Paige barely slept. When Sami was awake, she rocked her to lull her to sleep, and once she was sleeping, she didn’t want to risk waking her by transferring her to her crib. Shortly before dawn, exhausted, she carried Sami down to her own bed, but she had barely dropped off to sleep when Nonny ran in, alarmed when she hadn’t found Sami in her crib.
“Paige Pfeiffer,” she cried, taking Sami in her arms, “this child might easily have crawled to the edge of the bed and tumbled right off!”
“She wasn’t moving far,” Paige murmured groggily. “She doesn’t feel well. Be an angel and give her more Tylenol. And wake me in an hour? Please? It’s my Saturday in the office.”
A shower revived her somewhat an hour later, but by the time she had finished up at the office and was heading home, she was beat. She napped with Sami in the afternoon, while Nonny took a walk in the snow, then went out for a run while Nonny stayed inside with Sami.
Inevitably she thought of her birthday and having run through the snow to Mount Court. There was no point in that now. There probably hadn’t been a point in it then, except that she had needed a boost. Noah had certainly given her that.
Okay. So she could use a boost now—just a little one—the kind that came with a call from a friend to say that he was thinking of her. There was such a message when she got home, but it was from Daniel Miller. One of the newer aliens of Tucker, a computer whiz somewhere around her age, he wanted to say how much he had enjoyed Thanksgiving and that he would be going to an art exhibit at Bennington the following weekend and would like to take her, if she was free.
The fact that he had left the entire message with Nonny made a statement about the prospect of their ever being anything more than friends.
Paige spent the rest of the afternoon and evening as she had the one before, holding Sami. Fortunately, her temperature was down. The initial rawness of her cold had settled into a steady drip, and while Paige was relieved, and grateful when Sami fell into a sound sleep in her crib, she couldn’t deny the special feeling that came when a child was sick and clung. A sick child was the ultimate in dependency. The parent with multiple children, all making demands on her, might dread that. Paige did not.
Neither had Mara. “I’m a way station in their lives,” she had written about being a foster mother:
which is perhaps what gives added meaning to those needy times they have. I can spend my day running from examining room to examining room, or from the hospital to the Town Hall to the court house, but when I come home and sit out on the back porch swing, holding a hand or talking out an upset, there’s a completion that I feel. I’m not thinking beyond, to the future. I’m enjoying now for now’s sake, and when now passes, I miss it.
Once Sami was asleep, Paige felt oddly lost. There was plenty to do that she didn’t feel like doing. She played Scrabble with Nonny, but it didn’t satisfy her the way holding Sami had, and it didn’t keep her mind from wandering to the phone.
She turned in early and fell asleep quickly, though not deeply. Each sound Sami made—a cough, a tiny cry—came through the monitor and brought her awake. She checked upstairs from time to time, but the child was cool and sleeping.
She had just returned to her room after one such check when she heard a rapping on her bedroom window. Her eyes flew there and found Noah’s face. Not bothering with a light, she opened the window and helped him climb inside.
“What are you doing here?” she cried, delighted in spite the start he had given her. “You’re not supposed to be back until tomorrow night!”
He tossed aside his coat, taking her in his arms, said against her hair, “I wanted to hold you,” which he did, tightly, for a long minute before easing her back. In the darkness he studied her face, feature by feature, as though searching for a change that the few days apart might have brought. “How was your Thanksgiving?”
Paige had to struggle to think back that far. No man had ever cut short his vacation to be with her. No man had ever taken to stealing in her bedroom window. No man had ever held her with arms that trembled or touched her face with eyes whose hunger lanced the dark. No man had ever made her feel so full.
“It was okay,” she managed to say, though her thoughts clung to all these things that made Noah unique. “Yours?”
“Nice. For a day. Then I got restless.” He kissed her, then smiled down apologetically, then kissed her again. This time when he smiled there was a question in his eyes.
Paige answered it by pulling up the hem of his sweater. While he pulled it over his head, she started unbuttoning his shirt, and while he pulled it off, she kissed his chest. By the time she was ready to move on, his trousers were open. She slipped her hands inside and held him while she sought his mouth.
“I missed you,” she whispered, and felt his response in her hands. He drew away from her only long enough to toss aside the rest of his clothes and her nightgown, then tumbled her back to the bed.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His mouth was eloquent without a word, with his hands and body echoing all it said, and when he drew her up off the bed and settled her onto a magnificent erection, she felt beautifully and thoroughly complete.
He held her, one arm around her hips, one arm around her back, perfectly still. In her ear, in a faintly ragged breath, he whispered, “I was dreaming of this all the way home. Had a five-hour hard-on. Hope the flight attendant didn’t notice.”
Paige laughed. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, over the wall of muscle that was so comfortably broad. “You are a corrupter,” she whispered. “I wasn’t thinking about this at all.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.” It wasn’t sex she’d been thinking of, but the completion. When she was with Noah, she felt content.
“There goes my ego.”
