Together Alone

by Barbara Delinsky

  “I take it you’ve eaten here before?” he asked.

  “Several times.”

  “Do you have any recommendations?”

  “The chicken Caesar is good, although I always love the quiche. It may be more of a luncheon dish, but I think people pay far too much heed to conventions like that. Your stomach doesn’t know what time of day it is. I’ve read articles calling pizza a perfectly appropriate breakfast.”

  The marathoner would have died. Michael merely chuckled. “My kids have been eating pizza for breakfast for years. Even the two oldest, when they were living at home, before their mother died. She never believed that it was worth a fight, and while I much prefer the great British breakfast, I don’t believe in fighting, either.”

  “What is the great British breakfast?” Celeste asked before he could return to the subject of kids.

  “Eggs, kippers and sausage, broiled tomatoes and mushrooms and toast. It’s quite large. I can’t eat like that anymore, of course. My doctor says I’m too large, and besides, I’m not the best of cooks at any time, much less first thing in the morning. So a tradition has arisen in my house. Special occasions are marked by the children coming over and cooking me the great British breakfast. Not that it’s often, mind you. But it is fun.”

  For just a moment, Celeste wondered what it would be like to be part of a large and congenial family. Then she pushed the thought aside. Large families meant more food to cook, more clothes to wash, more misdeeds to monitor. She didn’t wish it for the world.

  “Have you decided?” Michael asked when the waitress returned.

  Celeste ordered the quiche. During the time it took him to order the chicken Caesar, she noted that his hair was vaguely shaggy, as were his clothes, clean but shaggy. He had a distinctly broken-in look.

  Once the waitress left, he asked her if she was having the same trouble adjusting to being without children at home that he was. She couldn’t lie. To his credit, he didn’t look shocked.

  “It must be different for a woman to shoulder the responsibility of parenthood alone, than for a man,” he said and proceeded to talk about the years since his wife had died as they related to his children.

  At one point, Celeste tried to bring the discussion around to what he did in his own time for fun, but his own time appeared to be family time. If he wasn’t visiting his grandchildren, he was taking his older son to Whalers’ games, or attending parents’ weekend at the younger one’s school. He took one vacation a year, with both sons, his daughter and son-in-law, and grandchildren.

  Celeste was not ready for grandchildren.

  By the time their food had come and gone, she realized that she wasn’t ready for Michael, either. She was tired of hearing about his kids. She was still too close to parenthood to want to talk about it all the time. Granted, he sounded like a great father. But she wasn’t looking for a father.

  Then again, as she bid him goodbye, she felt a twinge of regret. There was something endearing about his smily face. It wasn’t an inspiring face, or a pensive one. But it was kind.

  Not that he was in serious contention as a suitor, she decided as she drove home to Grannick. There wasn’t any chemistry between them, and chemistry was important.

  She might find it with the veterinarian. He had a lovely, deep voice that was definitely a turn-on. Unfortunately he had left to go to a conference the day after she called. They were meeting at the Sunflower the following week.

  So there was that to look forward to.

  And the doctor, though she had certain qualms about that one. Arranging a date with him had been as complex an ordeal as reading his résumé had been. In response to her note suggesting the Sunflower, he had sent his telephone number. The first challenge, then, had been to reach him, rather than his answering service. The second challenge had been to find a suitably accessible meeting place. He was from Baltimore and had no business, whatsoever, he claimed, in Springfield. So they were meeting in Boston, where he had meetings the following week.

  He had sounded almost begrudging, as though she was one more appointment to be squeezed into an already overbooked schedule. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t hung up on him. Maybe because doctors earned a bundle. More probably because she had just returned from striking out with the marathoner. She might yet call and cancel.

  Then, sigh, there was the architect. As she had done with the others, she had sent him a note suggesting a meeting at the Sunflower. Unfortunately, since she had to write through the magazine post office box, it had taken him longer to respond. The wait had been worth it.

  “Dear GC403, I loved your note. Supper at the Sunflower sounds perfect, though I actually had another thought. One of my clients, an artist, is having a showing of her work at a gallery in Cambridge. A large open house is planned for the last Sunday in October. If you were to come, you would not only see a sample of my work, but hers, as well. There will be many interesting people there, including artists and authors from the area, so that even if you think me a total bore and never want to see my face again, the afternoon won’t be a waste. On the chance that you find me as interesting, if not more so, than some of those others, there is a wonderful coffeehouse nearby where we can go for drinks and entertainment, before I put you in your car and send you home.”

  It was the kind of adventure that sounded full of possibility. Her anticipation of it, as she drove home from Springfield with Michael’s kind face in her mind, was peppered with heat and spice.

  Brian looked despairingly in the direction of his kitchen. Pots, pans, and baby bottles filled the sink. Dirty dishes littered the counter. Laundry was piled on the floor by the dryer.

  He was exhausted looking at it. He was exhausted thinking about it. It seemed he had been doing nothing but pots and pans and dishes and laundry for two months straight.

