Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire)

by Amy Jo Cousins

  What she didn’t expect to recognize in the pages as she turned them, scanning slowly, was the loneliness.

  “Haven’t seen the mailman in three days. Hope he’s not sick.”

  Three pages later. “Neighbor’s boy came in for cookies after finishing the lawn. He’s getting so tall.”

  There was no mention of anyone who might be a friend. And she knew that there’d been no family left after Adeline had closed the door on her niece, Susannah, for refusing to give up her lover or her baby.

  Toward the end, the personal notes grew longer as the accounts dwindled. Addy could feel the isolation growing, pictured an old woman sitting alone at the window of an empty house, watching the hedges grow high and catching the occasional glimpse of the world moving past on the other side of the fence.

  The last entry was a long, rambling paragraph, the words scarcely legible.

  I dreamed about John last night. Not young, but old. Even older than I am now. His hair was very white and his fingers would not straighten, but he put them on the keyboard of the piano and played it and the sound was the same as the first night I heard him. Such a foolish thing to do, to fall in love with a man thirty years your senior just because his music makes you weep. And to let him fall in love with you when you know you will never have the courage to follow him away from your home, your family. But how could I? My parents were so angry with me for playing onstage that one time. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra might as well have been a band playing in a burlesque show, for all their carrying on about their daughter performing in public. To tell them I was in love with the concertmaster was impossible. He was soon gone, in any case. The symphony toured for two years in Europe, I think. I chose to give up the music, he chose to follow it. Or perhaps the reminders of my betrayal of his trust were just too great in the city where we’d loved each other for a little while and lost ourselves in the melodies. I cannot regret it. My entire life would be worthless, wasted, if I thought I had made the wrong choice and lived with it for the next seventy-five years. I made the only choice possible.

  But I dreamed of John last night and wished that I had played with the symphony just one more time.

  I wished that I could have been a little more like Susannah.

  Tucked between the last fragile pages of the ledger was a photograph. Addy recognized the fight-the-power clenched fist of the newborn even before she turned the picture over and saw the words written in her mother’s firm, sloped handwriting.

  Adeline Marie Tyler. One week old.

  She smiled at her baby self and pressed a hand to her belly, a gesture that she found herself making a hundred times a day.

  Before she could change her mind, she got up and found her backpack. Tearing a sheet of graph paper off the top of the pad she’d pulled out, she scrawled the words Thank you across the page on the diagonal, folded it and put it in an envelope. If she were lucky, it would go out in the afternoon mail.

  Nothing had changed. It couldn’t, not just like that. She wasn’t so full of fantasy that ten minutes and the words of an old, lonely woman made her want to jump up and run home to a man who might not even be there for her anymore.

  When she heard herself using words like home and might, she wondered how long it would be before she talked herself out of her resolve.

  Late in the night between Sunday and Monday morning, she called Spencer’s office to leave him a message. She knew that his voice-mail system would date-and time-stamp her call and he would know that she’d called on purpose when he wouldn’t be there, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.

  The phone ringing in her ear seemed very far away. She was so tired, sleep licking the edge of consciousness. Calling from bed on her cell phone had seemed simpler than going in search of the last place she’d left the portable.

  But it was taking forever.

  She would just rest her eyes.

  When she heard his voice, rough and scratchy as it always was before he woke up completely, she thought she was dreaming.

  “Addy?”

  How lovely. She could just lie here and listen to him talk. She’d missed the sound of his voice.

  “Addy, I know it’s you. I have caller ID.”

  She snapped awake. Definitely not a dream, then.

  “Spencer?” she stuttered. What now? “I must have fallen asleep.”

  “And then called me?” The streets outside were quiet, her neighbors silent above and below her. They might have been the only two souls awake in the city. “Should I be flattered?”

  “No. I was awake when I called—” her voice was heavy with sleep “—but the phone just kept ringing.” The fog cleared for a moment. She wasn’t making any sense. “Why are you still at the office?”

  “I’m not. I forwarded all calls to my cell phone so I wouldn’t miss you if you called.” In the middle of the night, it didn’t seem so embarrassing to be caught.

  “I’m that predictable? Doesn’t sound like an irrational woman.” She could have swallowed her tongue as she let the bitter words slip out.

  “Ah, Addy.” When he sighed, it felt as if he was right next to her. “It’s much easier for me to apologize when you’re not throwing my words back in my face.”

