan. He wanted me to ask you a question.”

  “Anything.” Ashley’s answer was quick. Too quick. She sent a slow breath through her clenched teeth. Come on, Ashley, get a grip.

  “We are a serious gallery, Ms. Baxter. Our clients have no room for fraudulent work.”

  “I’m sure.” Ashley pinched her temples between her thumb and forefinger. “What are you saying, exactly?”

  “To be blunt, we need to know that the work in your pictures is original art. That you didn’t copy them somehow or computer-enhance them.”

  Ashley started to laugh, but her hand flew to her mouth and she caught herself. “You want to know if my work’s original?”

  “My husband and I both want to know.” From the tone in the woman’s voice, Ashley realized that she and her husband must have been lied to before.

  “Yes.” Ashley’s heart raced and she felt the floor fall away. “That’s exactly how they look, and they’re original. Definitely.” She wanted to jump in the air and shout. So what if they had to ask hard questions? She had the answers. Besides, if they were worried about fraud, it could only mean one thing.

  They loved her work!

  “Well, then—” the woman cleared her throat—“we’d like you to come to the gallery next week sometime and bring the following three pieces.”

  She rattled off the titles of three of Ashley’s favorite paintings. Ashley grabbed a pencil and scribbled the information on a piece of scrap paper near the telephone. The whole time she worked to concentrate.

  The woman hesitated. “Will that be possible?”

  Ashley couldn’t keep the room from spinning. She’d waited years to push ahead with her dream, and now…the news about her family, the idea of the Web site, the contact with dozens of New York galleries. And finally this phone call. Suddenly she realized she hadn’t given the woman an answer and she stifled a giggle. God, you did it. You did all of this. “Yes, of course. I’ll figure out how soon I can be there; then I’ll give you a call.”

  “That would be lovely.” The woman’s voice was kinder than before. She gave Ashley directions to the gallery—a small, conservative shop in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, not far from Central Park. “Ask for me at the front desk.”

  Ashley promised she would. The doorbell rang just as she hung up. She raced to the entryway, pulled on the handle, and stared wide-eyed at Erin and Sam.

  “What is it, Ash? You look scared to death.” Erin opened the screen door and stepped inside. Sam followed her and the two of them waited.

  “You won’t believe it!” Ashley took a few steps back and did a little jump-skip across the living room, her fists raised in the air. “I’m taking my paintings to New York City!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JOHN BAXTER RARELY worked nights.

  He’d been a doctor in Bloomington for enough years that the younger guys at the office handled the on-call hours. But tonight was different. One of his patients—a man who served alongside John on the elder board at church—had undergone triple bypass surgery two days earlier. The man had been moved from the cardiac unit to intensive care, an upgrade that pleased John. But he wanted to make sure his friend was comfortable.

  It was just before seven o’clock when he stepped off the elevator onto the third floor and headed for the nurses’ station. A whiteboard posted on the wall nearby had the names and conditions of each patient in the unit. John glanced at the list and saw that his friend was doing better.

  He was about to turn and head down the hall toward the men’s room when something caught his attention. One of the names on the list was Lori Callahan.

  Wasn’t that Luke’s girlfriend’s name?

  Why in the world would she be in the hospital? And in the intensive care unit, no less. He spun around and met the eyes of one of the nurses behind the counter. “Lori Callahan? Is she a young woman, twenty, twenty-one?”

  The nurse studied the whiteboard for a minute. “Yes, I believe so. She’s new to the unit, Doctor. Let me check.” She sorted through a pile of files nearby and found the one she was looking for. “Yes…twenty years old, lives in an apartment off-campus.” The nurse continued to scan the report. “Says here she’s a full-time college student.”

  John bristled and took a step backwards. His son was living with a girl who was so ill she was in the intensive care unit at St. Anne’s Hospital, and no one in the Baxter family even knew about it? John was a doctor, after all. He could’ve done something to help the girl if Luke had called.

  Things must’ve been worse than John thought, the chasm between Luke and his family wider with every passing hour.

  “May I see that, please?” John reached for the file. The girl probably had a bad case of food poisoning or pneumonia, maybe a bacterial infection gone haywire. College coeds didn’t wind up in the ICU every day. He scanned the admit sheet, past her name and address—the address she shared with Luke—past her date of birth. Then, in less time than it took to blink, he found i
t—and his heart dropped to his knees.

