The Older Woman (2 page)

“Not bad,” he said aloud—if he focused on the end result and not the process.

And now that he was more or less vertical, he could see into the backyard of the house next door—Meehan’s house. Sometimes he could see her, too, mostly when she left for work in the mornings. Sometimes she had breakfast outside on the patio—here lately with some guy Doyle assumed was a new boyfriend, a “suit,” who would arrive with a little white bag of bagels and coffee, chat her up for a little while, make her laugh, then go.

Sometimes, on her days off, Meehan fiddled around out there with plants and hanging baskets and clay pots. She apparently liked growing things—there were flowers all over the place. And wind chimes. The woman liked her wind chimes. He could hear them at night if he cut off the air conditioner and left the windows open.

Occasionally Meehan just sat on a lounge chair by herself and read. She definitely had nice legs, nice enough that it was no hardship for him to pay attention to her comings and goings. She always waved if she happened to see him in the window, but she didn’t bother him. As far as he knew, she’d never checked up on him or anything like that. Apparently, his word that he’d wouldn’t upset old Mrs. Bee had been good enough for her, and he appreciated that.

He hadn’t seen her much the past few days, though. It kind of surprised him that she hadn’t come to Rita’s wedding. He knew she’d been invited, and he knew she liked Rita and Lieutenant McGraw both. In fact, Meehan was one of the few people who had openly approved of the big Warren-McGraw romance—besides him. And he did ultimately approve, regardless of the current ache in his gut. He was nothing if not a realist.

A woman either loves you or she doesn’t. Period.

Doyle shifted his weight and kept watching out the window, mostly because Meehan and the boyfriend had just come out of the house. She was standing in the gravel driveway with her arms folded. She was standing—and the guy was pacing. And talking. Every now and then he gestured with both hands—a “What do you want from me?” kind of thing.

Apparently nothing, Doyle decided, because it didn’t look as if Meehan answered him. She wasn’t even looking at him. She just stood there with the rain beating down on her.

The boyfriend was talking again, waving his hands around a little too much, Doyle thought.

Threatening?

No. Not threatening. Or if he was, he wasn’t making much of an impression. Meehan didn’t seem to be intimidated by him. Still, this was
not
the Meehan he knew. He’d been a patient on her ward for months. She had a mouth on her. She was tough—

tough enough to hand it out and then some if the situation called for it. And it sure looked to him as if this one required at least some kind of comeback on her part.

The boyfriend said something else, then turned and walked to his car.

Meehan stared after him, but she didn’t try to stop him. He slammed the car door and drove away, accelerating too much for the weather conditions in the process and slinging mud and gravel all the way to the street.

Meehan stood for a moment after he’d gone. Doyle thought she was about to go into the house, but she didn’t. Rain or no rain, she abruptly sat down on a nearby stone bench.

Was she crying?

Nah, she wasn’t crying.

Well, hell, maybe she was…

Doyle abruptly pushed himself away from the window. Either way, it was all over now. The boyfriend had gone his merry way, and Meehan’s current emotional state was none of his business. He had enough troubles of his own.

He held on to the furniture to maneuver to where he could get the cane. It hadn’t entirely hit the floor after all. It had caught in the chair rung, and he managed to retrieve it without too much difficulty.

He stood leaning on the cane, out of breath but more than a little pleased that the retrieval hadn’t turned into some kind of major production. He suddenly remembered the drama in the backyard next door and lurched over to the window again. Meehan was exactly where he’d left her.

“Damn, Meehan,” he said. “How long are you going to sit there like that?”

He felt like rapping on the window pane until he got her attention, and then yelling at her to get in out of the rain—as if she was a little kid who refused to take note of the weather until somebody of authority insisted.

But he didn’t rap, and he didn’t yell. He moved back to the chair, fully intending to sit down. He’d had enough of the “damsel in distress” thing with Rita. As knights in shining armor went, he was pretty dented up these days. He felt no need whatsoever to go riding to the rescue. All he felt was…aggravation. He was fully aware that he owed Meehan—for telling him about the apartment in the first place and for vouching for him with Mrs. Bee so he could move in. But, damn it all, he was tired. His day had already been hell, and it wasn’t even dark yet.

