Читать книгу An Unlikely Daddy - Rachel Lee - Страница 10
ОглавлениеRising before the sun. The phrase had amused Marisa since childhood, especially since she was climbing out of bed at the same time as usual. The sun’s winter-delayed arrival always made her feel cozy somehow, and this morning was no different. By the time she finished showering and dressing in one of Johnny’s old flannel shirts and maternity jeans, faint gray light began to appear around the edges of the curtains.
In the kitchen she made her allotted few cups of coffee and decided to eat cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast. With a glass of milk, she swallowed her prenatal vitamin while she stirred the oatmeal.
She had just poured the oatmeal from the pan into the bowl when she heard a knock at her side door. Looking over, she saw Julie standing there and waving. Immediately she went to let her in.
“Gawd, it’s cold out there this morning,” Julie said, pulling back her hood and shaking out her long auburn hair. Green eyes danced. “Be glad you don’t have to be anywhere. After that thaw last week, it feels like an insult. Oatmeal, huh?”
“Want me to make you some?”
“Sweetie, I already gorged on Danish and coffee. Unlike you, I don’t have to worry about healthy eating.”
Marisa laughed lightly. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I know, I know, it’ll catch up with me. All our sins do. So, dish.”
“Dish?”
Julie pulled out a chair without unzipping her jacket and sat, arching a brow at her. “Did you really think a mysterious man could show up on your doorstep last evening and that your neighbor Fiona would miss it? Or that she wouldn’t call me and probably half the rest of the town? Sit, eat.”
Marisa brought the bowl of oatmeal and a milky mug of coffee to the table. Julie eyed the coffee. “Still on restriction?”
Marisa shook her head. “Not now. The doc says I can have more, it’s not risky. But now...I don’t want any more.”
“Hah. They retrain us. Anyway, the guy last night.”
“Fiona. Does she report on every breath I take?”
“You know her better than that. But last night was something new. Everyone needs something new to talk about. So, who was he?” Julie waited eagerly.
“He says he worked with Johnny for years.”
Julie’s smile faded. “What’s wrong, Marisa? Did he scare you?”
“I don’t know what to make of him, that’s all. He said a few things, so yes he knew Johnny but...it seems kind of late to be making a social call. He certainly doesn’t know me. And he’s talking about Johnny wanting him to check on me.”
“Well, that sounds like Johnny.”
Marisa’s head popped up, a spoonful of oatmeal in her hand. “What do you mean by that?”
Julie bit her lip, finally shrugged and said, “Johnny asked me to keep an eye on you if... Well, you get it.”
“He did?” Anger billowed in Marisa. “He asked you that, and you never told me?”
Julie put up a hand. “He asked me not to. Don’t bite my head off. But, frankly, I could see his point.”
Marisa put down her spoon and gripped the edge of the table. “See what point?”
“The point that he was going away for months at a time to do a dangerous job, and sometimes his feet touched ground long enough to worry about you. He didn’t want to share that with you because you might worry about him more. It was always understood, wasn’t it, that Johnny would come home?”
The oatmeal was beginning to congeal. Marisa pushed it to the side, her appetite utterly gone. More secrets, now one that had been shared with her best friend. What else hadn’t Johnny told her? She guessed at some of it, but now she wondered. “What else?”
“That was it,” Julie answered quietly. “You know Johnny. He made light of it when he asked me, but I could tell he was serious. I’d have looked after you, anyway. You’re my best friend.”
Numbness was slowly replacing anger. Julie popped up. “Let me make you some fresh oatmeal.”
“I don’t want it anymore. Maybe I’ll make some later.”
Julie paused beside her, squeezing her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I honestly didn’t think that telling you that would.”
“No?” Craning her neck, Marisa looked up at her. “How many other things didn’t he tell me?”
“God,” Julie breathed. Slowly she returned to her chair. “Don’t take it like that. We all know he couldn’t talk about his work. It wasn’t like he was running around confiding in everyone except you. That was it, Marisa, I swear. Given that he had a dangerous job, why should it surprise anyone that he asked a handful of close people to help you out if something went wrong? Seems more thoughtful than secretive to me.”
Maybe Julie was right. Gripping her mug in both hands, Marisa tried to swallow the coffee before it cooled down too much and warmed her not at all. But this on the heels of last night...she felt alarm flags popping up inside her. Had she ever known her husband at all?
“Damn it,” Julie muttered. “The last thing on earth I wanted to do was make you feel bad. I just came over to hear about Mr. Mysterious, and look what I’ve done.”
