Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (35 page)

“I wanted to see what had become of Lucy, and I wanted to meet you, Alyson. You weren’t what I expected.”

Alyson scowled.

“You probably always wondered where you got your amber eyes. They’re from the lion tamer.”

Alyson crossed her arms over her chest, although Grace could tell that she was intrigued. “Did he even have a name?”

“He went by Gregori, and spoke with a Russian accent. I suspect he may have been no more Russian than a house cat, though.” Sophia’s gaze softened. “I can see his face in yours, even now.”

“A lion tamer,” Alyson muttered, still disbelieving but now with a trace of wonder.

“But it was Grace who threw me off that Easter,” Sophia went on, and her eyes misted, pain pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I saw myself in her, as I had never seen myself in anyone else before. She reminded me of all I had lost and all I had never had. I came back home sorry that I’d ever gone to Connecticut. I regretted looking back.

“But then, this past Christmas, I received that letter from Grace, and the photo. Here she was, on my coast, struggling to find her way in the world. Her face showed my features, but her life showed that she didn’t know who she was.”

“She’s not you,” Cat spoke up. “Her face doesn’t make her you.”

“But it shows that my blood runs in her veins. How much else of me had she inherited without knowing? What potential lay hidden inside her? What doors could she open for herself, if she discovered and utilized it? It could only help her to find out.” Sophia glanced at the mantel.

Grace followed her gaze to the clock, and tensed at what she saw. Crap! The cars would be passing the end of the driveway any minute now. She stood up, anxious to go, but torn by the intrigue of what was unfolding before her.

“You didn’t want to help Grace,” Cat said. “You wanted to create a clone of yourself.”

Grace did a double take, distracted by her friend’s words. “Is
that
what you think I am?”

“You look like one, don’t you? And lately you’ve sounded like one.”

“I know who I am,” Grace said, then caught Professor Joansdatter’s wry look. Grace remembered the things she’d said in her research notes, full of questions about who, at heart, she was meant to be, and how she seemed to be so easily influenced by her surroundings. “Or at least I know as much as any of us do,” she amended.

“The rest of us haven’t rejected our friends, drastically altered our appearance, or changed our values in the space of three months.”

“I haven’t changed my values.” Her eyes went again to the clock, impatient. She didn’t need yet another argument with Cat. She had more important things to do.

“Oh, really?”

“I’ve just explored contrasting viewpoints.”

Cat barked out a laugh. “Is that what you call it?”

“Yes, I do. Listen, can this wait? The auto race is about to pass by, and I’ve got to be there.” Was she imagining it, or did she already hear the roar of motors?

“No, it can’t wait!” Cat screeched in disbelief as Grace moved toward the door. “You want to interrupt your intervention for an
auto
race?”

“I never asked for a lousy intervention!” Grace called over her shoulder, on the move.

“And they are
historic
autos,” she heard Sophia placidly explain behind her. “It would really be a shame to miss it.”

Grace ran across the foyer and out into the sunshine. She
did
hear motors; they were going by already! She was missing it! Declan wasn’t going to see her. Then he’d crash and die, and it would somehow be her fault, and life would be dark and haunted forever after.

She took off at a run up the driveway, her flat-soled leather sandals slipping on the asphalt. Through the forest of pine and cypress, she caught glimpses of color whizzing by on the road up above.
No, no, no!

The MG was marine blue. She saw green go by, and white. Just as she reached the end of the driveway she saw a flash of blue, and then the back of an MG, its driver wearing a helmet. Grace jumped up and down, waving her arms, yelling, “Go, Declan! Go!”

Had he seen her? Did he check his rearview mirror? Did he know she was there?

The car disappeared around the beginning of the dangerous bend. Moments passed, and a maroon car zipped by, then a yellow. Andrew, and then Cat and Alyson, caught up to her. Grace noticed for the first time that there were other neighbors at the ends of their driveways, groups of friends, people holding drinks and laughing.

From somewhere around the curve came a low cry of horror from the throats of onlookers, and then deep in Grace’s chest she felt a thud of sound. The cry of horror turned into a chaotic jumble of shouts, and piercing it all was a woman screaming.

Grace’s stomach dropped. For a moment she saw stars at the edges of her vision. It couldn’t have happened. That couldn’t be Declan—

She began to run. She heard a shout behind her, Andrew, telling Cat to fetch his medical bag from his car. Andrew kept pace at her side as they ran down the road and around the bend.

A marine blue MG was smashed into a wall of hay bales. People were massed around the car, and between their bodies Grace caught glimpses of a figure lying on the ground.

A thousand possible futures with Declan died inside her as
she approached, her breath catching on sobs of fear.
It can’t be over already; we weren’t finished; there were things unsaid between us
, her heart wept.

If he was dead, she would be haunted by the unfulfilled promise of this summer with Declan for the rest of her life.

Andrew pushed past the people, Grace following in his wake. When the last of the onlookers stepped aside, Grace looked down.

And saw a stranger.

Every joint in her body went liquid in relief.

Andrew knelt down beside the man and began examining him with cool professionalism. He snapped questions to the crowd about what had happened, how the driver had behaved, how he’d ended up on the ground. As the answers came, the man stirred and his eyelids fluttered open. The sound of sirens approached.

