Flashback (1988) (20 page)

My husband is dead. Is that fair?

Zack saw the response flash in the woman’s eyes and then vanish.

“We are asking you,” Clothilde Beaulieu said patiently, “to do nothing more than study the contents of that envelope and use it—or not—as you see fit. I assure you there will be no hard feelings if you return the material to us after you have looked it over, … or even right now.”

“We mean that, Zachary,” Marie said. “We really do.”

For a time, there was only silence. Zack looked first at one woman and then the other, and finally at the envelope in his lap.

A sucker for anybody’s cause
.

Had Frank’s terse assessment of him been so irritating because it was so close to the mark? Suzanne … the mountains … the Judge … his career. Any clash with Ultramed and Frank was almost certainly destined to be a losing proposition for him. And there was much, so very much, at stake.

The envelope was a Pandoras box. A bomb that might be nothing more than a dud, or nothing less than a lethal explosion.

A sucker for anybody’s cause
.

Slowly, deliberately, Zack slid the dead surgeon’s legacy under his arm. Then he reached across and shook hands with both women.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

Frank, Frank, he’s our man. If he can’t do it, no one can.…

Over the two decades since his graduation from Sterling High, not a day had passed that Frank Iverson did not hear the chant echoing in his mind. Cheerleaders dancing on the sidelines, each one hoping Frank would at least spend a few minutes with her at the victory celebration after the game. Grandstands jammed with parents, teachers, students, and reporters, all screaming
his
name, all begging him for one more pass, one more score. The Judge and his mother, proudly accepting congratulations from those seated around them.

Driving through the streets of Sterling toward his hospital, Frank heard the cheering as clearly as if he were standing on the field, staring across the line of scrimmage at the opposition, knowing that, in just a few seconds, his play would swell those cheers to a deafening roar.

Frank, Frank, he’s our man.…

They had been days of glory for him; days of strength and independence. It felt so good to realize that after all the difficult, humiliating years that had followed, after all the lousy breaks and the goddamn patronizing, demeaning lectures from his father, a return to the stature and influence of those times was so close at hand. Two weeks, that was all. Three at the most.

He had done his part, and done it well. Now, all he needed was patience—patience and constant vigilance. Three years before, he had made the mistake of complacency, of trusting, and it had cost him dearly. There would be no repeat of that fiasco this time. Nothing would be taken for granted. Nothing. Besides, he affirmed as he swung up the drive to Ultramed-Davis, there were reasons aplenty for keeping his eyes open and his guard up. A million reasons, to be exact.

 … If he can’t do it, no one can
.

13

“Helene, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think it’s time we moved Mr. Gerard Morris’s fabulous woodland scene out of the window and more toward the back—like in the storeroom.”

Suzanne propped Morris’s huge oil against a display case and stepped back several paces, hoping that the change in lighting and perspective might thaw some of the feelings she had for the man and his work.

“The mans a legend,” Helene Meyer called out from the back.

“In his own mind, he is.”

“Suzanne, when are you going to come to grips with the reality that tourists don’t come up to northern New Hampshire to buy abstract art? They want mallards.”

“Paint by numbers,” Suzanne muttered, remembering a tongue lashing she had received from the pompous artist for reducing the price of one of his “masterpieces” by fifty dollars.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

It was nearing three in the afternoon. Suzanne and her partner had been doing inventory nonstop since her return from Guys funeral. Outside, muted midday sunshine filtered through a row of expansive, century-old sugar maples, turning Main Street into a gentle work of art that far surpassed anything Gerard Morris had produced.

Immersing herself in the inventory and spending time with Helene had helped lift some of the melancholy Suzanne was feeling, but memories of Guy Beaulieu kept her mood somber. Although she had not known the man outside the hospital, she had shared several patients with him before his practice dwindled, and more than respected him as a person and a physician.

Nevertheless, the stories that had been circulating about him of late were disconcerting, and Suzanne had gradually
come to agree with those who believed that it would be in everyone’s best interest for Guy to retire. Now, reflecting on Zack’s opinion that the aging surgeon seemed quite capable and mentally intact, and with the realization that the man had died defending himself, she was having second thoughts.

First Guy Beaulieu, and then the old woodsman Chris Gow—in both cases she had backed off, siding with Ultramed through her silence. True, the corporation had plucked her from a situation that had seemed totally hopeless and had given her a chance. For that alone she owed Ultramed her loyalty. But still, there had been a time, she knew, when she considered herself a liberal, a champion of the underdog. There had been a time when she would have gone to the mat for either man, just as Zack had done. It was hard to believe she had changed so much over just a few short years.

As she hefted Morris’s painting off the floor and replaced it in the window, Suzanne silently cursed Paul Cole for the chaos he had brought to her life.

“So?”

Helene Meyer, dressed in jeans and a blue-print smock, emerged from the storeroom with a pair of ceramic vases that they had taken on consignment from a MicMac Indian potter. She was a short, dark, energetic woman with close-cut hair and just enough excess pounds to puff her cheeks and arms.

“So what?” Suzanne asked.

“So where are Morris’s ducks?”

Suzanne nodded toward the window.

