Dreams for Stones (4 page)

She went back to the living room and sat on
the sofa, curling her legs under her. From this angle, a slice of
the Golden Gate Bridge was visible.

She’d miss the mountains, of course, but
this view might grow on her. Besides, it would be for only two—no
less than two years now. A year and ten months. Actually, the move
would take her at least a month. So, make that a year and nine
months.

She rolled the idea around like a toffee,
tasting it.

When Greg walked into the living room,
yawning and rubbing his head, she was still staring out the window,
trying to decide.

“Hey, Kit. Deep thoughts?”

She smiled at him. “Just resting. Flying
always makes me tired. Must be all the energy I put into keeping
the plane in the air.”

“Nope, it’s the noise. Get yourself a pair
of earplugs. Fix you right up.”

She’d forgotten that—how often Greg took
something she said in jest and treated it as if it were serious.
Well, earplugs probably were a good idea.

“If you’re hungry, we can walk over to
Chinatown,” he said.

“I’d like that. Besides, I can use the
exercise.”

“Hey, I thought we already took care of
that.” He twitched his eyebrows in a fake leer, and laughing, she
stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

After dinner, as they opened their fortune cookies, Greg’s phone
rang. He checked the number, frowning. “It’s the hospital, and
after Walton promised no calls tonight.” He half turned away from
her. “Yeah. What’s up?”

Kathy unfolded her fortune:
You will be
lucky in love
. She looked across at Greg, her heart lifting.
She already was. Her decision to move to San Francisco
solidified.

While Greg talked on the phone, her
attention drifted to a Chinese family seated nearby. The man and
woman were helping their three young children to the dishes sitting
on the lazy Susan in the middle of the table.

The children, all boys, with solemn, dark
eyes and quick, shy smiles, were neatly dressed. Children. Three
was a perfect number. Two blonds and one redhead. Two boys and a
girl, or two girls and a boy, Greg and herself. . .

“I thought we agreed.” Greg’s voice dropped
abruptly. A moment later he ended the conversation, closed the
phone, and turned back to her.

“Sorry, Kit. An acetaminophen overdose came
in. Walton thinks I should see it. We’ll need to take a cab back so
I can pick up the car.”

She swallowed a spurt of irritation. Why
didn’t people overdose between nine and five? They did, of course.
It just seemed like more of them chose to do it at night. She
sighed, letting the irritation go. She’d already learned it was a
waste of time to get upset.

Greg came in late, after Kathy was already asleep, but he got up
with her the next morning and, after breakfast, drove her by the
medical center and pointed out the emergency entrance. “I bet I can
drive this route in my sleep. As a matter of fact, it’s highly
probable I have.”

“Aren’t we going in? I’d love to meet
Walton.”

“When we have a late case, he doesn’t come
in until noon.”

“We can stop by later, then.”

“Sure.” Greg reached over to fiddle with the
radio button, while Kathy tried to decide if he was twitchier than
normal this morning. Or maybe it only seemed that way because she
hadn’t been with him for a while. He never did sit still,
incessantly jiggling a foot or tapping a finger. She’d found the
only way to deal with it was to ignore it.

“What do you want to do today?” he said.

They decided on the Alcatraz tour, a visit
to the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park, and a ride on a cable
car. Greg said that would be more than enough.

Kathy found Alcatraz haunting, but in the bright sun and brisk chop
of the boat ride back to the mainland, her slight melancholy
dissipated. And as it did, she realized San Francisco was beguiling
her. Like Greg predicted it would in one of their first
conversations after he moved.
Guaranteed, Kit. Love at first
sight. Just like us
.

A cool breeze brushed her cheek and made her
shiver. Greg draped an arm on her shoulder, and she shrugged off
her unease.

After lunch, they wandered, sedate as
fifty-year marrieds, through the Japanese Garden, then reverting to
childhood, they raced each other across a stretch of grass. Greg
built up a lead, then turned, caught her hands and swung her around
and around in dizzying circles until they both collapsed to the
ground laughing and exhilarated.

