Holding Hands (4 page)

Chilly rain dripped inside Meredith’s collar,
flattened her hair and seeped through the stitching in her shoes as
they walked back to the car. Meredith slung Scott’s laptop bag over
her shoulder and gathered the pizza and salad; Scott took their
suitcases, and the three of them made their slow way along a path
of crushed seashells that led to what could charitably be called a
cluster of hovels.

“
Unfortunately, I can’t
allow candles in the cabins,” Cindy rattled on, her voice
splintered by the wind and rain. “Fire hazard. You’ll have to make
do with this flashlight. I wish I could spare more, but I’ve got to
parcel them out to my other guests. Hopefully things’ll be back up
and running tomorrow. Good thing we don’t need air conditioning
today, right?”

Just thinking of air conditioning caused a
shiver to ripple down Meredith’s back. By the time they paused at
one of the shacks and Cindy shoved a key into the doorknob,
Meredith’s shirt was pasted to her skin, and her drenched hair lay
clammy against her neck.

Before entering the cabin, Cindy paused to
snap the umbrella shut, a move that sent more raindrops splattering
onto Meredith. “It’s really a pretty unit,” Cindy said, flickering
the flashlight around the small room. “Bed, dresser, bathroom
through there—” she aimed the beam at a doorway “—kitchen area—” a
small counter with a microwave sitting on it and a minifridge
wedged beneath it, both appliances useless without electricity
“—and TV.” Also useless. “You’ll see tomorrow, it’s a charming
room. I don’t want you going back to Diane on Sunday and telling
her I gave you the worst unit. This is definitely one of the better
ones. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

Scott grunted something. Meredith nodded as
if to indicate that the cabin was everything she could have
hoped.

“
So, give a call if you need
anything,” Cindy said, sauntering back to the door. “The phones are
still working. Just dial zero to reach me. Let’s hope this storm
blows itself out before long. Don’t forget to check in tomorrow
morning. Breakfast is served from seven to nine-thirty. Oh, if you
want ice—” she hesitated in the open doorway “—we’ve got some in
the big house. Or we will once the power comes back on. Have a fun
evening!” She opened the umbrella, ducked outside and closed the
door behind her.

Meredith stood motionless, waiting for her
eyes to adjust to the gloom. Scott evidently felt more adventurous,
since he was holding the flashlight, and he took a few steps, then
bumped into something and swore.

“
Let’s eat before your pizza
gets cold,” Meredith suggested.

“
Yeah. I can’t very well
reheat it.” He swept the room with the flashlight and the beam
alighted on a couple of upholstered chairs that had seen better
days. A small end table stood between them.

Meredith carried the food to the table and
set it down. “Can I borrow the light for a minute? I want to dry
off.” She hoped the bathroom was stocked with towels. “Go ahead and
start eating. I’ll just be a minute.”

In the bathroom, she propped the flashlight
so its beam was reflected by the mirror above the sink. She looked
like hell, and she doubted the teddy she’d brought would improve
matters much. A small hair dryer rested in a bracket on the wall,
but without electricity she couldn’t use it to redeem her
bedraggled hair. She made do with a hand towel, wiping her face and
neck and wringing the excess water from her hair. Her comb and
brush were packed into her bag; she used her fingers to smooth the
dripping brown locks as best she could.

If she were less tired, she’d view the
blackout evening as an adventure. How romantic to be stranded in
the dark with her man, in a quaint little cottage near the sea. But
at ten p.m., after a horrible drive, her clothing waterlogged and
her stomach growling with hunger, she was not feeling romantic.

She felt even less romantic when she emerged
from the bathroom in time to hear a familiar chirp emerging from
her purse. Where had she left the damned purse? She followed the
sound, first with the flashlight and then with her steps, to the
three-drawer dresser. The small, non-functioning TV set occupied
the top of the dresser. Her purse was propped against the base of
the screen.

She pulled out her cell phone, saw who her
caller was and sighed. It could be an emergency. When your mother
was seventy-five and phoning this late at night, you didn’t ignore
it.

