The Night We Met

by Tara Taylor Quinn

"Nate?"

  He was buttoning his shirt and looked over at me. "Yeah?"

  "You have two able-bodied sons who can help with that tomorrow. Why don't you come back to bed now— to your bed—and get a few hours' rest so you can keep up with them."

  His hands stilled.

  "I'm not going to wake up in the morning and change my mind about you, Nate."

  "You might."

  "Real y?" I lifted my chin to stare at him.

  I smiled as his hands slowly unfastened the buttons and waited for him to shed the rest of his clothes.

  Then, setting down my own cup, I held back the covers.

  "Come to bed, my love."

  He did.

  "And if you ever, ever think about leaving it—or me— again, I will be through with you until death and beyond."

  I wasn't sure I'd be able to follow through on that threat, but I knew it needed to be said.

  "I love you, Liza."

  "I love you, too."

  "I'm not perfect."

  "Me, neither."

  "But this I can swear to you. I'd sooner die than leave you, or this bed, again."

  That was enough for me.

  The next night, with al of Nate's belongings back in their rightful places, the five of us sat down to dinner together for the first time in over a year. We'd told the boys they needn't cancel their plans with friends in order to stay home, but they both insisted. Keith offered to gril the steaks. Jimmy wanted to mix drinks—was given an unequivocal no—and settled for keeping an eye on Elizabeth while Nate supervised Keith and I prepared the salad and potatoes.

  And after dinner, as if by unspoken agreement, we al moved into the living room. Nate sat at the piano I'd seen him glance at several times that day, and started to play.

  Four hours later we were still there. Elizabeth had been asleep for a long time. The boys had drifted off, kissing me goodnight on their way, and stopping to tel their dad they were glad he was home.

  And, with my heart floating, I laid my head back against my chair, knowing all was right with my world.

  I recognized the chord instantly. Started to smile.

  And was stil smiling through my tears as Nate finished the last chorus of "My Cup Runneth Over.'

  Mine did, too.

  We threw a huge party at the resort for Elizabeth's third birthday. Keith and Jimmy invited their friends, who all came. My mom and sisters Bonnie, Alice and June flew in with their families. William, too. Most of our off-duty staff was there. Nate acted like a besotted schoolboy, never leaving my side, and I reveled in his attention. Elizabeth might have received all the presents that day, but Nate and I knew the real celebration was less for our sunny three-year-old than for the family that was once again whole.

  Lori was the only one missing but she called. With good news of her own. She and her new beau, Charles, were getting married. We tried to talk her into a wedding this time around, but she said at thirty-two, she just wanted to tie the knot and settle down to babymaking. They were taking a Mediterranean cruise, getting married aboard ship, and would be home at Christmas so everyone could meet Charles.

  Her parents, Holly and Todd, were flying out to cruise with them.

  Nate seemed at peace with the news.

  Our lives were completely blessed.

  Elizabeth turned four and our world continued to evolve. Keith was eighteen that summer—old enough to vote. And at thirty-seven, I stil felt as though I had more to figure out than I'd already learned. And we finally let Jimmy get his driver's license.

  Both boys, along with their father, spent many hours on the ski slopes that winter. And at Christmastime, when Lori and Charles came for what we hoped was becoming an annual visit, I al owed Elizabeth to put on her first pair of baby skis.

  That was it, though. I couldn't tolerate the idea of her on the slopes quite yet.

  We had many evenings around the piano during their week-long visit, chatting, playing cards while Nate serenaded us, or engaging in rousing sing-alongs.

  Lori still wasn't pregnant and we had long talks about life and its vagaries and finding happiness in spite of them.

  When it was time for her to leave, I was very sad to see them go. London was so far away and it looked as though they were going to make England their permanent residence.

  Elizabeth loved playing with the other kids at the resort and by the spring of 1988, I started back to work there part-time. Elizabeth would be five soon, and entering kindergarten that fall. The same time Keith left for college...

  I figured I'd plan ahead and find myself something to do to take the sting out of the passing years—

  and our changing lives. I signed up to volunteer at the battered women's shelter again. Two days a week this time. It felt right.

  I alternately wept and smiled through my eldest son's high school graduation, with Nate standing beside me, holding my hand. And Elizabeth squirming to see.

  "Where is he, Mama?" She must have asked at least fifteen times.

  I'm not sure she ever picked him out in the crowd of two hundred. She was too busy stringing the buttons we'd brought along to keep her occupied. Over the needle, down the string went hundreds of tiny buttons, only to come off and be restrung in a different order.

  Maybe she'd grow up to be a fashion designer.

  I could think of worse things.

  And better ones, too.

  Mostly I just wanted my children to be happy. As happy as I was.

  Chapter 15

  Nate took Elizabeth and me to Hawaii in late August of 1988. We left the day after Keith went off to col ege. My oldest child was the age I'd been when I'd met and married Nate.

  Jimmy, 18 now and entering his senior year of high school, was working—and living—at the resort while we were in Hawai . He'd been invited to go with us, but hadn't wanted to leave Jenny, his girlfriend of the moment. She was his ninth "serious" love.