Marisa didn’t answer immediately. Julie had been her friend since kindergarten, and she had to believe her. So Johnny had been worried. Well, he’d kind of explained the possibility when they were dating. He’d been in the Rangers, after all. Going into combat and who knew what else. She certainly didn’t. How would anything have changed if he’d told her he’d asked friends to check on her if something happened? Not at all. She would still have moved forward with the certainty that he would always return, because any other possibility was unthinkable. Johnny had seemed to believe that himself. Maybe she was more troubled by the realization that he’d been acutely aware that he might not come back. If so, he hadn’t shared that with her. Another in his long line of omissions, most of which hadn’t bothered her. So why was this getting to her?
“So,” Julie said eventually, “I’ve got only a few minutes before I have to get to work. I want to hear about this friend of Johnny’s.”
Marisa struggled back to the present moment. “Not much to say. He’s in town for a few days. He wanted to see how I was doing mainly because Johnny asked him to at one time or another.”
“But it took him six months to get here?”
Marisa nodded. “Same kind of job as Johnny’s. Anyway, I gather from what he said that he heard I was pregnant and that galvanized him to get here. He said something about how Johnny had mentioned that I was safe here, among friends. So maybe it didn’t seem all that critical.”
“Or,” Julie said fairly, “he simply couldn’t get away.”
“Maybe.”
“So...” Julie grinned. “Is he gorgeous?”
“Julie!” Marisa’s shock caused her to gasp. “Are you kidding?”
“No, perfectly serious. Johnny wouldn’t want you to bury yourself, and a calendar is a poor way to measure grief. I always thought that old thing about wearing widows weeds for a year was a bit over the top. I mean, you grieve however long you grieve. There’s not some magic date when it stops. As for everything else—” she pushed back from the table and stood “—you’re still here, hon. You should snap at anything good that happens by, or the next fifty years are going to be awful. At least enjoy having a new face around for a few days. I’m off!”
Anything good that happens by? Really? Emotionally she still felt like a train wreck most of the time. Snap at life? The only snapping she’d like to do was angry.
Then her baby stirred again, reminding her she did indeed have to carry on. She scraped the oatmeal into the trash and made herself a fresh bowl to eat with her second cup of coffee.
Slowly, as the warm oatmeal and coffee hit her system, calm began to settle over her. When she was done eating, she sat for a while with her eyes closed, her hands on her belly, and concentrated on the new life growing inside her.
She already loved her child. It hadn’t taken long for that to happen. At first, during the darkest days, she’d hated her pregnancy almost as if it were a promise that would never be fulfilled. She’d gone through the motions of taking care of herself only because she had to. But then had come the day when she had felt the first movement. Even in the midnight of her soul, she’d felt an incredible burst of joy, a connection she had never imagined possible before she even saw the child. Her baby was growing inside her, and it was indeed a promise. Her child, her love. An unbreakable link was forged with those first tiny, almost bubble-like movements.
The future did hold something good, she reminded herself. It held this baby, Johnny’s final gift, a new life she needed to live for and work for. A purpose, a joy, a journey. Her imaginings might have turned to dust with Johnny, but now there were new imaginings. Maybe it was time to quit fighting with herself and just get on with setting up the nursery, making sure she had everything a baby would need. Maybe it was time to accept Julie’s repeated offer of a baby shower. Time to stiffen her spine and start taking steps of her own choice into all the tomorrows to come.
Because if she was sure of anything, it was that she couldn’t remain like this, paralyzed and hunkered down. If she didn’t change it now, she’d be changing it in a few months because life would force it on her.
Maybe it was time to stop being a victim.
* * *
The doorbell rang shortly after she finished washing her breakfast dishes and absently wiping the counters clean. Ryker, she thought. No one else she knew in Conard City would come by at this time of day. She’d half expected never to see him again. She hadn’t been exactly welcoming last night, and he could have called his duty to Johnny done. He’d checked on her. What more could Johnny have expected of him, of a man who was a stranger to her?
She dried her hands on a towel, smoothed her still-damp hair back quickly, then went to answer the door. She half hoped it was Fiona, who lived next door, coming to try to pry some more gossip out of her. Fiona, she often thought, needed to get a job now that her two children spent all day in school. She clearly didn’t have enough to do with her time. Of course, who was Marisa to criticize anyone else for that?
