The You I Never Knew by Susan Wiggs Page A

rating.”
    “That’s dumb. Besides, I’ve fallen for you. And that’s not going to change. Not ever.” As they finished dressing, she had considered telling him that she was alarmingly late with her period. But she’d said nothing. If it was a false alarm, there was no need to worry him.
    He took her hand. “Honey, I don’t want it to change. That’s why we’re better off keeping this quiet.”
    His words made her feel hopelessly naive. There were differences between them, class differences she didn’t want to see. Looking back, she realized that had been apparent to Sam right from the start. That was probably why he didn’t think anything of simply disappearing one November night.
    She had walked outside with him, into the dry cold and sunshine, bringing along the finished winter landscape.
    “Damn.”
He squinted in the direction of the training arena.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Jake Dollarhide. I think he saw us.”
    The foreman’s son. She saw the gangly young man standing in the distance, and he was staring directly at them. “So what?” she’d said with breezy disregard. “Let Jake Dollarhide stare all he wants.” She put the finished painting behind the seat of the truck.
    “I can’t take that, Michelle—”
    “Yes you can. I’ll paint a hundred more for you.”
    “Believe me, honey, this is enough.”
    She hadn’t known back then that those would be his last words to her. That his last kiss would be a quick, furtive brush of his lips over hers. But after that moment, she had never seen him again.
    * * *
    “Ms. Turner, we’re ready for you in Dr. Kehr’s office.”
    Goose bumps rose on Michelle’s arms as she entered a comfortable office with a generic but good-quality Robyn Bloss serigraph print on the wall behind the desk. Michelle studied it for a moment, remembering that she used to paint freely, in intense colors of her choosing, not in hues to match the burgundy wing chairs in doctors’ offices where people waited for the bad news.
    The Bloss print was supposed to be pacifying. To some it might have been. But to Michelle it was profoundly disturbing. Seeing that print was like looking into a mirror.
    She seated herself in a leather armchair beside her father. A large window behind the desk afforded a view of the city, gray and bleak in midwinter, the river a colorless vein through the middle of town. Dr. Kehr, the nephrologist, sat opposite them, her ultraclean hands folded atop a stack of files and charts. She had a bland but pleasant smile, no discernible personality, and somehow meeting her for the first time made the whole situation starkly real.
    They were going to cut out one of her kidneys and sew it into her father.
    Sucking in a deep breath, Michelle shifted in her chair and waited for the rest of the team to arrive. They met Donna Roberts, the transplant coordinator, who was a registered nurse specializing in organ transplantation. Donna did a lot of touching and hand-holding, which Michelle didn’t particularly need at that moment, but she figured she’d be grateful for later. Then there was Willard T. Temple, the psychologist and social worker. He could scuttle the whole thing if he didn’t think her father and she were mentally prepared for it.
    They would each have their own surgeons. They showed up in scrubs, alike as Tweedledee and Tweedledum but with firmer handshakes. Neither of them could stay long because, after all, they were surgeons and they spent all day cutting people, not talking to fading movie stars and their neurotic daughters.
    To Michelle’s surprise, one of the surgeons held the door open. “This way, Mr. Slade.”
    Gavin got up. Briefly, he rested his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be back shortly, okay?”
    “You’re not staying?” Panic pounded in her chest.
    “I think they need to draw lines on me or something.”
    After the door closed, she scowled at Dr. Kehr. “He should be here.”
    Temple, who held a clipboard with a yellow legal