Divinely Yours Read online

  “You’ll have to have a word with my mates Paul and Ringo about that one,” John said.

  “Are there any questions?” the SB asked.

  Silence. No one, it seemed, wanted to question her.

  “Don’t be shy,” She coaxed.

  “I have a question,” Skye said. The words skidded off her tongue before she could stop them.

  “Yes, Skye,” the SB said brightly. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Uh, you know my name?” Skye said in a flustered voice. She’d hoped to retain her anonymity.

  “’Course I do,” She said. There was a pause. “It’s that whole omniscient thing. Comes in handy at social gather­ings, let me tell you.”

  “Oh, of course, I forgot. I mean, I didn’t forget. I just—”

  “It’s okay, Skye. Fire when ready.”

  “Well, your Supreme Beingness, um, I just thought...Rather, what I meant to say was...Don’t you think this last lesson was a little...simplistic?”

  “What did you say?”

  The room fell silent. A few people nervously eyed the ceil­ing as if they expected it to fall in. The girl sitting next to Skye moved her desk several feet away.

  “I, uh…”

  “I spent a lot of time on that lesson, Skye. Eons in fact.”

  “Maybe ‘simplistic’ wasn’t the right word,” Skye said quickly. “I retract the question.”

  “Just teasing you,” the SB said with a laugh, and the whole class, including Skye, breathed a collective sigh of relief. “I have a pretty thick skin and don’t take offense easily. How could I with every­one and his brother yelling my name every time they stub their toes? But back to your question. You’re exactly right, Skye, when you say the lesson sounds simple, but, like a whole lot of other things, it’s only deceptively simple. You could live a million lives and not understand all of the nuances of this one little lesson. It’s also the one from which all the others flow. The more you learn to love well, the more you will summon your own strength and godliness. Do you un­derstand?”

  “I guess,” Skye said.

  “Don’t sweat it right now. With each lifetime, you’ll comprehend it a little bit more. Loving others on Earth is the best way to illuminate the mysterious, to rouse us where we are asleep. And I know you wish you felt more awake, don’t you, Skye?”

  “Yes,” Skye said, marveling that the SB knew the smallest details of her life.

  “Oops!” the SB said abruptly. “Gotta run. Trouble in the Middle East again. Man, those folks run me ragged. Ciao, everybody.”

  “Ciao,” the class answered back.

  “Nice lady,” Dr. Mullins said, handing out CDs with all the Beatles songs he’d covered in class. “A little souvenir from me to you on our last meeting. I’ve enjoyed teaching you. I wish for all of you to have fruitful lives on Earth. Class dismissed.”

  The students jostled toward the door, chattering over their encounter with the SB. Again, Professor Mullins summoned Skye to his desk.

  “I hope the SB cleared that last lesson up for you, Skye,” he said.

  “I’ll try to remember, I promise.” She paused. “I don’t sup­pose you have any idea when I’ll be called down?”

  He shrugged. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “What?”

  “It’s up to you entirely.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Not at all.”

  “But I don’t want to go...ever. I have no desire to leave Heaven. Zip.”

  He gave her a queer smile. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Skye? You’re the creator of all of your circumstances. You were the one who wanted to go to Earth in the first place.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Skye insisted. “I fought against going. I was told I was handpicked by the SB.”

  “You were,” he said with a nod. “But the desire came from you first.”

  “I don’t understand. I never asked to go to Earth. This is all very confusing to me.”

  “It will all be clear soon enough, Skye.” He touched her gently on the shoulder. “Have a wonderful life.”

  Eighteen

  “Please make yourself comfortable,” the therapist said. She gestured toward an oversized cushioned rattan chair with a round back. Ryan hadn’t seen one like it since the late seventies. In fact, the therapist’s entire office was decorated in early American Earth Mother. There were hanging spider plants, hemp wall tapestries, and beeswax candles.

