More Than Friends (33 page)

"Aldous Huxley."

He grunted and took a long drink of milk. When he set down the glass, he said, "Do you think I can teach?"

"You're my strongest TA."

His gaze grew more direct, his voice lower. "That's some consolation."

"Jason .. ." She sighed.

"Sorry. Couldn't resist. It really was a blow to my ego." Speaking lower now, too, she said, "It was a blow to mine, too, if the truth were told."

"Why you? I think you're hot."

Her cheeks turned pink. "Not hot. Forty years old, and married. I thought I was above doing something like that."

"You didn't do anything."

"No matter. It made me see that I was fallible."

"You were unhappy. Are things better at home now?" Since she had no intention of discussing her marital problems with Jason, she said gently, "They're better than they are at your house. I feel awful

about what's happened. No wonder you've been looking so pale." He cleared his throat. "That's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. You were right. I haven't been feeling super. I thought maybe you'd have the name of a good doctor in town."

"What's wrong?" she asked, feeling suddenly the mother, a role she much preferred to that of Jason's lover.

"I'm tired. Weak. That kind of thing."

"Maybe it's mono."

"I don't think so."

"Have you gone to the campus health service?"

"McDiagnosis? No thanks."

She would have chuckled at the characterization if the situation hadn't concerned her. Whether it was maternal instinct, guilt over past sins, or worry about a bright young man, she was willing to do what she could to help. "I have an internist in Boston. My husband and I both use him. I'm sure he'd see you." She took a pen and paper from her purse.

"Use my name. If they give you trouble, say you're a cousin. If they still give you trouble, call me and I'll call." She handed him the piece of paper on which she had jotted the doctor's name and number.

"About the other, the teaching position? See what you can do about registering to finish your course work this spring."

"Will you serve as my thesis adviser?"

"You know I will."

"I wasn't sure, what with our involvement."

She fought another blush. "Our involvement is strictly professional."

"Right."

More quietly she said, "That's all it can ever be, Jason."

"Gotcha," he said, and drained his milk on a single long glug. Be strictly professional, Sam told himself, but it was easier said than done. The weekly partners meetings at Maxwell, Roper and Dine had become tension-packed ordeals since Sam's falling-out with J.S. A hostility had entered the proceedings. At times it was more subtle, at times less so, but there was always an edginess in the air, a walking-on eggshells approach to whatever matter was at hand. The matter at hand this day, at Sam's request, was the assignment of support workers to partners. After waiting patiently through the usual analysis of new clients, new rulings, and billing procedures, he was anxious to speak. Sitting back in his chair, he looked from one to another of the four men spaced around the oblong conference table.

"I've been running into a problem of late," he began. "Associates have been diverted to other partners while they've been in the middle of doing v ork for me. Books I've needed in the library have mysteriously disappeared. Messengers have been ate delivering papers to my clients. My own secretary has been 'borrowed' and therefore busy at times when I need her. I think we have to address the issue of the management of the firm."

"J.S. is the managing partner," Martin Cox said unnecessarily. "He's been the managing partner for twenty years. I've never had any problem."

"You wouldn't," Sam remarked. Martin and J.S. were pals. "But just because something's been done one way for twenty years doesn't mean it's the only way. The present management isn't working for me. Maybe we ought to rotate as managing partner, or hire a business manager, or more secretaries, or a librarian."

Martin frowned. "Additional staff costs money. We don't need the expense."

"We need something," Sam insisted. "I'm not getting the backup I need, and it's having an adverse effect on my clients. If I were the paranoid type"--he looked straight at J.S.--"I'd say someone was trying to undermine my practice."

"Is that an accusation?" J.S. asked with some humor. Strictly professional, Sam urged himself, though he was seething inside. "It's an accusation only because the threat was made." He hadn't planned to spill it all, but the smirk on John Stewart's face egged him on. Turning to the other partners, he said, "J.S. made it clear to me that this kind of thing might happen if I didn't resign my partnership."

J.D. looked sharply at his father, but it was Sam's fellow litigation partner, Will Henry, who asked, "Is that true, J.S.?" J.S. shrugged with his mouth. "In light of recent events, I don't believe Sam has the moral fiber to continue on as a member of this firm."