He sighed and looked around the room, then at the clock. It was time for Mrs. Bee’s regular Sunday ritual. No matter what, Sunday afternoons were iced tea and cake time.

Well, what the hell.

He needed the exercise. He could just make a trip downstairs—and more than likely, by the time he got to the front hall, Meehan would have come to and gone inside. And then he wouldn’t have to worry about it. He could stop in the kitchen and shoot the breeze with Mrs. Bee instead, hopefully talk her out of a piece of that cake with the pineapple-and-coconut-cream icing he liked so much.

He’d kill two birds with one stone—three if you counted keeping himself occupied so he wouldn’t think so much about the disconcerting state of his health—four, if you threw in Rita.

Sounded like a plan to him.

It took him a while to get down the staircase. The effort made his legs hurt a lot more than he anticipated, and he kept having to stop and get over it. He didn’t see Mrs. Bee anywhere. The front door was wide open, but the screen was latched. She hadn’t gone out on the porch.

He could hear the rain beating down on the granite steps outside. Mrs. Bee didn’t like air-conditioning in her part of the house, and it was hot in the front hallway. An old brass-and-wood ceiling fan wobbled overhead, but it was way too muggy and humid for it to help much.

He stood for a moment at the kitchen door, then hobbled inside to the far window. The toe of his left shoe kept dragging on the red and white linoleum tiles. Not a good sign. He was a lot more tired than he thought. He finally got himself situated in front of the window and moved the fruit-print curtain aside so he could see out.

“Is Katie still out there?” Mrs. Bee asked behind him.

“Yeah,” he said, relieved that a little old lady creeping up on him like that hadn’t made him jump.

“It’s none of our business if she wants to sit in the rain,” Mrs. Bee said, peering past his elbow.

“Right,” he agreed without hesitation. His opinion exactly.

“But…”

He could feel Mrs. Bee looking at him, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might have been watching out the window, too, and no way in hell was he going to walk into a loaded opening like that.

“Calvin?” Mrs. Bee said after a moment. She sounded every bit the schoolteacher she used to be. Class was in session, and he had just been called on.

“No way, Mrs. Bee,” he said, trying to stay ahead of her.

“Somebody really ought to do something.”

“You don’t mean ‘somebody,’ Mrs. Bee. You mean me.”

“Yes, Calvin, I do.
I
can’t go. It will look as if I’m meddling. If
you
go, it’ll just look as if you don’t know any better.”

He glanced at her.

“Well, it will,” she said. “Men don’t know about these things—especially soldiers. It’s all that hunt the hill, get the hill, way of doing things. She knows you, Calvin. She likes you. She’s not going to be offended if you go.”

He didn’t know about any of that. All he knew was that he’d had more than one occasion to see Meehan when she was “offended,” and it wasn’t something he cared to repeat.

“Mrs.

Bee—”

“It’s just so…worrisome,” she interrupted. “Katie sitting out there in the rain like that. She had that bad spell of pneumonia last winter. She ought not be out there in the wet.”

“It’s July, Mrs. Bee. I think she’ll be all right.”

“Maybe,” Mrs. Bee said. “Maybe not. Couldn’t you go and shoo her back inside or something? It might be, if she saw you coming, she’d just get up and go in by herself, anyway—and you wouldn’t have to do anything. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

No, he didn’t think, but he didn’t say so. His legs hurt. He was tired. And pineapple-coconut-cream-cake hungry. He looked out the window. It was raining as hard as ever, and Meehan was still sitting there. He drew a quiet breath and glanced at Mrs. Bee. Her whole frail little body was saying one thing and one thing only—
Please!

Ah, damn it.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go shoo her. She’s not going to like it—I’m going to catch hell for it. But I’ll go.”

“I’ll get the umbrella,” Mrs. Bee said, scurrying away.

He peered through the window again, hoping that Meehan would be gone. She wasn’t.

Mrs. Bee came back with a big multicolored golf umbrella. He took it and hobbled toward the back door.

“You’re a good boy, Calvin,” she said as he stepped out into the rain.

