by Helen Conrad
Shelley began to tremble. Quickly, she stuffed the paper into the suitcase and turned away.
“Oh Michael,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “Be careful. Stay safe.”
And she doubled over as though in pain.
It wasn’t much later when she let herself out of the room and took the elevator to the floor where Robin and she had booked their room.
“Well, there you are.” Robin greeted her with a wide grin. She was sitting in the middle of one of the twin beds, applying scarlet polish to the tips of her toes. Her short chestnut-brown hair shone silkily as she talked, bouncing when she nodded her head to emphasize points.
She carefully set aside her bottle of nail polish. “Listen, I met your hunk last night. If that's the kind of man you psychologists get to work on in your clinic, I'm heading back to college for my degree. Wow!”
“Robin, I'm sorry about deserting you last night. It was really a strange thing, I don't know—”
“Are you kidding?” Robin bounced up and down on the bed like a teenage girl who'd just heard her favorite rock star was in the lobby. “It was fantastic! It was the most romantic thing I ever saw! The way he swept you off your feet . . .” She swooned dramatically across the bed, then grinned. “When's the wedding?”
Shelley kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the bed beside her, lying on her stomach and resting her head on her folded arms. “There's not going to be any wedding, Robin. It's not like that at all.”
“Give it time.” Her friend nodded wisely. “He's crazy about you. I could tell. When he came to get your suitcase, he kept asking questions ...”
Shelley raised her head. “What questions?”
“... and telling me cute little things about you ...”
“What did you tell him?”
“... and saying things like 'I hope you don't mind if I monopolize your friend for a while. Like maybe the rest of her life.'”
“He didn't say anything of the sort!”
Robin sighed. “Well, he would've if he'd thought of it.”
And that shows how accurate your intuition is, Robin my friend, Shelley thought sadly. “What questions?” she repeated aloud.
Robin's smile was smug. “You wouldn't want me to betray a confidence, would you?”
Shelley glared at her, rising as though ready to back up her threat. “You wouldn't want me to throw all your underclothes off the balcony, would you?”
“Watch out for the toes!” Robin wriggled her still-drying toenails at Shelley. The pout on her pretty red mouth looked almost real. “Boy, give the girl a lover, and she turns on her best friend,” she complained.
“Robin!”
“Okay, Okay.” She sat up, cross-legged, and obviously relishing her role. “He wanted to know what you liked for breakfast—”
“And you told him nothing but black coffee.”
“Right. Then he asked if there was some man lurking around in your life, someone he was going to have to outfight or outsmart in order to win you.”
“He didn't say that! “
“He most certainly did. He didn't put it quite that way, but that was the gist of it.” Robin gasped. “My God, you're blushing!”
Shelley flopped back down on her stomach, hiding her face. “I am not,” she replied, her voice muffled. But she knew she was. Oh, Michael, Michael, why did you have to be so lovable?
“It's finally happened.” Robin was so entranced by her friend's romance, she forgot to tease. “You're in love, aren't you? Really, head-over-heels in love.”
Shelley peered out from under her arm. “I've been in love before,” she said grumpily. “Don't act like it's the end of the world.”
Robin shook her head firmly. “If you mean that schoolgirl fling with Barry, forget it. You never really loved the man. When you found out he had another girl stashed away, you were so relieved, you ended up being her best friend.”
That was a novel way of looking at her heartbreak. But Shelley had to admit Robin had a point. The romance with Barry hadn't come close to touching her as deeply as Michael did. And she barely knew him! What might it be like to really get to know him, to spend her life— forget it. There was no chance, and thinking about it would only bring more pain.
“This is different,” Robin went on. “The man is different. I knew the moment I saw you two together that you were made for each other. You looked so perfect sitting at that table down at the Boar's Head. As though you were already man and wife.”
Shelley couldn't resist a smile. Little did Robin know!
“He told me his name was Michael. But that's about all I know about him, except that he's gorgeous. Where does he live? What does he do for a living?”
What indeed. Shelley hesitated, not sure what she was allowed to tell. Of course, she trusted Robin implicitly, but it wasn't her secret. She couldn't do anything that might possibly put Michael in jeopardy. He lived a shadow life, a life she couldn't share. She sighed, avoiding Robin's eyes. “It doesn't matter. I'm not going to see him again.”
For once Robin was so flabbergasted, she couldn't think of a thing to say. She sat staring at Shelley, her mouth hanging open.
“I know we've got reservations for another night,” Shelley went on, sitting up on the bed, “but I've got to get out of here. You stay, if you want, and I'll take a bus home.”
“You just hold on a minute.” Robin had her stubborn face on. “I'm not going to let you do this.”
Shelley glanced at her friend, then away. “Oh, Robin, you don't know.”
Robin grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I know, all right. I know you. You've fallen hard and you're scared to death, so you want to run back and hide in your books and cases, where it's nice and safe and boring.”
“No.” She shook her head sadly. “That's not it. You don't know the background of all this.”
Robin bounced on the bed in her impatience. “I don't have to know the background to recognize a woman running from love when I see one. And you're the one who's supposed to know all about what makes people tick!” She took Shelley's shoulders in her hands to make her meet her eyes. “Physician, heal thyself!”
