The tough questions were over. Cooper stood up. “Cookies or an ice pop?” he said, turning his back to her and closing his eyes briefly. Thank God. She seemed satisfied with the answers he’d given her.
“Ice pop,” Lucy decided. “Grape.”
“Grape what?” Cooper asked.
“Grape
please.”
“Bingo,” he said and opened the freezer. He unwrapped the frozen fruit bar, tossing the paper in the garbage.
“Yo te amo,
Luce,” he said, handing it to her.
She smiled back at him.
“Gracias,”
she said.
“Te amo,
too, Cooper.”
Seven-thirty, and Lucy and Ben were sound asleep, tucked neatly into their beds, doing their best perfect angel imitations.
But Josie wasn’t home, and Cooper knew that something definitely was up. Still, he decided to give it another half hour before he called the office.
He did the dishes, and turned down the temperature in the oven so that the casserole he’d made wouldn’t totally dry out. He’d already gathered up all of the toys in the living room, so now he cleared off the kitchen floor, sorting the toys into three separate containers—cars, dolls, and miscellaneous.
Cooper managed to hold out until ten after eight before he picked up the phone. He called Josie’s personal line and, to his surprise, Annie picked up.
“Taylor-Made Software,” she said in her cool, efficient voice.
“Annie, this is Cooper,” he said. “Is Josie still there?”
“Yes, she is,” Annie said. “Can she call you back?”
“Well, sure,” Cooper said. “But—”
The line had already been cut. Perfect. Just perfect. Something had come up that was obviously more important than the instructions that Dr. Santana had given Josie for reducing her levels of stress. And that something that had come up was obviously also more important than
him.
He fumed until ten after nine. He paced until ten after ten. And at ten after eleven, when Josie still hadn’t returned his call, he started to pack.
It was after eleven-thirty before the phone rang. He answered the phone after only one ring, sticking the handset under his chin as he continued to load his clothes into a suitcase. “Yeah,” was all he said.
“It’s me,” Josie said. “Cooper, I’m sorry—”
“Yeah,” he interrupted coolly. “I figured you were going to say something like that. Nice of you to call and let me know you were going to be late for dinner. I finally gave up and ate without you.”
“Oh, Lord, you’re mad at me—”
Cooper laughed harshly. “Mad? That’s an understatement. Yeah, I’m mad at you, I’m mad at myself—hell, I’m mad at the whole damn world. But you know what pisses me off the most, babe? The fact that I constantly set myself up for disappointment. You hit me with this Dr. Santana crap, and I actually
believed
you. I actually thought things were going to change. You had me going there for a while. But less than twenty-four hours later, you’re treating me like shit again. It’s nothing new, but somehow I hadn’t managed to catch on. Until now.”
“Cooper, I’ve had a really bad day—”
“Josie, I can’t handle it any more,” he said. “I’m outta here. I’m taking the kids with me—we’re going up to Connecticut.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then Cooper heard Josie take a deep, shaky breath. “You’re not going to give me a chance to explain?” she said. “You’re just going to leave?”
“I’m already gone,” Cooper said and hung up the phone.
Josie took a cab home, even though she already knew it was too late. She told the driver to wait, then took the stairs up, two at a time.
As soon as she unlocked the door, her fears were confirmed. The place was deserted.
She might have missed them by a minute or by a half hour—either way the outcome was the same.
She locked the door behind her, went back to the waiting cab, and headed back to the office.
Her world had come to an end. And she didn’t even have time to cry.
THIRTEEN
“G
EE
,” C
OOPER
said, tucking the telephone under his chin. “This time I don’t even rate an in-person visit.”
“I’m sorry,” Josie said across the telephone line. “I don’t have time to go chasing you across the tri-state area.”
“Of course not,” he said. “You’re much too busy worrying about whether or not an airplane is going to crash into your office building—”
“Stop it!” Josie said. “Just stop it, and listen to me.”
“Why? Joze, I’ve heard it all before—”
“Our computer system’s been infected with a virus.”
Cooper was silent.
