The Time of Her Life (23 page)

Susanna didn’t know what had driven her
from sleep. One moment she’d been curled up around Skip in bed. The next
moment she was on her knees, heaving up her guts in the commode.

When she finally sank down onto the
bathroom rug, a puddle of weakness, grateful she’d thrown in that last load
of laundry the other night because the rug still smelled fresh.

She must have dozed, because she startled
awake, every inch of her aching, her stomach rebelling again... Just when
she thought there couldn’t possibly be anything left, she was forced to drag
herself up again.

She was burning up, pressing her cheek to
the cold tile.

She was shivering so hard her rattling
teeth echoed in the quiet. And it was so quiet.
Not a creature was stirring....

Funny how every minute of her every day
was filled with family life. Meeting everyone’s needs. Organizing play
groups and cooking and reading stories and laundry and Christmas shopping
and cleaning and listening to Skip deliver a blow-by-blow about contracting
a huge firm and Karan’s meltdown about her unraveling marriage, all while
squeezing in a full-time career around what was really important—her loved
ones.

She’d spent thirty minutes tracking down
Lambie tonight after dinner because Brooke couldn’t possibly sleep without
him. While Skip regaled them with his success story and they both took turns
helping Brandon with his vocabulary sheet....

Yet here she was, alone, while her family
slept peacefully. Not even Skip to care for her in this hour of
need.

He’d be here if she woke him. But she
didn’t have the strength to call out or the heart to interrupt his sleep
when he had an important meeting with the vice president of sales and their
newest, and now biggest, client tomorrow.

So she just lay there trying to draw
warmth from the woolly bath rug, teeth chattering, until forced to reach for
the toilet seat and drag herself up yet again.

Only this time when she sank back to the
bathroom rug, she sensed a presence in the doorway. Even turning her head
took a monumental effort. Two glinting eyes surveyed her from a furry golden
face.

Hershel.

He didn’t take long to assess the
situation before maneuvering the tight passage into the bathroom, tail
thumping the wooden hamper as he did. He flopped down beside her with his
big warm body, solid and safe, a gesture that said louder than any words
that she wasn’t alone anymore.

Warmth finally chased away the cold. Not the feverish sort of
burning up, but a gentle warmth that finally lulled her from sleep. A
blanket.

Jay, not Hershel.

It took a moment to make sense of him, sitting with his back
against the bathroom wall, his arm hooked over his knee.

“I’m dying.” That hoarse voice wasn’t hers, was it?

“You’re not dying.” Jay’s chuckle was an assault on her
weakened senses, an offense to her misery. “You probably just picked up the
virus everyone else had. Remember?”

No, she didn’t. She was dying.

“I won’t let you die,” he said softly. “I promise.”

And he seemed determined to make good. When she was forced to
drag herself up, he was there to support her, pull her hair back with gentle
fingers. He pressed a cool washcloth to her face and neck.

He didn’t rebel at the sheer grossness of the situation—not
that she cared, she was
that
sick. But she would
care. If she ever felt better, she’d die of embarrassment. But right now he took
the situation in stride and cared for her.

And she wasn’t alone.

Not yet, anyway.

* * *

L
IKE
EVERY
RESIDENT
WHO
’
D
been felled by the
horrible virus, Susanna took days to shake off the effects. In the meantime she
lay curled up in a pathetic ball under a mountain of blankets—on the couch
during the day and in bed at night. She sipped warm broth and nibbled saltines
and slept.

Jay ran the facility, returning to the cottage to check on her
every few hours. Liz sent soup. Jay updated Brooke and Brandon on Susanna’s
condition via text messages, took her mom’s and Karan’s calls every night.

The only time he left for any stretch was when Mrs. Harper
passed away as the sun rose one morning.

“To start her first day in heaven,” Mrs. Harper’s son had said
while he held her hand.

Jay relayed the peace of the passing, reassured Susanna she
wouldn’t have been able to do anything more to help had she not been sick. But
Mrs. Harper’s death inspired Susanna to drag her sorry self into the shower for
the first time in days. She fully intended to attend the memorial service at the
end of the week without worries of infecting the guests.

The best part of her illness was that she was so entrenched in
her misery that she didn’t have any time to angst about Jay because if she’d
been well, his thoughtful care of her during this illness from hell would have
pitched her over the edge.

As it was, it took a call from Gerald to do that. He caught her
one afternoon as she slept.

“Hello, Susanna.” His sober tone helped her shake off sleep.
“Glad I caught you. Got a minute to talk?”

“Of course.” She didn’t confess to lying around her living room
and hoped she didn’t sound half-dead. “What’s up?”

“We got some news this week I need to share with you. I haven’t
called until now because we wanted to come up with an action plan before the
news broke. But the news is getting ready to go public, and I wanted you to hear
it from me.”

Adrenaline surged. Closing her eyes, she fought a wave of
nausea and ground out, “Doesn’t sound good.”

“Not a crisis. Just a bit of a setback.” He went on to explain
that one of the partners in the senior living venture, University, was going
into Chapter Eleven reorganization and the news was about to break publicly with
considerable fallout.

“Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Wish I was, trust me. We’ve been in meetings all week,
reviewing the details. We’ve decided to ride out their window until they have to
file the reorganization plan. Unfortunately, your transition period will be up
before University files that plan with the court.”

“So what are you saying, Gerald? We’re pulling the plug on the
acquisition?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. The rest of the partners want to
hang in, but you know as well, if not better, than I do the situation down
there. We’re talking tightening our belts to ride out this setback, and Jay
hasn’t been all that open to tightening anything.”

Gerald didn’t know the half of it. “Have you considered
bringing in a new partner?”

