I always hate to throw a guy out of a game, but
sometimes it was necessary to keep order.
— Cal Hubbard, umpire
Suzanna turned on her laptop and went on-line to check for messages. There were three from the home office, and another two from Sean Blackthorne, owner of the company.
“What does he want?” she grumbled out loud in the Saint Louis hotel room, her finger hesitating after she’d moved the track ball to hit the OPEN icon.
Oh, hell, delaying things wouldn’t help any. Sighing, she opened the first e-mail, scanned it quickly to see that Sean had decided to join her in Saint Louis later that afternoon.
“Oh, peachy,” she said, deleting the e-mail and opening the second one. There was only one word in the message: Dinner?
“Dinner,” she said out loud, hitting the Delete button once more. “Now, what does that mean?”
Suzanna quickly scanned the messages from her office, saw nothing earthshakingly important, and shut down the computer in favor of the Room Service breakfast that had arrived a few minutes earlier.
“Dinner,” she repeated, knowing she was talking to herself, and also knowing that she’d been doing it for years and had ceased to worry that she might be going nuts. She’d been traveling alone for so long, living alone in so many different hotel rooms. She just liked the company.
“Could it hurt?” she asked herself, lifting the metal lid on her scrambled eggs, home fries, and ham. “We only dated a couple of times, and that was months ago, before I told him I didn’t think dating the boss was a good idea. And the man knows I’m married now.”
Tim. Her husband of almost two months. One month and a day short of three weeks, to be more precise about the thing.
Suzanna picked up the controller and turned on the television, flipping stations until she found ESPN. Tim and the Phillies were out on the coast, and even at home in Allentown the game wouldn’t have come on TV until eleven o’clock. Not that Phillies games would be broadcast in Saint Louis anyway.
She’d hit the sack here at nine last night, unreasonably tired after a day spent trying to undo the damage Forrester and Sons’ resident computer guru had done to their newly purchased Blackthorne accounting system.
She looked at the scrambled eggs and decided they didn’t smell all that appetizing and she didn’t want them. Maybe just the wheat toast, that would be enough.
Munching the toast, she waited through recaps of a few other games before the announcers turned to the Phillies-Giants game.
As it had been lately, the recap of highlights of the latest Phillies’ win looked pretty much like the Tim Trehan Show. Tim was on a tear, plain and simple. No home run last night, although he already had more four-baggers this season than any other catcher in either League. But last night it was a triple and two singles. Five RBIs. Three runs scored.
And one heck of a throw to second to cut down a base-stealing attempt to end an inning.
Suzanna turned up the volume when the tape switched to the clubhouse and she saw Tim sitting in front of his locker, a towel wrapped around his neck, fielding questions from reporters.
“It’s been a good road trip,” Tim was saying into a crowd of microphones shoved into his face. “Dusty’s playing well, Rich Craig made one heck of a catch in the ninth to rob Gomez, and Jeff Kolecki started, what? Three double plays? We’re just clicking, that’s all. Everybody’s giving one hundred and ten percent. A real team effort.”
“And there he is, ladies and germs, Mr. Modest,” Suzanna said, taking another bite of toast.
“Now we head home,” Tim said, “and that’s good. This has been a long road trip.”
“Home to your bride, Tim?” one of the reporters asked, and Tim just grinned at him as the tape ended and the station went to commercial.
“Oh, be still my heart,” Suzanna said, turning off the set, and then grinning herself, definitely pleased. What a smile that man had. Without effort, Tim could always have the whole world eating out of his hand.
Except that he was making noises about her quitting her job, going on the road with him when the team traveled, and she’d been resisting him.
She didn’t know why.
Yes, she did.
One hundred million dollars.
They were married now, sure. But she didn’t want to look like some sort of gold digger. Get married, quit her job the next day, wrap herself in Tim’s money? No, just the thought made her nervous.
Besides, she’d worked long and hard to get where she was, and she liked her job. Loved her job.
Even if it had meant not going to the coast with Tim. Maybe because it had meant not going to the coast with Tim.
Because there were flaws in her marriage, and she knew it.
One of them was that Tim had never told her he loved her, which meant that she sure as hell wasn’t going to be the first one to say the words.
Besides, he had to know she loved him, had loved him for so long that she couldn’t remember ever not loving him.
