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Authors: Elizabeth Bass

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“How could you do this?” she asked. “How could you be such a thoughtless jerk?”
“Wait a second!” he replied. “What did I do that was thoughtless? I sent the cats down to you. Aren’t you glad to see them?”
“Of course I am!” she yelled. “That’s not the point. That guy who drove them down could have decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble and dumped them on the side of the road in Wyoming! Or he could have been some crazy who sells cats to labs for medical experiments.”
“Wouldn’t labs be interested in healthy cats?” Ben asked.
“It doesn’t matter—the point is, you didn’t know this guy from Adam. Why didn’t you at least tell me what you were doing?”
“Because I wanted to surprise you.”
She cursed under her breath.
“And I knew you’d have a cow,” he added, “which you are. For no reason. The cats obviously got there safe and sound.”
“Why did you feel the need to send them at all? The last time we spoke, I was talking about coming home this week. For all you knew, by the time the cats arrived, I wouldn’t even be here.”
“But you
are
there,” he pointed out. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re ever coming back.”
She sighed in frustration. “So, this was a passive-aggressive move to get me to go back to Portland?”
“Maybe so.” Uneasy silence crackled over the line until Ben spoke again. “Everything’s fine here, Grace. You could even say your leaving has been good for me. I manned up to the challenge. The store’s eking out a profit, the duplex is spic-and-span, and I feel good about that. But you know what? It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We had finally decided to be together, remember? Instead, I’ve never felt more alone in my life. I miss you. I know you feel your dad needs you, but the fact is I need you, too.”
As he spoke, the anger seeped out of her. She sat on her bed and then sank back on the mattress.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Come home. It’s crazy, you staying there so long.”
“I know. I should just set a date . . .” Another one.
“But you should make it a do-or-die date, and make it realistic,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re coming the day after tomorrow and then freak out again because your dad stubs his toe or something.”
“It’s been a little more serious than that,” she said.
“I know, I know,” he said apologetically. “But I’m serious. By what date do you think you can get things arranged there and get yourself ready to come back?”
She bit her lip. “Thanksgiving?”
“That’s a month away.”
“I know. But I’ve promised Dad I’ll be here for Thanksgiving anyway, because he wants everybody here. Even Sam’s flying in. And that will give me time to get together with Steven and arrange things. He’s even mentioned moving into the house here, so if we could find some day help . . .”
“Great!”
“And—oh!—you should come for Thanksgiving, too.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long way to go just to eat turkey,” Ben said. “And what about Rigoletto’s? Put on your capitalist thinking cap, Grace—Thanksgiving weekend? Black Friday? Do you really want to give that up?”
She took a deep breath. She had imagined him flying in and the two of them driving back together. He had sounded so eager to have her there.
A silence fell over the line . . . though it wasn’t quite as silent as she would have liked. She could make out a rhythmic pulsing beat in the background . . . a tambourine . . . and was that a banjo? “What are you playing?”
“Just music,” Ben answered in a staccato voice.
“But it’s—”
“It’s the Freelance Whales, okay? I put in an indie section. Just a small one. It’s very popular.”
“Oh.”
And to think a few months ago she’d been worried he might play a Miles Davis record. Her line in the sand hadn’t just been crossed, it had been obliterated and washed out to sea with the tide. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to say a word of reproach. He was there and doing his best.
“I guess I could find someone to sub for me,” Ben said, relenting. “Or maybe we will have to close the store for the weekend. But if it’s important to you, Grace, I’ll be there.”
19
T
HE
E
ND OF
T
HE
S
TORY
A
fter three months, Steven’s new office still had an unfinished feel to it. The waiting room still bore the sharp smell of fresh paint and carpeting, and the walls were bare except for a single framed print of a dancer in an impossibly bendy position. Hard to tell whether this was meant to soothe, inspire, or taunt his patients.
“Would you like to speak to your brother?” Emily asked her.
“We’re supposed to have lunch today.”
“Dr. Oliver didn’t tell me that. We’re rather busy.” When Grace glanced around the deserted waiting room, Emily looked at her with long-practiced patience. “He’s in with his last morning patient now. Naturally I’ve blocked out the schedule for his lunch, but he only has thirty minutes.”
“I’ll try not to keep him late.”
“Dr. Oliver’s next appointment is at one.”
“Do you always call him Dr. Oliver?” Grace asked her.
“Of course,” Emily said.
“Never Steven?”
“No.” Two red stains appeared in Emily’s cheeks, but Grace couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or offended.
“Emily, how would you like to come to my father’s house for Thanksgiving?”
Emily flinched a little. “I couldn’t intrude.”
“An invited guest isn’t an intrusion.” Grace laughed. “Unless your name is Uncle Truman.”
