Together Alone (36 page)

She didn’t fully relax until Thanksgiving dinner was done and Jill, Marilee, and Dawn had taken off to visit friends. In the kitchen, drying platters and pans as Kay washed, she said, “I thought he’d show up here, just because I told him not to. He’s trying to keep me off-balance.”

“What does he know about Brian?”

“Nothing. He guesses.” She met Kay’s gaze with a sheepish shrug. “He doesn’t see us together like you do.”

“Lucky for that. Brian’s eyes give it away. Yours, too, sweetie.”

How can I help it? He’s so different from Doug. Doug and I were totally swept up in being young and in love. But everything with Brian is deeper.”

“More mature.”

“Positively speaking,” Emily agreed, but she was looking at Kay, thinking of subtle changes there, too. “How’re things here?”

Kay blushed. “Interesting. It’s been different with John around. Nice. Maybe we all need a shock once in a while. Yours was learning about Doug’s other family. Mine was John’s accident.”

The kitchen door swung open. Celeste breezed in. “Okay, guys. What do you think? Is he great, or is he great?”

Emily said, “He’s definitely handsome.”

“And charming,” Kay added.

“Not that we saw any of the others you met.”

“He’s different from what I thought you’d get with an ad.”

Celeste waited. After a minute’s silence, she asked, “Why do I hear ‘buts’? Tell me what’s wrong with him. I can’t find a thing.”

“Neither can I,” Emily said. That was what bothered her. Carter was smooth, almost too much so. She didn’t want to breathe the word slick, though it was the one that came to mind. He had been the perfect guest, bringing flowers to Kay and a book to John, talking law enforcement with those in law enforcement and college with those in college. He had smiled and teased and drawn people in. He hadn’t gone near Julia, but then, neither had Celeste. Maybe that was what bothered Emily, though she knew it shouldn’t. Just because she found Julia irresistible didn’t mean everyone did.

“Where did he grow up?” Kay asked.

“All over. He was an army brat.”

“Where do his parents live now?”

“They’re dead.”

“Does he have siblings?”

Celeste shook her head. “He’s all by his lonesome.”

“No wife at any point?”

“No. I read you his letter. His work kept him on the move too much to allow for a wife.”

“Statements like that aren’t definitive. He could have had a wife, but abandoned her.”

Emily cleared her throat. “Yes, we do know that happens.”

“He is not like Doug,” Celeste declared. “Since we met, he’s been here in Grannick more than he’s been away.”

“What about his work?” Kay asked.

“He’s the idea man, the concept guy. He creates the initial drawings and leaves the drudgery to his assistants.”

“Is he working, while he’s here?”

“Of course not. Good God, he’s earned a vacation. He’s been working nonstop for years.”

He didn’t looked overworked. He was tanned. He seemed rested. Emily would have pegged him as a playboy, not a workaholic.

“Come on, guys,” Celeste was plaintive now, “don’t rain on my parade. He treats me like a princess. He even treats
Dawn
like a princess. Would you believe, he showed up yesterday morning with flowers and gifts for both of us? He’s incredible.”

Emily thought about the yesterday morning part, which implied a last night and this morning part. “Is he staying at your house?”

“Of course.”

“Dawn knows you’re sleeping with him?” Emily hadn’t told Jill about Brian and her. She wanted to. She had thought to broach it a dozen times during the drive from Boston to Grannick, but had lost her nerve each time.

Celeste’s situation was different. She had been divorced for years.

“Dawn
adores
him,” Celeste was saying. “She actually behaves when he’s around. I don’t think she and I have fought once. He’s a good influence on her. Would you believe, the two of them made me breakfast this morning? Dawn, cooking? Dawn, waiting on me? Dawn,
smiling
in my presence? I didn’t know what that smile was the first time I saw it, she’s usually so sullen.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Kay said.

Emily was pleased for Celeste, far more with regard to Dawn than Carter. “Moments like those are special. They’re the ones we keep forever. Jill and I were out in the snow yesterday afternoon after she got home.” There hadn’t been enough to mess up the drive, just enough for fun. “We took Julia out. She had never played in snow before. It was priceless watching her. We made angels, and teeny snowmen, used up just about all the snow there was.”