  If there was a heaven, Gayle was up there enjoying the irony of the do-nothing father doing all. Well, at least he was trying, which was more than she was doing. She had let a goddamned car wipe her out.

  He should have cleaned the kitchen and folded the laundry last night, but he had been tired. Why? Because he had been up into the wee hours the night before making love to Emily.

  So maybe Gayle was enjoying herself out of spite.

  Women would be the death of him yet.

  “Brian?”

  But a sweet death it would be. The sound of her voice, alone, made him jump. He reached the door just as Emily arrived at the top of the stairs and braced his hands on either side of the frame. “You can’t come in yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this place isn’t ready for viewing. I need ten minutes.”

  “I’m not viewing.”

  “Five minutes.”

  She ducked under his arm and took a look around. “Mmm. You’re right. Not for viewing.”

  “I try to keep ahead of it, but it’s impossible. As soon as the clothes are clean, they get dirty again. Same with pots and pans, and I swear I make up that goddamned sofabed ten times a day. Dust the table, and there’s more in an hour, so what’s the point? It’s doing and redoing, doing and redoing. There’s never an end to it.”

  She shot him a droll look. “Now you know.”

  “How do women survive?”

  “You get used to it after a while.”

  “But what do I do before ‘after a while’ sets in?”

  “Listening to music helps. Some women make phone calls while they’re folding laundry. Some watch television while they’re doing the beds. Unfortunately, if we don’t do the work, it won’t get done, and we want it done.”

  Brian stalked to the bed and began pulling at sheets. “You’ve got it, there. I tried leaving the bed unmade on the theory that no one’s here during the day to see, but then I had to see when I walked in at night, and when Julia saw the thing open, she insisted on playing there and having supper there, and she spilled food all over the place, so I had to wash the sheets.”

  Emily nudged him asid
e. “I’ll do the bed. You do the laundry.”

  “No. It’s my bed.”

  “I’ve spent some time in it myself this week.”

  “Not enough,” he grumbled. She rarely spent the night. He knew that she was struggling with the morality of their affair, that she came to him against her better judgment, but he was dying to wake up with her. She was, still, that little pocket of calm in his life. Even when they were making love, he felt stabilized.

  But he was loath to pressure her, when she was so vulnerable. So he ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Sorry. I rushed to get Julia to day care so I could come back here and clean before work, but it’s not my idea of how to best start the morning.”

  His idea of how to best start the morning entailed taking Emily in his arms, but something about her said that wasn’t why she had come. Suddenly frightened, he reached for her hand.

  Emily closed her fingers around his. “We have to stop.”

  His fear grew. “You don’t want to be with me?”

  “I do. Too much. I love being with you. Then I go back home and feel guilty, and it isn’t only the cheating on Doug. When I’m with you, I’m not thinking about him.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “But he’s my husband, and we have a daughter. Unless I’m prepared to ask for a divorce, I need to think about him more. I need to try to make my marriage work.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s my husband. And because we had a good marriage once.”

  “That was before Daniel disappeared,” Brian said and regretted it when a shaft of pain crossed her face. But it had to be said. “Isn’t it true?”

  “Yes, but one thing may not have caused the other. Doug has grown. He’s changed.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know him the way I used to.”

  “That’s not a good answer.”

  “Well, I don’t have a better one, and until I do, I have to look for it!” She took a breath. “Being with you clouds the picture.”

  Brian heard her anguish. It was some solace for what she was saying. Feeling helpless and more than a little inadequate, he drew her close. “When you’re with me, you smile. You laugh. You enjoy yourself. You deserve to do those things, Emily.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  Inadequate. Oh, yeah, he felt that. Doug was a major roadblock in their relationship, but he wasn’t the only one. Daniel was right there beside him. She claimed he was dead, but she wouldn’t leave the house, or the town where he had lived. Brian feared she wouldn’t leave Doug for the same reason.

  He almost told her about the photograph. It had arrived several days before, a computer rendition of a file photo of Daniel. At twenty-one, he was handsome, half-scholar, half-rogue. His blond hair had darkened to a shade of brown midway between Doug’s lighter and Emily’s darker. His face was more narrow than the child’s had been, his eyes intelligent, his mouth gentle. He looked markedly like Jill, except for the shadow of a beard. Emily would have been proud of the young man in the print.

  But showing it to her wouldn’t help anything. He had sent it out through every channel possible, and could do nothing now but wait. He was also waiting for the fingerprint enhancement to be done, so that he could run a check on it. And he was preparing to question those people who hadn’t been questioned the first time around. He had even greater incentive to do that now.

  Startling, how dependent on her he had grown. She offered him the kind of guileless devotion no other woman had, and he loved it. He felt pampered. He felt needed. Whereas his relationship with Gayle had been programmed to allow for a wedding, a child, a simple evening together, his relationship with Emily was spontaneous and hot.

  She complemented him. She challenged his mind. She brought sun to his day. And damn it he brought it to hers. He knew he did. Even now, with her arms wrapped around him and her face burrowing into his neck, he could feel her drinking off his strength, his sturdiness, his love. Rather than being depleted by what she took, he was always enhanced.

