The Night Remembers (16 page)

Daphne tilted her head sideways and looked up at him from under her lashes. "You promise I won't end up eating alone?" The look in her eyes invited a reassuring kiss.

Adam ran the backs of two fingers down her cheek in a brief caress instead. "I promise," he said softly. Then he reached around and pulled open the door. "Go," he ordered, pushing her out. "Before I forget I have a job to do here and decide to go with you."

Daphne went, her knees still trembling from the tenderness of his gesture.

* * *

His house
was
easy to find. Easy, that is, if you were a native San Franciscan which, fortunately, Daphne was. A modest-sized bungalow tucked into the maze of streets in the Russian Hill district, Adam's house had a slightly 1920s' look to it, as if it might have been built by some movie mogul as a hideaway for his lady love. The inside, however, was warm and modern and very definitely had been completely remodeled.

The stuccoed walls were a warm cream, the floors were shining hardwood, the overstuffed furniture was mostly varying shades of soft brown, from pale toast to roast coffee. Touches of burnished copper and bright orange accented the room: a ginger-jar lamp, a tall Chinese vase by the door, an Oriental rug that stretched between the sofa and the fireplace.

Either Adam had become a lot more interested in decorating over the years or he had hired a decorator, Daphne thought with a smile. And, although the room accurately reflected his warmth and quiet personality, she felt sure it was the latter. Adam would never have thought to pick a color scheme that would complement his golden good looks to such advantage.

She crossed the room, tossing her bag into a corner of the sofa as she passed it, and struck a match to the fire that had already been laid in the fireplace. It blazed to life immediately, little flickers of flame dancing up around the dry eucalyptus logs, releasing their clean fresh fragrance and casting a warm glow over the room. Daphne watched it for a few minutes, delighting in the unique fragrance of the wood and the warmth of the fire on her outstretched hands.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her dinner had to be ordered before she could eat. Breakfast, she remembered suddenly, had only been half eaten this morning. And lunch, delicious as it was, had been sketchy: little paper cups of shrimp cocktail and individual-serving size packets of oyster crackers, eaten as they strolled along Fisherman's Wharf, with a shared banana split from the ice-cream parlor in Ghirardelli Square as dessert.

Smiling to herself, she pulled the metal fire screen closed and turned, following her nose to the kitchen and the list of takeout places that Adam had promised would be by the telephone.

A decorator had been at work in here, too, she thought, eyeing the russet squares of Mexican tile on the floor, the cream walls, the bittersweet orange counters and gleaming appliances. It looked like something from
House Beautiful,
not a thing out of place, not a single water spot marring the perfection of the double stainless steel sink.

The list was where Adam said it would be, pinned to a small corkboard next to a wall phone that was the exact shade of the cream-colored walls. Daphne pushed the bulky sleeves of her sweater up and ran the tip of her index finger down the neatly typed list. Mexican, Chinese, Greek, Italian; the selection was extensive. He must have every takeout place in San Francisco listed here, she thought wryly, wondering if he ever cooked for himself.

She called one of the Chinese restaurants on the list and then looked around for anything that might resemble a coffee maker. It was attached to the underside of one of the cupboards, a modern space-age gadget that ground the beans, brewed the coffee and kept it warm, all in less than twelve square inches of space. Now if she could only find the coffee.

Not in any of the cupboards, not in the refrigerator. The only things in there were a quart of milk, a half-eaten wheel of cheese neatly wrapped in cellophane, two apples and three one-pound bags of peanut M&Ms. She finally found a sack of gourmet coffee beans in the freezer. She started the coffee maker, guessing at the amount of beans to use, and left the kitchen to poke around the rest of the house.