Doyle opened the umbrella. He could feel Mrs. Bee’s eyes on him all the way across the backyard. Which was just as well, because he probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

It was hard walking on the rough, wet ground, but he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to get this over with. Which he did. It would take him too long to hobble down Mrs. Bee’s driveway to the sidewalk and then around the hedge and back up Meehan’s drive to where she was still sitting on the bench—the key word here being “still.”

Oh, he had the “hunt the hill, get the hill” mind-set, all right.

And what the hell was wrong with Meehan that she would be sitting out in the rain like this?

He’d find out soon enough, he guessed, if he kept going. He could see her plainly through the hedge. She seemed to be completely lost in thought. He could have yelled at her at any point, but he didn’t. He just kept slogging along, pulling the cane out of the mud with every step. She didn’t even notice him until he was right on her and held the umbrella over her head. Nice touch, the umbrella, he thought. Gave the trip—ill-advised though it may be—a purpose.

Meehan looked up at him. She didn’t say anything; neither did he. And she wasn’t bawling. That was a plus.

With some effort, he continued to stand and hold the umbrella over them both—a futile gesture at this point in her case. She was wet to the skin.

She frowned. Just enough of one to let him know he was on dangerous ground here. Not exactly news.

Hunt the hill, get the hill.

“So,” he said pleasantly. “What’s new?”

She gave a sharp sigh. “Bugs, what are you doing here?”

“Holding the umbrella,” he said reasonably.

“What do you want?”

“What do I
want?
Well, let’s see. I want a cold beer, for one thing. And I want somebody to drive me to some loud, smoky, possibly sleazy place where I can get one. Maybe a big thick steak with a pile of fried onions, too, while I’m at it. Since that’s not going to happen, I guess I want to stand right here—until I can shoo you back into the house.”

“I don’t want to be ‘shooed,”’ she assured him. “And you can mind your own damn business.”

“Oh, I know that. I tried to mind it, believe me. It didn’t work, though. See, you’re not exactly what I would call behaving here—or does the ‘behave and don’t upset Mrs. Bee’ thing just go for me?”

“What are you talking about!”

“Mrs. Bee! She’s all worried about you sitting out here in the rain like this.”

“She doesn’t have to worry.”

“Yeah, well, maybe so. But you know how she is. And I hate to say it, but I was getting a little uneasy about you myself. This is not like you.”

“What did you and Mrs. Bee do, watch everything out the window?”

“Pretty much,” he said. Personally, he’d always found it a lot easier to just tell the truth in most situations—unless it involved some gung-ho officer. It was too much trouble keeping stories straight. He suspected that Meehan was the same way, especially when she was working. He had always believed whatever she said, anyway. The whole time he was in the hospital, whenever he needed to know what was what with the pain in his legs or the burns on his hands or why he was running yet another fever, she was the one he always wanted to ask, because he knew she’d tell him straight.

He kept looking at her. She was upset, all right, and once again he was glad she wasn’t bawling. He didn’t know what to do when women cried—strong women, that is. Women like Rita. Or Specialist 4 Santos. Santos was a damned good soldier, but she always bawled when she had to make a jump. He didn’t know why, and he wasn’t sure she did, either. She would cry like she wasn’t crying, and nobody knew what was up with that. The jumpmasters certainly weren’t crazy about it. But, she always lined up like everybody else and hopped right out the door when she was supposed to. It was just…damned unsettling.

Tears weren’t a big deal with most women. But Rita and Santos—and Meehan, if she happened to break down—were an altogether different situation.

He kept checking Meehan out, just in case. She caught him at it, and she started to say something but didn’t. She looked away, down the driveway in the direction lover boy had gone.

He

waited.

And

waited.

The rain beat down on the umbrella. A car went down the street, its heavy bass speakers pounding. Somebody somewhere threw something heavy into a metal trash can.

“So did you get dumped or what?” he asked finally—and that got her attention.

She stared at him a long time before she answered. “Yes,” she said finally.

“Yeah, well, it’s been that kind of a day,” he said with the assurance of a man who’d been there.

He maneuvered the cane so that he could press one hand into his thigh. Both legs were beginning to hurt like hell. He tried to shift his weight a little. It didn’t help a bit. When he looked up again, Meehan wasn’t frowning anymore. It occurred to him that she was a lot nicer looking when she didn’t frown.