Даниэла Стил - Turning Point

“Of course. Come to my room. I’ll meet you there.” She didn’t want to do that. She didn’t trust herself. She still loved him. But she loved Andy too. She knew that now. And it was too soon to let go and quit. If Ryan had survived and beat the odds, maybe they could too. And she knew something else now. Whatever happened with Andy, she couldn’t give up her job at UCSF. Not for Andy or Gabriel, or anyone. She couldn’t move to France. She wanted to stay here and do what she was doing there. It was too much to give up. She couldn’t give up her job any more than she could give up her kids. She didn’t want to start over somewhere else. She needed to stay here.

“Let’s take a walk,” she suggested. “I need some air.”

She met him at the Ferry Building and they walked along the Embarcadero while she told him what she had to do. She had to try again with Andy, even if it didn’t work in the end, but it might. And she couldn’t give up her job. She didn’t want to. It meant too much to her. He cried when she told him and told her she had broken his heart. He said he was going to get divorced for her, and she wondered if it was true. If he were, he’d have called a lawyer when she left Paris before he came to the States, but he hadn’t, and she might have ended up like Wendy, waiting years for him to leave his wife, if he ever did. She’d never know now. But the sacrifices would have been too great on her side anyway, a man, a marriage, a career that she had built for years and sacrificed for. She hoped that she and Andy could put the broken pieces back together. It was possible, but nothing was sure in life. She had almost lost her son in the last three days, almost left her marriage. She felt as though she had lost her mind for a while, and she had found it again. Whatever happened with Andy, she had found herself.

“I won’t survive this,” Gabriel said dramatically. “I’ll go back to Paris tonight.”

“Don’t,” she said simply. “We can do this. We’re adults. I love you, but not enough to give up my whole life for you. And maybe you don’t love me that much either. Stay, and finish what you came here to do.”

“I can’t, you’ve destroyed me,” he said, and she tried not to smile. He sounded very theatrical and very French. Ryan almost dying made everything else seem very small in comparison. And if he had died, she wouldn’t have been talking to Gabriel at all, she would have been with Andy, who would have needed her more than Gabriel then.

“Let’s try to do this nicely,” she said simply, but she wasn’t sure he had it in him. She left him at the Embarcadero, and walked back to her car and drove to the hospital. She had called Valérie before she got there and told her what had happened, and asked if she thought Gabriel would be okay.

“He’ll be fine, he’s just being histrionic. We’ll talk to him. You’re right. He should stay. Things happen in life. Your boy almost dying is a big reminder of that. Things can change in the blink of an eye. And I’m not sure he would have gotten divorced. He’s too used to the life he has with his wife. We’ll never know now. But I think you did the right thing.”

“So do I. However it works out. And I’m not giving up my work for anyone, and they shouldn’t expect it of me. He didn’t volunteer to move here, and he’s not even practicing anymore, he has a government job.”

“Good point.” Valérie sounded happy for her, and most of all that Ryan had lived.

Ryan was smiling when Stephanie walked into the room. Andy was with him and she smiled at both of them.

“We have a young man here who wants ice cream,” Andy said happily.

“I think that can be arranged,” she said, and asked the nurse at the desk to have some sent up from the kitchen. A bowl of vanilla ice cream came up a few minutes later.

“That was fast,” Andy said as she handed it to Ryan, and he dug into it. There were still marks from the boils on his skin, and he was still very pale, but the worst was over, and he was going to survive. Maybe they would too. She hoped so. The doctor had said he could go home at the end of the week. Andy was going to watch him, while she did the rest of the conference, she didn’t want to miss it and Andy agreed. The housekeeper was going to sleep at the house to help with Ryan, while she was busy.

Andy didn’t ask what she had worked out with Gabriel, but he could tell that she had. She seemed quiet and at peace, and she felt back in her right mind. She had gone crazy for a while. The school shooting, being in Paris, not having her husband or children around, their marriage being in trouble, but she had come back to earth and landed on her feet. It felt good to be her again. And Ryan was alive.

Chapter Eighteen

Marie-Laure and Paul went to Squaw Valley that weekend to ski, with the understanding that they were both free agents. They were fabulous skiers and he had fun skiing with her, and prowling the local bars at night.

Valérie and Tom went to the Napa Valley for the weekend. He waited until they were at their hotel, standing on the balcony of their room, looking out over the valley, to ask her the question that had been tormenting him all week. He knew she had met up with her old friend on Thursday.

“So how was your lunch date with your old boyfriend?” Valérie was an independent woman, and he knew he would never control her and didn’t want to try, but he didn’t want to lose her either. And he had fantasized a gorgeous French boyfriend who might stir up old embers again and cause a spark.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you. He was never my boyfriend. We went to school together.” She grinned at Tom and he wanted to shake her. He’d been worried about it since she told him. “I just wanted to keep you interested.”

“You have my interest, and my heart. You didn’t need to torture me,” he scolded her, and wondered if what she said was true. She was not above using feminine wiles, and she had on him. “So why did you have lunch with him?”

“I did a little exploring before I came over here,” she said, gazing at the valley, and then at him. “Jean-Louis teaches at Stanford at the medical school. He married an American, and they live here. He suggested something to me a few years ago that I wasn’t interested in then, but I might be now. It depends on you actually. He offered me a guest professorship, teaching psychiatry. I thought it was boring compared to what I was doing with the post-trauma programs. But they can run them without me now. Everything is in place, and the kind of situations we are seeing today take a lot out of you. They’re ugly. The world is more savage than it used to be. I think I’d enjoy being a guest professor for a year or two, and it would give me time to write another book while I’m here. I wanted to know if the offer would still be open to me.” Tom was listening to her, fascinated and holding his breath.

“And what did he say?”

“He said it would be,” she said softly and smiled at Tom. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it. I wanted to ask him first. I can’t practice medicine in this country, or if I could, it would be a long, complicated process and I don’t want to do that now. But I can teach. I think I’d like that. I could start in September, if that seems like a good idea to you.” She had been saving it until she knew for sure, and she was planning to tell him over the weekend.

“You are a busy little bee, aren’t you, Dr. Florin. I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’ve been trying to think of ways to get you over here, but you trumped me on this one.”

“And I can get a work permit to go with it.”

“You might have to marry me to get a green card,” he teased her, but it sounded like she didn’t need one. “So are you going to do it?”