“You know,” she said, turning toward him as the saucepan swung in place on the rack, “you still need to pack all your pans and knives.” Her gaze moved across the kitchen. “Except for my French coffee press and my grandmother’s china and maybe that dumb plastic hamburger press I bought from the infomercial, everything in this kitchen is really yours.”
Yours. Mine. She couldn’t have sucker punched him worse if she’d hit him in the gut with that saucepan. Nick glanced away, rubbing a dish towel over a minuscule spot on the counter.
“You know?” she repeated.
“I know.”
He exhaled slowly and looked at her, wondering how she’d react if he admitted that packing up his kitchen things was going to be the hardest part of all. Moving his clothes, his toothbrush, his mother’s Bible, and even his sagging pillow—lifting it from its place beside hers—hadn’t been so bad. Sitting in the lawyer’s office, signing the sheaf of financial documents had seemed easy, numb, nothing. Pick up the pen, initial, flip the page, initial, next page, next page. Even when she’d yanked their photos from the magnets on the refrigerator, it had inflicted only a dull ache. But the thought of packing his kitchen things, taking them from this house, it felt . . . bad. Worse than bad. Like a wound from a hand-forged German carving knife. It made him remember all the times he’d stuffed his belongings into his backpack, made one last search to see if he’d left anything behind, before moving on to the next foster home.
“The coffee’s still hot,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t mention that the Moccamaster coffeemaker was his. And offer a packing box.
“Coffee?” Leigh tilted her head, looking at him as if he’d suggested more—that they have another dance, spread a picnic blanket on the steps of the Palace of Fine Arts . . . run off to Capri. Find each other again.
“Seems a shame to waste it.”
“Well . . .”
“It’s only coffee, Leigh,” he said, remembering her words earlier: “It’s only a dance. . . . Don’t make more of it.”
She glanced away, fingers moving to her pearls.
He dropped the dish towel onto the counter. “Okay, then. I’ll—”
“Fine.” She met his gaze. “I’ll have some. But I need to make a quick call to the barn first. To check on Frisco.”
Some things would always be the same.
She stepped away to make her call and he heard her asking questions about the animal’s comfort, whether he’d eaten, was drinking, and if he’d produced any manure. Nick grimaced, opened the cupboard door, and reached for the mugs. He pushed aside the one with a handle fashioned like the hind end of a horse.
He poured the first cup, appreciating the rich aroma and wondering where they should drink it. Here in the kitchen? At the McNealys’ table? Maybe shove aside the pile of grass skirts and party props on the living room couch, or . . . He stopped. Why was he making such a big deal out of this? When had a cup of coffee become so important?
He glanced toward the darkened dining room, where—for the first time in his life—he’d sat in his own dining room, held his wife’s hand, and offered a blessing. First time, at their last supper. Last dance, last cup of coffee. Last chance. He took a slow breath and filled the other cup.
What did he have to lose?
He looked up as Leigh returned to the kitchen. “Grab a jacket. We’re having our coffee out on the porch.”
+++
Leigh sat on the paint-layered porch step beside Nick, watching as he tugged his tie loose and left it hanging half-mast over the open collar of his shirt. The moonlight lit his face and brushed his black hair with silvery-blue highlights. But it left his eyes in shadow, dark as the coffee. She was glad; she didn’t want to read what they held. He’d done her a favor by coming to help with Harry; the least she could do was sit here for a few minutes. Drink some coffee. And hope he didn’t remind her that it was the last time they’d do that. She watched the steam rise from her cup to blend with the cool air and listened to the muted sounds of evening traffic and distant foghorns.
“I appreciate your coming tonight,” she said. “I thought I could handle it with Harry, but . . .”
He smiled. “But you needed a ‘good cop.’”
“Yes.” Her chuckle died in her throat. “And you are. You are that, Nick.”
“Thank you.” He looked down at his coffee. “It was something to combine it all tonight. Arrive as a cop—end the evening cooking again.”
“Do you ever miss it?”
“Miss . . . ?”
“Cooking professionally—Niko’s.” She realized that she’d never asked him that before. Not directly. It had come up in their arguments, after she’d seen TV footage of police shoot-outs, explosions, slain officers; those times when, shaking inside, she’d remind him that people didn’t shoot chefs. And of course, she’d had to grit her teeth at her mother’s taunts that her doctor daughter had “fallen in love with a restaurateur and wound up married to an ordinary street cop.” But after the restaurant closed, she’d never asked Nick if he missed it.
“No. I don’t really miss the restaurant,” he answered. “I drive by it once in a while. It’s a Mexican bakery now and doing a decent business from what I can tell. The flower shop next door—you remember, Betty’s Blossoms—is a tattoo place.” He shook his head. “Maybe I should have stayed and offered tats and body piercing along with my lemon soup and baklava.”
Nick caught her gaze and his expression sobered. “I should have told you that taking the police science classes was about more than curiosity or my friendship with Toby.” He winced. “You should have known that I was thinking seriously about making the change. Before . . .”
