Dancing in the Dark

by Sandra Marton

  The words fell between them, heavy as stones. So far, Wendy thought, the only person who knew how she felt was her father, and he sure hadn’t looked at her the way Seth was looking at her now.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m dead serious. If Pommier can fix my leg—”

  “Pommier isn’t taking on new patients, or did I read those stories wrong?”

  “He says he isn’t. But I’m convinced if I can just get him to see me—”

  “How are you going to manage that?”

  Wendy hesitated. “I—I have an in.” Her voice quickened and she leaned forward eagerly. “Don’t you see, Seth? If he operates, if it works, I can get back in shape within a year. Two, max.”

  “Wendy, come on. Those are huge if’s. Besides, even if the guy could work this miracle—”

  “It’s what he does. I’ve read every word written about him. Pommier can do it.”

  “I’ve read a lot about him, too. The surgery’s risky.”

  “Life’s full of risks.”

  Seth put down his coffee mug and ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe I just don’t get it. Why would you want to ski competitively again? You’ve been there, done that. You have the medals to prove it.”

  “Not Olympic gold.”

  “You still have your legs,” he said harshly. “Isn’t that as good as Olympic gold?”

  They stared at each other in taut silence. Then Wendy reached for her things. “I should have known you wouldn’t see this my way. The only person who understands is my father.”

  “Does he, now,” Seth said, his voice flat.

  “Yes. Yes, he does. I’m going to get my chance to talk to Dr. Pommier, thanks to him.”

  Seth’s mouth thinned. “Ah. So that’s your ‘in.’ Your old man. It figures.”

  Her head came up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your old man will do anything to get that gold. He pushed you like crazy, ran you right into the ground. You got to Norway so worn-out that it’s a wonder you didn’t fall down as soon as you got off the plane.”

  “You think the accident was his fault?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.” Seth hesitated a moment, then went on. “And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you something else. Your father was glad you ended things between us.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “He saw me as a kid with no future, getting in the way of his pursuit of an Olympic medal.”

  “It wasn’t his pursuit, it was mine. And you’re dead wrong about the accident.” Wendy’s voice shook. “It was my fault. All mine.”

  “Yeah, right.” Seth dug out his wallet, took out a bill and tossed it on the table. His anger was back and he knew he’d never get rid of it until he placed it where it belonged, square on the jaw of Howard Monroe. “He’s got you brainwashed.”

  Wendy’s eyes flashed. “You have no right to say that.”

  “I have every right. That last night, on Sawtooth Mountain, you lay in my arms and said you loved me. You said you had to get the dream of winning out of your system.” Seth got to his feet, his face white, his eyes hot. “But you were lying. You already knew you were going to break up with me, Wendy, whether you won that damned medal or not. That accident just made it easier for you. You had the perfect excuse to shove me out of your life.”

  “You bastard! You...you unfeeling, self-centered son of a—”

  “Hi, everybody. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  They both turned. Alison was standing beside their table, smiling nervously and twisting her knit cap in her hands.

  “Look, you guys, why don’t I go outside, drive around for a while, say, fifteen minutes or so and—”

  “No,” Wendy said sharply.

  “Hell, no,” Seth said, even more sharply. “I was just leaving. So long, Wendy. Have a nice life.”

  Wendy watched as he strode to the door, yanked it open and stepped out of the Burger Barn and, she devoutly hoped, out of her life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RODNEY POMMIER, M.D., F.A.C.S., had come to Cooper’s Corner to get away from all those initials dangling after his name.

  Not that they didn’t matter to him. He’d worked hard to get them and he was proud of them. He’d just never figured being a medical doctor and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons could also turn a man into a celebrity.

  A very unhappy celebrity.

  Rod had wanted to be a doctor ever since he was a kid. That his path through life had been all but laid out for him in a different direction by generations of Pommiers had made reaching his goal all the sweeter. When he was growing up, it had been expected he’d go to McGill, take his degree in finance and management and, as his father put it, come on board at Pommier Investments.

  Well, he’d tried.

  Rod sighed as he stood on the sagging porch of the old cabin he’d just bought, and looked out at the view.

  He’d absolutely tried. But after a year of struggling to give a damn about cost analysis and price earnings ratios, he’d given up, flown home one weekend and announced that he was going to become a doctor, not a financier. He’d stood in his father’s wood-paneled study, ready for the war that was sure to come. Instead, after a couple of minutes of stunned silence, he’d gotten a smile, a handshake that turned into a hug, and all the best wishes he’d never expected.

  “It’s time a Pommier went out into the world and did something else with his life,” his father had said.

  That was what Rod had done.

  He loved medicine. Loved his work. Newsweek said he had the arrogance of all top surgeons, that he played God in the operating room. He didn’t see it that way. He was a man with a talent for looking at broken bones and torn muscles as parts of an intricate puzzle. It would have been as wrong to deny that talent as it would have been to misuse it....

  Which was why he was here, skiing in the snowy Berkshires, instead of back in Manhattan seeing new patients.

  Rod sighed again and leaned his elbows on the porch railing.

