He shook his head. “I don't think I'll ever be that grown up.” At forty-four, he still expected Sarah to take care of him if he had a headache.

“Don't worry about it. I'm probably just crazy. My parents think I am anyway.”

“Do they know?” He was amazed. They were obviously very liberal.

“I told them years ago. My mother cried for months, but now they're used to it. Thank God my brother has six children. That took the heat off me.” They both laughed then and got out of the car, and Andy instantly leapt all over the leather pants, but she didn't seem to mind it.

When they walked into the house, Sam was watching TV, and Mel was doing something in the kitchen with Agnes, and Oliver ushered Daphne in, and introduced her to Sam. She looked casual and at ease, and Sam looked her over with interest.

“You work with my dad?”

“I sure do. And I've got a nephew your age. He watches wrestling too.” She seemed to be up-to-date on the rages popular with nine-year-olds, and Sam nodded his approval. She was okay.

“My dad took me to a match last year. It was great.”

“I took Sean once too. He loved it. I thought it was pretty awful.” Sam laughed at her, and Melissa emerged slowly from the kitchen, and Oliver introduced her.

“Daphne Hutchinson, my daughter, Melissa.” They shook hands properly, and Agnes quietly disappeared, wondering if he was already going out with other women. Things had certainly changed around here, but after what Mrs. Watson had done, she could hardly blame him. He needed a wife, and if she was too foolish to hang on to a good thing, then someone else deserved her good fortune.

The two ladies chatted easily, and Ollie could see that Melissa was carefully looking her over. She approved of the leather pants, the shining hair, the fur jacket, and the black Hermes bag, hanging casually from her shoulder. Daphne was very chic on her own time, too, and now Oliver understood why. There was a certain aura that came from an older man buying gifts for her, and introducing her to the finer things. Even her jewelry was too expensive for most single women. The story Daphne had told him still amazed him. But it was interesting too. But it was as though Melissa sensed that this woman was no threat, that there was nothing except friendship between her and her father. She had eyed her carefully at first, and the messages Daphne had sent out were only of friendship and nonsexual interest.

“Where's Benjamin?” Ollie asked finally.

“Out, I guess.” Mel answered. “What do you expect?” She shrugged and grinned at Daphne.

“I have an older brother too. I hated him for about eighteen years. He's improved a lot, though, with old age.” He was exactly the same age as Oliver now, which may have been part of why she liked him.

The four of them sat and talked for hours in the cozy living room, and eventually went for a walk with Andy, and just before dinnertime, Benjamin came home, looking rumpled and distracted. He had gone to play touch football with friends allegedly, but as always, he had wound up at Sandra's. Her parents were separated now too and it made things, easier for them. Her mother was never home, and her father had moved to Philadelphia.

Benjamin was cool with Daphne when they met, and barely spoke to any of them on the way to dinner. They went to the Italian restaurant Oliver had told her about, and they had a good time, laughing and talking and telling jokes, and finally even Benjamin warmed up, although he cast frequent inquiring looks at his father and Daphne.

They went back to the house for the dessert Agnes had promised to prepare for them, and Andy was lying in front of the fireplace as they ate apple pie k la mode and homemade cookies. It had been a perfect day, the first they'd had in a long time, and they all looked happy.

The phone rang as they were listening to Sam tell ghost stories, and Oliver went to answer. It was his father, and the others could only hear Ollie's half of the conversation.

“Yes … all right, Dad … slow down … where is she? Are you all right? … I'll be right over…. Stay there. I'll pick you up. I don't want you driving home alone. You can leave the car there and pick it up tomorrow.” He hung up, with a frantic air, and the children looked frightened, and he was quick to reassure them, although as he set down the phone, his own hands were shaking. “It's all right. It's Grandma. She had a little accident. She took the car out alone, and hit a neighbor. No one's badly hurt. She's just shaken up, and they're going to keep her in the hospital tonight, just to watch her. Grandpa's just upset. Fortunately the guy she hit was quick, and jumped onto the hood of the car, all he got was a broken ankle. It could have been a lot worse for both of them.”

“I thought she wasn't supposed to drive anymore,” Melissa said, still looking worried.

“She isn't. Grandpa was in the garage, putting away some tools, and she decided to do an errand.” He didn't tell them that she had told the doctor she'd been going to pick her son up at school, and his father had been crying when he called him. The doctors had just told him that they felt it was time to put her in a home where she could have constant supervision. “I hate to do this,” he said, looking at Daphne, “but I've got to go over there to see him. I think he's probably more shaken up than she is. Do you want me to drop you off at the station on the way?” The train wasn't due for another hour, but he didn't want to leave her stranded.

“I can take a cab. You just go.” She looked at the three young faces around her. “I can stay here with the children, if they'll have me.” Mel and Sam looked thrilled, and Benjamin said nothing.

“That would be great.” He smiled at her, and instructed Mel to call a cab at nine-fifteen. It would get her to the station in plenty of time to catch the nine-thirty. “Benjamin can even drive you.”

“A cab will be fine. I'm sure Benjamin has better things to do with his time than drive old ladies to the station.” She had sensed his reticence and didn't want to impose on him. And a moment later, Oliver left, and Benjamin disappeared to his own quarters, leaving her and the two younger children alone.