“Somehow it got past all the protection programs,” Josie went on. “We’re working around the clock to save what we can, but it’s bad, Coop.” Her voice shook. “Best case scenario—we only lose the equivalent of two months work on the Fenderson Project. Two
months.
And I haven’t even begun to get an idea of what other projects we’ve lost.”
“Backup disks.” Cooper finally spoke. “What about your backups?”
“The disks were infected, too,” Josie said. She laughed, and there was a tinge of hysteria in her voice. “With all the amazing catastrophes I’ve come up with, I never once considered the possibility of a virus. Ironic, huh?”
“I’m sorry,” Cooper said, sitting heavily down at the kitchen table.
“Please come home,” she said.
He rested his forehead against the palm of one hand. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Josie said. “Now that you know the reason I was so late yesterday evening—”
“I feel for you, Josie, I really do,” Cooper said. “I wish I could support you—I know that I should be there for you, but this time, I don’t know, I can’t. Something snapped last night, and I just can’t do it.”
“Please—”
“Even if I did come back, I wouldn’t see you, would I?” he said. “You’re going to be at the office round the clock until you get a handle on how much damage has been done, right?”
“We’re still working on saving files,” Josie admitted. “I may not see the light of day for about two weeks.”
“And then what?” Cooper asked.
Josie sighed. “Then we’ll know how much we really lost, and how much overtime we’ll have to put in to catch up again.”
“Overtime,” Cooper said flatly.
“Cooper, we have a deadline, and suddenly we’re two months behind,” Josie said. She sounded exhausted. “And that’s the
best
case. Worst case—Lord, I don’t even want to think about
that.”
“So you’re going to get out the whips, make everyone work twice as long and hard, and give the entire office ulcers and ruin
their
marriages,” Cooper said. “Simply to meet a deadline.”
“What else do you suggest?” Josie asked, her temper flaring.
“Call Fenderson,” Cooper didn’t hesitate to say. “Call what’s-his-name, the VP—Mr. Saunders. Call him and tell him what happened. Tell him you need an extension.”
“No,” Josie said. “No, I won’t do that. It would jeopardize any chance we have of doing business with them in the future. If the word got out—and it would—it would jeopardize our reputation. It would jeopardize everything.”
“Not everything,” he said. “Just the business. By
not
calling Fenderson you’re jeopardizing everything else.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Think about what you really want, Josie,” Cooper said quietly. “Think hard over the next few weeks. And if I’m still in the top ten, give me a call. You know where to find me.”
Ben grinned up at Cooper.
He was loaded with Lucy’s sticky white glue, and had managed to cover himself with confetti-like pieces of bright colored paper. He held his arms out to Cooper, asking silently to be picked up.
But Cooper crossed his arms. “I don’t know,
chico,”
he said. “I’m thinking this time, we might just hang you on the wall. You make a fine looking piece of art.”
Lucy looked up from the kitchen table, where she was busy drawing with Cooper’s set of charcoal sticks. She giggled.
Ben crowed and clapped his hands.
“Chico,”
he said, “Ah-wa.”
“He said ‘ah-wa,’ ” Lucy said. “He said a new word.”
Cooper’s eyebrows went up. “Ah-wa?” he repeated. “Is that Martian or Mercurian? Or maybe from one of the outer planets?”
Ben precariously pushed himself up into a standing position and wobbled toward Cooper. He lost his balance and sat down with a thump at Cooper’s feet. But he only smiled more broadly, lifting his arms up toward Cooper again.
“Chico,”
he said remarkably clearly. “Ah-wa.” When Cooper again didn’t respond immediately, he began to bounce up and down, still sitting down. “Ah-wa,” he said again. “Ah-wa. Ah-wa. Ah-wa.”
Cooper was mystified. “What is he saying, Luce?”
“Ah-wa,” Lucy said as if the meaning was obvious. She turned back to her drawing. “He wants to take a shower.”
Agua.
It was Spanish for water.
“Do you want to take a shower?” Cooper asked Ben, slipping easily into Spanish.
The baby clapped his hands gleefully, then pushed himself up onto his feet again. But Cooper grabbed him before he could run out of the kitchen, leaving a trail of confetti behind him.
