A Morning Like This (3 page)

David couldn’t explain why the fear came. He knew something was wrong the moment he heard the clicking connection and the
empty whirring, someone hesitating on the end of the line. He stopped chewing. For what seemed an eternity, no one spoke.
Then, brittle, businesslike, a woman said, “Hello, David. This is Susan Roche.”

Susan Roche
.

For a moment he couldn’t place the name. He started chewing again.

Then stopped chewing for the second time.

Oh.
That
Susan Roche.

The message continued. “I’m staying at The Elk Country Inn.”

Elk Country Inn? Susan? In Jackson Hole?

“Would you return my call as soon as you can?” And then, softly, “It’s imperative, David.
Please
.”

Her careful voice went on to dictate a number, but David didn’t write it down. He stared at the machine, his anger growing.
He turned it off before she even finished the sentence.

How dare she do something like this?

The slice of anniversary cake sat abandoned on the counter with two huge chomps taken out of it. Brewster stood over his bowl,
panting, waiting to be served from the forty-pound bag that listed to one side in the corner. And David Treasure looked up
to see his face reflected in the toaster beside him, his features mirrored and distorted in the dents of stainless steel.
It was someone else’s face, someone who didn’t look at all like him.

After so many years, how dare she turn up in Jackson and call me at my house?

He fumbled for the delete button on the answering machine. The motion, which he made several times daily, evaded him now.
Which button did he push? That one?
No
. This one?

He hit the wrong button and the message began to repeat. “Hello, David. This is Susan Roche.” It sounded louder the second
time. In desperation, David found the button marked
DELETE
and punched it hard.

“Deleting. Deleting,”
said the liquid crystal display.

The blinking red light stopped just as Braden came barefoot into the room. David reeled away from the phone machine. “Hey,
sport,” he said and in his own ears his voice sounded too booming, too cheery.

Braden opened the cabinet and pulled out a box of Honeycomb cereal. “Morning, Dad.” He stood on tiptoe and rattled the stack
of dishes, trying to pull out a bowl.

“Here.” David reached over the boy’s head and shifted things so Braden could get what he needed. “Let me help you with that.”

“You eating breakfast, too?”

“No,” David said. “I’m running late. I’d better wake your mother up and get to work.”

“Don’t forget my baseball game this afternoon.”

“I won’t forget. It’s a big one, huh?”

“If we can beat Food Town, we can beat anybody.”

David scrubbed his son’s blond hair until it poked from his head like the spines of a porcupine. “Brush your hair before you
get to school,” he teased, doing his best to be lighthearted. “Your mother will never forgive me if you don’t.”

Your mother will never forgive me. Of course she wouldn’t. Never
.

Not if she found out about Susan Roche
.

David walked into the bedroom and stopped beside their bed. He stared down at Abby’s face—at her dark, mussed, Meg Ryan hair—his
heart tightening. He reached and stopped, his hand poised above her shoulder. He swallowed hard, steeling himself for what
the next moment might bring, and the next, and the next. “Ab—” he whispered, jostling her. “Hey. Wake up.”

She moaned into her pillow, gave him a sleepy smile and, first thing, before her eyes had barely opened, reached her arms
to encircle his neck. “Please don’t tell me it’s already time.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

“Is the coffee ready?”

“I turned it on before Brewster and I went out.”

“Are you leaving?”

A nod. “Braden’s up. He’s eating breakfast.”

“Good.” She smiled again as he bent to kiss her and if he seemed subdued about something she didn’t act like she noticed.
She pulled his head down to hers once more, kissed him again. “Last night was fun.
Real
fun.”

He hesitated, a slight moment just long enough for her to narrow her eyes at him. “I’ve got to shower,” he said.

She watched him, her smile gone, and propped herself on one elbow. “David? Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No? Why would anything be wrong?”

“I don’t know. You just seem…I don’t know. Preoccupied.”

“I’m late.” He pulled away from her. “That’s all.”

He left her and began rattling around in the bathroom. He showered, dropping the soap on the tile with a resounding thud.
He shaved and buzzed his battery-powered Crest Spinbrush over his teeth. He dressed without coming out of their huge walk-in
closet.

“Honey?” she called past the suit coats and shoes and tailored shirts. “Are you sure nothing’s the matter?”

“I’m sure,” he lied.

When at last he found the courage to reappear, he grabbed his keys with purpose from the table, managing to depart without
so much as a perfunctory kiss for either of his family members. “I’ll meet you at Braden’s game,” he called as he took the
porch steps two at a time, feeling like he was running away.

If the minutes before David left for work seemed excruciating, the hours he spent trying to focus on business proved even
worse. He helped one confused teller balance her till. He listened to a couple concerned about the time it was taking to process
their home loan. He wandered around in the lobby, smiling at customers he knew, shaking hands with colleagues, talking about
the bank’s newest marketing plan to open two new branches in Wyoming.

But he couldn’t focus. The first chance he got, he retreated upstairs to his corner office and leather swivel chair, where
he stared at the telephone on his desk as if he faced an enemy.

Susan Roche. At the Elk Country Inn
.

June had come to western Wyoming with a welcome, harrowing rush of hot weather and RVs and visitors who wanted to stalk bison
and bear in Yellowstone. Outside his office window, stores stood with their doors open, the displays behind their polished
glass fronts beckoning to sightseers with turquoise and elk-horn jewelry and hand-woven Shoshone rugs. A cavalcade of interstate
traffic—campers and motorcycles and cars—inched forward on the street, setting a pace that would make any seasoned rush-hour
driver crazy. An apple-red stagecoach trundled slowly past on bright yellow wheels, a group of tourists inside waving to passersby.

