Some Enchanted Season Read online

  He knew the way to the rehab center in his sleep. When the hospital had done all they could for Maggie, Tom had researched the options and selected the Allen-Ridley Institute as the next best step. Located on a twenty-acre tract in a Buffalo suburb, it looked more like a gracious old hotel than a rehabilitation hospital. The main building sprawled across a lawn that was emerald green in summer and neatly groomed even in winter. The broad veranda, lined with rockers and wicker planters, was a welcoming place to spend a sunny afternoon.

  All the chairs and planters were empty today.

  He followed the veranda to the front, where double doors in the center led into a lobby that was an elegant parlor. The patients’ rooms could pass for any well-appointed bedrooms, and the dining room was truly a dining room, with cherry tables, chandeliers, paintings on the walls, china cabinets in the corners. Only the therapy rooms indicated that the center was a high-tech facility.

  A young secretary showed him to Dr. Allen’s office. He’d been there many times before—had sat in this leather chair and listened to the doctor’s assessment of Maggie’s condition, had heard reports of improvements and regressions, had been cautioned, warned, and encouraged.

  A week ago, when the doctor had called him in to arrange Maggie’s release, his future had changed—once again—in this room.

  “Today’s the day,” Dr. Allen said after a perfunctory greeting. “Do you have any questions before we meet Maggie?”

  Ross shook his head. They had talked at length the previous week about the minimal care she required. His role in the next few months wasn’t loving husband welcoming home his fragile wife but, rather, a companion on hand in case something went wrong. She was able to do much for herself, but some questions about her abilities could be answered only away from the controlled environment of the center. Answering those questions was the goal of the next few months.

  At the same meeting, the doctor had gone over her remaining impairments in detail—a mild expressive speech disorder. The various symptoms of post-traumatic syndrome—headaches, sleep disorders, personality changes. Residual problems with the hip she’d broken, particularly with extended weight bearing. Difficulty climbing stairs, trouble concentrating, dizzy spells.

  And the amnesia. Much of her memory of the year preceding the accident was spotty. The months immediately prior were missing altogether. When or if those memories would return, according to the doctor, was anyone’s guess. If she hadn’t been in the accident, if the amnesia were the only problem, he would presume that she would make a complete, or nearly complete, recovery.

  But the accident changed things. There had been bleeding in and swelling of her brain, causing some damage, and she’d been in a coma for weeks. Still, the doctor had thought that being in Bethlehem would be good for her, that it might jog loose forgotten memories.

  Ross wasn’t proud of it, but he wouldn’t mind if those memories stayed unjogged awhile longer. At least for the next few months they were together.

  The doctor had told him everything he possibly could, except how he and Maggie were going to get along. They were two people who had once been in love, had once been intimate, who had watched their love die. And now there was only awkwardness. Distance. One stranger with another.

  “This will be a period of adjustment for Maggie,” Dr. Allen said. “She’s going to find out just how independent she can be—what she’s capable of and what she’s lost. There will be the temptation to do things for her, but don’t give in until she’s proven that she can’t complete a task.”

  … how independent she can be … That was the big question. Would she be able to manage alone, or would she require a live-in companion? At the end of these few months, they would know.

  “I would recommend that she continue to meet with a psychiatrist for a time,” the doctor continued. “At least until we see how well she adjusts to being away from the center. Dr. Olivetti, her psychiatrist here, has recommended a doctor in Bethlehem by the name of Grayson. Maggie’s first appointment should be within the next week or so. Have I raised any new questions?”

  When Ross shook his head, the doctor slid a stack of forms across the desk for him to sign, then rose from his chair and smiled out of habit. “Let’s go get Maggie, Mr. McKinney.”

  Maggie McKinney watched from her seat on the bed while an aide did a final sweep of the room. “Looks like that’s it, Mrs. McK,” the young woman said with a bright smile. “Everything’s packed, and your husband’s on his way up with Dr. Allen to pick you up. You must be so excited.”

  Excited? Yes, that was part of what she was feeling. When they’d wheeled her in there eight months earlier, she’d been afraid she would be stuck there forever. She’d been unable to perform the simplest tasks—couldn’t pick up a fork, couldn’t talk worth a damn, couldn’t walk two steps. She’d lost her dignity and her independence and had been unable to imagine winning them back.

  But she was almost there. The next two months would prove how much she had regained. They would prove that she could live alone, that she could make a life for herself.

  That she had no further need of Ross.

  The words still had the ability to stir an ache deep inside. There’d been a time when not needing Ross in her life had been utterly inconceivable—a time when he’d been her life. That time was long past now, but the regret wasn’t. The sorrow wasn’t.

  And even if their marriage was over, she owed him so much. It was his money, his forceful personality, and his steadiness—along with her own damn hard work—that had gotten her through the past eleven months. From the first day, she’d gotten the best care his money could buy, the special treatment he had imperiously demanded.

  And he had stood by her. Her parents had let her down, and so had her friends, but Ross had been there week after week, when she couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even get her thoughts in logical order. He, and the endless hard work, had been the one constant in her life, and she was grateful to him.