"Moral fiber?" Sam echoed in a tone that said he knew about Mary McGonigle.

"Moral fiber," J.S. repeated, but his smirk had given way to something meaner.

"That's one opinion," J.D. ventured mildly.

"It's more than one opinion. It's the opinion of half the legal community in Boston. Word spreads."

Sam sat forward. "Bullshit. I'm golden in the legal community right now. If word has spread about my private doings, it's gone from your mouth to the ears of a few of the ass-kissing cronies who buy your self-righteous crap."

"Ahhh," J.S. said, "so the gloves come off. I was wondering when that would happen. Scum always does revert."

"Damn right the gloves are off," Sam said, rising. He'd had it with J.S."s games. "You want a vote? Let's take a vote! Let's see if you can get the majority you need to boot me outta here." Before J.S. could respond, J.D was on his feet. "Sorry," he said with an eye on his watch, "no vote today. I'm late for a meeting already."

"Sit down, John David," his father said, but J.D. was out the door without a backward glance.

"There's your answer," Sam told J.S. "He won't vote against you, and he won't vote against me."

"Oh, he'll vote," J.S. said. "I promise you, he'll vote."

"Fine," Sam said. He went to the door and turned. "But in the meanwhile, back off my case, J.S. If I keep running into brick walls, I'll sue. What'll that do to the image of your firm?" He stalked out and down the hall to his office, where he sank onto his chair and brooded. There was some solace in knowing that J.D. hadn't wanted to vote against him, but the solace was shallow. He had half wanted the vote to be taken. He was feeling in limbo, wanting to know where he stood. It seemed he was wanting to know where he stood on many scores lately.

His eye fell on the newspaper that lay folded on the corner of his desk. He picked it up, reread the obituary he had seen earlier that day. It was a glowing piece about a man, well-known and respected, who had been a judge on the Superior Court. His death would leave an opening on the bench that would be as hard to fill as it would have candidates scrambling to fill it. Even now Sam guessed there were men and women making phone calls, assessing their chances, putting in their bids.

Had Sam been ten years older, he might have gone for it. He and Annie had often talked of how

ideal a judgeship would be when he was in his fifties and looking to escape the hustle of private practice. Not that the governor would mind his youth. Governors loved putting their stamp on the courts, and the longer their appointees lasted there, the better. But Sam was only forty-one. His career was flourishing. He wasn't of a mind-set, yet, to be a judge.

Too bad. It might have been perfect. Another time.

Had he been ten years older, he would have gone for it. And gotten it. And told John Stewart Maxwell, in no uncertain words, to go fuck himself.

Grady swore at the slick layer of packed snow on the pavement. A four-inch snowfall had startled Constance the night before. The plows had been by, but barely. Driving was iffy.

The last time he had been down Teke's street, his truck had collided with Michael. This time he practically crept. Snow crunched under his tires when he pulled into the driveway. He climbed out and stood for a minute, admiring the pristine beauty of the scene.

Gullen had been beautiful on the rare days when there had been snow, but it was a different beauty, a more raw one. This one was as cultured, as rich and privileged, as the citizens of Constance. The snow draped the arms of the firs like white mink. Or so it seemed to Grady, who was feeling outclassed. This was Teke's home. This was the place where she hung her clothes, raised her children, and slept with her husband. Okay, so the husband was gone, but this was still hers. Even from the outside Grady could see that it was head and shoulders above anything he would have been able to buy her.

Everything here pointed to the vast differences between them. But he wanted to see Michael. And, differences and all, he wanted to see Teke.

The sound of shoveling drew him to the back of the house. He trudged through the snow around the garage in pursuit of that rhythmic scrape.

Teke was by the back door in the first stages of clearing the steps. The air was invigorating. The exertion felt good. Lately too much of her time had been spent indoors. She was grateful to Mother Nature for getting her out.

Grady's appearance didn't surprise her. It had been five days since she had seen him last, and that, at the rehabilitation center with no promise of the next, but she had known he would come. He seemed intent on sticking around, and for the life of her, she couldn't tell him to get lost.

