The Love of a Stranger

by Jeffrey, Anna

  ****

  Alex dropped the cats, then tightened the belt of her robe and stepped outside into the chill. Ted had already reached the bottom of the deck stairs. By the time she hop-scotched across the cold, wet planks, his truck had turned down the driveway. She began to shiver in the damp morning air and went back into the house. She shut the door firmly and rested her forehead against it for a moment, the pain and disappointment in Ted’s dark eyes hanging in her memory like a dark curtain.

  Returning to the kitchen, she found Doug spooning cat food onto two plates. The cats paced and meowed and brushed his pants legs with cat excitement.

  “I forgot to call him and tell him I was home,” she said. “Why didn’t you say something? Or do something?”

  Doug held a spoonful of cat food suspended. “Like what?”

  She crossed her arms. “I don't know. We should’ve done something.”

  Doug laid the spoon on the breakfast bar and rounded the end, stopping where she stood. “C’mere.” He pulled her into his arms. “Did you think we could keep this hidden from Ted?”

  “No, but I didn't intend to drop it on him like a concrete block. He’s a friend.”

  “He’s my friend, too, Alex. More than that. Once he was more like a brother than my natural brother. I know him. He has to sort this out and he will. He just needs a little time.”

  Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and she shook her head. “I don’t like hurting a friend. I don’t have that many in the first place.”

  Doug kissed her brow, then tucked her head against his shoulder, petting her hair and rubbing her neck with his thumb. Being petted was such an alien experience, she didn’t know how to reject it. And maybe she didn’t want to.

  “So you’ve always known how he felt about you?”

  “I didn’t encourage him. I never made him think there was anything but friendship between us.”

  Maizie and Robert Redford yowled in harmony and she glanced to where they were sitting at the back door. “They want to go out and I have to wipe my nose.”

  Doug produced his handkerchief, dried her eyes and wiped her nose. He framed her face with his hands and looked into her eyes. “And a pretty nose it is.” He kissed the tip. "When I first met you, I wouldn’t have guessed you’d care about Ted’s feelings.”

  “Well, I do have a reputation to live up to.”

  He smiled and kissed her. “He isn’t mad. He’s coming to terms with something hard. I’ll talk to him.”

  ****

  Reaching the county road, Ted finally stopped, yanked his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose. He had taken her. His oldest and best friend had taken the woman with whom he had been in love for six long years. There was nothing left to be said. He drove through town, nosed his pickup north toward the mountains, lost in his thoughts.

  His stomach felt as if somebody had slugged him, like back in high school and football. He still remembered how a hard belly blow felt. Funny. Being hit in the stomach hadn’t bothered Doug all that much. Doug just plowed on, never cried uncle, never said he’d had enough. He had that thing in his gut, like that damn coyote over in the Oregon desert. That was the fundamental characteristic he shared with Alex, the thing that made them alike. Hell, they deserved each other.

  What had made him, ordinary Ted Benson, think he might have a future with a woman like Alex? What did they have in common? On his best days he was no match for her. His buddies were right in their criticism of how she treated him, how she made him look the fool. Not that she meant to. He had let it happen by not summoning the will to demand her respect. And she had so damn many problems all the time. Her whole life was just one constant fight with somebody.

  Doug had nailed it, him and all that damned psychology he had studied. Alex McGregor was indeed a mountain Ted Benson wasn’t destined to scale. Why, for godssake, had he thought he wanted to, especially with a woman as sweet and loyal as Mary Jane waiting for him? He thought of how Mary Jane kept her own troubles hidden to keep him from worrying. He thought of how she opened her heart and home to him, and her body, with nary a question about his stupid obsession. with a shooting star.

  He climbed ten slow miles on a winding road before he reached his destination, almost half-way up Callister Mountain itself. The snowline was probably less than half a mile away. He usually came to this spot when troubles assailed him. Parking near the edge of a steep decline, he slid out and walked to the front of his truck, then squatted on the balls of his feet and looked over the grand panorama coming to life before him, trying to remember if he had ever been here so early in the morning. The maw before him always gave him the urge to call out and listen for his echo, but he had never done it. Disturbing the silence in that way would be as disturbing as fingernails scraping a blackboard.

