A Child's Wish

“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life looking and waiting, which is a better choice than giving up.”

“Which is what you’d be doing if you married me?”

“Wouldn’t you say so?”

He mulled over what she’d said. He didn’t like any of it.

“Are you angry?”

“No!” He squeezed her hand, let it go. “Of course not.”

“You sure?”

He nodded, surprised to find that he didn’t feel a bit annoyed, even though he’d just been rejected—for the second time in his life.

“Hurt?” she pressed, when he really wished she’d just say a quiet goodbye.

Not that he couldn’t just turn his back and leave. But something held him there, as if he owed her this.

“I’m…” He didn’t know what. “Confused…” he finally said. “Sad, I think.”

She nodded, smiling in a sorrowful kind of way. “And if you were in love with me, you’d be hurt.”

He stared at her, and even as he held her gaze he felt himself softening. She was right. Absolutely, completely right. Damn it.

“YOU SURE you don’t want to consider a marriage that would be pretty much guaranteed to be peaceful, amiable and interesting?” Mark turned at Susan’s door, not completely ready to walk out of her life.

She held on to the door, revealing both strength and vulnerability as she leaned there in her navy suit, every strand of her short hair in place. “I’ve spent the past five years half-alive, Mark,” she said softly. “Being with you brought me back, and now that I’m here I want it all.”

He cupped her face. Kissed her softly. “Good for you.”

“It’s time for you to start living again, too, you know.”

People wanted different things out of life. “I’m not sure what that means,” he said. “I’d decided marriage to you was ‘having it all.’”

“It wasn’t.”

He nodded. He should be depressed. He wasn’t.

“You’re going to have to risk it again, you know.”

He frowned and glanced at his watch, although he knew he could take whatever time he needed. He’d told Macy not to expect him back. “Risk what?”

“The grand passion.”

It must be a woman thing, this need they had to make everything emotional. Even Susan, as it turned out.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone,” he told her—and himself. “I also don’t think I have what it takes to put up with another Barbie.”

“Emotions and Barbie aren’t interchangeable,” Susan said. “I’m a doctor, Mark, and if you get nothing else from me, get this. Barbie was intensely sensitive. By all accounts you’re right about that. But that wasn’t her downfall. Her downfall was her character—which is what drove her to make the choices she made. That was what kept her from seeking medical help when things got unmanageable, and that allowed her to give in to illegal comfort.”

“I’m going to miss you.” He took her hand.

She nodded.

“What do you plan to do now?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said, head tilted as she rested it against the door. “Be open and wait and see, I guess.”