Looking--gorgeously rugged, to her chagrin and delight--like a dyed-in-the-wool woodsman with his plaid flannel jacket and galoshes, he took the shovel from her hands. "This snow is heavy as hell."

"I don't mind." She flexed her back, looking anywhere but at him.

"It's a gorgeous day--blue sky, white snow, warm sun." Her breath came out in a wisp of white. "I need the fresh air."

"You look good, Teke."

Her parka was hot pink, thigh length, and foreign made. She wore a matching wool hat and mittens and lime leggings tucked into knee high fur boots.

"How's your boy doing?" he asked.

She hitched her chin toward the sunroom, where Michael and his therapist were at work. Grady waved. He made a gesture suggesting that Michael come out to help shovel, to which Michael responded with a vigorous nod. His therapist said something. Michael pulled a comical face.

Grady chuckled. "Cute kid." He started shoveling.

"Being home is still a novelty," Teke said. "His friends stop by every afternoon. He likes that until the talk turns to basketball."

"How's the therapy going?"

"So-so. He improves in spurts, takes two steps forward and one back." She batted snow off a bench with her mitten, then sat and raised her face to the sun. Its rays were pure. Far more than she. She drank them up.

The sound of Grady's shoveling stopped. In its place, his voice was wistful. "You look so pretty. Could be eighteen years old, sitting there with rose on your cheeks and on the tip of your nose. I swear, Teke, just as pretty as I remembered you all those years." She kept her face to the sun. "Don't say things like that."

"It's the truth."

But it makes me ache for what we lost, she thought. After a pause, and in an off-handed way, she said, "Did you think of me often?"

"All the time."

"Did you ever think of writing to me?"

"I did write, but I couldn't send the letters. It wouldn't have been fair."

She righted her face and leveled him a stare. "It's not fair now." When he stared back uneasily, she said, "Your coming around here, being nice to Michael and me. It's not fair. You had your chance with me, but you gave it up. It can't go anywhere now."

"No one says it should."

"It always did, with us. Right from the start. It was strong."

"Isn't that good?"

"Not now. Now it makes me dream about what might have been, but what might have been can't be. I have three kids and a marriage that's on the rocks. It's all I can do to hold myself together, and I have a feeling this is just the start. I have to get Michael back on his feet. I have to win back the girls' trust. I have to deal with J.D. somehow. I have to deal with Sam and Annie and whatever we're going to do about our families. So much has changed in such a short time. So much is uncertain. I just can't deal with something as intense as what you and I had once."

He stared at her a minute longer, then resumed shoveling. But she had to make him understand. "I kept going back to what Sam and I did, and asking how it could have happened, how I could have been so frightened by that letter you sent. We hadn't seen each other or spoken in twenty-two years, and during that time I had a very good life. So why was I suddenly so threatened?"

Grady thrust the blade into the snow, lifted the load, tossed it aside, thrust, lifted, tossed.

"I was threatened," Teke went on, "because deep down inside I knew that my marriage wasn't great. I hadn't ever admitted that to myself. I hadn't been able to. But it wasn't great, Grady. J.D. is nice, and handsome, and successful, and he's given me three of the most wonderful children a woman could want, but I was more of a mother than a lover to him. I fill his needs like I do for the kids--I see that he has clean clothes and hot food, I make his bed in the morning and pull back the spread at night, I put his socks away with the colors separated just so, the way he likes it." All of which was lovely. Then there was the humiliating truth. She forced it out.

"Am I his outlet for passion? No. I never was." Grady thrust, lifted, tossed, thrust, lifted, tossed. The rhythm soothed Teke, allowing her to go on. "I knew it from the start. Maybe he did, too. Maybe, like me, he had a list of priorities. He liked enough of what I had to offer, so he could live without the heat. Same with me. Only in the end I missed it. I missed you. I was threatened by the letter you sent because my marriage was missing exactly what you had to offer." She was silent, but only for a minute. "Are you listening to me, Grady? Have you heard what I've been saying?" He gave a final thrust, lift, and toss, then straightened. He dropped his head back. He filled his lungs with air. Then he met her gaze.