The Things We Do for Love (8 page)

She returned Cameron’s call first. Her cousin didn’t answer, so Mary Anne left a message about the radio show.

Then, Jonathan.

“Hi, Mary Anne. Glad you called. You know, I think you may become our station’s second biggest star.”

After Graham Corbett, no doubt. She’d never heard Jonathan speak so ineptly before.

“That was a joke,” he apologized. “And a lame one. Sorry.”

Mary Anne tried to figure out what part of it was supposed to be funny.

“Hey, I’m putting together a plan for our election night coverage in November. I thought you and I would be on the air together.”

“Me?”

“You have a strong intellectual presence.”

Not that I’ve noticed.

He seemed to sense her doubt. “You’re a good journalist. And actually, your essays are growing in popularity. I can see you becoming a female…I don’t know…a cross between Noam Chomsky and David Sedaris.”

She managed not to burst out laughing. But in any case, helping him cover election night would be good for her as a journalist, would further her ambitions. “Okay,” she said.

“Good. Let’s meet tomorrow. Are you free in the morning? Or better yet, how about dinner tomorrow night?” he said. “My treat.”

He’s engaged.
Mary Anne didn’t understand her own
qualms. She’d thought nothing of stealing him from Angie when she’d bought the love potion. But then, she’d never thought the love potion would work. “All right.”

She hung up the phone with a mixture of excitement and guilt. Jonathan was suddenly being
very
attentive, and she liked the attention. But he’d asked Angie Workman to marry him. He planned to marry Angie.

So, he’s treating me as a friend.

Was that true? Well, the dinner was about work, about the station.

She heard Lucille helping Nanna make her way to the lift to go downstairs for dinner. Nanna didn’t come down every night, but obviously she was feeling well enough tonight.

Mary Anne’s cell phone vibrated in her hand. Graham Corbett. Her heart thudded strangely, a reaction she didn’t understand. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mary Anne. It’s Graham. I want to apologize for asking you out in front of all the people at the dump.”

“Were you asking me out?” she said, blinking, a strange dazed feeling coming over her.

“You didn’t pick up on that?” He laughed.

He
did
have a nice voice. That soothing radio voice, a masculine voice with a unique resonance, like bass strings.

She thought over what had happened at the dump. “Not exactly. I assumed you weren’t serious, given your past behavior toward me.” She heard the hum of Nanna’s lift. “I’m going to need to hang up, Graham. We’re sitting down to dinner.”

“May I call you later? Actually, I’d like to stop by. To run over some protocols for the show.”

He wanted to come over—to come here?

“All right,” she said, thinking about her clothing, wanting time to change.
After dinner.
“Seven-thirty.”

“Great. I’ll see you then. Shall I bring some wine?”

Wine? How would Lucille and Nanna react to that? Nanna would still be downstairs at seven-thirty, probably studying bridge hands with Mary Anne.

She felt a smile creep over her face. Graham Corbett, showing up with wine, perhaps anticipating some action on a
couch,
coming face-to-face with Nanna and Lucille. “If you like.”

S
HE’D SAID HE COULD
come over.
You’re doing all right, Graham,
he told himself. In his mind, he saw the long wheat-colored hair that she’d tossed so neatly at him that afternoon, and her black-fringed green eyes.

Mary Anne was beautiful. He’d spent years denying the fact by telling himself he didn’t like the person beneath the pretty exterior. Why had he felt that way?

Well, there was her hero worship of Hale. And with that came the unspoken attitude that what Hale did as station manager and had done as a journalist overseas was inherently more valuable than what Graham did.

Graham couldn’t agree.

But I do like her.

He was a little rusty about pursuing women. Since Briony had died, he’d dated, of course. But increasingly, he approached dating with caution. Even without asking women for dates, he received plenty of female attention, some of it hard to discourage. Perhaps because of his radio show and the resulting national attention, he’d been stalked by one local woman for nearly a year before her husband’s work had dictated that she move to California.
And when he asked out women, he often found that they started calling him if they didn’t hear from him again. Even when he dated a woman he found he really liked, something always made him back away.

