Suddenly (25 page)

Sara looked suddenly uneasy. “I thought it was just you and Sami.”

“One more’s no trouble.” She put Sami in Sara’s arms before Sara could say that she had never held a small child before. “Want a break, Jill?”

Jill ran upstairs to phone her friends. Paige lifted kitty. “Hello to you, too. How’s my second girl?”

Kitty meowed.

Sara, who was awkwardly trying to shift her arms around Sami, murmured, “I don’t think I’m doing this right. Maybe you’d better take her.”

“Let her straddle your hip…. That’s right. There you go.”

Sara and Sami were exchanging wary stares.

“Are you adopting her?” Sara asked.

“No. I’m just keeping her until a permanent placement is found.”

“Do you think she knows that?”

Still cradling kitty, Paige came close. “I think she’s too young to understand. She knows if she’s clean and dry, and if her stomach’s filled, and if her world is peaceful. She certainly knows if there’s noise and upset, and she knows if she’s with people who care. Yes, she’s aware if those people change. She knows new people from old, but does she understand that she’s come thousands of miles and has more to go before she finally settles? I doubt it.”

Sara continued to stare at the child. “It’s awful to be bounced around.”

“Were you?” Paige asked in response to the suggestiveness of the statement. She wanted Sara to know that she could discuss anything with her.

“Not really. A little, maybe. My father would come to town and take me for the day. I hated it.”

“Why?”

“He was strange.”

“Strange?”

“A stranger. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know why he was coming.”

“He wanted to see you. He loved you.”

“No. It was in his mind. I was his daughter, therefore he loved me. It wasn’t an emotional thing.”

“You underestimate him.”

“If it was real, why didn’t he visit more?”

“Maybe he felt awkward, what with your mom and her husband.”

“But he was my father.”

“He may have thought you wanted to forget that. You didn’t have his name.”

“That was my mom’s idea, and he didn’t fight it.”

Paige wished she knew more of Noah’s side of the story. “Did you ever ask why he didn’t?”

Sara scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

“Maybe you should.”

“We don’t talk about things like that.”

“Maybe you should. If it’s bothering you—”

“I didn’t say that it was,” Sara said quickly. “I don’t care why he did what he did. He lives his life, and I live mine.”

“Seems to me the two are overlapping now.”

“Not much. I don’t see him often. He avoids me.”

Paige let kitty down and gestured Sara toward the kitchen. “I was under the impression that he avoided you because the two of you agreed to keep your relationship a secret.” She took a package of chicken from the refrigerator and unwrapped it.

“That was the idea, but it’s not working. People are finding out anyway.”

“Is
he
telling?” Paige couldn’t imagine it. Her impression was that Noah felt a definite loyalty toward Sara. He hadn’t told Paige that Sara had lied about having a younger brother, when he might easily have done so.

“Kids find out. They ask questions. They want to know where you come from and who you live with and what you’re doing on Thanksgiving vacation.”

“Ahhh. So
you
told them.”

“Just a few,” Sara said defensively. “My closest friends. I had to.” Her expression soured. “The rest will find out soon enough. Fall weekend’s coming up. Most everyone’s leaving, but I’m not. They’ll want to know why.”

“You could always tell them California is too far to go for a weekend,” Paige suggested. “Then again, you might want them to know the truth. They know you now. Their opinion of you will have already been formed. And maybe their opinion of your father is softening.”

Sara looked noncommittal.

“Is it? Is there as much grumbling as there was at first?”

Sara shrugged.

“Didn’t the mountain climb help?”

“A little, I guess.”

“Well, that’s something, then.” She took two bottles from the refrigerator. “I have to warn you, I’m not the most imaginative cook in the world. I always do my chicken on the grill out back, but I can do it either with honey-mustard sauce or teriyaki sauce. Which would you like?”

“Honey-mustard,” Sara said, then, “Did you mean what you said the other night about not being in love with him?”

Paige took the cap off the honey-mustard sauce. “I don’t know him very well. How could I be in love with him?” She coated the chicken with sauce.