But as she had half feared, she opened the door to see Ryker. He looked more rested, his face less like granite this morning. Sunlight reflected almost blindingly off the snow.
“Good morning,” he said pleasantly. He offered a small white bag. “Bagels from your local bakery. I figured they couldn’t be too bad for you. Want me to knock down those icicles?”
She felt as if a whirlwind had just blown into her quiet life. “The icicles are really bothering you,” she remarked, suddenly remembering that he’d mentioned them last night.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Most of them aren’t too dangerous, but why let them grow? Got a broomstick?”
Arguing seemed utterly pointless. She gave him her broom, then listened to the dull thuds from the porch as he took down the icicles. In the kitchen, she opened the bag he’d brought, and her nose immediately filled with the amazing smell of oven-fresh bagels. For the first time that morning, she became genuinely hungry. Melinda, the bakery owner, had also tossed in a few small containers of cream cheese. At that point it seemed churlish not to set out a couple of plates and make some fresh coffee.
Ryker came in, bringing the cold and the broom with him. “All done. Where should I put this?”
She pointed to the pantry door at the back of the kitchen. “Just inside there. Thank you.”
“Safety, that’s my thing,” he said as he put the broom away and shucked his jacket, revealing a gray flannel shirt that made his eyes and hair look even darker. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m okay.” It was the best she could say. “I made coffee to go with the bagels. Do you drink it?”
“By the gallon. But you don’t have to feed me just because—”
She interrupted him, feeling a sense of desperation. “Let’s get past this, okay? Maybe you showed up out of nowhere without any warning. Maybe I don’t know you from Adam, but you’re here because of Johnny. One way or another we should both respect his wishes. He wanted you to check on me. I’m not going to tell you to get lost, at least not right away. You brought breakfast, which was nice, and I do have enough manners left to invite you to enjoy it with me. Okay?”
For a couple of seconds he didn’t move, then a smile spread slowly. “Cutting to the chase, huh?”
“As much as I can. We can spend the next few hours fencing around, but honestly, I hate wasting time like that. Especially now. Sit down. Eat. I’ll join you. Thank you for the bagels.”
With a snort like a laugh, he took the chair she indicated at the kitchen table. The bagels were already sliced, so all they had to do was spread the cream cheese. Melinda, the bakery owner, had remembered that Marisa liked hers with chives. She hadn’t had room to feel much outside her own pained universe for the past few months, but she was touched now by Melinda’s thoughtfulness. So many good people around here, and she’d been avoiding most of them.
Maybe Ryker’s arrival had jarred her out of her self-preoccupation. Was grief selfish? She supposed it was.
At least he didn’t tell her to sit while he got the coffee, or otherwise imply that she wasn’t perfectly healthy. Lately, on the rare occasions she visited with her friends, they wanted her to let them take care of everything, as if she were an invalid. She understood they felt helpless to do much about anything else, but really, she was in good health and capable of getting a cup of coffee for someone.
But then the awkwardness returned. Ryker decided to pierce it. “I probably know more about you than you do about me,” he remarked. “Johnny talked about you from time to time, but I gather he said little about me.”
“He mentioned R.T. a couple of times, but, no, he didn’t say much. But then he didn’t talk much about his friends in the Rangers or later. It was like when he came home, he turned all that off.”
“Probably wise,” Ryker said. He washed down a mouthful of bagel with some coffee. “Compartmentalizing, we call it. Keeping things separate. Why would he want to bring any of that home to you?”
“But he talked about me,” she argued.
“Once in a while. Sometimes everyone talked about home. Sometimes we needed to remember that there was a place or a person we wanted to get back to. The rest of the time we couldn’t afford the luxury.”
That hit her hard, but she faced it head-on. Remembering home had been a luxury? That might have been the most important thing anyone had told her about what Johnny had faced and done.
“I didn’t know him at all,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut, once again feeling the shaft of pain.
“You knew the best part of him. That mattered to him, Marisa. You gave him a place where that part could flourish.”
“But why?” she asked, opening her eyes. “Why do you get into this? This kind of life?”
“I can’t speak for Johnny. Only for myself.”
“Then tell me.”
“I was young, hotheaded and determined to do something important with my life. And in case you start to wonder, Johnny did a lot of very important things. But we don’t know what it’ll cost when we cross the line and take up the work. We have no idea in hell what we’re getting into. No one can.”
She managed a stiff nod and tried to eat some more bagel. The baby kicked, then she felt a little foot or hand trail slowly along her side.
