Mel laughs.
We finish, grab our jackets and leave, first stopping to talk to Lyle the director who’s frustrated and pacing. Life is horrible. This biz has driven him back to smoking. He could have been a lawyer.
“Everyone wants something else, huh?” Mel quips.
He doesn’t smile. We commiserate and I check the shooting schedule. Today is Monday; they’ll be filming tomorrow, the last day before everyone leaves, but they won’t need me for a roof scene in Brooklyn.
Good.
More time to do things like peel apples, bake pies, make homemade orange juice. I have the most intense craving to do those things. As Peter said about his garden, it’s therapy….
We walk toward Greenwich Street. Mel kicks leaves, I call to tell them I’ll be coming back early. At the other end, children’s squeals. They have the week off from school.
I disconnect. Mel asks how it’s going with their psychiatrist. Her name is Poppy and she draws cartoons.
“She’s unbelievable,” I say. “Makes them laugh. Draws Danger Mouse, Super Friends, Dora in the City - she’s so terrific. Super Friends overcoming trouble is best, gets them to talk, feel better. The only thing that brings them down again is…”
“Peter?”
“Yes. His pleurisy.”
There was an infection; the membrane surrounding his affected lung remains inflamed. He’s been coughing, having terrible chest pain. The doctor said it should get better, but in the meantime it’s even hard to sleep; he keeps waking, coughing painfully. Peter says it’s punishment for his sins. I try to counter that Fate saves those who are essentially good.
Mel frowns sorrowfully. “The kids must make the connection…between the pleurisy and the shooting?”
“Abby does. That’s the one area where she feels fury at her mother. Last week, Peter coughed up blood. She got hysterical, couldn’t stop crying.”
“Oh, poor kid.”
“We’ve told her it will get better.”
“Does she still want to be a doctor?”
“Yes, but she’s six. Teddy says he does too, but he copies everything she says.”
Our pace slows as we approach the intersection. We hug and say ‘bye for now.
“You really going to roast that turkey?” Mel teases.
“Yup, twenty pounds unstuffed,” I smile. “It’s thawing on the terrace; looks cute on its chaise longue. Bring friends, tell Joe. Come hungry.”
“Twenty pounds! You’re crazy!”
“You’re just noticing?”
Mel grins, waves and heads south on Greenwich.
I head north, and jog the remaining eight blocks to Charles Street. It takes a whole twelve minutes because of pedestrians and my not being quite ready to defy traffic lights.
Still, not bad for someone who not so long ago was practically crawling around on all fours. Peter and I were like patients together. Bed rest…so much bed rest. We played a lot of Scrabble, and with the kids Go Fish and Chutes and Ladders. When things improved, I busted my chops to get back into shape, in no small part by jogging everywhere.
And there it is…oh my…the heart swells as I trot up the once-feared service alley and mount the terrace. I open the French doors to a kitchen aromatic with the scent of cinnamon and pumpkin, an oven already pre-heated, and Mary, grinning, wearing two red oven mitts.
Teddy flies at me like a little tackle, wanting hugs. Abby hugs too, then beams and hops a little dance.
“Now?” she chirps. In one hand she wags two or three yellow cellophane bags full of chocolate chips. In her other hand she holds a chilled cylinder of chocolate chip cookie dough. “Now?”
“Wow!” I say, “how many chocolate chips did you buy? Let me get this off first.”
Peter crutches in from the parlor, wearing jeans and a dark sweatshirt. One-handed, he helps me off with my jacket, tosses it and hugs me, his face dropped to the crook of my neck. “Missed you,” he whispers complainingly, and the children grin. Teddy’s still hugging my leg. Abby sings and hops and waves her yellow cellophane bags.
“They’ve been driving me nuts,” Peter says low, cracking a smile. “You promised the world’s best chocolate chip cookies; you’d better deliver.”
“You’ll love ‘em, too,” I smile. “You’ll be helpless to resist.”
He’s lost weight since the pleurisy. His shoulders feel bony and there are pouches beneath his cheekbones. He’s still handsome but I worry; peer hard into his eyes. “How’s today’s…breathing?”
He inhales, to show me he can inhale. Then he bends away and coughs only a little, gripping his crutch for support. “See? Better.”
