know. She pretended to be me when I played hooky from school. She helped me run away with my bad husband, and then she picked up the pieces when he left me. She’s baby-sat Shelly when my childcare fell through, and she does more than her fair share for Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford.” Caroline paused to draw breath. “None of what she’s done changes the fact that my face scares her.”
“She sees your face every time she looks in a mirror.” He stepped inside the small house. It wasn’t so welcoming to a man. Only women lived here, and he felt too large for the narrow hall, the dainty French furniture. “Are you afraid to see her?”
She met his gaze. Not for the first time, this woman who looked so much like his wife but thought so differently disconcerted him. In silence, Caroline led him to the kitchen. She poured a cup of strong black coffee and set it on the counter in front of him.
“I’m terrified. Cate is part of me. We share so many of the same memories I’m not sure who I am without her.”
Her frankness only emphasized their serious fix. Caroline had become his friend as he’d fallen in love with her sister. He’d helped her and Shelly when he could, but she’d never confided in him this way.
And now they were going through the same crisis. Who were they when Cate, the glue that had held their family together, no longer knew them?
He closed his eyes. A shout rose in his throat. Pure pain that no one but Cate could alleviate. Only his Cate no longer existed.
“I understand why you’re reluctant,” he managed to say. “She may not remember you, but she needs you. You are part of each other. You can tell her things about her past that the rest of us don’t know.”
“I don’t know her better than you do, Alan.” She took another coffee cup from the cabinet. “I’m only her sister. You’re her husband.”
Not a very good husband. He’d blamed their uneasiness on the stress of raising a teenager who was about to leave home. He’d assumed they’d find their way back to each other after Dan left.
Not that he’d resented Cate’s devotion to their son. They’d both wanted to be better parents than their own. But he’d lost sight of Cate, the woman, in his reliance on her. Over the years, he’d become the provider. She’d been the mom. Had their roles divided them, or had Cate stopped loving him?
“What’s on your mind, Alan? Something else is going on.” Caroline’s conviction reminded him of Cate after she’d seen through all his half truths. “You’ve never stormed in here before to point out my responsibilities to Cate.”
“Help her. Make her remember.”
“Make her?” Caroline blanched. “You’re thinking she chose to forget? I wonder, too. Who made her so unhappy? You? Me? I’ve let her take care of me as if she really were older.”
“She is. She takes those thirteen minutes seriously.”
“And twenty-seven seconds.” Caroline poured coffee in her cup and lifted it to her mouth for a wary sip. “Don’t forget those twenty-seven seconds.”
“She never meant to make you think you couldn’t take care of yourself.”
“Sometimes I couldn’t. I needed her, but I couldn’t admit it. I always wanted to prove I knew how to handle my own life.”
Her guilt sounded too familiar. He’d needed Cate to believe he was her knight in shining armor, but he’d tried so hard to be a professional success—and then failed so spectacularly—he’d broken her ability to trust him at all.
Damn it, he’d learn how to win back her faith, but she still needed the rest of her family. “Why don’t you take care of her this time?”
She widened her eyes, as if she hadn’t thought of the possibilities. That happened when guilt overwhelmed you. “What’s to stop me?” She toasted him with her coffee cup. “I will go. Tonight. Evening visitor’s hours.”
He set his own cup on the counter. “I have to go into the office for a few hours. Can you fax me your budget for the medical center interiors?”
“Sure. Why are you working on Sunday, Alan?”
He had no choice. He still had to save the company. Caroline and too many others depended on him for their jobs. “I’ve spent so much time at the hospital I have to catch up on paperwork. How close are you to the figures we discussed when we started the project? Not over budget anywhere?”
She plucked a pair of glasses from the shelf beside the sink and slid them onto her nose. Cate didn’t need glasses. “I’ll get the file now if you want. We’re close on window treatments, and I hooked us up with the rugs.”
“Hooked us up?”
She flashed a grin. “Don’t you ever talk to Dan? I worked us a deal.”
Like her, he felt more at ease talking about work, a topic he and Cate rarely discussed. Lately, he’d tended to share tense silence with his wife. Silence couldn’t bide easily between two people hiding life-altering secrets.
“I’M DR. DAVIS. I hear you don’t remember me.”
Cate looked up from her book, relieved to quit pretending she could concentrate enough to read. A tall woman stood in the doorway, finely dressed in a beige suit that complemented her dark-mocha skin. Her looks were lovely, but the supreme confidence in her eyes brought Cate the deepest sense of assurance she remembered feeling.
“I’m happy to meet you.” Cate took a get well card from the table and slid it into her book to mark her place. “Come in.”
The other woman set a file on the nightstand. “Did you tell Alan about the baby?”
“Yesterday.” She left out the part where he’d gone and not come back.
“He didn’t take it well?” Dr. Davis reached for the call button on the cord at Cate’s shoulder. “You can’t blame him for that?”
“Maybe. Who are you calling?”
“A nurse. I’d like to examine you now that you haven’t spotted for several days. Your body has endured a great deal of trauma, and I’d like to make sure the baby’s perfectly healthy.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Relax if you can.”
Cate tried to disguise her distress. “I’m not sure I could even if I remembered how a pelvic feels.”
Dr. Davis laughed. “Good point.”
The nurse came, and the doctor began her exam. She seemed dissatisfied with what she found. From her particularly vulnerable position, Cate still tried to be brave. “What?” she asked bluntly.
“Nothing to worry about.” Dr. Davis peered over her shoulder at the nurse. “Open Cate’s file and remind me of her dates.”
The date of Cate’s last cycle seemed to make matters worse. Cate fought her increasingly primitive need to remove herself from the doctor’s hands. “You’re
