Happiness Key (34 page)

“He wants me to meet him Tuesday after work. He will tell me then.”

“Are you going to?”

“I…” She shrugged. “Should I?”

“Wow.” Tracy leaned back against the pillows. “What will you lose if you don’t, and what will you gain if you do?”

“I have no answers.”

“Well, I have a question,” Wanda said. “If you don’t go, for the rest of your life, will you wonder what Darshan was going to say?”

“I…I don’t think I know.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Tracy said. “Except that if you do go, whatever he says, whatever you think you’re feeling, you need to go home after you hear him out. You need to think it over before you do anything.”

“Most of our lives we are living in the middle of a story. But sometimes we end one or begin another. I feel I’m in that place.”

“But which place?” Wanda asked. “The ending, or the start of something new?”

Janya smiled sadly. “I suppose that’s what I discover on Tuesday.”

Wanda couldn’t remember the last time she and Ken had sat down to dinner together. She just knew that this morning he had made a point of telling her that he would be home in time to take Chase for his afternoon walk. When he actually showed up on time to do it, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to meet him halfway and have something ready for dinner, in case he decided to eat with her when he and the dog got back.

She fried chicken and baked biscuits to go with it. She wasn’t ready to bake the man a pie. Some things were sacred, and she didn’t bake pies for just anybody. But she did make peach cobbler, which was over and above the call of duty, and an emotional risk, at that.

The chicken was just ready to come out of the oven—where she always finished it—when Ken and Chase returned. The dog bounded in, as he always did, to be sure she was still there. Chase’s adjustment to living in a house with a family had been nothing short of amazing.

“I hardly have to do a thing,” Ken said. “I walk him off leash now. He comes whenever I call, and in between he chases seagulls.”

“I never thought you’d take to him.”

“If you’d asked me, I’d have said the same thing. But it’s nice to be needed, and he gives back double.”

“Kind of like a wife, only his expectations are a whole lot lower.”

“My expectations are kind of twitching. Do I smell chicken?”

“You do. If you wash up and act real nice, I’ll give you some.”

He smiled, the old Ken smile. For a moment she just basked in it. Then he was gone, and she heard water running in the bathroom.

Dinner was on the table when he returned. She’d cooked green beans and summer squash to go with the chicken, and made cream gravy for the biscuits.

He sat down, looked at the food on the table, then up at her. “I have really missed your cooking.”

She bit her tongue. This was not the night to point out that she had been right here cooking all the months he had stayed away. “Well, dig in,” she said instead. “Before I change my mind.”

She waited until he was halfway through his plate before she asked him the questions she’d been saving for a good moment. She had been married long enough to know a smart woman never tackled a man about anything on an empty stomach.

“I need your advice, Kenny,” she said. “Will you take a minute and listen?”

“You’ve got until I finish what’s on my plate and have seconds.”

“There’s peach cobbler, too, if you leave any room.”

“Peach cobbler? With vanilla ice cream?”

“Chocolate ripple, even better.”

“Shoot.” He frowned. “Maybe not the best choice, that word.” Then he shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “So, what’s up?”

She figured she had just witnessed a miracle. As always, Ken had been reminded of the man he killed. Probably almost everything reminded him. But he’d
pushed it away. Maybe the man’s guardian angel had finally woken up from her nap and was seeing to business.

“Okay, there are a couple of things.” She split another biscuit and ladled gravy on top. “First, on the Herb front.”

“You all still looking?”

“We are. We got the name of the woman Herb left his wife for, back when he was still Clyde Franklin. Gloria Madsen.” Ken knew the Clyde/Herb part of the story, so she didn’t explain again.

“So you got a name. Anything else?”

“Not really. But I got the feeling she was some piece of work, you know? Kind of a tramp, not above stealing anything she could get her hands on.”

“So you’re hoping I’ll run her name and see what I can find out about her later years.”

“It’s a real long shot. But it’s all we got right now.”

“It’s no trouble. Just don’t go telling everybody and their grandma what I’m doing for you.” His green eyes had an affectionate gleam, as if he really wasn’t sorry to help.