The dining room echoed the color scheme of the living room, with a gleaming mahogany table surrounded by four matching chairs upholstered in cream-colored leather. The guest bedroom was done in safe, nonsexist shades of bleached bone and tan, its furnishings neither masculine nor feminine in feeling. Adam's bedroom, however, was done in rich masculine shades of brown: mostly camel and milk chocolate with discreet touches of burnished copper and antique gold in the striped bedspread and the hardware on the traditionally styled teak furniture. The attached bathroom was all milk chocolate tile and cream-colored towels. And all of it—every room—was as neat and tidy and impersonal as the gleaming kitchen.

Adam had always been neat. Obsessively so, Daphne had accused more than once when they were in the midst of some argument or other. But this place went beyond neat, it looked almost as sterile as an operating room.

She wandered out of the bedroom and across the hall to the only room she hadn't yet seen, switching on the light as she entered.
Ah, here's where Adam lives,
she thought with satisfaction. She hadn't realized until she saw it that what she had been looking for in the midst of this decorator's dream of a house was some sign of the man she had once been married to. She found it in Adam's den.

Oh, it had been decorated by a professional, too. The dramatic burnt umber walls and cream-colored woodwork attested to that fact. But the floor-to-ceiling bookcases were full of Adam's tattered medical books, the rolltop desk under the window held several framed family photographs, and the leather sofa sagged at one end as if that spot was where Adam habitually sat when he was reading. The long low table in front of the sofa held a brass bowl full of Adam's favorite peanut M&Ms, an untidy stack of medical journals that had spilled over onto the floor, and a large book, left lying open as if Adam might have just been reading it.

Daphne moved forward, drawn by something vaguely familiar about the book on the coffee table. Only it wasn't a book, it was a photograph album. Hers and Adam's, put together when they had still been together. Until this moment she had forgotten all about it.

She sat down on the sofa, pulled her boots and socks off and curled into Adam's spot as if it were still warm from the heat of his body. She lifted the album onto her lap and began to turn the pages on what had been their life together.

There was Adam, shortly after they had first started dating, smiling at her with the wind in his golden hair and the Bay at his back. And there they were sitting cross-legged on a blanket in Golden Gate Park with a picnic basket to one side and a half-empty bottle of cheap apple wine between them, both of them grinning like idiots at whoever was taking the picture.

And another shot of them together, heads tilted toward each other as they posed. She was looking straight into the camera, mugging for the photographer, but Adam was gazing at her, a laughing, loving expression on his face as he watched her clown.

She ran her fingertip over his beloved face, her expression wistful, wondering when it was, exactly, that he'd stopped looking at her like that.

She turned the page and came face-to-face with their wedding photographs. There was one large one, a big eight by ten that had been part of the package deal at the Vegas wedding chapel they had gone to. It showed them standing under an arch of white plastic flowers, a sky-blue wall at their backs.

Adam wore his only suit, a $49.99 special, purchased on sale. His tie was a three-inch-wide paisley and his hair covered his ears, but he still looked like every girl's dream of an ardent young groom. Daphne wore a simple white cotton peasant dress of her own design and making. It had a wide flounce that swooped across the bodice, baring her shoulders, a narrow yellow sash and a scalloped hem that reached to her ankles. Her long golden-brown hair hung to her waist, crowned by a wreath of daisies and baby's breath that Adam had blushingly presente
d to her before they left the motel.

They looked young and scared and very much in love, standing there, clutching each other's hands as they stared solemnly into the camera.

The other wedding pictures were snapshots, taken mostly by Sunny or Brian, who had come with them so they wouldn't have to have strangers act as witnesses. There was Daphne and Sunny, bride and bride's attendant. And Adam and Brian, groom and best man. And Sunny and Brian, clowning as he pretended to drag an unwilling substitute bride to the altar. And then Daphne and Adam again, "kissing the bride" a second time in front of the garish wedding chapel for the benefit of a photographer who had been blubbering into her handkerchief the first time.

They had been so much in love. So much.

When had love ceased to be enough?

Daphne sniffled a bit, wiping at her damp eyes as the bittersweet memories assailed her. She continued turning the pages.