“You know what I think?” Cooper said, the realization hitting him suddenly. “I think you get yourself all messy because you like taking showers. And you know what else I think?”
Ben hugged Cooper, coating him liberally with glue.
“I think I’m going to try giving you a shower
before
you get yourself all messy,” Cooper said. “Then maybe we can skip the mess making—permanently. What do you say to that,
chico
?”
“Ah-wa!” Ben announced.
“Yes, sir,” Cooper said. “One heavy dose of
agua,
coming right up.”
Josie’s alarm went off at eight a.m., and she tiredly pulled herself out of bed and into the bathroom.
For ten days in a row, she’d gone to sleep no earlier than four, and woken up no later than eight in the morning. David, too, had been at the office continuously. He’d slept for three nights curled up on the couch in his office, before Josie realized how uncomfortable that surely was. She told him he could sleep in her bed—as long as she wasn’t in it. So they slept in shifts. David usually crashed around eleven, got up at three, and went back for a nap around lunchtime.
Her stomach burned, and she popped an antacid before she stepped into the shower.
Lord, this was the pits.
She missed Cooper. Every day, as they discovered more completely the extent of damage that the computer virus had done, Josie realized that she was going to have to keep on missing Cooper. She knew now that they had lost the equivalent of three months’ worth of work on the Fenderson project. And in order to meet their deadline in seven months, she’d have to keep up this grueling pace.
No one had figured out where the computer virus had come from. Her senior staff was calling it an act of God.
Or maybe it was a test from God.
Josie froze, water streaming down over her head.
It
was
a test—a test to see which had more power over her, her business or her family. Which ruled her, the things that she needed, or the things that she wanted?
She wanted her family. She wanted Cooper. She even wanted Lucy and Ben. She loved the children. And she loved Cooper. God, how she loved Cooper.
But she
needed
her business, and her business had won. Hands down.
It was clear to see that she’d failed the test.
Miserably.
She’d failed, and she’d lost Cooper—maybe even for good.
Cooper walked with Lucy and Ben around the outside of the house, hunting for crocuses.
“There’s a purple one!” Lucy shouted excitedly. “Two, no, three! No! A gazillion! Hot dog! Look at ’em all—baby flowers, hiding under the leaves!”
“Hot dog! Hot dog!” shouted Ben, running in a wobbly circle around Cooper.
Cooper knelt down and grabbed Ben, holding him still and pointing his face and his attention directly toward the budding flowers. “See?” Cooper said. “Aren’t they pretty?
Muy bonita?
”
Ben’s brown eyes were wide as he stared at the flowers. “Cookie?” he said, then looked up at Cooper and grinned.
Lucy dissolved in laughter. “He says they’re cookies,” she said.
“Ben says everything’s a cookie,” Cooper said with a smile. “I think that’s his idea of stand-up comedy.”
“What’s this?” Lucy asked, pointing to a green shoot that stood taller than the crocuses.
“That’s going to be a daffodil,” Cooper said.
“What’s a . . .”
“Daffodil,” Cooper said again, more slowly this time. “It’s another spring flower. It’s bright yellow, with trumpet-like petals in the middle of . . .” He fished in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out an old grocery list. He took his pen from the inside pocket. “Let me draw it for you.”
As Lucy watched, he quickly sketched a daffodil. “Picture this all yellow,” he said.
“Pretty,” Lucy said.
“Yeah,” Cooper said. “They were always Josie’s favorite spring flower. Daisies in the summer and daffodils in the spring . . .”
He stared down at the green shoots. It was almost spring. Somehow they’d made it to the end of the winter. They’d made it, but had they survived?
“Cooper . . .”
“Yeah, Luce?” Cooper straightened, wadding up the paper and stuffing it back into his pocket.
“Is Josie gonna come back?” Lucy asked, her little face serious. “Or did she go to heaven, too, like Mommy and Daddy, and now we can’t go and see her, even if we want to?”
A flood of emotion hit Cooper full in the chest, as if he’d suddenly been tackled by the New York Giants’ linebackers. Josie, dead? God, the thought made him sick to his stomach. Never to see her again, never to hold her in his arms, never to listen to the music of her laughter . . .
