The Woman Next Door

by Barbara Delinsky

  Conversationally, he said, “This looks like Amanda. Was she here?”

  “She may have been. I’m not sure.”

  Will tried to cover for the slight. “They have you on medication. Things must be blurry.”

  Graham was annoyed at Will, and at Dorothy, but he let it go. The time isn’t right, he told himself, and, instead, said, “I’m glad Amanda could drop by. There’s been heavy pressure at school.”

  “Still with the suicide?” Will asked.

  “That, and the season. There are lots of end-of-the-year issues.”

  “She shouldn’t bother to come,” Dorothy said. “Everyone else is here.”

  “She doesn’t see it as a bother,” Graham said and darted a quick, warning look at Will. “She’s as concerned about you as we are.”

  “Well, it’s different,” Dorothy mused with startling breeziness for a woman so weak. “She doesn’t have the connection. You know?”

  “Hasn’t been married to an O’Leary long enough,” Will teased.

  But Graham was offended. “What connection, Mom?”

  “You know, honey. I mean, all the other children here. It’s different for her.”

  “If it’s different for her, it should be different for me. Do you think it is?”

  “Gray,” Will murmured, “not now.”

  Graham took a deep breath. Will was right.

  But, damn it, Amanda deserved better.

  As a concession to his brother, he made his voice quiet and calm.

  But he just couldn’t let it go. “Amanda’s trying, Mom. She’d like to help. She wants to be part of us.”

  “But she isn’t,” Dorothy said sweetly. “She’s always been different. That doesn’t mean we can’t get along with her. Now that I think of it, she probably was here earlier, because she’s always good with the children, and they were especially well-behaved today.”

  Graham pressed his mouth shut.

  Will said, “My children adore Amanda. She’s going to make a terrific mother herself.”

  Graham could have killed him.

  Dorothy said, “I’ll have to take your word for that.” She closed her eyes.

  Graham looked at Will and mouthed a large, “Shut up.”

  Will mouthed back a bewildered, “What?”

  “Oh, don’t get angry at Will,” Dorothy scolded. “He’s only trying to help. You’re so protective of that girl. You’d think she was made of fine china.”

  “Mom, please,” Graham warned.

  But, lying there in that hospital bed, Dorothy must have felt a measure of power in her situation, because she said, “I can see why you do it. There is something fragile about her. She’s always been different from us in that, too. Megan wasn’t. She was sturdy.”

  “Don’t go there, Mom.”

  “She came over this morning with audiotapes. She even brought a tape recorder so I could listen. She thought of everything.”

  “Mom.”

  “She’s a wonderful person. I never did understand what happened between the two of you.”

  “I told you what happened,” Graham said.

  “Gray,” Will cautioned.

  But Graham had had enough. If his mother was well enough and strong enough and sharp enough to demean his wife in the name of his ex-wife, Dorothy could hear what he had to say. “Megan’s gay.”

  Dorothy stayed with her own train of thought. “She’s doing so well with that store. I’m so proud of her. I like her partner, too. Brooke. Did I tell you that Brooke moved into the house with Megan?”

  “Brooke is her life partner, Mom. They’re lovers. Megan left me. Accept it.”

  Dorothy didn’t blink. “I will if you will. But I’m sure it’s still hard. Especially now, with all this.”

  “All what?” Graham asked, though he knew where she was headed.

  “The baby business.”

  Will touched his arm, but Graham wasn’t about to keep still. He might have preferred another time, but certain things had to be said. If Dorothy was strong enough to goad him, she was strong enough to hear it through. “I didn’t want Megan’s baby.”

  “I can understand why you’d say that.”

  “No, Mom, I don’t think you can. I didn’t want Megan’s baby, because Megan and I were great friends, only we never did work as a couple, and that would have spelled disaster for a child. Megan did me a favor by ending that marriage.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. What I have with Amanda is much better. We’re not just old friends whose families wanted us together so badly that we didn’t think about anything else.”