Something? What had happened after Briony’s death. Falling apart.

He belonged to the local gym and went there most mornings, early. There were women there, too, who’d hinted that they’d like to spend more time with him.

He shaved before going to Mary Anne’s house. Dressed casually in jeans, flannel shirt and a fleece pullover. Then changed his mind, switching to a wool blazer. Grabbed the bottle of merlot that he’d bought on impulse. Because he wasn’t a wine drinker.

No, not on impulse, Graham. You wanted to share that bottle of wine with Mary Anne Drew.

He knew where she lived and walked there at seven twenty-five, paused outside the brick house and gazed up at it. The porch light was on.

He climbed the steps and rang the doorbell.

Light steps inside.

The door was opened by a black woman in a blue dress, the sort of thing a nurse might wear. “Hello,” she said. “You must be Mr. Corbett, here for Miss Mary Anne. Come on in.”

As occasionally happened in West Virginia, Graham felt as if he was in a time warp. He stepped into a foyer so clean he could see the vacuum cleaner tracks on the light brown carpet. There was a hall mirror, and he saw himself, a tall and uneasy man come to call on a woman.

The woman who’d opened the door led him into the living room, where Mary Anne and a woman with white
hair pulled back in an elegant chignon seemed to be playing cards at a small antique table. This older woman wore a sweater, slacks, heels and delicate gold jewelry.

Mary Anne stood up. “Hi, Graham. Come on in. Graham, this is my grandmother, Jacqueline Billingham. Nanna, this is Graham Corbett. And you’ve met Lucille?”

The black woman beamed at him, nodding.

He felt silly holding the bottle of wine, switched it to his left hand and reached out to take Jacqueline Billingham’s hand, delicate, with its fragile skin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Billingham. And Lucille.

“I brought some wine,” he said, feeling that perhaps bringing the wine had been the wrong thing. He’d known, in some part of his brain, that Mary Anne lived with her grandmother, but he hadn’t envisioned things exactly like this.

“I can open that for you, Mr. Graham,” Lucille offered.

“I’d be happy to—” But she’d already taken it from him.

Mrs. Billingham passed on the wine, but Graham and Mary Anne each had a glass. Graham asked Lucille if she would like some, and she said she might have a glass with them and she did.

Mrs. Billingham said, “Well, isn’t this fun? How nice of you to come by. Now, you work at the radio station, don’t you, Graham?”

He nodded. “I host a talk show. I’m also a psychologist in private practice in town.”

“I know all about you,” Lucille said from the doorway, where she stood with her half glass of wine. “My daughter-in-law, Ginny, listens to you all the time.”

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “I’m fortunate in my listeners.”

The cards had been abandoned, though Graham had insisted that they should finish and had learned that it wasn’t a game, that they were studying bridge.

Now, he sat beside Mary Anne on the couch. The couch was cream-colored with a floral print. This didn’t seem a house where having a light-colored couch had ever been a problem. Nor was this a place where he felt comfortable teasing Mary Anne, so he asked Mrs. Billingham how long she’d lived in the house and learned that she’d been there since she was first married and that it was where Mary Anne’s mother had grown up.

“Now, you’re not from West Virginia,” Mary Anne’s grandmother said. “What brought you to Logan?”

“Actually, I’m from Tennessee. My wife was a graduate student at Marshall University, so I had a clinical practice there.”

Beside him, Mary Anne jerked, and her wine flew onto the white couch and the light brown carpet.

H
ER OWN GASP
she quickly disguised with exclamations of regret for the spilled wine. She leaped up to get something to mop it up with, but Lucille said, “You sit still, Miss Mary Anne. This is no trouble at all.”

Of course, Lucille wouldn’t let her do it. In cases of other spills, Mary Anne managed to do the cleanup only after some persuasion.
What if I get married someday and I can’t get a stain out of a carpet?