  His discovery of the regenerative matrix technique, a TV reporter had gushed, had opened a door into a new field of orthopedic medicine. Well, yeah. Maybe so, but it was still too soon to know exactly what lay beyond that door. Not everybody would benefit from the surgery. Some might even be damaged by it. “First, do no harm,” said the Hippocratic oath. After a while, Rod had wearied of trying to explain that, especially since far too many people thought he just wasn’t interested in taking on patients who weren’t rich or famous.

  The truth was, most of his patients were neither. He chose people based on how well he thought they’d respond to the new technique, not for any other reason. But after he attended a couple of functions run by New York’s upper crust and his name and face began appearing on the Sunday society pages of the Times, the world was sure it knew all it needed to know about him. Rod had only attended the damned parties because his department chairman had urged him to go.

  “For the good of the hospital,” she’d said, and it had taken a while before Rod realized that what she really meant was for the charitable donations that his appearance could engender.

  Before he knew it, he was a media darling. That was bad enough, but even worse were the endless calls and letters, the people who buttonholed him in restaurants and supermarkets, every last one of them wanting him to perform his miracle on them—and, damn it, he didn’t perform miracles. He was a surgeon, and the surgery was risky, delicate and sometimes dangerous, though nobody seemed to want to hear that. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came the morning the director of his hospital’s board asked him to come by for coffee.

  After a few minutes of banal
conversation, the man got to the point. There was great interest in the hospital, thanks to Rod’s new procedure. NBC was interested in doing a series of interviews. They’d like to meet with Rod in his office, in his home; they’d like to put a camera into the operating room....

  No, no and no, Rod had said coldly. He turned to leave, but the director called him back. There was one other thing. The board was wondering, could he see his way clear to increasing the number of surgeries he was doing? For the good of medicine, the director added hastily.

  Rod explained that he was doing the optimum number now. He was only operating on patients he was sure would benefit from the technique and he needed more follow-up studies before he’d present a paper to the New England Journal of Medicine.

  “I admire your caution, Doctor,” the director had said, with an unctuous smile. “But there’s a fine line between prudence and denying patients the right to be helped. Surely you see that.”

  What Rod saw was that he needed to rethink his professional life. Other hospitals had been making offers; he’d wanted to stay where he was out of loyalty, but wasn’t integrity supposed to accompany loyalty?

  He went back to his office, told his secretary not to make any appointments for him from mid-December through mid-January, called his travel agent and asked her to find him a place where he could ski and take it easy and not be anybody’s media darling.

  That was how he’d ended up in a town so small it didn’t even appear on some maps, where nobody shoved a mike or a camera in his face, or asked for his autograph as if he was a rock star.

  Rod grinned. He was feeling better than he had in a long, long time. Oh, yeah, some people knew who he was, and he suspected one or two of them were working up to mentioning it for reasons of their own—like Howard Monroe, who skied with the local club. But Rod had developed good antennae; he knew when it was time to say “no, thanks” to an offer of coffee.

  He liked it here in Cooper’s Corner. Owning a piece of it made him feel good, even if the piece he owned needed work.

  A cold wind swept across the face of the mountain. Rod went back into the cabin and took his anorak from the battered sofa where he’d tossed it. He glanced at his watch—3:05. It would be dark soon, and cold as the arctic. He’d had the electricity turned on, a plumber had checked the pipes and a heating guy had delivered oil right after he’d closed on the deal this morning. The lights worked—he’d checked first thing—and so did the plumbing, but the oil burner wasn’t doing anything except making noise.

  He stepped out on the porch again.

  Shadows were creeping from the edge of the woods, but the narrow road that led up the mountain was still plainly visible. A truck turned onto it. Had to be Seth Castleman, Rod thought, checking his watch again. They had a three-fifteen appointment, and he knew he’d be on time. Castleman was a first-rate carpenter, a fine cabinetmaker and a man who took his responsibilities seriously. If he said he’d meet you at three-fifteen, that was when he met you.

  Meeting your obligations was a trait Rod admired. His good mood slipped a notch. That was why he’d have to head back to New York pretty soon, another week or ten days at the most. He hadn’t scheduled any new patients but he knew there were people wanting to see him.

  Surgery—no neon lights, no cameras, no hoopla—was what he did and what he wanted to get back to doing.

  Seth’s truck pulled into the driveway. That was another thing Rod had arranged for this morning: a guy with a snowplow to clear the drive. And a good thing, too, considering that more snow was predicted for tonight.

  “Hey,” Seth called, smiling as he got out of his truck.

  “Hey,” Rod said, and grinned. He went down the steps, hand outstretched. “Welcome to Pommier’s Folly.”

  Seth chuckled as they shook hands. “Yeah. I heard you really bought the place this morning.”

  Rod rolled his eyes. “Is there anything that stays confidential in this town?”

  “Nope,” Seth said cheerfully, “there isn’t.” He looked at Rod. “Not unless it’s really important. Folks tend to respect personal privacy.”

