level he wanted her to understand the person who had been formed by the bitter implosion of his parents’ relationship.
“On my twelfth birthday,” Sam said after a while, “I came home after school and Vick had taken Alex somewhere, and Mark had disappeared. My mother was passed out on the sofa. Dad was drinking something straight from the bottle. Around dinnertime I started to get hungry, but there was nothing to eat. I went to look for Dad, and finally found him sitting in his car in the driveway, shouting some crap about suicide. So I went to Fred and Mary’s house, and stayed for about three days.”
“They must have meant a lot to you.”
“They saved my life.”
“Did you ever tell them that?”
“No. They knew.” Recalling himself to the present, Sam leveled a wary glance at Lucy. She knew that he’d told her more than he had meant to, and he wasn’t certain why, and he regretted it. “Back in a minute,” he said, and went to set the steaks on an outside grill at the back of the house.
* * *
As the steaks cooked on the grill, and a pan of red potatoes roasted in the oven, Lucy told Sam about her parents, and the recent discovery that her father had been married once before he’d married her mother.
“Are you going to ask him about it?”
“I’m curious,” Lucy admitted, “but I’m not sure I want to hear the answers. I know that he loves Mom. But I don’t want him to tell me that he loved someone else more than her.” She traced her fingers over the scarred surface of the worktable. “Dad’s always been distant from the rest of us. Reserved. I think his first wife kept a piece of his heart that he couldn’t give to anyone else after she died. I think he was permanently damaged, but Mom wanted him anyway.”
“Must be hard to compete with someone’s memory,” Sam said.
“Yes. Poor Mom.” Lucy grimaced. “I’m sorry you’ll have to meet them. It’s not fair to you. Waiting on me hand and foot, then having to suffer through a visit from my parents.”
“No problem.”
“You’ll probably like Dad. He tells physics jokes that no one ever gets.”
“Like what?”
“Like, ‘Why did the chicken cross the road? Because a chicken at rest tends to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.’” Lucy rolled her eyes as he laughed. “I knew you’d think it was funny. Where do you think we should go for dinner?”
“Duck Soup,” Sam said. It was one of the best restaurants on the island, a vine- covered inn featuring local produce and items from its own kitchen garden, and freshly caught seafood. A whimsical portrait of Groucho Marx hung in the entrance foyer.
“I love that place,” Lucy said. “But Kevin and I had dinner with them there once before.”
“Why does that matter?”
Lucy shrugged, not quite certain why she’d mentioned it.
Sam looked at her steadily. “I’m not worried about being compared to Kevin.”
Lucy felt her color rise. “I wasn’t thinking that,” she said irritably.
After pouring more wine, Sam lifted his glass and said, “Time wounds all heels.”
Lucy brought herself to smile, recognizing the quote by Groucho Marx. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, and raised her own glass.
Over dinner they discussed movies, discovering a shared liking for old black-and- white films. When Lucy confessed that she had never seen
“It’s too bad we can’t watch it tonight,” Lucy said.
“Why can’t we?”
“Do you have it on DVD?”
“No, but I can download it.”
“But that’ll take forever.”
Sam looked smug. “I’ve got a download accelerator that maximizes data delivery by initiating several simultaneous connections from multiple servers. Five minutes, tops.”
“At times you hide your inner geek so well,” Lucy marveled. “And then it just appears like a bolt of lightning.”
After dinner they went to the living room to watch the movie. Lucy was immediately taken with the story of the prickly, cold-natured heiress, her debonair ex-husband, and the cynical newspaper reporter played by Jimmy Stewart. The dialogue was filled with elegant quicksilver humor, every pause and reaction perfectly timed.
As the black-and-white images flickered on the screen, Lucy leaned into Sam’s side, half expecting him to object. The relaxed evening together, the tentative confidences, had created a feeling of intimacy that Sam might not want to encourage. But he put his arm around her, and let her head rest against his shoulder. She sighed, relishing the solid warmth of him next to her, the anchoring weight of his arm. As awareness of him gathered in a slow simmer, it was difficult not to touch him, reach for him.
“You’re not watching the movie,” Sam said.
“Neither are you.”
“What are you thinking about?”
In the silence, the movie dialogue floated like champagne froth.
“I was thinking,” Lucy said, “that I’ve never tried a relationship where no one makes any promises. I like that rule. Because if you don’t make promises, you can’t break them.”
“There’s another rule I didn’t tell you about.” Sam’s voice was guarded. His breath stirred the hair on top of her head.
“What is it?”
“Know when to stop. When either of us says it’s time to break it off, the other agrees. No arguments, no discussion.”
Lucy was silent, her stomach leaping as he altered his position on the sofa.
Sam turned to face her, his head silhouetted against a background of flickering ghost-images. The low sound of his voice undercut the muted flurry of words and images from the screen behind him. “Of all the people I’ve never wanted to hurt, Lucy … you’re at the top of the list.”
“I think you’re the first man who’s ever worried about that.” Lucy dared to reach out and touch the side of his face, her fingers shaping gently against his cheek. She felt the subtle flex in his jaw, the forceful beat of his pulse against her fingertips. “Let’s take a chance,” she whispered. “You won’t hurt me, Sam. I won’t let you.”