“Do you think he’s handsome?”

“Very.”

“Do you think he’s smart?”

“Very. But those things are low on my list of priorities. When I fall in love with someone, it’ll be because of the person inside.” She grabbed a match. “Hold that thought. I’ll be right in.” She went out back, lit the grill, and returned to find that Sara had held the thought all right, only it was a slightly different thought from Paige’s.

“Would you like to be in love with him?” she asked.

“Actually,” Paige said, taking salad makings and a loaf of French bread from the fridge, “I’m not sure I’d like to be in love with anyone right now. My life is a mite busy.”

Sara nodded. She shifted Sami in her arms.

“Too heavy?” Paige asked.

“No.”

Jill returned, looking excited but unsure. In response to Paige’s questioning look, she said, “My friend Kathy has tickets to the Henderson Wheel concert. She says I can have one if you don’t need me that night. It’s a week from Saturday at the movie house.”

Paige didn’t like the thought of
anything
at the movie house, but she knew that the concert would go on with or without her approval. She also knew that Jill needed a pickup.

“I don’t need you. It’s perfect, actually. I work in the morning, but then I was thinking of staying over at my grandmother’s. She adores Sami.”

“So I can go?” Jill said with an enthusiasm Paige didn’t see often enough on her face.

“Call Kathy and say yes before she gives the ticket to someone else.” Jill ran off.

It struck Paige that the concert was on the same fall weekend that Sara would be one of the few at Mount Court. “Are you a Henderson Wheel fan?”

Sara made a dubious sound.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a so-so.”

“I could try to get a few tickets if you like”—Forgive me, Mara, but it’s for a good cause—“for whoever is left at Mount Court with you.”

Sara shook her head. “It’ll be a local crowd. They don’t like us much.”

“Who told you that?”

“Everyone knows. They think we’re spoiled little rich kids. They like our money, but that’s all.”

Paige wished she could have denied it, but years of misbehavior on the streets of Tucker had formed a definite image in the minds of the locals. “Maybe that will change under your dad. So far this year, there haven’t been any embarrassing incidents. His rules must be paying off.”

She left the kitchen long enough to put the chicken on the grill, then was back to make a salad. By the time she was done, Jill had returned. Paige reached for Sami.

“This little one needs to be changed. Jill, you know where things are, why don’t you set the table. Sara, the chicken should be done. You can bring it in.”

Paige played with Sami all the way up the stairs and through a diaper change. She was seeing the beginnings of smiles and laughed every time she did. What she loved, though, was the way Sami’s arms naturally went around her when she picked her up.

“That’s my girl,” Paige said, hugging her all the way down the stairs. She set her in the high chair in the kitchen, gave her mashed chicken from a baby food jar and a sliced banana, and sat down to eat with Sara and Jill. She had taken no more than two bites of chicken when the phone rang. She looked at Sara. “I warned you. I’m on call.”

But it wasn’t her answering service. It was Noah. “I’m a little frantic here, Paige. I need your help. We’ve searched the entire campus, but we can’t find Sara. She hasn’t been seen since practice.”

“She’s with me,” Paige said quickly.

“With you? Really?”

“She left campus with me. We’re just having dinner.”

“Thank God,” he breathed. “I’ve been imagining horrible things.”

“You shouldn’t have. She signed out.”

“No, she didn’t.”

Paige caught the guilty look on Sara’s face. “Aaach. I guess she didn’t.” To Sara, chidingly, she said, “He was in a panic. They’ve been looking all over for you.”

If Sara was touched, she didn’t let on. Paige wanted to shake her.

On the other end of the line, Noah sounded dismayed. “The girls kept talking about the Devil Brothers, saying that it was only a matter of time before they abducted one of the female students. Who in the hell are the Devil Brothers?”

“Not Devil. DeVille. They’re two sweet, simple-minded lugs of guys who are Tucker’s perennial scapegoats. They’re harmless.”