“Of course. We want to see how much we can recover because
we’re taking a hit. But if the creditors’ committee can come up with a viable
plan of reorganization, something the court and creditors can live with, we’ll
minimize damage considerably.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, Gerald giving
Susanna a chance to think of the questions that needed asking, to figure out
where she fit into the picture.

The bottom line was always about the money.

Money, money, money. Making her life miserable again.

When the silence stretched for too long, Gerald said, “You know
that even if the deal falls through, you’ll still have a job. Don’t stress about
that. We’ll come up with another situation that will work for you. Maybe not
quite as optimum as The Arbors, but something you can live with.”

“I appreciate knowing that,” she ground out between clenched
teeth.

“I wanted to get to you before you pulled up the internet or
heard about this on the six-o’clock news.”

Not that Susanna would have seen the news on the computer or
the television. Her head pounded so hard that even the thought of listening to
the drone of the TV made her head ache.

“You want to break the news to Jay or shall I?” Gerald asked.
“Your call. Either way, I’m going to send you the draft of our report. You and
Jay will be able to see how the numbers play out. We still have time before the
end of the transition period forces a decision. Maybe you can smooth things over
with him. We’re not going to let the standard of service suffer at any of our
properties. We just need to ride things out until University gets on their feet
or we get someone else on board.”

Jay wouldn’t care. He took every single decision personally. He
wanted to argue about every change she made from the software they used to the
coffee. From Jay’s perspective this news would constitute a crisis.

And that’s exactly how the news felt to her.

She didn’t like cutting corners on things that impacted quality
of life for people. Sometimes they were little things that made all the
difference between a frown and a smile.

Susanna hadn’t genuinely understood the difference until The
Arbors, until watching Jay make a leap of faith that the profit-and-loss report
would balance next month so Mrs. Harper could have a specialized wheelchair to
keep her mobile.

Northstar’s margins didn’t really have room for leaps of faith.
Sure, she could find places to shave down numbers, but at what cost?

“I’ll tell Jay what’s going on.” That’s all she could
promise.

“Good girl. Tell him to call me with his questions.”

She dropped the phone and stumbled to the bathroom. But the
nausea appeared to be a false alarm this time, which must mean she was on the
mend. She didn’t trust it, so she curled up on the rug with a towel beneath her
head and tried to think.

She couldn’t. Adrenaline made her thoughts race, her head pound
and her stomach ache.

God, what was wrong with her? Was she cracking under the
pressure, coming completely unglued? She hadn’t eaten solid food in days, hadn’t
slept well in months. Unless Jay was with her. Then she’d slept the exhausted
sleep of a woman with her lover. A woman in love.

Her head ached. She felt conflicted, out of sorts about
everything The Arbors was and Northstar wasn’t. A dangerous conflict that would
lead to nowhere but her own discontent since she owed her allegiance to the
company that signed her paycheck.

Why didn’t anything feel normal anymore? Not her life. Not her
mood. Not her schedule. Not her periods. She couldn’t even remember the last
time she’d had one.

That
stopped her.

Eyes opening, Susanna lay there staring at the bathroom wall,
where the mitered corners of the baseboards met in precision angles, so still,
she didn’t think her heart beat.

Her periods?

Her mind went blank. Why couldn’t she remember having a period?
She’d been intimate with Jay for the better part of two months and hadn’t once
had to face the awkwardness of addressing why they couldn’t be intimate.

When was the last time she’d had a period?

Suddenly the most important thing in Susanna’s world was
getting to her calendar.

She was meticulous about noting her cycles, always had been out
of habit because she hated wasting even one brain cell on such a mundane detail
but equally hated getting to her ob/gyn and not having a clue when they asked.
They always asked.

Maneuvering through the display on her phone, she pulled up her
calendar, scrolled through the previous weeks...the previous
month...two
months.

Impossible.

She and Jay were meticulous about birth control. Except for
that first night when passion had caught them off guard.

“Oh, God.” The words were out of her mouth on a hard breath.
“No, that’s not possible.”

Reason rebelled. Her brain simply couldn’t wrap around the
impossible thought.

Not
so impossible really.

Then in the recesses of her stunned brain, she could hear a
voice saying,
Mother, you should practice what you
preach.

And she laid her head on the sofa cushion, and shut her eyes,
trying to breathe through the panic.

* * *

J
AY
ARRIVED
AT
THE
COTTAGE
to find Susanna on the couch hunched over a laptop.
Butters and Gatsby raced toward her. With a sharp command, Jay stopped them
before they jumped up.

“Hey, babies,” she said, her voice rough, as if she’d been
crying. Cradling the laptop close, she petted the dogs, cooing to keep them
satisfied, while Jay took in her pallor and the dark circles beneath her
eyes.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” But she didn’t meet his gaze. She just sat there,
holding tight to the laptop with one hand, petting the dogs in turns with the
other.

Taking the bottle of sports water, he headed into the kitchen
to grab a fresh one from the fridge. He cracked the lid, set it on the table
beside her. “You’re overdoing it.”

That’s when she finally looked his way, and the distance he saw
in the deep blue depths of her eyes surprised him.

“We need to talk.” Her tone warned he wasn’t going to like what
he heard.

He didn’t really want to hear about the problems they faced
because he didn’t have any answers. Not an answer for how he was supposed to
leave her now that he’d found her. Or how he could ask her to quit her job and
stay with him if he couldn’t leave.

The fact that she already had a family and he’d wanted
one...well, turned out that part was negotiable. He wanted to be with Susanna.
She had a great family already, and when he really got down to it, did he want
to pass along the death sentence of Alzheimer’s to his kids?

He shooed the dogs away and sat down on the couch by her feet,
Butters at his feet. Gatsby opting for his own space on the ottoman. “Okay.
Let’s talk.”