More Than Friends (21 page)

Jon stormed toward the door. "I don't know. Maybe you should divorce him. That's what he deserves." He was gone down the stairs before Annie could respond.

"Are you going to, Mom?" Zoe asked in a tiny voice as she came to Annie's side.

Annie held her close. One of them trembled, perhaps both did, though the line between them blurred. Annie knew for a fact that the word divorce shook her.

"Are you?" Zoe whispered.

Annie kissed her soft blond waves. "I haven't thought about that."

"Because you're too upset to think about it, or because you don't want one?"

"I don't want one," Annie said, knowing it was the truth.

"Even after what Daddy did?"

"What Daddy did was unthinking and unkind and very, very wrong. I'm hurt and I'm angry. I want to strike back, but divorce isn't something to be done out of vengeance. Daddy and I have been married for nineteen years. I don't know as I want to throw the whole thing away."

"Can you forgive him?"

Forgiveness was one issue to be tackled, trust was another. "I don't know."

"But if you can't, how can you live with him?"

"I may not be able to," the furious part of her said.

"Will you get a divorce then?"

Annie recalled dozens of times over the years when Jon or Zoe had come home telling of a friend whose parents had split. "Tragic" had been one of the buzzwords they'd used to describe it, "difficult" another,

"heartbreaking" a third. Annie had identified with those children and, because of that, had taught Jon and Zoe to be extra-understanding and supportive of those friends. The Popes were, after all, secure in the knowledge that divorce would never hit them. How smug they had been. Annie could understand why Zoe was so frightened. She was, too. "I don't want a divorce, sweetheart. It's not a word I ever dreamed I would associate with your father and me."

"Do you still love him?"

"Yes. One afternoon can't kill half a life of loving." Her voice cracked. Her eyes filled with tears again. "That's why this all hurts so much," she managed in a broken whisper.

"Does he still love you?" Zoe asked.

It was a while before the knot in Annie's throat eased enough to let her speak. "He says he does."

"Do you believe him?"

Taken at its most innocent, his explanation of what had happened with Teke was plausible. "I want to."

"How will you find out for sure?"

"I don't know. Time, I guess."

Zoe was quiet then. She began to rock against Annie, and even with tears still threatening, Annie had to smile. When Zoe had been a baby, Annie had rocked her for the soothing, the comfort, the sheer pleasure of it. If the rocking stopped, Zoe had always started it up just this way. So now Annie rocked with her, wondering as she did just who was giving the comfort and who was receiving it.

"What is it about us, Mom?"

"Hmmm?"

"Aren't we pretty enough? Or sexy enough?"

Annie felt a squeezing around her heart. "For whom?"

"Men. Look at Jana. I always thought I was just as pretty as she is, but she's the one the boys want to take out."

"Who says?"

"I see."

"But she doesn't have a boyfriend.... " Unless Annie had been so preoccupied with work that she hadn't noticed. "I thought you guys went out in a big group."

"Yeah, and the boys in the group all crowd around her. Like Daddy crowding around Teke. What's wrong with us?"

Annie moaned. "Oh, sweetie, nothing's wrong."

"Then why does it happen?"

"Maybe because we're quieter."

"Maybe because our breasts are too small."

"Zoe."

"I'm serious. Boys like big breasts."

Time evaporated. Annie was Zoe's age again, telling her father the very same thing. "Know what Papa Pete used to tell me when I complained about that?"

"What?"

"He said that big breasts would sag in time. He said that in the long run, I was far better being me."

"Well, that's just fine," Zoe said with a gutsiness that Annie hadn't had at her age, "but what about the short run? Jana shouldn't be the only one with guys after her. And Daddy should want you the way he wanted Teke."

Annie agreed. "Know what else Papa Pete said?"

"What?"

"He said that good things come to those who wait."

"Meaning that if I'm patient, I'll have guys after me, but what about you? You were supposed to already have your good thing. Are you supposed to wait until he decides he wants you again? What do you do in the meanwhile? Will you sleep in the same bed with him? Will we all go out to dinner together?" She gasped. "And what about Thanksgiving? We always spend it with the Maxwells. And Christmas?