“Ahhhhh. The girls were working themselves into a frenzy, taking me right along with them. I’m afraid our secret’s out, Sara’s and mine. So she’s there. Thank God.” In the next breath he said, “God help her, the little minx. If she thinks I can give her dispensation from disciplinary action, she’s wrong. Particularly now that people know we’re related, I’ll have to go out of my way to be impartial. She went AWOL. That’s worth a detention times ten.”

“What’s he saying?” Sara whispered.

“You don’t want to know,” Paige whispered back, then said into the phone, “Can she finish dinner, at least?”

“I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Make it an hour.”

“Half.” He took a shaky breath. “Thank God. I was thinking that I’d taken her away from her mother only to subject her to unspeakable horrors.” He took another breath, a steadier one this time. “So, anyway, what are you eating?”

“Chicken, but there’s none left for you. Come in an hour and you can have some brownies.” She hung up the phone before he could argue.

“Brownies?” Jill said. “We don’t have any brownies.”

Paige looked from one girl to the other. “Then we’d better get a mix down from the shelf and whip up a batch real quick, don’t you think?”

Noah loved the brownies. He didn’t love the awkwardness that accompanied Sara and him in the car back to Mount Court. Talking with teenagers was his forte, which was one of the reasons why the difficulty he had talking with Sara upset him. The other was that she needed a father as much as he needed a daughter.

But talking about feelings, perhaps criticizing and being criticized, was risky business for two people who didn’t know each other very well. After several minutes of silence, all he could think to say was, “I was worried.”

“I’m sorry,” she answered, though she didn’t sound it at all.

“Why didn’t you sign out?”

“I didn’t think of it.”

It’s one of the most basic of the dorm rules, he wanted to say. When you leave campus, you sign out. If everyone came and went as the mood took them, we’d never know where they were. Parents entrust the care of their children to the school. We are responsible for our students.

“You know,” he mused, “when I envisioned having my own daughter at the school where I taught, I thought I knew the drawbacks. After all, I was in a similar position as you once. So I was thinking how difficult it might be for you, but there’s another side to it that I hadn’t thought of. Me. Normally parents are miles away and don’t know about the little problems at school until those problems are resolved. They don’t go through the hell of the worry I did.”

She was quiet for so long that he wondered if she’d heard. When he looked at her, she said, “You can always send me home. Then you won’t have to know about the problems.”

“I don’t want to send you home. I want to have you here.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be here.”

“Don’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Sara?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled.

“Are you missing California that much?”

“Maybe.”

“Looking forward to going back for Thanksgiving?” When she didn’t answer, he shot her a glance. “You talk with your mom every week, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is she doing okay?”

“Sure.”

The fact was that Noah had received an irate call from the woman several days before saying that she could never get through on the dormitory phone and asking why Sara hadn’t called her. According to Liv, the two hadn’t talked in three weeks.

Given Sara’s history, Noah tended to believe Liv. But he couldn’t say that to Sara. He was doing his best to trust her, in the hope that she would earn that trust in time.

Unfortunately it was taking longer than he had thought, and his patience was growing thin.

For that reason he set great store in the upcoming fall break. It was only five days, Thursday through Monday, but it would be the first time that Sara had stayed at the house with him. It would also be the longest period of time they had ever spent together alone. The annual week with his parents didn’t count. This was major parenting.

The prospect of it might have unnerved him if he hadn’t been so excited. He wanted her to come to like him and to that end planned a dinner out and a shopping trip to Boston. He would take her to a movie, if she would go. He would play Boggle with her. He was hoping to involve her in redecorating the house, if only to make her feel that it was hers.

He was also hoping to take her canoeing on the river north of Tucker. Canoeing was relaxing and peaceful. It was a tandem activity involving coordination and cooperation and created the kind of atmosphere in which the beginnings of a relationship might be forged, or so he hoped. He knew he would meet resistance along the way, but he was determined to persist. If the weekend proved a bust, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying on his part.

