This Time, Forever (12 page)

“Except for those two slow pit stops, it looked pretty good,” she fibbed.

Ben gave her a skeptical look. “You've been at this long enough to know where I screwed up.”

“Yes, and I agree there was a lost opportunity and a little loose driving, but the pit stops are where you really lost the time.”

“Better. We've been together for too long for you to humor me.”

Susie laughed as she picked up the beer cap and deposited it in the below-counter trash can. “You think?”

His smile was slow in coming, but very real once it arrived. “Okay, bad choice of words. Humor me at will.”

“Actually, I've been thinking more in terms of having you humor me.”

He walked to the sofa and sat down. “That sounds interesting. How?”

“I've reserved us rooms at the most fabulous hotel on Coronado Island,” Susie said as she seated herself next to Ben. “It's old and kind of fancy-looking, yet laid-back at the same time. Matt and Cammie can explore, and you and I can have some quiet time, and maybe talk a little?”

“So you have this set up for right after the season ends? That sounds great.”

“Actually, the reservations are a little earlier than that.”

“How much earlier?”

“Like tomorrow.”

He sighed. “Honey, you know I can't just take off during the season.”

“It wouldn't be that long. I have a rental car being delivered here in the morning, and reservations for all of us to fly out of San Diego early Wednesday morning. Since next weekend's race is right there in Charlotte, this will barely take a nip out of your schedule. An extra forty-eight hours away from the garage won't be the end of civilization as we know it.”

“It depends when those forty-eight hours occur, and this isn't a good time. How much did the hotel cost?” Ben asked.

“Somewhat less than a fortune,” Susie replied.

She wanted to tell him that she'd paid for the trip with her profits from the knitwear she'd sold, but after his reaction this morning when she'd talked to Cammie about him needing them, she decided not to. While she'd like to think he'd be proud she'd been doing so well, she was no longer certain.

“Look,” he said, “I don't think I'd be very good company. I have things I need to take care of around the garage, and if I'm not doing them, I'll be distracted. Did you get an adjoining room for Matt and Cammie?”

“Yes, as always.”

“It won't matter if I'm not there. Just cancel one room and the three of you can bunk together.”

Susie knew that it made no sense to be angry since
she'd made these plans without consulting him. All the same, her frustration was becoming so sharp that it might as well be anger.

“It does matter because I planned this for all of us,” she replied. “If you feel you can't be there, we'll just head on home, too.”

Ben shook his head. “That's not fair to Matt and Cammie. I'm assuming they know about the trip?”

“Yes.”

“Then take the time, build some memories with the kids and then come home rested and happy.”

“That's what I'd been hoping for you,” she replied.

“I appreciate that. Really. But you're just going to have to go on without me.”

Which was exactly what Susie was beginning to fear.

A
FTER A
M
ONDAY
eaten up by travel and time change, Tuesday dawned no sunnier for Ben, who was having a breakfast meeting at the country club with Adriana Sanchez, his business manager. And, really, he was going to have to find a new venue for these breakfast meetings or he was going to start to connect this place to bad events, pretty much like he connected tequila to an overindulged twenty-first birthday.

“You're in a better position than many,” Adriana said.

“It just seems bleak because it's been so long since we've had a discussion about your overall financial picture. The quarterly review meetings I had asked for would have softened the blow.”

Ben wasn't into second-guessing as a form of self-punishment. If he wanted to suffer, he'd order up his first shot of tequila in twenty years. Or he'd dwell upon the fact that today he could be out west, on Coronado Island with his family.

“I agree that the meetings would have been a good idea. From now on, I'll stay on top of that,” he replied.

“But let me ask you this…. If, as you tell me, my stock portfolio has rebounded to seventy percent of what it was worth before the market dropped, and if the acreage I hold outside of Charlotte is currently a break-even
proposition at best, if I stopped being a driver tomorrow, could I keep everything afloat?”

Adriana was relatively young—somewhere in her early thirties, the best he could guess—but she was a graduate of one of the top business schools on the east coast and had spent a good number of years on Wall Street before opting for a simpler life and returning home to Mooresville. Ben trusted her judgment implicitly.

“You're too young to dip into your retirement accounts without paying a huge penalty,” she said. “So I'm not even going to count those assets…which are considerable…as we discuss this.”

“Okay,” he replied.