  Staring out to the limitless horizon, he realized something anew. He was less than a grain of sand in the scheme of things. The time he spent in this life was a nanosecond. He needed to take advantage of what was available to him. He climbed back into the truck and drove into the alpine fir trees he loved. There was snow, but it was light and the road wasn’t frozen. A light skiff lay on the dark green tree branches, making the whole place look like a Christmas card.

  At the Double Deuce Ranch’s cattle guard he turned around and headed back to town and to the Forest Service offices. His watch showed seven-thirty, but he didn’t see Gretchen. A few employees talked and laughed in the break room, readying for the day.

  Instead of joining them, he went to his own office and hung his uniform jacket on the coat tree that stood like a sentinel in the corner of his office. He closed his door, then took a seat behind his desk. The first thing he always saw when he sat down was a picture hanging on the opposite wall—an enlarged snapshot of himself and Doug when they were just kids, holding a string of fish between them. Naturally the biggest fish hung on Doug’s end of the stringer. Ted huffed out a one-note laugh.

  He leaned on his elbows and rubbed his eyes, trying to corral his thoughts. The fingers of his right hand found a pencil lying loose. He spun it again and again on the desk blotter, watching the revolutions. In a few months he would be thirty-eight. Other than his job, a government pension and a little money in the bank, what did he have to show for his nearly forty years? Since the day he left his parents’ home, apartments with spartan furnishings had been where he hung his hat. He had never owned a house, didn’t even own a good horse.

  He opened his left top drawer, pulling it all the way out. He blindly felt in the back under boxes of paper clips, staples and rubber bands and dragged out a navy blue ring box. It had been hidden in the back of the drawer for four years. He opened it and stared inside. A diamond solitaire set on a gold band nested in the slot, a plain gold wedding band beside it.

  He lifted the rings from the box, pulled his handkerchief from his rear pocket and polished both of them. Then he slipped them on his little finger, holding his hand out flat in front of himself, studying the stone. When he bought the set, the half-carat diamond had seemed like a large stone, but now it looked small and trifling. He could afford something bigger. But Mary Jane wouldn’t care about the carat weight or even the diamond, period. She would be happy with just the gold band. She cared about him. Why hadn’t he realized what she meant to him years ago?

  Gretchen’s voice came from the lobby. She was running late. He was in no mood to trade sarcasm with her this morning. He slipped the rings back into their velvet slot and snapped the lid shut. He got to his feet and grabbed his jacket, shrugged into it and dropped the ring box into his pocket. Then he pressed in Mary Jane’s number. Her rushed hello came on the line.

  “Headed out?”

  “Hi,” she said softly.

  He closed his eyes and pictured her sweet smile.

  “Teacher’s meeting this morning. Can I call you later? I was just on my way out the—”

  “Don’t leave yet. I’m coming over.”

  ****

  When
Alex’s planned trip to Los Angeles for one last meeting with the developer of the Salt Lake retirement home project and his architect rolled around, Doug didn’t want to think of her driving alone. He persuaded her to fly. Returning from taking her to the Boise airport, the previous four days dominated his thoughts. The real Alex was nothing like the cold image she projected to the community around her. The real Alex was warm and funny and affectionate. An even insecure in some ways. He couldn’t imagine the will and discipline it had taken for her to live for eight years with virtually no human touch, couldn’t relate to all of her reasons for doing so. It didn’t matter now. There would never be a dearth of contact between him and her.

  He had been at her house day and night since Wednesday. They survived on canned soup and what they could throw together to make a meal from her spartan pantry. They spent more time in bed than out. He felt sore. He should have known that once undertaken, her approach to sex would be no less ardent than how she tackled everything else.

