A Minute to Smile (18 page)

Esther glanced at Alexander, and found that he was smiling at the youth. Keith caught the expression on his professor’s face and flushed in pride, then gave a little mock bow.

The class applauded, and within minutes, a rousing debate was in progress. For Esther, it was exhilarating and challenging. Although she didn’t participate, she followed the arguments carefully, weighing out both sides in her own mind for later sorting.

When the class time ended, Alexander gestured toward Keith, keeping him back after the others had left. “That was quite well done,” Alexander said.

“Thanks, Dr. Stone.”

“I’d like to talk to you about your plans following graduation, if you wouldn’t mind. Are you free sometime tomorrow morning?”

“Sure. About ten?”

“Fine. You know where my office is.”

“See you.” He lifted a hand to both Esther and Alexander, then shouldered his heavy book bag and wandered out.

Alexander looked at her. “Will you join me for coffee this morning? I overslept and had no chance to eat breakfast.”

“The orderly and disciplined Alexander Stone overslept?” Esther said with raised eyebrows. “What’s the world coming to?”

He brushed her forearm with his index finger. “If my dreams of a certain lovely redhead didn’t so torment me,” he said quietly, “I’d likely be on time.”

Esther said nothing. She lowered her eyes, feeling the sweep of yearning overtake her. “Let’s go get some breakfast,” she said finally.

Out on the university grounds, with warm summer sunshine streaming through the trees, the oddly claustrophobic sense of desire that had descended over Esther at his hint of dreams evaporated. She looked at him. “Keith is a natural teacher. Is that what you’re going to discuss with him?”

“Partly. The trouble is, he’s on scholarships and just recently wed. The last six months have been a struggle for him and another student told me this morning that his wife is going to have a baby.”

Esther made a sympathetic noise.

“Yes,” Alexander said. “In fact, your experiences are what triggered my decision to see if I might be able to help him.”

A pang touched her—if only there had been someone willing to go to bat for her, how different things might be now. “I think that’s wonderful,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that.” He took her hand and wrapped it around his elbow, covering it with his own hand. “What would have made it possible for you to continue with your studies? Was it money or time that made it impossible?”

Ruefully Esther said, “What I needed was a different husband.” She sighed. “It was time, mainly, for me. John wanted me home with the children. But that also led to questions of money, because it was impossible to hold a job, do my studies and care for Daniel all at once.”

“Didn’t he help you?”

Esther hesitated, knowing how cruel her answer would make John seem. “No, Alexander, he was opposed to me leaving the children at all.” Their walk had carried them to a small bridge over a pond and she paused there to look at Alexander. “But it’s a lot more complicated than it seems. He’s not a bad person. His mother was an alcoholic and abused him.” A flicker of sympathy showed on Alexander’s craggy features, giving her courage to continue. “He wanted the boys to have the mother he never did, and I guess I wanted to show him that they would.”

“You needn’t defend him to me, Esther.”

She smiled. “Maybe I’m defending him to me.”

“You’re very hard on yourself,” he said, inclining his head. “We all make mistakes, you know. And you can hardly call the time you spent with John a mistake. You have your children, and since Jeremy will be in school next year, there’s no reason you can’t go ahead with your degree, as well.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.” He took her hand. “But that’s not what I meant to discuss this morning. I am starving.”

“What are you going to do for Keith?” she asked.

“I’m not quite sure. Susan was quite wealthy—her father built a fortune in manufacturing—and she asked me to see that some of that money be used for this kind of thing.”

“Why not a scholarship or something?”

He shook his head. “She felt that scholarships, no matter how well administered, often had too many conditions attached. So instead of setting it up to be given to graduate students in history or single parents or struggling sons of the working class—” he lifted a brow sardonically “—she asked me to keep my eyes open as long as I taught, and when I retired, to pass the baton to someone I felt would do it well.”

They had reached the door of the café, and Esther paused, touched. “What a kind person she must have been.”

“Yes.” But instead of a sad light that sometimes clouded his eyes, this time the kaleidoscope irises twinkled. “But no saint, I assure you.”