“No,” he managed to say. “No, honey, Josie’s not in heaven. She’s in New York. There was a big problem at her work, and she’s really busy right now.”
Lucy smiled with relief. “That’s good,” she said. “I was a little scared.”
Long after Lucy and Ben had fallen asleep, Cooper sat staring into the crackling fire.
Lucy’s words kept echoing in his mind. That little girl still missed her parents terribly. She still loved them, she still called out for her mother when she woke from a bad dream, still cried when she realized her mother wasn’t there to hold her.
Lucy wasn’t going to see her beloved parents again. Not now, not ever, at least not on earth. She loved them, but they were dead, and her love, as strong as it was, couldn’t bring them back.
But Josie wasn’t dead.
Cooper loved Josie, he missed her, he even sometimes cried at night from a sense of loss, the way Lucy cried for her parents. But, God! Miracle of miracles, Josie was still alive! She was in New York, which, even under the best of conditions, couldn’t possibly be confused with heaven, Cooper thought with a laugh, using the palms of his hands to blot his eyes dry.
He hadn’t lost Josie for good, the way Lucy and Ben had lost their parents. And as long as both he and Josie were alive and kicking, he had a shot at getting her back. And dammit, he did want her back. But he didn’t want the overworked, ill, unhappy, worried Josie.
No, he wanted the Josie who sang along with the radio, the Josie who baked not one but three apple pies because she overestimated how many apples she should buy. He wanted the Josie who could meet his gaze across the room at a crowded party, and with one small smile make him totally, incredibly hot for her. He wanted the Josie who insisted on seeing every single Sylvester Stallone movie on the very day it was released. He wanted the Josie who knew how to laugh and dance and make love to him so absolutely perfectly.
But right now that Josie came with the unhappy Josie—they were an attached set, inseparable, two for the price of one. Still, he knew that she wanted to conquer her fears, she wanted to escape from the trap she’d made, for herself. Cooper sighed. She wanted to, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t found the motivation she’d needed to go through with her plans to change—especially not after the computer virus hit. And even then, the thought of losing Cooper hadn’t been enough to motivate her.
But she
did
want to change, he argued with himself. And sure, getting her to go through with her plans, making sure she stuck to her schedule of visits with Dr. Santana, that wasn’t going to be easy or fun. In fact, he suspected that the next seven months or more were going to be sheer hell. But hadn’t he vowed he’d love her for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad?
Times were bad, there was no denying that. Yeah, it was bad—or was it?
Cooper found his thoughts coming full circle. Josie was alive. And as long as she was alive, as long as he hadn’t lost her permanently, things weren’t
really
all that bad.
He reached for the phone and dialed Josie’s private line.
As it rang, Cooper glanced at his watch. It was late—after one o’clock in the morning—but he had to talk to her now: Right now.
“ ’Lo?” The voice that answered the telephone was not Josie’s. This voice was thick with sleep and very male.
“David?!” Cooper got a sudden vivid picture of David Chase lying in
his
bed, skinny arms wrapped around
his
wife—”Oh, Jesus.”
“Cooper?” David cleared his throat. Cooper could picture him sitting up, shaking the cobwebs from his head, turning on the lamp on the bedside table. He could picture Josie, too, squinting in the sudden light.
“Yeah,” Cooper said tightly. “Surprise, surprise. I guess you weren’t expecting me to call, huh?”
“At one a.m.?” David said. He sighed. “Well, actually, it really doesn’t surprise me. You always were something of a night owl.”
“How’s my bed?” Cooper asked. “Comfy enough for you?”
“I’d prefer a softer mattress,” David said, “but after sleeping on my sofa, I’m not about to complain. But you didn’t call to chat with me, right? You want to talk to Josie.”
“No, actually, I don’t,” Cooper said. He felt sick to his stomach. Things
were
bad. Truly, horribly bad. He
had
lost Josie permanently. “But you can give her a message from me. Tell her to watch for papers from my lawyer. Tell her I’m filing for a divorce.”