More Than Friends (14 page)

"Go away," she whispered, and made a sharp

shooing motion before wiping her cheeks with her hand.

Every other time he had gone. This time he didn't.

"Go away," she whispered again, but more feebly. She began to shake as she hadn't when J.D. had come. Struck by the fact that her marriage was endangered, her son in a coma, and her life generally in tatters, she covered her face with her hands, backed up, and slid down the wall to the floor, where she sat crying, not caring who came and saw and pitied.

Grady's arms circled her. She hadn't heard him approach, but she knew they were his. They had a special shape. He had a special scent. Twenty-two years hadn't changed either.

"Go away," she sobbed.

"Can't do that," he whispered hoarsely. "I never could, when you were hurting."

She tried to think of all the reasons she should hate him and make him leave, but all she could think about just then was how tired she was, how sad, how heartsick, how frightened, and how solid and reassuring he felt.

So she indulged herself this one pleasure in the midst of hell. "Oh, Grady. I've botched things up."

He tightened his arms around her but said nothing.

"You told me to do good when you sent me away. I thought I had. Now I've ruined Michael's life."

"I was the one driving down the street."

"But he ran out because he saw me with Sam. I was with Sam, Grady. Sam is my husband's best friend. I'm a horrible person, not what you wanted me to be at all. You shouldn't come near me. You shouldn't have anything to do with me."

He stroked her head, as he had done when she was ten.

"J.D. hates me. Michael hates me. The girls will hate me, too, when they find out." Her voice rose to a wail. "What am I going to do?"

"Get some sleep," he said into her hair. "You're worn out."

"AH I ever wanted was a family." A husband, children, a home, security. "Now I'm losing it."

He ran a hand over her back. It was a gesture that said he had known her intimately once and still cared. She knew she should reject his comfort, just as he had once rejected hers. She should stand up, walk away, and show that she could live without him.

But she couldn't just then. She needed his caring. She was feeling at sea in a storm.

"You lose friends," he said in an anchoring voice. "Maybe a husband. But not children. They're your blood."

"My blood," she whispered, but her eyes were closed and her damp cheek lay against Grady's chest. His heartbeat was rhythmic and firm. It lulled her.

From a great distance she heard a voice ask, "Is Mrs. Maxwell all right?"

"She's very tired," Grady said. "I'm going to drive her home. Will someone call her there if there's any change?"

"Of course."

Teke stirred enough to murmur, "I can't leave." But Grady seemed to know what he was doing. He helped her to her feet and, supporting her with an arm around her waist, started her walking. He stopped for just a minute at the side of the bed and said, "That's a fine name, Michael is. He's a fine looking boy."

Teke felt a pang. Of all the secret times she had thought of Grady over the years, all the times she

had wanted to show him her children and the life she had made for herself, she had never thought it to be under circumstances like these.

"I want him to live and be all right, Grady."

"Tell him that."

"Michael, do you hear?"

Grady touched Michael's hand. "Your mom needs some sleep. She'll be back in a little while."

Teke said nothing more. She let herself be led from the hospital and seated in Grady's pickup. No matter that it was the same truck that had hit Michael. She was too tired to care. She was asleep by the time they left the parking garage and didn't wake up until they reached her house.

He didn't walk her to the door. She didn't ask him to, nor did she turn and thank him for driving her home. Talking to him would mean facing him and the conflicting emotions he evoked, which she didn't have the strength to do.

So she went to the door and let herself in without a look back. She didn't listen for the pickup's growl but went upstairs and started the shower. For an eternity, it seemed, she stood under the scalding spray. She scrubbed herself, then scrubbed herself again. She washed her hair until it squeaked. Then she left the shower, put on a nightgown, and climbed into bed.

That was at four in the afternoon. She slept until seven the next morning and awoke to find J.D."s side of the bed neat as a pin, which was fine. Given what he thought of her, sharing a bed with him would have been as distasteful to her as to him. What a bitch, he had said, and considering what she had done with Sam, he was probably right. Likewise when he'd called her a lousy wife.