  Of course, she knew why he’d spent all that money and made all those visits to her both at the hospital and the rehab center. While he was a decent man, he was also an image-conscious man. He’d worked hard to present the perfect image, both professionally and privately. He’d had to stand by her, like it or not, until she could stand on her own.

  But he wanted to be free too. She was sure of it. So, after the next few months, she intended to say good-bye—if he didn’t say it first. Another person may think that was cold and manipulative, but it wasn’t. Good-bye was simply all that was left for them to say.

  While the aide loaded her suitcases onto a wheeled cart, Maggie made her way into the bathroom. After closing the door, she stared at herself in the mirror, taking stock. Her auburn hair, shaved completely in the operating room for the surgery to remove blood clots from her brain, had grown back months before and looked much the same as ever. It completely covered the scar that arced across her scalp from front to back.

  Makeup camouflaged the thinner scars on her forehead, her cheek, her jaw. Those were where her face had come into contact with various parts of the truck. The thicker, elliptical scar at the base of her throat, visible when she tugged down the neck of her sweater, marked the incision where the ER doctor had inserted the tracheotomy tube that allowed her to breathe in those first few hours.

  Other than the scars, she looked like the same old Maggie. But she wasn’t. She was more afraid than the old Maggie, less confident. She felt less intelligent, less capable, less competent.

  But she was more determined. She’d already proven wrong the doctors who’d said she wouldn’t survive the wreck, the others who’d said she wouldn’t recover. Now she was going to prove just how much she had recovered. She was going to declare her independence, to live her life for herself and no one else.

  For the first time in far too long, she was going to be happy.

  The knock at the door made her gaze shift in that direction. “Mrs. McK? They’re here,” the aid
e called out.

  They. The two most important men in her life. The doctor who had treated her so well these last eight months, and Ross, who had once loved her with all his heart. Whom she had once loved with all her soul.

  Taking a deep breath to ease the tightness in her chest, she looked at herself again. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide and dark. She looked afraid. Though she’d waited for this day to come, now that it was here, she wanted desperately to stay at the center, where everyone was familiar, where everyone understood her shortcomings and the reasons for them, where there were other people like her. She wanted to stay where she felt safe and protected.

  There was another tap on the door. “Maggie?” That was Dr. Allen. He was being polite. There was no lock on the door—no unbreachable privacy for any of his patients, not even in the bathroom. If she didn’t answer, he could, if he wanted, simply turn the knob and let himself in.

  She turned it instead.

  Her large, comfortable room seemed smaller with so many people in it. She pressed her palms together and avoided eye contact. “I—I guess it’s time.” Her voice sounded breathy because she’d forgotten to breathe. She filled her lungs before gesturing toward the wheelchair. “I’m not riding in that.”

  “Now, Maggie,” Dr. Allen began, but she interrupted.

  “You people spent a lot of time teaching me to walk again. You’re not putting me in a wheelchair now.”

  “It’s our last treat for you. Just policy, Maggie. You know that.”

  She appreciated that he gave her credit for knowing simple things—some people didn’t—but it didn’t sway her. “I don’t want to feel like some—some—” She knew the word, could see it in her mind, could hear it but only in its second meaning. Invalid. Not valid. Null. Useless. No good.

  Ross broke in in his rich, powerful CEO voice that no one—not even Tom Flynn, certainly not Maggie—argued with. “Take the wheelchair away. She worked hard to learn to walk. Let her walk.”

  The aide looked at Dr. Allen. He shrugged, then smiled at Maggie. “All right, Maggie. Dazzle us all. Walk out of here.”

  She circled the bed and left the room for the elevator. The doctor walked alongside her, with Ross a few feet behind, the aide behind him with the luggage cart.

  After recovering from the fractures that had required surgery on her left leg and right hip, she’d been walking one way or another for several months—with a walker, followed by crutches and, most recently, a cane. In the last few weeks she’d gotten around on nothing but her own two feet. But today whatever grace she had recovered was temporarily gone. Her movements felt jerky and awkward because fate or luck or whatever the hell it was couldn’t let the moment pass without reminding her how much she had changed.

  But she would get stronger. However strong she needed to be to live alone, she would achieve it.

  The elevator doors opened, and she moved inside with the others. The car was mirrored. By turning her head just a bit, she could see Ross’s reflection. The first time she’d ever seen him, she had been in her second year of college, and she’d thought he was the most handsome man who ever existed—black-haired, blue-eyed, with a wicked grin and more ambition, intelligence, and sex appeal than one person should ever possess. She’d been half in love with him from that moment on, had fallen all the way in a few short weeks.

  All these years later she still found him startlingly handsome. His hair was longer than he normally wore it, shorter than she normally liked it, and the expression in his eyes was guarded in a way it had never been before. He was still ambitious, intelligent, and sexy as hell, but she never saw that wicked grin anymore. She never saw him smile at all unless she happened to be looking when he smiled at someone else.

  The day she’d realized that was the day she’d decided to return to college to finish the education she’d interrupted to put him through school. It was the day she’d known their marriage was past saving.

  It was the saddest day of her life.