“Anyway,” Ryker continued after finishing half a bagel, “we do it for a variety of reasons. I wanted excitement. Exotic places. A sense of mission and purpose. Adrenaline junkie, I guess.”
“And Johnny?”
Ryker spread his hand. “By the time I met him, I couldn’t have guessed a thing about why. By then he was one of us. And as you so correctly said last night, by then he wouldn’t have been happy with a tamer life. Somehow, I guess that’s how we’re built.” He frowned faintly and looked past her. “I don’t know if I can make you understand, or even find the right words. But there’s a point where the mission becomes everything. It motivates every breath we take. Not for everyone, mind you. But for some of us...well, we get hooked. We don’t just carry the sword, we are the sword.” He shrugged and picked up another piece of bagel. “Unfortunately, the world needs swords. I’d have made a lousy plowshare, I guess.”
The reference didn’t escape her. Her stomach turned over, and for a few seconds she felt so nauseated she wondered if she’d have to run to the bathroom.
But memories floated back, instants out of time, just brief things she had heard or seen with Johnny, moments when he had seemed almost like someone else. Moments when she glimpsed the sword. They always passed swiftly, wiped away by a ready smile, but she’d seen them. She just hadn’t wanted to remember them.
But recalling them now, she felt just awful that Johnny had felt the need to hide a very big part of himself from her. She’d have loved him no matter what. Hadn’t he trusted her?
“We also get older,” Ryker continued. “So we change some more. I’m nearly forty. Too damn old for this business. Johnny was starting to feel the same way. So after I moved over to State, he asked me to let him know if something opened up.”
“How could you give up the rush?”
Another faint smile. Her insides prickled with unwanted awareness of him as a man. She shoved it quickly aside, and guilt replaced it. At least he was speaking.
“It’s possible to get one without being the pointy tip of the sword. Besides, it’s important to know when the time has come. You can shift without giving up the mission or your sense of purpose. It’s safer for everyone. Johnny had started to think more about you, about being with you more.”
Her breath caught. “He told you that?”
“Actually, yes. When he asked me to let him know if there was a position for him, he said it, Marisa. He said he was thinking about all the time he’d missed being with you, and that he was ready to start down a different road. Unfortunately...”
“Yes,” she said tightly. Unfortunately. Johnny had said the same thing when he told her was trying to get a job with the State Department. We’ll have more time together. We’ll even be able to travel together once in a while. I’ll need to work my way up a little higher on the food chain, but think of the places we could visit.
How much of that had been real? “Just last night you said he knew it could be dangerous.”
“It’s always dangerous,” Ryker said bluntly. “Always. But I didn’t think it would get him killed.”
Nor had she. In her blissful ignorance, she had forgotten all the places in the world where a State Department employee would be unwelcome. No, she’d been thinking of London, Paris, Tokyo...not little out-of-the-way consulates in dangerous countries. But of course Johnny wouldn’t shy away from the dangers. He never had.
She needed to get away from this, at least for now. Ryker was shifting her mental images around like a puzzle, and she wasn’t sure she would like the new picture. “So, more about you,” she said.
“I was born,” he said.
Despite everything, she felt her mood rising to a much lighter place, and realized she desperately needed it. “That’s it?” she asked, surprised to hear a tremor of humor in her voice.
“No, of course that’s not it. I had, still have, family. I grew up like a normal kid, two parents and a sister. My parents are retired now, and my sister lives in New Zealand. I get to see her once every few years. And that’s where normal ended, I guess. The military called to me like a siren. My imaginings were very different from reality. But I think I mentioned that. Anyway, since then my home has been my job.”
None of that told her very much, but what had she been expecting? “That could be lonely.”
“I haven’t noticed it, except occasionally.” The way he spoke led her to believe there had been times when it had been incredibly lonely. She wondered if Johnny had felt that way sometimes, too. And why.
“So you’re going back to teaching in the fall?”
She nodded. “I hope I’m ready by then. I’d be a lousy teacher right now.”
“How are you filling your days?”
“Trying to get through them.”
The words lay there, stark and revealing. More than she had wanted to say to this stranger, more than she had even said to her friends. The fact that hell lived inside her was not something she felt compelled to inflict on her friends. She tried to keep it to herself as much as humanly possible. She knew she didn’t do the best job of it, but she still made the effort.
“Everything’s okay with the baby, though?”
“Fine.” It wasn’t really his business.
“And a nursery? Have you put one together?”