The lousy mother part bothered her, though. She had been, and still was, the most conscientious mother she knew. So she made a full breakfast for Jana and Leigh before sending them off to school, spent an hour putting the house in order and gathering the things she wanted, then set off for the hospital.

She was done standing by Michael's bedside doing nothing. He was in that mind of his, she knew he was. She intended to get him out. six

to get himself off to work. He had shaved, showered, and dressed. His briefcase was on the floor by the door, his keys on the counter nearby. Still, he lingered. Once in the office, he knew, he would be bombarded with phone calls relating to Dunn v. Hanover. The press wanted statements; well-meaning friends wanted to offer congratulations; other victims of abuse wanted to hire him. It might have been flattering, if it weren't so embarrassing. In light of the way he had abused his own wife, he felt like a fraud.

Annie had left soon after Zoe and Jon, but signs of her were everywhere. Handwritten notes were tacked to the kitchen bulletin board, a scarf was hooked through the refrigerator handle, a pair of earrings lay on the windowsill at the end of a row of small potted plants. The plants were wilted. He took a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, and worked his way down the line. Time had calmed Annie some. When he spoke to her she gave brief, quiet answers. But always answers, never questions or unsolicited remarks. This was his punishment, he supposed. The cold shoulder. A loathsome formality. Severence of the soul wire.

And no Annie to hold. That was the worst. He could live without talk if he could hold her--not make love, just hold her. There was something about the way her body fit his, something about her warmth and her softness, that had become requisite to his existence. Setting the glass on the counter, he began to wander from room to room. At the den he stopped. On impulse he opened the cabinet that held the VCR, selected one of the family cassettes, and put it in the machine. Remote control in hand, he leaned against the broad leather arm of the sofa.

The tape opened with a game of Trivial Pursuit. It was a recent tape, he remembered the game, but it might have been one of dozens of others. The Maxwells were paired against the Popes, which was very much the norm. J.D. was the detail man and hence the strongest player of the four, Teke the weakest simply because she was always leaving the game to fix snacks. Annie and Sam pooled their varying strengths, and the kids played both sides.

Sam studied Teke on the screen. She seemed comfortable playing second fiddle to J.D." exchanging looks, laughs, and whispers with him while he came up with his answers. She exchanged her share of looks with Annie and the children, too. And with Sam. He scrutinized those for something either of them might have felt but suppressed, a hidden desire, a pent-up hunger. He saw nothing remotely suggestive. For his part, he was totally engrossed in Annie, who had an arm around his waist and a cheek to his shoulder. He loved it when she nestled against him that way.

He sighed. The Maxwells didn't touch the way the

Popes did. But they always won the game.

Wondering if there was a perverse lesson in that, he fast-forwarded the tape. This time he found the Popewells celebrating New Year's Eve. They were wearing ragtag costumes--Teke had dragged out a trunk filled with goodies from Halloweens past--and eating nachos and blowing horns. The television was tuned to Times Square. The Big Apple slowly dropped. Everyone counted, louder, louder, and exploded with excitement when the new year arrived.

There were kisses all around. Sam watched once, rewound the tape, and watched again. He saw himself kiss Annie, then the kids and Teke and the kids and Annie again, where he lingered. Teke kissed J.D. but went on to the others and didn't return. Not that J.D. was lonesome. He was dancing around the room with a rabbit and a chipmunk, Jana and Zoe respectively.

Another fast forward brought him to a Sunday afternoon of car washing. Soap and water were everywhere, most noticeably on the women of the house, who never could win in a water war but took it all in stride. Annie and Teke were laughing hysterically. Their T-shirts and shorts were drenched and clinging. Little was concealed of their shapes. Sam studied Teke. Her breasts were full, her hips curvy, as she squirmed to avoid the spray of the hose. Annie's body was smaller and sweeter and so much more enticing to Sam that he wondered how he had ever touched Teke and stayed hard.

Disgusted with himself all over again, he tossed the remote control on the coffee table, left the room, and climbed the two flights to Annie's attic office. Sinking onto the window seat, he fingered the afghan that lay in a haphazard heap. He knew she was sleeping here, using the afghan to keep warm.

