Vacation with a Vampire & Other Immortals by Maureen Child, MAGGIE SHAYNE Page A

waist, to hold her against him. He wanted to help her, because he could feel the discomfort that walking brought, but also the pleasure she was taking in the stroll.
    Touching her right then, he decided, would be a mistake. He met her eyes briefly, to let her know he was listening, even though he thought he knew what she was about to say.
    “Actually, it goes back a lot further than that. I’d been seeing a face, hearing a voice, in my dreams since I was a teenager. I thought I was seeing my soul mate then. But later I decided he was someone else entirely.”
    “He?”
    “You.”
    He lifted his brows, studying her.
    “But back to that night, two months ago. I’d been feeling…tired. Lethargic. Sleeping more and more, and sometimes during the day, too.” She smiled. “Like you.”
    He smiled back but didn’t interrupt.
    “It seemed to keep getting worse, so I finally saw a doctor. And she told me…” She paused, as if needing to gather her strength to go on. “She told me I was dying.”
    Then she looked at him again as if to gauge his reaction. But it didn’t seem appropriate to feign shock or surprise. “I’m sorry, Anna. That must have been extremely difficult for you to hear.”
    “It was. I was…I was devastated, really. But then…then I wasn’t.”
    He lifted his brows.
    “I just had to process it all. My life was ending. And I think what I really regretted was that I’d never lived. I’d spent my life taking care of others—people who never even seemed all that appreciative of it. Mary—my doctor—she tried to tell me that, but I didn’t really get it, you know? Not down deep. Not until I wandered down to the harbor, where all the sailboats come in. I’ve always loved the sea, always wanted to buy a sailboat and just head out into the ocean alone. No worries. No cares.”
    “And what’s kept you from doing that up to now?” he asked, honestly curious.
    She shrugged. “My sister. Well, her kids, really. She’s an addict.”
    “Heroin?”
    “Prescriptions. Anything she can get her hands on, really. Vicodin, Percocet, Ativan, Oxy.” She shrugged. “I gave up trying to help her long ago. She has to want to help herself, and she just doesn’t. But she has two kids, and they needed me. So I was there for them. I mean, they lived with her, but I was the one making sure there was always food in the house, keeping the power from being shut off and the heat on. I was the one who bought all their school clothes, and went to all the open houses and parent-teacher conferences and holiday concerts. I was the one who kept Child Protective Services from declaring her unfit and taking them away from her for good.”
    He nodded, and he knew she was underselling all she had done, minimizing it.
    “The kids grew up and headed off to college. Now they both have jobs, they’re living on their own—not high on the hog or anything. But they support themselves, and over time they’ll do even better. So I stopped paying my sister’s bills.” She looked at him, as if waiting for his verdict on that. But he said nothing, and so she went on. “See, when I paid them before, it was for the kids’ sake, but now it would just make me an enabler. She’s not going to take care of herself unless she’s forced to. It’s the best thing I can do for her.”
    “You don’t have to defend your actions to me, Anna. Not only am I not your judge, I agree with your decision completely. I doubt I’d have done as much as you have, in your position.”
    She thinned her lips. “I love my sister.”
    “That I will judge. You don’t love your sister. You love who she could be, maybe who she once was and who she could become again. But you don’t love who she is now. A negligent mother, an addict without the backbone to get herself clean. Who could love that? What is there to love in that?”
    She lowered her head. He thought her eyes were growing moist. “When I refused to keep helping her, the kids disowned me.