She felt a prickle of guilt. Her pregnant friends had usually attacked the nursery business early and had things ready months in advance. For some reason she had been postponing it, as if she could stay in this state of stasis forever. Unrealistic. Ducking. Evading what she couldn’t have said. “No. There’s a crib in the basement that was Johnny’s. I thought I’d use that.”
“Need help getting it up here?”
It was clear he wanted to do something more than knock down a few icicles. Well, this was one task where help would be welcome. “Yes, actually I do.”
She had just given him a wedge to drive farther into her life. She hoped like hell she didn’t regret it.
* * *
Glad of a useful job to do, Ryker headed downstairs to the basement. Marisa had told him where to find the crib, and he didn’t have any trouble locating it. The basement was clean, scrupulously organized and stocked with every tool a man could wish for. The only thing that bothered him was that the laundry machines were down here. That meant Marisa was going up and down those narrow steps at least once a week, and when the baby came she’d have to do them even more often. He didn’t like it. The railing didn’t seem stout enough; the steps were too narrow. How often would she attempt them with a baby in her arms? He hated to think.
But as he carried the awkwardly sized pieces of the crib frame up one by one, he had the opportunity to think about Johnny and Marisa, and his opinion was changing.
Had Johnny even once considered how his death would gut his wife? Had he ever looked at her and wondered what would become of her? In just a short time Ryker had gleaned a decent impression of the price Marisa was paying, a price compounded by the impending arrival of a child she would now have to care for on her own. He had no doubt she could do it, but there’d be no handy dad to spell her when she got tired or needed a break.
Lots of women did it. He got it. But Marisa should have had Johnny to lean on. Of course, Johnny had been so busy pursuing his new goals that maybe he’d have been no help at all.
Thoughts such as these had been one of the main reasons Ryker had avoided every opportunity to settle down. It wasn’t just that women wanted to change him. No, they had a right to expect certain things from a husband, things he couldn’t provide.
And the lie. The big lie. That they would travel together? Johnny would likely have never been assigned to any station where he could take his family. Not with his skills.
And another lie, his own. He and Johnny didn’t work for the State Department. They worked for the CIA. State was their cover. He hated having to perpetuate that with Marisa. At this point she deserved something better than lies. She certainly deserved to know about a black star on a marble wall at Langley that would never bear Johnny’s name.
But the simple fact was, the agency would put up the star, but it might never acknowledge that John had been one of them. It had happened before and would happen again, and setting Marisa on a quest to break through that huge barrier to truth seemed fruitless. Some names were never inscribed in the book, which was guarded as well as the crown jewels. Some families were never invited to the annual memorial ceremony. Some were never told what their loved ones had done. Some were left forever with stories such as those Marisa had been told because even one slip might cause an irreparable harm.
He didn’t even know himself exactly what had happened to John. He’d never know. But he didn’t like giving her the cover story when she deserved the truth.
But maybe the truth would upset her more. Maybe knowing that all that talk about exotic travel had been most likely lies would only compound sins that never seemed to stop compounding.
He’d been at this business longer than John had; he was more used to deceptions that went with it. But he found himself getting sick to the gills of it. That woman up there reminded him that secrecy had repercussions. Horrible repercussions. At least if John had been killed in a combat mission with the Rangers, she’d have been given some information about where, when and how that was truthful. Instead, she’d been given a lie. A street mugging?
Not much closure, especially when she was right that John could have taken care of himself.
He brought the springs up to the bedroom she had indicated. Her room, he guessed, at the back of the house. She wanted the child near. She was already working over the wood with a damp rag. He looked at the springs, though, and wondered if they should be replaced. A few rusty spots marred them.
“Can we get new springs for the crib?” We, as if he belonged.
She let it pass, though, and stepped over to look. “Maybe I should.”
“Can you get them in town?”
“I can order them. I know I need to order a mattress.”
But not a whole new crib. He didn’t need brilliant insight to understand that. “Let me measure them, then. Can you just call to order them?”
“Freitag’s?” She smiled faintly. “They’ll order anything anyone around here wants. We used to have a catalog store, but that closed. Miracle of the internet.”
“Where do I find a tape measure?”
He found it in the kitchen drawer she had directed him to and returned with it and the memo pad and pen from the fridge. He measured the frame, made notes about how it bolted to the bed, then joined her in wiping down the wood. At last she sat on the edge of her bed, holding her stomach and laughed. “That felt good!”
“Yeah? Somehow I think you need to tell that to your back.”
