by Susan Wiggs
“I need to get busy, anyway,” Gayle said, walking her to the door.
When she stepped outside, Sophie flipped open her phone, wondering what on earth Brooks Fordham was calling for this time.
Thirty
Bo Crutcher was drunk again, Noah observed. It was his normal state for a Sunday night, when they headed up to Hilltop Tavern to shoot pool and drink beer. After the hockey game incident, Noah had decided to give Sophie a little space. He was surprised that she’d taken it so hard. Hell, that was why he hadn’t said anything or admitted he’d been aware of the age difference from the start. He figured after she had a little time to think, she’d realize it was no big deal.
Apparently she hadn’t come to that realization yet. Earlier in the evening, he’d called to say he wanted to see her. She’d seemed nervous when she said, “I’ve got something tonight.”
Eventually, he’d pried it out of her. The “something” was dinner. With Brooks Fordham.
“It’s business,” she’d said, somewhat defensively.
“Whose business?”
“His.” Noah had read some of the guy’s archived articles for the New York Times. He was a foreign correspondent, reporting from places like Zanzibar, Portofino, The Hague…. The guy had been present the night of the hostage situation Sophie had told Noah about. Noah hated what she’d endured that night, and he figured he ought to be grateful she was in touch with others who had been there, so she wasn’t alone with her memories. But…okay, Noah had never met the guy, and he already knew he didn’t like him. Fordham had a bio as fancy as his fancy-sounding name, with an Ivy League education, list of awards, publications. And he had that silver-haired, distinguished-gentleman thing going. Successful. Mature. He looked, Noah realized, like the kind of guy Sophie Bellamy would date.
Too late, jerk-off, Noah thought. She’s taken. He watched Bo aim for a shot and miss, losing his edge to his seventh or eighth beer.
“Come on, buddy,” Noah said. “Let’s take a break.”
“Yeah, okay.” Bo put up his pool cue and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Lemme order another round.”
“In a minute.” Noah motioned him to a booth. They slid in and kicked back to survey the mostly familiar crowd.
“So what’s really bugging you, bro? Woman troubles?” Bo asked, cocking one eyebrow at him.
Noah explained what had happened after the hockey game. “She kind of hates the idea that she’s ten years older than me.”
“But does she hate you?”
He could still hear her earnest voice, soft with excitement. I love you, Noah. His mouth curved into a smile. “I don’t think so.”
“Then why are you hanging around here?”
“She might need some time to think.”
“How much time? Is she waiting for you to grow up? That’ll never happen.”
“She’s having dinner with a guy she knew when she lived in Holland.”
Bo gave a low whistle.
“It’s business,” Noah stated.
“If you say so.”
“She says so.” Although he and Sophie were still new to each other, he trusted her. Didn’t he?
“Then just go for it, man,” Bo suggested. “Be with her, fall in love. It’s not hard.”
“No shit.”
“I’ll help you get rid of this guy, if—”
“Whoa.” Noah held up his hands. “We’re not getting rid of anybody. I don’t want to mess this up. I want this to work out.”
“Then work it out.” Bo signaled the waitress for two more beers.
“Good plan,” Noah agreed. “And I don’t need another beer. I’m driving, remember?”
“Guess I’ll have to drink yours, then.”
Noah suppressed the urge to tell his friend to take it easy on the drinking. He’d mentioned it before, to no avail. Bo liked to get a buzz on, that was a fact.
The waitress set down two longnecks and a pair of frosted mugs. Bo made eyes at her, earning a wink, but then the young woman pivoted away and went about her business.
“I need to figure out my next move,” Noah said. She’d asked him once what he wanted, what he dreamed about, and he hadn’t been ready with the answer. He knew what it was now—Sophie herself. He’d never known anyone quite like her. She was beautiful and vulnerable, yes, but more than that, she drew from him a tenderness he used to only wish he could show to a woman. Holding her, touching her, revealed things to Noah that he hadn’t known before—that he could be with a woman like this and feel more than lust. That he had finally discovered a love deep enough to last forever.
He’d always pictured himself raising a family, here in the place he’d grown up, making a life filled with someone he could love forever. With every moment he spent with Sophie, he felt more and more confident that it could happen with her. Yet she made him think outside the box. Life was good here, but the world was a big place. Sophie—multilingual, a world traveler—could take him places he’d never dreamed of.
We’ve got a lot to talk about, he thought.
Apparently, he wasn’t alone in his thinking. When he got home that night, he let Rudy out for a run and saw Sophie walking up the driveway. She wore the long, tailored coat she’d had on the first night he’d met her, along with the high-heeled boots.
“Hey,” he said. “How was your evening?”
“It was…interesting. Brooks is following up on some things for his story.”
“Okay, I have to say this. I’m insanely jealous of the guy.”
She glanced away. “There’s no need to be. Brooks suffered a lot, during and after the incident. He might be dealing with the brain injury for years—”
“That’s not the part I’m jealous of. But I do wish I’d been there for you, Sophie, with you.”