  “I don’t want to let you go.”

  “I have to do this,” she whispered brokenly.

  He would have argued, if he hadn’t been so loath to cause her pain.

  “We’ll still see each other,” she said.

  But not that way, and that way was what set their relationship apart from the relationships they had with other people. He thought to tell her he loved her, but that would only make things harder. So he simply held her for a while. He waited for her to draw back, but she didn’t. So he held her longer. Still she didn’t draw back.

  Finally, sensing that she needed him to do it, he released her. “I’ll be here,” he said and managed a smile.

  She nodded. “It’s good to know.”

  “Julia loves you.”

  “I love her, too.” She looked around, drinking in the room with thirsty eyes before finding a diversion. “Why are there dishes in the sink? Is something wrong with the dishwasher?”

  “Yeah. It’s full. Everything inside is clean. I just haven’t had a chance to unload it.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. You fold the laundry. I’ll do the bed.”

  “John would kill me.”

  With a dry, “John’s not here,” she put Brian’s newest jazz revival disc on the player and set to work. It was her way of saying that though they wouldn’t be sleeping together, not much else would change.

  Brian took heart from that.

  At the moment of Daniel’s disappearance, there had been four other customers and three employees inside the post office with Emily. The only employee questioned at the time had been the one helping the customers. The other two had been sorting mail in the back room.

  One of those had died nine years before. The other was retired and living with his daughter two towns east of Grannick.

  “Arthur Terrell?” Brian asked when a white-haired man answered his knock.

  “Yes.”

  He flashed his badge. “Detective Stasek. Grannick Police Department. I understand you were working at the post office nineteen years ago when Daniel Arkin was taken from his mother’s car. Do you remember that day?”

  “Arkin. Sure do. Ever find the boy?”

  “No. We’re doing some clean-up on the case. The file says that you were in the back room at the time of the crime. Do you remember how long you’d been there that morning?”

  “I was sick about the boy. His picture was on our wall for a long time after. He was a cute-looking thing. My daughter had one just his age. Couldn’t imagine something like that happening to him.”

  “Mr. Terrell?”

  “How can I help you, sir?”

  “How long were you in the back room?”

  “The back room? That’s where we sorted the mail. Did it all by hand in those days. The carriers kept coming back to get more.”

  “Were you in the back room the whole time Mrs. Arkin was there?”

  “I didn’t know when she was there. We couldn’t see anything up front. Didn’t know nothing had happened ’til the police showed up.”

  “You didn’t leave the back room at all? Not to poke your head out front? Or go outside for coffee or a smoke?”

  “Don’t smoke.”

  “How about getting fresh air?”

  “I always stayed inside ’til the job was done. Didn’t see nothing outside, seeing as we didn’t have no windows.” He frowned. “I figured it had t’ve been someone passing through town. No one in Grannick would’a taken the boy. No one in Grannick would’a kept the boy, seeing as Emily was so upset. Such a nice girl. My heart broke for her.”

  Brian’s, too, but he wanted a lead. “You mentioned the carriers coming back for more mail. Did any of them come or go while Mrs. Arkin was there?”

  “I just told you. I didn’t see her there.”

  “Okay. I’ll rephrase that. The police arrived within ten minutes of Mrs. Arkin’s leaving the post office. Did any of the carriers come
or go during, say, the half hour before the police showed up?”

  Arthur thought about that. “Don’t remember, really.”

  “How about sounds? You couldn’t see what was going on out front, but could you hear?”

  “Some.”

  “What does ‘some’ mean”

  “If there was a ruckus, I’d a heard.”

  “Did you hear one that morning?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear anything at all unusual that morning?”

  “Not that I recall. I used to stand out back listening to the voices, playing a game, trying to recognize them, just to pass the time, know what I mean? You couldn’t always hear the ladies’ voices. Oh, you could hear Constance Marret’s voice, no one could miss that one, it was all high and whiny. Emily’s would’a been softer, like a hum. Once the police came through and said what happened, I remember thinking that the voices were too calm for something like that. ’Course, Constance had been in earlier, and Archie Hickocks”—he upped his own voice—“who made high little sounds, kind of like this,” he paused, “and Frank Balch was in, and his voice was the worst. Could always hear Frank. He had a mean voice.”

  “Was it any meaner than usual that day?”

  “No meaner. Just the same. Those were the times when my partner—Horace, he passed on a few years back—my partner and I’d look at each other and be real happy we weren’t working out front.”

  Brian got nothing more. After passing Arthur his card, he returned to the Jeep and considered the next name on his list.

  Four patrons had been inside the post office with Emily that day. Archie Hickocks had left on foot, heading down the street to the sandwich shop that had been where the Eatery now was. His arrival had been well documented.

  Frank Balch had climbed into his own car without seeing Emily’s car or the child. He had been counting out change from the twenty dollar bill he had used to pay for his stamps and thought he’d been gypped of a dollar. He had been ready to storm back in, when he had found it.

  Selma and May McDougall had left the post office and gone to the dress shop across the street. They hadn’t seen a thing.