  "I worry about that boy," I told Nate one morning as we strol ed along the sandy Maui beach outside the condo we'd rented. Elizabeth was making paper leis at the kids' club in the resort's main lodge.

  "He dives headfirst into every relationship and ends up hurt."

  "Give him time," my sage husband said, sliding his arm around me and pulling me close. It was more than two years after he'd come home, and I stil thrilled at his attention. "Jimmy's just finding his way,"

  he added.

  I hoped so. And fretted anyway.

  "Look at your sister June's boy," Nate went on. "He dated at least fifteen girls before he met Samantha. And they've been married, what, seven years now?"

  I nodded. They had two darling little girls and lived in Texas. I'd only seen pictures of them, but my mother kept me informed.

  "Jimmy's going to college next year," I reminded Nate. "What if he trades majors like he does girls?"

  We could be paying for col ege straight through the next decade.

  "I don't think he will." The tide came in, soaking our feet. "He's been adamant al along about wanting to major in English and teach high school. That doesn't seem to waver."

  "I guess."

  But it was a mother's job to be concerned about her children.

  Even after they were grown and gone.

  "There's a message for you, Mrs. Grady," the plump, dark-haired woman said as we walked through the lobby of the resort a few minutes later. "It sounded urgent. I put it through to your phone."

  With my heart pounding and Nate's hand tightly clamped in mine, I rode the elevator up to our two-bedroom unit that overlooked the ocean.

  The message light on the phone was blinking.

  I recognized William's voice and went cold. Listened. And then, carefully replacing the receiver, sank down onto the bed.

  "What is it?" Nate was there beside me, his hand at my back. "Liza?"

  "Mom was in a head-on collision. A young girl was passing in a no-pass zone. Mom never knew what hit her."

  "When?"

  "This morning. She
was on her way to bingo." I felt his warmth next to me. And that was al I felt.

  Except a headache. Like my skul was swel ing and filling with air.

  "How bad is it?"

  I shook my head, fumbled with my hands in my lap. "She—" Glancing up at him, I started coming apart. "She died, Nate."

  I needed him to do something about that. To make it all better.

  "Oh, my God."

  Both of his arms came around me, cradling me. "I'm so sorry, baby. So sorry." His face was pressed to the top of my head as he held me. Kissed me.

  I have no idea how long I sat there, but I know time passed in that Hawaii resort suite because the sun rose higher, the maid came to clean and then went away. And all the while, as fear and loss attacked me, ravaged me, Nate was there, holding on.

  "I don't know how to live without her." I'd cried al the tears I had. Now there were only words. And pain. "I've never spent one day on this earth without her."

  "I know."

  Pul ing away only enough to look at him, I said, "I just can't believe it."

  "You need to talk to Wil iam. Find out what the plans are. I'l call down and have them keep Elizabeth a little longer while I make arrangements to get us to California."

  I nodded, but clutched at him as he started to move away. "Don't go."

  Nate nodded. And stayed by my side as I called my brother, cried with him and told him we'd get home as soon as we could. Wil iam, Mom's executor, wanted all of us there before he did anything.

  June and Alice were already with him. Bonnie and her husband were driving up from San Diego that afternoon.

  And Nate kept a hand on my thigh, or an arm against mine, as he got us on the first flight out of Maui.

  We'd be in San Francisco by dinnertime. Keith and Jimmy were going to meet us there.

  My mother's death changed something inside me. I think that in the months following her funeral, I finally grew up. Until that point, a part of me had always been her little girl. I couldn't fal back on her anymore.

  And maybe that was why, when Elizabeth started school a couple of weeks later, I dropped her off, dry- eyed. I drove to the resort and went to work. Something had become very clear to me. Life was filled with change.

  Changes were good as well as bad, and there was no way to stop them from coming. They were life.

  I could either live my life. Or not.

  I wanted to live.

  My new awareness of the total lack of control I felt over most of the things my heart relied on brought its own kind of peace.

  Acceptance, Nate called it. I remembered him telling me—the night after we met—that my sense of acceptance was something he wanted. Was it something I'd had all along? And just forgotten?

  Or maybe as a nineteen-year-old entering the convent I'd simply had less to lose? No husband, no children...

  In any event, it saw me through Jimmy's graduation the fol owing spring. His departure for college.

  And Elizabeth's going into first grade. I can't say I didn't feel intense pangs during every one of those major occurrences, but I weathered them.

  Both boys had elected to attend Colorado State University in Fort Collins, rather than the University of Colorado right there in Boulder. They'd also decided to room together, which made me feel better about sending Jimmy off.

  The movie Dead Poet's Society with Robin Williams came out that summer and Jimmy, having seen it repeatedly, was more certain than ever that he was going to be a high school English teacher—at an al -boys' high school.

  Nate wasn't as pleased as I was, but he didn't dissuade our son from his goals. Rather, when the boys were home for Christmas break, Nate took Jimmy to Denver to visit a couple of all-boys' high schools and to speak with the headmasters.

  Lori and Charles came for Christmas again that year. And on the first night, while the guys were all downstairs watching a movie on the new large-screen television set, I came out of Elizabeth's room to find my stepdaughter waiting for me.

  "Can we talk?"

