A Morning Like This (5 page)

“It didn’t make any difference, did it? From the beginning with you, I knew where I stood.”

“You didn’t have much faith in me,” he said.

“I had plenty of faith in you. I had faith in your faith. I knew how religious you always claimed to be. I had faith you would
never leave your wife.”

Her words hit him hard. Because she was right. Because he had told her once that he knew what he was doing was wrong, that
he struggled with it—that underneath it all, no matter what he believed about God, he was human. Human like everybody else.

W
hat is it you want from me, Susan? Why this, now? Why, after all these years?”

She didn’t answer right off. She kept walking, away from him.

David panicked. Apprehension charged the length of his spine. “I’m not telling Abby about this, if that’s what you’re here
for. Things are good between us now.”

“I can’t promise she won’t find out,” Susan said. “I’m sorry.”

“That can’t happen. It would kill Abby if she found out what happened between us… and when.”

Susan wheeled toward him. “That’s all you think about, isn’t it? Yourself. How to cover your mistakes.”

“No. There’s more to it than that and you know it.”

“Oh, yes, David. There’s more to both of our stories. So you can forget thinking only of yourself.”

He waited.

“Sam got the flu on Memorial Day and she wouldn’t get over it. I had it, too, but mine ended in three days. And Sam just kept
feeling so…tired.”

David closed her billfold, which he’d been holding open all this time. He handed it back to her.

“They did some blood work and then they called me. They said she needed to come back in. So we went back. And back. And back.
We’ve seen three different doctors since then—one in Portland, two in Corvallis. They’re all telling us the same thing.”

“What? What are they telling you?”

For the first time, when he looked at Susan, he noticed her red-rimmed eyes. For the first time she didn’t seem like such
a predator to him, but instead only a mother, as trapped by her indiscretion as he was by his. For the first time he noticed
she looked bad.

“Do you know what it’s like to tell a little girl she has leukemia, David? First I just said, ‘They’ve found something in
your blood they want to check. There’s something that doesn’t look right. Your blood’s sick.’ Then the doctor walked in and
said, ‘Well, Samantha, you have leukemia.’ Without even preparing her. She didn’t say anything. She sat looking at him with
a straight face like he’d walked in and said, ‘You have strep throat.’ ”

His reply came out empty, frightened, helpless. “
Susan
.”

“She didn’t cry until she got out into the hall. She took my hand and looked at me and she said, ‘Leukemia, Mama? But people
die from leukemia.’ And I said, ‘Well, you won’t. I won’t let you. You’re going to be all right.’ ”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“It isn’t what you can say, David. It’s what you can do. She’s a good candidate for a bone-marrow transplant. Only we haven’t
been able to find the right donor.”

The awful truth sank like weighty stones in his stomach. So this was it, then. This was the reason she had come.

“Are you thinking it might be me?”

Susan nodded. “Possibly.” At Ripley’s Believe It or Not, he stared at a replica of a woman with brass rings around a neck
that must have been stretched to fourteen inches long. E
XPERIENCE THE ODDITY
, the placard read. Susan touched his sleeve. “You might be the only chance Sam has of staying alive.”

Along the far wall at the Community Safety Network hung an oil painting of five distinguished ladies, known since the 1920s
as The Petticoat Rulers of Jackson Hole. Five women who’d grown disgruntled with the way men governed this town and so took
matters into their own hands.

In a spirited contest, running upon—among other things—a platform of fencing the town cemetery so cows couldn’t graze over
the final resting places of beloved townsfolk, these women had defeated their male opponents by a three-to-one margin and
since then been lauded as the first fully woman government in the United States.

Mrs. Grace G. Miller, Miss Pearl Williams, Mrs. Genevieve Van Vleck, Mrs. Faustine Haight, and even Rose Crabtree, the proprietor
of the Crabtree Inn, gazed down from their cameos with solemn countenances and deep-set, sepia-toned eyes.
You can do this, too!
they seemed to be saying.
You can be in charge just like we were!

Abby checked the pink message slips strewn across her desk. She dropped one onto the pile, then picked it up and read it again:

Sophie H. has decided to leave today. You’ll want to talk to her.

Kate Carparelli

In a shelter meant for battered women, there were only two reasons a person would decide to leave. One, she had decided to
launch out on her own and begin a new life. Or two, she had decided to go back to someone who had hurt her. It happened all
the time. Some women came here seven or eight times before they made the choice to give up on their marriages and refuse to
live in a dangerous place.

Sophie Henderson could go either way.

Abby found Sophie in an upstairs room stuffing meager belongings into a bag that read
Friends of the Teton County Library
. On it, a cowboy sat atop a horse, burying his nose inside the pages of a book.

“Hey.” The sight of this woman packing made Abby’s heart clench. She couldn’t help feeling close to the women who passed through
this place. She couldn’t help feeling bound to them. Over the past weeks, Sophie had become a special friend.