Before I fell in love with you. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does to me. I need you to know I wasn’t trying to be dishonest. I didn’t think the force would even accept me after all the trouble I got into as a kid. Figured I didn’t have a chance, but I kept at it anyway.”
“And then business started sliding downhill.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “I was relieved when Niko’s closed. I never told you that, but I was.” He shook his head. “I remember your mother telling everyone who’d listen that her son-in-law’s restaurant had hit the skids, so he was ‘settling’ for being a cop.”
She grimaced.
“Didn’t matter. Because I’d already figured out that cooking—the business of selling food—wasn’t what I was meant to do.” He smiled. “Do you know the best part about owning that restaurant?”
She didn’t. Her stomach sank at that truth. She’d never asked. “What? What was best?”
“After closing time. After thanking the councilman for coming, walking the Chronicle food critic to her car. When I put the Closed sign in the window, and . . .”
A lump rose in her throat. “Let the street people come in and eat.”
He nodded. “Being a cop is like that for me, every day. It’s what I do—who I am. I didn’t ‘settle,’ Leigh. I need you to understand that.”
“Okay.” The word came out in a whisper and she didn’t trust herself to say more. She sipped her coffee, glad Nick had stopped looking at her. Then she glanced toward the McNealys’, saw a shadow on the porch. “Caro,” she said, gesturing with her mug in that direction.
“She seemed better tonight,” he said, “happier, I guess.” He chuckled low in his throat. “I can’t believe I hauled those hedge clippings twice today. A jungle in our dining room.”
“The table needs to go back.”
He hesitated, then exhaled slowly. “I’ll do it. I’ll see when Buzz is free to help me.”
“Good. And tie up that chandelier.”
“Right.”
“Well . . .” Leigh glanced toward the McNealys’ porch. Caro was gone. “I do appreciate your helping us tonight. I’m sure you had other plans.”
“Nothing that couldn’t wait.”
“Anyway, thank you.” She glanced at her watch. “We both have t
o work in the morning.” She started to stand.
“Wait.” He grasped her wrist. “Don’t go. I need to say something.”
+++
“Stay, please.” Nick reluctantly released her arm. “Hear me out.”
Leigh pulled her hand into her lap and held it with the other, lowering her head for a moment. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was praying. He wondered if she still stubbornly refused to do that. She inhaled softly and lifted her chin. “If this is about us, there’s no point.”
Lord, help me. He made himself wait until his heart stopped thudding in his ears. “There is—I still love you.”
She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Don’t do this.”
“I’m doing the only thing I can do, Leigh. I’m trying to understand. Can you really give up on our marriage so easily?” He regretted his choice of words even before he saw her reaction.
“Easily? Is that what you think this past year has been for me—easy?”
“I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that. C’mon.” He reached out, decided against it, and drew his hand back. “I guess, what I’m really asking is . . .” The thudding in his ears started again. “Have you really stopped caring for me?”
“Our divorce is final on the third—that’s Friday.”
“I have the paperwork. That’s not what I’m asking.”
She squeezed her eyes shut again and whispered something that may have been a curse. He’d never heard her do that. Her eyes opened, and the tears surprised him. “Why are you doing this?”
Please, God . . . He grasped her hand. “I told you. I love you. I can’t give up.”
She shivered. “And I can’t do this. I can’t go through this again. It’s too hard.”
“Tell me what to do,” he said quickly. “Anything. I’ll do anything. Tell me what to do—what to say.”
Her lips twisted as if she had a sudden pain. “And how would I believe you, Nick? How would I trust anything—anything—you had to say?”
Guilt strangled him. “It would take time; I know that. But if you give me a chance, a little more time, I’ll show you. We could try the counseling again. Get a different counselor if you want. You call the shots. Just give me a chance. Leigh . . . I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were huge in the moonlight. “And what about Sam?”
“What about her?”
“She’s around. She’s everywhere.” Her body tensed.
“Sam doesn’t matter. She’s not part of my life. You are. Only you.”
“But the court date is set, the paperwork . . .” Her eyes met his, and for the first time in months, hope seemed within his grasp. Like Leigh reaching for that pot rack.
“We can postpone it. We’ll drive by the court,” he told her. He lifted her hand and touched his lips to her fingers. “Please.”
“I don’t know,” she said, her expression still wary, but softer.
“Just say you’ll think about it—that we can talk again tomorrow.”
“I work tomorrow, Tuesday too. Maybe Tuesday evening . . .” Her expression hinted at wariness again.
Don’t push her. “Tuesday night, after work. We’ll talk. And meanwhile, you’ll think about what I said?”
She was quiet. Forever, it seemed, until . . . “I’ll think about it,” she whispered.
Relief flooded through him, choked his voice. “Thank you.”
He brushed the back of his fingers gently along her cheek. It took everything he had not to pull her into his arms, cradle her close, kiss her. But anything more would overwhelm her—he knew that—and for now, he’d received the blessing he’d been praying for. A second chance to try to be the husband Leigh deserved. “Tuesday, then.”
