Solomon's Decision (10 page)

"Didn't she pass away about the same time Jesse did?" Wally asked.

"No, it was closer to Christmas." He looked at his glass. "Do I want another? Nah.
I've got to open the station in the morning. Dad'll kill me if I come in with a
hangover."

"I'm gonna have some coffee." Wally pantomimed pouring into a cup and soon
Lester was headed their way with a steaming carafe.

Erik realized the world was looking a little blurred. "Me too," he said. "Black and
strong." Caffeine might keep him awake tonight, but it was better than passing out before
he could even climb the stairs to his apartment.

Well into their coffee, Steve reopened the conversation. "Look, Erik, don't get the
wrong idea about Linnie Pierson, okay? She's a real nice lady, and nobody around here
cares much who the father of her kids was. However she got them, she did it for a good
reason and we don't worry about it."

"They're nice kids," Wally added, "and she's done right well with 'em. That's all
that matters."

"It is indeed," Erik agreed. He went to bed full of food for thought.

* * * *

"You're sure we did the right thing, 'Melia?"

Amelia Warren, widow, horse breeder, County Commissioner, and
enthusiastically fallen woman, stretched voluptuously. It had taken her three weeks to get
Lester to come to her house instead of meeting her in the apartment above the Wooden
Nickel, as he had done for the past six years. Somehow the change had done them both
good. Lester had made love to her with unusual vigor, and she'd been just enough titillated
by seeing his broad, dark body against the white crocheted bedspread of her feminine bed
that she had been more, well, turned on--she thought that was the current term--than she
had been in years.

She dropped a kiss on Lester's shoulder, too lazy, too sated, to stretch any farther.
"I hope so, honey. If we hadn't let him rent the apartment, he might've gone up to New
Meadows, and we didn't want that."

"We didn't?" Lester pulled her against his shoulder and held her there. "How's
come?"

"Oh, honey, I told you earlier, but I guess you were just too busy to listen."

One big, ham-sized hand cupped her head and strong fingers sifted through her
hair. "Had me better things to do," Lester rumbled.

Amelia shivered as his fingers, callused and hard, stroked the tender skin behind
her ear. The worst part about growing older, she thought, was that Lester was no longer as
randy has he'd been when they were both twenty.

For perhaps the jillionth time, she wondered what her life would have been like if
she had stayed in Garnet Falls and married Lester, instead of going down to Idaho State
and finding someone else. Less fulfilling, certainly, but more exciting. Lester warned
her--oh, back when they were just kids--that with his chances of passing on Cystic Fibrosis, he
wouldn't give her children. Today medical science could give the answers they hadn't
dared take a gamble on, but it was too late, had been for a long time.

"I don't want Linnie to end up like me," she said, hearing the tiniest hint of regret
in her voice. She couldn't say, even now, that she'd made the wrong choices in her life. The
twenty-eight years of marriage had been all right, just not exciting and passionate. She'd
had the children, and a lot of money.

Would those same years have been any better with Lester? She didn't know, and it
really didn't matter, except that now, as she saw the big six-oh staring her in the face, she
was aware of how much she had missed when she was young. Every woman needed to be
loved. It kept the skin clear, the juices flowing. "Madeline needs more than a father for
those twins, Lester. She needs a husband for herself. It's such a waste, her bein' alone at her
age."

Lester's voice was slow and deep, as if he were on the edge of sleep. "She's got
family--Jon and Janine, and their young 'uns--" he mumbled, "and those little hellions of
hers." His voice dwindled with the last few words, and she felt his breathing deepen and
become the regular, long inhalations of early sleep.

Was there a man alive who could stay awake after sex? She'd heard her share of
beauty parlor and bridge table talk, and one of the most common complaints of even the
best satisfied wives was that their men never cuddled them enough afterward.

Idly she wondered how Erik Solomon was in bed? Did he stay with his women
after loving them, sharing the afterglow, or did he, in Candy Lindholm's inelegant and
earthy words, "start to snore before he'd rolled clear off?"

She smiled into the room's dimness. Not that she'd ever know, because even if
Amelia's plans came to fruition, Linnie Pierson was not one to kiss and tell.

