The Night We Met (21 page)

I thought of Nate, with his graying hair, life-weathered face and agile body. He was busy at the resort, probably in the middle of an afternoon climb with a group of rowdy boys.

"This is an immigration contract," Roger said. And spent the next few minutes going over the concerns it raised. All things he could've told me over the phone.

None of which needed to be discussed with me before he talked to Maria. Or at all.

When he crossed his arm over mine while pointing out a particular phrase, grazing my breast with his elbow, I didn't know what to do.

I liked Roger. He'd been volunteering one morning a month since the beginning of my legal aid program. He was bril iant. Funny. Extremely good-looking. And ten years younger than me.

I was forty-five years old—and flattered.

* * *

"Fine." I meant to tell him about my meeting with Roger. But didn't get around to it. I poured us each a glass of wine instead.

"Play for me?" I asked as soon as we'd finished the salad and French bread I'd prepared for dinner. •

"I'd rather play with you," my handsome husband said, snagging my arm as I walked by him. He slid his hands down my sides, to rest on my hips, pul ing my pelvis against his. "We've got the whole night to ourselves."

I did love him. So much. With more vigor than I felt, I pressed my lips to his. And for the next few hours forced myself to focus solely on him.

Two days later Roger asked me to meet him for lunch in his office. He was getting ready to go to trial on a convoluted case and could only spare his lunch hour. He ordered in for us.

"Here's the deal," he said, every inch the professional as he sat behind a big cherrywood desk, with his impeccably knotted tie and crisp white shirt. "Because of the full faith and credit clause, if she and Robert have presented themselves as married for the past seven years in the state of Colorado, she is legally married. By common law. We're checking a little further on that.

It depends partially on whether or not an il egal immigrant can have a legal address in this state. The bigger concern is the criminal activity. If she agrees to testify against the brother, she won't be charged as a conspirator. But then there's the issue of criminal neglect of her children. I might not be able to make that go away. It looks like the best I can do, assuming all the other issues work out to her benefit, would be to go for a lesser charge regarding the kids. She'd get probation. And probably have a guardian at litem assigned to them."

He'd been holding my gaze the entire time he was talking.

"Does that mean she'd get to keep them? Under supervision?"

"Most likely."

"But she'd have to testify."

"As far as I can see, it's the only way out. She knowingly stayed, witnessed criminal activity without reporting it. According to what she said the other day, this isn't a one-time thing she can come forward about. It's been going on since they came to the United States."

He was sitting behind his desk, but it still felt as though he was touching me, as intimately as he had in the coffeeshop. It certainly was overt, and yet...

"Won't they come after her?" It had to be my imagination. Roger didn't want me. I was merely experiencing the first signs of midlife crisis.

"Not if they're in jail."

"But what if they get off?"

He lifted his hands, let them drop. "We'l ask for protection. There aren't any guarantees."

"What are the chances they'll be convicted?"

"Without al the facts, I couldn't say. But from what I've seen so far, I'd guess pretty good."

Pushing away from his desk, he stood. Moved to a half-size refrigerator across the room and took out a bag.

"I hope you like croissants," he said. "There's a shop around the corner that makes the best chicken salad I've ever had."

He pul ed out the sandwiches in their plastic containers and set them on the coffee table in front of the couch before reaching back in for two cans of soda. Popping the tops, he set those down, too, added napkins and patted the seat beside him.

I knew what that meant. Stared at the couch. Caught him watching me. And because I didn't have any idea what else to do, I went and sat there. I might be the owner of a battered women's shelter and co-owner of a ski resort, the mother of three children and a wife of almost twenty-six years, but at that moment I felt like a schoolgirl planning to enter the convent.

I wanted Roger's help. Maria had been sent to me. Through me, Roger would help her.

I wanted to feel young and attractive and desirable. What woman in her forties didn't?

I wanted to be admired by a man who wasn't a generation older than I was.

"You're a very beautiful woman, Eliza."

We'd finished our sandwiches. I was gathering the trash, preparing to throw it away.

"Thank you."

"You have to know I admire you."

Crushing the paper napkins, I half smiled at him. "I admire you, too."

He shifted, perhaps with no hidden agenda. His knee was now touching the outside of my thigh.

"Can I be honest with you?"

I couldn't look at him, but my hands were still clutching the napkins. "Of course."

"I want you, Eliza. I've been thinking about you for months. You keep popping into my head at the oddest moments. While I'm arguing a case in court, driving on the freeway or, here's a good one, out to dinner with another woman."

A little thril passed through me. I had that much appeal?

"I don't know what to say."

He took my hand. Pried my fingers apart and pul ed away the napkins, dropping them on the table.

With his fingers he caressed my palms. "Relax."

"I don't think I can do that right now," I whispered.

"Say you'll see me again. Just you and me. No business. Let's go where it takes us."

I gave his suggestion a thought. One. And, extricating my hands, I shook my head and stood.

"I can't tell you how it makes me feel to have someone as successful and good-looking and—" I paused, even smiled "—young as you saying these things about me. But, Roger, I am so much in love with my husband I could never, ever think of another man in that way."

Roger, to his credit, bowed out gracefully.

I went straight to the resort. To Nate. And found him coming down the walk with Beth at his side. "We were just going home," he said.

"I have a stomachache." Beth's voice was weak. Whiny. She was pale, too.

"What did you have for lunch?"

"Too much chocolate cake," Nate said, his arm around our daughter as he continued toward his car.

I dug my keys out of my purse. "I'll meet you at the house."

"Can I ride with you?"

My heart seemed to melt as my little girl looked at me with such need. There were times when a mom still got to be a mom.

"Of course. You can he down when we get home. How about if I read to you? The next chapter in Jane Eyre."

"That would be good, Mommy."

I agreed with my daughter. I'd made a good choice.