  "Of course." I led her to the room I shared with her father and patted the bed. "Have a seat."

  Out of habit, I settled on my side, piling the pil ows behind my back, and Lori did the same with Nate's.

  "What's up?"

  "Charles and I have been having tests. Fertility stuff."

  "And?"

  I knew it wasn't good when her eyes filled with tears. "Turns out I'm infertile."

  "Oh, honey." I covered her hand with mine. "I'm so sorry."

  "Yeah," she sniffed, looking down at our interlocked hands. "Me, too."

  "Is there anything they can do? New medical procedures are being discovered all the time and—"

  Lori shook her head. "My ovaries don't produce eggs. We've tried hormones and other things, but it's just not going to happen."

  "What does Charles say?"

  "That we can adopt."

  I nodded. "There are a lot of great kids out there who need to be loved."

  "Yeah, I just... I don't know...."

  I saw those eyes, so like her father's, shadowed with pain, and brushed the hair back from Lori's shoulder. "You're only thirty-four. You've got time to think about it."

  "That's what Charles says. I was so set on having kids of my own, you know. And now that I can't, I'm starting to wonder if maybe I just wasn't meant to be a mother."

  "You're meant to be whatever your heart tells you to be."

  This was the one thing I stood by. Period. The one law by which my life had been lived. Through al its ups and downs.

  And it had served me wel .

  Lori's eyes searched mine. "And if I decide I'd rather spend my life alone with Charles? Traveling, studying, working.. .would that make me less of a woman?"

  "Of course not."

  She licked her lips. "Would you think any less of me?"

  "No!"

  "You're the consummate mother, Eliza. You make motherhood look like the crowning glory of life."

  "Because I fel in love with your father, married him

  and got pregnant. Life chose it for me more than I chose it for myself."

  "Are you sorry about any of it?"

  I didn't answer right away. Not because I felt any uncertainty, but because I wanted to take the time to reflect, to give Lori, and myself, the complete truth.

  "I'm sorry I lost Sarah. Had I known how horrible that would be, I might not have had the courage to marry your father. And I'm sorry about our separation. But truthfully? When I consider everything life has given me, with him, and with our children—no, I don't have the slightest regret."

  Lori contemplated that—or something else, I don't know. I gave her time. And then I said, "You're a gifted attorney, my dear. And a wonderful wife to a man who has a lot of interests, a lot of professional goals. A man who wants you to share in all of those. If the two of you also want to share the raising of a child, then you'll know it. But, please—" I looked her straight in the eye "—don't even consider doing that out of some sense of guilt or obligation. The only dishonorable thing you can do with your life is to live it in a way that's contrary to your heart."

  Lori watched me for another few seconds, and then smiled. A tentative expression, but positive nonetheless.

  "What do you say we go downstairs, pour ourselves a glass of wine and find some good recipes for Christmas dinner?" I suggested.

  "Sounds great."

  I got up, straightened the pillows and met Lori at the door.

  "Thank you," she said.

  "You don't have to thank me." I gave her a hug—and held on. "You're the one who welcomed me all those years ago when you came looking for your father and accepted me, too. You have no idea how much that meant to me."

  "Not nearly as much as it means to me now."

  I kissed her cheek, took her hand and walked downstairs with her. I might be losing some of the things I'd held dear in my thirties—kids home every day, all activities, even diapers. But I was gaining, too.

>   Whatever life might bring me, I knew that Lori would always be part of it. Part of Nate's life and part of mine. We were bound together in love and support. There was nothing I wanted more than that.

  After all, wasn't that what my life had been about since the moment he'd walked into that bar twenty-one years before and took command of my heart?

  I missed my mother horribly that Christmas. The family gathered around to watch the I Love Lucy Christmas special, aired for the first time in thirty years, and I remembered when, as a little girl, I'd sit with my mom and dad and laugh at Lucy's antics on our old black-and-white television.

  Elizabeth was more interested in having a tea party with her Cabbage Patch doll and talked her father into joining her. He sat in one of the two child-size chairs at the activity table we'd set up for her in the living room.

  I cried only a little when the boys went back to school. Lori and Charles had returned to London the week before and the house was quieter than I liked.

  But before she'd left, Lori had given me an idea. Family law was her specialty and she'd spent a lot of time telling me about some of the women and children she'd represented—victims of domestic violence. Women like the ones at the shelter where I volunteered in whatever capacity they needed me. Sometimes cooking or running errands, sometimes playing with the kids. She'd said a dose of me was just what these women needed. In a more active capacity.

  According to her, I was an example of what could be.

  I couldn't get her statements out of my mind during the months that fol owed. When I got involved in other things, something outside myself would bring those comments back. A television show. An article I was reading. Some remark I'd hear someone make.

  And as New York City saw the swearing-in of its first black mayor, as my daughter grew more adamant that she was right and I was wrong—about everything—and my sons opted to stay in Fort Collins and work for the summer, I began to seriously consider another life change.

  Just to be sure, I spent less rime working at the resort that summer and volunteered more often at the battered women's shelter. I spent my time out of the kitchen and with the women themselves.

  "Keith called me at work today," Nate said one night