“How did you guess?”
“Because mine would have been aching after being bent over all that time.” He stepped back and looked at the crib. “It’s a very nice piece of furniture.”
“Johnny’s grandfather built it for him. Carpentry was his hobby.”
“A great heirloom then.” He looked again at the springs. “You know, I should probably take this back downstairs and work on it with some oil and rust remover. Maybe it doesn’t need to be replaced.”
She shook her head. “I want new springs if I can get them. Babies bounce when they get old enough to stand. I wouldn’t trust it.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed, and carted it back down to the basement. He could also put some wood slats in place to replace the springs, he thought. Peg them in so they couldn’t slip out.
But why was he even thinking of such things? He had no place here, and no sense of how long Marisa would tolerate him. Worse, with every passing hour he was building the wall of lies higher.
Sometimes he just hated himself.
When he got back upstairs, he found Marisa in the kitchen. She was nibbling on some carrots, and a plate of them sat at the center of the table as if in invitation to him.
“Mind if I get some coffee?” he asked.
“Help yourself. Make fresh if you want. And thanks for your help with the crib.”
“No big deal.” He filled a mug and sat across from her. She appeared pensive, so he waited for her to speak.
“You know, I don’t want to use springs in that crib at all. I shouldn’t need them. They look dangerous to me, and my friends all have mattresses that just sit on brackets around the outside of the crib.”
He summoned a mental picture. “That would work. I could add some more brackets for you easily enough. The way it looks now, you only have four of them.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I’d need them all the way around so the mattress is higher. You know, so fingers or hands couldn’t poke out.”
“Easy enough.”
Then she smiled faintly. “And that’s part of the reason for crib bumpers, I guess.” A little shake of her head. “I need to get on the stick about this, don’t I?”
“You’ve got a little time.”
“Not a whole lot.” She held out her hand. “Pad? Pen?”
He’d forgotten he’d tucked them into his breast pocket and turned them over immediately.
“So, hardware for angle brackets and screws, right? Say eight of them?”
“Maybe twelve. And they should be wide, not too narrow.”
She wrote. “Then mattress, bumpers, sheets, blankets...” Her voice trailed off. “I let this go too long.”
“You’ve still got time, right?”
“Another ten weeks.”
“That’s plenty,” he said bracingly. “Your friends and I will help if you let us.” Then he took a leap into a potential briar patch. “I don’t like those basement stairs of yours.”
She looked up from her writing. “Why?”
“Too narrow, and the railing isn’t sturdy enough. “You shouldn’t be climbing them right now, but with a baby in your arms or on your hip...” He let it hang, and braced for her justifiable anger. Just who the hell did he think he was? She’d have every right to demand that of him.
She frowned, then sighed. “You’re right. I hate those stairs.”
“I can fix them.”
At that her head jerked back. “Ryker, you just dropped by to do your duty to Johnny. You checked on me. Are you planning to move in?”
A justified question. But he was feeling a need, a strong need to atone and make up for things, including the lies he kept telling by omission as much as anything. His answer, though, surprised even him. “For a change I’d like to actually build something.”
Something passed over her face—whether sorrow or something else, he wasn’t sure. “Why should I trust you?” she asked finally. “You think I can’t tell you’re keeping secrets?”
“John kept secrets, too,” he said. “And by the way, John trusted me, or I wouldn’t be here now.”
She debated. He could see it. He wondered how much faith she’d lost in her husband just by the few things he’d told her. He’d certainly tried to avoid telling her that she’d been fed some outright lies. He didn’t feel good about it, but that was the job. Besides, he owed it to John to protect her from the ugly truths.
“What would you do to the stairs?” she asked.
“For one thing, the steps need to be wider. So it’ll stretch farther into the basement, but there’s room. And I’d give you a rail on both sides strong enough that if you grab or fall against them, they won’t collapse.”
She nodded slowly, giving him his first sense that he might actually be getting somewhere with her. “I’d like that,” she admitted.
He rose and reached for the jacket he’d slung over the back of the chair earlier. “I’ve imposed too much. See you tomorrow.”
Before she could answer, he headed for the door. Coming here hadn’t eased his sense of guilt in the least. He’d better watch his step before he carried that woman into another thicket of lies, a thicket worse than the one left to her by John.
He was, after all, still CIA. And while he might have a few months off, that didn’t mean he should spend them weaving another trap for an innocent woman. She’d paid a high enough price already for loving the wrong man.
