When We Meet Again

Chapter 11

I called on the St. Claires as soon as I could without it being unseemly. Poppy’s father was welcoming and accommodating and I made any pretext I could to get Poppy in the room to no avail. We discussed nothing important; current affairs and golf and then Mrs. St. Claire invited us to sit down for lunch. Poppy came in just as we were about to be seated and she seemed delighted to see me. I tried to catch her eye once or twice but she is a very demure young lady and did not look back at me. She did speak to me, inquiring after my health and my family but nothing to really give me an idea of whether she regards me in the same light as I look at her. I would like to speak to her father, I think I’m ready to speak to her father; but I need to know that she would be agreeable.

Dean closed his father’s journal and sighed deeply. The Poppy from his father’s memory was nothing like he recognized. Granted she was his mother so maybe they didn’t look at her the same way but he felt like he should be able to recognize something about the woman who was his mother in the woman his father had fallen in love with. He’d thought that reading this journal would bring some clarity to his own feelings about Meaghan but he was even more confused. Obviously his father had examined every angle in choosing Poppy as his bride. He was attracted to her but he also approved of her family and who they were and made an effort to get along with her father. Clearly if he were drawing analogies then he’d be leaning toward Samantha’s family; he was great friends with her father or at least he had been before this debacle with his daughter and her mother adored him. He hadn’t even met Meaghan’s mother despite the fact that they were in high school together. He didn’t know if that was his fault or hers.

*****

Meaghan was doodling on the prescription pad; it was just after midnight and the ER was surprisingly quiet. This was disappointing since Meaghan was just not interested in being in her own head right now. If it wasn’t so late she would have texted Bain but he had work in the morning and he didn’t have enough sense to ignore her texts so she decided to take the decision out of his hands and just keep her hands to herself. She looked up feeling eyes on her and started when she saw Dean loitering by the doorway, staring at her. She stood up without realizing what she was doing and walked toward him.

“Dean?” she said, his name a surprised question as well as a statement.

“Hi,” he said, “Can we talk somewhere?”

Meaghan stared at him and then indicated the coffee machine. They walked toward it; it was at the end of the ER corridor and no one else was nearby at the moment. The night duty nurse was at her station and she looked up curiously as they passed but didn’t say anything. There was an orderly cleaning up what looked suspiciously like vomit on the other end of the corridor but he did not look up at them, seeming too lost in his own misery for curiosity.

Meaghan reached out to press a coin in the slot but Dean’s hand came forward to restrain her.

“Allow me,” he said as he replaced her hand with his. “What would you like?”

“Coffee, black with sugar,” she said and he pressed the relevant buttons. Her coffee cup descended soon after and she picked it up and waited as he made his own selection. White coffee with sugar. Meaghan tried not to smile at implied analogies.

“What did you need to talk to me about?” she asked trying for a neutral uninterested tone and not sure she nailed it.

Dean hesitated, opened his mouth, closed it and then his eyes fell on the bench next to the machine.

“Shall we sit?” he asked.

Meaghan moved immediately and sat down. Her knees welcomed the fact that they were no longer required to hold her up and she waited anxiously for Dean to say whatever it was. She was pretty sure she knew what he wanted to say. His coldness on the phone the day before was a neon light flashing ‘I already got what I wanted from you’. Meaghan was many things but she wasn’t stupid.

“So, what’s up?” she asked again.

Dean breathed inhaled deeply. “My dad gave me his journal the other day,” he said on the exhale.

“Oh?” Meaghan asked, her heart sinking. Clearly this was going to be the long and drawn out version of ‘it’s not you it’s me’.

“Yeah. I was asking him about how he knew he was in love with my mother; he can’t speak you know? Because of the stroke,” Dean continued.

“I’m sorry,” Meaghan said heart softening. Clearly this wasn’t easy for him either.

Dean shrugged, “Don’t be. He’s still alive and he’s in his right mind. It’s a lot more than many people get. Anyway, so he gave me the journal to read and it made me think a lot.”

Dean hesitated and Meaghan prompted him, “and?”

“And,” Dean huffed a laugh. “I was even more confused after reading it than I was before. But I just felt like…” Dean stared off into the distance as if lost in his own head.

Meaghan gave him two minutes to find something to say. “You felt like what?” she asked at last.

“I had to see you,” Dean whispered.

Meaghan stared at him, waiting for something else…Some clarification of what was going on in his head, the ax to fall; something. Dean just continued to stare off into the ether. Whatever he was going through, clearly this was the best he could do to communicate it. Just then, the nurse came to call her, there was a patient waiting. Meaghan stood and looked down at Dean; he looked back at her and nodded his head as if giving her permission to go. She grimaced and went – not knowing if he would still be there when she came back. Patients kept her occupied for the rest of the night and when her shift was over she looked hopelessly at the bench by the coffee machine, expecting to find it empty. Dean was slumped on it, fast asleep. Meaghan stared at him and then went to wake him up, shaking him gently until his eyes fluttered open.

“Hi,” she said smiling at him.

“Hey,” his voice was raspy with sleep and his green eyes stared muzzily at her, hypnotizing even without being able to focus clearly.

“You fell asleep,” she informed him. He smiled lifting his brows at the obviousness of the remark.

“No sh*t,” he said straightening up.

“My shift’s over, shall we go?” she asked. There was a strange heat curling low in her belly as she watched him uncurl himself gracefully and stand up. He looked way too delicious for someone who had spent all night sleeping on a bench.

“Yeah,” he murmured as he put a hand over her shoulder and let her lead him out of the hospital. She ignored the interested stares of the rest of the staff as they watched them leave. She sighed inwardly; this was her second workplace to be disrupted by well-meaning males. She guessed she was just not meant to be another anonymous worker going about her business unremarked and unremembered. Still she thought wistfully, it would have been nice to have that for just a few days.

Dean was leading her to the visitors’ parking and she figured his car must be there. She spotted the Lamborghini without difficulty as it was the same one he’d driven into Mr. Henley’s garage all those years ago.

“You know, parking a lambo in this neighborhood is just asking for trouble. You know that right?” she commented. Dean laughed but didn’t reply. He clicked his keys and the car alarm beeped off so he could get the doors open. He ushered her in not even asking if she had her own wheels somewhere. Meaghan’s lips tightened at the assumption but she didn’t say anything.