She smiled and stepped inside as he held the door. But in light of the resolve she had made the night before, the opportunity was too good to pass up. As a young waitress poured fragrant coffee into heavy mugs, Esther asked, “What was she like, Alexander?”

“Who?” He seemed genuinely bewildered. “Oh, Susan?” He paused to tell the waitress to bring him an omelet.

“Just coffee for me,” Esther said.

He looked out the window for a moment, then finally looked at Esther, a fond expression gentling the harsh planes of his face. “She was silly,” he said. “She liked practical jokes and magic tricks and could tell a filthy story and get away with it because she looked like a nun.”

“Was she pretty?”

The twinkle returned to his eyes. “I believe you’re a bit jealous.”

“Maybe a little,” Esther admitted. “Maybe curious is a better word.”

He stirred cream into his coffee. “Well, Susan was many things—smart and funny and terribly clever, but no, she wasn’t particularly pretty. She was always too thin and a bit frail in spite of her vitality.” He tugged his beard. “But she had enormous gray eyes that were quite beautiful, and you forgot after a while that there were any prettier women because she had such presence.”

A nudge of something half remembered flickered in Esther’s mind, but she ignored it. Clasping her hands tightly in front of her, she leaned over the table. “Are you still in love with her, Alexander?”

For a long moment, he didn’t answer. In that moment, Esther saw all the things about him that she had grown so fond of—all the physical details that made him different from every other male on the planet. She let her gaze touch each detail: the hints of silver glittering through his dark curls, the swell of his lower lip against a frame of silky face hair, the breadth of his shoulders beneath his hand-tailored shirt, his beautiful long-fingered hands. Then she looked into his eyes for the answer she had to have, even if it meant she could no longer sit with him in the quiet of a weekday morning, drinking coffee at a window booth with students walking by.

“I will always love the memory of her, Esther,” he said at last. “I spent fourteen years of my life with her, and you don’t forget someone like that.” He smiled and the twinkle shone like tiny stars through the sudden turquoise of his eyes. “But it’s you that I think of in the dark of the night, that I dream of, that I want.”

She blushed, because it suddenly seemed as if she’d been fishing for compliments.

As if he knew the conversation had made her shy, he sipped his coffee and looked out the window. “Esther,” he said and frowned.

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“If you had the resources, would you finish your degree?”

Esther bit her lip. Even the thought of it was terrifying. She wasn’t sure she
could
do it. “I don’t know,” she said at last. It seemed as if she should add more to that, somehow, that she should articulate her reasons for not knowing, but how could she? She wasn’t even sure what they were herself. “I haven’t even let myself think about it since I left school.”

The waitress brought his omelet and refilled their coffee cups. Alexander said nothing for several minutes. Finally he looked at her with a serious expression in his eyes. “You’re a natural healer, Esther. I hope you won’t defer your dream much longer.”

“Thank you.”

He ate with relish and Esther watched him spreading jam on toast liberally. “I keep meaning to buy some of your rose-petal jelly,” he commented.

“I’ve got to make a fresh batch this afternoon. A woman brought a bag of rose petals in this morning to trade for a gallon of lemonade.” The thought didn’t give her much pleasure. The day was going to be a hot one and she would much rather have spent the time with the children. But if she left them, the petals would be no good. “Hmm,” she said, thinking aloud. “I wonder if I could make a decoction of the petals and wait until this weekend to make the jelly.”

“Try it,” he commented. “And if it works, may I come over and learn your secret recipe?”

She laughed, then inclined her head. “There’s an elaborate initiation and incantation, but I suppose I can share it with you.”

The small radiating lines around his eyes creased with humor. “Perhaps I ought to dust off the robe I keep around for such sacred occasions.” He finished his breakfast with a sigh of satisfaction and lifted his coffee. “When are the boys leaving?”

“John is coming to get them at nine in the morning.” She looked at her watch. “Which means I’d better get back and finish the packing.”

“All right. I’m going to sit here a while longer.”

She smiled. “Ponder the imponderables?”