And New Year's? And skiing? Mom, what are we going to do?" Annie didn't know, she just didn't know.

"John Stewart is waiting," the message read. It was written on a small MAXWELL, ROPER and DINE memo sheet in Mary McGonigle's script and was lying on his desk when J.D. reached the office the next morning. He stared at it for the longest time, wishing he could ignore it, knowing he couldn't. John Stewart might have been put off the day before, but he wouldn't be put off again.

J.D. crushed the paper into a ball and threw it in the wastebasket on his way out the door. He strode down the hall, determinedly keeping his pace steady, and turned into John Stewart's office with his head held high.

"It's about time," John Stewart boomed, tossing a chin toward the door.

J.D. would have shut it even without the hint. He had no intention of the office grapevine in general, or Mary McGonigle in particular, picking up any of what was bound to be said.

John Stewart wasted no time getting to the point. "Well? Are you going to divorce her?"

J.D. walked to the window. Absently he rubbed the brass telescope that stood there. "Why did I know you were going to ask me that?"

"It's the most appropriate question, isn't it?"

"Actually, the most appropriate question is how Michael is doing." He put his eye to the telescope's lens. "In case you were wondering, they moved him to a private room early this morning. He's still sleeping most of the time, but he wakes up when you call to him. The doctors say that as he eats and regains his strength, he'll be awake more. As for his motor ability," J.D. went on, thinking of Sam and Teke and feeling anger, thinking of Grady Piper and feeling

anger, and all the while looking through the telescope at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, "there seems to be some minor impairment."

"What does that mean?" John Stewart growled.

J.D. had put the same words to Bill Gardner no more than thirty minutes before. "It means that he doesn't have full control of his limbs. He can't direct them and make them respond the way they did before the accident." He wondered why the telescope was focused on the Ritz. "The prognosis is good. He will eventually regain most of what he had, but how much will depend on how much he wants it and how hard he works." Basketball was out for the year. Probably baseball, too. "The next step is therapy. They'll move him to the rehabilitation center in about a week."

John Stewart grunted. "I won't have my grandson lolling around with old men who foam at the mouth."

J.D. saw a sheer drape being drawn open and a scantily clad woman appearing. Feeling like a voyeur, he straightened and turned around.

"Old men who foam at the mouth do not go to rehab centers, at least not the one I have in mind." Gardner had recommended it. "It's a notch above the rest."

"Why can't he come home?"

"We aren't equipped for the kind of intensive rehabilitation that he needs."

"Of course you aren't now, but you can be."

"He'll do better in a center. He'll have people all over him there."

"And Theodora? Will she be there?"

"Probably. Michael has become her personal cause."

"That's guilt speaking."

"And maternal instinct," he said because he

didn't like it when John Stewart belittled Teke. Even now.

"Guilt. Believe me. Guilt. That brings us to the matter of divorce. She'll take you to the cleaners if you're not careful." J.D. slipped his hands in his pockets. "She can't do that. She was the one who had the affair."

"Still, we'll need the best lawyer possible. I think Hammond over Mittleman. I've been hearing that Mittleman lets his associates do most of the work. That's not for us. Hammond may cost more, but it will be worth it in the long run. I don't want that gold digger to get a penny more than is absolutely necessary."

J.D. walked to the bookshelf and fingered the spine of a leather bound reference book. He doubted Teke would ask for much. She never had, J.D. had to say that for her. She accepted what he offered, but she wasn't a thief. She hadn't been stockpiling jewelry, as some women he knew did. "Don't call Hammond," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not ready."

"To divorce her? But she admitted to adultery. What greater evidence do you need?"

"I'm not going to a lawyer yet."

"If it embarrasses you, I'll call--"

"What embarrasses me," J.D. said, turning around, "is your wanting to be involved in something that isn't your business. This is my marriage. I'll decide if and when I want to end it." More quietly he added, "If and when that time comes, I'll find my own lawyer."

