our meeting wouldn’t be necessary.”
Lorraine frowned.
“But in the event of an untimely death, Virginia asked me to speak to you personally.”
Lorraine slid forward in her chair. “Mom wanted you to talk to me? About what?”
“Medical school.”
“Oh.” She gave a deep sigh. “Mom never understood about that.”
The attorney raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“It was a big disappointment to Mom when I decided to drop out.”
“Why did you?”
Lorraine looked out the window, although she scarcely noticed the view.
“A number of reasons,” she finally murmured, glancing down at her hands. “I love medicine and Mom knew that, but while I have the heart of a physician, I don’t have the competitive edge. I hated what medical school was like—the survival of the fittest. I couldn’t do that. Maybe I’m lazy, I don’t know, but I have everything I want now.”
“How’s that?”
Her smile was brief. “I do almost as much as a doctor, but without the bucks or the glory.”
“I believe your mother did understand that,” Dennis said, although Lorraine suspected it wasn’t completely true. “But she wanted you to know that the funds are available if you should change your mind and decide to go back.”
Lorraine’s eyes stung as she held back the tears. “Did she tell you I’d recently become engaged?”
“She hadn’t mentioned it. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. Gary and I only recently told…” Lorraine let the rest fade. The attorney waited patiently, but she didn’t trust her voice.
“If you reconsider and decide you’d try medical school again, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
His offer surprised her. “Thank you, but I’m not going to do that. Not when Gary and I are about to start our lives together.”
“Well, I promised I’d mention it to you if the occasion arose. It saddens me that it has.”
Within a few minutes, Dennis finished explaining the terms of the will and handed her the necessary paperwork. When she’d read everything, he passed her another sheet of paper.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“An inventory of the safe-deposit box. I went down to the bank yesterday afternoon and retrieved everything. I have it all for you here.” He stood and picked up the manila envelope on his credenza. “I wanted you to be sure that every document listed on the sheet is accounted for.”
Because she knew it was expected of her, Lorraine dumped the contents of the envelope onto the desk surface and checked off the items on the list. She’d previously seen or known about everything here. Or so she assumed until she found the opened letter addressed to her mother. How odd, she mused, studying its colorful foreign stamps.
“Do you know anything about this letter?” she asked the attorney.
“Nothing. Actually, it seemed odd to me that Virginia would put something so obviously personal in with documents that were all business-related.”
“It’s from Mexico,” Lorraine said unnecessarily.
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“Postmarked seven years ago.” She withdrew the single page inside. After scanning it, she turned it over and read the signature. Gasping, she lifted her head to stare at Dennis Goodwin.
“You’re…you’re sure you didn’t know about this?” She was unable to conceal her shock.
“Lorraine, I don’t know anything about that letter. I was your mother’s lawyer, not her confidant. What she chose to place in the safe-deposit box had nothing to do with my role as her attorney.”
Lorraine sagged against the back of the chair and raised her hand to her throat. “Could…could I have a glass of water please?” Her mouth felt incredibly dry and her voice had gone hoarse. This couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be real. This was crazy.
“I’ll be right back.” Dennis stepped out of his office and quickly returned with a large paper cup.
Lorraine drank the contents in several noisy gulps and briefly closed her eyes, trying to take in what she’d learned.
“I’m sorry if something’s upset you,” Dennis said.
“You really haven’t read the letter?” she asked shakily.
“No, of course not. It would’ve been highly unethical to do so.”
Lorraine waited until she’d regained her composure enough to sound unemotional. “It appears, Dennis,” she said calmly, “that my father isn’t dead, after all.”
Two
T he nightmare woke Thomas Dancy out of a sound sleep. He opened his eyes and filled his lungs with air. A breeze wafted in through the open bedroom window and a full April moon cast fingers of cool light into the room. It’s just a dream, he reminded himself. One that came to him periodically. It was always the same, and despite the passage of almost thirty years; it hadn’t lessened in intensity. He relived every gut-wrenching detail—and always woke up at the same point, trembling with fear and terror. Again, as he did every time, Thomas felt unabashed relief that it had only been a dream. Again, he reminded himself that the worst was over. He’d walked through that hell once, and lived.
Thomas threw back the sheet and sat on the edge of the thin mattress as the darkness and the effects of the nightmare closed in around him. Even now that he was wide-awake, the fear refused to release him, had seeped into his bones.
He’d lost so much, back in the early seventies. By far his greatest and most profound loss had been his wife and daughter, but the dream had nothing to do with them.
In an effort to combat the lingering traces of depression—the dream’s legacy—he formed a mental picture of Ginny and tiny Raine the day he’d left for Vietnam. Ginny had been so young, so beautiful. Her face had been streaked with tears as she held their daughter in her arms. Despite everything that had gone wrong in the years since, that particular image never failed to lighten his heart.
She’d come to the airport to see him off to war. A war he didn’t understand and had no desire to fight. It had nearly killed him to leave his family that day. But in the end he’d been the one to do the killing.
Guilt surged up in him and he shook his head, refusing to allow his thoughts to stumble down that path. He rubbed his face with both hands, as if he could erase the last residue of the dream and all the memories it brought back.
He couldn’t.
The trembling started again, and he stood and walked over to the window and stared into the