“Oh, Robin!” Shelley broke away from her grip and rose from the bed, pacing the floor with restless unhappiness. “Someday I'll be able to tell you all about it, and then you'll see how wrong you are. I've got to go.”
Robin frowned. “I don't think he'll let you,” she said flatly.
Shelley stopped in front of the mirror. Oh, what can ail you, sad, sad lady, she thought to herself in a paraphrase of the Keats poem. That's what she looked like. Alone and palely loitering. A vagabond on a darkling plain. “He's not here,” she said softly, and her voice sounded far away. “He left for a business appointment. I'm going to be gone by the time he comes back.”
“Oh, no, you're not.” Robin jumped off the bed and barred the door to the hallway, her arms dramatically outstretched. “No way! I won't let you throw away—”
“Robin!” Suddenly Shelley was furious, not at her friend so much, but at fate, the world, everything that seemed to be conspiring to make her miserable. “It's not up to you. It's my life.” She glared at Robin, eyes blazing. “Did I interfere when Jim left for Peru and you wouldn't go with him? Did I tell you what a mistake I thought you were making? No. I left it up to you to handle your own life. Please have the courtesy to allow me the same freedom.”
Robin seemed to crumple before her eyes, and remorse shot through Shelley. She leaped forward and threw her arms around her friend. “Oh, Robin, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have brought your marriage into this. It's not fair.”
“No.” Robin gently disentangled herself from Shelley's embrace and walked unsteadily toward the balcony. The breeze from the open doorway ruffled her shiny brown hair. “No, you were right. I can't make you do what I think you ought to, any more than you can make me.” Her sigh was long and painful. “And now that it's out in the open, how about leveling with me? What do you think about the m
ess I've made of my life?”
“Robin, this is hardly the time or the place—”
“Please, Shelley.” She turned and looked into her friend's face. “Was it so wrong what I did? Isn't marriage supposed to be a fifty-fifty proposition? Shouldn't he have met me halfway?”
Shelley hesitated. She felt like she was the last person in the world to be giving others advice right now. It wasn't as if she were doing such a wonderful job of her own relationship.
“That's the ideal situation, but not many people achieve it,” she told Robin at last. “You can't expect to go half and half on everything anyway. A marriage, or any other relationship, is the sum of all its parts. One partner may have to go three quarters of the way, or maybe even ninety percent now and then. You can't balance and weigh everything that way. It just doesn't work.”
“So you think I should have given in to him. I should have gone to Peru.”
Shelley took a deep breath. “I'm not saying that. Only you can say what your marriage was worth to you. I can't.” She closed her eyes, “But when you love someone, really love them, you should be able to go the extra distance,” she said softly, more to herself than to Robin. “It all depends on what you can bear to do. Sometimes you have to stretch yourself.”
How far could she stretch, Shelley asked herself. How far could Michael? They'd have to be a pair of contortionists to make anything work between the two of them? No, it was impossible.
Robin began to pace the floor of the hotel room. Suddenly she chuckled, though the sound was harsh.
“Do you know one of the reasons I was so hot on coming here to this resort? I thought I might meet a man who would wipe Jim out of my mind.” She laughed a humorless gurgle and walked out onto the balcony. “That's what I wanted to do—to prove to myself that there were more where Jim came from, that I could always find a man.”
When Shelley came out beside her, she saw the tears slowly sliding down her friend's tanned cheeks, and silently she put an arm around her shoulders and drew her near.
“I found men all right. Tons of them. Of every size and shape and personality.” A sob broke her sentence. “But not one of them was Jim. He's the only man I’ll ever love. I know that now. And I've let him slip away.”
“It's not too late.”
“It is. I was so angry that he would take that job in Peru without consulting me, I told him I wouldn't go with him. We both put up the barricades, fighting about it every day. And then, suddenly, he was gone. And I was so—so alone.” Her voice broke on the word.
“Robin, I'm sure he still loves you.”
“I'm not so sure. The last letter I got asked if I'd filed for divorce yet. That was all. Not even 'How are you, do you miss me?' “
“He's still hurt.”
Robin turned and hugged Shelley hard. “So am I,” she said, sobbing, her voice muffled by tears and Shelley's shoulder.
“Let's get out of here,” Shelley said. “I think we both need to go home.”
Robin nodded. “I’ll start packing.”
“And I'll write a letter to Michael.” She smiled at Robin's tear-stained face. “We’ll go home and have a real talk, okay? And we'll figure out a way to show Jim how sorry you are about what happened.”
Robin gave her a wavery smile. “Sure. Why not? Miracles have happened before.”
Miracles, Shelley thought as she hurried back to Michael's room to collect her things. Maybe that was what she needed. But didn't they only happen to angels?
Too bad old girl, she told herself. Looks like you're out of luck.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
Men Like Michael
“The purpose of Assertiveness Training is to teach you to take charge of your life. To do this you must be able to set your own goals and map ways of working toward them.” That was what the book said.
