At Close Range

6

Brian looked at his watch. Almost two in the morning. Once again, he’d had no concept of the time. “It’s late.”

“I know.”

“I told Cynthia not to worry if I didn’t make it home.”

Hannah sat up and wrapped her arms around her middle. She’d never changed out of the navy skirt and jacket she’d worn to court that day. Suits were pretty much all he saw her in anymore. “No, Brian, go,” she said. “I really appreciate you staying this long, but I’m a big girl who’s been living alone for years. Most of my life, really. I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t doubt that,” he said, but still didn’t intend to leave. “Just as I don’t doubt that if the situation were reversed, there’s no way you’d let me stay by myself.”

“I…”

“My folks and Cara’s were around after Cara died, but if they hadn’t been, you’d have stayed, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, but…”

“And last year, with Carlos…” He’d avoided the name, mostly because he knew that her emotional reaction to Callie’s death was worsened by the grief she’d already been fighting. “I never would have left that night if Joan, Maggie and Donna hadn’t been here.”

Joan had been a sorority sister from ASU, as well, though a year behind Hannah and Cara. Maggie and Donna were fellow judges Hannah had known for several years, though he’d only met them at Carlos’s funeral.

“Cara and Carlos were people, Brian. Callie’s a cat. People lose pets every day. You expect to lose them. Their lives are much shorter than ours.”

“Hers shouldn’t have ended yet. And expecting to lose them doesn’t make it any easier when it happens, does it?” He threw her own words back at her.

He wasn’t leaving. No matter what she said. Ever since her drug-addicted mother had lost her to the foster system sometime in Hannah’s early youth, Hannah had been alone. He knew the story.

She’d taken care of herself. Survived.

But tonight, Hannah’s eyes were communicating something else.

Tonight, Hannah Montgomery was afraid to be alone.

“Can I ask you something?” Hannah had no idea how late it was. A long time after their two o’clock check, but there was no hint of dawn through the window blinds. She’d taken off her sandals and jacket.

“Of course.” Brian had stripped down, too. Sort of. He’d lost the tie. And taken off his shoes when he’d put his feet up on the couch. Though they sat close together, their legs weren’t touching.

She and Brian rarely touched—except for the occasional supportive hug or hand squeeze.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” It was a leading question. She’d known that before she asked.

Even so, his answer mattered.

“What kind of wrong? Like do I think you should take a sleeping pill and get some rest—that kind of wrong? Or do you look like you’re getting the flu kind of wrong?”

He knew what she meant. She could tell from the way he wasn’t meeting her eyes.

She should just let it go. Soul searching wasn’t a common practice with either of them. They both had too much baggage. To look was to hurt. Period.

But it was almost morning and she hadn’t been to bed. Overwhelmed by exhaustion, both physical and emotional, she wasn’t herself.

She studied him through eyes that burned with fatigue. Brian’s features were strong, confident. But it was his mouth that drew her. It turned up just a hint at the corners, with full lips that smiled easily. They seemed to promise comfort. To promise that everything would be okay.

Must be what his patients’ parents saw every day.

“I’ve been caregiver only three times in my entire life…” She broke off when she heard how far back into her thoughts she’d gone; she’d intended to leave most of the hell unvisited.

“Jason and Carlos. And Callie?”

“Right.” God, how she hurt. How she’d always hurt. “And all three of them died younger than they should have.”

Brian sat up on the couch. “If you think—”

Raising one hand, Hannah shook her head. She didn’t need him to tell her the deaths weren’t her fault. She’d already been over the facts a thousand times.

“I know they didn’t die because of me.” She wanted to make that quite clear. “I mean, I could hardly be responsible for Jason’s cancer when he was diagnosed before we even met. But he was in remission when I met him. His prognosis was the best it had ever been. There was honest-to-goodness hope.”

Brian stared at her. “And?”

For a second, she’d forgotten she was talking to a doctor. A pragmatist. When she’d first known Brian, he’d been an undergrad at Arizona State University slightly full of himself, and a little fonder of partying than she was.

