More Than Friends (15 page)

"Knock, knock," came a voice from the door.

She looked up and mustered a smile. "Come on in, Jason. I was just thinking."

Jason Faust was a graduate student in the department.

He was working toward his degree slowly. Coming from wealth gave him the luxury of doing that. It also gave him an arrogance that some of the others resented. Annie wasn't bothered by it. She found him to be bright and hardworking. This was their third year together. She relied on him as a guide for the newer teaching assistants.

"Must be heavy thoughts," he said. "Want an aspirin?"

"Already took three."

"A cup of coffee?"

She demonstrated the fine tremor in her hand.

"Some weed?"

She shot him an admonishing look. Then she sat back in her chair and ruffled the papers on the desk. "I'm a little behind. That's all." Jason leaned against the wall just inside the door. In a quiet voice he said, "I was sorry to hear about your friend's little boy." She frowned. She hadn't told anyone at work. She rarely involved colleagues in her personal life. "How did you know about that?"

"Susan." The department secretary. "When I couldn't find you yesterday afternoon, I asked. It must be difficult, running back and forth to the hospital. If I can help with anything here, I'd be glad to."

"I might take you up on that. God willing, Michael will come out of the coma soon. If he doesn't, if he's still in the hospital later in the semester when we get into the crunch of exams and papers, things could get hairy."

"I can handle hairy."

"That's because you're younger than I am. Youth has a resiliency that fades the older you get."

"You're not very old."

"I'm old," she said. She felt old and ugly, unappealing enough for Sam to have been tempted by Teke.

Granted, Teke was no younger than she was, but a different body was a new one and might have a certain appeal. Why Sam had been susceptible was another matter. Annie had been so sure of his love and loyalty. She didn't know where she'd gone wrong.

"Funny," she mused, "you get so involved in living that you sometimes forget what really matters. I worked so hard to build a career. I squeezed courses in while the kids were little, and increased the load as they got older. Then I got my degree and began teaching, and it seemed so important, and when I won tenure, that was the best." She caught her breath. "Now something like this happens, and you realize that none of the scrambling up the ladder matters half as much as you thought it did."

"Do they think the little boy will pull through?" Jason asked. Annie had been reflecting on Sam and Teke and marriage and friendship. Poor Michael was on the periphery of all that. "I think so." She tried to sound encouraging. "He's breathing on his own now."

"How's his mother--your friend?"

Annie wasn't sure. Teke had been gone from the hospital by the time she had arrived the afternoon before. Annie had been relieved, for more reasons than one. She knew she would have to face Teke sooner or later, but later helped. She needed more time to gather herself and her thoughts.

"She slept home for the first time last night. It's good, if not for her, then for her kids. She has two others." Annie took a tired breath. "I worry about them."

"Are they close to their brother?"

"He's thirteen to their fifteen and seventeen. Growing up, the girls always played with each other more than with him, but, yes, they're close. We're all close."

Were, she corrected, and wondered what was going to happen.

"I could teach for you, Annie."

"Hmmm?"

"You look so unhappy. Go on home."

She picked up a pen. "It's worse there."

"To the hospital, then. It might make you feel better. All you have left today is Brit lit, which I know like the back of my hand." She crinkled her nose and began doodling.

"Then call your husband. Make him take you to lunch." That was the worst suggestion of the three. She put more pressure to the pen, which wasn't making a mark.

Jason came toward the desk. "Do something, Annie. I hate seeing you upset."

She tried to form a smile, but it came out skewed. "I'll be okay."

"Isn't there anything I can do?"

"Yeah. Get the department to buy decent pens." She tossed hers aside.

"These stink."

"I'm serious."

She looked up then. Jason Faust was known as the department hunk--this, from women of widely varying preferences. Annie couldn't argue with their assessment. He was blond-haired and silver-eyed, reminiscent of a younger, looser J.D.

"You're sweet," she said.

"So are you. What can I do to help?"

She sighed. "Nothing you're not already doing. It's nice having you around. You're more normal than some."

"Does that mean I get to teach a course next year?"

