The Woman Next Door

by Barbara Delinsky

  She took in a deep breath, held it, looked over her shoulder, turned. “Hi,” she said with a sleepy sigh that ended in a smile.

  “Hi,” he said, kissing her nose.

  “Mmm. You haven’t kissed my nose in months.”

  “You haven’t looked so cute in months.” She looked about twenty years old. Not that he had a thing for younger women. Well, maybe he did. He certainly liked Amanda’s freshness.

  Looking dreamy she closed her eyes. Seconds later, they popped back open. “Did you call the Cotters?”

  “Yeah. I called earlier. Jordie’s fine. He stayed in the hospital overnight. I think they want him to see someone this morning.”

  “See someone. Like a psychiatrist?”

  “I got that impression.”

  “From Karen or Lee?”

  “Karen. Lee wasn’t around. Maybe he was making the arrangements.”

  “Or out playing somewhere.”

  “He was pretty upset. He didn’t fake that while the two of you were up there on the top of that tower.”

  When she held her breath, he knew she was remembering. He couldn’t imagine it had been any more frightening for her than it had been for him. His first instinct, seeing her up there, had been anger. But it didn’t last. She was the one who had stayed with Jordie, while he ran back for help. She had known what Jordie needed.

  “You did good,” he said softly.

  She released the breath. “It was . . . redemption.” She scrubbed his beard with her fingertips, then, spreading her palm over it, brushed her thumb over his mouth. “Karen and Lee have decisions to make.”

  “So do we,” he said, because he didn’t want to discuss Karen and Lee. He didn’t want to discuss much at all—-just wanted more of what was passionate and irresponsible and light. It was fun. They hadn’t done it in too long a time. He had missed it. “I’m hungry. Do we have anything good in the house?”

  “Actually,” she said thoughtfully, “you have a choice of entrées. There’s chicken, steak, or me. I’d have to defrost the chicken or the steak. Me is ready.”

  Rolling over onto her, Graham found that she was. He was already inside her when the telephone rang. They let it ring.

  ***

  Georgia hung up the phone with a look of concern. “Are they all right?”

  “They’re all right,” Russ said. “Trust me. They’re all right. And don’t go ringing their bell. They need time to themselves. You’d know that if you’d been here last night. Man, that was a scary scene.”

  It wasn’t until ten that she had finally pulled into the driveway, and by then the drama was done. At least, the one in the woods was. The one involving the future of Beet Beer was about to come to a head.

  The phone rang. Seeing the return number of her attorney, she picked up. “Yes, Sam.”

  “They won’t budge,” he said. “You’re part of the deal. They want you to stay on for another two years. They’re willing to give you that.”

  “Two, rather than three.”

  “It’s something. It’s certainly flattering.”

  “Flattery doesn’t do much for me when I’m three hours away by plane and my kids need me,” Georgia said, massaging her lower-back muscles. She was tired—tired of packing and unpacking, tired of pulling bags through airports and dashing from one gate to another to make connecting flights, and squeezing her body between two other passengers when the only free seat was in the middle— and all that was on top of emotional exhaustion, the tension of worrying about what was happening at home, the long-distance sessions with Allison, who was growing up too fast, and Tommy, who would be reaching that point soon—and even that was on top of Russ and his needs and her needs and the fear of what would happen if the separations went on and on and on. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she would be standing here making a major business decision while her lovable dork of a husband pawed through a basket of laundry fresh from the dryer looking for the mate to one of Tommy’s soccer socks—red stripes on white, except for the foot, which would be permanently gray from the playing-field dirt unless she bleached it. The question was whether there was bleach in the house. There were cartons of Beet Beer in the pantry. But Clorox?

  She started to laugh. She didn’t know what else to do.

  Russ looked at her strangely.

  Sam said, “I missed the joke.”

  She put a hand over her face. “No joke.” Dropping the hand, she took a deep breath that raised her shoulders, and let them settle. “So,” she said into the phone as she held her husband’s mystified gaze. “Here’s the story. I want to be able to go to the market, buy bleach, and make my kids’ socks good as new. Is that so terrible?”