A
NGIE, TOO, WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO FALL
break. Well in advance, she told Paige and Peter that they wouldn’t see her in the office on those days. She wanted lazy time with Dougie—sleeping late, having a leisurely breakfast, knocking around the house, lighting a fire. She wanted him to feel the pleasure of being home.

Had she been the only one involved, she might have pulled it off without a hitch. But there was Ben to consider. For two days, a normal weekend, they could pretend that things were fine, but five days would be harder.

They had canceled the New York trip. Ben hadn’t wanted to go in the first place and was happy enough to let his agent do the honors. Once upon a time, Angie would have insisted that they be there, but her days of insisting were done. She didn’t feel qualified to insist on much where Ben was concerned. Where once she had spoken for him, she was silent now. She didn’t know what he was thinking, didn’t know what he was feeling. He wasn’t saying much to her but came and went, leaving her imagination to account for his time. She had taken to stopping at the house during the day, but he was rarely home. He did his work, then was gone.

She didn’t know where he went and didn’t have the courage to ask, mainly because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She did know that the thought of his being with another woman continued to cut to the quick.

Telling herself that something had to be resolved before Dougie came home for a long and potentially awkward weekend, she drove to the house the afternoon before he was due home, saw Ben’s car gone, and kept on driving. She went to the post office in the center of Tucker, but the blue Honda wasn’t there, so she continued on down Main Street, past the row of cars parked diagonally in front of the grocery store, the hardware store, the bookstore. She turned the corner and tried the parking lot of the Tavern, then the parking lot of the Tucker Inn. She returned along Main Street, past Reels and the ice-cream shop, thinking she might have missed the Honda the first time around.

Then she went to the library. It was a small gray building with crisp white trim, a relic of Colonial days that was nearly as revered by Tuckerites as the church. When Dougie had been little, Angie had taken him to story hours there; when he had entered school, she had helped him research reports there. When judged by the number of volumes it held, the Tucker Free Library fell short. When judged by the charm of the place and the warmth inside, nothing could beat it.

The blue Honda was parked under a tree. Angie pulled in beside it and sat with her head bowed. From time to time she looked up, but the view was discouraging. Leaves that were a brilliant crimson and gold the week before were starting to fade. With their edges curled, they looked smaller, sadder, more self-contained. Every few minutes, given a fatal nudge by the breeze, one fell from its branch to the ground.

Therein lay the good news. Ben’s car didn’t have enough leaves on it to suggest that it had been parked for long. The bad news was that it was there at all.

As she had so often in the past weeks, Angie recalled the first time she had set eyes on Ben. She had been drawn first by the air of quiet certainty about him, second by the dryness of his wit, third by the way his smile curled her stomach. He could coax her into taking time off from studying to go to a midnight movie, spend an evening laughing with friends, or climb into the car and drive for hours with the radio blaring their favorite songs.

His light heartedness had complemented her seriousness. They brought out the best in each other.

She wasn’t sure when that had changed. The years between that first day and the present seemed crowded together, twenty-one years of doing everything that had been productive and profitable. Somewhere along the line whimsy had been lost. Their lives had become programmed.

To suit her. He was right. Okay, so she was at fault there, but that didn’t justify his taking up with Nora Eaton.

She heard a light tap on the window and looked up as Ben settled against her car mere inches from where she sat. He was wearing the leather jacket she had given him several years before, open to a plaid shirt. His hands were tucked in the pockets of his jeans. He looked healthy, even roguish with the smattering of gray in his hair, but there was neither quiet certainty about him nor a smile. He looked at the Honda, then at the ground, and in that instant, if she had been able to, she would have started the car, backed around, and sped off down the street. But Ben would have been injured, for starters. And then there was the matter of her tears. They came from nowhere and started pouring down her face. It took both hands to hide herself from him.

The passenger door opened and shut. He reached for her and held her with surprising ease over the gearshift. “Come on, Angie. It’s not that bad.”