  Then yesterday, he witnessed a metamorphosis. Right before his eyes, she changed from his passionate lover to a terse, calculating business woman as elusive as a shadow. She spent a good part of the day on the phone, another part packing her suitcase and gathering documents. The ease with which she switched roles worried a dark place inside him and Ted’s story about the coyote in the Oregon desert kept rolling over in his mind. He worked at setting aside his doubts. He couldn’t expect her to abandon the life she had carried on before knowing him, could he?

  She had begged him to go to Los Angeles with her, but he declined. Nothing, not even she, could make him return to the City of Angels. He had left nothing there but a washed up career, a reputation as a rogue cop and memories he almost couldn’t bear to recall.

  Since keeper-of-the-cats was now his title, he would stay nights in Alex’s house, but he would spend his days at his own place. Her home might be a mansion, but to him, its maze of fifteen rooms and dark hallways and corners held all the warmth of an empty skyscraper. In her absence, he planned to replace his old shower in the one bathroom in his house. He had been putting it off, not wanting to live for a week without showering.

  His thoughts drifted to Cindy Evans. More than ten days had passed since he had approached her in the bar offering her an opportunity any sane woman would take. Plenty of time for her to wrestle her conscience and get in touch with him. He was slipping in his dedication. In the past, he wouldn’t have let a potential witness languish so long. He would make another attempt to talk to her this week, he decided.

  Reaching Callister, he drove straight to his little farmhouse. The red message notification light on his voice mail box blinked at him as he entered the kitchen, an unusual occurrence since few people called him at all, much less left messages.

  A vague anxiety niggled at him as he pressed the play button and the machine voice denoted the date of the message as Thursday. The next voice he heard belonged to none other than Cindy Evans.

  “You know what you said, about helping me and all? I’ve been thinking about it. You prob’ly don’t know it, but I got four kids I gotta think about. If you still want to talk, then okay.”

  Thursday. Four days ago. Shit!

  He glanced at his watch, saw the time to be well past noon. He abandoned his plan to work on his bathroom and headed for town. He found a young man working the bar at the Rusty Spur. The guy told him Cindy had gone over to Eastern Idaho. One of her cousins had a baby and she went to help out, wouldn’t be back for a week or two. He handed over a sealed envelope with Doug’s name scrawled across the front.

  Doug waited until he was seated in his truck before he opened the envelope. Inside was an out-of-town phone number. As soon as he reached his house, he tried it.

  “You gotta come over here,” Cindy told him when she came on the line. “I ain’t going back to Callister for a while.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Over in Challis. East a ways. You can call me at this number when you get here and I’ll meet you somewhere. I don’t want you coming to my cousin’s house. She’s got a big family. And she wouldn’t understand my situation anyway.

  “No problem.”

  “Promise you won’t tell anybody where I am. I mean people like Ted or Pete Hand.”

  “Not a soul in Callister will even know we’ve talked on the phone,” he assured her.

  After they hung up, he dragged out his map and studied the route to Challis, Idaho. To his aggravation, there was no short and easy way to get there from Callister.

  He was still studying the map when the phone rang and Ted was on the line. Doug was relieved to hear from his old friend. He hadn’t had much time to think about how to resolve the issue that shouldn’t be an issue between them. To his relief, Ted sounded as if nothing was different.

  “Hey, Ted. How’s it going?”

  “You home alone?”

  “Alex went to California.”

  “Put the coffee on. I’m coming to see you. I need a favor.”

  A fresh pot of coffee waited when Ted arrived within the hour. Doug offered his right hand and they shook. “Come in, come in,” he said, taking Ted's jacket and hanging it on the handlebars of the ski machine. “Come into the kitchen.” Doug gestured for Ted to sit down at the table and went to the cabinet for coffee mugs. “You said you need a favor. Just name it.”

  He delivered a spoon and a cup of steaming coffee to Ted who stirred sugar into his mug. “Mary Jane and I are finally gonna do it. After all these years. I want you to stand up with me.”