Emily’s blank stare sobered her, however, and Grace remembered Lou saying that he wanted the holiday just to be close friends and family. So maybe he would consider Emily an intruder. Then again, with her history littered with unhappy foster homes and group houses, if Emily didn’t intrude on someone sometime, she would never get anywhere. Besides, she’d worked with Steven forever. That had to qualify her as a close . . . something.
“I appreciate the offer. . . .”
“It’s more than an offer. I want you to be there.”
Emily smiled so politely, it was maddening. The woman was a tough nut to crack. “If you’ll just take a seat, I’ll let Dr. Oliver know you’re here the moment he is free.”
It was twelve-thirty by the time that moment occurred. Grace was surprised Emily didn’t drag the poor patient out bodily for this incursion on her carefully planned schedule. Steven came out, looking a bit harried himself. “We can grab a sandwich next door,” he told Grace.
“I invited Emily over for Thanksgiving,” she told him as they were in line to place their orders.
Steven frowned. “Why?”
She gave him a quick whack on the arm. “To be polite.”
“What did she say?”
“She said no, but I want you to work on her. Make her change her mind.”
“If she doesn’t want to go . . .”
“She will, if you second the invitation.”
“You mean if she’s coerced?” He extracted a little bottle of orange juice from a hill of chipped ice. “I’ve worked with Emily for years, Grace. She’s the best admin worker I’ve ever come across—I’d be at sea without her. I don’t want to upset her by forcing her into awkward social situations.”
“Trust me, she’s not going to quit over a meal at our house. Our family isn’t that bad, is it?”
He darted a quick look at her and then placed his order.
When they were settled at a table, she decided she might as well plunge in with the plans she was making. Emily’s clock was ticking away. “I’m leaving after Thanksgiving,” she told him. “Back to Portland.”
“That’s good.”
“So I was looking at your room the other day. We could get it painted and fixed up a little. Also, I should start looking for someone who could come in during the day.”
His smile collapsed. “To tell the truth, I’ve decided against that.”
“The home help? What else can we—”
“No, I mean I’ve decided against moving back home. I don’t think that would work. It might sound selfish, after you’ve been here all these months, but I’m not sure that I would want to be pushing forty and living with my dad. It’s not as if I’m looking to get married again—obviously, I’m not even divorced—but I don’t quite want to give up the idea of any kind of social life in the future. And a man living with his father . . .”
Grace nodded. What he said made sense. It would be a little
Sanford and Son
ish. “We should be looking for a full-time person, then. Live-in, too.”
Something rumbled inside her just to think the words, much less say them. Their father would never go for this, even if they could find someone. But she couldn’t force Steven to move home against his will.
“I’ll ask around,” he said. “I’m sure some of the doctors I know have had to recommend home help for patients. There’s probably an agency that deals in this.”
“I wouldn’t want it to be someone different all the time. I think Dad would feel better with someone regular, who he could trust.”
“I know what you mean,” Steven said. “Just leave it to me.”
After ten more minutes, Steven had to get back to his patients, and she needed to get home in case her dad arrived home early. Truman and Peggy had driven him out to Llano to eat barbecue.
“Don’t forget to ask Emily,” she said as they parted.
“I won’t,” Steven promised. “But don’t expect her to come, Grace. She’d probably feel like the odd man out at our family gathering.”
Grace knew something about feeling like she didn’t quite belong at a family shindig. She also understood the longing to be there anyway. “Just ask her.”
 
That evening, as she stood on the back porch, wondering how she would ever work up the nerve to broach the subject of live-in home help with her dad, she caught sight of Ray dashing around his backyard. He was so tall that she could see the top of his head from her vantage point on the porch. Ray was hauling the ladder toward the pecan tree in the center of the backyard. Closer up, he looked a little demented.
“Are you going to pick pecans?” she asked. A lot of them were still wearing their green husks.
He halted in midmovement and darted glances all around, trying to pinpoint where the voice had come from. He spotted her and exhaled in relief. Maybe he’d thought he was hearing voices.
“I’ve been neglecting the bird feeders!” he said. “I haven’t even thought about them.”
She noticed there was one hanging from a large branch on the pecan tree. It was fairly high up.
“You’d better let me spot you on that ladder,” she said.
“I’ll be all right.”
“Famous last words.” She hopped down and came around the side of his yard and let herself in. On the other side of the fence, Iago was showing his discontent at being left behind by attempting to claw through the wood.
“I never once thought about the bird feeders till this morning,” Ray said. “Can you believe that? All these months—who knows what the birds have been living on.”
“Well, it was summer. Now is the time when you
should
be tending to them, I think.”
“Really?” He looked somewhat relieved as he crawled up the rungs and unhooked the house-shaped glass-and-wood structure. He climbed back down holding the bird feeder away from him with his fingertips.
“I assume birds survive okay in the warm weather just eating worms and whatnot,” she said.