“No, you don’t.” She spoke low but forcefully, and when she looked up at him, he imagined he could see nightmare memories flickering in her eyes. “We talked about what happened, and it was surreal, as though I were talking about someone else.” The yellowish glow of the porch light gave her face an ethereal cast. “He’s planning to attend a national holiday celebration in Umoja, and was wondering if I was going.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know. All of that seems so far away, and not just geographically.”
Yet he saw it in her eyes, that unmistakable yearning. She had been a part of something big, so much bigger than anything Avalon had to offer. He couldn’t blame her for missing that life.
“I didn’t come to talk about that. Noah, about what happened—”
“Nothing happened,” he said quickly.
“You’re right. Nothing happened. I just happen to be ten years older than you.” She shook her head. “I feel so foolish. When I phoned Bertie Wilson about the dog, she called you ‘little’ Noah Shepherd. I didn’t even question that.”
“She used to babysit me.”
“Lovely. I’ll keep that in mind when we’re in bed together.”
When we’re in bed together. Thank God, he thought, practically staggering with relief.
“I won’t pretend I’m not rattled by this,” she said. Then she took a step toward him, pulling a set of DVDs from her pocket. Star Wars, the collector’s edition, and a six-pack of beer. “But I’m willing to keep an open mind.”
Thirty-One
Sophie hadn’t dismissed Tariq’s suggestion of a trip to Umoja out of hand. She had developed a true affinity for the people of the embattled nation. It was a hellishly long trip, but the closure of seeing the results of justice would be so satisfying. She thought about what she’d done that night, about the people who had died because of her. She needed to come to terms with that, too, with the breath-stealing moment of decision that had caused her to act. Seeing the liberated nation wouldn’t erase the memory; she knew better than that. But its transformation would be a powerful reminder of the lives that had been saved because of the court’s action.
Later, though. Maybe in the summer, s
he’d take Max, although that would mean missing the national week of celebration. For now, she planned to savor the new closeness she’d found with her family. There hadn’t been one big dramatic moment of revelation. Simply by being there, moment by moment, she’d built a bridge between herself and her children. Instead of the temporary, truncated scheduled visits of the past, she was able to relax in the knowledge that she had all the time in the world.
Time. She was also coming to terms with being madly in love with a younger man. She was determined not to let the differences in their ages matter, and had come to believe that the more closely she knit herself into the life of this new community, the less preoccupied she would be with the idea that when she had been getting her law degree, he’d been earning a high-school freshman letter in baseball.
She had decided to go about the business of fitting into the community the way she did everything else—by making and executing a plan. She was actively looking at homes for sale. Another important component of that plan involved friendships. In her life, she had several close, cherished friendships—her girlfriends from college, who had been there for her when she’d found herself unexpectedly pregnant with Daisy. Tariq from The Hague, whose humor and caring had seen her through the lonely times without her children. But now everyone was so far away. Closer to home, she had only Gayle Wright. If Sophie was going to be in Avalon, she needed to expand her circle of friends. But how? She’d come to realize a planned siege was the old-Sophie way of thinking. The past few weeks had shown her that the rules were different now. Friends would ultimately seek each other out. Still, she was determined to make new connections here. She had to.
So far, she had bought a cup of coffee for Hattie Crandall, owner of the bookstore that occupied the street-level space below the law office, and she’d taken in a movie with Becky Murray, the woman who had been Daisy’s childbirth instructor. Today, she took Daphne McDaniel to lunch. The receptionist of the law office was young and hip. It wouldn’t hurt for Sophie to hang out with someone like her.
They went to a trendy café on the main square, where all the menu selections were organic, vegetarian and named after characters in Lord of the Rings.
“I’ll have the Boromir sandwich,” Sophie told the girl at the counter.
“You didn’t even read the description,” Daphne pointed out.
“They had me at ‘Boromir.’ He’s such a tragic character. He’s the one who betrayed his friends, and then found redemption, but paid the ultimate price for it.” The sandwich turned out to be not so dramatic—a whole-wheat pita stuffed with alfalfa sprouts and hummus.
“You sound like a Tolkein fan,” Daphne commented.
“I need to reread those books,” Sophie said, shocked to realize her copies were at least a quarter of a century old. “How about you? I noticed you’re reading Robert Silverberg.”
Daphne nodded. “I’ve been on a sci-fi kick for quite a while now. One of my ex-boyfriends introduced me to the classics of the genre, and I got hooked on Silverberg and Theodore Sturgeon.”
Noah was a science fiction fanatic, too. Sophie decided she should give it a try.
“Ex-boyfriend?” she commented, focusing her attention on Daphne. “Are you seeing anyone now?”
Daphne shook her head. Her smile was a little wistful. She was a pretty girl, Sophie observed, though that was not immediately noticeable. The anime style—neon-pink highlights in her hair, uncomfortable-looking facial piercings and shiny black clothes—tended to overshadow her beauty. Sophie brought her thoughts up short. She was thinking like a mother, not a friend, a coworker. Someone to whom age was only a number.
“It’s been a while,” Daphne said. “I…my last boyfriend and I broke up a few months ago. Or no. God, it’s been like, eight or nine months, and I haven’t met anyone new. Guys worth dating, that is. Hazard of living in a small town, I guess.” She added a dollop of honey to her rosehip tea. “Anyway, there are things I miss about him, so much.”