  “You were lonesome,” Dorothy said, and Graham didn’t contradict her.

  “Yes, I was lonesome. But I’d dated lots of women before I met Amanda, and none of them did anything for me until her. She was everything I wanted. I didn’t just—-just end up with her. I chose her.”

  Dorothy seemed mildly deflated, but she was far from done in. “So now she’s making you choose again.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She’s making you choose. It’s either her or us.”

  Graham was astonished. “She’s not doing that. You are.”

  “It isn’t just me,” Dorothy said with a flare of indignation. “It’s all of us. Mac knows she isn’t right. So do MaryAnne and Kathryn and—”

  “Mom,” Will broke in. “That’s enough.”

  “Are you siding with him?” she asked. “Do you hear what he’s saying?”

  “He’s saying he loves his wife.”

  “That’s only for starters,” Graham said. He was all wound up, letting loose with things that had been on his mind for far too long. “I’m saying that I’m with Amanda for life. I’m saying that she’s the only mother I want for a baby of mine. I’m saying that if we don’t conceive a baby ourselves, we’ll adopt, and if that baby isn’t welcomed by this family with open arms, we’re outta here.” He put a hand on the back of his neck, where the muscles were hard as steel. “Hell,” he muttered, “I’m outta here anyway.” He turned to the door and stopped short at the sight of Amanda, who obviously had just arrived. In the next breath, though, he was in motion again. “Come on, babe,” he said and reached for her hand. “Let’s make tracks.”

  ***

  Amanda took his hand, but she didn’t move. Her eyes went from his angry face to Will’s alarmed one to Dorothy’s stunned one. She hadn’t arrived more than two minutes before, clearly in the middle of the discussion. But she had heard enough to love Graham more than ever, to respect him more than ever, and to know that his relationship with his family was at stake.

  “Mandy” he growled, “let’s go.”

  “Wait,” she whispered. Freeing her hand from his, she went back into the room where she’d been an hour before. After an apologetic glance at Will, she said to her mother-in-law, “I was downstairs in the coffee shop. I knew Gray was coming and thought I’d surprise him. There’s an Italian restaurant across the street. I was hoping he and I could have dinner there. He’s been worried about you and worried about me and feeling pressure about lots of things he shouldn’t have to.”

  “You had no business eavesdropping,” Dorothy charged.

  “I didn’t hear anything I didn’t know. I know that Graham feels passionately about his family. I also know he feels passionately about me. I’ve always loved him for both of those things. Making him choose between them would be a sin.”

  “I’m not making him choose.”

  “Neither am I,” Amanda said simply. “I love his being from a large family. I accept them. I want them to accept me.”

  “We do,” Will said.

  Amanda shot him a sad little smile. “I think you want to. I think you try. But I also think you all walk on tiptoes about Megan.” To Dorothy, she said, “I like Megan. I think she’s a wonderful woman. I like to believe that she’ll be coming over to our house with books from her store when we have kids, but Gray’s right. She needed her space, and
he needed something else. I just want to give it to him. If I’m different from what you wanted, I’m sorry.”

  “This isn’t only about Megan,” Dorothy blustered. “It’s about having babies. Graham’s been unhappy these last few months.”

  “So have I. What we’ve been through hasn’t been fun.”

  Didactically, Dorothy asked, “Isn’t there a message in that?”

  “Christ, Mom,” Will muttered.

  Amanda didn’t balk. She had an answer for Dorothy. “Yes, there’s a message. The message is that life isn’t always fun. If you were to ask Gray”—she smiled warmly—“he’d make an analogy to pulling out weeds. He’d say that the more time you put into pulling out weeds, the healthier your shrub bed, because the weeds suck away nutrients. In our case, the weeds are the little bits of dissension that come when you’re trying to have a baby and can’t, or when you’re trying to get along with family and can’t. Dissension sucks away the nutrients in a marriage. So we’ve been working to get rid of it. I trust that he loves me.” How could she not, after what she had just overheard?