But nothing else. He was huge inside her. She closed her eyes to more intently savor the pleasure.
He pulled her close again and drew in a long, shaky breath against her brow. “I love it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Tell me that you feel good that way.”
She coiled her arms around his neck and held on tightly.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Her heart caught. “Me too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His body tensed. “Christ,” she heard him murmur seconds before he pushed her back, and while her hips rose to meet him, he drove into her again and again.
It was a while later, after they had dozed in each other’s arms and woken softly, that he said, “Did you mean it?”
She didn’t pretend ignorance. She had never before told a man that she loved him. She hadn’t even thought it about Noah until he’d said the words himself, and then the meaning of everything she’d been feeling seemed to congeal. “Yes. Did you?”
“Yes.” He paused. “It’s kinda nice.”
“And kinda scary.”
“Lots scary.” He settled her more comfortably against him and drew up the quilt. In a quiet voice he said, “Something exciting happened while I was home. An old friend of mine is president of the Board of Trustees of a prep school there, my alma mater. He said that the Head has just announced that he’s leaving.”
Which meant that Noah would be applying for the job. And he’d get it. Which meant he would be moving to Santa Fe. Just when she’d fallen in love. It wasn’t fair.
“The job isn’t automatically mine,” he cautioned. “There’ll be a formal search, but everyone involved knows me and my family, and the fact that I’m an alumnus of the school is a plus.”
“Is it a good school?” she asked against his chest.
“Not good. Great. Great reputation, great student body, great alumni support, great endowment.”
“Everything Mount Court doesn’t have.”
“You could say. It’d be a feather in my cap.”
She nodded against him.
“You could come with me,” he su
ggested.
“Me? Oh, no. My life is here.”
“You could move it there.”
To New Mexico? “But I like it here.”
“You say you love me,” he said in the simplistic way men had of doing, as though love conquered all, as though love forgave all, as though love condoned the creation of havoc.
She was suddenly miffed. “Love is only one part of my life. The entire rest of it is here in Vermont.”
“What if we were to get married?”
She took in a breath the wrong way and began to cough. When she had recovered, she pushed herself up so that she could see his face. It was a futile move. Between half-lidded eyes and the dark, she couldn’t see much, which was nearly as unfair as his request. “Marriage has never been in my game plan.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
“It was for you before.”
“That was then, this is now. You and Liv are worlds apart.” He took her chin in his hand. “Either you’re very cynical, or very frightened. Which is it?”
“Neither,” she said, then, “Both,” then, “Hell,” and sank down on his chest. Seconds later, when the baby monitor emitted a distinct cry, she bobbed back up. “Sami’s been sick.” She found her nightgown and, pulling it over her head, left the room.
Sami was only half-awake. She was congested, whimpering as she stood against the bars of the crib scrubbing at her nose and eyes with her fist. Paige lifted her out and held her close. “Shhhh, shhhh, Mommy’s here,” she crooned. “Is my little girl not feeling great?”
“What’s wrong?” Noah asked from behind. He had pulled on slacks, but they weren’t fastened. His chest was bare.
“It’s just a cold, but enough to make her miserable. She doesn’t understand what’s wrong or what to do to fix it. Not that there is much,” she murmured, and headed for the bathroom, where she wet a cloth and wiped the child’s face.
“Will she take something to drink?” Noah asked when she returned to Sami’s room.
“Maybe. I’ll go down for a bottle after I change her.”
“I’ll get the bottle. What should I put in it?”
Nothing, Paige wanted to say. I don’t need your help. I’m perfectly able to take care of myself. I’ve been doing it a lot longer than I’ve known you. Which, from a sensible, level-headed woman, was absurd. “Apple juice. She likes that.”
“Is everything all right?” Nonny asked from the door. She was a petite wraith in a white nightgown and shawl, who suddenly saw Noah. “Oh, my. I didn’t know we had guests.”
Paige sighed. “Not guests, Nonny. Just Noah.”
“And not exactly dressed for the weather, I see. I hope she isn’t going to kick you out at dawn this time, Noah. Since it’s Sunday. And since I already know you’re here.”
To Noah, Paige complained, “This was how it was when I was growing up. I’d tiptoe around her about something, then find that she knew about it all along.”
Nonny had shuffled to the changing table in her tiny white mules and was feeling Sami’s forehead. “Is my pumpkin hot again?”
“No. She must have been frightened when she woke up all stuffy. Noah’s going down for a bottle. You go back to bed.”
“And miss the fun?”
“Nonny.”
“I’m going, I’m going.” She shuffled out of the room.
Noah went down for the bottle. By the time he returned, Sami was cleaned up. Paige sat on the rocker and let her drink, while Noah leaned against the crib and watched.
“You did this just right,” she said softly. “I’d have thought you’d be rusty.”
“I always loved feeding Sara.”
“Did you do it much?”
“Whenever I could.”
