Page 21 of The Reunion
He waited for me to go inside when the doors opened, pushing the button as he backed in. “Yeah, we have to be careful with that at our age.”
This man was at least ten years older than me, and I cringed at all the money I wasted getting my forehead creases flattened out if he thought we were so close. “I don’t think I asked how long you’ve been here. You’re not local. I would remember.”
Shaking his head, he stepped back and held out his hand for me to go ahead as the bell rang. “No. The university put me in charge when they took this place over a while back.”
I readjusted my purse strap on my shoulder when we stepped outside again, rolling my eyes over the beautifully decorated lobby. “Well, it seems like you all made out well in the merger.” The management suite dripped with expensive-looking furniture and freshly painted walls. “The place looks fantastic.”
It seemed that a lot of things were different around here. The diner Carolyn waited tables at in high school was an ice cream shop, and the park at the town square had a water fountain and farm stand with handmade candles I’d like to stop and check out.
Yet when I looked up and came face-to-face with Dominic Vasser smiling at me in the doorway straight ahead, he was almost exactly the same as the night he put that ring on my finger. “Oh, my God.”
17
Crashing Down
Dominic
The hot coffee splashing from my cup to my wrist roused me from my two-minute catnap. “Son of a bitch.”
After years of practice, I was a master of sleeping standing up when I got to sleep at all. Given that I was one of the few intensive care doctors in this part of the state, my time away from this place seemed to be less and less.
The newer doctors who’d mastered the ICU routine moved on to better jobs in the city, and I was up to my ears in work again — not that I had anything better to do.
But when I found the note on my locker asking me to sit in on the new therapist’s interview since the chief was out getting his hip replaced, I figured it was something different to break up the monotony of my life.
The elevator dinged and quick heel clicks beat across the floor to me as Anna dug her keys from her pocket. “Thanks a bunch for hanging around this morning.”
Rushing to catch the ringing phone, she wrestled the door lock. “I hate bothering you like this.” The phone stopped ringing, and she sighed as she pushed the door to the wall. “But we figured since your unit would work with her the most, one of you would want to meet her face-to-face, at least, before everything was finalized.”
I sipped my coffee and sank into the chair across from her desk. “I got called in early this morning, so I was just camping out in the on-call room, anyway.”
Tapping on her keyboard for a few seconds with one hand, she pulled a manila folder from the basket on the wall with the other. “Well, this shouldn’t take very long.”
Peeking out the door, she waved at whoever walked by as I set my cup on the edge of her desk. “This is kind of a formality. She already accepted the job, but we had to meet in person for paperwork’s sake. Speech pathologists are like unicorns, so turning her down wasn’t an option.” Plopping into her chair, she flipped her hands up. “Plus, she’s a hometown girl. So, she wasn’t much worried about the money. Thank God.”
There were two kinds of people who grew up here — the ones who never leave and those who never come back — so I squinted back at her as I racked my brain to figure out who it might be. “I can’t imagine who you’re talking about.”
Pushing the resume across the desktop, she tipped her chin at it. “Faith Bennett.”
More than once, I deluded myself into seeing Faith where she wasn’t. But I’d never managed to pull someone into one of my hallucinations before. “Faith? Are you sure that’s her name?”
Her arms crossed over her as she leaned back in her seat. “One hundred percent. Have you heard of her?”
Pulling the folder closer to me, I flipped through the pages until I found the tiny gray-scale photo of her at the corner of the last page. “Yeah. But, uh,” — realizing I hadn’t looked in a mirror since sometime yesterday, I combed my hair back with my fingers in the window behind her — “no one’s seen her since we graduated from high school.”
The list of credentials after her name had me shaking my head as I read them over, because all I recalled was Faith telling me she wouldn’t be coming to college with me at the playground. “This doesn’t sound like the same person at all, to be honest.”
Snatching the folder from my fingers, she motioned behind me with it. “Well, there she is. You tell me.”
I rocked out of my chair and stepped into the doorway as Faith came to a standstill not ten feet in front of me.
Stuffed into a soft pink business suit that showed enough cleavage to make my head spin, that simple girl who used to wear nothing but jeans and t-shirts grabbed her chest. “Oh, my God.” Shuffling her heels over the tile so she didn’t fall on her ass, she tossed her arms around my neck. “Dominic Vasser, what are you doing here? Have you been here all this time?”
I always wondered what standing before her again would be like. Would it be awkward, or would we only pick up like all the years that separated us didn’t mean anything? But there was nothing but relief for both of us in that hug — a lifetime of questions finally answered. “Where else would I be?”
As right and comfortable and wonderful as it ever was to have her squeeze me like that, I just held her until she kissed my cheek and whispered the words that destroyed me all over again. “Your mom said you moved back to Texas.”
I worked my hands up her arms and pulled her away from me, nearly vomiting on her as I realized what she was saying to me. “Wait a minute. What are you talking about?”