replaced yesterday’s bouquet. Opened the sheers that had been pulled for the night across the window opposite them, giving Michelle a skyline view of the harbor she loved.
He’d turned on the sixty-inch flat-screen television hanging on the wall next to the window. And, when she’d frowned, turned it back off again, although he knew her frown probably had nothing to do with the TV.
Michelle comprehended little, if any, of what went on around her. According to her doctors, frowning—and smiling, too—were simple reflexes that came and went. Sometimes her eyes filled with tears—a physiological reaction to medication, dry eyes or something in the air. Her gaze would land on something sometimes, but there was no connection between visual stimulation and a thought process that would translate the view. Permanent vegetative state was the diagnosis—and it was the same according to all four specialists Josh and her family had called in from around the world to see to her. She couldn’t move of her own volition. Or speak. Or even think.
But somehow she breathed on her own. And as long as that was the case, Josh’s inheritance would be providing for her care. Every dime of it. From a trust account he’d established in her name.
Her parents had more than enough wealth to care for her. Insurance covered basic expenses. But as far as Josh was concerned, his money would be dirty if he spent it on himself.
“I’m going away, Michelle.” He said what he’d come to say. “I’m on my way out of town now.” He’d waited until nightfall so there’d be less traffic.
It seemed fitting that he’d slink away into the night.
Leaning forward, he grabbed a tissue from the box beside her and wiped a drop of drool from the side of her mouth, catching it before it could roll down her chin. “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he told her. It wasn’t right, him leaving her like this. But staying wasn’t right, either. His presence in town was hurting his father’s business, creating strife for the Wellingtons and embarrassing his mother’s family, the Montfords. The Montfords had worked hard to rebuild their reputation of decorum after his distant uncle’s scandalous marriage and desertion many decades before. They’d dedicated all the decades since to reestablishing themselves as a family of conservative do-gooders, whose purpose on earth was to contribute to and better the world and whose behavior was always above reproach.
Josh’s behavior, his selfishness and lack of awareness, had caused a scandal.
So he’d had to choose between further hurting Michelle, who, by all accounts had no idea he was even sitting there speaking with her, and hurting all of the people who loved him, who’d supported him and given him everything he had. People whom he’d taken completely for granted. People who still had work to do and much to contribute, to better the world in which they lived.
The choice had been a no-win. Hell. Just like the life his years of cavalier unawareness had created for him.
“It’s taken the Montfords three generations to gain back the respect my great-great-uncle lost,” he told Michelle, something he never would have mentioned to her in the past. Truth be told, he couldn’t remember ever having a meaningful conversation with her, period.
Even his marriage proposal had been made on the fly. They’d been skydiving that day. He’d been filled with the adrenaline of having conquered the air—coupled with his newly resolved determination that it was time for him to marry. His marriage would be good for the family name. Good for business.
And because, in all of his travels across the United States and abroad, he’d never found that one woman who stood out above the rest, he’d chosen the most beautiful one he knew.
One he’d dated on and off for years.
“Let’s get married,” he’d blurted over a glass of celebratory champagne in the back of the family limo on the way home from the airfield.
He would have driven his Mercedes convertible but hadn’t wanted to stay sober after the great event....
The sky outside Michelle’s window was a purplish hue, aglow from the lights of the harbor. Earlier that day, when he’d left his mother’s house, that sky had been a vivid blue. As blue as it had been the day, two years before when, without hesitation, Michelle had accepted his proposal. And thrown her arms around him, confessing her undying love for him.
He’d had no idea she’d cared so much. Then, or after.
He was one of the blessed ones. The privileged. He was too busy to care....
Busy upholding his reputation, keeping up appearances, studying and, later, working even harder than his ancestors had in order to ensure the continuation of the family name and financial success. And when his work was done, he’d been busy partying.
“My great-uncle a few times removed, Sam Montford, married a black woman and brought her to live in the family mansion downtown,” he told Michelle. Back then, the scandal had nearly ruined the Montfords. It was old history now, something people knew but didn’t talk about much anymore.
“And if that wasn’t bad enough,” he continued softly, “he fathered a child with her who was to be raised among the privileged society kids, equal to them.”
Michelle’s expressionless face gave proof to the seriousness of her condition. If she’d had any mental cognition at all, she’d have shuddered at that one. Not because of the child’s mixed race, but because of the societal scandal such an act would have caused back in his great-great-uncle’s day.
People of his family’s social class absolutely did not cause scandal. At any cost. To the Montfords and Wellingtons, Redmonds and people like them, appearances and reputations were every bit as valuable as their financial net worth. Sometimes more so.
In today’s world, his distant uncle’s actions might have produced a raised eyebrow in their conservative society, but generations ago, mixed marriages, particularly among the elite, were unheard of. Blasphemous.
Michelle offered him a steady stream of drool.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” he asked, wiping her chin and slowly running one finger down Michelle’s linen-clad knee.
Her therapist had already been there that day, and would be in again before bedtime, to massage every muscle in her body and move her limbs, to keep her as toned as they could for as long as they could.
Because he’d deemed it so. He wanted her to be as comfortable as she could be.
And the irony was not lost on him. If he’d paid even a hundredth of the attention to Michelle then that he did now, none of this would have happened. It was an inarguable fact—and the reason Josh took full blame for the probable attempted suicide that had left Michelle in her current state.
What kind of fool left his deliriously drunk fiancée alone to sleep it off while he went back to party some more? True, he hadn’t known that Michelle had consumed enough liquor to make alcohol poisoning a risk. He hadn’t even paid enough attention to know she had a low tolerance for alcohol. He knew she drank with the rest of them; he hadn’t bothered to notice how much. Or, in her case, how little. As her future husband, he should have noticed. And if he’d stayed with her that night, tended to her, paid even a little bit of attention to the symptoms of alcohol poisoning that she’d already been exhibiting, he could probably have saved her.
“Remember that New Year’s party we went to at the Montford