David stared past the busy scene without seeing it. Of course he wouldn’t call her. He hadn’t written down the number.

Any fool could look it up in the phone directory, you idiot. Right there under
Motels
in the Yellow Pages
.

David grabbed the phone book, flipped open to the motel page, and ran his forefinger down the listings.
The Elk Country Inn
. He picked up a ballpoint pen and scribbled the familiar prefix, then traced over the number a second time, thinking about
it, his apprehension rising.

Abby always thought she could be so sure of me
.

Finally he steeled himself, picked up the receiver, and dialed. A front-desk clerk answered in a singsong voice.

“Elk Country Inn. How may I direct your call?”

“Yes. I… uh.” David stared at the thick gold wedding band that encircled his ring finger. “Susan Roche, please. One of your
guests.”

Before he could say anything more, before he could ask “Is she there? Will you connect me?,” another series of clicks came,
followed by a beeping and then a distant ring. Only one, which he didn’t expect her to answer.

“Hello?” came a breathless voice.

Anyone who’d braved the crowds in Jackson this time of year ought to be out driving through the parks or hiking some backcountry
trail. Nobody should be sitting in a motel room, waiting beside the telephone.

“Susan Roche? Is this Susan?”

“Yes,” she said. “David.” And nothing more.

David lifted his gaze from his wedding ring and saw the photograph of Abigail and Braden propped where he could always see
it, framed in silver beside his lamp. In it, Abby squinted at the camera and leaned against a log wall, her Sunday shoes sunk
to the hilt in springtime mud. She cradled Braden, wrapped in a fuzzy blue blanket, in her arms. The picture had been taken
on the sunny spring day he and Abigail had walked forward at their little nondenominational church to dedicate their son to
the Lord.

“You phoned my house,” he said to Susan. “You asked me to get in touch.”

“I did.”

One beat passed. Two. “So—” Nothing more. His throat ached for her to say something, anything that might help him know where
to go with this or to let him off the hook. “You’ve come back to visit.”

“I have.”

“It’s been a long time, Susan.”

“It has.”

Heartrending silence while he waited, she waited, to see who might speak next.

“A lot has changed since I saw you last,” he said finally.

“Yes,” she agreed, her voice gone soft with what sounded like relief. “With me, too.”

The pen in David’s hand, the one he’d used to write the number, read
The Jackson State Bank
. He clicked the ballpoint shut with his thumb, then clicked it open again. “This trip…” And then he stopped clicking. “Is
it business or pleasure?”

He heard her draw a deep breath.

“I came to see you.”

David stared at the picture on his desk. Abby beaming at the camera. Braden, so innocent and tiny, nestled in her arms. “I
don’t think that’s possible.”

“What I have to say can’t be done over the phone. I want to meet you somewhere. For lunch, maybe.”

David turned to his Palm Pilot for escape—to a calendar unmarked for the afternoon. He didn’t have to be anywhere until Braden’s
baseball game late in the day. “I don’t see how I can fit you in,” he lied.

I’ve worked so hard to put this behind me. It’s been so many years since I made this mistake
.

“Don’t push me away, David.”

“It isn’t the best idea. Getting together.”

“There’s a café down the street from my motel. Betty Rock, or something like that.”

“I can’t. That won’t work.”

“David,” she interrupted him. “This is important. Believe me, I wouldn’t put either of us through this if I didn’t have to.”

“I won’t meet you at Betty Rock. Not there.” He hated himself for not standing firm against her and saying no to the whole
thing. But Susan sounded desperate, and she’d come from so far away. “I will meet you for a few minutes,” he told her. “Let
me think of a better place.”

Batting practice for the Jackson Hole All-Star Little League Team kept Braden just busy enough that Abigail Treasure didn’t
need to worry. Besides, there was always another mother around willing to take the boys out after the drills—to Dairy Queen
for a milkshake or floating down Flat Creek on lumpy inner tubes during the heat of the day or biking along the potholes of
the Snow King trail.

“You going to be okay this afternoon?” Abigail asked as Braden reached into the backseat to grab his mitt.

He nodded and grinned. “I’m going to Jake’s.”

“Well, call me if you need me. Tell Jake’s mom I’ll take you guys to the Alpine Slide tomorrow, if I can.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Tell her I said thanks.”

“I will.”

They both hesitated, waiting for each other. “Don’t I get a kiss good-bye or something?” she asked.

He looked mortified. “Mom, not here.”

Abby let out a deep sigh. “Later then,” she said. “Not in front of these guys.”

“Yeah.”

“Have a good practice.”

“I will.”

Braden slammed the door. As Abigail eased the SUV out of the parking lot, she couldn’t help checking her rearview mirror and
watching her son high-five one of his friends. He was surrounded in an instant by a pack of boys, all bouncing up and down
like puppies.

For a moment, as she glanced back, she let herself wonder what could have happened to her husband this morning.

As David had showered in the bathroom, he’d made more noise opening and shutting the medicine cabinet, thumping the soap into
the sink, and slamming the toilet lid down than the entire percussion section of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.
As he’d dressed in their closet, he’d remained ominously silent, never breaking into the warbling whistle she’d grown accustomed
to. He didn’t step out to double-check the weather through the window. He didn’t stand before the mirror with his chest to
the fore, confidently taking stock of his day.

Most telling of all, when David had emerged and made a beeline toward the door, he hadn’t embraced her. He’d grabbed his keys
like he was capturing the flag in a cavalry charge. He’d raced out the door and down the steps, pounding his soles against
the pavement with such purpose she hadn’t dared call him back.

He had forgotten to kiss her good-bye. He always kissed her on his way out the door. This morning of all mornings she’d been
expecting a last, lingering reassurance from last night.