She swiped the screen with her finger and
lifted the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom.”

“
Are you all right?” her
mother asked. “Charlie told me there’s a huge storm on the Cape.
High winds, downpours, a real mess.”

“
We’re fine.” The scent of
Scott’s pizza wafted toward her, making her stomach growl again.
Melted mozzarella. Hot olive oil. Floury crust. Basil. Honestly,
she was not in the mood for a salad right now. “We just got here,
so—”

“
Just got there? Good lord,
how long did the drive take?”

“
The storm slowed us down,
Mom. I’m really beat, so—”

“
Oh, you poor thing. Well,
at least you got to relax while Scott drove. Poor man. Give him my
best. You two have fun!”

Meredith said goodbye and disconnected the
call. She made her way over to the unoccupied chair and sank into
it. Literally. The upholstery had the consistency of mashed
potatoes.

“
What did she want?” Scott
asked, his listless tone conveying that he wasn’t all that
interested in her answer.

Meredith lifted her salad onto her lap and
pried open the lid. She was too miserable to be nice anymore. “She
wanted to thank you for driving through this crappy weather.”

Scott said nothing for a moment. She imagined
he was chewing his hot, rich, gloriously fattening slice of pizza.
Finally: “Does she really have to call you every night?”

“
Apparently she
does.”

“
You could tell her not
to.”

“
She’s my mother. She’s
getting old.” She stabbed a few limp shreds of romaine with the
tines of her plastic fork. “Her boyfriend told her we were having a
storm here. She wanted to make sure we were safe.”

“
Her boyfriend?”

“
Charlie. I told you about
him.”

“
No you didn’t.”

“
I did. You weren’t paying
attention. You were watching a football game.”

Had Scott heard the reproach in her tone? Was
he going to be pissed at her for pointing out his inattentiveness?
Or would he plummet into a state of doleful self-recrimination?

Either way, she was too cold and wet and
tired to care.

Chapter
Four

THE POWER HADN’T RETURNED by the time they
were done eating. They groped through their bags for their
toiletries. Meredith hadn’t packed a nightgown—she’d been planning
to wear the teddy to bed—and she donned a sweatshirt, which had the
benefit of being warm and dry, necessary in the drafty dampness of
the cabin. Scott never wore pajamas, and he slid beneath the covers
clad in his boxer briefs and a cotton T-shirt.

How sexy, Meredith thought bitterly as she
settled her head against the pillow. The most romantic thing they’d
done that evening was to brush their teeth side by side at the sink
in the bathroom, sharing the flashlight. While she’d been spitting
minty foam into the basin, Scott had pointed out that she wouldn’t
be able to recharge her phone. She in turn had pointed out that he
wouldn’t be able to recharge his laptop, an observation that had
left him brooding.

Laptop or no, he had no trouble falling
asleep. He’d risen before dawn that morning, as usual, so she
wasn’t surprised that he could lapse into a deep slumber within
minutes of lowering his head to the pillow.

She couldn’t. She lay awake in the unfamiliar
bed, listening to the wind wail outside, listening to the clatter
of rain pelting the roof. Listening to the steady rhythm of Scott’s
breathing and wondering if he had any idea of how unhappy and
frightened she was.

She thought about her friend Leslie, who’d
told her a year ago that she and her husband were divorcing. “Why?”
Meredith had asked. “Did that bastard cheat on you?”

Leslie had laughed. “Nothing so dramatic. We
just realized it was over. We weren’t growing anymore. We weren’t
enjoying being married. Our marriage was in a coma, on a
respirator. No longer breathing for itself. It could have gone on
like that forever, but we decided to pull the plug and let it rest
in peace.” Leslie was a nurse. She defined her world using medical
metaphors.

Meredith thought about her mother, whose
fifty-year marriage had ended in widowhood. Her mother had been a
traditional wife, tending the house, raising the kids and making
sure a hot meal was waiting for her husband as soon as he walked
through the door at the end of a workday. He’d handled the bills,
he’d chosen the vacation destinations, he’d doted on her mother and
lavished her with gifts and called her his favorite little lady,
and they’d both been content to fulfill their assigned roles.