In her own mind, marriage had nothing to do with it, but this argument always seemed to appease Lucille, who would then give her tips.

Mary Anne had spilled her wine because she hadn’t known that Graham Corbett had ever been married. She decided immediately that he was divorced and then caught herself. She’d jumped to the conclusion that he’d never been married, and she’d been wrong about that.

Anxious to cover the moment, she said casually, “Were you married long?”

“Four and a half years, which I realize gives me far less insight into the married condition than someone who has been married for ten years—or forty, as my parents were when my father died.”

That
was smooth, Mary Anne acknowledged. Though
Jacqueline Billingham would never show herself to be a woman who wondered if a person was divorced—being more the type to ignore the fact that
anyone
got divorced—Graham had decided to present his parents’ credentials as people who had married for life and remained married.

“How long ago was that?” Mary Anne asked, knowing that her grandmother was probably thinking her too forward with these questions. Sometimes she wondered if Nanna was ever curious about anything, because so many things seemed beneath her curiosity.

Lucille, Mary Anne happened to know, was curious about many things, among them why Mary Anne herself was not yet married and when Jonathan Hale’s wedding was going to be. Lucille would never suspect Mary Anne of any hanky-panky, as she would call it, with a man engaged to another woman. On the other hand, the possibility that an engaged man might make inappropriate advances toward Mary Anne was not beyond her imaginings. Mary Anne knew this because Lucille had asked rather coolly if Mary Anne had gotten that work question taken care of.

Mary Anne had found herself unable to admit that she’d be having dinner with Jonathan the following night. Instead, she’d simply nodded.

Now, though Lucille was absorbed in a quick and efficient cleanup of the couch, Mary Anne knew that she was just as interested in Graham Corbett’s marriage as Mary Anne herself was.

Graham sipped his wine and said, “Briony died seven years ago.”

Mary Anne didn’t expect to be shocked by this—it was
one of the two possibilities for his marriage’s end. But she felt it. It was sort of a heavy weight inside her.

Of course, nobody asked how she had died.

And even Nanna, Mary Anne felt sure, wanted to know.

Graham didn’t say.

Knowing it was incumbent upon her to say something to move them all beyond the topic, Mary Anne said, “I’m very sorry.” She gave a just-long-enough pause, during which he only nodded, then said smoothly, “Nanna’s been without Grandpa for fifteen years now.”

“My husband was a physician,” Nanna said pleasantly. “He had a practice on Stratton Street behind the Embassy Building.”

“The brick office where the attorneys are now?” Graham asked, taking his cue as he was supposed to. “I like the ivy.”

“It’s hard on brick,” Lucille remarked.

Mary Anne had a difficult time keeping her mind on the ensuing conversation, which covered both West Virginia horticulture and architecture.

Finally, Nanna said it was time for her to get to bed, for Graham to say that he’d stayed too long, for his hostesses to protest and for him to say, “I just wanted to speak with Mary Anne about work for a moment. It’s been such a pleasure meeting you.” He rose when Nanna did, remained standing until she’d made her way out of the room.

While Lucille helped Nanna upstairs, Graham and Mary Anne remained alone in the living room. Now she could indulge her own curiosity by asking how his wife had died, but maybe good manners had affected her more deeply than she’d previously realized.

Graham sat down again, not on the chair where he had
been but on the couch beside Mary Anne. Of course, he kept an appropriate space between them. If he was the kind of man who would put a physical move on her in an inappropriate way—and Mary Anne doubted he was that kind of man—then the atmosphere of Nanna’s house would have forbidden it.

He said, “I wanted to bring you a packet of information about the show, but I forgot.” He shook his head at his own mistake. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow so that you’ll have time to read it through before Saturday.”

“I assume I’ll follow your lead,” she said.

“That helps, but there are some things you should know.”

