Unforgettable Love Page 11

  Julie’s eyes stung with tears. She had thought maybe her mom would have seen how out of hand everything had gotten. A smile can break a hard heart just long enough to get a breath of fresh air inside. Sometimes that was all a person needed. But Julie was wrong when it came to her mother.

  With one last look around, Julie grabbed her wallet this time and left the half-packed suitcase, the messy overstuffed drawer and everything else the way it was. She knew she had a cell phone but had no idea what had happened to it. It disappeared somewhere in the darkness of her amnesia. Her only regret about that would be that she’d have to wait a little while to call her dad. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe she would let a few days go by before reaching out to him and letting him know where she was.

  Stepping outside the house and closing the door quietly behind her, Julie looked at Aaron who was studying her as if to see if she had any new scratches or bruises on her body.

  “Are you alright?”

  Julie nodded but said nothing, wiping away a stray tear.

  “Do you have any bags you want me to carry?”

  She shook her head no and gently touched the charm hanging around her neck.

  “I’m sorry, Julie. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea at all.”

  “No.” She looked up at him as they walked to his car. Aaron opened the door for Julie as she took one last look at her home. “I’m glad I came and told my mom the truth. She may not like it, but I don’t think she’ll stay mad forever.”

  Aaron nodded his head, but he wasn’t so sure. He knew a couple people in his life who he had made mad, and he was pretty sure they wouldn’t mind spitting on him if he were on fire. Looking at Julie, he thought maybe he should fix those things in his life. She looked peaceful, even if she was just a little sad.

  As they pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the expressway, Aaron spoke.

  “What did your mom say?”

  Julie rested her head against the back of the seat.

  “She said good-bye.” She shrugged her shoulders and left it at that. Even though she was angry and more than a little hurt by her mother’s reaction, she wouldn’t talk badly about her. Julie just didn’t have it in her to be that mean. James was different, and everything Julie had said about him had been true. He was cruel for sport, and Julie would not cover for him. But her mother was the only mother she would ever have. The woman was going to have a hard enough time living up to the standards of everyone else, so why would Julie want to add to that misery? She wouldn’t.

  How devastating was it going to be for her to face the ladies at the country club and tennis club and all the other places she went to and tell them the wedding of the century was off?

  Julie couldn’t worry about that. She was ready to find Mark. In fact, she felt exhilarated. She was free, and everyone knew it. She wasn’t hiding, sneaking away anywhere. She was just leaving to start her new life. And when enough time had passed, she would talk to her mother again. Maybe her mother would even talk back. But she couldn’t live her life for her parents. She had to make it her own. And she was more excited to do that than she thought she ever could be.

  Chapter 13

  “Well, that’s just like my sister to lay claim to crystal stemware that was passed down in someone else’s family,” Mrs. Carter spoke into her phone, fanning herself with one hand and inspecting the polish on the fingers of the other, while keeping the phone tucked tightly between her chin and shoulder. Her left leg bounced over her right as she sat in her wide backed chair on the patio. The sound of the ocean and Tobie barking and chasing fireflies were the only life at the house besides her making any noise.

  “But what can I tell you? I disowned that girl three decades ago and still people insist on calling me when she’s done something offensive. Zebras do not change their stripes.” She shook her head at the voice coming through on the other line.

  “Oh, kin be darned. I swear the tomcat in the barn was closer kin to me than her. Why I ...”

  Her voice trailed off as she looked up to see what else was moving near her back gate entrance. The gate was opening up, and before Mrs. Carter realized it, a small, feminine hand wrapped around the wood, gently pushing it open.

  “Speaking of kin,” she said absently into the phone. “Darlin’, I’m going to have to call you back. Well, how do I know what to do about the crystal? Tell her your neighbor is dying and has a sterling silver punch bowl set. Mimi always was easily distracted by shiny things.” She hung up the phone and quickly stood, taking a few hesitant steps to the edge of the wooden deck.

