The Older Woman (18 page)

The cat escorted him across the yard, looking for coyotes all the way. When he opened Mrs. Bee’s back door, it shot into the hallway before he could head it off.

“Sorry, Mrs. Bee,” he said as the cat zipped past her. “Maybe I can bribe her back outside.”

“It’s okay, Calvin. We’ve got cat litter.”

“Cat litter—I forgot to give you the cat litter.”

“Katie brought it over.”

“Oh,” he said, wondering when she’d had the chance to do that.

“She came over to tell me,” Mrs. Bee added.

“Tell

you?”

“Where you were.”

He tried to let it go, but he didn’t make it two steps before he asked. “What did she say?”

“Oh, nothing much. Something about keeping you chained to her bed.”

“Whoa! Mrs. Bee!” he said, more than a little taken aback by her candor. He could feel his ears get hot. He’d made it through the girlie-magazine thing, but she’d royally ambushed him this time.

“It’s all right, Calvin,” she said, stepping into the kitchen. “I’ve been around—and it’s not that difficult to see how you and Katie feel about each other. That’s how I knew we were going to need cat litter.”

He didn’t know how much Mrs. Bee could tell by looking at Kate, but
he
might as well be carrying a sign. “Mrs. Bee?” he called.

The old lady turned and looked at him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For

what,

Calvin?”

“For…not getting all pushed out of shape about Kate and me, I guess.”

She smiled. “Love is where you find it, Calvin,” she said. “And it’s not to be wasted. Nobody knows that better than I do. The girls are coming later—in case you want to plan your day accordingly.”

“Okay,” he said, but then the light dawned.

“Mrs. Bee…what you just said. Does that mean the girls know about Kate and me?”

“Yes, Calvin,” she said with the same kind of gentleness she must have used on her students whenever they asked really dumb questions.

The old lady disappeared into the kitchen.

“Oh, great,” he said under his breath. He didn’t have the strength to engage the church ladies. To say that he was tired would have been an understatement. He had missed a lot of sleep in the last twenty-four hours, and he couldn’t have been happier about it.

He looked at the stairs, took a deep breath and began the climb to the second floor. Halfway up, the cat joined him, wary of being in strange surroundings but sticking with him, anyway.

“If you didn’t have friends in high places, you’d be out of here—you know that, don’t you?” he said to it.

When he was inside his apartment, he looked out the window. The Meehan sisters’ cars were still there. He supposed they were working themselves up to give Kate hell when she got home.

He toyed briefly with the idea of hunting up something to eat, then abandoned that for the lure of his bed. He lay down on top of the covers and fell immediately asleep. He was vaguely aware at some point that there was a thunderstorm passing over and that the cat wandered around investigating the perimeter. Neither event was enough to bring him completely awake. He slept on, eventually becoming aware that he was not alone. He opened his eyes and looked to his left. Kate was sleeping next to him, her head on the pillow. She was still wearing her nurse clothes. In fact, she still had her shoes on. Apparently, she’d arrived, assessed the situation and crashed.

He dropped off to sleep again, waking the next time because she stirred against him and put one arm around his waist.

“Hey,” he said, and she opened her eyes.

“I’m hiding,” she murmured sleepily.

“From the church ladies or the Meehan sisters?” he said, reaching to caress her cheek.

“Both,”

she

said.

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I’ll wake up later, okay?”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

She went immediately back to sleep, and he turned on his side so he could look at her.

It was raining still. He could hear it on the roof. He was happy that she had come here, whatever the motivation, but he was by no means presuming anything. He felt closer to her than he’d ever been to another human being in his life—but he had no expectations. None. He was in it for as long as it was going to last—he knew that much. He might even tell her that at some point, but he wouldn’t tell her the rest of it.

He picked up a tendril of her honey-colored hair and wrapped it around his finger.

I love you, Kate.