  The therapist—her name was Jennifer Carr—looked like a relic from the Summer of Love. She wore a long flowing dress and granny glasses. Ryan could easily picture her in earlier days, perched on the shoulders of a bare-chested boyfriend, groov­ing to Joe Cocker at Woodstock.

  The chair was surprisingly comfortable. It was so large he felt protected by it, like a snail in its shell.

  Dr. Carr asked some preliminary questions, and she seemed so self-assured he gradually relaxed.

  “Let’s talk about your relationship with Susan before the accident,” she said, pulling a pencil from her thicket of wiry gray hair. “What do you think made it so special?”

  “Do you have a couple of weeks?” Ryan said with a chuckle. He sighed, and his tone grew more serious. “The rela­tionship I had with Susan wasn’t perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was unlike anything I’d ever experi­enced before.”

  “Was it common interests between the two of you that made it so exceptional? Similar backgrounds? Great sex?”

  “No,” Ryan said, surprised to be talking about sex so early in the game. “I mean, yes. The sex was…mind-blowing. And we did enjoy many of the same things, but it was more than that.”

  “I know it may be hard to put into words, but describe it for me if you can.”

  Ryan’s expression grew thoughtful as he recalled the wonder of looking into Susan’s eyes and seeing the person he was meant to spend eternity with.

  “It was as if we’d been asleep all of our lives and love woke us up.”

  “And now?”

  Ryan sighed. The difference between then and now was like comparing the ocean to a painting of the ocean.

  “It’s just two people going through the motions,” he said.

  “Maybe we should talk about the day of the accident.”

  Ryan startled at her statement. He hadn’t discussed that day for a very long time, hadn’t wanted to talk about it or even think about it.

  “We had an argument,” he finally managed. “It was the worst one we’d ever had. Susan thought I betrayed her.”

  “How?”

  “By making love to another woman.”

  The woman in question was Tracy Stevens, the daughter of a wealthy senator. She and Ryan had slept with each other for years even when he was involved with someone else. But when he’d fallen in love with Susan, he’d quit fooling around with Tracy. She was reluctant to accept her diminished role in Ryan’s life and continued to dog Ryan even after he an­nounced his engagement to Susan, always urging him to come over for a quickie.

  Tracy was a constant source of friction between Susan and Ryan. She’d often call the house and hang up when Susan answered. Since he shared a history with Tracy and still had professional ties with her father, Ryan was reluctant to be unkind to her, hoping she’d soon give up.

  Ryan’s stomach roiled as he remembered the terrible morning when Susan told him she had to go to out of town for a family emergency.

  “I might even have to spend the night,” she’d said, hur­riedly spreading marmalade on an English muffin at the breakfast table. “I’m going in to work for a few hours, but then I’m leaving straight from the office.”

  “What kind of family emergency?” Ryan asked. As far as he knew, Susan had no kin to speak of. Both of her parents were dead and she had no brothers or sisters.

  An
odd look entered her eyes. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Not until I know exactly what I’m dealing with. It’s just so bizarre.”

  “Maybe I should come with you,” Ryan said. Susan had been acting distracted for the last day or so. Was this so-called emergency the reason why?

  “No. I prom­ise I’ll explain everything as soon as I know what’s going on. Please try to understand. This is something I have to do myself.”

  After she left, his mind started churning out all kinds of explanations for Susan’s secretiveness. Then he did something completely out of character. He headed to the medicine cabinet and looked for her diaphragm case. He became even more agi­tated when he saw it was missing. The phone interrupted his thoughts. Tracy was on the other line.

  “Ryan, it’s a glorious day for brunch on my verandah. I’ll have my cook whip up Belgian waffles for the two of us.”

  “Thank you, Tracy, but, as usual, I’m going to have to de­cline,” he said distractedly. “Some people around here work, you know.”

  “Ryan. You forget how well I know you. It’s Friday. You’re always late going into the office on Fridays.”