And he still called her “babe.” She hated that he called her babe. It made her feel like one of a crowd of babes, maybe even interchangeable babes.
Except he’d given her a ring, and his name. She’d moved her clothing into his house.
They were man and wife.
“So how come I don’t feel like we’re man and wife?” she asked out loud, heading for the bathroom, to take a shower, start yet another day.
It was Monday. By Wednesday night, Tim would be home, to begin a home stand against the Mets on Thursday. She’d be home herself on Wednesday, maybe even tomorrow if that damn computer geek at Forrester and Sons would just keep his sticky fingers off the keyboard until she could undo the damage he’d inflicted and get the company up and running again.
She loved Tim coming home to her, her coming home to him. They were like illicit lovers then, grabbing all the time together that they could manage... spending most of those hours in bed.
It still amazed Suzann to realize the depths of her passion, the hungers Tim had discovered inside her.
All her dreams about Tim had been about his eyes, his smile, the house they would build with the white picket fence around it, the children they would have together. How she’d bake him cookies, and they would sit on the porch swing at night, holding hands. Mushy stuff. Romantic stuff.
The wild, hot sex had come as a bit of a surprise.
A nice surprise.
Suzanna stepped out of the shower, wrapped a hand towel around her wet head, began smoothing a lightly scented oil on her still-wet skin.
She was so aware of her body now. Tim had done that, too, awakened her to her own body, even her ability to reduce the man to a mass of heavy-breathing, sweating passion that left them both limp and shaking.
So much to be happy about, rejoice over.
Except they didn’t talk.
Oh, they talked. They talked about the games. They talked about the past, a lot. They talked about their parents, how it felt to be an orphan, even at the advanced age of twenty-nine. Those were deep talks, holding a lot of truths, even a few tears. So they did talk.
They spoke to each other in general terms about the world, politics, even the cats. But whenever she wanted to get more serious about their relationship, talk about anything even vaguely resembling his feelings for her, hers for him, why he had decided, out of the blue, to marry her, he found a way to get her into bed, where she couldn’t talk or think at all.
“This time,” she said to her reflection as it was revealed in the mirror after she rubbed a towel over its steamed surface. “This time, we talk.”
* * *
“It really smells great in here, Mrs. Butterworth,” Tim said, strolling into the kitchen, his hair still damp from his shower. “Thanks a lot. I know Suzanna will be tired, flying in from Saint Louis and then taking the shuttle from Philly to here. She left her car parked at ABE when she flew out, or I’d go pick her up, take her out to a nice dinner I wanted her to have more than some warmed-up pizza when she finally got home.”
Mrs. Butterworth, who should have been short and soft and gray-haired, to match her treacle-sweet name, hitched up her denim overalls that threatened to slip off her slim shoulders and turned to look at Tim.
“Are you going to tell her about Margo tonight?” the woman asked, narrowing her eyes behind small, round wire-rim gold frames, the same frames she’d worn when Tim was in high school. Mrs. B. called it her John Lennon look. What was scary was that with her mop of brown hair, parted in the middle and swinging in at her chin, with the glasses, and with that beak of a nose the woman had, she sort of looked like John Lennon.
He was surprised that she hadn’t said, “Hey, Jude, I’m going to bring you down.”
Before she could say it, or anything close, he reminded her, “Now, Mrs. B., we can’t be sure.”
“The hell we can’t,” the woman said, turning back to the counter to spoon soft butter into the potatoes in the mixing bowl. “I may have taught history, Tim, but I minored in biology in college. One minute little Margo is dragging her belly all over the floor, howling like a banshee, and the next day she’s curled up on the couch, no more pitiful howling, and looking like the cat that ate the canary. We won’t even talk about the absolutely disgusting smirk on Lucky’s face.”
Tim pulled out one of the wooden kitchen chairs, turned it around, then straddled it. “But Margo’s still a kitten, Mrs. B. Suzanna said so, said she wasn’t quite a year old yet. Lucky’s only about a year old himself.”
“So Lucky robbed the cradle. Color me shocked.”
“This isn’t good, you know. Suzanna said she was thinking maybe she’d breed Margo. You know, with another pedigree Persian? Does it really take only one time?”
“With cats, with dogs, sometimes with people. Weren’t you listening during Sex Ed?”