When she woke up, they went to the grocery store, right out in front of God and everybody, as if she didn’t mind that people they both knew might see them together and conclude that what was happening between them was happening. It took a while to get the shopping done, and then to take groceries to her house to put a meal together. It struck him more than once how easy they were in each other’s company. On the one hand, it was as if they’d been together for years. And, on the other hand, there was that red-hot undercurrent of still-unmet desire—and they’d only just touched the surface.

Late or not, the sisters insisted on staying for supper. All three of them. He didn’t mind. They weren’t any worse than any number of platoon sergeants he’d had. Kate ran the sisters out of the kitchen, and he did most of the food prep, parked on a bar stool.

“I hate cooking,” Kate said, handing him another onion to chop.

“Why?”

“Because I had to do it all the time when I was at home. Grace had too much seniority to get stuck with it. Arley was too little. And Gwen would have burned the house down.”

He didn’t doubt it for an instant. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

“What? That I didn’t let Gwen burn the house down?”

“No. That they’re all in an uproar—because of you and me.”

She leaned against him for a moment, in spite of the fact that all three of the sisters could see her if they happened to look up from the intense, low-voiced conversation they were having in the den. “I’m not sorry.”

He believed her…then and all through the meal that could have been more strained than it was if he’d taken the collective disapproval seriously. Kate’s sisters were entitled to their opinions—but that was as far as he was willing to go.

He talked to all three of them, asked polite questions, pulled the answers out of them when he had to. He thought he liked Gwen the best. Gwen told him all about Kate when she was a little girl, the kind of things that would have embarrassed a lesser woman, the kind of things a sister might tell the man who mattered.

He also thought he understood the other two. Grace was worried about the big

“What will people say?” And Arley…Arley was like a jealous little kid. He was taking up Kate’s time and attention—cutting into the many hours she wanted devoted to
her
problems, and she did
not
appreciate it. She wanted Kate at the ready so she could pick up the pieces of her and Scottie’s life as needed.

The meal was great—some kind of skillet beef, potato and onion thing. For someone who hated to cook, Kate did just fine, in his opinion. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and he didn’t care what the sisters thought about that. He was just barely able to keep his hands off her.

After the meal, he intended to help get the kitchen squared away, but he didn’t have to have a house fall on him. The sisters were getting restless.

“Where’s that awful cat?” he heard Grace ask.

“Kate said it moved in with Cal,” Arley said.

“Figures,” Grace said.

Kate looked up sharply at the remark.

“Go or stay?” he asked as she stacked another dirty plate and carried them to the kitchen counter.

She looked at him gratefully. “Go,” she said.

He smiled. “Want me to loan you my whip and chair?”

“I’ve got my own,” she said. “And I think I need to use them.”

“Thanks for the meal,” he said.

“You did most of the work.”

He stood looking into her eyes.

“Could you hobble a little closer?” she asked. “I don’t want you to think I’m easy.”

He grinned…and hobbled.

She wanted the kiss to be as restrained and chaste as possible, because of the potential onlookers. He wanted the kiss to be deep and hard. He

won.

“See you later,” he said, letting her go and hobbling again, this time in the direction of the back door. “Tell the sisters ’bye for me.”

She followed him to the door, and he thought that if he’d turned around at any point as he made his way across the yard, she would still be watching.

Life is good, he thought.

And it stayed good. He hadn’t realized how alone he’d been or how much he would welcome another person in his life.

No. Not just another person. Kate Meehan.

Initially he had been determined not to crowd her, but she didn’t seem to need the space he was willing to give her. He spent the time she was at work at his own place. The rest of the time—the nights—he spent with her. After the initial struggle she’d had, he marveled at the ease with which she now seemed to accept whatever was happening between them. If it still mattered to her what her family or anyone else thought about it, he couldn’t tell.

He loved being with her, and that was the bottom line. It wasn’t just the sexual satisfaction she gave him. It was everything else as well. He liked looking at her. He liked talking to her. Naturally, he felt no hesitation about bringing up whatever topic he wanted to know about.

