7

SEATTLE

VANESSA CHANGED INTO HER running clothes—the blue warm-up suit Brian had given her for Christmas and her Nikes—and took the five flights of stairs down to the ground floor of the hospital. She walked through the long hallway to the rear of the building and knocked on the open door to Darcy Frederick’s office.

“Ready?” she asked.

Darcy looked up from her littered desk, her glasses slipping halfway down her nose. “Oh, Van.” She used both hands to adjust the heavy, purple frames on her delicate nose. “I can’t go today. I’m swamped.”

Vanessa pushed into the office and dug Darcy’s running shoes out of the canvas bag in the corner. She dropped them on the floor in front of her friend. “Off your butt, Darce.”

They’d been running together for over two years, and both of them knew this routine. Darcy would probably never get out of the building if she didn’t have Vanessa pushing her. Vanessa, though, would run with or without a partner. She had to. By the end of the day, she felt as though thousands of restless, prickly creatures coursed beneath the surface of her skin. The only way to settle them down was to do something physical. Aerobics would work, or biking. Anything. But running was easiest.

Darcy made a halfhearted attempt at straightening the papers on her desk before finally standing up. She took off her glasses and ran her fingers through her short, almost-black hair before picking up her gym bag and disappearing into the bathroom across the hall. In a moment she was back in a gray sweatshirt and black warm-up pants.

“Ready,” she said, and Vanessa followed her out the door.

They walked the first block, then started an easy jog. Anyone watching them would have expected Darcy to be the faster, fleeter runner. She stood a good six inches taller than Vanessa, with broad shoulders and long legs, while Vanessa was slight and golden. But Vanessa was quicker by far.

“So, how’re the kids doing?” Darcy asked as they turned off the main road onto a side street.

“Wasn’t a great day. One of my CF kids is pretty sick.” Jordan Wiley was no better, despite the antibiotics. It had been nearly a week, and she’d expected to see some improvement by now. “And we found laxatives stashed in one of the anorexics’ teddy bear.”

“You’re kidding!” Darcy grinned, and Vanessa had to laugh herself.

“Yeah. I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t gaining any weight. Kid’s too clever for her own good.”

They ran in silence for another block.

“Well.” Darcy was beginning to lose her wind already. “I think I’ve figured a way for you to get federal funding for the AMC program.”

“Really?” Vanessa glanced at Darcy, afraid to get her hopes up.

“Uh-huh. Have you heard of Walter Patterson? Senator from Pennsylvania?” The words came out between Darcy’s puffs of breath.

Walter Patterson. The name was vaguely familiar. “Not sure.”

“You need to contact him. You and your network. He’s a zealot on programs that aid victims, and he’s forever sponsoring legislation to help women and children. He can be an advocate for you, or at least he could point you in the right direction. But I think you should get the whole network involved. You know, make it a major deal.”

Vanessa didn’t respond right away. She was thinking about the network—that informal group of physicians and health-care professionals she’d pulled together from around the country when she’d started working at Lassiter. They had in common their commitment to issues affecting adolescents, and Vanessa was their indisputable hub. She knew that hers was not the only AMC program being affected by cuts. Terri Roos’s program in Sacramento was in jeopardy,

and a particularly innovative project in Chicago had already shut down. Darcy was right—she should involve the entire network. She could check on this Patterson guy, then mobilize her forces to descend on him from all corners of the country.

“Federal money’s so tight, though,” Vanessa said finally.

“It was tight last year when my sister got money for the Rape Counseling Program in Philadelphia. And it was Walter Patterson that got it for her.”

“Really?”

“Really. My sister called him up with statistics on how many women she was reaching, et cetera, and filled out a few reams of paperwork and eventually got what she needed.”

Darcy stopped running and leaned over to catch her breath while Vanessa jogged in place. It was rare for Darcy to give such high praise to a male. She was even critical—far too critical—of her own husband. Patterson must be a saint.