“Like what?” asked Sophie.
“Like…pretty much everything.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have split up.”
“I think about that every day, believe me. But the reason for the split is a total deal-breaker.”
Sophie waited, not wanting to pry but dying to hear more. So was this the lot of the small-town lawyer? To experience life vicariously through coworkers and clients?
“Simple, but there’s really no work-around. He wanted kids and I didn’t,” she said, her eyes misty with regret. “It’s one of those things you can’t really compromise on. Well, I saw getting a dog as a compromise, but Noah didn’t.”
Sophie’s blood froze. Was she talking about the Noah? Her Noah? Mr. Make-love-until-you-weep Noah? Mr. Storybook-woodsman-rescuer Noah?
She made herself ask. “Would that, um, be Noah Shepherd?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Neighbor across the road.” The words ached like ice cubes in her mouth.
“You do know him.”
You have no idea, thought Sophie.
“So are you going to do like everyone else, tell me I’m crazy to let him go? Tell me I’m going to want kids one day and I’ll never find a better man than Noah to do that with?”
“Sounds like you’ve already heard those objections.” Sophie felt slightly dizzy, as though she’d been hit when she wasn’t looking.
“I have, from everybody.”
“And?”
“I miss him like crazy because he really is a great guy. Wait till you get to know him.”
I didn’t wait, Sophie thought. I fell right into bed with him.
“It would never work. I still don’t want kids,” Daphne said. “I never will. I’m the oldest of five, and I raised my younger brothers and sisters after my mom got sick. So I’m done. That’s it for me.” She picked at her sandwich, taking out a pickle slice and setting it aside. “And Noah just couldn’t get past that. If you ever meet his family, you’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
“The Shepherds—they’re one of those families that seems too good to be true, but they are, you know? They’re just so good to each other and so good for each other. I mean, how many people do you know who live in the house they grew up in? Most of us can’t wait to leave. Noah couldn’t wait to fill the place with a family of his own.”
Sophie’s mouth was dry; she gulped down her water. The sudden cold caused a flare of pain in her chest. “But if you really loved him, couldn’t you have worked something out? A compromise?”
Daphne offered a wistful smile. “You know what? That might have worked for me, but eventually, I figured something out about him.” She took a knife and cut her sandwich down the middle. “He wanted babies more than he wanted me. It was a hard thing, accepting that and walking away, but ultimately, I saved myself a big fat heart-ache.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed thoughtfully, then said, “A lot of my friends still think I was nuts to let him go.”
“You want what you want,” Sophie said. “Don’t change your goals because of a guy.” Then she forced herself to shut up. She didn’t want to manipulate this situation.
“Is this the voice of experience talking?” Daphne asked.
“I wouldn’t say that. I had my first child before I’d even considered the question of whether or not to have kids one day.” But the information she had just learned kept pounding at her. Noah had broken up with a girl who did not want babies.
Sophie tried to finish her lunch, but the sandwich turned to cardboard in her mouth. Of course she and Noah hadn’t talked about the idea of raising a family: it was too early for that. Now she considered what Daphne had told her, and it all made sense. He was a bighearted man with more love to give than anyone she’d ever met. Of course having a family was part of his dream. It was so obvious now that she forced herself to think about it.
She somehow managed to shift the conversation away from Noah, but couldn’t pull her mind away from the thi
ngs Daphne had said, the things Sophie knew in her heart to be true. Noah loved her, yes. But soon enough, the first glow of love would pale and he’d remember he wanted babies and not only would Sophie not give him that, she could not.
It snowed again, a fresh blast of winter, skirling across the lake. As soon as she got home from work, Sophie bundled up for the trek to Noah’s house. He was just getting in from the clinic, and was still in his scrubs.
“Hey, you,” he said, pulling her in for a kiss and then giving her a smile tinged with fatigue. “You’re early.”
“Sorry about that.” She knew she had to address the situation right away. That night—before the usual sweet talk led to lovemaking. What she’d learned from Daphne was going to be a deal-breaker for them, and there was no point in putting it off. Still, she couldn’t help noticing the sadness in his eyes. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
He braced his arms on the counter, leaned back. “Nothing. Just didn’t have time to shower off my day yet.”
Sophie’s heart lurched. He almost never complained. “What happened?”
“Nothing unusual, but I had to put a family’s dog down today. It was definitely time, but it’s never easy.”
She felt horrible, not just about the loss but about her own blindness. He was a man with needs, but he almost never let them show. This whole winter had been about her needs, her issues. No wonder she hadn’t bothered to find out his deepest dreams before falling in love with him.
“Oh, Noah,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. I’ll be all right. Comes with the territory.” He turned to the sink and washed his hands. She went to the fridge, got a beer and opened it for him. He smiled. “Better already.”
Sophie took a deep breath. Best to get on with it. The snowfall was coming fast and hard, much as it had been the night they’d met.
“I had an interesting talk with Daphne McDaniel today,” Sophie said. “Your ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize you knew her.” He seemed unconcerned.