In the late afternoon, they returned to the
apartment and made love. Afterward, they caught a cable car to the
waterfront for dinner.

When they returned to the apartment, Kathy
curled up on the couch with a book while Greg worked on a case
presentation for the following week. When his phone rang, he
checked the number and, saying it was the hospital, went to the
bedroom and closed the door. For the next twenty minutes, only the
intermittent murmur of his voice was audible.

When he came out, she looked up. “An
emergency?”

“Yeah.” His hair was standing up at odd
angles as if he’d spent the entire call pulling on it.

Noticing his strained tone, she set her book
down. “You need to go in?” She wouldn’t even mind too much if he
had to spend the night at the hospital after having him to herself
all day.

“Yes. . . no.”

“You don’t have to go in?”

“It wasn’t a case.” He sat in the chair next
to the couch, rubbing his hands on his thighs.

She sat up, put her feet on the floor and
leaned toward him. “But it was a problem.”

“Yeah. You could call it that.”

“You want to talk about it?”

He closed his eyes, then opened them and
turned away. “I need to tell you something.”

His expression and the tone of his voice
were scaring her. Her heart began thudding in a dull, heavy rhythm,
and her stomach swooped as if she were in a free-falling
elevator.

“. . . didn’t plan it, Kit. Julie and me.
We, well we just. . . clicked.”

She shook her head. The words he’d spoken
rattled around inside, like a handful of pebbles that needed to be
sorted out and lined up before they made any sense.

“I don’t understand.” Her mouth was almost
too dry to form the words.

He gave her an anguished glance and started
wringing his hands. “I know. I know. I should have told you right
away. No excuse. Stupid. Julie told me to.”

The elevator jarred to a halt as the words
made sudden, awful sense.

No! You can’t possibly love someone else.
We’re engaged. You’re marrying me!

The words piled up, broke free. “Why didn’t
you tell me not to come?” Not what she thought she was going to
say. Surprising her even more was the calm, detached manner in
which she’d said it.

“I thought it would be easier. Better, if I
told you in person.”

“You slept with me. Twice!” Her control
slipped as the words lurched from her mouth.

He sat back abruptly, as if he’d been
slapped.

Now there was an idea. Although she didn’t
believe in violence, right this minute, she understood why it
happened—could almost feel the relief a hard physical connection
between her hand and his face would bring. Except. She didn’t want
to touch him. Ever again. Or let him touch her.

She wrapped her arms around herself, holding
on tight as he shifted around like a man with ants in his pants.
Nasty, stinging, fire ants if the choice were up to her.

“I still have. . . feelings for you.” He
gave her a pleading look. “I wasn’t sure. It’s been confusing, you
know?”

No, she didn’t know.

“I had to see if what we had. . . If it’s
over.”

“And is it?” She almost choked on the words,
overwhelmed by the sudden, vivid memory of him swinging her around
this afternoon, the two of them laughing with the joy of being
together. Or so she’d thought.

He nodded.

She clamped her lips shut to keep the
whimper clogging her throat from emerging. A sudden pain made her
realize she was digging her fingernails into her arms. Fingernails
she’d splurged to have manicured for this trip. Probably he hadn’t
even noticed.

She pushed back against the sofa cushions to
get further away from him, fighting the temptation to leap up and
rake her perfectly shaped nails across his beautiful, deceitful
face. Carefully, she loosened her grip, slid her hands together in
her lap, and took a breath. When she tried to speak, she found she
had to stop to clear her throat. “I expect you’ll want your ring
back.”

“That’s okay. You can keep it.”

And let him think he’d bought her off?
Absolutely not. “Here. I obviously have no use for it anymore.” She
slid the ring off and laid it on the end table next to him, then
re-clenched her hands in her lap.

She didn’t know how she was managing to sit
on the couch as prim and composed as if she were at a tea party.
Shock maybe. But whatever its cause, she was grateful for it. She
would
not
break down in front of him.