“Much better!” Mary exults, clanging and banging out cookie sheets. “He’s only coughed twice since noon!” Then she looks almost tearful. “It really is going to be Thanksgiving. Now, about these wonder cookies…”
I wash up at the sink and turn back to the island, flexing my artiste fingers. “This is a secret formula, y’know,” I tell them with my eyebrows raised.
Big grins.
I cut open the cookie dough, spoon chunks of it onto a cookie sheet. “Small blobs if you want little cookies, big if you want big.”
“Huge!” Teddy yells. Peter smiles, ruffles his hair.
I scrape the last bits of dough from the plastic wrapper, and survey the neat ranks of cookie blobs. “Now for the good part.” I look from Teddy to Abby. “You’ve washed your hands?”
“Yes! Yes!”
I add chocolate chips to the first cookie blob. Press them down slightly; add more. “The secret is, put in so many chips you can’t even see the cookie!” I open the yellow bag wider so the little chocolate nuggets spill out onto the island.
“Okay, you do it.”
Happy fingers get to work pressing in chips. Peter helps. Cookie blobs fill and darken. I check with Mary about the baking time and temperature, then see Peter tilt his head toward the parlor.
“Step into my office?” he says.
I follow him.
58
There’s a fire going in the fireplace. He leans his crutch against the sofa, lowers himself into it, and we kiss. Then we sprawl into each other, nuzzling for long, relieved moments. We don’t like being apart.
“Happy,” I whisper.
“Ditto,” he says, pulling me tighter. “I don’t deserve to feel this good.”
“Yes, you do. Would I love a bad guy?”
The coffee table is strewn with his iPad and printouts from MarketWatch, Barrons, and Bloomberg. CNBC burbles softly on the wide-screen, but he isn’t listening. Too soon, he tried going back to work four days a week and wound up exhausting himself, coughing worse. Now he’s going in three days a week, but has cut his hours back and does much by telecom anyway. “It’s an addiction,” he apologized once, hanging up from a call to Tokyo. “It’s like the pulse of the world. The global fever chart.”
Even on that first post-surgery day in the hospital, his work pals came running in, round-eyed and really emotional. Then, after commiseration and pacing and hand wringing…what did they talk about?
The market. That’s all they’re able to talk about. The doctor had to kick them out.
Although…says Poppy the wonder child shrink…any passion is good if it helps take your mind off yourself.
Peter flicks the TV off, then turns and touches his finger to my cheek. “Makeup,” he smiles. “Orange.”
“Must’ve missed it. I scrubbed in a mad rush.”
He wipes it away with his thumb. “Impatient to get back?”
“Yes. For the cookies.”
He smiles. His hair has grown longish and a little wild. He looks like a rocker. I lean into him, push a dark strand off his brow. “That realtor called me again today.”
“Tell him to stop.”
“I did.”
Briefly, I considered subletting or selling my apartment, but not yet; I’m not ready. Peter’s Fifth Avenue place is already on the market, its furniture with it and go
od riddance. He has also resumed talking about buying a place in Connecticut, closer to the city, maybe; midway between work and fishing and hayrides and picking apples. It sounds glorious.
So only my place still has a question mark hanging over it. I was there again yesterday, wandering through it, touching everything. How can I let go of that shrine of memories?
I’ve said it would break my heart. Peter said sometimes your heart has to break to make you move on. I know, I know….
“While you’re mulling,” he says quietly, “bring your dad’s desk here? I love it.” He pulls me closer, and closer still till our brows touch. Something seems to be on his mind. Then he stiffens, turns away and coughs, a wracking maybe fifteen seconds of coughing not as bad as it’s been - I shift, seize his shoulders - but still he’s all hunched, wincing and reddened.
“Bring everything…please?” he croaks as breath returns. “I want us to be a family.”
I feel stricken and it shows. “That one was bad.”
“Today was better, really. I was just getting emotional.”
“It sounded worse!”
“Emotion, honest.”
I stare at him, dubious and troubled.
He looks at me lovingly, pushes a stray strand of hair from my brow. Then his hand reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a small box of navy-colored velvet. He opens it, and shows me a diamond ring. Modest. Nothing I’d be embarrassed to wear, because we’ve talked about this.