Sam went to get more pie, and Mel ran upstairs to get the script for the play to show her. Agnes had gone to bed, as she was wont to do, right after cleaning up the kitchen, and Daphne was alone in the living room when the phone rang, and rang and rang, and nervously she looked around, and finally decided to answer, fearing that it might be Ollie, and he would worry if he got no answer. Maybe he had forgotten something. In any case, she picked it up, and there was a sudden silence on the other end, and then a female voice that asked for Ollie.

“I'm sorry, he's out. May I take a message?” She sounded businesslike, and all her instincts told her it was Sarah. And she was right.

“Are the children there?” She sounded annoyed.

“Certainly. Would you like me to get them?”

“I … yes …” And then, “Excuse me, but who are you?”

Daphne didn't miss a beat as Mel walked into the room and Daphne spoke into the phone. “The babysitter. I'll let you speak to Melissa now' She handed the phone to Mel with a gentle smile, and then walked into the kitchen to see how Sam was doing. He was butchering the pie and dropping big gobs of apple into his mouth, while attempting to cut another piece for Daphne. “Your mom's on the phone, I think. She's talking to Mel.”

“She is?” He looked startled and dropped what he was doing to run into the other room as Daphne watched him. And it was a full ten minutes before they returned, looking subdued, and Daphne ached for them. She could see in their eyes how desperately they missed her and Sam was wiping his eyes on his sleeve. He had obviously been crying. And Melissa looked sobered by the conversation too.

“More pie for anyone?” Daphne wanted to distract them, but wasn't sure how, as Mel looked at her with questioning eyes.

“Why did you tell her you were the sitter?”

Daphne looked her square in the eye, honest with her, as she had been with Ollie. “Because I didn't want to upset her. Your dad and I are just friends, Mel. There's someone in my life I love very much, and your dad and I will never be more than friends. There was no point upsetting your mother, or causing a misunderstanding between them. Things are hard enough for all of you right now as they are, without my adding to the trouble.”

Mel nodded at her, silently grateful. “She said she's not coming home next weekend 'cause she has a paper to write.” And as she said the words, Sam started to cry softly. And without thinking, Daphne pulled him close to her and held him. She had defused any fears they might have had by telling them about the man she loved, and she was glad she had, and gladder still she had told Ollie before. These were not people to hurt, but to love and nurture. And it made her angry knowing that their own mother had left them.

“Maybe it's too painful for her to come back just yet' She was trying to be fair, but Mel looked angry.

“Then why can't we go and see her?” Sam asked reasonably.

“I don't know, Sam.” Daphne wiped his tears, and the three of them sat down at the kitchen table, their appetite gone, the apple pie forgotten.

“She says her apartment is not ready yet and there's no place for us to sleep, but that's stupid.” He stopped crying, and the three of them talked, and nine-fifteen passed without their notice.

“Oh dear.” When she glanced at her watch again, it was nine-thirty. “Is there another train?” She could always take a cab into New York if she had to.

But Melissa nodded. “At eleven.”

“I guess I'll catch that then.”

“Good.” Sam clung to her hand, but the two children looked suddenly exhausted. She put Sam to bed shortly after that, and chatted with Mel until shortly after ten, and then suggested she go to bed, she could take care of herself for another half hour before she called a cab. And Mel finally went upstairs, with her own thoughts. And Ollie came home at ten-thirty, and was surprised to see Daphne still there, quietly reading.

“How's your father?”

“All right, I guess.” Ollie looked tired. He had put his own father to bed, like a child, and promised to come back the next day to help him decide what to do about his mother. “It's an awful situation. My mother has Alzheimer's, and it's killing my father.”

“Oh God, how terrible.” She was grateful that her own parents were still youthful and healthy. They were seventy and seventy-five, but they both still looked like fifty. And then she remembered the call from Sarah. “Your wife called, by the way.”

“Oh Christ …” He ran a hand through his hair, wondering if the kids had told her Daphne was there, but she read the look in his eyes and was quick to reassure him. “What did they tell her?”

“I don't know. I wasn't in the room when they talked to her. But no one was around when the phone rang, I answered it, and told her I was the sitter.” She smiled and he grinned at her.

“Thanks for that.” And then, with worried eyes again, “How were the kids afterward?”

“Upset. I gather she told them she couldn't come home next weekend, and she can't have them up there. Sam was crying. But he was all right when I put him to bed.”

“You are truly an amazing woman.” He glanced at his watch then with regret. “I hate to do this, but I'd better get you to the station for the train. We'll just make it.”

“I had a terrific day, Oliver.” She thanked him on the way to the station.

“So did I. I'm sorry I had to run out at the end.”

“Don't worry about it. You have your hands full. But things will look up one of these days.”

“If I live that long.” He smiled tiredly.

He waited for the train with her, and gave her a brotherly hug before she left, and told her he'd see her the following day at the office. She waved as the train pulled away, and he drove slowly home, sorry that things weren't different. Maybe if she'd been free, he told himself, but he knew it was a lie. No matter how free Daphne might have been, how attractive, how intelligent, all he wanted was Sarah. He dialed her number when he got home, but when the phone rang at her end, there was no answer.





Chapter 8


George Watson put his wife in a convalescent home the week after that. It was one that specialized in patients with Alzheimer's and various forms of dementia. Outwardly, it was cheerful and pleasant, but a glimpse of the patients living there depressed Oliver beyond words, when he went to see his mother. She didn't recognize him this time, and thought George was her son, and not her husband.