030:

"Hello?" She didn't recognize the number, but answered it anyway, as so many work related people got this number.

"Hi Mia." She blinked, staring outside at the darkness, not able to see even the patio which she knew was covered in late fall leaves from the overhanging trees.

She didn't recognize the voice. And the weary sigh that accompanied her name, as if the owner of this unfamiliar and very male voice didn't really want to call her.

"Hi." She repeated, unconvincingly. She didn't know this person, if it had been any of the normal guys, they would have come up on the screen with their names.

"It's Robert." He said, and she tried for the life of her to remember anyone named Robert.

"DeMarco." He added, belatedly, and with that same uncomfortable weariness.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Hi there." She let it hang on a slightly upturned query. What did he want? Had Ryan told him to call her? She had thought to give him a jingle when she felt she had her own emotions under control. This would be pushing it a bit, if it wasn't the business call she hoped it would be. She glanced up at the clock and realized it wasn't business. It was almost eleven.

"I'm bothering you." He said, but didn't apologize, didn't offer to call her a different time.

"No, not really." She had to be polite, knew he was going through his own personal hell. Losing a wife...

"I'm interrupting something? You and Ryan...." He let it hang uncomfortably.

"No!" she laughed, leaning against the wall banister on the stairway. "No, it's not like that. We- we're not living together."

"Yeah, I know. He lives at Tom's."

"Did Ryan tell you to call me?" She asked, knowing now that he had to have mentioned it, and given him her number.

"No." The weariness floated palpably in the air between them, on an angry dark cloud of fear and pain. "No, I ah--- stole your number from his phone, though. I heard him tell you to call me, and when you didn't, I figured I should call you."

"How is your wife? Ryan mentioned she's not doing too well." She thought she'd address this issue right from the start. It was the reason he'd called after all.

She could hear him swallow. "Yeah." There was a choked up quality to his tone. Melia recognized it and tried to picture him. She'd met him a few times with Ryan, never actually spoken to him, but had shaken his hand. He wasn't as tall as Matthew, who was quite tall, more like a hairs breath taller than Jared. He was older than Matthew and Ryan, maybe thirty-one or two. He had very dark unruly hair, longish, but very styled, curly or wavy, or both. His eyebrows were heavy, his features pronounced and very handsome, but not in a Hollywood norm at all. Matthew and Tom were Hollywood Norms, not Robert. His arms had been hairy, even the backs of his hands....and he was heavily muscled. He worked out a lot that was obvious.

"They've got her in hospice. They give her a couple of days at the most. I haven't left her side, but I had to get out of there." It was the most he'd said and there was that anger under the surface. Melia recognized the anger but hadn't experienced it. She supposed it was different being a guy.

"Where is the hospice?" She asked gently, trying to imagine knowing when it was going to happen. Knowing it would be in the next few days. Even with Jared's loss of his legs, she hadn't pictured him dying that night. More--- she still pictured him living on and on forever...

"Here, in Bellaire."

"Oh." She didn't know what else to say, his pain was a torture to her, the memories beginning to surface. Maybe it had been a mistake to offer to comfort him. How could she comfort anyone? She was barely handling her own grief!

But she was making decisions... she thought of Ryan, and felt a throat clogging guilt wash through her. A diversion... that's what she needed, and this man did too... they just needed a diversion. "Do you need to get out? Do you want to talk?"

"Like what?"

"Well..." She wasn't sure what she was suggesting. "You want to come up here? I like to go walking on the pier at night."

"The Pier? The Huntington Beach Pier?" He repeated. "It's after eleven."

"Kinda late, isn't it?" She sounded apologetic but wasn't sure where he was going with the conversation. "I don't think they close the pier. There are night fishermen."

"I'll go walk on the pier with you." He said suddenly.

She hadn't realized she'd held her breath, hoping he would... or wouldn't? "Okay, I was just going to get a shower; it'll take you about that long to drive up here. Do you have a GPS?" They all did. She gave him her address and he clicked off.

Melia frowned. She was tired, had been looking forward to getting some much-needed sleep. But she trudged on up the stairs, turning in at her mother's room.... Her room. She stopped in the doorway... no, it was her mother's room still. She glanced up at the wall above the dresser as she tossed her clothing on the bed. A giant oil of her parents, Richard and Tracy. But below it, on the dresser top, several framed pictures of Raine Maverick, and their family pictures, Raine with his twins. She picked one up and held it in the light.

He'd been a handsome man, Raine. Dark hair and eyes, slightly built.... Capable looking, enigmatic. She knew he was a man of conviction. He was somebody who thought for himself, who made his own decisions, who tried to influence others for good without violating their agency. She knew this because her mother, and father, had told her.

Unlike Hannah, whose father had left her a written and video legacy. She went to her purse which had been thrown on the floor and dug around till she found her little photo album and pulled out one photo. A picture of Jared holding Hannah. She cocked her head, clicking her tongue at it, feeling a bit choked up, would she finally cry tonight? Or would he approve of her desire to help this man, Robert, deal with his own imminent loss?

She rather thought the latter.

******