“Will you marry me?”
We’ve skirted this topic but I still feel a little shocked.
“It’s beautiful,” I gasp; look at the ring, look into his eyes. “But I thought we were going to…”
“Wait?”
“Until…I don’t know. Shouldn’t we? Wait?”
He looks down at the ring. “I haven’t been this happy ever, not in my whole life – which, I’ve discovered, is short,” he says slowly. “My parents knew after three days and nights together that that was it for them…forever - and you’re the bravest, strongest, sweetest woman I’ve ever met. You’re the only one I’ve ever been able to open up to and be vulnerable with-”
“I have flaws you still don’t know about!” I whisper, feeling my eyes fill. “I don’t like it when my peas and mashed potatoes touch-”
“-and that’s not counting the fact that we saved each other’s lives. That is some bond.” Peter’s eyes plead. “Could waiting years change that? Could anyone ever seem more right?”
I press my hands to his cheeks; bring my brow to his and close my eyes…seeing first that my hesitation has hurt him.
Weeks ago, during a particularly bad night, he was in pain and feeling needy and first broached the subject of marriage…so soon that it scared me. Then, though I still felt scared, I realized that this felt too right to be a gamble. Alex and I lived together for over two years before we married, and then we went south. Now I understand that what Alex and I never, ever had is…what Peter and I had on that first night together. The fainting, the ice pack, the sweet kindness - and then going through the fire together! Nothing I ever experience will come close to that.
“…a long engagement if you like,” Peter is saying, looking disappointedly back down to his little velvet box. “We can wait till January or June, or whenever you’d like…”
My heart swells and I plunge.
It’s the instinctive plunges I’ve made in my life that I don’t regret, and in a tide of love and joy I thought I’d never feel again, I throw my arms around him and squeeze him. “Yes, yes,” I whisper. “Let’s…do it…become a family.” I squeeze him harder, then he grins and kisses and kisses me, then holds me tight for long, precious moments, and when I finally pull back again I’m crying, swiping at tears with my fingers.
He teases. Brings out a box of tissues he had hidden under a pillow.
“Ohh, you…” Now I’m laughing and crying, both.
The aroma of cookies fills the air. Molten chocolate. We turn toward the kitchen and the clamor of Mary filling a plate.
“Sugar shock time,” Peter says, one arm still around me.
Teddy’s face is the picture of little-boy concentration as he carries in the platter, puts it proudly on the table. We push away MarketWatch and Bloomberg and the rest. Mary brings glasses of milk. Abby brings pretty napkins trilling, “Party!” The children plant themselves between us.
Next, delirium as we demolish the cookies. “Ooh.” “Yum!” “Omigod, these are good.” The plate empties before the chocolate can cool, and small, happy faces wear smears. Mary runs for a damp cloth to wipe.
“You have got to make more of these,” Peter tells me.
“No, we will!” Teddy says; and Abby asks, “Can we make more again soon? Have a never ending supply?”
We hug them. Over their heads we trade looks, and nod.
Yes, we tell them. There will be more cookies soon. A never ending supply.
Author’s Note
Hello, and thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this book, I would love to ask you a favor to please leave a little review for it. Here’s the link to do that. It would mean so much.
If you do write a review, or comment on your favorite social media, I’d love to hear from you and thank you. Here’s my Facebook author page and my email is [email protected]
A new thriller’s in the works, so please join my Newsletter at http://jaschneiderauthor.net and/or follow me on BookBub (click upper right). You’ll be the first to know about sales or new books about to release.
Huge thanks again for reading!
Joyce ☺
About the Author
Joyce Anne Schneider is a former writer at Newsweek. She is the author of the EMBRYO medical thriller series, the police/psychological thrillers featuring NYPD Detective Kerri Blasco, and the standalone thrillers Into the Dark and Girl Watching You.
When not writing she’s usually thinking about writing and dreaming up new stories, and can rarely be seen without her trusty laptop. She loves to hear from her readers. Her website is http://jaschneiderauthor.net, her email address is [email protected], and come say hi on Facebook. You can also join her website Newsletter to hear about sales and new books about to release. She lives with her family in Connecticut, loves gardening, and is working on her next thriller.
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