Part 28 (2/2)

”Oh, no?”

”Actually no.”

”Look.” Ozzie put a hand out toward her and then thought better of it and shoved it back into his pocket. He sighed, rubbed his eyes with his other hand, searching for better words. ”Look, I should have told you earlier. About your father and my connection...to your past.” He choked a little, and she saw it was difficult for him to get out the next few words. ”I'm sorry.”

”Don't apologize!” Meredith half-shouted and then glanced around and lowered her voice. Ozzie looked as if he wished she'd spared him the trouble of saying he was sorry in the first place.

”The point is, you bankrolled my entire childhood.” She felt a blockage in her throat. ”I mean, what am I going to... How am I supposed to ever pay you back for that?”

He shook his head vigorously. ”But you shouldn't think that, darling. That's never what I expected. I never wanted for you or your mother to feel the least bit indebted to me. Not for one second.”

”Why?” Meredith's voice began to quaver-she would not cry. ”Why would you do that?”

”For your father.”

”But why?”

”Because...” Ozzie looked down at his shoes and up again. ”Because I owed him.”

”For what?”

”For everything.”

”What's that supposed to mean?”

”It doesn't matter. It's ancient history now. Just believe me when I tell you that I owed him. I still owe him.”

”I just don't understand.”

”In this case, trust me when I tell you it's not necessary. You don't need to back-match the past, my dear.” Ozzie stepped back and looked at her. ”You're just like him, you know.”

”Really?” She softened.

”Mmm. In looks, but also in your talents. You have his eye for detail. And his dramatic timing.”

Meredith laughed and, emboldened by the moment, blurted out a question she'd been longing to ask. ”How come you never had any kids of your own?”

His eyes s.h.i.+mmered. ”I didn't need to. I had you.”

Remembering the scene a week later brought on a tingling in Meredith's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They still hurt from the man who had jostled her in the security lineup. She pushed all thoughts of Ozzie from her mind and concentrated on what lay ahead. A fresh start in Toronto. A romance. Maybe even (she could barely even think the word) a boyfriend.

The message on the screen changed again. BA Flight 92 to Toronto delayed to 12:00. She growled. Another precious fleeting hour of her youth to be wasted in the airport. Why was nothing ever on time anymore? Meredith tapped her foot, fumed, tapped the other foot. The rest of the world may have decided punctuality was a virtue of the bored, but she was always on time. She was like clockwork.

Meredith froze.

She checked the date on her boarding pa.s.s and confirmed it.

She was four days late.

19.

Joe stood at the Pearson arrivals gate wis.h.i.+ng he were somewhere else.

Not that he didn't want to see her-just the opposite. He was afraid of precisely how much he did. That and the news he had to deliver.

It had been over a week since her train pulled out of the station in Florence. He warmed, remembering the hanky she'd waved out the window in an attempt to make light of the European romantic melodrama of the moment. After she'd gone he felt scooped out, but in a good way, as if he'd been emptied of all distractions and could finally appreciate his life for what it was. Joe had wandered around Florence for another day, sloping through galleries until his vision blurred and taking his espresso and panino standing up at the bar the way he noticed Italian men did. In the end he flew home a few days early. He had work he wanted to finish up before Meredith returned. And he needed time to think.

How did you tell a woman you'd just fallen for that you couldn't ever hope to make her pregnant? Joe wondered darkly if Meredith would break up with him immediately or put it off until after dinner (he'd booked a table at a little trattoria near his house, in honor of their Florentine adventure). Surely there was no way she would stay with him given his biological limitations. How could he reasonably expect her to, knowing so well the relentless, inexhaustible female drive to reproduce? He could make all the arguments he wanted about adoption and the joys of stepmotherhood and pet owners.h.i.+p, but in the end, physiology would triumph over psychology-Meredith's body would find a way to leave him.

He had to tell her that children were out of the question-and tell her sooner rather than later. Joe couldn't begin to count the number of desperate women who had come to him during his career, having frittered away their window of fertility on some lunkhead who had, in their words, been ”wasting their time.” Joe might have less than Olympian sperm motility, but he was still a gentleman. He wanted Meredith to have what she wanted (and arguably, needed) most, even if it meant being without her. He would not-much as he longed to-be the guy who wasted her time.

People cl.u.s.tered around the metal barricades, waiting for familiar faces to emerge from behind the frosted gla.s.s part.i.tion. Beside him stood a bald man with three small children. They squealed with happiness when they saw their mother swooping around the corner in a canary-yellow sari. She stooped to kiss them on their heads and then stood and looked at her husband and placed a hand on his cheek. In some ways, Joe thought, the gesture showed more affection than a kiss.

It took ages for Meredith to appear. A river of people poured past, each one identified in Joe's eyes only as not her. By the time she materialized his entire body was p.r.i.c.ked with antic.i.p.ation. The sight of her-his Meredith. (He had already begun to think of her, slightly guiltily, in this way.) Hair tucked neatly behind her ears, a blue raincoat he had never seen before skimming the tops of her pretty bare knees. She lugged an enormous black suitcase that looked as if it must weigh twice what she did. He wished he could jump the gate and help her, and tried to call out, but although she paused and looked around with a curious expression (those cute little furrows on her forehead!) she didn't appear to have seen or heard him.

Joe pushed back into the crowd, determined to meet her when she emerged, but people crammed in front blocking his way. He kept pausing and scanning for a glimpse of blue raincoat. He should have warned her he was coming instead of making it a surprise. Surprises were emotionally risky. They only put people off balance, particularly people like Meredith. For all he knew, someone else was meeting her. Maybe he should just go home and call from there. As he was considering his options Joe felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find her standing behind him, c.o.c.king her head.

”I came,” he said, the words backfiring out of him, ”and then I couldn't find- I was afraid you'd gone off on your own or that maybe you'd even seen me and didn't want-” He stopped himself blathering by reaching down and taking her into his arms. She pulled away first, just as he was placing a kiss on the hollowed-out part between her collarbone and her shoulder.

”Lovely to see you,” she said in an oddly remote voice.

He felt suddenly self-conscious and wished they could be alone together. ”My car's two levels down.”

”Thanks.”

”What for?”

”Picking me up.”

”My pleasure. How was your flight?”

”Fine. A bit exhausting. How was yours?”

”Mine?”

”When you came back. From Florence.”

”Oh, fine. I guess. I slept most of the way.”

They were silent until they got into his car. When he turned the key in the ignition the stereo blared to life. He'd been listening to Bruce Springsteen's ”Nebraska” on the drive up and then had forgotten to take it out of the tape deck of the Jetta. The chorus that had seemed so soulful just a dozen or so minutes ago now embarra.s.sed him. He banged his hand on the volume k.n.o.b a little too hard and the whole stereo came loose and hung from its hinges. They both stared at it for a moment.

”Is everything okay?” she asked.

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