Vanessa started running again with a burst of energy fueled by a new glimmer of hope, and Darcy fell in next to her as they crossed the street. The long stone wall of a cemetery materialized next to them in the darkness, and a string of leafless maple trees bowed low over their heads.

“So all I have to do is call this guy and charm the money out of him?” Vanessa asked.

Darcy laughed. “You couldn’t charm milk out of a cow, Van,” she said. “Charm ain’t your long suit.”

“I suppose not,” Vanessa admitted.

They ran along the wall in silence for a few minutes, and by the time Darcy spoke again, she was panting in earnest. “Well,” she said, “you’re not going to believe this.”

“Believe what?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Vanessa stopped running, but Darcy didn’t. She teased Vanessa with the distance between them, leaving her with a disconcerting reaction of elation and envy, joy and loss. Vanessa wanted Darcy the way she had her now—a child-free woman like herself, devoted to her work, able to run with her in the evening.

She started running again and caught up quickly. Catching Darcy by the arm, she pulled her friend into a hug.

“Congratulations, Darce.” She felt like crying and bit her lip to hold the tears at bay.

Darcy drew away with a grin and leaned back against the stone wall, gulping air. “I thought it would never happen. All those tests. I mean, I’d look at you and Brian and see how good you two are without kids and think, ‘Well, Dave and I can be like that, no big deal.’ But the difference is that we really, really wanted them and you guys don’t and it—”

“What makes you think we don’t want kids?”

Darcy looked surprised. “I just figured. You’re thirty-eight and Brian’s forty—right?—and you haven’t done it yet, and I figured the two of you made a decision that kids weren’t important to you, and you were perfectly happy the way you are.”

Vanessa leaned against the cold stone wall herself and breathed deeply for a minute before responding. “I would love to have a baby,” she said. “More than anything.”

Darcy studied her so intently that Vanessa realized she had never spoken to her friend this way, this confidentially. She knew all there was to know about Darcy. She knew about the first marriage that had ended in her husband’s suicide. She knew about the abortion that had left her with problems conceiving and about Dave’s long-ago drinking problem. Vanessa had shared little of her own past in return. She discussed those things with no one other than Brian. And Marianne, the therapist she’d had until a year ago. Even then, even with those two people whom she trusted above all others, the telling had been long and hard in coming.

“Van.” Darcy lightly touched her arm. “I didn’t know that. Why haven’t you ever said anything about this to me? I can’t believe you’ve kept that to yourself after listening to all my trials and tribulations. Have you seen a specialist? I can tell you who’s—”

“That’s not it.” Vanessa shook her head. “I can have a baby, as far as I know, even though I’m getting ridiculously old for it. And I assume Brian’s capable of doing his part.” She looked down the quiet, tree-lined sidewalk, away from Darcy’s gaze. “I’m so afraid we’d split up, and the baby would only have one parent and—”

“God, Vanessa!” Darcy threw her arms up in exasperation. “You and Brian have been living together for over two years, but you always talk as though you moved in with him last week. Like you’re still in the trial-run stage, or something.”

She was right. It was irrational. Vanessa had known that for a long time, yet that knowledge did nothing to change her fear. She put her arm around Darcy and started walking in the direction of the hospital.

“Well, I’m as happy for you as I can be,” she said, and she supposed there was something in her voice that told Darcy not to pursue the subject any further. They talked about sonograms and names and godparents, and Vanessa tried to concentrate on the conversation instead of the thoughts roiling in her head. She was as certain of Brian as she could ever be of any man, but trust was something that would never come easily to her. Trust in the future. Trust in other people. She expected to wake up one morning and find Brian gone. He had left his first wife, hadn’t he? He hadn’t walked out on her, exactly, but still, ending the marriage had been his idea. No matter how fervently he reassured Vanessa of his deep feelings for her, she knew something about herself that no words of love could change: She was the kind of person other people left behind.