“I hope so,” he answered, scoping out where the other feeders were. Now that Grace had an eye out, she spotted several. Ray headed for a hummingbird feeder hanging off the back porch. “Jen would have been able to say for sure. There wasn’t a bird that came into this yard without her noticing it. She knew them all, and what they ate, and where they wintered.”
“She was a bird-watcher?”
“A bird freak,” he corrected. “She set up this backyard as a sort of private, open aviary.” His gaze snagged on a birdbath full of leaves, pecan shells, and what looked like the petrified remains of an old baseball. He shook his head. “But now look at it. I wonder how long it took the birds to realize they needed to decamp.”
“They’ll come back,” she said.
He furrowed his brow at her. “Do you know anything about birds?”
She laughed. “Zilch, actually.” Then she nodded at a bird feeder hanging off a linden tree by a window. “You missed one.”
He obediently moved the ladder. “I wonder how often I should be checking these things.”
“You could put Lily on it,” she said.
He swung his head around. “Lily?”
She nodded. “She lives to observe. She’s over at our house right now.”
“I know.” She squinted at him and he explained, “They leave me notes. I don’t know how to thank you for being so patient, letting them invade your home all the time.”
“No thanks necessary. Dad loves having them over. I do too.” She felt a pang about Ray, though, abandoned by his loved ones, rattling around the house all by himself, angsting about bird feeders. “I think they’re about to start watching
The Lord of the Rings
. Have you seen it?”
He laughed. “Asking a software engineer if he’s seen
The Lord of the Rings
is like asking him if he reads Dilbert or has ever tried Indian food. Jen and I had seen it twice by the end of opening weekend.”
She watched him unhook the feeder that looked like a little red barn. “Jennifer was an engineer?” She hadn’t known that. “Is that how you two finally got together? Work?”
He climbed down. “It was earlier, actually—in college.”
“You went to the same college?”
“We weren’t supposed to. I went to Stanford, but then in my second year, my dad had a stroke and had to stop working, so I transferred to UT and lived at home to save money.”
“That couldn’t have been easy.”
“No, it wasn’t. Most of my friends from high school had left, and I was living at home, so I didn’t really feel part of college life at first. Then one day as I was walking to my electromagnetics class, there was Jen in the hallway. I nearly walked right by her, until I heard her say my name. She was on her way to chemistry. We were taking some of the same courses, but in different sections. Later on we met in the student union and caught up. Her parents had moved to Little Salty, so I had lost contact with her for a while. She asked me if I was dating anyone—I thought this was my big chance—and then she told me she wanted to set me up with her roommate. Cheryl. So I went out with her roommate for a while.”
Grace felt as if someone had slapped her. He had gone out with
someone else?
“Why?”
“Because Jen already had a boyfriend.”
But Jennifer was your true love,
she wanted to say. He was supposed to be a hopelessly devoted, tortured Olivia Newton-John man. Why would he have settled for Cheryl?
“It was sort of devious,” he admitted. “I didn’t like the guy Jen was going out with—he was a really slick business school guy. I thought if I kept an eye on him, I’d find out he was cheating on her. Sure enough, he was. After a while, it was really obvious. He was being incredibly edgy around the apartment, and sometimes he even looked guilty. And one time on campus I saw him making out with a girl—I couldn’t see her, but I suspected it was not Jen.
“Afterward, I invited Jen out for a pizza—at Milto’s—and she seemed distracted and upset. It was clear she knew. I was about to tell her what I knew, just to confirm her suspicions, when she suddenly blurted out, ‘That bitch!’ Really loud—right in the middle of the restaurant. Then she apologized for ever having introduced me to her.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Cheryl,” Ray explained. “It was Cheryl who Jen’s boyfriend was cheating with.
Cheryl!
I couldn’t believe it. He wanted Cheryl when he already had Jennifer. And at the same time, Jen said something like, ‘I can’t believe she’d rather go out with him than you!’
“Well, that stopped both of us. We sort of gaped at each other for what seemed like a minute or so, and then I said, ‘But you preferred him, too.’ And she said no, she didn’t, and I said she obviously had because she had been going out with him and not me for five months, and she said that was because I had never asked her. And I explained that I hadn’t asked her because I assumed she’d turn me down flat, and she said that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard of, and I argued that it was actually perfectly logical since we’d known each other forever and had never dated. Then she repeated that if I had asked her that might not have been the case, and I replied that we’d never know now because it was all in the past, and she said it wouldn’t be all in the past if I would just finally for once ask her out on a damn date. And then it struck me—she
really did want me to ask.
So I did.”
Grace felt like a kid listening to a fairy tale. Never mind that she knew the ending, her attention was rapt. She just needed to hear the words. “And what did she say?”
“She looked at me like I was the biggest jerk in the world and practically yelled, ‘What the hell took you so long!’ ” He grinned. “And that’s how we finally got together.”

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