Too bad. She really would like to know if the sensual promise she read in Erik's
rich brown eyes was for real, or just a product of a dirty old woman's imagination.

* * * *

Madeline turned the heat down under the potatoes and went to the door, hoping
someone interesting had come to call. The twins had been out at the ranch for two weeks
now and she still wasn't used to the peace and quiet of an empty house in the evenings. She
was so lonely she could cry.

She had so far resisted calling them this evening, but knew that if something didn't
distract her, she would before their bedtime. It wasn't that she doubted their well
being--Janine and Jon treated them like their own children. Ginger and Kyle were so much more
content out there with their cousins than at Wanda's Childcare, which was all right to go to
after school, but not for all summer. The real problem was her own loneliness, pure and
simple.

She opened the door.

"Good evening, Madeline. Is supper ready?" Amelia Warren slipped past her and
into the living room, immediately making herself at home.

"Hello, Amelia. No, supper is not ready. I've already eaten."

Amelia sniffed. "What's that I smell cooking?"

"Potatoes." Madeline had to chuckle at Amelia's anticipatory expression. "They're
for the committee potluck tomorrow night."

"That's all right then," Amelia said, leaning back comfortably into the sofa. "I'll
eat some tomorrow. I'm not really hungry tonight, anyhow."

Shaking her head in amusement, Madeline started for the kitchen. "The tea will be
hot in a few minutes," she called back over her shoulder. "And I've got snickerdoodles this
week."

"No chocolate chips?" came a forlorn wail after her.

That Amelia. She was a caution. Rich and feisty, she had a finger in nearly every
Sunset County pie. Besides being a County Commissioner, she sponsored several of the
soccer teams in the county's league, organized outings for the elderly--she didn't consider
herself one of them, being only fifty-nine--and wrote frequent, impassioned letters to the
Idaho Statesman
whenever one of her causes needed support. This summer she
was championing the preservation of Wounded Bear Meadow, trying to shame the state
into purchasing it for a wildlife refuge if NWT didn't come up with funding. Madeline
hoped she'd be half the woman Amelia was when she reached fifty-nine. Even at
thirty-one, she wished she had that much energy.

She wouldn't mind having Amelia's love life as well. Everyone in Garnet Falls
knew--but no one ever mentioned--that Amelia and Lester Wood met every week in the
apartment above the Wooden Nickel for an afternoon of lovemaking. Since both were
widowed and free of familial responsibilities, it was generally accepted that whatever made
them happy was fine with their friends and neighbors.

"Have you heard from the novelty company?" Amelia asked when Madeline
returned to the living room carrying a tray with two cups of peppermint tea and a plate of
cookies.

"No, but I didn't really expect to yet. It's only been a week since I ordered the
prizes." As co-chair, with Amelia, of the Wednesday Club's annual fund-raiser, her job was
to follow the older woman's orders and keep all the loose ends tied up.

"They should have acknowledged our order by now," Amelia fretted. "What if
they never got it?"

"Amelia, we still have more than three weeks before the carnival. But if it makes
you fell better, I'll call them tomorrow."

"Please do." Amelia took another handful of cookies, making Madeline envy her
metabolism. Only slightly over five feet tall, Amelia was as slim as a girl and never
seemed to worry about her weight. She ate like a logger--Madeline had personally seen her
put away eight pancakes, three eggs, and a huge slice of ham at the Legion breakfast last
April. Life was definitely not fair, not when Madeline had to subsist on yogurt and
vegetables for lunch just to be able to eat normally at supper.

"So. Are you and Erik Solomon seeing much of each other?" Amelia said after the
plate was cleared of cookies.

Aha!
thought Madeline,
now we come to the point of this visit.
"Should we be?" she said, with as much innocence in her voice as she could put there.

"Well, I just thought, since you're about the only single people in town your age, it
just seemed like, you know, you could get together and do things." Amelia didn't meet
Madeline's eyes.

"Do things? What did you have in mind?" She knew good and well what Amelia
was envisioning, but she wanted her to say it, straight out.