  Sam said, “No. But I don’t know how it translates into legalese.”

  “That’s the easy part,” Georgia said, feeling a startling wash of calm. “The answer’s no. There’s no deal if it involves my being on the road. I’ll work from here. I’ll be accessible on the phone. But the traveling’s done.”

  “It may nix the deal.”

  “Then make another,” she said. “I want out.”

  ***

  By the time Friday morning rolled around and Amanda left for work, she was feeling as strong as Georgia. Spending a day with Graham had been a tonic, largely because of the kind of day it had been. It hadn’t been an intellectual one. They hadn’t gone into deep discussions about trust and communication, hadn’t broached suspicion, hadn’t gone near talk of Graham’s family, and, other than Graham’s early mention of it, had avoided discussing babies.

  The day had been . . . earthy. They hadn’t bothered to dress, because they didn’t leave the bedroom for long. Twice they accessed phone messages, but didn’t answer the phone in between. They kissed. They touched. They had made love more times than she could count, and lay close together for silent, sleepy hours. They showered together. They heated pizza from the freezer and ate it in bed. They danced to Doc Watson, boogying body to body, stark naked, across the bedroom floor.

  It was sex, as pure, as raw as it had been at the beginning. It was new again and elementally physical. Passion washed away all that had come between them. They were alone together, their bodies in total sync. They were starting over again.

  It was an incredible escape from the world—and Amanda would have done it again this morning in a heartbeat, if the voice of responsibility hadn’t risen. She had a backup of meetings and calls; Graham had chores of his own. With the weekend nearly upon them, a single day of work seemed in order.

  That said, he was a constant interruption. He e-mailed her every hour, called twice before lunch and twice after, and when she came home from school at four, he was waiting at the door with his bags packed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For a split second, every irrational fear returned. But there was something about his grin—not an irreverent O’Leary grin, but an intimate Graham grin—that restored her faith. He let her use the bathroom. That was it. Within five minutes, they were in his truck, headed north.

  The inn was called Frog Hollow. It was in the tiny town of Panama, in the northern reaches of Vermont, and while new, it was already widely known. Each room was different from the next, though the common theme for all was frogs. The grounds were lush, with a pond here and hiking trails there. A tiny country store sat directly across the street. In addition to the usual penny candy, it carried bite-sized Almond Joys.

  As getaways went, Amanda couldn’t imagine anything more ideal. She had only two complaints. The first, mildly countered by the five-star quality of the food, was that there was no room service, which meant that they had to dress and leave their room. The second, annoying in that it distracted her, was Graham’s need to issue a throaty frrrribbit whenever she touched on any subject remotely serious.

  He did it when they were talking about Amanda’s thoughts about Quinn.

  “Frrrribbit,” he said.

  “That’s irreverent,” she advised, though it did lighten thi
ngs a bit.

  He did it again when they were talking about how much they loved their work and, therefore, how easy it was to bury themselves in it when things were rough at home.

  “Frrrribbit,” he said.

  She humored him. “You like things green. I know.”

  He did it yet again when they were discussing Graham’s family.

  “Frrrribbit,” he said.

  “Have you done that for them?” she asked with an arched brow.

  And yet again when they were speculating on who, if not Lee, might have fathered Gretchen’s child.

  “Frrrribbit,” he said.

  “I—don’t think so,” she replied with such gravity that he was the one who laughed. In her own defense, she said, “It’s an issue, Gray. That baby has been a catalyst for a whole lot of self-doubt. I want to know who the father is. Don’t you?”

  Collaring her with an elbow, he hauled her onto his lap. “I don’t want to think about that. It isn’t top priority right now. Neither is my family, or your work or my work, Jordie, or Quinn. Yes, we need to talk about these things. I don’t think I fully understood what you felt when Quinn died, or what it’s like for someone without siblings to face a roomful of siblings like mine. I can’t completely understand why you all feel threatened by Gretchen, but it’s good when you try to explain. Bottom line, though? None of that matters. What matters is us. That’s what we lost sight of.” His eyes grew a deeper green. “Know what I love most about you?”