“It’s terrible!” she cried. The closeness of him, the familiarity of his touch, and the rightness of his scent drove home her dilemma. “My life is coming apart at the seams!”

“It’s just us having some troubles.”

“But that
is
my life.
Us
is the key to the rest. It’s what holds everything together.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and she herself was wondering where it had come from. She hadn’t planned to say it. But the words had popped out, and she couldn’t take them back. They were more right than, career woman that she was, she wanted to believe.

It was a minute before she regained a semblance of control, and then she drew back, groped in her jacket pocket for a tissue, and blew her nose.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break down. It was a buildup of things, I guess.” When he didn’t say anything, she took a deep breath. It shuddered on its way out. “I never thought life could be so fine one day and so terrible the next. Since Mara died—” Her throat grew tight again.

“What’s happening to us has nothing to do with Mara.”

“I know.” She wanted to say that Mara’s death had set off a string of events, because that was truly the way it seemed, but he was right. The problems with their marriage had nothing to do with Mara.

“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked.

She looked anywhere but at him. “I, uh, take time off in the middle of the day sometimes thinking that maybe we can have lunch together, but when I go home, you’re never there. Usually I don’t want to know where you are. Today was different.”

“How so?”

She would have mentioned Dougie’s fall break, had she not realized that it was as irrelevant as Mara’s death. So was Dougie if they were talking about the future. For the first time, she could accept that.

Holding the tissue tightly in her hand, she said in a broken voice, “I can’t keep on this way. I’m not focusing in on much of anything I do, because my mind keeps wandering back to us. I need to resolve things.” She felt an overwhelming defeat. “I had to know if you were with her.”

“Today’s her day off. Lately I only come here when she’s off.”

Angie looked up to find him staring at her. “Is that true?”

He nodded.

“She must have a lot of days off. Your car’s never at home.”

“I drive around,” he said in such a begrudging way that it had to be true. “I can’t bear the quiet, so I get in the car and drive. There are some days when I start as early as ten in the morning.”

Angie might have found solace in the fact that he was upset, had she known something about the nature of that upset. In the past she might have presumed to know that something, but she’d learned better.

“What do you think about while you’re driving around?” she asked.

He snorted. “Us. What else?”

He was looking out the window now. Angie didn’t feel as much on the hot line herself. “What about us?” she asked.

“I think about the things we used to do that I liked.”

Like what things, she wanted to prod, but she held her tongue. She had to stop directing conversations. Ben was a big boy. If he wanted to elaborate, he would.

Sure enough, after a minute he said, “I liked it when we used to do spontaneous things, like cook on that little hibachi out on the rickety balcony of that first apartment we had, or play backgammon until three in the morning. I liked it when we used to be snowed in, when we slept late and went for a walk. Things like that.”

“Then I got too busy to be snowbound.”

“And I let you,” he admitted. “I let it happen. So I’m at fault, too.”

Yes, thank you, she thought. If the hours he had spent driving around in his car had produced this realization, she forgave him the driving. The infidelity was something else.

“Are you suing for divorce?” he asked, looking at her now.

She shook her head. “I’m not ready to give it up, but I need to know what’s happening with her.”

“Nothing. It’s off between us.”

He looked earnest, but she had to know more. “Why?”

“She was a substitute. A way to fill the time.”

“She’s been that for eight years. What’s changed now?”

“You know now. And I feel like shit.”

The angry part of her was glad to hear it, the demoralized part felt a redemption of sorts. She had always thought Ben a man of conscience. Indeed, politically, his cartoons threw a punch for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. Mara had loved that. And Angie had been proud.

Despite a lapse, conscience had prevailed. It was gratifying to know that she hadn’t been totally wrong.

“What about us?” she asked quietly. “Can we put something meaningful back together?”

He straightened his leg and rubbed its thigh. “I don’t know. I’m still angry sometimes.”

“When I’m at work?”

“Mostly.”

“Do you want me to quit?”

He eyed her cautiously. “Would you?”