  The bell rang for the first floor, and the aide stepped off first, pushing the luggage cart toward the side entrance with its automatic door. Dr. Allen accompanied Maggie and Ross through the front door and onto the veranda. When they stopped at the top of the steps, he was saying something about questions and needs and calls, but she wasn’t listening. Instead, she stared across the grounds.

  It was nearing the end of November, eleven months less one day since she’d taken up residence in hospitals. The sky was overcast, and the air was chilly with a reminder that winter had arrived. It was her favorite time of year. Autumn, changing leaves, Thanksgiving, Christmas, nesting in for winter. She was a great nester. She loved warm clothes, cold weather, hearty stews, and roaring fires.

  Ross loved business meetings, eighteen-hour workdays, and takeovers. He wouldn’t adapt well to nesting, to twenty-four hours a day with her, to living in a tiny town hours away from everything important to him. He would make the effort because she, through Dr. Allen, had asked it of him, because his image of himself demanded it, but she was sure he would be glad when it was over.

  So would she, she reminded herself.

  “Well, Maggie.” Dr. Allen claimed her attention as well as her hand. “We’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too.”

  “Take care of yourself. You can do it now.”

  Smiling at his reassurance, she stepped forward and hugged him. “Thank you for everything.”

  “We just helped. You did all the hard work yourself.” When she released him, he extended his hand to Ross. “Mr. McKinney.”

  “Doctor.” They shook hands, then Ross looked her way. She felt it. “I’ll bring the car around—”

  “No.” She tilted her face to the gray sky and smiled. “I can walk.”

  She held the rail, smooth wood painted black, and took the first careful step, placing her left foot on the step, gingerly shifting her weight, bringing the right foot alongside. Ross descended easily to the bottom, then waited. He didn’t know what it was like to have to think about the mechanics of walking, to give commands and coax muscles and work and struggle so hard for every step. He didn’t realize how incredibly lucky he was. She did. She was lucky to be alive.

  When she reached the bottom, she slowly turned and smiled triumphantly at Dr. Allen. “Thank you.”

  He smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

  Buoyed with the confidence of success, she found the walk to the end of the sidewalk easier. Ross’s attention was on the parking lot, not on her, and she looked that way too. His last car, to the best her battered brain could recall, was a Jag—expensive, impressive, part of the image. There were only a dozen cars in the lot, but she didn’t see it. “Which one is yours?”

  She felt him glance her way, as if startled that she’d spoken. “The Mercedes.” Then, noticing that about half of the dozen cars were Mercedes, he gestured to a midnight-dark car. “The gray one.”

  The aide met them at the car. After settling in, Maggie took a quick look around. Luxury and beauty. Ross had a fine appreciation for both qualities and had worked hard to earn the fortune that enabled him to surround himself with both. Unfortunately, whatever fortune he had was never enough. The ambition she had so admired back in college had become a relentless drive to have more, always more. If he could live comfortably on a six-figure income, then he would be more comfortable with an eight-figure income. If he owned six companies, he wanted twelve. If he was a powerful, wealthy man, he wanted to be the most powerful, the wealthiest.

  All she’d wanted was enough. Enough money to pay their bills, provide a comfortable house, put food on the table, and a little extra for fun now and then. Enough to support a houseful of babies and let her be a stay-at-home mom. Just enough.

  There had been a time when that was all he’d wanted too. How had they grown so far apart?

  They’d left the center grounds and were several miles away before he spoke. “Do you want to stop somewhere for lunch?”

 
“I ate early.” She’d had her reasons. She hadn’t sat down to eat a meal with him in at least eleven months. She hadn’t eaten a meal in a restaurant in that long, hadn’t tried out her relearned skills—feeding herself, walking, talking, socializing—in public in that long. She wanted to delay the experience.

  “Is there anything you need to do before we leave the city?”

  “Like what?”

  “Visit your friends. Pick up clothes from the house. Go shopping.” He finished with an uncharacteristic shrug, the only outward sign of the awkwardness he was feeling. It was funny, the things she knew about him when she really didn’t know him at all anymore.

  “I’ve said all my good-byes.”

  “So you want to go straight to Bethlehem.”

  “Yes.” Though she sounded certain, she was just guessing. When Dr. Allen had asked her where she’d been happiest, she hadn’t had a ready answer. Certainly not in the mansion Ross had built. She’d hated the place from the moment he’d showed her the plans, but he’d built it anyway, and she had lived in it, but she’d never been happy there.

  She’d been happy in the little two-room apartment where they’d lived when they were first married. Everything about the place had been shabby, but they’d been wildly in love, and that had been enough. She’d been happy everyplace they’d ever lived—the drafty old house subdivided into dreary rental units, the starter house of red brick where the roof leaked above their bed, the middle-class ranch in a neighborhood crawling with kids, the stately Georgian with enough trees to screen out neighbors and kids. She’d been happy everyplace … except Ross’s place.

  It was Ross who had suggested Bethlehem. He said she’d picked out the house herself, had overseen the remodeling, had made every decision. He said she’d been happy there.

  Happy. In a house she couldn’t remember in a town she couldn’t remember filled with strangers she couldn’t remember. Happy.

  It was a concept she sometimes had difficulty grasping.

  After another few silent miles she asked, “Where is the Jag?”