  She couldn’t speak, simply shook her head.

  “How different you are from where I’d been. I didn’t want more of the same, Mandy” He pulled at his beard. “Why do you think I grew this?”

  It was an interesting question. They had never discussed it. Nor had she analyzed it, though, Lord knew, she analyzed almost everything else to death. She had simply accepted Graham’s beard as a handsome addition to his looks. “Defiance?”

  “Simpler. I wanted to look different from them. I wanted to go a different way from them.” He held her gaze. “I still do.”

  ***

  Amanda took him for his word. She didn’t spend another minute of the weekend thinking about his family and the way it pulled him. But the breather was short-lived. They had barely started home Sunday afternoon when Graham’s cell phone rang. It was Peter, calling to say that Dorothy had suffered a stroke.

  There was no question of dropping Amanda off at home. She wouldn’t have that. Dorothy was Graham’s mother, and this was an emergency. She wanted to be with him for this.

  Graham kept driving, retracing the route they’d taken north on Friday until they reached the southern tier of Vermont, when he connected to a highway that headed east of Woodley The sense of fun and irresponsibility had ended with the initial call, but the closer they got, the more tense Graham grew. He phoned Will and learned that Dorothy had had the stroke at dawn. From Joseph he learned that she was awake and aware. Malcolm was the one to tell him that Megan had found her first.

  Not knowing what to say to that, Amanda said nothing. She couldn’t tell Graham that Dorothy would be fine, because she certainly didn’t know that. All she could do—which she did—was to hold his hand to silently remind him that she was there.

  It was early evening when they reached the hospital. Graham parked. Half running, half walking, they hurried through the lobby to the elevator. Thanks to detailed instructions from MaryAnne, they knew just which way to turn when they reached the sixth floor, though, had they come in total ignorance, they would have been hard-pressed to miss the O’Learys gathered outside one particular room.

  Malcolm came to meet them just shy of the door. “She’s okay. Impatient, actually. She doesn’t want to stay here, but there’s no way she’s leaving until they do a battery of tests, and even then, she’ll need help. Her balance is off. She’s listing to the left. They suspect there was minor damage on that side.”

  “Minor,” Graham echoed with caution.

  “Minor,” said MaryAnne as she joined them. “She was lucky.”

  Amanda didn’t have to love the woman to be grateful. She felt the relief in Graham. “What caused it?” he asked.

  “They don’t know,” Mac replied. “That’s what the tests are for. It could be just a product of age.”

  “Is this a precursor of others, then?”

  Having joined them, Peter said, “They’ll medicate her to minimize the chance of that.”

  Graham sputtered. “That may be easier said than done.”

  Even Amanda knew how Dorothy hated taking pills.

  Mac grasped his arm. “Well, she’ll have no choice. Come on. She’ll be pleased to see you. She keeps asking.”

  Entering the room, Amanda couldn’t help but feel for Dorothy. She was a waif of a thing fading into the white of the hospital sheets. Even if the stroke had been mild and she wasn’t seriously ill, it was clear she was badly frightened. The way her hand shook when she reached out to Graham attested to that.

  He took her hand and kissed her cheek. “You look pretty good for someone who’s just taken ten years off my life.”

  “Where were you?” Dorothy asked in a high child’s voice. “You weren’t at home. They called and called. It’s a good thing Will had your other number.”

  Amanda followed Graham, leaning in, kissing Dorothy’s cheek. “He’s right. You look better than we feel. It was a long drive, worrying.”

  Dorothy gave her the briefest glance before returning to Graham. “They want me to stay here. I can’t stay here.”

  “You have to,” he said. “They need to do tests.”

  “Tests kill. That’s what killed your father.”

  “No, Mom. Cancer killed him.”