"Well, bowl, maybe. Have picnics. Go up to McCall and have dinner. Maybe see a
movie."

"But I do those things with my children. Why should I be interested in substituting
Erik Solomon?"

"Oh, pshaw, Linnie! Don't play dumb with me!"

"Play dumb? What on earth do you mean, Amelia?" She was biting back laughter
at the transparency of Amelia's thoughts.

"You know good and well what I mean! It's high time--it's way past time, in
fact--that you started living like the young and pretty woman you are. You've played like a
widow woman long enough, Linnie, and it's time you came back to life."

Madeline sobered, wondering if the whole town still saw her in the role of
grieving widow, a role they'd willingly allowed her at Jesse's death, even though she'd
never been wed. "I'm alive, Amelia. Really I am. And I'm happy, too. How could I not be,
with Ginger and Kyle."

"Children are no substitute for a man in the house, Madeline!" Amelia snapped.
"You can't cuddle up to a child in the night."

At Madeline's raised eyebrows, she backed down. "Well, maybe that isn't quite
what I meant to say. You need love, Madeline, and don't tell me you get it from those two.
They're little hellions, just like all that age, and they can keep you busy and wear you out,
but they can't bring you to life like a man can."

"And if I don't want to be brought to life that way?" Madeline couldn't help
asking.

"Then you're a damn fool, girl. Wasting yourself like you are, you'll end up a
lonely old woman someday."

"I'll still have my children."

"Sure you will, just like I have mine. One's in San Diego, one's in Columbus, and
I'm not sure from one day to the next where the youngest is, the way her cruise ship
wanders all over the globe." She leaned forward and patted Madeline's hands where they
lay on her lap. "Children don't complete a woman, Linnie. They fulfill her. But a woman's
only half a person without a man to love her."

"Then why haven't you married again?" Madeline had always wondered why
Amelia and Lester maintained their not-so-clandestine affair instead of marrying.

"I'd marry him in a minute, if he'd have me," Amelia said. She bit her lip and
blinked rapidly for a moment. "But some men get an idea into their heads and there's no
convincing them otherwise." Looking every day her age for a moment, Amelia, with
visible effort, renewed her smile. "Besides, we're talking here about you, not me. I'm
practically over the hill, and you're still a spring chicken. Why, if I were twenty years
younger, I'd go after that gorgeous man myself, but since I'm not, well, I guess it's up to
you."

Madeline smiled. "He is awfully good looking, isn't he?"

"That he is, Linnie. And nice as he is handsome." Amelia picked up the fanny
pack she used as a purse. "I've got to be goin'. You'll be sure and check up on that order,
now won't you?"

Madeline promised, and escorted her visitor to the door. She was pretty sure
Amelia wasn't at all worried about the order for carnival prizes. She'd just been doing a
little matchmaking, in her own steamroller way.

Closing the door, Madeline leaned against it, feeling the cool glass of the window
on her forehead. Who would be next? It seemed like the whole town was determined to
pair her off with Erik.

* * * *

"Good morning."

Madeline didn't have to look up from her desk to know who was standing in the
doorway of her office. She knew that voice as well as she knew her own.

"Good morning, Erik. What can I do for you?"

He was leaning against the doorframe, looking impossibly handsome in a pale
yellow cotton sweater over a madras shirt, light tan chinos, and tasseled loafers. No one in
Sunset County ever dressed like that, except for the annual Christmas play at the grade
school, maybe, or the high school graduation ceremonies.

"How do I get a list of all the civic organizations in the county?"

"A list of civic organizations? What for?"

"I thought I'd put together a luncheon program, telling why preserving Wounded
Bear Meadow would be good for the area. I kind of got the impression that most people
around here don't think too much of the idea."

"I see," she said, wondering if he would believe her. "I can tell you. There's the
Wednesday Club, the American Legion, the Odd Fellows, and the Sunset County
Boosters." Smiling, she pressed her forefinger against her lips. "I don't think any of them
have luncheon meetings."

"What about the ones that do?" He strolled into her office and sat in the old oak
chair she kept for her occasional visitors--mostly Emaline and Eddie.