“Well, I’ve noticed that if someone has a real problem that they need counseling for, you tend to find a way to suggest that they get it.”

“Not always easy,” he admitted. “But as much as possible, we like to keep things pretty light on the show. The harder topics are for private face-to-face counseling.”

“Right,” Mary Anne agreed.

“Can I ask if you’ve ever had any?”

Mary Anne drew her eyebrows together. “Is it a prerequisite?”

He shook his head, again with the smile that she herself was beginning to find appealing. That troubled her.
Cameron likes him.
Though Cameron kept insisting that Graham liked Mary Anne, she’d not yet gone as far as telling Mary Anne to go for it.

“It’s not a prerequisite,” Graham said. “It was a personal question. Curiosity.”

Cameron,
Mary Anne thought. “Cameron thinks virtually everyone should have counseling.”

Graham smiled but not in agreement.

She said, “The answer is yes. My father’s an alcoholic and a celebrity, and I’ve found counseling helpful.”

Graham nodded, wondering at all that was going on inside her. Wondering
everything
about her.

Now, she said, “I’m supposed to help Jonathan with some election coverage soon.”

Graham blinked at this non sequitur.

“But obviously,” Mary Anne said, “he won’t be broadcasting that at the same time as your show. So it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Graham nodded, wondering why she’d brought this up. Was it simply to hear the sound of Hale’s name? He rose. “Call me if you have any questions between now and Saturday.”

Mary Anne said, “Thank you for coming over. It was pleasant.”

She thought for a moment that he was going to laugh. Instead he said, “I agree, Mary Anne. I completely agree.” He paused beside her grandmother’s credenza, looked at a framed photograph there. “Is your mother in this?” he asked.

“Yes. There. And that’s my aunt Caroline, her sister, and Aunt Louise, Cameron’s mom.” Mary Anne studied the three girls in dresses, posed with their mother and father. All wore full-skirted white dresses with satin sashes. Nanna’s hair was in the same French twist she wore today; it had been blond then. “Caroline’s the one who broke the mold.” Mary Anne laughed. “She’s the youngest.” She moved on to another photo and showed Graham her own mother and father and her brother, Kevin.

Lucille came down the stairs then.

As Mary Anne closed the door behind Graham, Lucille said, “That’s a nice young man.”

Having forgotten for a moment that Cameron liked Graham and that she, therefore, should not, Mary Anne replied, “Yes. I’m beginning to think he might be.”

Lucille didn’t ask how Mary Anne could think any different. She said, “And he lost his wife.”

Which Mary Anne took as evidence that Lucille, like herself, wanted to know how Briony had died.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, when Mary Anne opened the front door of her grandmother’s house, she found a manila envelope on the doormat with her name scrawled across the front. She found a note from Graham inside, telling her that he looked forward to her joining him for his show Saturday afternoon. Thursdays and Saturdays were the days for his show. Also in the envelope was information about the show, including protocols for dealing with callers. It was part of a packet he probably had given to other guests in the past.

Mary Anne would make time to read it that morning. From noon on, her schedule was packed—with an Altar Society luncheon, a Daughters of the American Revolution tea, an artist’s opening at the library and dinner with Jonathan. Jonathan had left her a message on her cell phone the previous evening suggesting they meet at the library and walk to the new Thai restaurant from there. Mary Anne was pleased with the choice. It was the kind of restaurant where you ordered at the counter, which made it seem less like a date.

Because she didn’t want a date with someone else’s fiancé.

No, she wanted Jonathan Hale to break his engagement to Angie Workman.

Is that what you really want, Mary Anne?
Just twenty-four hours earlier the answer would have been…
of course.

But suddenly, everything in her life seemed to be unfolding in ways she hadn’t expected.

She’d just stepped back inside when the phone rang. She snatched it up to hear Graham ask if she’d received the envelope.

“Yes. Thanks.”

“And I’m hoping you’ll join me for dinner Saturday night at Rick’s. We can talk about how the show went and have some fun, too.”