  “And you trust that he’s over Megan?” Dorothy asked, clearly doubting it.

  Here, too, Amanda had an answer. “Yes. I trust him in that, too. So that leaves you all. I’m not asking him to choose. I’d never do that. But if you can’t find it in your heart to accept me, the one who’ll be hurt most by it is Gray. We both love him. Can’t we keep that from happening?”

  ***

  Graham was slow to calm down. “She is insufferable,” he muttered as he strode down the hall.

  Amanda had to walk faster to keep up. “Your mother is set in her ways. You haven’t conformed to those ways. She’s having trouble with that.”

  “She’s rude and ungrateful. She’s shortsighted. If she thinks our kids are going to want to be with her—if she thinks we’re going to let them be with her—”

  “We will,” Amanda said, though not without the pang that came from four years of trying to make kids in the singular, let alone plural. “She’ll come around. She’s your mother, Gray. And she isn’t well.”

  He snorted. “She was well enough to argue. But it’s my fault,” he said, finally slowing to a saner pace. “I should have set the record straight months ago. I should have done it years ago.” He stabbed at the elevator button. “I’m sorry. I let you down.”

  Amanda slipped her arm through his. “You said what needed to be said just now. Thank you.”

  The elevator opened. It already held a handful of passengers. Graham and she entered it and turned to face front, tabling the discussion until they reached the bottom floor. Rather than speaking then, though, Graham took her hand. Seeming almost shy, he said, “Are we doing dinner?”

  “I hope so. There’s nothing waiting at home.”

  “Italian?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He paused then, looked down at their hands, raised vulnerable eyes to hers. “Did you mean it, what you said back there? The thing about trust?”

  She nodded.

  He studied her a minute longer. The green of his eyes grew deeper as confidence returned. Amanda was both humbled that she could affect that confidence, and gratified by its return. Graham O’Leary was a magnificent man. When he looked at her that way, oblivious to the people skirting them as though they were a sculpture in the middle of the lobby, she trusted him with her life.

  Releasing a breath, he pulled her to his side, threw an arm around her shoulder, and led her through the hospital lobby and out the door.

  ***

  Two hours later, in separate vehicles, since that was how they’d come, they returned to the cul-de-sac. Separated physically didn’t mean separated by voice. They had been on and off the phone with each other during the drive. Slowing to a crawl now, Graham narrated.

  “The night is dark,” he said on a note of intrigue. “If there’s a moon, it’s hidden behind clouds, but we can’t see even those, since there’s no moon, so how do you know what’s up there at all?”

  “There are no stars,” Amanda put in from her car. “That’s the tip-off.”

  “Right. But there are lights down here. The Langes are all in. Georgia home, too?”

  “Maybe permanently.”

  “And the Cotters. Subdued. No dancing shadows in the windows. No kids bouncing around. Think they’ll be okay?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on Karen and Lee. She says they’ll be fine. She says Lee won’t fight the divorce, and rightly he shouldn’t. As evidence of infidelity goes, she has him cold. He’s moved in with his pregnant lover.”

  “At least she isn’t Gretchen, speaking of whom, the house is dark.”

  “Wait,” Amanda advised as her car inched forward, “wait . . . there. At the back of the living room. There’s the light. What does she do in the library so late?”

  “She studies,” Graham said.

  “Like French?”

  “Like lots of stuff. She’s taking correspondence courses to get a college degree.”

  Amanda stepped on the brake. That was a new take on the books on the table, and a nice one. “How do you know that?” she asked.

  Graham’s voice came back clearly. “She told me.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” Amanda asked. What had Gretchen done instead? She had tried to hide the books.

  “She feels intimidated by you. Come on, Mandy Don’t get in a huff.”

  “I’m not upset. Well, maybe a little. I mean, if she wants to be friends, why hide something like that?”

  “You wouldn’t. But she isn’t as confident as you,” he said as he turned into the driveway.