  “You don’t really expect me to worry about making it easier for you to say you’re sorry.”

  “No, although I do wonder that you don’t feel any need to do the same for calling me a liar. Even if only to myself.” They were both silent. She heard a faint crackle, a break in the reception of her cell phone. She wasn’t sure if he was still there or not, and the freedom of not knowing allowed her to say the words.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. Very sorry.” She heard him laugh softly. “Although I do think it’s crazy that you wouldn’t believe me. Wouldn’t take what I wanted to give you.”

  She wanted to say it. Could hear herself in her head. Don’t fall asleep. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.

  But she didn’t say the words out loud. Just cradled the phone closer to her ear and listened to him breathing. Pictured him doing the same. When she spoke, it was with regret at the hurt she knew she’d be causing.

  “I want to come by the house tomorrow to get some things.” That wasn’t all, and he must have guessed, because he said nothing. “But I don’t want you to be there when I do.”

  The wait before he spoke seemed interminable.

  “Fine.”

  She sighed. That was her man. Ever the reasonable soul. No tantrums or shouting matches or demands that she sit down with him and hash this mess out. Once again, he would do whatever she asked of him.

  She should be happy. Instead, she was dumb enough to wish that just once she could be important enough for someone to fight for.

  “Thank you.” She listened. Silence roared in her ear. She had to hang up. “’Bye.”

  She lowered the phone and pushed the end button, but she could still hear him saying the words.

  “You should have believed me, Addy.”

  She parked on the street outside the house the next afternoon and pretended she wasn’t giving in to the fear that she might need to make a quick getaway. At the door, she hesitated before sliding her key into the lock. It felt as if she were sneaking into a stranger’s house. When she opened the door and Elwood came bounding and skidding across the slick entryway floor to greet her, she almost laughed from sheer nerves.

  “Who’s a good boy?” She bent over the dog, scrubbing her knuckles against his shaggy side and scratching him under the chin. After a moment, she lifted her head.

  Great-Aunt Adeline’s violin still hung on the wall, the polished sheen of the old wood glowing rosy in the afternoon light. The portrait of a long-dead woman named Susannah, the first thing to have awakened her to her connection to this house, was visible farther down the hallway. A pair of Spencer’s running shoes, the laces undone, sat on the bottom step of the staircase.

  The tears were already flowing as she st
ood up and walked briskly up the steps to what had been her bedroom. Stupid hormones. She’d better hurry or she’d be a blubbering mess by the time she managed to get out of there.

  In the room itself, she focused on the essentials. No time for a general clearing out. That could wait for a day when she was stronger, a possibility that seemed as remote as her making a spur-of-the-moment decision to climb Mount Everest. Just her work files, the solitary suit in her closet and some socks. She seemed to have no socks back at her apartment.

  She was standing over her desk, fingertips running over the lines of the floor plans she’d drawn of the house, when she knew he was in the room with her.

  The suit in its dry cleaner’s bag, draped over her arm, rustled as she turned around. Spencer stood at the foot of the bed, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand. In dark gray slacks and a deep blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled up and collar unbuttoned, he looked just like the fancy uptown lawyer whose calls and letters she’d ignored until the day she’d walked into his office and he’d turned her world upside down and shook out the spare change.

  Exactly the same. Until she looked in his eyes and saw reflected there the same bone-deep weariness that constantly threatened to overwhelm her. Until she noticed his grip on the papers tighten until they crumpled.

  “You promised not to be here,” was all she could think to say.

  “I lied.”

  The planes of his cheeks were sharper, as if the skin were stretched tighter over his bones. The slight sunburn he’d had on the day of the Cubs game had faded to a light tan that did nothing to hide the shadows of lost sleep under his eyes.

  And, Lord help her, he needed a haircut.

  Exactly the same. And yet, as if she was seeing him clearly for the first time. Summer warmth began thawing what had been frozen in her since she’d left.

  “Spencer—”

  “I’ve spent every day since you left trying to figure it out. After I got over wanting to strangle you. How to write the perfect love letter to convince you that I love you. The argument that would make you believe me.” He ran the fingers of his free hand through already rumpled hair. “Then I thought that maybe I should make some big romantic gesture.”

  On the foot of the bed next to him, she could see the pile of balled-up socks and the stack of note cards next to it and she knew that the little gestures were the ones she would appreciate most for the rest of her life.

