head and moved me back into position. “This might hurt a little. I’m going to pull these old closures off and replace them.”
I got set for some serious pain, but got only a minor sting instead. “You are good. So how come you quit working?”
“I don’t know. Connie was making such good money. I worked part-time, but there wasn’t the driving need for it like when we were younger and he was in school. I hate to sound cliched, but those really were the good old days. Our salad days. We were young, up to our ears in debt, living on Hamburger Helper. Sometimes without the hamburger.”
I laughed. She wiped the last of the dried blood off my scalp and got everything taped down. She started pulling the wrappers from the bandage together, knotting them into a neat ball to throw away. Her voice became almost wistful.
“Connie and I loved each other then. Things were really going well for us. Something happened somewhere. I never quite figured out what.”
I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you fix me that drink now? Then I’d like to hear about it.”
She fumbled around under the kitchen cabinet for a minute or so, and came up with a perfectly iced down, exquisite Scotch and soda.
“You remembered,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She was suddenly embarrassed. “Do you not drink Scotch anymore? I can get you something-”
“This is fine,” I said.
“Would you like to go into the den?”
“Sure, as long as you think the old biddies aren’t spying on your house.”
She laughed quietly as she stood up and pushed her chair back under the kitchen table. “It’s past their bedtimes.”
We walked out of the kitchen and down a long carpeted hall. Off to the right, the living room was dark and unoccupied. I could see enough to tell, however, that it was filled with expensive antiques, the kind you can only afford to keep when you’re doing exceptionally well and don’t have children.
“How come you and Connie never had kids?”
She stepped down into the sunken den and turned a knob on the wall. The lights came up. The room was much more relaxed without homicide detectives hanging around. A comfortable couch sat in the middle, with a projection screen TV against the opposite wall. The room was lined with books, an expensive stereo, and shelves of records and CDs.
She sat on the couch and set her drink down on an end table. “Connie didn’t want them,” she said. “Frankly, I never felt the urge either. So I never made an issue of it.”
“What happened between you two?” I asked, settling into the couch a space or so over from her. Instinctively, I knew I wanted to sit next to her, but not
“We were married twelve years,” she said after a moment. “A lot can happen in that time. The stresses of professions, especially medicine. Connie worked eighty, a hundred hours a week. We got to where we went days at a time without seeing each other. That puts a strain on a marriage. It’s a brutal system, but you can’t do anything about it. Marriages are a casualty.”
“I can imagine.”
I sipped the drink. She’d made it strong, the Scotch as old as their marriage. It burned down my throat for about three seconds and then exploded into pure pleasure. Good thing I don’t drink much; I’m too prone to enjoy myself at it.
“Then there were the other women.”
“Other women?” I asked, shocked.
Her stare said: oh, you naive and innocent young boy. “Infidelity is another occupational hazard in the medical profession. Think about it. Men and women, intelligent, educated, thrown together in a high-pressure, tense, dramatic environment where lives are lost and saved every day. It’s pure romance. I’m no fool; I knew Conrad was handsome, charming when he wanted to be. And I know nurses, especially the young ones. The ones who go wild over being on an open heart team. Real living on the edge stuff.”
“Rachel,” I asked, cautious, tentative. “Were these just momentary indiscretions, or did Conrad have a steady girlfriend?”
She stared into her vodka and tonic. Her knuckles were white; condensation from the side of the glass leaked through her fingers and ran down her hands like tears.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I know there was more than one. But I don’t know how many, and I don’t know how serious.”
I wanted to comfort her. Her marriage to Conrad may not have been successful, but it was obvious she still cared for him in some way. And it was equally obvious that with her husband’s death, there was a great deal of pain in Rachel Fletcher’s life that would never be resolved.
“Rachel, I’m so sorry,” I said. I scooted over next to her on the couch, set my drink down on the table in front of us, and put my arm across the back of the couch. She stared at me blankly for perhaps thirty seconds, our eyes meeting over the two feet or so separating us. Then she put her glass back down and came into my arms again.
I held her there, her head nestled in the crook of my shoulder for a long time. We were very still, very quiet, with only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room to remind us that time was still passing.
“I’d forgotten how good you feel,” she whispered. She brought her arms around me and pulled herself even closer. My arms were around her shoulders, my hands buried in blond hair. Okay, so maybe there was something besides comforting going on here. But it was late at night; it had been a long time for both of us. Who can blame two people for grabbing what comfort they can in the world?
She pulled herself away from me for a beat, then raised her head with a look in her eyes I hadn’t seen since we were in college together, involved with each other, young and inexperienced and passionate and still untouched by the worst surrounding us.
I wanted to kiss her, wanted that more than anything else in the world. But I knew if I kissed her once, I was in over my head.
“This’s not a good idea,” I said. Words never had to work harder to get out of my mouth.
“Why?”
I pulled myself away from her while I still could. “Not now, Rachel. Not with all this going on. Maybe after it’s over, after things settle down.”
“Harry, I’d forgotten what a noble old fool you were.”
I grinned at her. “Noble old fool is right.”
I finished my drink, and we talked a little while longer. Finally, I was exhausted. It was nearly one in the morning, and it had been a very long day.
“Yeah, I need to get up early, too,” she said. “If I’m going to get in my usual three miles before all this craziness starts, I’d better do it early.”
“Oh, you run?” I asked.
“Well, not professionally, you understand. But yeah, I took up running back when I was a med school widow. Oh, God, I can’t believe I said that.”
“Med school widow?”
“That’s what med students’ wives call themselves. We used to joke about it, call Code Blue when our husbands came home. The shock would nearly kill us.”
“Shock would nearly kill you, huh?” I smiled, glad she was able to joke. That was, I thought, a good sign.
“Go on, my brave white knight, who’s suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to protect the one he used to love.” She put her arm around my waist and steered me down the hall.
“Yeah, well. I’m getting paid pretty good for it,” I kidded.
“Cheap at the price. It’s hard to get good help these days.”
“Hey, can I see your living room?” I asked, following an impulse. She stopped, reached in, turned on a light. Rows of framed pictures on a baby grand, furniture so expensive and cultured I didn’t even recognize it, art on the