“Fine.” Shelley slapped the book down on her desk after reading the paragraph over eleven times. “That's exactly what I'll do.”
She took out a blank sheet of paper and began writing.
Goal 1. Forget about Michael Hudson.
Goal 2. Focus on your work.
Goal 3. Divorce emotions from your professional life.
She bit the end of her pencil. It was no use. She wasn't going to be able to do any of those things until she found out what had happened to Michael that day in Newport.
She and Robin had left in a hurry. She'd scribbled out a letter to Michael, full of poorly thought out arguments against seeing him again—things like “The cliche that opposites attract has always been a fallacy” and “You spend your days seeking physical danger while I spend mine trying to alleviate the emotional danger in people's lives—you walk the razor's edge by choice, I try to pull people like you back from the brink” and ending with “Please don't try to contact me in any way.”
And he hadn't. If she looked down into her heart of hearts, she had to admit that had surprised her, and maybe even hurt her a little. Not one letter, one visit, one phone call. He might have disappeared off the face of the earth for all she knew.
So you see, she scolded herself often, what you did was exactly right. He didn't really care a thing about you. You were a fun challenge for a slow day in Newport. Other than that, you were certainly expendable.
But in the back of her mind one question kept nagging at her: What happened when he confronted Harry Stickler? Had there been shots fired? Had he been hit?
Four days had passed since the weekend. Michael hadn't kept his weekly appointment with Jeff. So where was he? What had happened?
She tried to ignore the questions. She did a lot of shopping. She tried to read a book. And she called her cousin Tag to see about meeting his sister Missy for lunch, just as she’d suggested, to see if she could get a handle on what might be the problem.
“Meet me at Mickey’s on the Bay,” she suggested to Tag when she called him.
There was an awkward pause.
“No can do,” he said at last. “I’m persona non grata there at the moment.”
“What?” That seemed odd. “Why? What happened?”
He sighed as though he didn’t relish getting into it. “You do know that Mickey is getting married, don’t you?”
She blinked. Did she know that? Someone had said something about it but she’d discounted it after having seen how Tag and Mickey felt about each other a few weeks before.
“His name is Robert Harding,” Tag said. “He’s a banker. Finance guy. Rich.”
“But… .”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, his voice slightly bitter. “Does she love him? No. But he can take care of her. And…and Meggie.” He fell silent.
“I see,” Shelley said, feeling the sadness he was hinting at. “And you?”
“Me?” He sounded angry. “It has nothing to do with me. I can’t marry anybody.” He swore softly as though he hadn’t meant to say those words or put them in quite that order. “What I mean is, she has to do what will make her safe and make her happy. You know what I mean? And…and if Robert is that safe harbor she needs, so be it.”
“And you?” she asked again, softly.
“Me? I’ve been told to stay away from the café. And I guess that’s only fair.” His voice thickened for a moment. “So I’m out of here. I’m going down the coast, or maybe to the islands.”
She could sense the pain in his voice and she closed her eyes. It was pretty obvious someone—maybe Robert himself—had told him to stay away from Mickey.
“Listen, we’ll talk when I get back, okay?”
“Okay Tag. You take care.”
“Sure. Don’t I always?”
He rang off and she stared at the cell phone in her hand for a moment. Poor Tag. Maybe it was all his own fault, but he was letting the woman he loved slip away. She only wished she could do something to help.
Everyone’s life seemed to have a tragedy lurking in the shadows. Hers was Michael. And what was she prepared to do about it?
Assertiveness training be
damned, she had to find out how he was and what had happened! When she finally admitted that to herself, adrenaline flooded her body, and she jumped into action, dialing the number on the form he'd filled out in Jeff's office.
“The number you have dialed has been disconnected,” the robotlike tone of the recording informed her.
So much for the direct approach. There was still the office he worked for. She looked up the number of the district attorney's office and rang it.
“Michael Hudson?” the receptionist asked. “I have no listing for that name.”
Of course not. Undercover operators had unlisted numbers. Now what? Shelley stared at the Mary Cassatt print for a long time before she could make herself take the next step. Then she pulled on a jacket and ran out into the parking lot and got into her car for the drive to the station house.
It wasn't long before she was standing at the door to Detective Sam Gladstone's office. “Detective Gladstone? May I speak with you for a moment?”
He leaned back in his chair, his long, lean body alert. She could see that he didn't quite recognize her at first, but by the time he'd nodded his acquiescence, the memories had been stirred to life.
“Dr. Carrington, isn't it?”
“I'm not a doctor yet,” she said automatically, coming in slowly to stand before his desk.
“Sit down.” He rose and offered her a chair. “What can I do for you?”
She dropped into the chair and smiled nervously. Just what could he do for her? Shelley wondered. That was the hard part. How was she going to get through this without looking like an idiot?
“Detective, we met a few weeks ago under unusual circumstances. ...”
His dark face almost smiled. “Not so unusual for me,” he reminded her.
“Oh, no, of course not.” She slid forward on her chair. “But it was for me. I was a witness against a Michael Hudson. You seemed to know him fairly well.”
He nodded solemnly. He wasn't about to make this any easier. She was going to have to go all the way on her own.