“I’ll write down everything I found out, which was precious little. But with luck, maybe she robbed a bank.”

“That would be great, wouldn’t it? Maybe she murdered somebody, too, embezzled from a big oil company, even worked on Wall Street.”

Wanda put her hand to her chest. “Maybe she was one of the top dogs at Enron. Or…a politician.”

“I can hardly wait to get started.”

They smiled at each other.

“So what else?” He dished up a second helping that was as large as his first. He had lost weight in the last months. She thought he was on the road to gaining it back tonight.

“Well, the situation at Alice’s seems to be deteriorat
ing.” She told him everything they knew, not leaving out a bit of it. “So we’d like your advice. There’s no good way to watch out for Alice. Lee keeps her shut up in that cottage like it was jail.”

“Could he be right? Does she need the rest and quiet?”

“You tell me, Kenny. She’s got friends. She knows we care about her, and she, well,
blooms
when she’s with us. Take that away, and is she going to be better off? Does that work, staying away from people you love?”

She hadn’t meant to talk about
them,
but all roads seemed to lead there.

“Not that well,” he said after a moment. “This Lee Symington might just be up to no good.”

“Like what?” Wanda said.

“Elder abuse. Not that rare, you know. Old people can be a whole lot of work and trouble. Even the best caretakers have bad days and lose their cool.”

“It’s not like he’s changing bedpans. She cooks their meals and cleans.”

“What do you think’s happening?”

“He handles her money. He claims she has very little, that her investments went south.”

“A lot of people’s did.”

“What if hers didn’t? What if he’s robbing her blind?”

“You’d need more to go on for an investigation.”

“And if anybody started coming around asking questions, Mr. Lee Symington would know what was up. And that would make all our lives miserable.”

“Something tells me you have an idea already, only you were hoping I’d come to it on my own.”

“Granny cam. Can we put one in there without them knowing about it? Tracy’s the landlady. Would she have cause?”

He didn’t laugh her off. He just looked as if he was
thinking. “You can’t record what they’re saying. That’s against the law unless both parties agree. But there’s no law in Florida that says you can’t watch them anywhere there’s no expectation of privacy. No cameras in the bedroom or bathroom, in other words.”

“You mean, we really can do it?”

“Can, but are you sure you want to? What do you think it’ll tell you?”

Wanda thought about that over another chicken leg. “Well, it won’t tell us if he’s embezzling Alice’s money. I guess all it will tell us is whether he’s threatening her physically.”

“I’ll get you some information on hidden cameras. You’ll be surprised how sophisticated they are. Her house is so close to old Herb’s, we might be able to set up some wireless arrangement so you can view everything there.”

“You know the most terrible things, don’t you?”

“You’d better believe it.”

Over cobbler and coffee they talked about their children. Wanda caught him up on everything she knew. Everything felt normal, simple, like any long-married couple at the end of a day. Wanda wasn’t lulled by it, and when Ken announced he was going in to work to finish some paperwork, she didn’t protest. She wasn’t even sure what they would do if he stayed. She was out of that rhythm.

“I’ll be back by ten,” he promised. “We can watch the news before we go to bed.”

“See you then.” She was carrying dishes to the sink, but he stopped her. He kissed her goodbye, the way he always had until his life fell apart. She didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter, because he was gone before she had a chance, anyway.

Dishes done, her third shower of the day out of the way,
Wanda propped herself up in bed with the telephone. She was too tired for a whole night of calls. In fact lately, since Ken had begun to come home earlier, she had passed some of her clients back to Lainie and asked her to find them someone new to talk to.

She didn’t want to risk an interruption or an explanation if Ken caught her on the phone with another man. More than that, she was just losing heart for the whole thing. She had faced the fact she was doing these calls more to spite her husband than for money. What Ken didn’t know certainly wasn’t hurting him, and she was losing interest in flaunting SEDUCED after the divorce.

She was losing interest in the divorce, too. But maybe she wasn’t losing interest in Ken.