Tim dropped his head into his hands. “In my next life, I’m inventing condoms for cats,” he grumbled under his breath.
“I heard that,” Mrs. Butterworth said, then turned on the mixer. “Stop sitting there feeling sorry for yourself for lying to Suzanna, and fetch me the milk carton from the fridge.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tim said, slowly unwrapping his long legs from the rungs of the chair and heading for the huge refrigerator that had been covered to match the cabinets—just one more of Keely’s little tricks. First time he’d come into the kitchen, it had taken him a full minute to locate the damn thing.
“So, Mrs. B.,” he asked, handing over the milk carton and watching as she opened it, poured some into the potatoes being smashed to smithereens by the electric mixer. “How long before Suzanna figures out I didn’t have Lucky snipped?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Planning to build a bomb shelter out back to hide in?”
“I don’t know. I mean, how mad can she get?”
“Suzanna? Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see. Do you remember the time Kurt Wheeler said something nasty about that sweet little Diane what’s-her-name after the junior prom? Said he’d—well, you know, hit a home run with her? Poor Diane, the child wouldn’t say boo to a goose, or whatever that saying is. But not Suzanna, when she found Diane crying in the girls’ bathroom. Your sweet, dear Suzanna went looking for Kurt and then all but picked him up and slammed him into the lockers, told him to keep his dirty mouth shut or she’d shut it for him. She’s got a righteous temper, Tim, and you know it.”
“Yeah,” Tim said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I know it. So, how long have I got before I get my head shoved into a locker?”
“Well, according to the care and feeding of cats book I picked up at the supermarket last week, the first thing to notice is if Margo’s nipples begin to turn pink and become erect.”
“Oh, cripes,” Tim said, half collapsing against the counter. “I don’t want to hear all of this.”
Mrs. Butterworth turned off the mixer and reached into the drawer in front of her for a spatula which she used to wipe the sides of the bowl before turning the mixer on again. “Well, tough toenails, Tim. You’re hearing it. You’ll also notice the fur around the nipples sort of becoming sparse, probably so the kittens will find it easier to nurse. At least that’s the conclusion I came to. Not that I needed the book all that much, because Margo’s little belly is growing.”
“So there’s no doubt?”
“None. From my calculations, and I used the night those two animals kept me up to all hours, running around my apartment and howling at each other until I could finally corral Margo and lock her in the bathroom—and knowing now that you can calculate gestation as one mating day plus sixty-three days—I’d say we’ll have kittens in, oh, about another six weeks, give or take a few days.”
“But Margo’s already getting fat?”
“I’d say so, yes. She’s so little beneath all that fur, it wouldn’t take much to give her a belly. The instructions in the book were very clear. Don’t touch the cat’s belly, especially long-haired cats, or you could injure the babies. So I haven’t prodded at her or anything. Oh, and Margo should not have been mated during her first time in heat, not long-haired cats. I’m worried about that little girl.”
She turned off the mixer once more, then glared at Tim overtop the rim of her glasses. “You men, you’re all alike, thinking with your hormones.”
“Hey,” Tim said, stepping back and raising his hands, “how did I get dragged into this?”
“I’m not sure, other than your lie to Suzanna; but you’re standing here, I’m worried about Margo, so you’re getting whatever I want to hand out. Okay, that’s about it. Roast is sliced and wrapped in foil in the oven. Gravy’s simmering on the top of the stove, salad’s in the fridge. Now, what time is Suzanna due home? I have a date.”
Tim lifted one side of his mouth in a smile. “A hot one? Has he been snipped? You’d better be careful, Mrs. B.”
“Ha-ha,” she said, taking out a dinner plate to cover the metal mixing bowl, keep the potatoes warm. “Better you should ask that question about yourself. I swear, I’m surprised you ever let that poor girl out of bed when you’re home.”
And with that parting shot, Mrs. Butterworth—tall, slim, denim-overall-and-navy-knit-top-clad recent inductee to senior citizenship—sashayed out of the kitchen on her sneakered feet, on her way back to her garage apartment.
Leaving Tim to sink slowly back into his chair, desperately trying to recall Suzanna’s answer to his question about birth control that he’d asked that first night.
“Cripes,” he said, blinking. “Two out of three? Oh, Suze, get home. We have to talk....”