He drew it to himself to ward off the chill he felt.

He had committed one stupid act, with ramifications that seemed to grow worse by the hour.

J.D. paced his office. Folders were piled neatly on his desk, along with a schedule of the day's meetings, but he couldn't get himself to look at either. It had been bad enough trying to concentrate when Michael was the only thing on his mind, but now Teke and Sam were there, too. He didn't know how he was going to work.

"What's the story on Michael?" his father asked from the door. J.D."s stomach jumped. He stopped pacing. "He's the same."

"Mary said you slept here last night."

Mary McGonigle had been with John Stewart for twenty-odd years. In addition to being his secretary, she was, as needed, his paralegal, his private courier service, his travel agent, his bank teller, and his personal shopper. J.D. wasn't sure if she was his lover. He wasn't sure if his mother was, either. He wasn't sure if John Stewart still had those kinds of urges. He was a very cold man.

The major difference between Mary McGonigle and Lucy Maxwell, as far as J.D. could discern, was that Mary was groomed and at work by seven each morning. That was how she had managed to catch J.D. Not that he had anything to hide--well, he did, but his having spent part of the night in the office was explained away easily enough.

"Teke went home for a break," he said, "so I stayed with Michael for most of the night. I came here to catch an hour or two of sleep." When Mary had woken him up in the middle of the fourth, he'd thanked her and gone back to the hospital, waiting

there until he felt sure Teke would have left the house. Then he had driven to Constance, showered and changed clothes, and returned to the office, where he was good for absolutely nothing.

"I need your help with Ben Meyer," John Stewart said now. Wait till you hear what Teke did to me, just wait till you hear. Shooting for nonchalance, he slipped his hands into his pockets and steadied his voice. "What's the problem?"

"He's giving us trouble on the university bequest." Ben Meyer was a multimillionaire and the major contributor to a new sports complex. John Stewart had been negotiating the gift.

You'll hit the roof, but only until you find out whom she did it with. All hell will break loose then. "I thought it was a done deal," J.D. remarked.

"It was, until Ben got to looking around at the sports complexes at other schools. He wants his to be like theirs. He wants his full name on the outside of the building. He says the Meyer Sports Center isn't enough."

You'll say you told me so. You'll say it's my own fault. I'll never hear the end of it. "I thought it was a whole package, with the name on each side of the building and a formal portrait and plaque in the foyer," J.D. said. You'll tell me to boot them out, both of them. You

"II want Teke out of the house and Sam out of the firm.

"He wants the full name," John Stewart told him. "The university doesn't."

But she's the mother of my kids, J.D. argued. They need her. I can't do what she does for them. I don't want to. He shifted one tense shoulder in a way that made it look like a shrug. "It's his money." John Stewart's eyes said John David was pitifully shortsighted. His voice reinforced the impression.

"It's our money lost if he's displeased with the arrangement and goes to another firm. I want you to talk to him."

"Why me?" J.D. asked. And Sam, what in the hell am I supposed to do about Sam? He brings good money into the firm. And he does the storm windows for me. I don't know how to do the storm windows.

"You have children nearing college age," John Stewart said. "You can make the argument that using his full name would be unwise. He'll believe you, more than me, when you tell him what the kids will do with it."

Blowen Meyer. It was really quite funny--or would be if the whole situation didn't suddenly strike J.D. as being petty. One time? Okay, even if it was, it was a cheap shot. I was the one who gave them their tickets to the big time. I was the one who stuck my neck out for them.

"Everyone calls him Ben," J.D. grumbled. "Why can't he use that?"

"He wants his real name. And there's no middle initial."

"That's what he gets for being only half Yankee. Why in the hell does he need his full name on the wall? What'll he want next, a crown?"

"Take care of it, J.D.," John Stewart ordered as he turned away. "I want this settled."

Annie sat at her desk with her forehead in her palm. The headache was back, partly, she was sure, from the strain of fighting back tears. She tried to keep her mind occupied, but it wouldn't cooperate. It insisted on running to Sam.