sister. But she was a do-gooder, and not only with DIDA. Rebecca was my hero. “Yes, she is actually,” I said. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of months, though we talk all the time when she’s someplace with cell coverage. Right now she’s working in China at an earthquake site. She’s unreachable.”
KiKi returned with my bowl of Brunswick stew and Adam’s barbecue platter.
“Anything else for y’all?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“We’re good,” Adam said, though his gaze never left my face. “So, you’re really close to your sister,” he said once KiKi’d walked back to the kitchen.
I felt like telling him everything. About my life. About Rebecca and the complicated bond we shared. Everything. I never felt that way. I kept things locked tight inside me, never wanting to show any dent in my professional demeanor. I knew how to hide my flaws.
Rebecca hated my wimpiness, and I’d learned early to erect a brave facade. I needed to work with Adam. Better that he saw me as a competent physician than a woman who could still be unnerved by the past.
“Yes,” I said simply. “We are.”
“You’re so lucky to have a sib.”
“You don’t?” I finally got around to picking up my spoon, but I was so intent on our conversation that I didn’t even consider dipping it into the stew.
He shook his head, swallowing a mouthful of barbecued pork. “No family,” he said. “Lost my parents when I was fifteen.”
I drew in a breath of surprise. The urge to tell him my own story expanded in my chest, but it was a story I never told. “Both at once?” I asked. “An accident?”
“Exactly. They were coming back from a party. Drunk driver.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Did you live with relatives then?”
“Didn’t have any of them, either. Just grandparents who were too frail to take me. So I did the foster home thing.”
“Was it hard?” I’d been spared foster care. I ate a spoonful of the stew. I loved Mama Dip’s Brunswick stew, but now I barely tasted it.
“I got into a good one,” he said, blotting his lips with his napkin. “Unusual to be able to stay in one foster home for years, but I did. I’m still in touch with them. Good people.”
“You’re so—” I smiled “—upbeat.”
“Just born that way.” He shrugged. “Extra serotonin or something. It got me through.”
I ate another spoonful of stew, still not tasting it. “I was fourteen,” I said.
“Fourteen?”
“When my parents died.”
He set his fork down and leaned back in his chair. “You’re kidding,” he said. “You, too? An accident?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to go there, much as I longed to tell him every detail of my life. “Yes,” I lied.
“Did you end up in foster care, too?”
“No.” I looked down at the stew. “Rebecca—my sister—was eighteen, and she wouldn’t let it happen. She took care of me. She made it work.”
“You were lucky.”
“Incredibly.”
“Where does your sis—Rebecca—live when she’s not on assignment?”
“Here. Well, in Durham. She lives with Dorothea Ludlow. Do you know who she—”
“The DIDA founder,” he said. “Cool lady. Your sister lives with her? She’s her—” He raised his eyebrows. Clearly he did know about Dorothea.
“No. Dorothea’s in a committed relationship with an artist named Louisa Golden. They have this beautiful Victorian, and Rebecca rents the upstairs.”
“What’s your relationship status?”
“You are so blunt.” I smiled. “You just … you think of a question and it pops out of your mouth.”
“Does that bother you? ”
I thought about it. “I like it, actually,” I said, “and I’m not in a relationship. ”
“Amazing,” he said. “You’re pretty and smart and a catch. You’ve been working too hard, huh?”
People always said I was pretty, which meant average looking, which was good enough. Rebecca was beautiful though, and a force of nature. There were pictures of her on the DIDA Web site working in the field. No makeup, her short brown hair messy and unkempt, a sick child in her arms. The image of her could take your breath away. Even though I was the blonde, blue-eyed, creamy-skinned sister, I seemed to disappear next to her. It had sometimes been hard growing up in her shadow.
“How about you?” I asked.
“Divorced. Two years ago. Super woman, but she changed her mind about wanting kids.”
“You mean … changed her mind which way?”
“We went into it—we were married four years—we went into it talking about having a couple of kids. Several, really. Had the names picked out. All that rose-colored kind of fantasizing. I crave family, for obvious reasons.”
I nodded. I understood completely.
“Frannie was a reporter for one of the TV stations in Boston. She got caught up in her career and just totally changed her mind. It was bad. Hard when you still love each other and get along well and all, but can’t agree on that basic, really important issue. Not something you can really compromise on, you know? Either you want kids or you don’t.”
“I do,” I said, blushing suddenly. It sounded as though I was offering myself to him for something more than dinner. “I mean—” I laughed, embarrassed “—I feel the way you do. I have no family except for my sister. It’ll be a challenge balancing kids and work, but it’s a priority.”
For the first time that evening, he seemed at a loss for words. He chewed his lower lip, gazing at his nearly empty plate, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. My embarrassment had vanished, and I felt something happening between us in that silence. A shift. A knowing. When he looked up again, it was clear he felt it, too.
“You said I’m blunt.” He was smiling.
“Well, I didn’t mean—”
“I’m going to be even more blunt right now,” he said. “I fell in love with you in the O. R. today.”
I laughed. He was crazy. “You don’t know me,” I said.
“So true. So true. I sound like an idiotic kid, huh? But I fell in love with what I did know. What I witnessed. Your skill and caring.”
“Maybe you’re one of those men who can’t stand to be without a partner,” I said, but I knew where this was going. Where I wanted it to go.
“I’ve been without a partner for two years,” he said. “I’ve had opportunities. I haven’t been interested. Till right now. Today. But I don’t want to freak you out, okay? I won’t stalk you. Won’t call and bug you. I’ll leave the ball in your court.”
“Maybe you connect to people too quickly,” I said, thinking of the housekeeper in the elevator. “You assign them a personality before you get to know what they’re really like.”
“See?” He grinned. “You’re already finding fault with me, just like in a real relationship.”
I laughed. Could he be anymore likable? But then I sobered. I looked at him across the table.
“I