  It was impossible.

  Lori Callahan was suffering from an infected uterus due to postabortion difficulties.

  Postabortion?

  The information had to be wrong, or maybe the girl wasn’t Luke’s live-in friend, because no matter how much he’d changed, Luke would never agree to something like this. John closed the file. His forehead was damp and his knees trembled. It had to be some kind of mistake.

  The nurse was watching him, waiting for the folder. “Doctor, is everything okay?”

  John handed over the file and steadied himself against the nurses’ station. “Is anyone in with the girl?” If Luke had been a part of this, if the girl in the room was the same one he was living with, if he’d gotten the girl pregnant and agreed to the abortion, then he’d be in there, sitting by her side, holding vigil, desperate for her to turn the corner.

  “No, Doctor, the young woman’s had no visitors.” She opened the file and flipped back a few pages. “Apparently she drove herself to the emergency room earlier today. The notes say she didn’t want anyone contacted.”

  “Very well.” John backed away from the counter. “Thank you. I’ll take a look at her before I go.”

  The nurse’s eyes reflected curiosity, and for a moment John thought she might ask why he was interested in Lori Callahan, why reading the girl’s file had caused him such concern. But nurses worked under a clear-cut code of respect for doctors, and the woman only nodded and returned to her work.

  John headed down a hallway, his mind and body in a trance. Why had he come to the hospital tonight, anyway? He squinted, determined to escape the avalanche of fear coming down on top of him. His friend from church—that was it. He moved his legs in the direction of the man’s room and found him sleeping. John checked his chart, inspected the incision down the center of the man’s chest, then prayed over him.

  The moment he finished, he couldn’t remember a word he’d said.

  Back out in the hall he went to the nearest rest room, darted inside, shut the door, and locked it. He fell against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. The girl’s diagnosis flashed in his mind again and again, like some twisted, evil taunting designed to make him crazy. Potent emotions swirled in his mind—grief and guilt and regret. Remorse and anger and desperation.

  Lori had had an abortion?

  What in the world was Luke thinking? How could he allow this, and then stay home while Lori struggled in the intensive care unit? Was that all the character his son had? All the faith and goodness he’d been able to muster after a lifetime under the Baxter roof? Yes, things were much more serious than John had thought.

  He’d assumed Luke’s absence from his family, his decision to move in with Lori, had been a phase, some kind of extreme reaction to September 11. But he never figured it would lead to this.

  John opened his eyes, took a few steps toward the sink, and gripped the ceramic basin. Father, I never thought I’d be here. Never thought I’d be dealing with this, and, well…I don’t know how to do it. Give me the right words when I talk to Luke. Make him hear me somehow. Please, God…please.

  The girl was hardly out of the woods. John wanted to check on her before he took the next step. And he would take it, no question about that. Maybe he’d lain too low for the past few months, letting Luke stumble along a path that ran straight to his own destruction. But the least his son could do now was be here with the girl. John would insist on that much, even if Luke resented him for interfering.

  Steadying himself, John left the rest room and went to Lori’s room. Hers was the bed nearest the door. John had never met the girl, because Luke wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Is she afraid of us, Son?” John had asked Luke the last time they were together—sometime back in January. “You’ve always brought your friends home for us to meet.”

  “Not this time, Dad.” Luke’s jaded laugh raked John’s nerves. “You’ll have her listening to your God talk in five minutes flat.”

  “That’s not fair, Son. At least give us a chance.”

  But Luke was adamant. “I won’t have you meet Lori until you accept both of us for who we are.”

  John took quiet steps closer to the bed and studied the girl. A friend of the Baxter family was a professor at Indiana University, and last semester he’d had Lori in his class.

  “She’s a fighter, John. An always-angry, cause-bearing campus activist.” The man raised an eyebrow. “She’s the last person on earth I’d picture Luke dating. And vice versa.”

  John studied the monitors and then shifted his gaze back to Lori. She looked nothing like a fiery activist now. Her face was smooth and unlined, her eyes as peaceful and long-lashed as a twelve-year-old’s. Somehow he’d pictured her taller, more like Reagan. But the young woman lying in the bed was barely five feet tall.

  As John watched her, he realized something. This frail patient had become the enemy in his mind, the woman who wooed Luke away from everything he’d believed in, the one who convinced him to drop his moral convictions and move in with her, taking up causes and joining clubs he would’ve laughed at a year ago.