Brian had been there, too, and the four of them had had a ball. Jill had been caught up enough in Julia’s excitement not to be looking for things between Emily and Brian. That was how Emily wanted it, a gradual getting to know one another, that would make something deeper perfectly natural, when and if it came.

Playing there in the yard, Emily wasn’t thinking of Doug. She wasn’t thinking of Daniel. She was thinking of Jill, Brian, and Julia, thinking how much all three meant to her. They were laughter-filled, light-hearted moments when the problems of the world seemed eons away.

It was late before the last of Kay’s guests left, and a while after that before she had the house in order, but as she worked, she, too, was thinking about special moments. The past few days had been full of them.

First came Marilee, out of the blue, home for vacation early to help with John, insisting Kay shouldn’t be alone.

Kay hadn’t had the heart to tell her that she wasn’t alone, that between Emily and Celeste and half the police force and their wives, John had more babysitters than he wanted. The fact was that with Marilee there, Kay felt less stressed. In a few short months away from home, Marilee had grown up. She had become an individual in her own right. She didn’t shy from responsibility, as she once had. Kay found that decidedly rewarding.

Then there was her own work, which suddenly seemed of less significance. She took sick days until John was discharged from the hospital, and once he was installed in a hospital bed in the living room, she rushed home during free periods and lunches. Yes, others were there. But she wanted to be there, too. After years of being the last of the teachers to leave, now as soon as classes ended, she was gone from school.

John had always needed her on some level, but it was largely a custodial one—cook, keep house, wash clothes—and there was that now and more, what with his physical limitations.

But there were emotional needs now, too. He was a terrible patient. If his being laid up was a shocker for her, it was all the more so for him. He grumbled and fussed. He complained. He didn’t like what he was wearing, how he was lying, what was on television. His ribs hurt. His legs ached. He was in a constant state of irritation that only eased when Kay was home. She was the only one who could make him smile.

She was surprised at how much that meant to her. For years, they had shared a house and a child and the activities tied to each. But John had his work, and Kay had hers. There hadn’t been much sharing of that.

Now Kay was present when Brian or Sam or one of the others came by at the end of the day with a rundown of activity at the station. John insisted she be there, seeming calmer when she was. Likewise, claiming boredom, he made her tell him about her day at school.

They grew closer, and not only in matters of the mind. There were physical chores, intimate chores, that he allowed only Kay to perform. As a result, she touched him more in the course of a day than she had touched him in months before. Initially awkward, she grew increasingly at ease, and it wasn’t only that John was wounded and, hence, less intimidating. It was that he wanted
her
to touch him, wanted
her
to help him, wanted
her
to sit on the edge of the bed, within reach of his hand when whoever it was from the department was there.

He was being possessive, acting proud of her, and she liked that—which appalled the professional person in her, until she realized that she didn’t
need
his approval, simply
enjoyed
it. She felt more complete, more confident, even thinner. She didn’t know whether it was nervous energy burning off calories, or the walking she did early each morning, and she hadn’t lost much more than a few pounds, but she felt better about herself.

Encouraged by John’s need, she grew bolder. She bathed him more slowly. She gave him back rubs. Safely clothed while he was bare and vulnerable, she looked at his body in ways she had never dared do, and he loved it. They joked about his arousal, until joking gave way to sweetness. Kay pleasured him, alternately watching the pulsing in her hand, the bunching muscles of his arms in the grip of sexual tension, the pained etch of ecstasy on his face at the moment of climax, and after such times, it seemed only natural to fall asleep beside him in the big hospital bed downstairs.

On Thanksgiving night, he asked her to take off her nightgown.

“Here?”

“I can’t go upstairs.”

“John, this is the living room.”

“Huh.”

“Marilee might walk in.”

“She’s at Jill’s for the night.”

“People can see in.”

“The lights are out. The shades are drawn. I’m stark naked. Why not you?”

“Because…because it’s different.”

“How’s it different?”

“You’re a man.”

“What’s different about that?”