“Good, good. You’re learning, child. You’re learning.”

The White Mountain Olde Curiosity Shop and Gallery occupied the ground floor of a half-century-old, red-brick structure two blocks from the center of town. Three years before, when she received word that an uncle had died and left the place to her, Helene was working in a dead-end advertising job in Manhattan and competing with what seemed like several million other forty-year-old divorced women for any one of a minuscule pool of available men.

She took her inheritance as an omen for change.

Despite having “taken her act on the road,” along with her two children, Helene had never given up on the notion that Mr. Perfect was, at any given moment, just one man away. Perhaps, Suzanne reflected, that was why the woman always had a smile and an encouraging word for even the bleakest situation.

“You okay?” Helene asked, setting the vases on a pair of lucite pedestals, and then reversing them.

“Huh? Oh, sure, I’m fine.”

“You look tired.”

“I always look tired.”

“You always look beautiful,” Helene corrected. “Today you look beautiful and tired.”

“I’m fine. I’m just not sleeping too well.”

The explanation was an understatement. Since her discharge from the hospital, she had been almost continuously restless and ill at ease, sleeping no more than an hour or two at a time and often awakening with an intense, free-floating anxiety. It was hardly the mood she would have expected, given the outcome of her surgery.

“You need some sex,” Helene said.

“I don’t need any sex. That’s your cure for everything.”

“Well, have I had a sick day since you’ve known me? As long as there are ski lodges and contra dances and Thursday night single-mingles at the Holiday Inn, I intend to stay healthy as a horse. Don’t you think it’s time you—”

“No. No, I don’t. Now let’s change the subject. Besides—”

She caught herself after that one word, but it was too late. Helene leapt at the opening.

“Besides, what?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, yes.” She squinted across at Suzanne. “You did it, didn’t you? The other night with that new doctor. What’s his name?”

“Zachary. But—”

“Well, I’ll be damned. No wonder you’re so tired.”

“I thought that was supposed to perk me up.”

“Not when it’s the first time in several years, it’s not,” Helene said. “You need to keep in shape for that sort of thing. Glory be. He must be something else, that’s all I can say. Tell me about him.”

“There’s nothing to tell. He’s a nice guy. I was frightened about my surgery and he was understanding, and things … things just … got out of hand. It was a mistake—just one of those things. We’re not even going to see one another again outside the hospital.”

“Glory be,” Helene said again.

“You stop that.”

Helene took Suzanne by the shoulders.

“No, you stop that,” she said. “Suze, you’re like my sister. Bringing you in as a partner in this place is the best thing I’ve ever done—except maybe for that furrier from White Plains.…”

She sighed wistfully, and Suzanne laughed.

“If I keep putting my two cents into your life,” she went on, “it’s because I love you. I know you had it rough with that jerk you were married to and all, but that’s water under the bridge. He’s gone. You can’t keep letting him rule your life.”

“I don’t let him rule my life. I’m doing just fine, thank you.”

“And you’ve got a great job and a great kid and a lot of interests and you don’t need anyone messing things up for you again. I know. I know. You’ve said all that before.”

“So …”

“So there’s more. It’s out there waiting if you’d just stop running scared and give it a chance.”

“Helene, I’m perfectly happy, and my life is perfectly under control.”

“Okay, okay. But if you ask me, you could do with a little less control and a little more—”

“Meyer, enough.”

Helene held up her hands defensively.

“Just trying to help,” she said.

“I know.”

“So, this Zachary that you’re not going to see again outside the hospital, tell me about him.”

“Helene, I thought we—”

“Tall? Kind of a Clint Eastwood face? Great eyes? Dark brown hair?”

“How did you—”

At that instant, the door behind Suzanne opened. She whirled, and tensed visibly.

“Hi,” Zack said.

“I thought so,” Helene muttered. “Glory be …”

“I’m sorry to have popped in on you like this,” Zack said, sipping the cappuccino Suzanne had made him. “I know you said Wednesday.”

“That’s okay I needed a break.”

They were perched on cherrywood stools on either side of a glass case that doubled as a sales counter and jewelry display. Following introductions, small talk, and a nudge that Suzanne
had tried unsuccessfully to find annoying, Helene had gone off on “errands.” Across the gallery, a dowager tourist and her diminutive husband were eyeing a Gerard Morris, entitled typically:
The Forest Is a Symphony. Life in Itself
.

“How’s the incision?” Zack asked.

“No problem …”

The atmosphere between them was subdued, but not strained. And despite her efforts to pull away, Suzanne sensed that her connection to him, forged on the hillside behind her house and later in her hospital room, had not softened. Silently, she cautioned herself against giving off any encouraging signals. Helene meant well, but she simply didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry about Guy,” she said. “He was a nice man.”

“Yeah.”

Zack debated telling her about the envelope, but decided against it—especially since it still lay unopened on die seat of the camper.

“Are you off for the afternoon?” she asked.

“Nope. I’m due at the office in a couple of minutes. I … um … actually, I came by for a consultation.”

She eyed him suspiciously.

“Seriously,” he said.

She started to protest, but held back. Helene was right. He did have great eyes.
Damn you, Paul
, she thought.