  But the girl lying here was hardly the enemy. She’d merely bought into a pack of the enemy’s lies, traded old-fashioned common sense for an answer that was really no answer at all. She was as much a victim of her own bad choices as Luke. And now…if she recovered from the abortion, she’d have a whole new set of lies to deal with.

  John thought back to Lori’s chart. Her temperature had spiked as high as 105 in the past hour, and it hadn’t come close to breaking. The doctor on duty had her hooked up to fluids, painkillers, and big-gun, broad-spectrum antibiotics. The next twelve hours would be crucial. If the infection spread to her blood, they could lose her.

  So where was Luke?

  The girl stirred and a low moan came from between her dry lips. With a jolt, her face convulsed in a twisted mass of pain. John took her hand in his. “It’s okay, Lori. You’re going to be okay.”

  She stirred just enough that John thought maybe she could hear him.

  Despite the months his son had spent with this young woman, John knew little more than that she’d been raised in an agnostic home that tended toward atheistic viewpoints, and that she was a supporter of many left-wing and New Age organizations and causes.

  Still, two truths remained: She was God’s child, and she loved Luke. And as such, John did for her what he would’ve done for any of his own children. He clutched her hand a bit more tightly, closed his eyes, and began to pray.

  “God, I beg you to lay your hand of mercy on Lori and breathe healing into her body.” His voice was a whisper, and the heat from her fevered body filled the air between them. “Help her survive this, Lord, and forgive her because—” His voice caught. The baby she aborted had been his grandchild, Luke’s son or daughter, a baby none of them would ever know. Still, John had no contempt for her. “Forgive her because she’s been lied to, God. And I’m sure she doesn’t understand what she’s done. Heal not just her body, but her heart. And forgive Luke, too. Thank you.”

  John straightened and let go of Lori’s hand. Whatever reason Luke had for not being here, it wasn’t good enough. John checked his watch, and it hit him that he had no idea where his son would be at seven-thirty on a weeknight.

  He sucked in a breath and wiped the back of his hand over his forehead. Nerves had no place in what he was about to do. He would have to go in the strength of what he knew was right, and pray that somehow Luke heard his heart. Because John Baxter’s days of sitting back and waiting for everything to work out were over.

  Even if Luke hated him for it.

  Luke’s poli-sci book was spread open before him, but he couldn’t focus on the words.

  Something about the judicial system or the process by which a judge could be removed from his place on the bench. But Luke’s concentration was gone, and this time it wasn’t only his past that plagued him.

  Lori was gone again, and he
had no idea where she was. She’d spent Monday at the doctor’s office, and Tuesday she’d stayed home with back cramps. PMS…it had to be PMS. He’d been right all along. But then this morning she was gone before he woke up. Her first class on Wednesdays was at ten o’clock. So where was she?

  Luke spent most of the afternoon wondering. Was she seeing someone else? Getting involved in some club or group that demanded all her time? If so, why hadn’t she told him? They’d agreed to have an open relationship. Lori said their inner beings couldn’t be free unless they kept their commitment open-ended. Luke agreed, because who cared what Lori did? He wasn’t in love with her.

  But if she had something else taking up her time, the least she could do was tell him. He forced his eyes back to where he’d left off in the book, but three lines later he stopped. Not one word had registered, and not just because of Lori’s strange behavior these past days.

  But because of Reagan.

  He pushed his chair back, planted his elbows on his thighs, and dropped his head into his hands. Why’d she have to call, anyway? Couldn’t she have let well enough alone? She didn’t love him anymore, hadn’t since that night they were together. If she had something to say to him, she could’ve said it any of the dozens of times he’d tried to call her.

  But now? What good could come of talking now? Did she really think he’d simply sit back and wait for her? That he’d keep going to church and believing God was good and chalk up her sudden disappearance to something that had never been meant to be in the first place?

  Hardly.

  Luke slid his chair closer to the table again. The poli-sci test was tomorrow at eight in the morning. He had to study or he’d never get a passing grade. He brought the book closer and found his place just as he heard a knock at the door.

  He looked up and knit his eyebrows together. Who on earth…? No one ever came over to hang out. And Lori would’ve used her key. A sinking feeling tightened around Luke’s airways. It couldn’t be his mother, could it? Twice before she’d stopped by with fresh-baked banana bread or a pile of mail.