“Oh,” Mary Anne stammered. This wasn’t a dinner invitation shouted across the tarmac at the dump. This was an invitation issued in a respectful fashion. Which meant she should pull herself together and prove someone had raised her right.
But what about Cameron?
For a moment, she didn’t know what to say, as if she’d forgotten how to refuse dates. And she found herself blurting, “Thank you. I’d enjoy that.”

“Great. Shall I make a reservation for seven?”

“Yes. Sure. Thank you,” she repeated.
Oh, God, what am I going to tell Cameron? Why did I say yes?

Mary Anne hadn’t spoken with Cameron since bumping into her at the recycling center. Had Cameron seen what had happened there, noted the obviously nonplatonic attention Graham had been paying to Mary Anne?

Mary Anne punched
4,
which was her code for Cameron’s number. Her cousin would be at work but might pick up anyhow.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Cameron. It’s Mary Anne.”
How am I going to tell her?

“Hey. Has Graham gotten you to go out with him yet?”

The straightforward question was entirely Cameron, and Mary Anne felt almost relieved. Almost. “Um. I’m supposed to have dinner with him after the show, Saturday. I don’t know why I said yes.”
Forgive me! Forgive me!

“How about, ‘Because he’s handsome and nice and intelligent and has the hots for me’?”

“Cameron, I’m
sorry.
Jonathan asked me out to dinner tonight, and I’m all off-kilter and not thinking.”

“Cousin,” Cameron said sternly, “your refusing to go out with Graham Corbett is
not
going to make him go out with me.”

“And by the way,” Mary Anne said, although it wasn’t “by the way” at all, “how did Paul Cureux find out about the love potion?”

Cameron explained about taking firewood to Clare and what Clare had said to her and what Paul had then surmised.

“I guess there’s not much client confidentiality in the love-potion business,” Mary Anne said, feeling stung.

“Well, Paul says that they’ve been trained from a young age to be discreet about anything to do with their mom’s clients, midwifery or otherwise.”

“Obviously, that really took hold.”

“Well, he only mentioned it to you,” Cameron said, using an argument she would have found completely inadequate in any other context.

Mary Anne changed the subject. “Did you know Graham was a widower?”

“I think I did,” Cameron said faintly, as if trying to remember.

“Well,
I
didn’t.” Mary Anne was intrigued about
Graham’s wife’s death. Did this mean she was interested in Graham? She
couldn’t
be interested in Graham. It was one thing to be on his show, go out with him once and report back to Cameron that he was as disappointing as she’d always known he would be. It was quite another to become attracted to him. “Do you know how she died?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“No clue. Why don’t you look on the Internet? See if there is anything there?”

Good idea. When she’d moved in with Nanna and started working for the newspaper, Mary Anne had arranged wireless service, so that she could work from home. When she and Cameron had talked some more about Jonathan and his date with Mary Anne that night, they hung up. Right away, Mary Anne grabbed her laptop and used Google to find Briony Corbett.

Immediately, she came across a foundation set up to provide money for athletic scholarships to needy female West Virginia athletes—the Briony Corbett Memorial Fund. The Web site included photos of a diminutive blonde spiking a volleyball over a net, sitting under a tree with a group of children, coaching a girl’s soccer team. Briony was pretty—a freckled, wholesome kind of pretty. It didn’t say how she’d died, but Mary Anne saw that she’d been twenty-six at the time of her death. Mary Anne read an obituary as well, but, once again, there was no information about how she had died.

She prepared herself for her time on Graham’s show, trying to imagine what her role would be on the air. She wasn’t subject to nervousness on the radio. Maybe there was an element of performance that was genetic. But that was something she hated to consider. It wasn’t that
she didn’t love her father or didn’t think he was reasonably talented. It was that he
always,
always, always needed the limelight. And he seemed to lack all common courtesy when it came to getting out of the way and letting others be noticed.