“Everything.” He was firm all over. Men were that way. They were also more sure about their bodies than women were.

“I haven’t touched you since the accident,” he said.

“Yes, you have.”

“Not that way.”

She was sitting beside him in the dark, thinking that things were so lovely
this
way. Then his hand moved. It touched her chin and slipped lower. She tried to stop it, but his fingers worked under the shoulder of her gown.

“You shouldn’t,” she whispered.

“Why not? I love you.”

“I’m fat.”

“Who says?”

“Me.”

“Not me.” He pushed the gown off one shoulder.

“John.”

He freed the other shoulder, then her breasts. The darkness didn’t hide a thing—not her fullness, not the way his eyes held her, not the self-consciousness that had her hands clutching at her nightgown and cover.

He pushed the nightgown lower and touched her. Self-consciousness didn’t keep her from feeling a tug inside, still she wanted to slip under him. That was the way it usually happened. When he covered her, she felt less exposed.

But he couldn’t cover her, what with his casts. “Take it off all the way,” he said thickly.

She shook her head. “Another time.”

“I want to see you now.”

“John.” It was enough that his fingers were stroking her breasts, drawing helpless sounds from her throat. “This is embarrassing.”

“Why?”

“Because…because—”

“Why is it embarrassing?”

They were in the living room. He was lying there, watching her. She felt on display. “I told you. I’m fat.”

“You’re not fat. Take the nightgown off.”

“You’ll see everything, if I do.”

“I want to.”

“I don’t.”

“You see me. I want to see you.”

“But you’re good to look at. I’m not.”

His fingers lifted. “Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“You think I don’t like the way you look?”

“Women don’t age as gracefully as men. We get hippy and lumpy and crepey.” She tugged the nightgown up.

“But I like the way you look.”

“Well, you have to, in a way I’m your wife.”

“I don’t
have
to. I just do.”

“I’m like that soft old cardigan that you love slipping into. It’s shabby and stretched, but it’s familiar, and it’s warm.”

“I
like
the way you look.”

“You don’t have to say that, John.”

“But I mean it. And I like the way you feel. So I want you naked. I want to see you and feel you.”

She wanted to believe, wanted it badly. “You do?”

“How many times do I have to say it?”

“Lots, I guess. You don’t usually.”

“Can’t you tell, from how I touch you?”

“No. Men are physical. They touch. It doesn’t say anything about
me.
Only words do that.”

“Huh.”

For all the times she had let that ride, she asked now, “What does that mean, ‘huh’?”

“You just jerked me off, and I want it again. Look at me.”

She did. He was hard.

He slipped the nightgown to her waist. “That’s from being close to you. It’s from touching this, and remembering the way the rest of you feels. I like the way you feel, Kay. I like looking at you.”

“I’m getting older.”

“Well, hell, so’m I, but I don’t want someone who’s younger or skinnier. I want you.”

He smiled then, a cocky-crooked smile in the night. That smile hadn’t changed over the years. It still snowed her.

“Come on, baby,” he said with the hoarseness hardons gave him. “Lie naked with me. Give me a thrill.”

Kay left the bed only long enough to slip out of her clothes, then she crowded in beside him to hide. But he said the words. He said them over and over, while he touched her, and between the two, she finally found the courage to rise above him and take him in.

Ahhh, yes, she gave him a thrill, but the thrill was hers, too. She needed words. He needed deeds. It seemed an even exchange, for passion.

Myra pushed herself out of bed with a great effort. She made her slow way to the bathroom, wearily performed her ablutions, then, with the hem of Frank’s old flannel robe dragging behind her, turned toward the stairs. She had barely put a shaky hand to the newel cap when she felt a wave of dizziness. Clasping the worn wood, she slid down to the top step and leaned heavily against the post.

Thanksgiving had drained her. Oh, she had loved seeing children and grandchildren, but the strain of being on her best behavior had taken its toll.

It had been necessary, though, because they were watching her. There were little looks when they thought she wouldn’t notice, and closer scrutiny when she was talking with others. They were looking for signs of madness. They were looking for excuses to put her away.