“I wore him out,” she said. “He wanted to make love all the time and I knew it wasn’t good for him, that the doctor said he had to take it easy, give his body a chance to build the antibodies it needed…”

“I don’t think he’d have put it quite like that,” Brian said. “And while there’s a lot to be said for rest, there’s even more to be said for the power of the mind in combating some of these diseases. You being there with Jason—making him happy—probably gave him months he wouldn’t otherwise have had.”

Brian was a very sweet man. A good friend. The best.

“And I’m guessing, from everything you’ve told me about him, from everything Cara said, having you there in the end—an end that was inevitable—made those days priceless for him.”

“I made it hard for him to go,” she said now, remembering when Jason had lain in her arms, weak and in excruciating pain, in tears because he was going to die and she would have to face a life without him. In the end, the dream that he’d reiterated time and again, that he wanted her to fall in love, have a family, be happy, had fallen apart and he’d begged her to swear she wouldn’t give another man what she’d given him.

Wanting to calm his panic, she’d made the promise they’d both known she wasn’t likely to keep.

That had hurt him, too.

“And we both know that you took excellent care of Carlos.”

“Jason and I tried to have a child,” she said. Something she’d never told anyone before. “Our whole marriage. That’s why he wanted to make love so often.”

“You sure it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he had a beautiful woman he adored in his bed?”

She might’ve been embarrassed if she hadn’t felt exhausted. If this had been someone besides Brian.

“I wanted so badly to be able to have his child. I think it would’ve comforted him to know that whatever life I built would always include a part of him.”

“It will anyway,” Brian said, his face serious. “The best part. He taught you how to love fully.”

Maybe. Probably. “Still, such a simple thing, getting pregnant, and I couldn’t even do that.”

“I’m sure the doctors told you that Jason’s medication made him sterile.”

“There was a slight chance he could still…”

“Very slight. Miraculously slight. Like a vasectomy reversing itself.”

“It happens.” Or maybe that was just an old wives’ tale.

“Your lack of conception had nothing to do with you, Hannah.” Brian’s voice was firm. “And neither did Carlos’s death.”

“I laid him on his tummy.”

Brian’s sigh spoke volumes. They’d been through all this before. Carlos had been sick to his stomach and she hadn’t wanted him to spit up and choke. That night, the risk of SIDS seemed far less than the risk of asphyxiation. That’s what Brian had told her several times over the past months.

But she needed to say this.

“And look at Callie,” she continued, her case gaining strength as she presented it. “What kind of caregiver gets so involved in her own life, in a trial, that she doesn’t notice her declawed and completely cowardly cat slipping out the door with her?”

“You’re human, Hannah. And we don’t know for sure that’s how it happened.”

“If we’re going to believe there was no foul play, which everyone seems to, then we have to assume I let her out.”

His sigh, this time, sounded more resigned. “Like I said, you’re human. She’s never slipped out before has she? From what I’ve seen, she ran and hid whenever you picked up your keys.”

“She did. She hated riding in the car.”

“And you had her eleven years.”

She nodded.

“So having her slip out would be the last thing you’d expect. Or even watch for.”

“Parents have to be on guard at all times. They have to expect the unexpected.”

“And you did. I’ve never seen a more involved, conscientious and yet fun parent as you.”

Being Carlos’s mother had been fun. She’d managed to keep both promises she’d made to Jason—she had a family and was happy, but had fallen in love again, too—albeit differently.

And then one morning, it hadn’t been fun at all. She’d gone in to check on her sleeping son before her shower and found him oddly still….

“I should’ve known.”

How could she have been blissfully asleep when her baby was dying across the hall? How could she have lain in bed for five minutes after she finally woke, stretching, anticipating the day ahead, with a dead baby in the next room?

“There’s no way you could’ve known—”

“Instinct.” She pounded on the one thing that no one could ever prove to her. Or disprove. “Motherly instinct,” she clarified. “I don’t think I have it. I don’t know how to nurture.”