  Rod nodded. He knew what Seth was telling him. That was one of the reasons he liked it in Cooper’s Corner. He was pretty sure almost everybody had figured out who he was—he’d registered under his real name at Twin Oaks, and even though the town was small and out of the way, it bristled with as many TV antennaes and satellite dishes as any other place.

  “Anyway,” Seth said as they climbed the porch steps and entered the cabin, “if you don’t want folks to know what you eat for breakfast, you’d better tear your empty box of cornflakes into little pieces and flush ’em down the toilet.”

  Rod sighed. “Not this toilet.”

  “Doesn’t work?”

  “No. Well, the one in the half bath down here does, if you give it enough time, but the plumber said the one upstairs is a lost cause.”

  “Hey,” Seth said lightly, “it’s not like you wanted to keep that pink commode, right?” He unzipped his jacket, put his hands on his hips and took a slow walk through the main room. “You did get Pete Lehigh to come in and take a look, didn’t you?”

  “The structural engineer? Yeah. He said, same as you, the place is basically sound.” Rod watched Seth’s face, trying to read his reaction to what he saw. “Well? What do you think?”

  Seth took in the boxy dimensions, the metal avocado cabinets visible beyond the Formica breakfast bar, the phony overhead beams and the green shag carpeting.

  “Exactly what I thought the first time I saw it,” he said, deadpan. “The view’s fantastic.”

  “The well’s good, too. Don’t leave that out.” Rod grinned. “Every little bit counts, right?”

  “Uh-huh. Just as long as you don’t mind spending the rest of your life redoing the interior.”

  “Myself, you mean?” The doctor sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I said the last time we talked, right? Well, that was just an idea. A crazy one.”

  “Not so crazy. If you really like working with wood, hammering, sawing, that whole thing can be—”

  “Relaxing. Rewarding.” Rod walked over to a sofa upholstered in orange corduroy, winced at the sight of it and dropped down on the end cushion. “The truth is, I don’t have the skill, even if you were to provide the design and the know-how and half the muscle.”

  “You’re going to bring somebody in.”

  “I am, yeah. Someone who has the talent to do the work and the ability to act as a general contractor, oversee dealing with the new plumbing, the burner that I suspect is dying....

  Seth nodded. They’d talked about a sort of do-it-yourself project, with Seth providing help, but he wasn’t really surprised by the doctor’s decision. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. He’d figured Pommier would realize that his wistful talk of working with his hands was just that. The guy was here, taking time off from the real world, but the real world was where he belonged. And it would take long hours to do this job right—refinishing the handsome wood floor buried beneath the rug, restructuring the rooms, making cabinets and built-in furniture.

  He and Rod had talked long enough for Seth to understand what the other man wanted—a quiet, peaceful place where he could recharge his energies—and then Seth had made some suggestions, done a few quick sketches, and Pommier had responded with enthusiasm. A day later, he’d phoned and asked, cautiously, how Seth would feel about Rod doing some of the work himself. He had a buddy in New York, another doctor, who was into woodworking as a hobby and kept telling him how relaxing it was. Seth had listened, said bluntly that as long as Pommier agreed to leave the finer stuff—the furniture—to him, he saw no problem doing it that way.

  Then he’d done some daydreaming about the project even though he’d known, deep down, that it wouldn’t happen.

  Pommier had come to his senses. He’
d obviously realized he wouldn’t have the time. And he was a big-city guy with money. It was only natural he’d want to bring in somebody from New York or Boston.

  “Well,” Seth said, smiling, “thanks for letting me know.” He came toward Rod, hand outstretched. The doctor got to his feet. “And good luck.”

  “Yeah. You, too—and believe me, you’re gonna need it more than I will.” He grinned and clasped Seth’s hand. “Heck, I’ll just write the checks. You’re the one who’ll deal with the headaches.”

  “Headaches?” Seth said, frowning.

  “You’re guaranteed to have quite a few, turning this sow’s ear into a silk purse.”

  Seth stared at Pommier. “Are you saying you’re hiring me as your general contractor?”

  “Who else? And before you ask, I checked around. In fact, I talked with Clint Cooper again just last night. No question, you’re the man to do the job. Is it a deal?”

  “You bet it is.”

  The men smiled, shook hands, then stepped apart. “Well,” the doctor said, “that’s done.” He strolled across the room, rolled his eyes at the avocado refrigerator and pulled the door open. “Ugly,” he said, “but at least it works.” He reached inside, held up two bottles of ale. “I figured we’d want to celebrate. Okay with you?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Great. I’d offer you a glass, but the thought of drinking ale out of something the color of a lime—”

  “Say no more.” Seth took the bottle Pommier held out.

  “Success,” Rod said.

  The bottles clinked lightly as the two men touched them together. They drank, swallowed, and Seth cleared his throat.

  “I want to thank you for this opportunity... Hell, I sound like the speaker at some Chamber of Commerce dinner.”

  “Forget it. Besides, you may not feel like thanking me once you get started on this project. The more I see of this place, the more I wonder if my head was screwed on straight when I said I wanted to buy it.”