“Something like that.” He stood up with her. “Call me if you need anything, will you?”

“I will. Thanks.”

* * *

Esther cooked all the children’s favorite foods for supper, hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, strawberry-banana gelatin with bananas, and German chocolate cake. Afterward, they went through their lists carefully, making sure nothing had been forgotten. Each had several favorite toys, plenty of clothes, jackets and sweaters and sturdy shoes. She gave them baths and washed their hair, then clipped their fingernails and toenails, which they loved for some reason Esther had never been able to fathom.

“Okay, guys. Each of you pick a book and I’ll read to you, then you need to get to sleep.”

Jeremy chose his copy of
Owl Moon,
which told the story of a little girl and her father going owling in the middle of a still winter night. She ruffled his silky curls as he put it in her lap. “I remember when I checked this book out of the library the first time,” she said with a smile. “You loved it so much that we renewed it three times.”

“Yep, but this one’s mine,” he said.

“Yes.” She’d given it to him for his birthday and nearly teared up over his excitement at opening the present—he’d literally shrieked with joy.

Daniel gave her his hand-me-down copy of Uncle Wiggly stories. “Can we read three?”

She patted the spot next to her on the bed. “I’ll read five.”

“All right!” He snuggled next to her. Surrounded by the moist warmth of them, Esther read. She absorbed the soap-fresh smell of their skin, the herbal scent of the shampoo, admired the rosy glow of scrubbed little-boy faces. Although sometimes she hurried through bedtime stories because there were a dozen chores she had to do before she could go to bed herself, tonight she was sorry when it was time for them to climb into their bunk beds.

She tucked them in, feeling a dragging sense of unease, one that had bothered her all day. She didn’t believe in premonitions, but thought there might have been something she’d overlooked. As she listened to their prayers, she tried to think what it could be, but nothing jelled.

Squatting down to hug Jeremy, she said, “You remember, now, horses are very strong animals and you have to be very careful with them.”

“I know,” he said with a note of impatience. “Okay.” She smiled and rose to hug Daniel on the top bunk. “You know you can call me whenever you want to.”

Tears flooded his brilliant eyes. “If I don’t like it there, can I come home?”

Esther swallowed back the flood of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. “Of course you can. But I think you’ll have a wonderful time. Your daddy is so excited.”

He hugged her hard. “I wish you could come, too.”

“I know.” She kissed his forehead. “Go to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

As she went downstairs, the strange sense of doom stuck with her. What had she forgotten?

She called Melissa, then Abe, and got no answer. She considered calling Alexander, but felt too dangerously weepy and tired to burden him. Finally she called her mother in Georgia. The soft tones of the thick Southern voice comforted her as nothing else could have. Even her father, as brisk and uncomfortable as always with displays of affection, made her feel better.

As she hung up, she was yawning. It had been a long week. What she needed was a good night’s sleep.

But she didn’t get it. She dreamed of John driving away in the car with the children while she chased behind it, holding up something she couldn’t identify that he’d forgotten to take with him. When she looked down to see what it was, she found she held a safe in her hands—a safe to which only Esther knew the combination.

Finally, hot and thirsty, she got up just before dawn and went downstairs for a cup of coffee. She took it out into the backyard, wearing a sweater against the morning chill. A blackbird sang in an elm tree and a flutter of wrens chirped in the herb garden, catching bugs for breakfast. In the east, a pale glow heralded the rising sun.

The imagery of her dream wasn’t hard to fathom. Despite all her protests to the contrary, she was worried that John would be unable to keep the children safe from harm. That was what had worried her last night. It was silly. If anything, he was overprotective.

The calm quiet of nature at dawn eased her worry and she went back inside to make a grocery list. She flicked on the dining room light, and the bulb, with a buzz and a pop, burned out. Rolling her eyes, she went to the kitchen for a fresh bulb.

Befuddled by the restless night, she forgot what she’d come for and stood in the middle of the room, trying to remember. She noticed the coleus drooping in the window and gave it a drink, then absently plucked off a few withered leaves.