Cat arrived with Andrew’s medical bag at the same time the ambulance did. Grace stepped back with the rest of the crowd, letting the EMTs and Andrew do their work. Andrew summarized for the EMTs what he’d learned from the onlookers, and what his own examination suggested. As she watched him, Grace felt a new respect for Andrew. He was a truly good man. A man to count on in a crisis, who had devoted his life to helping others.

Her gaze flicked back and forth between the man she’d thought was Declan and the doctor who tended him—the man who thrived on adrenaline and lived to feed his own pleasures, and the one who healed the wounds such carelessness could cause; the man you’d sleep with, and the one you’d marry and have children with.

The one who’d steal your heart and carry it to the moon, and the one who’d catch and heal it when it fell back to earth.

With the driver safely in the care of the paramedics, Andrew returned to Grace and the others and they walked back to the house, Andrew answering Cat’s and Alyson’s questions.

“They said it looked like he started to pass out just as he came to the corner. He hit the bales and then opened the car door and tumbled to the ground.”

“Drugs?” Alyson asked.

Andrew shook his head and ran through the possible diagnoses.

Grace heard with only half an ear. Her heart had died when she thought it was Declan on the ground, but it had risen again while she watched Andrew. She could live her life chasing after a man who offered nothing but heartache, or she could turn her affections toward a man who had made it his life’s work to help others. She could be with someone who had his own best interests at heart, or someone who had
her
best interests at heart. It was all so clear.

And yet . . .

And yet.

They reached the courtyard and Andrew went to put his bag in his car as the others headed back into the house. “Grace, a moment?” he said, catching her hand as she went by.

She nodded and waited while he put his bag away.

He shut the car door, turned around, and took both her hands in his own. “Grace, I’m sorry if it seems like I went behind your back in talking to Cat. Please believe that I only did it out of concern for you. I’ve been watching all summer as a transformation seems to have been coming over you, and while there have been some advantages—like your weight loss—I’ve also seen some behaviors that concerned me. I was losing sight of that principled, opinionated, intelligent woman I first met. I thought that
you
might be losing sight of her, too.”

Grace bit her lip, a sense of shame rising within her. She
had
betrayed herself, to such a degree that the woman Andrew spoke of seemed a dream from a different life. “Maybe,” she admitted.

“Relationships are supposed to make us better people, not worse.”

She felt her cheeks heat and tears sting her eyes. She’d known that, once upon a time.

“I thought he had corrupted you completely. But then today, at the Lodge, when you kissed me . . .”

Grace ducked her face, embarrassed..

“I felt such passion in you, Grace. Passion for
me
. It was as if you were crying out to me to save you, and I realized that you’d been asking that of me all along, and I’d been too scared and blind to see it. It woke me up, and laid to rest the doubts that had been lingering in my mind. Grace,” he said, and dropped down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”

CHAPTER

24

G
race stood on the balcony of her bedroom, staring out over the dark gardens and the moonlit sea beyond. She was trying to find a space of calm amidst the tumult of her mind and emotions.

She’d sent Andrew home with a promise that he would have her answer tomorrow. “The intervention, the crash, Sophia . . . ,” she had said. “I can’t think straight.”

He’d been apologetic and solicitous, and until he left an hour later he doted on her like a mother with a sick child, while Grace cringed under his care, feeling undeserving of the attention and affection.

Sophia, meanwhile, had managed to convince Alyson and Professor Joansdatter that every big bad tale they’d heard about her was a misunderstanding, and she was actually a softhearted, lonely old woman who wanted only the best for her long-lost family. Guest rooms were made up, and even Professor Joansdatter and her partner—her husband, Gary, although she always used the gender-neutral term “partner” for him—found themselves ensconced in a room. Sophia had made sure that Grace kept her own room private, though.

“The last thing you need is one of these people in your ear all night, yammering at you,” she’d said.

To which a grateful Grace had answered, “Andrew asked me to marry him.”

Sophia’s gaze had sharpened with interest. “And?”

“I don’t know. There’s so much going on, I can’t think straight.”

“This is where I’m supposed to say that you make this decision with your heart, isn’t it?” Sophia said. “But we both know better than that. This is a decision to be made with both head and heart together. Anything less invites disaster. Too many women have destroyed their lives by following their hearts against their own better judgment.

“Look at Darlene. Do you think she would be so bitter now if she hadn’t been a flighty romantic young girl who chose her mate based on dashing good looks and grand gestures, and ignored it when her head pointed out that he was a drunk?”

Surprise had made Grace blink. “
Darlene
, flighty and romantic?”

“It shows you what disillusionment can do to a loving heart.”

As Grace stood alone now in her bedroom, though, she didn’t know what either her head or her heart was telling her. There was too much internal noise, too much confusion, too much emotion. Andrew’s proposal; the crash; the revelation that Sophia and a Russian (maybe) lion tamer were her great-grandparents; the arrival of Professor Joansdatter, her mother, Cat; the acknowledgment that under the influence of Sophia and Declan she
had
lost sight of her moral center and become . . . someone else.