"Yes." John Stewart cleared his throat loudly. "We've seen how well you do things. Honestly, John David, you would be so much better off in life if you would listen to people who know more than you do. Marrying Theodora Peasely was a mistake from the start. She wasn't your type."

J.D. remembered some fun times they'd had. He had thought she was hot stuff when they'd first met, and the attraction wasn't only to her body. It was to her simplicity and her naivete, which he'd found to be a refreshing change from his usual dates. Once married, she had taken the role of wife seriously. She had dressed for him and undressed for him, had kept the house neat, had dinner ready for him when he walked in the door.

"Not your type at all," John Stewart continued. "You had a far more genteel upbringing. You lived in a beautiful house. You had the nicest clothes and well-bred friends. From the time you were old enough to sit through a meal, you were taken to fine restaurants, not only here, but in New York and Washington, too. You had an exposure to culture --fine arts, the theater--that Theodora couldn't conceive of, and that, before we even mention private school. Do you remember your classmates there?"

J.D. certainly did. Among them had been a senator's son who was into selling drugs, a millionaire's son who was into buying them, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner's son whose idea of peace was making love to his roommate. "They were nothing to write home about," J.D. said, but his father snowballed on.

"You had horseback riding lessons, ice-skating lessons, and ballroom dancing lessons, and all that at a time when we didn't have the financial comfort we have now. But we were willing to sacrifice because we wanted you to mix with the kind of people who had something to offer the world. Theodora had nothing to offer, nothing at all." The devil made J.D. say, "She was great in bed," which had been true enough before the novelty had worn off.

"If that's the only reason you married her, then you have no one but yourself to blame for what has happened. Honestly, John David, is sex that important to you?"

It wasn't. Increasingly he and Teke had stayed on separate sides of the bed. He wasn't sure what it was, whether they had become bored with each other or whether his tastes had changed, but she didn't turn him on the way she once had. It had been a while since he had reached for her in the night. In that sense, Sam could have her.

"You're a fine one to downplay sex," J.D. remarked. "I'll bet you see some great stuff through that telescope of yours. Does some high-class call girl rent the suite you're focused on?"

John Stewart's neck turned pink. "I have no idea what the telescope is focused on. I never use it."

J.D. didn't believe that for a minute. Nor did he believe, at that moment, that John Stewart wasn't carrying on with Mary McGonigle. He would have said as much if good sense hadn't prevailed.

"Divorce Theodora," John Stewart ordered.

But this time around J.D. wasn't being ordered. "I'll decide what I want to do in my own time."

"She is an embarrassment to this family. So is Sam Pope. I want him out of this firm."

J.D. wasn't surprised by that demand, either. John Stewart was a punisher, and more than anyone else, J.D. was in a position to know that.

John Stewart would probably suggest keeping Sam in the firm but giving him little work and even less compensation, if that were something he could control. Since it wasn't, he would naturally want Sam out.

"It's not a wise move, J.S. Sam is one of our biggest money winners."

"We can do without him."

"He has one of the highest profiles and the best reputations of any lawyer in the state."

"Fine. Let him run for public office. He won't get my vote, I can assure you. I don't vote for men of dubious moral character." J.D. thought of Mary McGonigle. He often thought of her during John Stewart's self-righteous tirades. Usually those tirades were directed at public officials, other lawyers, or even a client. They had never been directed quite this way at Sam before.

"And I don't relish the idea of calling a man of low moral character my partner," John Stewart went on. "I don't care how many people like him. What he did was about as low as any man can get." He scowled at J.D. "For the life of me, I can't figure out why you want to share a letterhead with the man. I can't figure out how you can stand looking at him. Don't you want him out?"

J.D. returned to the window. Yes, he wanted Sam out, just as he wanted Teke out. They had betrayed him in the worst possible way. But he had to think about what his life would be like without them. He was resisting doing that, and he had a funny feeling he knew why. Sam--Teke, too, for that matter-stood for everything that John Stewart was not. J.D. feared what his life would be like in their absence.

"I asked you a question, John David."