“Look, Kitten. I didn’t do it to—”

“Don’t. Call. Me. Kitten.” The words ground
out, surprising her as much as they seemed to surprise him. But,
after all, she’d never used that tone with him before. Quite
possibly she’d never used that tone with anyone before.

“Sorry. Sorry.” He stood and backed
carefully away from her, as if she were a rattlesnake coiled to
strike. “I’ll get some things. Leave. You can stay here until you
go back.”

“Just a minute.” She unclenched her jaw, but
kept her tone firm. “I’m not through here.”

He froze.

“I want to get this straight. You’re in love
with another woman, but you still slept with me.”

His eyes appeared glazed, and a feeling of
power swept through her, momentarily pushing aside any possibility
she might start crying.

“Do you have any idea what that makes you?”
She thought of all the names she could call him. Delicious,
colorful, awful names. “You’re. . . despicable. Dishonest. And
dishonorable.” Good strong spitting words, and she made the most of
them.

His body bowed slightly, as if he were
folding in on himself.

She eased her hands apart and took a breath,
but she was finished. Less is more, she told herself. Too many
words would dilute her contempt. Besides, if she kept talking, she
might not be able to stop. Might start weeping. And she
would
not cry
in front of him.

After a stunned moment, he turned and
escaped into the bedroom, and she took a deep breath and closed her
eyes against the pain beginning to spread inside her head and
chest.
A few minutes more, Kathleen Hope Jamison. Two minutes,
three at the most. Then you can fall apart.

When Greg came out of the bedroom, he’d
recovered his composure. “I’m really, really sorry about this.”

As if that would erase what he’d done.

“We can talk more if you want. Tomorrow. And
here, this will help pay for your ticket. It’s all I’ve got on
me.”

Kathy stared in disbelief at the hand
holding money out to her. When she didn’t move to take it, he set
the clutch of bills on the table.

For a moment their eyes met before his
skittered away. He cleared his throat as if to say something more,
then apparently thinking better of it, he picked up his bag and
left.

She sagged in relief, taking several deep
breaths, then glanced at the table. The money was where he’d placed
it, but the ring was gone. She stared at the empty place where the
ring had been, realizing abruptly how disappointed she’d been with
it. The large emerald-cut diamond had been all Greg’s choice. “Hey,
Kit, what’s more debt?” he’d said, when she protested it made more
sense to pick a less expensive ring. “Only a couple of years before
we hit the big time. Besides, you’ll have it forever.”

Right.

So, why hadn’t she thrown it at him? It was
the least she could have done, and probably what he expected her to
do. But no. She’d let him off with words.

He’d taken her future and, with one sharp
twist, skewed it into an unknowable shape. Then he walked out.
Going to. . . what did he say her name was, Jeannie, Jennie? No.
Julie, that was it. No longer Kathy and Greg. Now it was Greg and
Julie. Julie and Greg.

And why wasn’t she crying? Or yelling? Or
something?

Instead she felt hollowed out, as if Greg
had walked out taking with him not only a change of underwear but
her emotions.

After a time, she managed to stand, her
movements labored and stiff, like someone bruised all over from a
terrible fall.

Falling in love.

Right. More like floating in love.
But
this. . . this
. . . Angrily she gave up trying to find the
right word. This other thing that just happened. That was
falling.

She searched until she found a phone book,
called Continental Airlines, and reserved a seat on the six a.m.
flight to Denver.

One step at a time.

That done, she went to the bedroom and,
averting her eyes from the bed, re-packed before consulting the
phone book a second time to call a cab. When it arrived, she left
without looking back.

Continental’s ticket counter was closed for
the night, and only a few people were scattered around the
terminal.

A janitor pushed a mop to the rhythms of
whatever played in his headphones, and a young man slept on the
floor with his backpack under his head, both of them blissfully
unaware of their surroundings.

Envy of their oblivion flared, faded as she
chose a seat away from everyone else.

The unreality that had set in after Greg
left the apartment lasted through the remainder of the night. She
knew it would eventually desert her, but as long as it lasted, she
accepted it with relief.