  Julie shut the gate carefully and smiled broadly at Mrs. Carter. She didn’t know exactly what she should do, but her heart helped push her feet quickly along, and before she knew it, she was running to the older woman and embracing her in a tight, affectionate hug.

  Tears fell down both their cheeks, and Mrs. Carter rocked Julie in her arms, patting and stroking her long hair.

  “Well, am I glad to see you, young lady.” Tobie, too, came bounding out of the darkness to greet Julie with a pounding tail that almost lifted his whole hind end off the ground. He wagged it wildly, showering yelps of happiness that another set of hands was available to pat his head and scratch his ears. “And it looks like someone else is happy to see you.”

  Julie patted Tobie, and when she stopped, he bounded back off into the yard to roll in the dirt some more.

  “Is Mark here?”

  Mrs. Carter[bc4] took a deep breath and folded her arms across her chest.

  “No, honey, he isn’t. He asked me to watch Tobie for him for a couple of days. I’m not sure where he is or for how long.”

  Julie’s face drooped.

  “Do you have his phone number? Can I use your phone and call him?”

  “First off, I do not have his phone number. And second, it is after eleven o’clock. It wouldn’t be one bit proper for a young lady like yourself to go calling on a gentleman at this hour lest he gets the wrong impression. Sit.” She stood over Julie just a little. “We’ve got some talking to do.”

  Julie felt her heart hit her feet. If she had to wait much longer, she was going to explode, she knew it. Her hysterical amnesia would get so bad that she would forget how to breathe or eat, and the next thing anyone would know, she’d be passed out on the floor. This waiting was killing her, she knew it.

  She sunk sadly down in the chair and stared into the yard. Above her, the happy tinkling of glass wind chimes set a meditative mood, and the yellow lighting made everything look warm and inviting.

  The atmosphere was soothing and made Julie feel she was at home, even though she wasn’t. She was far from home. Far from the life she had known for twenty-five years, and now she was hoping to nurture a relationship with Mark, maybe even share a life with him, and he had gone.

  “Mrs. Carter. I came all this way to tell him something important.”

  “Well, you might want to start by telling him what happened to you. That boy was on cloud nine after he had you over for dinner. I personally know he told his mama a great deal about you. Maybe even planned to introduce the two of you, but then you just disappeared.”

  Nothing came out of Julie’s mouth. When she thought of the chain of events that led her to this moment, the whole thing sounded like some crazy soap opera.

  “And then both of us drove to your house in San Francisco to find you and ...”

  “What? Drove to my house? When?”

  Mrs. Carter smirked just a little. She had a gut feeling about Julie’s fiancé and her mother, and the fact Julie had no idea she had a gentleman caller confirmed her suspicions. Those people were scandalous. She told Julie about their visit and what her fiancé had said.

  In between sobs, Julie shook her head and held her face in her hands.

  “None of what he said is true, Mrs. Carter! None of it at all! You have to believe me!” She gulped big swallows of air, trying to calm down as she explained everything she could remember. She told Mrs. Carter abou
t Aaron and his sisters and what eventually led to her leaving San Francisco for the second time, coming back to Los Angeles to find Mark.

  “And you don’t have anything with you, just the shirt on your back?”

  Nodding her head and feeling very embarrassed by this fact, Julie couldn’t quite look Mrs. Carter in the eyes.

  She doesn’t believe me, she thought. The story is too outlandish, and I sound so stupid. What am I doing here?

  “Well, if you didn’t mind our original arrangement, you are more than welcome to stay here indefinitely.”

  Suddenly Julie’s sobs stopped.

  “You believe me? You believe I’m not the things James said, that I’m not a cruel person.”

  “Well, honestly girl, anyone who spends more than five minutes with you would know that man was lying. And besides, your story isn’t as uncommon as you may think. There are many girls in the world whose parents have tried to marry them off to men who weren’t what they appeared to be.” She smiled, took a seat across from Julie and began to fan herself again, her eyes dancing with a fire Julie had never seen.

  “Did that happen to you?” she asked Mrs. Carter as she leaned in a little closer.

