Once Upon a Project (15 page)

Hearing Elyse identify herself brought a smile to her lips—maybe her friend really meant it when she said she would keep in better touch—but her expression changed to one of concern, then of distress, as she heard the halting uncertainty in her friend's tone and then the full message. Her mouth dropped open in shock and dismay. Franklin Reavis had
cancer?
How awful!

She listened to the message again, this time paying attention to the time stamp announcement at the beginning. My God. Elyse had called Thursday? Yes, now she remembered. After dinner she'd gone shopping at Carson's for new lingerie. When she got home she started packing for the weekend. She never did check her messages. What must Elyse think, leaving such a serious message and not getting a response? Her voice sounded so small on the message, like that of a little girl:

Pat flipped the receiver and checked the caller ID. When she saw the name “Franklin Reavis” and a Lake County telephone number she hit the REDIAL button.

 

 

Andy called at 8:00. “I just wanted to see what you were doing. Thinking of me, I hope.”

She managed a wan smile. “This weekend was just wonderful, Andy, but actually, my thoughts are with some friends of mine.” She told him about her conversation with Elyse.

“That's a tough break,” he said. “But they can do a lot with cancer treatments these days. It doesn't have to be a death sentence.”

“I don't know. Elyse said it's in his pancreas, and that there's a possibility that it might have spread already.”

“Oh. Yeah, I've heard that particular origin is difficult to diagnose.” He paused. “Is there anything I can do, Pat?”

“No, but I appreciate your asking. I was about to call a mutual friend of ours and tell her. Our friend's husband is scheduled for surgery on Thursday. He'll be in the hospital for about a week. Maybe we can get together with her sometime next weekend, even if it's just for a little while, like between visits to his bedside.”

“I'll let you go so you can make your call. Call me if I can help with anything.”

“I will.”

Pat held down the receiver for a few seconds, then released it and dialed Grace's home number.

Chapter 24

G
race hung up the phone, stunned. Elyse's husband was scheduled to have a cancerous tumor removed from his pancreas on Thursday? What a shock. Elyse must really be a wreck, not just because of the news itself but possibly not knowing how to handle it. The girl had practically led a charmed life, at least up till now. Grace knew such things were rare, if they existed at all, but she couldn't recall a single bad thing ever happening to Elyse. Her family had been the first one to move out of Dreiser, even if it was just to a duplex around the corner. She'd managed to get in to study physical therapy at a time when it was already difficult to get accepted. She'd had a beautiful wedding, and she'd married a successful man who loved her and who gave her a nice life.

No, that wasn't right. Elyse wasn't a housewife, totally dependent on her husband for life's comforts. That description was more fitting of Susan. No doubt Elyse's physical therapist earnings contributed significantly to that comfy suburban existence the Reavises enjoyed. Grace had been to their house once, when she and Pat drove up to see Susan's new baby girl and stopped to pick up Elyse on the way. The two-story Colonial house was rather ordinary-looking by Lake Forest standards—there were homes up there the size of small hospitals, like the one the president of Grace's company lived in—but it nonetheless had plenty of room, four large bedrooms plus a full finished basement, and it was comfortably and tastefully furnished. She couldn't believe it when Elyse said it was thirty-five years old. It looked brand new. Elyse explained that she and Franklin had just put new siding on it and had updated the kitchen.

Over the course of their marriage—hard to believe, but Pat said it was going on twenty-six years—they'd raised two children, a boy and a girl—in that order, naturally—participated actively in the lives of Franklin's children from his first marriage, and still appeared happy. Pat said that Elyse had told her how guilty she felt for not believing there was anything wrong with Franklin. Instead, she believed he was feigning illness to keep from going anywhere with her.

So what if Franklin had slowed down a little? Hell, the man was past sixty, even before his diagnosis. Naturally, he wouldn't feel like going out all the time. Elyse should have considered that he'd be ready to slow down before she would because he was so much older. Maybe instead of sulking and hanging out at Junior's Bar the night of the reunion, she should have brought her husband to the doctor. Everybody knew that the earlier the diagnosis, the longer one's chances of long-term survival.

Grace thought it odd that both Elyse and Susan had been so anxious to go to the party at Junior's the night of the Dreiser reunion. Now she knew Elyse came out of frustration with Franklin's lethargy. Susan's motives had become clearer when Grace saw her talking and dancing with Charles Valentine. Was it just curiosity to see him again after all those years, or something more?

If Grace had been impressed by Elyse's home that day seven years ago, she'd been blown away by Susan's. A gorgeous minimansion of tan stucco and stone, with windows and skylights everywhere, it had floor-to-ceiling fireplaces, a wraparound deck, and even its own private beach. Lake Michigan never looked so pretty, even if the water was choppy as hell and never really heated up, even in July. Of course, Susan's husband was a millionaire. Elyse and Franklin were just upper-middle class.

Grace felt a little cheated. She probably wouldn't have been interested in someone as old as Franklin, but Susan's husband had been a real catch. Sexy, good-looking, and young, and right there in Kenosha, Wisconsin, of all places; or, as it was jokingly referred to, “Ke-Nowhere.” Why did Susan have all the luck? Why couldn't
she
have met him first, damn it?

Bemoaning Susan's good fortune was a moot point, and Grace knew it. When Susan announced her engagement to Bruce Dillahunt—yes, that was his name, Bruce—Grace was still married to her second husband, Danny Knight; and at the time she'd felt pretty damn lucky herself. An executive at a leading accounting firm, he'd been the man she'd always dreamed of. Together they lived a glamorous lifestyle, with a high-rise condo on Lake Shore Drive, maid service twice a week, and a boat. It started to fall apart when Danny was approached about heading up the company's office in San Juan. He expected her to give up her job, just like that. It wasn't fair. He
knew
she'd been trying to get the director position in public relations. It still angered her that he thought so little of her career aspirations. She wasn't some lowly department store clerk selling girdles, always ready to pack up on a week's notice to follow her husband all around the world.