“Bullshit.”

Hannah blinked. The Brian she’d known in college might have said that. Not this one.

“Think about it, Brian. Think about where I came from. The first three months of my life I wasn’t held, fed, changed on a regular basis. By the time Child Protective Services got me, I was suffering from malnutrition and God knows what kind of skin conditions. I knew my guardian ad litem better than some of my foster families. I missed a vital part of my emotional education.”

“The learning to let others take care of you part, maybe.” Brian’s concession was dry. “Not the learning to care for others part.”

“My lack of nurturing instinct is what makes me good at my job,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “If I were a nurturer how could I possibly face an eighteen-year-old kid and make decisions that might help get him a death sentence?”

“Because what he did was heinous and to let him live would put other lives at risk.”

“He’s little more than a child.”

“He brutally beat another kid to death, simply because that kid’s skin wasn’t white.”

“And what about the mothers whose children I take away? Where’s my compassion then?”

“With the children. Would you want them suffering from malnutrition and skin disease the way you did?”

“I don’t know.” Hannah shook her head, looking inward. “I examine the facts and make decisions. I don’t think I feel anything at all.”

When Brian’s brows drew together, she figured she’d convinced him. And was disappointed that it hadn’t been harder. She wasn’t surprised, though.

“How well do you sleep at night?”

“Depends on the night.”

“Any night after a trial.” And when she didn’t immediately answer, he added, “Or a sentencing. Which,” he went on without letting her answer, “would be just about every Friday night, wouldn’t it?”

The man remembered too much. Or else she talked too much.

“What do you usually do on Friday nights, Hannah?”

He knew what she did. She’d turned down enough invitations from him over the years.

“When I’m not at a SIDS conference, you mean?”

He nodded.

“I come home. Have a quiet dinner…”

“Usually a frozen dinner you microwave because you don’t have the energy to cook. Though you love to cook.”

Peering over at her with his head slightly bent, Brian reminded her of a teacher she’d once had who’d always seemed to think she wasn’t giving him her best effort.

“I have dinner and then I either read a book or take a hot bath or both.”

“And have a glass of wine.”

“One. Sometimes.”

“All to help you relax so that you can sleep.”

Smart-ass.

“Am I right?”

He knew he was. There was no point in admitting the obvious.

“Just because my job takes a lot out of me doesn’t mean I’m a nurturer.”

Brian clasped his hands on his lap in front of him. “I’m prepared to argue this the rest of the night.”

“So am I.”

And they did.

In the end, Hannah felt a lot better. But she still wasn’t convinced.

Watching the beautiful woman seated next to him in Symphony Hall Saturday night, William Horne couldn’t help the frisson of worry in his gut. Hannah could hardly keep her eyes open, and while she’d said that she’d slept and was fine, he knew there were things she wasn’t telling him.

His son, twelve-year-old Francis, had played his piece. William wouldn’t be seeing him after the show. He wouldn’t be seeing him at all until his mother had one more day in court. With a judge specially appointed from another county.

“You want to go?” He leaned over to whisper in her ear.

Frowning, she shook her head. “I’m enjoying this.” And then, her expression suddenly compassionate, she added, “Unless you want to?”

He did. Kind of. But not if she was actually relaxing. Enjoying herself.

“No, I’m fine.” He smiled. Covered her hand where it lay on the armrest between them—a rare show of the physical affection he fought so hard to hold in check.

She’d outdone herself that evening, dressed in a figure-hugging black dress that brushed her calves. Her hair was swept up in an array of curls, leaving her neck exposed. And the diamond hoops threaded through her earlobes had been driving him crazy.

Lately, everything about this woman drove him crazy. From her body to her intellect and personality, she was under his skin.

As the concert went on, shrouding him in a cocoon of darkness and classical music and Hannah’s perfume, he let his mind dwell more intimately on the woman beside him.

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