  “Well, it’s a long story that deserves to be told, but not tonight. Tonight, we have to devise a plan to help us locate the handsome Mr. Mark Stewart. And I think I know exactly where to start.”

  Julie’s face lit up, and as the ladies talked into the wee hours of the night, Richard and Margaret Peterson spent the night in separate bedrooms.

  “Margaret, she’s our only child. What were you thinking?” Richard said, having found Margaret in Julie’s room when he came home from work. She was packing things into boxes and bags, carefully folding clothes, stacking photos and taking knickknacks off the shelves.

  “I can’t believe you are alright with your daughter throwing her life away,” Margaret said as if she were just repeating something she had heard on the news.

  Pacing back and forth, Richard shook his head. He hadn’t been the same since Julie had run away. The memories of her at the hospital right after she was born, the time she came down with the chickenpox and Richard held her and sang to her when she fussed, to the first dance she went to with that nerdy boy with the big nose and slight lisp and hundreds of other visions haunted him as he worried and prayed she wasn’t hurt.

  “She just got back. Margaret, she ran away from us, her parents. Not a couple of bullies at school or a mugger on the street. Her parents! She ran away from her own parents! And when we get her back safe and unhurt, you make sure she knows she isn’t welcome if she doesn’t do things your way?”

  “She’s ruining her life, Richard.” Margaret’s voice was low, but her anger was starting to show as her hands fumbled more and more as she kept pulling her hair back from her face.

  “No, she isn’t ruining her life. You’re ruining all of our lives. She doesn’t want to marry James? Big deal. It isn’t the end of the world.”

  “It most certainly is a big deal. How is he going to feel? What about his parents? They’ll never speak to us again after this. Are you prepared to be left out of all the golf outings and insider trading tips and charity events over your daughter’s cold feet?”

  “Yes! Yes I am!”

  “You’re crazy, Richard! That girl has developed a taste for the dramatic, and you’re falling right into her trap.” Finally, with a forehead shining with sweat, Margaret turned to face Richard. “We’re not going to be around forever, Richard. With James, she’ll at least have a chance to live a good life. Without him, heaven only knows what she’ll do.”

  “She’s not an infant, Margaret. She’s a grown woman. She has a kind heart. And she isn’t afraid of all the things you seem to think are lurking out there in the world. Julie isn’t afraid to just be herself, and if that means marrying a guy who works at an office job or works as a nurse, or whatever the case may be, I don’t care as long as she stays the good girl she is.”

  Margaret narrowed her eyes at Richard as if he were evil, plain and simple.

  “So you’re taking her side.”

  “My God, Margaret! She’s our only child, and you didn’t let her take so much as a sweater! Whose side should I be on?”

  Margaret dropped the shirt she was folding on the dresser and walked angrily past Richard.

  “Well, you can take either side of the bed tonight. I’ll sleep in the spare room.”

  But that night, Margaret didn’t sleep. And it was only when the sun came up that she said a prayer for herself. Whether she really knew it was a prayer or not wasn’t important. It was just the words.

  “My God, what am I doing wrong?”

  With just the silence of the house around her, she might have actually heard an answer. But sleep finally overtook her. When she woke up, she was angrier than she had been before she laid down in the spare room away from her husband. Richard had also not slept very well. He worried about his daughter and his wife and their futures.

  When Mark woke up in his apartment without Tobie, a moment of fear swept over him. But then he remembered he had asked Mrs. Carter to keep him for just a few days so he could gather his thoughts. Barricading himself in his place was not healthy or even smart. He just didn’t want to talk to anyone. He needed to rest. He needed to think. He needed to throw himself just a small pity party.

  But, it was a brief party since after a sleepless night he had to go to work. The law office of Terrance VanDriska was not going to carve a niche for itself in the halls of justice without him as their lead paralegal. He laughed a little to himself.

