Wishing for Wonderful (Serendipity #3)(51)

Eleanor was eating her breakfast when they walked in.

She gasped. “Ray, how did you—”

The shock of seeing him caused a bite of toast with raspberry jam to get stuck in her throat, and it took a good ten seconds for her to cough it up.

He began talking before she could say anything more.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” he said. “I know I’ve behaved like a selfish ass, but I’m going to be better. Don’t you worry about a thing, just get well and get out of—”

Once Eleanor had dislodged the toast, she said, “There’s nothing wrong with me, Lindsay’s the one—”

Ray’s expression changed almost instantly. “I should have known. It’s always about them! John and Lindsay, Lindsay and John! I’m your son, but do you care about me? No! Because of them, you’ve turned your back on your own family!”

“I’ve done no such thing,” Eleanor said, “and if you’d bothered to call me back—”

“Call you back—why? So you can tell me about how wonderful—”

“No, so I could tell you that John wants me to give you the house!” Eleanor replied angrily. “You claim the only reason he wants to marry me is to get hold of the few things I own. Well, he’s trying to show you that’s not true.”

“I don’t want the house,” Ray grumbled.

Eleanor sighed. “No, I suppose you don’t. What you want is to go around blaming other people for your unhappiness. John and Lindsay aren’t the ones making you unhappy. You’re doing that to yourself.”

“How am I supposed to feel? If it weren’t for her,” he gave a nod toward Lindsay’s bed, “you wouldn’t be in this hospital. You’d be—”

Eleanor saw a tiny window of opportunity and seized it.

“I’d be dead,” she said. “That’s where I’d be. Lindsay’s the one who saved my life.”

Lindsay heard what was said and turned to Eleanor with a look of disbelief. Eleanor spotted the look and rolled over it before Lindsay could voice an objection.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said, “I know I told you that I wasn’t going to tell Ray, but this is something he needs to know.”

Ray stammered, “You mean she…?”

“Yes, she risked her own life to save me. That’s how her leg got broken!” Eleanor could easily enough justify her lie by thinking of it as simply role reversal. “Do you think you would you do the same?”

“Of course I would,” he answered.

“Of course you would? I doubt that, especially since you’re too busy to even return a telephone call.”

“I said I was sorry. But—”

“There are no buts in life, you either do or you don’t. No minute ever comes around a second time. You have one chance to use each minute. You can use it to love and be happy, or you can use it to be angry and hateful. I’m going to use every minute I have to love and be happy.”

Eleanor leaned back into her pillow and hesitated for a moment, and then she looked square into Ray’s face, a face that looked exactly like his daddy’s. “I love you, Ray, and I pray that you can find it in your heart to do the same thing.”

“I will,” he said reluctantly. “But it’s not easy to see my mother being somebody else’s—”

“Do you see yourself as someday being a father?”

“Well, of course I do.”

“Funny, because I see you as my son. When you become a father, does that mean you’ll no longer be my son?”

“No.” He shook his head sheepishly. “But that’s different.”

“It’s not all that different,” Eleanor said. “I’ve been a daughter, a wife, a mother and hopefully one of these days I’ll be a grandmother.”

Traci snickered and gave Ray a poke in the back.

“Now I’ve been blessed with another opportunity to become a wife to the man I love. Second chances don’t come around all that often. Can’t you please just be happy for me?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Ray mumbled. “If you’re happy then I’ll be happy for you.”

His words had the sound of a forced apology, but the look of anger was no longer spread across his face. Ray shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “But you can forget about my taking the house.”

“That’s not something you have to decide right now.” Eleanor smiled.

Ray moved to the side of his mother’s bed, then leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Mom. And, yes, we’ll be there for Thanksgiving.”

No one noticed when John arrived, but apparently he’d been standing in the doorway long enough to hear something that made him smile. When he walked into the room, he looped his arm across Ray’s shoulder and gave a squeeze.

“Welcome to the family,” he said.

Luckily Ray couldn’t see himself, because his ears had blossomed into the color of a scarlet rose.

“Thanks,” he stammered.

~

It might look like everyone is coming out of this unscathed, but unfortunately that’s not quite true. For a while I figured The Boss was going to gloss over what I’d done to Life Management. I even started believing He might be in agreement with my opinion. Apparently not. He said He’d let it slide this time, but if I used the mega love zap on Life Management again I’d find myself shoveling coal. I think you know what that means. To prove He meant business he gave me 684 cold case assignments. Every one of them a couple who’d been married for decades.