“I've been trying to strike a balance for you, investing what is prudent, but keeping a reasonable cash reserve, even though you are well insured, should there be an accident that takes you off the track.”

“Not quite the way I want to leave racing,” he replied, earning a smile from this otherwise very serious young woman.

“That's good news,” she said. “If you leave racing in a way that doesn't trigger insurance coverage but hypothetically don't bring in another penny from this minute forward…which you will…your available cash reserves would get you through approximately two years. Obviously, it will last longer if you make lifestyle adjustments and cut back on your donations. I'm sure you know you're beyond generous on that front.”

“I've been lucky,” he replied. “And for so long as I can continue to give at that level, I will.”

His business manager's brown eyes warmed. “Which is one of the many reasons I like having you as a client.”

“So what are my other options if I need to stretch it out longer than two years?”

“As you've mentioned, you have the stock portfolio and the land, though I wouldn't advise touching either of those right now.”

“Anything else?”

“This conversation is wholly hypothetical, right?”

“Yes,” Ben replied. At least he hoped like hell it was.

“Well, on a hypothetical level, you could always hole up on the family farm in Tennessee. That would be a far less expensive lifestyle.”

Ben knew Adriana was joking, but he could work up only a weak smile. He had been a horrible farmer, and he'd gotten out the day he'd graduated from high school. Unlike his dad and his three brothers, he'd had no passion for it, had felt no connection to the land…or their hungry, demanding dairy herd. He'd been happy to buy more land for his brothers and help keep the place afloat just after his dad had died five years ago, but that was as close as he cared to be to Mother Earth at this point in his life.

Adriana laughed. “Based on your expression, you'd better keep your day job.”

That's when it struck Ben—he might need his job, but at this moment, he didn't love it. And he wondered if he ever would again.

 

A
T A CERTAIN AGE
, children should be able to fly in the same airplane without the mother being subject to “Mom, he's looking out my window” or “Mom, she's hogging the armrest.” Apparently, Matt and Cammie had not yet reached that milestone. Susie, who sat in
the aisle seat next to the dueling duo, looked longingly across the way at the empty seat between two preoccupied businessmen. She supposed she might startle them if she clambered across the closest man and plopped down between them. Then again, if they'd turned even half an ear toward her children's general crabbiness, they might welcome her.

The days on Coronado's beach had been idyllic, as had been their stay in the vintage part of the sprawling hotel. Susie just wished Ben had been part of it, or that he would have at least taken a call from her. She'd finally gotten through to him at home last night, and he'd somewhat grudgingly agreed to pick them up at the airport today, but only after she'd told him she could always call a limo service.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching Charlotte Douglas International Airport,” announced a fuzzy voice over the loudspeaker at the same time Susie caught Matt making faces at Cammie. Susie gave her son a stern look, then checked her watch. It was nearly four in the afternoon, Charlotte time, but Susie was humming with pent-up energy after being on the plane for so very long. All she wanted to do was get home and settle in with Ben.

What felt like a lifetime later—but was probably only twenty minutes—Susie stood at the luggage carousel with Matt and Cammie waiting for their bags to appear. They were all waiting for Ben to appear, too. His text message just a moment ago had been a terse “Running late.” That, Susie had already figured out.

“Here comes my suitcase,” she said to Matt. “Let me grab it.”

“I can get it, Mom,” he said.

Except the bag was nearly as tall as him, and Susie could envision an end result of both Matt and the suitcase circling on the belt.

“Let me give you a hand,” Ben said, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

Susie watched as both of the males in her life retrieved the suitcase together.

“Sorry I wasn't here to greet you,” her husband said once he'd placed the luggage next to her.

She came forward and gave him a quick kiss. “It doesn't matter. I'm just happy to see you now.”

“Me, too.”

Before he could help Cammie or Matt with their smaller suitcases, he was approached by a handful of autograph seekers. Ben was as gracious as ever, giving autographs and smiling as his picture was taken on every cell phone the group had. But as Susie looked at him, she grew a little sad. She knew it wasn't possible for a person to visibly age over the course of two days, but it seemed to her that Ben had. The lines radiating from the corners of his eyes appeared more pronounced and the set of his shoulders didn't have its usual military bearing.

“Mom, we've got our stuff,” Cammie said from behind her.

“Dad's almost done,” Susie absently replied as she reached for the handle on her suitcase and extended it.

“Ready?” Ben asked, taking her luggage from her.

