Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah Page B

he’d seen Mikaela. It had been here, in this very hospital. He’d come home for his mother’s funeral and found his father—the great Ian Campbell—suffering from Alzheimer’s. The disease had slowly and methodically erased every larger-than-life aspect of Ian’s personality.
    When the inevitable slide to death began, Ian had been moved into the medical center that bore his name.
    That was when Liam met Mikaela. She’d been young then—only twenty-five—and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
    “Did you know how much I longed to talk to you?”he said softly, leaning toward her. “You were sitting by my dad’s bedside. Do you remember that day? I didn’t say anything. I just stood in the doorway, listening to the way you talked to my father.”
    He sat down in the chair by the bed and took her left hand in his, coiled his fingers around hers. “I still remember the first time you
looked
at me. You’d seen me, of course, but you never really noticed me until I told you that he was my father.
    “It was springtime … remember that? You’d opened his window and brought him a small azalea plant that was a riot of pink flowers. I saw the sadness in you right away. Was it so close to the surface? I wonder about that now. Then, I thought I was special to see it, like we were soldiers of a similar war. The walking wounded. All I could think was how it would feel to be the one to make you smile. Do you remember what you said to me?
    “ ‘Do you talk to him?’ you asked me. I was so embarrassed. I said, ‘No one really talks to my dad anymore.’
    “And you said, ‘Then you should. It doesn’t matter what you say, just that you’re here. He needs to know you care.’ ”
    Care
. It was such a little word. Like
love
or
hate
. There was so much packed into those four letters. Up until that moment, Liam and his father hadn’t spent much time
caring
.
    “You gave him back to me, you know. I never really knew him when he was strong and bold and sucking up all the sunlight, but when he was old and shrunkenand afraid, he finally became mine. You taught me to talk to him, and in those last weeks, there were moments when he saw me, moments when he knew who I was and why I was there. The day before he died, he held my hand and told me he loved me for the first and only time in my life. You gave me that, Mikaela, and I don’t know if I ever thanked you for it.”
    He stood and leaned over the bed rail. He slowly released her hand and touched her swollen cheek. “I love you, Mike, with everything inside me. I’ll be here, waiting for you, for the rest of our lives. The kids and I … Come back to us, baby.” His voice broke. He gave himself a minute, then kissed her forehead, whispering, “Forever,” against her skin.
    Then he sat back down in the chair, still holding her hand.

Part Two

    Still do the stars impart their light
To those that travel in the night.
    —W ILLIAM C ARTWRIGHT

Chapter Six

    For four weeks, Mikaela had seen only darkness.
    By the end of the first week, Liam and the children had learned the age-old truth that life went on. As much as they wanted the world to stop for them, it didn’t. Day by day, ordinary life pushed into their sterile, grieving circle, demanding, prodding. Amazingly, the sun still rose in a world without Mikaela, and hours later, it set. Thanksgiving came and went, and in the last week in November, the first snow fell.
    Liam had learned that it was possible to appear to move forward when you were really standing still. As the coma dragged on, he’d had no choice. The kids went back to school; Rosa knit enough sweaters and blankets to cover everyone in town. Liam hired people to care for the horses; he paid the bills. And eventually he began seeing patients again. At first he’d only seen a few, but now he was up to a half-day schedule. He left the office at two o’clock every afternoon and sat by Mike’s bed until dinnertime. Some days Jaceyshowed up,