Maybe this is where it started,
she thought, coming to stop on the page that held a faded newspaper clipping. "Radical feminist assaults cameraman," the caption read under a grainy photograph of a long-haired, jean-clad Daphne allegedly trying to knock a cameraman unconscious with her homemade placard. As someone had said at Sunny's party, Adam had been mad enough to bust a gut.

"What the hell did you think you were doing, marching down Market Street with a bunch of harebrained man-haters?" Adam had raged, steam practically coming from his ears as he paced their small apartment. "Just what were you trying to prove?"

"Feminists do not hate men," she had pointed out, struggling to hide her tears. Tears that were a result of both Adam's anger and the unsettling experience of being arrested. "At least, not in general," she had added ominously. "And we were trying to prove that women have rights, too."

"By trying to brain a cameraman? Dammit, Daffy, you're my wife! Why can't you act like it?"

"Act like what? Your mother?" she shot back. His mother was a loving, tradition-bound woman who thought wives had been put on this earth to cater to their husbands and sons. Too enraged to think before she spoke, Daphne forgot that Adam couldn't really be blamed for having absorbed some of her old-fashioned ideas. She forgot, too, that he was trying to overcome them. "Cooking and cleaning and bowing down before the great doctor-to-be? With no opinions of my own. Is that the kind of wife you want? A little robot woman?"

"Dammit, Daffy, you know that's not what I meant. I was afraid you'd be hurt. You
could
have been hurt, you know. Besides, what's wrong with being like my mother?"

The argument, Daphne remembered, had finally ended up like all their other arguments, in bed, with ardent exclamations of love and regret and forgiveness—and no real solution.

The click of the front door brought her head up her gaze seeking the brass clock on the opposite wall. Eight-thirty. Adam was home earlier than he had planned, she thought, feeling a surge of joy shoot through her. Daphne uncurled her legs and leaned forward to place the album back on the coffee table. A voice froze her in the act of rising from the sofa.

"Adam?" The light feminine voice lifted in inquiry. "Where are you?"

Daphne melted back into the corner of the sofa. Some woman obviously had a key to Adam's house. A picture of the dark-haired nurse, Ginny, flashed into her mind. Would Adam give his house key to a woman who was only a friend? A woman who was, as he had said, not part of a "couple"?

"Adam, it's me." There was a light knock on the half-closed door to the den and Adam's sister stepped into the room. "I just stopped by to pick up that textbook on organic chemistry for my..." Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of Daphne. Her blue eyes widened. "You," she breathed, incredulous. "What are you doing here?"

Startled, Daphne told her the literal truth. "Waiting for Adam."

Marcia advanced into the middle of the room, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "How did you get in?"

Daphne's eyebrows rose. She knew Marcia didn't like her and she thought she knew why, but that was no reason for her to speak as if she suspected Daphne of breaking and entering. "With a key."

"You mean Adam gave you a key?" Marcia said the words as if she could hardly believe them.

"Obviously."

Marcia glared at her. "I don't believe it," she stated emphatically.

"No?" Daphne shrugged, fighting the quick rise of animosity she felt toward Adam's sister. "Well, then, I guess you'll just have to wait until Adam comes home and ask him, won't you?" She glanced up at the clock again. "He should be coming in anytime now," she offered. "We're supposed to eat at nine."

Marcia sank down into the straight-backed chair in front of the rolltop desk. "But his car's in the driveway."

"Yes, I know. I drove it back from the hospital. Adam's going to take a taxi." Daphne stood. "I made some coffee when I came in. Would you like a cup?"

Marcia didn't seem to have heard her. "I can't believe he'd actually see you again. You!" she said scathingly, as if Daphne were some lower form of life. Her eyes pinned Daphne to where she stood, something very close to hate in their blue depths.

"Why not?" Daphne asked, hardly able to comprehend how such an emotion could be directed at her by someone she barely knew.