“I'm parked close by.”

After only two more autograph stops, they were at the car. Ben had driven her SUV as opposed to his sleek sports car, which was made to accommodate neither luggage nor children. The ride home took place in silence,
but more of the tired sort than the uncomfortable sort. That, Susie supposed, was progress.

After they'd pulled down the winding drive to their home, Ben didn't hit the button to open the garage door. Instead, he put the car in Park and sat with it idling.

“Can we get out?” Matt asked.

“Sure,” Ben replied.

Before Susie could tell the kids to hang on and get their luggage, they were up and out.

“What's going on?” she asked Ben.

“I have someplace I have to be tonight. Don't expect me home until late.”

She decided to try to keep things light. “That sounds highly mysterious. Are you moonlighting as a secret agent?”

“Nothing that exciting. Just a business meeting,” Ben replied.

If he'd said he had to be at the track, Susie would have accepted the statement without a second thought. After all, tomorrow was qualifying day.

Recalling her vow to put it all out there, Susie said, “It seems odd to me that you'd have a business meeting when you're going to be at the track tomorrow. Usually, you're with Chris on Wednesday evening.”

Ben gave her a level look. “Do I ask you about all the details of your day?”

“No, but I'd be happy to share them with you, if you did.”

“I don't want to do that. We both deserve a level of privacy even though we're married.” He glanced at the car's clock. “I'm going to be late. Can we save this discussion?”

Susie considered herself a patient woman, but she'd
just been pushed one dismissal too far. And like any good Tennessee-born girl, she knew that sweetness could be a thousand times sharper than vinegar.

“For when you get home…whenever that might be? Of course we can, honey. And you might as well just bring in all the luggage then, too. We wouldn't want to slow you down, now would we?”

She'd loaded the syrup heavier than Cammie did on French toast, and Ben was staring at her as though he'd never seen her before. Well, let him look! Susie exited the car and gave Ben an utterly false smile and very perky wave while sending a very different mental message:
Be as stubborn and secretive as you like, Benjamin Horatio Edmonds, but I am not backing down!

But as she marched up the walk to her home's front door…

“Mom, I'm hungry,” Cammie called from the kitchen as soon as Susie had entered the house.

“I'll order us pizza for dinner,” Susie called back. Since the ordering of pizza was something that happened just about as often as Halley's Comet came around, that should buy some peace while she made a much-needed phone call.

“But I haven't even had lunch, and it's going to take forever to get pizza all the way out here,” Cammie said from closer by.

Susie hesitated at the bottom of the oak circular staircase that led to their home's second floor and some measure of privacy for her. The child had a point. They lived so far outside town that pizza delivery required intense negotiations. And the snack boxes she'd let Cammie and Matt purchase on the plane had been amusing for their mini-playing cards and the mystery of hummus
in a tube, but they'd hardly been a meal. In fact, they'd had no real meal today at all.

“Hang on, and we'll go fix something. But right now, I need to run upstairs. Grab a yogurt or something…” And then Susie dashed to her room before Cammie could catch her.

Once there, she closed the bedroom door, picked up the phone and dialed Maudie's Down Home Diner. Blessedly, Sheila Trueblood answered the phone.

“Sheila, it's Susie Edmonds.”

“Hey, Susie, how was the California vacation?”

“Fine,” Susie replied, knowing—or at least hoping— Sheila would get the real story later. And then she moved on to the purpose of her call. “Can you help me call an emergency meeting of the Tuesday Tarts for tonight?”

Sheila laughed. “So we're going to be the Wednesday Wenches?”

“Sure,” Susie said. If she were in a happier mood, she might have smiled at Sheila's usual sharp wit. But Susie remained far from happy. “I know this is short notice, and that I'm asking a lot, but I need the counsel of wise women, and I can't think of any wiser.”

“You know we're always here for each other,” Maudie's owner replied. “How's nine o'clock?”

“Perfect,” Susie replied. “And I'm bringing wine.”

Sheila snorted. “Wine? You sound frazzled enough that I'm thinking of putting out a fifth of whiskey and a bunch of shot glasses.”

“I just might take you up on that,” Susie said grimly.

“I'll make the calls,” Sheila said. “You just relax, and we'll see you in the back room at nine.”

After she'd hung up the phone, Susie heaved a sigh of relief and flopped onto her bed. Thank heaven for tarts and wenches!