Reunion in October (The Calendar Girls Book 2) (13 page)

Still bubbly on our conversation, I clambered up and into the tub again to peek out my bathroom window. A heartbeat later, my phone, still clutched in my hand, rang. The vibration against my palm startled me, and I dropped the receiver against the porcelain, but quickly fumbled to pick it up. “Hello?”

“Stop spying on me and go get some sleep.”

Oh, God! Josh could see me? I flattened myself against the tile wall. “I’m not spying on you. I’m just scrubbing my tile walls.” Oh, yeah, did I mention what a lousy liar I am?

“Uh-huh. Whatever gives you comfort, babe. I have to go back to work, and you really should get some sleep. I can’t have my favorite superhero too exhausted to save lives. Now, forget your…
ahem!
...bathroom tile, go to your pretty bedroom with the pretty sleigh bed and pretty yellow sheets, climb in, and close your eyes. Dream about me, okay?”

I gasped. He’d described my furnishings perfectly. “How do you know what my bedroom looks like?”

“You left your blinds open this morning. You might want to remember there are a bunch of men with a clear view of your second story a football field away.”

Ohmigod. Sinking to my haunches in the tub, I sucked in a sharp breath. Were all those workmen watching everything I did in my house?

Josh’s chuckles rippled across my flesh. “Relax, Frannie. I’m the only guy peeking in your windows. I figure, since you’re peeking out at me, I get to do the same to you. Fair’s fair, right?”

A bolt of anger charged through me. Did he think he was funny? Because I was
not
amused. “Wrong,” I retorted and immediately hung up. Racing into my bedroom, I drew the blinds, then grabbed one of my pillows and the sunny yellow counterpane. I practically flew downstairs to my den. I’d sleep on the sofa in there, secure in the knowledge
no one
could see me. I’d barely placed my head on the bolster when my phone rang again. I picked up the receiver from its station on the end table and barked, “I’m done debating with you, Josh. Don’t call me again.”

“Francesca?” a different voice said.

Shoot me now
. “Michael?”

“Yes. Sorry to disappoint you. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No,” I said on a sigh. “I was just going to bed before work tonight.”

“Oh, well, then I won’t keep you. I wanted to know if you got the flowers I sent you.”

I rubbed a fingertip across my brow. A slow, dull ache brewed between my temples. “Yes, I got them.”

“You…um…you didn’t call,” he replied. “I thought you might…to say thank you, you know?”

He was right. I should have called to thank him, even if I didn’t keep the roses. Shame burned hot and harsh, drying my throat to dust. When did I become so rude? Was this part of Josh’s influence on me, this selfish child act? I swallowed hard and chewed on my lip. An angel on my shoulder chastised me for my behavior. I had loved Michael once. And he had loved me. Maybe I should give him a second chance.

“You’re right, Michael, and I’m sorry. The roses were beautiful. And very sweet of you. Thank you.”

“I’d like to take you to dinner, too,” he said, relief evident in his tone. “Is there a night you’re free?”

Thursday, which I’d already promised to Josh. “I’m on the graveyard shift all week.” Still, I wanted to atone for my misbehavior somehow. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come over for breakfast tomorrow?”

“How about I take you
out
for breakfast tomorrow?”

“Really? Are you sure?” The old Michael never liked to go out for breakfast. He’d always found it wasteful to go to a restaurant for basic bacon and eggs, which could be made easily at home at a fraction of the cost.

“Absolutely. You’ll have to choose the place, though. I can’t believe how many businesses have changed hands since I’ve been gone.”

A weird silence built up between us, and I guessed we both thought about that night five years ago at the airport. When I found myself hugging the pillow to my chest, I cleared my throat and forced away the bittersweet memory. “The old standards are still the same: Mama’s Hen House and Parsons Drive-Thru. We’ve also got a diner now. We could go to any one of those three since the clientele will be mostly locals. Who knows? You might even run into some old friends.”

“Would that make you uncomfortable? We could go to Bridgehampton, if you’re afraid someone might see us. I doubt the gossips in this town have changed much. They see you and me together, rumors will fly, and your mother will have the church booked for next Sunday.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted.” Was he testing me?

“Not if you’re not ready. I told you, I screwed up. I don’t expect you to take me back and marry me next week—no matter what your mother wants. I’m just glad you’re willing to talk to me right now. The rest will come with time, or…” He paused and exhaled a loud breath. “…it won’t.”