  Amanda pulled in beside him. By the time she was out of the car, she had let go of the irritation that had surged briefly. Jealousy had no place in her relationship with Graham. He was loyal. He loved her. She had no cause for suspicion of anyone, and that included Gretchen.

  But they hadn’t been in the house for more than five minutes when the telephone rang. Amanda’s first thought was that Dorothy had taken a turn for the worse after their visit. Judging from the look of alarm on Graham’s face, he was thinking the same thing.

  He snatched up the phone. “Yes?”

  Amanda watched him, waiting for clues as he listened to the voice on the other end. He shot her a quick glance, but the look of alarm remained.

  “When?” he asked tersely. Then, “Are you sure?”

  When threads of a high-pitched voice reached her, Amanda’s heart began to pound. If her own words to her mother-in-law had caused a setback—or worse, sparked another stroke, a stronger one this time—she would never forgive herself. Graham, she thought with fear, might not either.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said and hung up the phone. “Gretchen’s bleeding,” he told Amanda. “She thinks she’s losing the baby.”

  For a minute, Amanda did absolutely nothing. It took her that long to switch gears. Gretchen. Calling Graham.

  But no, she cautioned in the next heartbeat. Not calling Graham. Calling this house and talking with Graham because he’d been the one to answer the phone. Just as he’d been the one who had worked with her and earned her trust, so that she had felt comfortable enough to confide in him about things like taking correspondence courses. Just as he’d been the one to show kindness, when Amanda and the other women had failed.

  “We have to help her,” he said. “We’re right here, and we don’t have kids that need watching. She trusts us. She has no one else.”

  Having let go of her suspicion, Amanda responded with friendship. “We’ll take my car,” she said, handing him her keys as she went back out the door. Counting on Graham to bring the car close, she hurried across the street. Gretchen was already at the side door, her pallor accentuated by the gaslight there.

  Her voice was thin and tremulous. “I was fine. I was really fine. Then I stood up, and I felt a pain, and then there was blood.”

  Putting an arm around her waist, Amanda guided her toward the a
pproaching car. “Did you call the doctor?”

  “He told me to get to the hospital. I hate to bother you. You have other things to think about. But I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Is there pain now?”

  “Contractions,” she said in a higher voice, “but it’s too early. The baby’s too little.” While Graham backed the car up, she clutched Amanda’s arm and said in an urgent whisper, “Graham isn’t the father. There was never, ever anything romantic between us. He’s been a friend, but that’s all. I was just angry, so I didn’t say.”

  “I know.” Amanda opened the back door.

  “It wasn’t Russ or Lee, either. I wouldn’t do that to any of you.” Clutching her middle, she closed her eyes.

  Amanda held up a hand to stay Graham, who was out of the car, wanting to help. When Gretchen began to breathe more calmly, they guided her into the car. Without forethought, Amanda followed her in and sat close by her side, giving her a hand to squeeze with each pain.

  Graham drove quickly. There was only one hospital in the area. It was the one that he and Amanda knew intimately, the one that housed the fertility clinic. The thought of that alone was enough to trigger a jumping in Amanda’s stomach. Determinedly, she focused on Gretchen.

  “I won’t lose the baby, will I?” Gretchen whispered at one point.

  “Not if we can help it.”

  A minute later, she asked, “It can live at seven and a half months, can’t it?”

  “Definitely,” Amanda said.

  “But it’ll be small. What if it isn’t fully formed? What if there’s brain damage? Or lung damage?”

  “Don’t think those things,” Amanda begged, though she had thought them all herself and not so long ago. She hadn’t been pregnant. But she had imagined being pregnant. Even imagining it, she had worried. So she knew what Gretchen was feeling.

  “Why’s it coming early?” Gretchen whispered. “Is something wrong?”

  Amanda reassured her as best she could, though it was certainly a case of the blind leading the blind. “The baby may just be impatient.” She tried to think of other benign possibilities. “Or ready. Maybe you miscalculated.” That didn’t explain the blood.