Meredith thought about her sister, whose
marriage was much like their mother’s had been. Suzanne never
questioned whether a marriage should be something more than the
routine rituals of a day. She’d confessed to Meredith once, after
they’d both drunk a bit too much wine, that she was relieved the
passion had gone out of their marriage. “I never liked sex that
much,” she’d confided. “I just hope Steve never gets it in his head
to ask the doctor for a Viagra prescription. As far as I’m
concerned, things are perfect the way they are.”

Meredith’s marriage was not perfect. Not even
close.

She doubted Scott needed Viagra. The last
time they’d made love—so long ago—he’d been strong and vigorous,
despite the fact that they’d both been exhausted after a long day
of work, and he’d fallen dead asleep immediately afterward. She
wondered if he fell asleep after Catilin...

Don’t even think about it.

She rolled onto her side. She was so tired.
Why couldn’t she fall asleep?

She heard a howl. Not the
wind. Low and eerie, almost a groan. There was something outside
the door.
Someone.

She bolted upright. The goose-bumps pricking
her skin were caused not by her damp hair but by that sound. She
heard it again. “Scott?”

He grunted and rolled away.

Another plaintive groan, a faint counterpoint
to the wind and the rain.

“
Scott, there’s someone
outside the door.”

“
Okay,” he mumbled without
moving.

If he wasn’t going to wake up, she’d deal
with this herself. She ought to get used to solving problems alone,
just in case, like Leslie, she decided to remove her marriage from
life support.

Pushing back the blanket, she tried to
remember where they’d left the flashlight. Lying awake in the dark
room, her eyes had adjusted enough that she could make out shapes
and silhouettes: the chairs over there, the dresser over here, the
bathroom off to the right. Her bare feet touched the braided rug
covering the floor and she moved cautiously toward the cabin’s
front door. She heard the moan again, louder.

It didn’t sound human.

Summoning her courage, she twisted the knob
to unlock the door, felt to make sure the safety chain was secured,
and edged the door open. The wind had lost strength, but a heavy
rain continued to fall and the sky was mottled with mauve and slate
clouds. At her feet, resting on the doorstep, was a wet mound of
fur.

A dog.

He lifted his face to her—droopy ears,
sorrowful eyes, his pelt glistening from the rain—and made that
howling sound again.

“
Scott, it’s a dog,” she
called over her shoulder. From the bed, she heard another
grunt.

Ignoring him, she released the safety chain,
opened the door wider and hunkered down next to the dog. A strip of
leather circled his neck, but she saw no identifying tags. Still,
he must belong to someone. Dogs didn’t purchase collars on their
own.

He nestled his snout into the curve of her
hand and licked her. “Where does it hurt?” she murmured. “Where are
you hurting, puppy?”

She heard shuffling footsteps, and felt
Scott’s warmth as he squatted down next to her. “Don’t touch it,”
he warned. “It could be sick.”

“
He doesn’t look sick,” she
said. The dog’s nose felt cool and his eyes were clear. “I think
he’s injured, though.”

“
All right.” Scott didn’t
sound all right. “There’s nothing you can do for him right now.” At
least Scott had gone from calling the dog
it
to calling the dog
him
.

“
We could take him to a
vet,” she suggested.

“
At this hour? In this
weather?” Scott shook his head. “We’re on Cape Cod and we’ve got no
power. How are we going to find a vet?”

“
My phone hasn’t died
yet.”

“
Meredith.”

A flare of anger surged through her, wiping
away her fatigue. “You don’t want to help this dog? Fine. Go back
to bed. I’ll take care of him.”

She’d expected Scott to fight back, to tell
her she was crazy—which, admittedly, she was, a little. Rescuing a
stray dog in a strange town, in the middle of a fierce storm, in
the middle of the night, was not the most rational behavior. And
Scott tended to view the world rationally, like the college
professor he was.

“
Go back to bed,” she told
him.