I stifled my suspicions and erased the sound of Josh chiding me in my head. Who died and made him my conscience anyway? “Pick me up at eight?”

“You bet. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me, too,” I said, and I was surprised to realize I meant it. “I’ll see you then.”

Chapter 10

Emily

On my second day in the hospital, I toyed with a lump of beige meat—chicken? Salisbury steak?—swimming in shiny-topped brown gravy. Dr. Stewart had ordered a low-fat, low-sodium, no-taste, and apparently, no-recognition diet for my stay here. For all I knew, this wasn’t meat at all, but some kind of tofu patty.

I’d pretty much given up identifying today’s lunch without a CSI team when a hesitant voice said, “Emily?”

Dropping my fork, I glanced up into the worried expression of Ambrose Chase peering from the foot of my snoring roommate’s bed. “Mr. Chase.” I waved him closer and rolled my bed tray with the unappetizing lunch out of the way. I had no intention of eating that slop anyway. “Come in. Please.”

“I won’t stay long,” he said, inching toward the visitor’s chair, but never making any move to sit. “I just wanted to be sure you were all right.” He stared at the floor. Either a stain on the linoleum fascinated him, or he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with me—a complete one-eighty from the guy I met yesterday who hammered me with research questions. “You…umm…had us all pretty worried.”

His obvious discomfort embarrassed me, and I wondered what I’d done at the library to make him so ill-at-ease now. Had I vomited on him? Wet my pants? Said something totally inappropriate before I hit the ground? Whatever had occurred, I’d have to try to smooth over the bumps with casual conversation. After all, Dr. Stewart said I owed this man my life. “Thanks for knowing what to do,” I said. “With the CPR, I mean.”

“Well, to be honest, I’ve…umm…I’ve never done CPR before. You got lucky. I’d just done the research for my book. I mean, like, an hour before you and I met in the library. I was doing all the compressions and stuff from memory. Once Miss Lydia got through to the 911 dispatcher, though, they talked me through the step-by-step. So, you see, you shouldn’t really thank me. Without the directions, I would’ve screwed up and made things worse for you, trust me.”

As I watched him shuffling his feet, staring at the walls, never making eye contact, I couldn’t tell if he had an inflated case of low self-esteem or false modesty. “Who was manning the calls over there?” I asked. “At the precinct, I mean. Rowena or Jake?”

“Jake, I guess. It was a man, so I’d say it was Jake, though I didn’t get a name.”

“Good.” I let out a relieved sigh and settled back against my pillow. “Rowena still needs to read the book to give the step-by-step.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“It can be. If you don’t know what to do off-script, you aren’t fully prepared for any possible eventuality. People in an emergency situation don’t have a book to go by, you know?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“Lemme put it this way.” I sat up again. “Suppose you’re in a case like what happened with you and me. I go down, you start CPR, based on what you remember, and by the time dispatch gets involved you’ve already screwed up one or two of the steps. Should Jake go back to Step One and make you start all over or should he know how to improvise?”

At last, my visitor sank into the chair beside my bed, his wide eyes and slack jaw showing how engaged he’d grown regarding our discussion. I probably awakened the writer in him. “Improvise, I suppose.”

I wagged an index finger. “Not necessarily. It all depends on what steps you’ve screwed up and how I’m responding to what you’ve done so far. Jake’s good at figuring things out on the fly. Rowena…” I shook my head. “…not so much.”

“And you? Are you a by-the-book-girl, or can you work off-script?”

“I’m somewhere in the middle,” I admitted with a rueful curl to my lip. “It all depends on the scenario. Of the three of us, Jake’s got the most experience. He was an Army corpsman. Did a lot of triage in the first Gulf War and has the nerves of steel to prove it. I, on the other hand, got my training here at home.”

“You were a soldier?”

I laughed. “God, no! I’m just a mom.”

“And a wife,” a woman’s voice said, followed by the click of heels on the floor and the entrance of my greatest nightmare.

My mother-in-law had arrived in her usual indomitable way—like an army tank in designer clothes and a fur-trimmed coat. Her perfectly made-up face mirrored disapproval at the hospital room, at Ambrose, and of course, at me. Sylvia Handler intimidated everyone, from the snootiest salesclerk, to her only daughter-in-law, to the meanest foreign dictator.