  It was true. He worked a half day on Fridays, and Tracy frequently called Friday mornings because she knew Ryan would be home and Susan would be at her office.

  “Sorry. I still can’t make it. Thanks for the invite,” he said, hanging up.

  A half hour later the doorbell rang, and Tracy stood on his welcome mat. She wore a short Lilly Pulitzer dress and held a sterling silver chafing dish in one hand and a chilled bottle of Moet in the other.

  “If Muhammad won’t come to the mountain,” she said with a wink.

  She looked as pretty as a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers, and his stomach was growling. What the hell. He decided to let her inside. They were old friends, after all, and maybe she’d take his mind off this latest strangeness with Susan.

  The two of them downed a couple of flutes of champagne, and Ryan was tipsy before he had his first bite of waffle.

  “Where’s Suzy Q? Off doing her Dr. Dolittle thing?” Tracy asked as they sat in the breakfast nook. She wore some kind of lotion or bronzer that made her olive skin glow seductively in the sunlight.

  “No, actually,” Ryan said with a sly smile. “Truth is I don’t know where she is.” He felt so warm inside. Warm from the maple syrup and the sunlight and the buzz of the Moet. At that moment ev­erything seemed right, even Tracy’s bare foot lightly grazing his inner thigh. Before he knew it, they’d moved from the breakfast nook and had become pleasantly entangled on the sofa.

  “Why don’t we take this party to the bedroom?” Tracy asked in a throaty voice.

  Her request seemed so natural and normal to Ryan—he’d been with Tracy so many times it didn’t even feel like cheat­ing—that he scooped her up and carried her upstairs without a second thought.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold of the bedroom, he was jarred out of his champagne haze. Susan was everywhere in the room, from her sandalwood perfume to her discarded terry-cloth robe to the Lucite framed photograph on the bureau, her trusting eyes staring at him. What had seemed harmless only moments ago now seemed like a horrendous breach of trust.

  “Sorry,” he said, depositing Tracy on the bed like a load of dirty laundry. “I can’t do it.”

  “It’s just sex between friends,” Tracy said with a pout. “Surely you don’t plan on being faithful to Susan your entire life? You aren’t even married.”

  He couldn’t look at her. Didn’t want to think about how close he’d come to messing up the best relationship of his life. “Thanks for the brunch, Tracy. You better go now.”

  “Will do,” Tracy said smoothly, as if his rejection of her was as inconsequential as a fleabite. “Just need to make a little trip to the powder room and then, poof, I’m on my way.”

  “You know where it is,” he said, relieved she’d been so easy to get rid of.

  An hour later, Ryan was running on the treadmill when he heard Liberty bark and the front door open. Not Tracy again, he thought as he strode down the hall to the foyer.

  But it wasn’t Tracy; it was Susan, and he smiled, thinking she was finally going to tell him about her mysterious errand. Instead, she barely looked at him and said, “I left my over­night bag in the bedroom.”

  She rushed down the hall, obviously in a hurry, and he followed behind her, hoping to get more information.

  As soon as he entered the bedroom, the smell hit him. It must have reached Susan’s nostrils at the same time, because she turned around and said, “What in the world?”

  Ryan recognized the scent immediately. It was Joy—Tra­cy’s perfume of choice—but the aroma of it was overwhelm­ing, as if an entire bottle had been spilled in the bedroom. The perfume wasn’t the only violation. The bed, which Susan had made earlier, was now mussed, and a pair of pink thong un­derwear was spread on Susan’s pillow with a white envelope beside it. Susan immediately went to the bed and tore open the card, reading it aloud.

  “The memory lingers on?” Susan said, her hands shaking, her face contorted in pain.

  “Susan—”

  “What did you do, call her as soon as you found out I was going out of town?”

  “Susan, this is ridiculous. I didn’t—Tracy did this. She dropped by unexpectedly and then she said she was going to the bathroom, but obviously she came in here and—”

  “Do you rendezvous with her every Friday morning?” Her face was shock white and her chin trembled. “In our bedroom?”