* * *
Tim sat in his favorite chair in the den, glowering at his brother.
Suzanna hadn’t been home long enough to do more than eat dinner, load the dishwasher, and change into soft pink sweats before the doorbell had rung and Jack and Keely had come barging in.
Oh, all right, so they hadn’t barged. They had seen Suzanna’s sedan as they were coming out of their own drive, on their way to the grocery store with Candy, and had waited another hour before packing up the kid and driving over, for a “visit.”
When had the idea sounded so good—building his own house not a half mile away from his brother’s?
So now here he was, sitting in the den with Jack, while Suzanna, Keely, and little Candy were in the kitchen, talking about whatever women talked about when there were no men around.
Him and Jack, probably.
And not that he wasn’t glad that Keely and Suzanna had hit it off so well. They kept each other company when Jack was doing his TV and radio color commentaries for the Yankee games, and while Tim was on the road with the team. That was what baseball wives did when they didn’t travel with their husbands.
Or when they weren’t jetting all over hell and back, playing computer genius and leaving their husband at home to stew, or on the road looking at a redheaded townie who most definitely was not Suzanna.
“Who’s pitching for the Mets tomorrow night?” Jack asked, sipping the beer Tim had tossed to him earlier, when they had both been banished to the den.
Tim shrugged. “I don’t know. Rimes? All they toss at me anymore are lefties.”
“Yeah, like Sam’s going to lift you for a right-handed batter. Good old ambidextrous Tim-bo just sashays to the other side of the plate. Your average is only twenty points lower from the right.”
“And I’m batting .325 leftie,” Tim reminded his brother, for there had always been a friendly competition when it came to their batting averages... considering that Jack’s average had never risen to more than about .200. “Hey, we’re identical twins. You could have tried the same thing. I learned how to catch and throw rightie, bat from both sides. Think what it would have been like if you could have said screw the bad left arm, now I’ll pitch with my right.”
“That would have gotten me into the record books all right,” Jack said. “Get real. You started throwing rightie when you were seven or so, once you knew you wanted to catch. You don’t start that stuff at twenty-eight. Besides, good average or not, you’re not all that great from the left side every time. You looked pretty lame against Colon the other night. He had you swinging from your heels.”
“He got lucky,” Tim said, thinking about the left-handed Giant reliever who had struck him out swinging. “I wanted it low and inside so bad, and when it came in low and outside, I couldn’t lay off it. I can’t hit them all, you know, bro.”
“No? I could have sworn you thought you could,” Jack said, grinning at him. He lifted his beer can, gestured toward the kitchen. “You and Suze still doing okay? She doesn’t mind the road trips?”
Tim looked into the opening of his beer can as if he could see straight to the bottom of the Black Hole of Calcutta, or something else just as depressing. “No, she doesn’t care. I mean, she hasn’t said... I haven’t asked. And it isn’t like she isn’t always flying off somewhere, putting out fires for her company.” He put down his beer. “Damn.”
“Uh-oh,” Jack said, sitting forward on his chair. “Want to talk about this?”
Tim eyed his brother coolly. “I don’t think so. Besides, there’s nothing to talk about. We’re good. Hell, we’re great.”
“That’s good. But you two did sort of rush into this marriage stuff, you know.”
Tim sneered. “Here speaks the man who married his interior decorator, after he’d moved her in to take care of Candy. So we’re not the sanest two guys out there. Are you saying you did it any better?”
“No, Tim, I’m not. And I think Suzanna’s the best thing that could ever happen to you. But there’s something... I don’t know. Call it twin telepathy, the way Mrs. B. does. But I get the feeling something’s bothering you.”
“Yeah,” Tim said, standing up. “You’re bothering me. I’ve been out of town for ten days, and now my wife’s home, I’m home, and I’m knee-deep in relatives. Go the hell home, bro, okay?”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Oh,” he said, then grinned. “Interrupted your seduction scene, did we? Sorry about that, Tim. But Keely wanted to invite you guys over Sunday night, after the games, to celebrate Aunt Sadie’s seventieth.”
“Aunt Sadie’s going to be seventy? You’re kidding.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? She only retired five years ago and moved into my garage apartment and regressed to psychedelic teenager.”