Her mother, still alive at the time, urged her to go for the sake of her marriage. Helen Corrigan reminded her daughter that she and Grace's father had chosen Puerto Rico for their only vacation, and that he had remarked that those Puerto Ricans had to be crazy to leave that island and its beautiful climate to go settle in the northern U.S. states. Grace reminded her mother that the island might technically be part of the United States, but that most of the people there spoke Spanish, a language that she, unlike Danny, who was fluent, barely remembered from her classes back in high school.

In the end he accepted the job, and they tried a commuter marriage. It didn't work.

She shrugged. Their marriage wasn't the first to collapse under the weight of the two parties' ambitions, and she doubted it would be the last. He still kept in touch with Shavonne, the stepdaughter he'd always adored, and the last Grace heard he was still down there with his second wife, her children from her first marriage, and the one they had had together.

Yeah, Susan and Elyse didn't know how good they had it, or, in Elyse's case, how good she
used
to have it, for life as she knew it was about to change drastically with Franklin's illness. Grace's father had died of prostate cancer around the time she and Jimmy were divorcing, and she still remembered pitching in with her siblings to help out and give her mother a break while she cared for him, which had been exhausting for her.

But neither Susan nor Elyse had to spend a Saturday night at the movies with a man who hadn't even offered her so much as a bowl of chili afterward. On the night of Grace's first date with Eric, she'd had to come right out and say she was hungry before he suggested they go to Panera Bread. Did he really think that she would fill up on that popcorn they'd shared at the movie? She'd already made up her mind to give him some—she was too horny and he looked too good—and she could tell he fully expected to get it, but that didn't mean she would be a dirt-cheap date.

Nor did Elyse have to spend the special occasion of her fiftieth birthday like she had last night. Nearly an hour waiting for a table, and then everything at accelerated speed. Everything—from the waiter's continually stopping by to see if they were ready to order, to the rather rushed singing of her birthday greeting—gave her the prickly feeling that they were supposed to hurry through their meal so they could vacate and the waiter could seat new customers at the table. It was all about the profits. Feed 'em, get their money, clean off the table the moment they leave, and bring in the next party before the seats cool off.

The evening was capped with a wild session in bed—she definitely proved to him that her being fifty hardly meant she was washed-up—and her waking up to the sound of his snoring. He did surprise her by taking her to breakfast as a continued birthday celebration. She liked spontaneous actions in her men. It gave her hope that Eric had potential. Of course, her flat refusal to make him breakfast the morning after their first date might have had something to do with his decision.

Grace would trade her life for Susan's in a hot minute provided she could still get to have a daughter like Shavonne, and provided she could keep her own looks, figure, and size. Not that Susan was bad looking, if you went for the light-skinned / good-hair type. Personally, Grace felt that if Susan was about ten shades darker and had nappy hair, no one would rave about how pretty she was. And while she had a reasonably good figure, she was so damn tall. Now that she'd put on some weight she looked positively Amazonian.

Grace had never had a weight problem in her life. She bounced right back into shape after having Shavonne, and she started paying attention to what she ate and exercising regularly while still in her twenties, during the seventies' fitness craze, when everybody from Jane Fonda to Richard Simmons had workout routines on tape. It had become a habit, one that served her well in the years to come. Every part of her body was firm, and nothing sagged. She might be fifty, but her body looked years younger.

Her eyes closed. No point in wanting to change places with Susan or anyone else. Her life was her life. Its path had probably been predetermined the moment she'd been born.

She'd go on doing what she'd been doing, looking for another husband. And in the meantime, she'd do the best she could with what she had . . . namely, Eric Wade.

Chapter 25

 

E
lyse looked at her watch, disappointed to see that only four minutes had passed since her last time check. This surgery was taking forever. She knew from the doctor's explanation that a Whipple procedure was considered major surgery, involving removal of multiple organs and reconstruction of the GI tract. It would take some time to complete, six or seven hours, maybe more. How would she manage to get through the wait?

Brontë squeezed her hand. “Don't worry, Mom. Daddy will be fine.”

“I wish I felt as confident as you do.”

The kids had been wonderful. She'd called both of them and asked them to come home that weekend because their father would be undergoing surgery on Thursday morning. She refused to tell them any more until they were home.

Together, she and Franklin explained to them about his workup and diagnosis, plus his need for immediate surgery to have the tumor removed.

As Elyse expected, the news stunned them. Todd recovered first, stating that Franklin would beat this. Elyse looked on, praying that Franklin wouldn't be quite so blunt with their son about his chances for long-term survival as he'd been with her. Todd was just twenty years old and was in that invincible stage, where he felt his parents would live forever.

Franklin didn't disappoint her. He'd told the children as gently as he could that if it was meant for him to conquer this hurdle, he would, but that they had to consider the possibility that he might not.

Brontë, always a daddy's girl, had sobbed and held on to her father. Todd hadn't cried, but he looked terrified at the thought of losing Franklin.

In the end they joined hands, and Franklin led them in prayer.

Elyse was grateful for the support from her children, as well as from her friends. In addition to Kevin's e-mail, Pat had called Sunday evening, explaining she'd gone out of town over the weekend as a last-minute thing. And Grace had called last night, offering assistance and encouraging words after Pat informed her about Franklin's diagnosis.

Elyse hadn't gotten around to calling Susan yet. Maybe tomorrow. How nice it would be to be able to report that everything had gone well and that Franklin was recovering nicely.

She looked at her watch again. Exactly three minutes had passed.

This was torture.