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“Always have, always will,” he said. “We met when we were just three days old and we’ve been—”
“If you spend my lunch hour telling me your life story I swear I’ll charge you double my hourly rate.”
“Even if I tell you about the sword?”
Jeanne hesitated. “Okay, I’ll have my secretary call yours and I’ll schedule you for next week.”
“In your dreams,” Stephen said.
It hadn’t been easy for him to persuade Amy to agree to go to Maine. They didn’t usually argue—his father said it was because Stephen let Amy make all the rules—but this time they did.
“I do not want to go to some faraway state and spend weeks with a bunch of women I’ve never met. Women you heard about through a therapist.”
She made the last word sound like “witch doctor.”
Stephen was determined to not let her wear him down so he stood his ground. “You cannot stay here in this house alone while the boys and I go camping.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
That idea horrified Stephen so much that he’d taken a step back from her. His reaction set Amy off into the tears that were always near the surface these days.
He threw up his hands in futility. “Amy, other women would kill for this chance. You get to get away from us and this house that you work on like a galley slave and you—”
“Is that what you think of me? As a…What did you call me? A galley slave?”
“You’re not going to twist this around so I’m the villain. I think this is a good thing for you to do.”
“I don’t know these women and neither do you. Who knows what they’re like? They’re in therapy. For what? Murder?”
“Amy, calm down. It’s true that we don’t know them, but Jeanne does and she—”
“And I guess you know this Jeanne person?”
Stephen thought back to their luncheon and the two subsequent phone conversations and he couldn’t help smiling. For all that she was old enough to be his grandmother and as wide as she was tall, there was something sexy about her. When his secretary heard him laughing on the phone she had raised her eyebrows.
“What does that smile mean?” Amy asked, advancing on him. “That’s a sex smile, isn’t it? There’s something more going on with you and her than just therapy, isn’t there?”
Stephen stopped smiling. “How did you guess? I’ve been having an affair with Jeanne Hightower for weeks now. Great sex. She likes my sword the best. And the tall leather boots.” He left the room before Amy could say another word.
That argument had been a turning point. That night Amy put on her prettiest lacy nightgown and snuggled up against him. They hadn’t had sex in weeks. But Stephen knew what she was doing and he was having none of it. It took all his resolve but he’d moved away from her and gone to sleep. Never before had he turned down her invitation for sex.
The next morning Amy got up early and made them breakfast. She didn’t say much during the meal, and it had been a solemn occasion. Usually, the boys were talking on top of each other and kicking each other under the table, but that morning all four of them had been quiet.
As Stephen left for work, Amy told him she’d go to Maine. It had been a victory for him, but he hadn’t liked being a bully to make her do what he wanted her to.
Since she’d told him she’d go, she’d done everything she could to get out of her promise, but Stephen remained steadfast. He saw how she was pretending to be more cheerful, but he also saw how she would stand and look out the kitchen window for half an hour at a time. He had known her all his life and he’d never seen her like this. When her mother died six years ago, Amy had mourned then moved on, but since the miscarriage she seemed to have stepped back from the world.
Stephen couldn’t see how a few days at a summerhouse in Maine with some strangers would help, but he had no other ideas. Every day, Amy seemed to move deeper inside herself. Slowly, he seemed to be losing her.
And he knew that if he lost Amy, he’d lose his life. She was his life. She had been everything to him for his entire life, through kindergarten, elementary school, high school, college. She had always been there, always with him. When they were six, one day over milk and cookies, she’d said, “Let’s get married right after we get out of college. I want a big wedding, and I want three children: two boys, then a girl. Okay?” Stephen had nodded in agreement. They had never talked about it again but it was exactly what they’d done.
The only flaw in the plan had been the miscarriage, and with the break in Amy’s perfect life she seemed to have lost something that she couldn’t get back.
Now, he had to work to keep from giving in to her. He knew that if he said yes, why didn’t she forget about Maine and go camping with them, Amy would explode in happiness. She’d throw herself at him for a moment, then she’d bustle around to hurry and get everything and everyone ready. Amy the dynamo of energy, happiest when she was organizing people. Their pastor once said that he didn’t know if he could run the church without Amy.
But Stephen knew that Amy’s happiness wouldn’t last long. By the time they got to the campground she’d be staring out the window, her mind only half on what was going on around them.
And, of course, there was the horror of a camping trip with Amy. Cleaning fish was not her idea of fun. Campfires scared the wits out of her, and he didn’t want to think about her lectures on what could be crawling inside a sleeping bag. No, camping was for him and the boys. No bathing, no shaving, no eating anything that was remotely good for them. Last year he’d won the belching contest but he feared his youngest son might win this year. He meant to practice on the drive to the campground. He and the boys were going to buy one each of every cola they could find and see which one produced the most gas. The big contest would be on their last night out. The winner got the plastic vomit that was hidden at the bottom of his backpack.