Tim shook his head. “Red convertible, all that weird junk she keeps bidding for on e-Bay. That baseball player figurine she made for me in her ceramics class—you know, the one with the bobbing head? I know she painted it to look like a Phillies uniform, and I know she put my name and number on the back, but when she told me she thought she’d captured my face? If I looked like that, Jack, I’d have to wear a bag over my head. The damn thing has rouge or something painted on its cheeks, and lipstick, for crying out loud.”
“Hey, don’t tell me your troubles. Mine’s wearing Yankee pinstripes—except they’re going the wrong way.”
Tim picked up his beer once more, laughing. “Sure, we’ll be there for the party. We wouldn’t miss it. My game’s at one.”
“So’s mine. I do the post game wrap-up on radio, and I’m outta there. Keely’s planning some kind of buffet dinner for around seven, just to be sure. Then we’re on the road for almost two weeks. Do you think Suzanna will be working out of the Allentown office? I trust Aunt Sadie, when she’s not trying to make me listen to her audition song for South Pacific, that is, but I’d be happier if Suzanna was around, to keep Keel company. She’s almost seven months along, you know.”
“I don’t know where she’ll be,” Tim said, and his mood plummeted again, because he didn’t know. He’d be home, the Phillies were starting an extended home stand, their last west coast swing over for the year, but Suzanna could be in Phoenix next week, or even Seattle.
This wasn’t right. He was supposed to know where his wife would be. And she was supposed to be with him. Here, in this house, or in the Philadelphia apartment. Just with him.
He looked down, because a cat was rubbing against his legs. It was Lucky, the no-good, double-crossing Romeo.
That brought up another thought Tim really didn’t want to have. Procreation. Margo’s, most definitely, and the possibility that Suzanna might soon...
“So,” Tim said quickly, banishing that particular thought, “have you and Keel ever thought about getting Candy a kitten?”
* * *
Suzanna put away her toothbrush, still feeling what she believed to be a stupid thrill, seeing it sitting there, right beside Tim’s, and headed back into the bedroom.
She loved this room.
Keely had told her that Tim, for all his bluster about just looking at pictures and then “picking stuff,” had actively participated in every last detail of his house, both the building of it and the furnishings.
He’d picked this bed. A huge thing, with four solid posts and a wooden top that was all carved inside and had striped draperies tied to it, like something out of an English castle. It was so high that Suzanna used the small two-step affair that she’d always assumed was only used by modern furniture makers as a sort of affectation.
The room was done all in deep greens and golds and touches of navy. Oriental rugs were scattered on the hardwood floors, and the dresser and armoire were huge. Everything was huge, even the deep tray ceiling that had to be at least fifteen feet above her head.
And the window. How could she not love the triple-hung window with the stained-glass oriel top? Keely hadn’t put any drapes there, because the architecture of the windows was more than enough, and the bedroom overlooked nothing more than the privacy of oak trees that had probably been growing on this rolling hill for about a century.
Coming home was like entering another century, actually. And that made sense, because English history and Mrs. Butterworth’s classes had always been Tim’s favorites. He was a thoroughly modern man, but he was also a traditionalist. And he might have said he liked the castle in that tapestry in the foyer, but she knew darn well he’d also be able to tell her when and where it had been made, how long it had taken to make it, and exactly what historical event the scene depicted.
Tim had made sure he had every modern convenience in his house, but, between them, he and Keely had managed to hide them all, so that there were no jarring surprises like air-conditioning wall vents visible next to a four-foot-high Chinese vase, or naked television screens marring the decor anywhere.
Even Tim’s flat-screen wall TV in his den had been camouflaged by the painting of a hunt scene that rose toward the ceiling at the push of a button.
Amazing what money could buy.
And yet this was a home, not just a showplace. Keely had also made sure of that. Sure, Suzanna knew she’d add a few things, someday, rearrange some of the furniture if the spirit took her. But, by and large, this was Tim’s home, and she was happy in it.
“Hi, there,” she said, easing out of the filmy dressing gown that went with her new negligee—she loved negligees—and slipped into bed beside Tim, who was paging through a copy of Sports Illustrated. “You in there?”
He closed the magazine, tossed it onto the bedside table. “Not that week. It’s the swimsuit issue. I forgot I had it.”