"It's only October."

"It's never too early to put in a bid. If I don't, someone else will."

"Someone else will anyway," she reminded him gently, "someone who has completed the degree that you're ambling your way through."

"But I'm brilliant," he argued with a grin.

She grinned back. "True. Still, it's not my decision to make."

"And not the time to discuss it anyway," he said resignedly as he turned to leave. "Will you let me know if there's anything I can do to help you out?"

"Uh-huh."

"Promise?"

"Uh-huh."

He winked and left.

"So, Mikey, what do you think?" Teke asked in a full voice as she stood back to admire her handiwork. The wall opposite his bed, stark white before, was now alive with a colorful assortment of the get well cards that Teke had taped there, along with a bright red banner that read GET WELL, MICHAEL. That the banner clashed with his T-shirt, which was turquoise and had his name plastered across the front in bold orange letters, was so much the better, as far as she was concerned. She wanted people to notice. She wanted everyone who walked in the room to know what her son's name was and the fact that he was a living, breathing human being.

"It looks great, Mrs. Maxwell," said a nurse who came in to check the needles in Michael's arm. He had dislodged one the night before, the result of an increase in random, sometimes agitated movements. No one was calling them a prelude to consciousness, but Teke prayed they were. At least she knew for sure that he wasn't paralyzed. Something in his brain was connecting, if in no orderly fashion.

She planned to work on that, too. She had made

an appointment with the physical therapist, so that she could learn how to exercise Michael's arms and legs. She was determined to keep him in shape and to remind his body of how it was supposed to behave.

"Those colors are bright enough to wake the dead," the nurse went on good-naturedly, "and it isn't just the wall, Michael. You should see the lady herself. She's wearing a hot pink sweater and tights. Of course, she's got the figure for it. If I tried that, I'd look like a blimp. Is she always this way?"

Michael didn't answer.

"She's also been baking. I see M&M cookies, and"--the nurse looked around--"I smell brownies. There they are, in a basket on the dresser, right beside the Hershey's kisses. I take it someone's a chocolate fiend?"

"Michael," Teke said. "Definitely." She passed the basket of brownies to the nurse. "Please have one."

Tempting Michael with his favorite treats was only half the point; the other was tempting the hospital staff to take a personal interest in him. On the chance that such an interest would result in more enthusiastic care, which in turn might help end Michael's coma, she could play dirty.

Anything for her son. No one was accusing her of being a lousy mother again.

"Oh, Lord," the nurse moaned, "she brought music, too. Don't tell me--Guns N' Roses, U2, Aerosmith."

Teke smiled. "You have a teenager?"

"Oh, yes." To the silent boy on the bed, she teased, "And it's a lucky thing for you that I do. I'm used to that noise. Watch out for the doctors, though. Shoot one of those songs at them when they're not expecting it, and they're apt to run for cover." She patted his arm.

"See you in a bit."

Teke took Michael's hairbrush from the large

satchel she'd set on the floor by the bed. "Someone around here has to know how to wash the hair of a bedridden patient." Careful to avoid his stitches, she brushed his hair. "That'll be next on the list, right after food. Aren't you hungry, baby? I know you don't like me nagging, but you've got to wake up for a meal once in a while." She stroked his throat. "I'll spoon it in if you open your mouth. What would you like? A chocolate milk shake? Pudding with whipped cream?

A hot fudge sundae?"

"There must be ways to get food into him."

The voice was quiet, but recognition was instant. Teke didn't have to look up to know that Grady had come, and she wasn't even sure his voice had done it. Her skin was suddenly more sensitive. She guessed she could be blind, deaf, and dumb and still know the instant he entered a room.

As quietly as he, she said, "They can put a feeding tube down his throat."

"Why don't they?"

"They want to give him a little more time." She prayed he would wake up before that was necessary. "It's an awful thought, a tube. But he's lost weight. He hasn't eaten a solid thing in three days." Grady came up on the opposite side of the bed. He didn't say anything, just looked down at Michael.

