word the doctor spoke embedded itself in Alan like a gut shot. Infuriated that he couldn’t help her, he stared at his unconscious wife. Her vulnerable, wounded body rumpled the blanket on her bed. The bank of blinking monitors that surrounded her screeched persistently enough to wake the dead. Alan bit the side of his cheek.
Men didn’t cry. So his father had preached, weeping into his beer or scrambled eggs or the ironing they’d both avoided after Alan’s mother left. Clutching Cate’s unresponsive hand, Alan alternated between an urge to bawl with unmanly pain and an acute need to break everything in the small hospital room.
“She’ll wake up,” Dr. Barton said, as if he saw through Alan’s attempt at stoic silence. “She’s healthy—no sign of infection in her wound. We just have to see where we stand. Tests, physical therapy—Excuse me, Alan, Nurse Matthews wants me.”
The doctor barely cleared the doorway before Cate’s twin, Caroline, slipped into the room.
She shared his wife’s fragile bone structure and dark auburn hair. In the old days, only he could tell them apart until Cate had begun using a blow-dryer to straighten her hair into a sleek curtain that brushed her shoulders. She’d looked more like a bank president than a loving creative homemaker. Caroline, a pragmatic businesswoman, never bothered to tame the wild curls she used now to cover her face. Neither of them seemed to see the contradiction in their hairstyles, but maybe Cate had expressed her altered feelings about her life in a not so subtle change.
Alan rubbed his fist against his temple, annoyed that he hadn’t asked her such questions before she’d decided to leave him.
Caroline eased around the bed. “What does Dr. Barton say?”
The sisters were so close they sometimes shared each other’s thoughts. If only Cate could sense Caroline’s pain, she’d wake up, feeling a compulsion to help her twin.
“Barton says the same thing over and over. We have to wait.” He stroked his wife’s forearm, grateful for the body heat that warmed her silky skin. How long since he’d touched her? How had he not noticed she was avoiding him, even in their bed? “I’m fed up with waiting.” Waiting and thinking about all the signs he should have read as he and Cate traveled to the end of their marriage.
“Where’s your dad, Alan? He’s the only member of our families unaccounted for in the waiting room, and I think you need him.”
Richard Palmer hated hospitals. Sickness scared the pants off him. “You know his phobia.”
“I thought he might have handled it for Cate.”
She clearly disapproved, and Alan didn’t blame her. “He calls our answering machine at home every ten minutes.” Alan roused himself. Last time he’d been out of this room, the waiting area had been empty. “Is Dan out there?”
Caroline shook her head. “I sent Shelly to look for him, and she called when she found him carrying a gas can down the highway. They’ll come here after she takes him to a service station and then back to his car.”
He nodded, twisting his hands on the metal bed rail. “A full gas tank probably seems pretty mundane to him right now.” He and Dan had stumbled blindly through the past two days. Cate anchored their family. Alan only hoped he was taking up enough of her slack to be a good father.
Caroline’s eyes seemed unnaturally wide as she tried to smile. “We’re all afraid. What if she doesn’t wake up? How long are we supposed to—”
“Don’t think about giving up.” Alan briefly hugged his sister-in-law. “She feels what you feel, Caroline.” It was ridiculous, putting such an airy-fairy notion into words, but Caroline met his gaze with Talbot determination.
“Don’t you worry.” She gripped Cate’s hand. “I refuse to lose her.”
Caroline’s tenacity almost renewed his faith. But it might be too late for him and Cate. Her serious injuries and the possibility she’d never let him try to win her back lingered in his mind.
He’d wanted to make her life comfortable and easy. Instead he’d let her down, and even now, he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.
The door swished open, and Aunt Imogen entered the room without speaking. Her bare head made Alan take a second look. She habitually wore oversize straw hats that she’d trimmed with flower displays never seen in nature. Today, only her fine gray curls clung to her temples.
Courage in her tired gaze touched Alan. He’d swear she hadn’t closed her eyes since he’d had to tell her about Cate. Neither had he, but she looked fragile.
He dragged a chair to the side of Cate’s bed. The way he’d let Cate think he resented her care for Aunt Imogen shamed him. According to local gossip, the older woman had been in midheartbreak over an affair with a married navy pilot when she’d taken in Cate and Caroline. Her emotionally hungry nieces had loved their aunt back to health, and Aunt Imogen and her brother, Ford, had shown Cate and Caroline the only true family affection they’d ever known. They’d also convinced Alan he belonged to the Talbot clan from the first day Cate had brought him home. He owed them as much as Cate ever could.
Taking Caroline’s hand, Aunt Imogen sat and smoothed the sheet beside Cate’s hip. “I guess you spoke to Dr. Barton this morning, Alan?”
Before he could answer, Uncle Ford prodded his way into the small room with the aid of a cherry cane and his great-niece Shelly’s hand at his elbow. Behind them, Dan craned for a glimpse of his mom.
Alan sidled through the others to wrap his arms around his son’s surprisingly broad shoulders. Dan hugged back, to Alan’s relief, but then he quickly pulled away. Dan preferred a handshake in recent years.
Alan met Aunt Imogen’s questioning gaze. “Barton can’t say much until Cate wakes up.”
“Until she breaks out of that coma,” Caroline said, as if the coma were an animal that had wrapped her sister in its vicious grip. “Let’s face facts.”
“I won’t face that word.” Aunt Imogen stood, her expression a faultless display of barely controlled fear. “Take this chair, Ford. Stop banging that cane.”
Her brother gave her an annoyed glance. “Good thing I’m not sensitive about having to use it.” He patted his sister’s hand. “I know you’re just worried.” Bellowing at a decibel level that compensated for the hearing loss he refused to admit, Uncle Ford nevertheless took Aunt Imogen’s seat. “Maybe the racket will wake—” he actually lifted his voice “—Cate.”
Her foot twitched beneath the blanket. Alan went back to her bed. “Cate?” Could waking her be that easy?
Her eyelids fluttered. For a horrified moment, he was afraid she couldn’t open her eyes.
“Cate,” he said, “wake up. Uncle Ford, why didn’t you shout at her before?”
“Shall I try again?” Uncle Ford struggled to his feet, maybe to lean a touch closer to Cate’s ear. He might have yelled again, except Dan appeared at his side to help him—or maybe to hold him back.
Alan flashed his son a grateful smile and took Cate’s hand. “Wake up,” he said again. “Please, Cate.” He didn’t beg easily, and his reticence had been a sore spot between them. He’d beg pretty damn freely now. “Cate,”