Suzanna looked past him, noticing that he’d thrown the magazine so that the back cover faced up. “Swimsuit issue, huh? How lonely have you been?”
“Not that lonely,” he said, reaching for her, and she decided that it was okay to talk later. Maybe even tomorrow. What was her rush?
Except that Tim stopped, just as he was about to kiss her. “Suze?”
“Hmmm,” she said, reaching for the snap on his pajama bottoms. He didn’t wear tops, but he had the sexiest collection of pajama bottoms.
“About... us.”
He wanted to talk? Well, how about that.
“Us. Sure. What about us?”
“Well,” he said, and she sat up to look at him, because his voice sounded sort of strained. Not at all like him.
“Yes?” she urged, getting nervous. “What about us?”
He sat up as well, pulled a pillow from behind him and laid it in his lap, rested his elbows on it. “Remember that first night, Suze?”
She smiled. “You just remembered who seduced whom? If I give you a quarter, will you promise to forget again?”
“I think we can safely say it was pretty mutual, babe. But what I’m trying to remember is your answer to a question I had.”
“You had a question?” Suzanna shook her head, not understanding.
“Yeah. Oh, hell,” he said, throwing the pillow onto the floor. “Birth control, Suze. I asked you about birth control. I’m sure I did. And you said you were fine.”
Suzanna felt her stomach coiling into one huge knot. “I don’t... Oh, wait, yes, I do. You asked me if I was okay. That was it. Okay.”
“That’s what I remember. And you said you were fine.”
“I did?”
“Well, something like that. Maybe never better?”
“Never better? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re asking me?” Tim stabbed his fingers through his hair. “I thought it meant you were on the pill, something like that.”
“I see,” Suzanna said, caught between anger and anguish. “You thought I had sex so often that I needed to be on the pill? Different city every week, different man every night? Is that it?”
“No! Oh, cripes, I hate this. I didn’t think that, Suze. I guess I wasn’t really thinking.”
She looked down at her hands, saw that she’d laced her fingers together so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. “I thought you didn’t care. I mean, I thought you never said anything. And then you never used anything, or asked me to use anything...”
Nothing. He didn’t say a word. Silence clogged the room.
“Tim? Would it be so bad? I mean, if I were to get pregnant?”
“No,” he said.
Squeaked, actually. The word had come out in a definite squeak.
“I see,” she said, sliding out of the bed and picking up her dressing gown, which she’d laid over the bedside chair done up in stripes to match the hangings.
Then she took the dressing gown off again and climbed back into the bed. “No, I’m not leaving.”
“Good. Ah, Suze,” he said, reaching for her.
“You are,” she said, pushing at his chest with both hands. “Get out, Tim. Out of this bed, out of this room. Now.”
“You’re kidding, right? What did I say that was so terrible?”
“It isn’t what you said, Tim; it’s how you said it. And how you looked when you said it. Like a deer trapped in headlights. You thought I was on the pill. You did, didn’t you?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again, probably so she couldn’t listen to his tone and accuse him of anything else.
“And now that you know I’m not, you’re trying to pretend it doesn’t matter, that it would be just fine with you if I were to get pregnant. In a pig’s eye, Tim. It’s the last thing you want.”
Now he did speak. “You’re right, it is. Right now, Suze, just for right now. I mean, we just got married. Why can’t we have some time to ourselves first? Jack’s happy as a clam, having Candy, having Keely pregnant. I want kids. But I think I’d rather we waited a while, babe, that’s all. You could maybe quit your job next year, travel with me when I go on the road? I mean, what’s the rush?”
“Get... out,” Suzanna said, pointing toward the door. “Go downstairs, Tim, sit in your favorite chair, and think about this, okay? Next wife, Tim, discuss birth control before you hop into bed with her every five seconds for seven weeks—almost two whole months.”
He got out of the bed and actually headed toward the door, before stopping, coming over to her. “Are you saying that you’re... you know?”
“No, Tim. I’m not... you know. Of course I’m not. So you can rest easy about that. You just can’t do it in this bed. Not tonight. Now go away. Here, take this,” she ended, flinging his pillow at him.
A second pillow hit the side of the door just as he was leaving. “And don’t call me babe!”
It was only after he’d gone that Suzanna hopped out of bed and dug around in the desk in front of the window, hunting up a calendar, her hands trembling as she counted the days....