“You heard?”

“I did.”

“I figured everybody around here would be talking about it.”

“They are.”

“I’ve decided to go back to him.”

“You have? Sophie—”

Abby stopped herself. She was not allowed to offer advice. Leaving or staying should be each woman’s choice to make. She’d
trained her shelter staff to offer support, never outright opinion.

“You know what my sister Elaine said the last time I showed up on her doorstep with a bloody nose? ‘Mike’s a good man, Sophie.
He would never do all those things you say he does.’ ”

Sophie stuffed a threadbare sundress into her Friends-of-the-Library bag. A frayed towel. A lime-green wind-breaker. All of
these either donated or hand-me-downs purchased for nothing at Browse and Buy, the official rummage shop of the Episcopal
Church.

“So, you’re going back because of your sister?” Abby asked.

“No. I guess I’m going back for myself. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s good enough that we can make it work this time.”

“Maybe so.”

“He said he’s willing to go to counseling and to try. He’s capable of changing, Abby. I just know it.”

Abby leaned against the doorjamb, her arms interlaced, a confidante’s pose. She fought to remain neutral, even though she
cared bone-deep for Sophie. “We’ll miss you around this place.”

Sophie laughed. “It’s been like a slumber party or something here. My sister and I used to share a room when we were little,
in a double-sized bed. Have you noticed how easy it is to laugh when you’re laying down? In the dark? With someone close beside
you like a sister?”

“I remember those days.” Abby smiled.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you aren’t folded over, trying to sit up. And there’re no faces to look at except the faces
in the ceiling. There’s nothing to make you stop laughing. It just comes
out
.”

A ragged khaki visor sat beside the bed on the night-stand, its bill shaped to form a perfect eyeshade over Sophie’s face.
Abby walked over to pick it up and hand it to her. “Don’t forget this.”

Sophie hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know if I want that or not. I don’t think I’ll need it.”

Abby turned the frayed brim in her hand and examined it straight on. “I’ve seldom seen you without it.”

Sophie stopped stuffing items into the overloaded bag. “Mike gave it to me for my birthday. I was wearing that the night I
left. I don’t want to do anything to him that will remind him of anything bad.” She glanced out the front window, then aligned
her hands as if in prayer, touching fingers to a disjointed nose that had been broken too many times. Her eyes glimmered with
precaution—or tears. Abby couldn’t be sure which. “I have to go. His truck’s out there.”

A heartbeat passed between them. Then another. And then they were rocking in each other’s arms.

“Thank you for everything,” Sophie said into Abby’s hair.

“If you need us again, you know where we are.”

“Yeah, I know where you are.”

“Oh, Sophie. Good luck.” The two women swayed to and fro in their embrace. Abby said again, with great emphasis, “We’re going
to miss you,” because those were the only emotional words she was allowed to say.

“Will you get the test done
today?
” Susan had called to David from halfway across the crosswalk as they parted. “You don’t have to make an appointment. You
just go.”

“Today?” he’d called back.

“Every hour matters.” She’d pulled up short in the middle of the street and turned back to him, ignoring a huge motor home
from Minnesota that bore down on her in the oncoming lane. “Every hour.”

“Get out of the middle of the highway,” he had called to her. “Everything will be okay.”

It took David hours to get to the hospital to have the test.

Although his schedule had seemed light this morning, an impromptu meeting, a hundred small details, filled the afternoon.
Every so often, he’d leave his upstairs workplace, thinking he could slip out to St. John’s. But every time he tried, someone
stopped him in the stairwell.

Finally, he stepped into the cramped laboratory waiting room late that day, knowing he didn’t have much leeway if he wanted
to make Braden’s game. He took a seat in one of the three plastic chairs and shot a covert glance around the office. What
if someone recognized him here? “I’m David Treasure,” he said to the woman who approached. “I’m here for a blood test.”

A stainless steel clock on the wall read 4:47. The woman, who wore scrubs with Snoopy dancing across the sleeves, held out
a hand for doctor’s orders.

“I don’t have anything from a physician,” he said. And found himself struggling just to voice Susan’s name. “A…a friend told
me the test had been sent from Oregon. That you would already know about it.”

From the next room he could hear the sound of a child whimpering, and a mother’s consoling reply: “It’ll hurt for a minute,
and then it will be over.”

“It won’t be over,” said the child. “It will hurt for a long time.”

The lab tech leafed through a pile of manila folders on her desk. David sat down. He couldn’t help himself. He had always
been one to ask stupid questions when he was uneasy. He bounced his knee up and down, striking up a conversation out of nervousness,
as if he could use any friend he could get.

“So, you like Snoopy?” He gestured toward her sleeves.

She either ignored his question or didn’t hear him. Probably the first. “Oh, here you are. You’re the test kit we’re sending
back to Good Samaritan in Corvallis.”