Several of them that day.

Even if I was the only one who knew it.

* * *

Nate came back to the living room after carrying a sleeping Beth from the couch to her bed. She'd thrown up twice, but then been ravenous an hour later. I let her have a bowl of chicken soup and some crackers while I read to her. If she kept them down al night, she could have whatever she wanted in the morning.

Within reason.

I'd changed from the business suit I'd worn that day into a pair of shorts and a tank top. Nate was still in the shorts and polo shirt he'd worn home from work.

"It was nothing," I said, noticing the lines at his mouth and around his eyes. It had been selfish of me to run to him. To bother him with something I'd already taken care of.

He sat down beside me, giving me the look that made me feel as though I were under a microscope.

"Nothing wouldn't have brought you all the way out there."

I considered lying to him. Very briefly. Because I didn't want to upset him.

I hadn't acted with Roger in any way that would have dishonored Nate. But if I lied to him, I would be doing so.

"Roger Kempton hit on me today."

Nate stiffened. "Isn't he a little young?"

"He's thirty-four."

"And?"

I turned, peering up at Nate, my heart so ful I could hardly speak. "I was flattered," I told him. "But I wasn't the least bit tempted, Nate. I felt nada, nothing, zip."

His expression relaxed and he grinned, ran his finger along my lips. "Not even a twinge?"

"Nope. All I could think about was how much I love you. Everyone else wil always pale in comparison."

"Oh, woman, what did I ever do to deserve you?" he groaned, pushing me gently down on the couch.

I could have asked him the same question. And would have if my mouth had been free for speaking.

In the fal of 1995, Jimmy called to say he was getting married. I hadn't even realized he'd had a girlfriend after Anita, who hadn't worked out.

"How long have you known this girl?" was the first question I asked, motioning Nate to pick up the other phone so he could listen in.

"Forever," my son said. "You know her, too. Remember Lindsay?"

I did. And two months later, when my twenty-five- year-old middle child stood at the front of the church with his bride in a Christmas wedding, I sat in the front row holding back tears as I remembered back to his fifteenth year. He'd come into the kitchen one night while I was finishing some gourmet meal I'd prepared during Elizabeth's naptime that day. It'd been during one of the darkest times of my life—the year without Nate. And my son, whose voice was stil cracking and who hadn't yet started to shave, told me in all seriousness that he'd met the girl he was going to marry.

Funny how life worked sometimes. After al the years, al the women, it turned out he was right.

The following spring, Keith showed up at Beth's thirteenth birthday dinner with a pretty blonde in tow.

"Everyone, this is Emily," he said.

"Oh! Hi!" Beth greeted her with a grin, pulling out the chair next to her. "Sit here."

Emily sat. Keith took the adjacent chair. And that was that.

Until after dinner.

"We have something to tell you," Keith said after Beth had opened her last present. "Emily graduated from UC this month and we're going to get married."

My jaw dropped. I might have embarrassed myself totally, made some less than congratulatory remark, like it would've been nice to meet her at any point in the last three years, had Nate not been sitting next to me. He put his hand on my thigh under the table, and probably to make sure he was getting enough of my attention to distract me, slid his fingers higher, too.

I asked if I could do anything to help with the wedding.

"Wel , that's just it, Mom," Keith said. "Emily and I were hoping you'd help her with everything. Her mom took off when she was a kid and it's just her and her dad, and he's not real good with stuff like this."

I glanced at Emily, saw the apprehensive but hopeful look on her face, fel in love, and forgave them everything.

The wedding wasn't big, but it was beautiful. We held it at the resort in August of that year, with Emily's father officiating. Jimmy and Lindsay were a joy to watch, obviously so besotted with each other.

Lori and Charles couldn't make it. They'd already booked their vacations that year—a six-week world cruise. It had been several years since we'd seen them, but we stil talked on the phone at least once a month.

Alice, June and Bonnie came out with their husbands, no kids. William and Shelly did, too. It was great to have so much of my family together again.

Beth, one of the attendants, was beautiful in her long pink gown that hugged a figure that was starting to look a bit too womanly for my liking.

Or Nate's. He watched our daughter like a hawk al night, interrupting anytime a young man got close enough to ask her to dance.

"Lighten up, daddy," I said to him about halfway through the evening when he'd taken a break from the piano to once again waylay our daughter. "She's growing up."

"Over my dead body." Nate's voice was gruff as he said the words. And then he chuckled. "She's not going to be easy, is she?"

"Nope." I ran my finger along the nape of his neck. "But not much that matters ever is."

Chapter 18

Nate turned sixty-two in 1997, twenty-nine years after I married him. I threw a party for him at the resort. With enough notice, Lori and Charles were able to make it. All of my family, sans nieces and nephews, were there, as well. Alice had turned sixty that year, and was complaining of osteoporosis.

I hated to see my siblings aging.

But if I had a moment or two of terror as I considered the years to come, I hid them well. And concentrated on al the love surrounding me as we celebrated. The shelter' was doing well. Maria was now working there as a housemother; she was a legal citizen due to her common-law marriage and on probation, maintaining custody of her children, while her husband and his brother spent the next twenty-five years in prison. The shelter had received enough funding for another year. The resort was expanding again. Keith and Emily were expecting their first child. And at fourteen, Beth was tal er than I was.

That same year, a one-hundred-and-fifteen-year-old man, John Bell, received a new pacemaker. And actor Tony Randall, at age seventy-seven, fathered his first child. I made sure Nate was apprised of both facts. My husband often mentioned retiring, but never did anything about it. And he took to the slopes that winter, just like always.

Princess Diana died that year. And Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombings. In today's world, no one was safe. Not princesses and not small children playing in day cares. I wondered what the sisters at St. Catherine made of it al . How they found peace.