  “It was the test. If he hadn’t had that one—”

  “If he hadn’t had that one, he would have died anyway, only we wouldn’t have known why until later. It wasn’t the test that killed him.”

  “You believe what you want. I’ll believe what I want.”

  “But you’re wrong, Mom. Believe that, and you’ll only get more worked up. Tests are benign. They don’t kill.”

  “Fine for you to say,” she grumbled. “You’re not the one having them. They’re also saying I can’t go home alone. They say I need help. But I can’t ask my daughters to spend all their time with me. They have their own families to care for. My sister-in-law has a bad hip; she wouldn’t be able to handle the outside stairs, let alone the inside ones. I’d ask Megan—Megan would do it in a minute—I’d still be lying on the floor at home if Megan hadn’t gotten worried when I didn’t bring in the morning paper—such a good girl—but Megan has the store. So who do I get to help?”

  “We’ll hire someone.”

  Dorothy looked appalled. “A stranger? I can’t do that.”

  “How about a nurse?” Amanda offered gently. “They do this kind of thing. Some of them even cook and clean. It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You get one, then,” Dorothy muttered. “It’s your generation needs the pampering, not mine.”

  “Mom, Amanda has a point.”

  “She works. She wants someone else to clean and cook. If she didn’t work, she could do it herself.”

  “But she does important work,” Graham said. “She helps kids. Why should she give that up to keep house?”

  Amanda saw the trap. Dorothy didn’t waste any time tripping it. “She helps other people’s kids. There’s the shame.”

  A nurse appeared on the other side of the bed. “Time to go, Mrs. O’Leary” To Graham and Amanda, she said, “We’re doing a CAT scan.”

  Dorothy shot Graham a final desperate look. Realizing that he wouldn’t save her, she locked her jaw and let herself be wheeled away.

  ***

  Graham was on the phone most of the night, going back and forth with his siblings about how best to handle Dorothy. The tests were inconclusive. More would be done over the next few days. Dorothy remained adamant against both the tests and the idea of hiring someone to help her
at home, so much so that several of Graham’s conversations did focus on the possibility of the family members taking shifts.

  Sitting in the kitchen with him, listening to his end of the conversation, Amanda injected a whispered, “I can help her out after school each day,” to which he gave her an appreciative smile and a speedy headshake.

  She felt dismissed. And she couldn’t blame him for it. Dorothy didn’t want her help. That was a fact. She might put up with her daughters helping. She might put up with Mac’s wife helping, or James’s or Joe’s or Will’s. From the half of the conversation that Amanda heard, she knew those possibilities were being discussed. She also knew, though, listening to Graham’s half, that none of his siblings considered her a suitable helper. They, too, knew how Dorothy felt. Graham might deny it, but they all knew.

  Settling into the background, Amanda found herself revisiting the insecurities from which she’d been so free all weekend. It was as if a germ had survived the wash of the last few days and was now taking root again and starting to grow. If Graham was aware of it, he didn’t bring it up. He was totally absorbed by his family, until the final call ended, and he and Amanda went to bed.

  Once there, he held her with the same love she’d felt since coming down from the tower, but silence wasn’t enough now. Passion couldn’t kill this revived little germ. It was real. Amanda needed him to admit that. If life had indeed come between them in the last year or two, and the struggle to conceive was the major factor, Graham’s family came in a close second.

  She was tired of feeling like an impostor. She wanted to tell him that.

  But she didn’t. She didn’t say a word. Dorothy was ill, and Graham was worried. This wasn’t the time for a confrontation.

  ***

  Come Monday morning, Karen was of like mind. This wasn’t the time for a confrontation. Even at the best of times, she wasn’t confrontational, and these weren’t the best of times. Jordie would be wearing a cast for six weeks and seeing a psychologist for far more than that. The twins, aware of something amiss, though not sure what it was, were talking to themselves more than ever, and Julie was clinging. When Karen was in the kitchen, Julie was there. When Karen was in the laundry room, Julie was there. The only free time Karen had was when Julie was at school, and then Karen was doing work on one committee or another.