Paige continued to rock. Sami, who was helping hold the bottle, took it out of her mouth and rubbed tiny teeth against her lips. “No more?” Paige asked. “Not even a little? For Mommy?” The mouth opened and the nipple went back inside. “That’s my girl.”
Sami drank most of the juice before taking the nipple out of her mouth for good. Paige set aside the bottle and rocked her a bit longer. Then she put her on her side in the crib, drew up a blanket, and rubbed her back.
“You enjoy her, don’t you?” Noah asked. He was standing close beside her.
“She’s a sweetie.” But it wasn’t Sami of whom she was most aware just then. It was Noah. The warmth of him was a physical thing, a lure when she didn’t want to be lured.
“Have you thought any more about adopting her?”
“No.”
“Not in your game plan, either?”
Paige didn’t answer. As she rubbed Sami’s back, she tried to remember what life had been like before Mara had died. Two and a half months. It hardly seemed possible.
Mara would have said that Paige would be insane not to accept Noah’s proposal, because the deep connect was everything.
Maybe it was. But it scared the living daylights out of Paige.
Noah touched her arm. “I think she’s asleep.”
Paige nodded. She let him drape an arm on her shoulder and guide her down the stairs, because it was so lovely to be guided rather than to guide all the time; but when they were in her bedroom and he turned her to him and took a breath to speak, she put a hand to his mouth.
“Don’t say anything. I can’t think about the future now, Noah. Not yet. What’s happened between us is new for me. Can’t we just enjoy it, just enjoy the here and now?”
It was easier said than done, because the words had been spoken and couldn’t be taken back. The following afternoon, leaving Nonny and Noah with Sami, Paige slipped into her room and curled up on the love seat with Mara’s thoughts on men.
“We had such problems, Daniel and I, right from the start,” she wrote.
But even when things were at their worst, there would be those few precious moments when everything clicked. They were like a dream. They made the hell worthwhile. I wasn’t taking care of Daniel, any more than he was taking care of me. We were doing it together, really together, two people of like minds, in harmony.
After he died, I thought I’d never experience that again, but I did. I had it with Nowell Brock—
Paige was stunned, she had never imagined Mara with Nowell.
—for the short time that he lived in Tucker, but there was no future in it, because he was married. I sometimes felt that was why we clicked. It was a safe relationship. Nothing could ever come of it.
And Peter. I had it with Peter. We could be out in the woods at dawn, lying still as the dead on the ground with our cameras glued to our eyes waiting for the deer to feed on shrubs by the brook, and we’d be whispering back and forth, one finishing the sentence the other began. He knew what I was thinking, and vice versa. We were totally in sync. But we always lost it when we stood up. Had it in bed, lost it when we got out. That’s the story of my life.
Paige lowered the letter.
“Who’s it from?” Noah asked from the door.
Once before she had put him off. She didn’t see any reason to do it now. “Mara. After she died, I found bundles of letters in her house. They’re kind of like a diary. She wrote them over a period of years.”
“What’s in them?”
“Different things. Some are personal. Others are more philosophical. I’ve learned things about her that I never knew. It’s sad. She was such a close friend.” She frowned, haunted still by all she hadn’t known about this close friend. “It makes you wonder whether any of us know, really know, the people we’re with all the time.”
“Of course we do,” Noah said kindly. “But there are always those people who, for whatever their reasons, shield part of themselves. It’s not that they’re dishonest, just that they don’t always tell the whole truth.”
“If I’d known the whole truth, I might have been able to help.”
“If Mara was one to tell the whole truth, your help might not have been needed. She would have been healthier and stron
ger.”
Paige knew he was right. She gave the letter a nudge. “I keep thinking of the isolation she must have felt when she was writing these.”
“It’s too bad she didn’t just give them to you at the time she wrote them.”
“Oh, they’re not written to me. They’re written to someone else.” Saying it, she felt a new wave of guilt.
“To a friend?”
“I guess.” And Paige was a voyeur on the thoughts Mara shared. “Someone back in Eugene. Mara never mentioned her to me.” She shot Noah a contrite look. “I know. I should package them up and send them on, and I will. I just want to read them a while longer. They make me feel closer to Mara. They help me to understand her death.”
“Did this friend come to her funeral?”
Paige shook her head. “Only Mara’s parents and three of her brothers came from Eugene.”
“Do you think she knows that Mara is dead?”
“Good Lord, I hope she does. I assume she found out.” But the guilt swelled again. “There haven’t been any telephone messages from an old friend since Mara died. I mean, it’s been two and a half months. If the two of them kept in touch, she would have tried to call. Wouldn’t she have?”
“If they kept in touch, she would have,” Noah reasoned. “But maybe they didn’t. That would explain why Mara never mailed the letters.”
“Then why did she write them?” Paige asked.
“She needed the outlet.”
“But why to this person?” And why not to Paige? There was some hurt in that, Paige realized. Perhaps even envy. Surely, though, she hadn’t kept the letters to deliberately deprive Lizzie Parks of something she wanted for herself.
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