  “Do you know what these are?” He shook the stack of papers at her. “Faxes.” He peeled off the top sheet and glanced at it. “The Prudential Building will let me spell Will you marry me, Addy? in office-window lights for a negotiable fee. I didn’t mention that it was a little late for a proposal.” He tossed the paper to the floor and took a step toward her. “Wrigley Field says I can put a message in lights on the outfield scoreboard.” Another toss and another step. “The North-Side Players will act out a romantic scene for you at your office. They were thinking more like Sleepless in Seattle, but promised to do their best with Pride and Prejudice.” Toss and a step. “For twenty-five bucks, I can name a star after you.” Toss. He was standing so close, she could have touched him. “And then there’s the baby’s room.”

  “Spencer, I—”

  “Just shut up and look at this.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the room. Her wrist hurt, he held it so tightly. He flung open the door to one of the spare bedrooms and waved wildly at the interior.

  “I did all this and then I wondered if you’d think I was only doing it because I wanted the baby more than I wanted you.” The walls of the room were painted a bright honey-yellow. Pooh and Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger, danced around the ceiling. She blinked and the picture swam before her eyes.

  “And I don’t, Addy.”

  He shifted his grip on her wrist and pulled her hand to his chest, pressing it flat against his heart. Waited until she looked back at him. His eyes held her, and the love in them was all for her, she knew.

  “I don’t want you because you’re pregnant. And I don’t want you because we get along okay and the sex is all right.” She snuffled out a laugh and curled her fingers under his. “I’m not interested in just letting things ride, Addy, to see where they take us. I love you and I need you with me, and if I have to tie you to a damn chair and shout that at you until you believe it, I will.”

  He was shouting at her. And she was crying now, because she’d never heard anything more wonderful.

  She fumbled over his mouth with her fingers, found his lips. He needed to shut up now.

  “Okay.”

  He stared at her, as if waiting for her to speak English. After a minute he said, “Maybe you could make it clear what you’re saying okay to. I want to be sure.”

  God, she loved this man.

  “I’m saying it’s okay.” She linked her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers. “I love you, too.”

  The wall broke and his mouth fell on her, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her hair, hands fisting in the back of her shirt as if he was afraid she might yet step away from him. She leaned against him, her rock, the one who would always be there for her, and kissed him back, saying the words again and again, until he buried his face in her hair, eased his grip and hugged her to his chest.

  “Thank God.” His words were muffled. A laugh hiccuped out of her.

  “You knew I’d say that.”

  She felt him shake his head. “I hoped.”

  Pressing a kiss on the warm skin of his neck, she whispered in his ear. “I’ll say it whenever you like.”

  “Always.”

  She smiled. “I love you.”

  “I have a confession to make,” he whispered in her ear a second later.

  “What’s that?” she whispered back.

  When he stood up and leaned back against her clasped hands, she was surprised to see that he was blushing.

  “I have lied to you once before.”

  “I knew it. You don’t really like all those vegetables on your pizza.”

  “No. Shush.” He stroked the curls back off her face. “Do you remember Steve Henderson?”

  She flipped through her mental files. “The bigamist? What’d he do now?”

  “He got married…” What did that have to do with anything? She figured it out when he finished with, “…for the first time.”

  Pause. “You mean he wasn’t…”

  “No.” He grinned at her guiltily and lifted his shoulders for a second. She reared back and punched him in the shoulder.

  “Oh, my God.” She punched him again. “Oh, my God! Do you know how many people I told about that?”

  He trapped her arms with his and hugged her again, rocking back and forth as she cursed him, and he laughed out loud. He did have one suggestion for her, though.

  “Maybe we can put a postscript on the wedding announcement.”

  She pictured it and shook her head.

  “Baby, you’re going to have write it in lights on that outfield scoreboard to get me out of this one.”

  “And I hope they charge you by the letter.”

  It was the strangest thing they’d ever seen, most of the thirty-six thousand fans at the Cubs Fourth of July night game agreed among themselves later that summer. During the seventh-inning stretch, right after the mayor led the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” a message in blinking white lights scrolled across the scoreboard.

  Thank you, Adeline Marie Tyler Spencer, for marrying me. And sincere apologies to Steve Henderson, who is not, in fact, a bigamist.

  Everyone remembered that for a very long time. Not the least, Caroline Reed, who claimed to have heard her father whisper the words while resting his cheek against her mother’s belly six months before she was born.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7698-1

  SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS

  Copyright © 2005 by Amy Jo Albinack

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole o
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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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