Teke put the brush away. She took a breath that was remarkably steady, given the momentousness of the introduction she was about to make.

"Michael, this is Grady Piper." A face from my past, the great love of my life. "He's the man whose truck you hit." Keeping her eyes on Michael, she said with resolve, "You shouldn't have come again, Grady. There was no need." He had driven her home when she had fallen apart the afternoon before, but she was fine now. If he wanted to help more, he could leave town. She had an angry husband and a very ill son. Grady couldn't change either fact. Years before he had opted out of her life. He had no place in it now.

But he said, "I can't stay away. I have to know how the boy is."

"A phone call will tell you that," she suggested. When Grady was silent, she took a different tack. "My husband blames you. He doesn't want you here. He'll make trouble."

"He already has. The police watch every move I make."

"Then leave," she whispered with urgency, and finally raised her eyes. She wasn't in shock now. She wasn't in tears or so tired that she couldn't see straight. For the very first time in twenty-two years, she took a good look at Grady Piper.

He was six feet three and as hard of body as he had been so long ago. He was wearing an open necked shirt and jeans, but it was his face that drew her. It was tanned, with the squint marks he had earned at the docks as a teenager embedded more deeply now. His hair, once black as the paint he put on tug hulls, was lightly flecked with silver, but he looked well, too well for her peace of mind. She had spent years trying to hate him. She was trying still. "Damn it, Grady," she cried, "why did you do it? Why did you write to me? Why did you come?"

"I told you in the letter."

"You said you wanted to see me. But why?"

"I just wanted to see you."

"You had no right?" she cried in a burst of anger. "You were the one who made me leave Gullen! I would have stayed and waited for you, but you told me to go. You said you didn't want me. You said you wouldn't come back for me. You said you wouldn't come back at all if I was there."

"I wanted something better for you."

"Well, I thought you were something better, but you turned me away. So I did what you said, I got my education, and my husband, and my better life, and I was perfectly happy with it, until you sent that letter. You shouldn't have done that, Grady! You can't waltz in and out of people's lives. It isn't fair!"

"Life isn't fair."

She looked away. "Swell."

"It isn't. I saved you, so I lost you. Where's the sense in that?" Facing him again, she saw his tension. It was wire tight in his jaw and as heartrending as the pain in his eyes. But she refused to relent. "You wouldn't have lost me if you hadn't sent me away."

"You don't understand," he ground out. "I'm a murderer. I'll be that for the rest of my life. I'm an ex-con. People know that right away, they can smell it on a man. Know what it's like to go through life with that kind of stink?"

"You're being overly dramatic."

He gave her a disparaging look. "I'm good at what I do, but for every job I get, there's three I lose because of my record. You wanted to be muddied by that?"

"I wouldn't have minded."

He snorted. "That's a nice house you've got. Nice car. Nice ring on your finger. I couldn't have given you those."

"As if I cared."

"Well, I did. I wanted the best for you." After a minute he lowered his eyes to Michael. "I wasn't even planning to see you that day. I just wanted to see where you lived. I wanted to see if you'd gotten the best. Looks like I botched things again." In a voice rife with self-disgust he muttered, "What a fuck-up I am." Teke's anger dissipated. She sighed. "Oh, Grady.

If you're that, then I'm ten times worse."

He met her eyes. "Because of what you told me last night?" She nodded. She had half hoped he wouldn't remember, though she supposed it was just as well. He wasn't the only fuck-up. Indeed, where Michael's accident was concerned, he was nothing more than a victim of circumstance. He shouldn't be wallowing in guilt.

"Is Sam a good friend?"

"My husband's best."

"How long has it been going on?"

"Tuesday was the one and only time."

"Why did it happen then?"

She rubbed Michael's chest. If he was listening, he was getting an earful, but she didn't care. "I had gotten your letter and was upset. He came. It happened."

"Isn't your marriage good?"

"My marriage is okay." She paused. "Was okay. I don't think J.D. will ever forgive me for what I did. It was treason of the first degree." When Grady said nothing, she dared look up. "It was, Grady. I've never done anything as awful in my life."