She had asked for that one. But there was no weaseling out. “Would isn’t the issue,” she tried to explain. “It’s could. Could I?” She took a shaky breath. “I don’t know. Being a doctor is part of who I am. I don’t know if I could give it up completely, any more than you could give up drawing.”

“I’ve been drawing since I was two.”

“I’ve been wanting to be a doctor nearly as long.”

“Art is part of the psyche.”

“So is the need to heal.”

A silence settled between them, heavily on Angie’s heart. In the back of her mind were Paige’s desperate urgings—
Talk to him, Angie, tell him how you feel
—and then Mara’s writings—
I come and go in people’s lives, just as people come and go in mine.

At that moment, Angie identified with Mara. But it was the last thing she wanted.

“There has to be a compromise,” she burst out. Meekness wouldn’t do when one had reached a crossroads in life. “It can’t end like this. We have too much in common, too many things we both like. We have a history together—”

“And a child who’s coming home for vacation tomorrow,” Ben broke in with an echo of the sarcasm that had been so prevalent of late. “Is that what this is about?”

A dead leaf fell on the hood of the car, dull and drab, discouraging enough to spur Angie on. She shook her head. “No, Ben. I’ve come to see things I couldn’t see before. You were right about Dougie. I’m not saying that I’m thrilled he’s boarding—I don’t think I’ll
ever
be thrilled about it, but it’s like the times when he was little and used to climb across the top of the swing set, and I’d close my eyes and let him do it because I knew that he’d never learn unless he did. He’s doing okay as a boarder. It’s what he wants. It may even be what he needs.” She took a breath. “No. This is about us.”

Which brought them full circle.

“So,” Ben said to the dashboard of the car. “Where do we go from here?”

Angie wasn’t touching the question. “You’ll have to tell me that. I’m feeling gunshy where giving direction is concerned.”

“I can’t do this alone.”

“But I don’t know what to say. I know what I want. I want us to stay together and try to make things work, but I don’t know if that’s what you want at all.”

He was still. After a long minute, quietly, he said, “It is.”

“Then there have to be solutions. Maybe we should think about them for a while, then talk again.” It sounded a little like carrying on long-distance negotiations, but Angie didn’t know what more to say. If there was hope, she could wait.

“And Nora?” he asked. When she looked at him in alarm, he added, “Can you forget about her?”

“Can you?” seemed the more appropriate question to Angie. She waited anxiously for an answer.

“She’s been a good friend. I’m not sure that if I hadn’t had her, I wouldn’t have run away.”

Angie felt a sarcasm of her own. “I’d thank her for that, except I hope I never see the woman again. She slept with my husband. I don’t know if I can forgive her for that. Besides, maybe if you had run away, I would have learned about the problem sooner. I didn’t know, Ben.” She was bewildered all over again. “Honestly I didn’t.”

He looked at her for the longest time. Then, with a tenderness worlds away from sarcasm, he said a quiet, “I know,” and let himself out of the car.

*   *   *

Students started leaving campus at the end of Wednesday classes. Vans headed for the airport in shifts through the afternoon. Parents arrived in cars, loaded up kids and suitcases, and left.

Knowing that Sara had cross-country practice, then a study hall that was part of her punishment for leaving Mount Court without signing out, Noah didn’t expect her at the house until dinnertime. Rather than cooking in, he had made a reservation at Bernie’s Béarnaise, thinking that would be a special way to start the break.

Five-thirty came and went. He gave her more time, figuring that she would be packing up a few things, but when she hadn’t shown by six, then six-thirty, he set off for the dorm. In the course of the two minutes that it took him to walk there, he imagined that she’d run off, or been abducted, or taken refuge at Paige’s again.

He wouldn’t have minded the last. He liked having an excuse to see Paige. They had no future, yet still she fascinated him, and not only sexually, though there was that, too. She gave him a run for his money when it came to repartee. If she was down, put off balance by something he said or did, she was never down for long. She could look him in the eye, tell him he was all wrong, and turn him on like there was no tomorrow.