+++
Sam frowned, licked the chocolate frosting off her thumb, then leafed through another stack of papers spread out across the dining room table. Why couldn’t she find it? Every other phone bill was there. She was careful, organized, paid bills on time, kept the receipts. She was responsible to a fault—had to be, she was a single mother. She frowned again, thinking of Kristi Johnson’s stupid mistakes. Despite what Sam had told the young mother about finding a “good guy”—and as much as she wanted to believe in that for her own life—the truth was, Kristi’s kids were very likely headed to foster care. She’d make another hospital visit tomorrow, compile reports, but it didn’t look good. The kids’ father was a loser and he’d show up again. Sam had no doubt about that. He’d slap Kristi around, steal her paycheck, bring friends by who would abuse her children; she’d be as guilty as he was for letting it all happen, putting her children at risk. Exactly as Sam’s mother had been.
November. The receipt for the phone bill should be in that pile—no mistaking the date. The month Toby died. A month of endings and beginnings. Despair. And hope too, those few days that Nick was here with them. If she was ever going to have a chance of making that happen again, she had to—ah, there it is. She pulled the November phone bill from the October slot in the tabbed file, ran her finger down the list of numbers, checked the dates.
November 18, 19. Three calls. Less than a minute each. Long enough to leave messages. Nick’s outgoing calls, made from her phone when his cell died. Calls to his wife that were never answered.
She reached for her wineglass and drained the last few drops of the cabernet that had almost ruined her new skirt. Then she picked up her cell phone to punch in the private number of the woman she refused to let ruin her life.
+++
Leigh sat on the porch and watched the Z4 pull away from the curb, then pulled her barn jacket close, not sure if her shivers came from the bay fog creeping in or because she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. More than the morning when she’d celebrated her graduation from med school by leaping from a skydiving plane thirteen thousand feet above a Lodi vineyard. Or the time, in her ER residency, when she’d opened the battered chest of a man struck by a speedboat, grasped his heart with her gloved hand, and squeezed it in her palm, forcing it to pump. Both times a life had been on the line—hers, over the vineyard; a husband and father’s that day in the ER. Tonight felt the same. Could she trust Nick? Was she crazy to even consider it just days from her divorce? when only two days ago, his lover had marched into her ER and as much as claimed him?
She stared at the full moon, shrouded now in wisps of fog but still brilliant and ethereal. Was this all some cosmic lunar mishap that filled her ER with chaos, turned her house into the Fairmont Tonga Room with Tony Bennett crooning, her sister hanging plastic leis from the chandelier . . . and her soon-to-be ex-husband declaring his love?
Nick. Her heart cramped as she remembered what he’d said about his restaurant, how feeding the homeless meant the most to him, that police work made him feel that way too. Despite what his mother-in-law said, he hadn’t settled for being a cop. He’d said it was who he was. She believed him; how could she not after what she’d seen him do for Harry and Antoinette tonight? And how could she not hope—when he’d looked into her eyes, pressed his lips to her hand—that he was sincerely sorry and that he wanted their marriage to work? and that Sam Gordon wasn’t part of his life?
She hugged her arms around herself, remembering the conversation she’d had with Caro in the kitchen before everything had whirled into full-moon madness. About their mother. How she’d told them both that there was no such thing as happily ever after. And Leigh had grown up believing it, steeled her heart because of it, expected less, always. But what if she was wrong? What if it was okay to trust Nick, what if loving him . . . is part of who I am?
She closed her eyes, remembering his words: “I still love you. . . . Only you.”
He was asking her to postpone the court date, to think about it. Was that so risky?
She stood, gazing out across the slice of cityscape. The breeze had moved the fog enough that she could see their glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, red-orange and lit up in the distance. “I left my heart in San Francisco.
. . .” Maybe Mr. Bennett had a point. Maybe the worst thing she could do was call it quits and leave. Maybe it was time to start trusting.
Leigh rubbed her arms against another rush of shivers. The next few days could change a lot of things.
+++
Sam heard Leigh’s phone ring for the third time and tried not to imagine why she wasn’t answering; she refused to accept that Nick was making love to his wife. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the phone, head swimming from nearly an entire bottle of cabernet.
“Hello?”
Sam waited, heart hammering as she strained to hear. Was Nick there?
“Hello?” Leigh repeated. “Is that you, Nick?”
Sam nearly groaned aloud with relief. “Dr. Stathos?” she asked, hoping the wine wouldn’t sully her voice like it had her skirt. “This is Child Crisis, Samantha Gordon.”
She loved the sharp intake of breath on the other side of the phone.
“Yes?” Leigh’s tone was wary, curt.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, pressing her finger against cake crumbs on the table as her skin tingled with an intoxicating surge of control. “But I have a county meeting first thing tomorrow, and I need some information. I have another child who would benefit from the therapy program at Golden Gate Stables. I want to suggest it at our meeting but can’t recall the last name of the owner. I know her name is Patrice. But I should really have the last name for the paperwork. You understand. I’ve left messages on the stables’ voice mail, but—”
“Owen.”
She smiled at the way the doctor’s voice quavered as if she were the stunned and defensive victim of a home invasion. “Great. I appreciate that.”
Code Triage Page 14