When Lainie answered, Wanda jotted down a list of numbers, but when Lainie finished, she told her she only had time for one call tonight. “I’ll call Shadow,” she said, “but I don’t have time for the others.”

“Those calls to him are pretty short,” Lainie said. “Maybe you ought to take that second number. He talks forever. Don’t forget, you get paid by the minute.”

“I know how I get paid.”

“Well, next month, don’t say I didn’t warn you when your paycheck won’t cover dinner at McDonald’s.”

“Okay, I won’t say it. Now see if you can find somebody to cover the other fellows tonight. Please?”

“You’re letting me down, Wanda.”

“I think you’d better get used to it, Lainie.” Wanda hung up.

She dialed what was now a familiar number. Shadow picked up on the third ring.

“You’ve been seduced,” she said. “And it’s a pretty night for it, isn’t it? Stars shining, a crescent moon.”

“You been outside to see it?”

“I can see through my window.”

“You need more fresh air, woman.”

“I need somebody to take a walk with me this time of night. You won’t catch me out there by myself.”

“Wish I was there.”

She wished he was, too, although even wishing felt wrong. But she and Shadow had connected. She’d never really looked forward to calling any of the other men in this same way. She had reveled in their conversations, but she hadn’t felt as if she were talking to a friend.

“So what do you need tonight?” she asked. “What’s your fantasy?”

“I think I just need a woman’s opinion. Your opinion.”

“Is that so?” She felt flattered. Being consulted was part of a marriage, an important part that had disappeared in hers.

“I made a mistake. A bad one. And I don’t know how to tell somebody I’m sorry.”

Little ol’ Wanda, phone-sex psychologist. Yet even as she tried to be flip, her heart went out to him. Here was a man who needed help, and he had turned to her. Unfortunately, what did she know of forgiveness? She was so locked into anger at Ken, she could no longer feel his pain. She had lost patience with his suffering, and she had made things harder for both of them.

But Lord, didn’t he deserve it?

“Why is saying ‘I’m sorry’ so hard for a man?” she asked. “Can you just say it and get it over with?”

“Some things are a little larger than a simple apology.”

“Yes, but isn’t that a starting place?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, I’ve got my own issues with asking for forgive
ness,” she said. “Sometimes the other person needs to ask for it, too. So who goes first? Do you arrange a time when you both promise to start, say, on the stroke of twelve and spew it out together?”

His gruff laugh was now pleasingly familiar to her. “Maybe that’s the way to do it.”

“You try it first, then, and tell me if it works.”

“Let’s say I did that. Then what happens? You know?”

“Then I guess you figure out how to start again. If the relationship has anything left, maybe you figure out how to keep it. If it doesn’t, you just part company, but at least you’re not so angry anymore, or hurt.”

“Maybe that’s why a lot of men never say they’re sorry. Because they’re afraid of that last part.”

“Whoever you’re apologizing to, Shadow? They’d be crazy to turn around afterward and head for the door.”

“You don’t know me, Sunshine.”

But she felt as if she did. “I’d take a chance on what I do know,” she said.

“You’re good for my soul. I talk to you, and I feel like I can just keep going.”

“You can. Keep going, I mean. I hope you don’t think about not going.”

“I have. Not anymore.”

“That’s good. That’s important. You just put one foot in front of the other and move on.”

“Is that what you do?”

“That’s what I do, although sometimes I’m not one bit sure where I’m headed.”

He laughed. “You have a good night. I’ll call again.”

“You be sure you do now.”

She hung up. Sometime later she opened her eyes and saw Ken undressing on the other side of the room. She
still had the phone cradled against her. She carefully set it where it belonged. Then she sat up.

“Did I miss the news?”

“You didn’t miss one good thing. Just war and misery. You were better off sleeping.”

She turned over and bunched the pillow under her head. He turned out the light and got in bed with her. She could feel his warmth, the soft caress of his breath against her neck. Then he put his hand on her shoulder, and in a moment, his breathing deepened and slowed.

His hand on her shoulder. Such a simple thing. But didn’t it make all the difference?