  “God, Ted, that’s just great.” Doug reached across the table and shook Ted's hand again. “She’ll make you a good home. And you’ll be a good dad to her kids.”

  “I’m gonna try. I guess I knew all along someday I’d marry her if she wanted to. She said yes, so...” Ted shrugged.

  “When?”

  “Four weeks. At that old Christian Church downtown. It’s no big deal. Not formal or anything. I'm just going to wear a regular suit, so you don’t have to buy new clothes.”

  “You do me honor, friend. I didn’t know if I’d ever hear from you again.”

  “I wasn’t mad, Doug.” He looked at the floor. “Hell, I couldn’t be mad at two of the people I think the most of in the whole world.”

  The warmth of long friendship and the feeling that his family was restored impacted Doug in a powerful way. “Thanks. I don’t know if you care, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been. She’s—well, we’re—Christ, I’m just happy.”

  “Where’d you say she went? California?” Ted snorted a laugh. “Ah, well, that’s a pattern. Don’t I know it. It’ll probably always be that way with her. Running up and down the road to somewhere. She’s got the itchiest feet of any woman I ever saw.”

  “I’m gonna to work on it. Part of what drives her is insecurity. Maybe I can convince her if she’ll settle down, I can take care of her. I’m not as rich as she is, but I can still take care of her.”

  Ted nodded. “Maybe you can even get her to work on her driveway. I’ve put hundreds of hard miles on my truck feeding those damn cats. Guess that’s your job now.”

  That remark made Doug feel sheepish. He ducked his chin and chuckled.

  Ted looked around the room. “Whatcha working on?”

  “The bathroom. When it’s done, I’m finished with carpenter work ’til spring. In a couple of weeks, I start doing some jury consulting for a law firm in Pocatello.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “It was a referral from Bob Culpepper. He’s turned out to be a friend as well as a good contact. Some more things are coming up in Boise in the next couple of weeks. When I got out of the hospital, I wondered if I would ever again be able to fill a whole day with something productive. Now I’ve got all I can handle. And no pressure.”

  “Like my mom always says, door closes, another opens. So you're gonna be content here, then. In little, ol’ Callister?”

  “Yep. I’m here for life. Alex, t
oo.”

  “Me, too, it looks like. If I even hinted I wanted to take Mary Jane and the kids off somewhere, I’d have to fight her whole family. Makes me feel like I belong to something.”

  “That’s great, Ted.”

  “It is great. And I’m happy about it.” He pushed his empty mug away. “Well, I gotta get going. I’ll let you know the plans when they’re all made.”

  “That’ll be great. Just tell me if I can do anything to help you.”

  Alex called the following evening. She had heard from Bob Culpepper. The judge ruled in Miller’s favor. The logger was free to start work immediately. She was devastated. Though three months ago the news wouldn’t have affected him, an unexpected jolt shot through Doug and he longed to be with her, to comfort her. “Come home,” he said. “Just get on a plane and come home. I miss you.”

  She told him she couldn’t return until Friday, and it dawned on him he had to see Cindy before Alex returned. He didn’t want to have to tell her what he and Bob Culpepper were up to until everything came together. And at the same time, he didn’t want her thinking he had something going on with Cindy. So he did something he hadn’t anticipated he would ever do. He told her a lie.

  Chapter 29

  A distant buzz ripped Doug from a sound sleep. His eyelids flew open. He took a few minutes to orient himself. What the hell was that noise? Chainsaws? Shit. Had Miller started? He left Alex’s bed, padded to the kitchen and made coffee. While it dripped, he stepped outside and looked around. He saw nothing different, but like a swarm of angry bees, the sound continued without letup.

  On his mind this morning was Cindy Evans and the crime he was convinced had occurred at Granite Pond. Before embarking on a three-hundred mile trip, he wanted to take one more look at the cabin ruins without Alex hovering at his shoulder. He called Ted and asked him to go along. An experienced firefighter’s take on the fire at the scene would be valuable information.