“Emily,” she said. “I see you’re feeling up to entertaining visitors. Perhaps your condition isn’t as serious as we were led to believe.”

I didn’t need a crystal ball to know those words were meant in the most unkind way possible. Not that there was another way to interpret them. Roy’s mother always thought the worst of me. And today, when she showed up here and found a strange man seated at my bedside, the two of us smiling at each other, she’d naturally jump to the worst possible conclusion. The fact that Ambrose Chase was blond, blue-eyed, and worst of all, a good-looking younger man, would only add to her negative assumptions. So the faster I defused this ticking time bomb, the best, for everyone’s sake.

“Mrs. Handler, this is Mr. Chase,” I said. “He stopped by to make sure I was okay. You know, after he saved my life yesterday.”

My mother-in-law did a visible double-take, her expression transforming from suspicious to cool, but welcoming. “Really? Well, then, Mr. Chase, we should probably thank you for your heroics on behalf of our dear Emily.”

“Oh, hey, no. Please.” Ambrose stood and surrendered the visitor’s chair. “It was nothing. I’m just glad I was there. If she hadn’t agreed to talk to me about my book, she might have been in the car with Luke when it happened and then who knows…”

An icy shiver rippled through me. He made a valid point. What if I’d been on the highway? “You really did save my life,” I said, my tone tinged with awe. “And my son’s.”

“No, God, no.” His eyes darted to the door, and he skirted around my bed. “It was luck. Really. I’m just glad you’re okay. Maybe when you’re umm…better…umm…you could contact me about that research?” He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket. “All my info is on here.” Like a squirrel on the interstate, he zipped left then right then left again, and finally placed the card on the counter near the sink before racing out of the room with one parting, “Take care now.”

I couldn’t blame him for running away. My mother-in-law had the exact same effect on me. But since I’d married her son, I had no easy escape.

****

“Honestly, Emily, you should have taken better care of yourself.”

I stared out the window of my hospital room at the autumnal treetops and waited for the rest of the criticism that was sure to follow. My mother-in-law did not disappoint.

“Roy works hard enough to support you and your children without having you add to his burden.”

Me and
my
children. Like Roy had nothing to do with their conception. That was my mother-in-law. In her opinion, I’d ruined her son’s life by getting myself pregnant and tying him to me for twenty-one years. Then I’d compounded his sentence by continuing to force him to breed with me, restarting the clock on another twenty-one years over and over again.

“And of all times, too,” she continued. “Your father-in-law and I just got back from our cruise last week. I haven’t even finished all our laundry. Now, here we are, traveling again to deal with your children while you recuperate from this…” She waved a perfectly manicured hand, and sunlight glinted off the circle of diamonds on her ring finger. “…attack of yours.”

After Dr. Stewart had advised I’d be here for about a week, Roy had called his parents, who flew up from Florida to take care of things at home while he continued to work and I was in the hospital. I would have preferred someone more pleasant to deal with—Freddy Kreuger came to mind. According to what Roy told me when he shared his plans yesterday, my in-laws were only supposed to get the kids off to school and Luke to daycare each morning. The rest of the day was theirs to do what they wanted. He’d be home by mid-afternoon to stay with the kids at night.

Happy to return to Snug Harbor and the habits he left behind, my father-in-law immediately hooked up with his old cronies at the Elks Club. He’d popped in twice to see me, kiss my head, mutter, “Get well, kiddo,” and disappear again. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, opted to spend her free time babysitting me here at the hospital. Just what I needed to speed up my recovery: endless hours with Sylvia Handler and her vocal disapproval.

“I didn’t set out to have a heart attack, Mrs. Handler.” Mrs. Handler. Not Sylvia or Mom. Never. Between us, that impenetrable wall would always remain.

“Well, of course you didn’t.” She clucked her tongue at me. “Sometimes, you say the strangest things.”             

Ditto
. The phrase popped into my head, but I didn’t dare say it aloud. I could just imagine how her arrival in Snug Harbor went the other day. Before the taxi pulled to a complete stop, she would have noticed the unfinished improvement projects and the general disarray of her former home. She’d take in the pot-holed driveway, the uncut grass, the clutter everywhere, the dust on the ceiling fixtures. Oh, she wouldn’t say anything—she never did. At least, not at first.