Summer’s End

the paintings she knew she had to sign.

“I said”-he put the paintings carefully aside, and reached for the brush with one hand-“take that thing out of your mouth.”

“Why? This way I have my hands free to look for…” But he silenced her almost immediately with a kiss.

“That’s why, you dummy. Now, are you coming to bed?” He pulled her close to him, and she nestled against him with a smile.

“In a minute. Can I just finish this?”

“I don’t see why not.” He sat down in the comfortable old chair at his desk and watched her ferret through the stack again looking for unsigned canvases. “Are you as excited as I am, madam, about the show?” It was only four days away. Thursday. He was finally going to launch her into the art world. She should have been showing for years. He looked at her with pleasure and pride, as she stuck the end of the brush through her hair to free her hands once again. There was a huge smile on her face. It not only played with her mouth, it danced in her eyes.

“Excited? Are you kidding? I’m half crazy. I haven’t slept in days.”

He suspected it was true. Every night when they went to bed, he looked sleepily into her eyes after their hours of lovemaking, and the last thing he remembered was always that smile. And suddenly in the mornings she was wide awake now. She jumped up and got him breakfast, then disappeared into the spare room where she had put all her work. She had brought her treasures to him, to keep until the show. She didn’t even want them in the gallery until the day before the opening.

Now she signed the last one and turned to him with a grin. “I don’t know if I’ll make it till Thursday night.”

“You will.” He glowed as he watched her. What a beautiful woman she was. She seemed even prettier lately, her face had a soft, luminous beauty, and her eyes a kind of passionate fire. There was a tenderness and a burning about her all at once, like a velvet flame. And their time together had a magic about it, like nothing he had ever known. The little cottage in Carmel fairly hummed with her presence, filling the rooms with flowers, bringing back huge pieces of driftwood which they lay against as they toasted their feet near the fire on “their” dune just outside. She filled his dreams and his arms and his days. He could no longer imagine a life without her.

“What are you thinking?” She tilted her head to one side, and leaned against the stack of her paintings.

“About how much I love you.”

“Oh.” She smiled, and her eyes softened as she looked into his eyes. “I think about that a lot.”

“About how much I love you?” He smiled and so did she.

“Yes. And about how much I love you. What did I ever do before you came along?”

“You lived excessively well and never made your own breakfast.”

“It sounds awful.” She walked toward him, and he pulled her down onto his lap.

“That’s just because you’re excited about the show and you can’t sleep. Wait another month, or two…” He paused painfully; he had been about to say a “year,” but they didn’t have a year. Only another five or six weeks. “You’ll get tired of making breakfast. You’ll see.”

She wanted to see. She wanted to see for a lifetime, not a month. “I’ll never get tired of this.” She buried her face in his chest, feeling warm and safe like a child. They were both brown from their weekend in Carmel, and her feet were still sandy as they brushed along the floor. “You know what I think?”

“What?” He closed his eyes and smelled the fresh scent of her hair.

“That we’re very lucky. What more could we have?”

A future, but he didn’t say it. He opened his eyes and looked at her as she sat in his lap. “Don’t you ever want another child?”

“At my age?” She looked stunned. “Good Lord, Pilar is almost sixteen years old.”

“What does that have to do with anything? And what do you mean ‘at your age’? Lots of women have babies in their thirties.”

“But I’m thirty-seven. That’s crazy.”

He shook his head. Deanna was looking somewhat stunned. “It’s not too old for a man, why should it be too old for a woman?”

“That, my darling, is very different indeed. And you know it yourself.”

“I do not. I’d love to have our child. Or even two. And I don’t think you’re too old.”

A baby? Now? She looked at him in astonishment, but he was perfectly serious. His arms were still around her.

“Do you mean it?”

“I do.” For a long moment he watched her eyes and wasn’t sure what he saw. Confusion, amazement, and also sorrow and pain. “Or are you not supposed to have any more children, Deanna?” He had never asked. There was no reason to. She shook her head.

“No, there’s no reason why I can’t, but… I don’t think I could go through it again. Pilar was a gift after the two boys. I don’t think I’d want to do it again.”

“Do they know why those things happened?”

“Just flukes, they said. Two inexplicable tragedies. The odds of that happening twice in one family are minute… but it did.”

“Then it wouldn’t again.” He sounded determined, and Deanna pulled away.

“Are you trying to talk me into having a baby?” Her eyes were very large and her face very still.

“I don’t know. Maybe I am. It sounds like it, doesn’t it?” He smiled and hung his head. Then he looked up. “Do you think that’s what I was doing?”

She nodded, suddenly very serious. “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m too old.” And I already have a child. And a husband.

“That is the only reason I categorically will not accept! That’s nonsense!” He sounded almost angry this time, and she wondered why. What did it matter whether or not she was too old for a child?

“Yes, I am. I’m almost forty years old. And even this is pretty crazy. I feel like a kid again. I’m acting like I’m seventeen, not thirty-seven.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” He searched her eyes, and she surrendered.

“Absolutely nothing. I love it.”

“Good. Then come to bed.” He picked her up in his arms and deposited her in the next room, on his large comfortable bed. The quilt was rumpled from where they had lain when they came back from Carmel, and there was only one small light on in the room. The soft colors looked warm and pretty, and the big vase of daisies she had picked Friday afternoon on the terrace gave the bedroom a country air. She did something special to his house, she gave it a flavor that he had longed for, for years. He had never really known what was missing, but now that he had her, he knew. What had been missing was Deanna, with her green eyes and dark hair piled onto her head, with her bare legs peeking out of his bed, or sitting cross-legged with her sketch pads on his deck surrounded by the flowers. Deanna, with her stack of paintings and her paintbrushes stuck into all his coffee cups, with the shirts that she “borrowed” and splattered with paint, and with the countless thoughtful gestures-the ties she had cleaned, the suits she put away, the little presents she bought, the books she brought him that she knew he would love, the laughter and the teasing and the soft eyes that always understood. She had drifted into his life like a dream. And he never wanted to wake up. Not without Deanna at his side.

“Ben?” Her voice was very small next to him in the dark.

“What, love?”

“What if I get bad reviews?” She sounded like a frightened child, and he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. He knew how great her fear was.

“You won’t.” He put his arms around her again, beneath the quilt. It had been a present from an artist’s wife to his mother, years ago, in New York. “The reviews will be wonderful. I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because you’re very, very good.” He kissed her neck and trembled at the feel of her naked flesh against his legs. “And because I love you so much.”

“You’re silly.”

“I beg your pardon?” He looked at her with a grin. “I tell you I love you, and you think I’m silly. Listen here, you…” He pulled her closer and covered her mouth with his, as they disappeared in unison beneath the quilt.

She woke at six the next morning and instantly disappeared into the spare room. She had remembered a