“Tell me about this,” he said one night in bed, gently touching the surgical scar. She looked into his eyes before she answered—for what he didn’t know. Reassurance that it wasn’t just morbid curiosity on his part, he supposed.

“They found something when I had a routine mammogram,” she said. “It was in the early stage. I had a lumpectomy and radiation. It was the first time I’ve ever really been sick.”

“And you’re still mad about it,” he suggested, because he thought he knew her well enough to guess that.

“Yes,” she said, giving him a surprised look. “I’m the strong one in the family. I fix everybody else’s problems—I didn’t know how to have one of my own. Not that kind, anyway.”

“So how did you get that job—fixing everybody else’s problems?”

“I’m not sure. I think I must like it on some level or I wouldn’t do it.”

“Did you get along with your mom and dad?”

“Mom, yes. Dad, no,” she said, moving so that she could rest her head on his shoulder.

“Why

not?”

“I don’t know why not. Do you know why you didn’t get along with yours?”

“Sure. He wasn’t around after I was six months old.”

“Your mother was around. Why didn’t you get along with her?”

He had to think about that. The remark took him by surprise—until he remembered that he had been a patient on her ward. She would know that no one came to see him except Rita. She might have even been part of some Chain-of-Concern thing that tried to find out why. “Okay, I see your point,” he said after a moment, and the conversation turned to other things.

Many
other things. Since he’d been in the army, he had been on a very prolonged quest for higher education. He hadn’t gotten as far as John Galsworthy in his studies, but he had his opinions about the things he had learned, and he could hold up his end of an intelligent discussion now and then.

He needed to be able to do that—to keep himself occupied so he wouldn’t ruin things. Kate had accepted their…relationship, but maybe she couldn’t accept the way he really felt about her. He knew beyond a doubt that he loved her. All the time and with all his heart, but he didn’t think she’d want to hear it. Meeting each other’s sexual needs was one thing. Loving each other—especially the way he loved her—was something else again.

The closest he came to telling her was an afternoon when she’d come in from work with Scottie in the car. The kid greeted him with another running hug, and they spent the rest of the daylight hours as a comfortable threesome on the patio. Kate worked on her pots of flowers, while he supervised and kept Scottie entertained.

And vice versa.

Scottie was a funny little kid, and Doyle enjoyed his take on the world around him.

“Do you like boys, Aunt Kate?” Scottie asked at one point, and Doyle nearly choked on his iced tea. He looked at her, extremely interested in whatever her response was going to be to that inquiry.

“You mean the ones that are made out of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails?”

she asked, trying not to grin.

“No,” Scottie said. “I mean the ones that are me and Bugs.”

The smile got away from her. “I especially like the ones that are you and Bugs,”

she said.

Doyle had come so close to saying it out loud then. Just out with it.

I love you, Kate.

He loved her so much it
hurt.
And all the while he felt like a man dancing on the edge of a precipice. Sometimes he could reach her, touch her, hold her. Sometimes he couldn’t. But sooner or later he was going over the edge.

One hot afternoon when he was in the Bee Library, he caught a glimpse of someone coming up on the porch. At first he thought it was Arley but then changed his mind. Mrs. Bee was out, and he went hobbling to the door to see who it was and what she wanted.

He didn’t see her when he reached the screen door. He opened it and stepped out onto the porch.

“Hey, good-lookin’,” Rita said, ambushing him with a bear hug. “Look at you!

Walking and everything!”

“Rita—” he said, completely taken by surprise. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Sure you did.” She grinned mischievously and moved to sit on the porch swing, pulling her long legs up under her. “You’ve just had other things on your mind—or so I hear.”

He didn’t say anything. He was still assessing his reaction to her sudden appearance. He was glad to see her. And he still thought she was beautiful—but it wasn’t the same. She was his friend, one he would always care about and help if need be—but there wasn’t anything more.

“So how’s married life?” he asked, hobbling over to the swing to sit beside her.

“Great! Better than great!”

She waited until he’d sat down to grill him. “Well, tell me! What is this I hear about you and Meehan?”