  But at the moment, he really wished he had some deposition on the other side of the country that he had to take to get him away from Inspiration Point. Some testimony he had to take about a grizzly accident where people were way worse off than he was so he could get a little perspective. Maybe stop feeling so sorry for himself. Or at least know there was a little misery out there looking for some company.

  He crawled out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom, making a note to himself that the apartment was lonely, and he would go back and get Tobie this evening. Maybe Mrs. Carter would let him wallow in her presence. Although she was never one to suffer fools, and that was what Mark was. At least he felt like one.

  Thinking back to the night he met Julie, he remembered he almost took a right instead of a left. He almost didn’t even go that way toward Inspiration Point, but he did.

  “That’s because you were supposed to, dummy. How can you even consider what that jerk was saying in San Francisco.” He interrogated himself in the bathroom mirror. “He was nearly frothing at the mouth. Mrs. Carter is right. Those people were a bit on the looney side, and here you are buying into their story as if it were gospel.”

  But, if none of it were true, where was Julie? Why were the flowers he gave her just tossed on the ground? Why didn’t she call or something? That reminded Mark that he still had her cell phone and backpack, but the thought of looking at them, of touching her things or smelling the scent of her skin on them made his heart crack in two. So the stuff just sat in the corner of his apartment out of view.

  He got ready for work in a fog.

  “If your heart is broken, you make sure you wear a nice outfit to work. You don’t let people know all your problems. Keep them to yourself, then call your mama when you get home.” That was what Mark’s mother would say to him. He didn’t feel like it, but he thought she was right. He dressed as if he had an interview. In fact, once he was at work, several of the other attorneys and secretaries asked if he was thinking of making a switch.

  “Nope. Just felt like cleaning up a bit,” he said, smiling.

  “Well, you sure do clean up nice,” Meagan O’Rourke said as she came to his office. She was an attorney, who had started not long after Mark did about seven years ago. She had immediately developed a crush on him, which still held fast today.

  “I hate to break it to you but Mr. Lupinski has been calling and will not
take no for an answer. He said he wanted to talk with you only, and if you didn’t return his call, he was coming to the office. So please, do us all the favor and call him back.”

  “Of all the days. Why today?” Mark half mumbled, half whined.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  Mark shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Julie to another woman. Even though he had nothing more than friendly feelings toward Meagan, Mark just didn’t feel right pouring out his feelings to anyone right now.

  “I’m just not myself today. Did you ever have one of those days?”

  Meagan rolled her eyes and smiled.

  “When don’t I? Maybe we could go out after work and compare notes. That new Chinese restaurant opened up couple blocks down. I’m sure whatever is wrong with you can be cured with some egg drop soup and egg rolls,” she fluttered her eyelashes up and down.

  “That sounds tempting but after talking with Lupinski, I know I’m not going to have much of an appetite. Thanks, anyways.”

  Meagan shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

  “Well, if you change your mind let me know. Otherwise, go ahead and deal with your neurosis on your own. Don’t say I never tried to help you.”

  Feeling as if he needed a nap, Mark dialed Mr. Lupinski’s number and waited for the gruff, gravelly voice to bark into the receiver.

  Mr. Lupinski had hired Mark to help him after he had gotten hurt at work. Not understanding the judicial system or rather not believing the laws applied to him, Mr. Lupinski wanted to know what was holding up his case and did Mark know about the new development at his previous employers.

  “Mr. Lupinski, I told you, you need to quit spying on your old bosses. It isn’t necessary.”

  “Well, if you guys would hire a private investigator like I told you to, you’d see all the shady shenanigans that were going on at that place.”

  Mr. Lupinski slipped off a loading dock and severely hurt his back. He would be well compensated. The company had accepted full responsibility, and he should be able to live out the rest of his life in comfort. He wouldn’t be a Rockefeller, but he wouldn’t have any real monetary worries either. However, the man wasn’t satisfied. His attorney, Jared Wilson, was never in the office so Mark, who worked on Mr. Lupinski’s file, was stuck taking all his calls. There had been over a dozen since the case settled two weeks ago.