  “Of course not! Susan, if you’d just hear me out. I had nothing—”

  But Susan wasn’t listening. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she whipped her bag over her shoulder.

  “Didn’t I predict this would happen?” she spat. “I knew I never should have gotten involved with you.”

  “Please, Susan,” Ryan said, reaching out for her, but she dodged him and dashed out the door. He followed behind her, but she was too quick for him. She had already gotten behind the wheel of her Chevrolet Tahoe, refusing to stop as he ran alongside the vehicle while she pulled out of the circular drive.

  “And that was the last time you saw her before the acci­dent?” Dr. Carr asked.

  “Yes,” he said, shaking away the memories of their last encounter. “It was the worst thing that could have happened.”

  “Did you ever learn who she was going to see that day?” Dr. Carr asked, flipping a page of her notepad.

  “No,” Ryan said. “I asked her, but she doesn’t remember. I assume it couldn’t have been very important since it’s never come up again.”

  He’d also found her diaphragm in the drawer of their bed­side table. She hadn’t taken it with her. It had just been moved from its regular spot. He’d behaved like such an idiot that day.

  “How did you find out about the accident?”

  “I couldn’t concentrate on my work because of our fight,” Ryan began, hoping to make it through the story without having a breakdown. “I kept calling her cell phone, but I’d always get voicemail. Then, while I was in a meeting with a client, my secretary buzzed me. ‘Susan’s been in a car accident and she’s badly hurt.’ I wasn’t even sur­prised. There’d been a feeling of dread hanging over me all day.”

  Ryan told Dr. Carr how he’d raced over to Grady Hospital and discovered Susan had been admitted to intensive care. The physician gave him a laundry list of horrors: traumatic brain injury; cerebral contusion; compound fractures of both legs; fractured ribs, cheekbones, and nose.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll be with us in the morning.”

  That night, Ryan never left her side, never took his eyes off the contraptions monitoring her vital signs and tubes that threaded through her broken body. His entire concentration was focused on the faint beating of her heart.

  Morning came, and the
machines were still steadily blipping with Susan’s lifeblood. Her doctor was cautious but more hopeful.

  “I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed my entire life,” Ryan said, feeling drained from the telling. “I just knew Susan was going to live even though it took two weeks for her to regain conscious­ness. The doctors warned us she’d be confused when she woke up.”

  “And was she?” Dr. Carr asked.

  Ryan sighed. He’d never forget the vacant expression on Susan’s face when she first opened her eyes and looked at him. It was as if she’d never seen him before in her entire life.

  “She had no idea who I was and no memory of our argument before the accident. She still has occasional memory problems. It’s as if she had to learn about her life all over again.”

  “That must have been difficult for both of you.”

  “It was,” Ryan said, staring into the prism in the window that was throwing off streaks of color onto the wall behind Dr. Carr. “But there were so many other issues going on that I couldn’t dwell on it. She had to have surgical pins and rods placed in the bones of both of her legs to help the fractures heal, and she was forced to endure hours of physical therapy just so she’d be able to walk again. That’s when I first began having my…problems.”

  “Yes?” Dr. Carr said, looking up at him expectantly.

  “I started to see a completely unfamiliar side of Susan. There was weepiness, bouts with depression, and an extreme neediness. I knew her injuries were excruciatingly painful, and nobody could blame her for the way she was acting, cursing out doctors, screaming at nurses. But it was completely unex­pected. The Susan I knew before the accident rarely raised her voice…and she was so strong.”

  “And the changes in her were upsetting to you,” Dr. Carr said.

  “Yeah.” He dipped his head in shame. “Her neurologist warned me there’d be personality changes. I guess I just didn’t expect them to be so drastic. I know I sound selfish. I should just be grateful she’s alive. You wouldn’t believe what she’s been through: bone-grafting, facial surgery, liver drainage. I just…”