Paul stood with his back to her, buttoning his shirt. Jean remembered the times she'd buttoned it for him. She remembered running her hands over his chest and tangling her fingers in his chest hair. He'd smile and kiss the side of her neck, then they'd get giddy with love and end up in the bed or on the carpet. Sometimes they'd make it out the door only to end up on the top staircase.
She made a move toward him, then changed her mind. They couldn't go back. They couldn't even go forward. It was over for them, completely over. Their marriage had died the same day as Sonny, and soon one of them would have to either resurrect it or bury it.
She went to her dressing table and fastened in her pearl and sapphire earrings. A touch of blue to brighten up a drab day. Outside the rain beat against the window..
"Are you worried about the trial, Paul?"
"No. Whatever is going to happen will happen. Worry won't change it."
When had he become so stoic? The day he'd been summoned back to her side, the day she'd begged him not to leave?
"I'll be there rooting for you. I want you to know that. I believe in you."
"Thank you, Jean." He pecked her on the cheek.
They were so infuriatingly civilized. She picked up her purse with the pearl clasp and fished out her car keys.
"I'm leaving early to pick up Maggie. I hope you don't mind going to the courthouse by yourself."
"Be careful, Jean. The roads will be slick."
Of course he didn't mind. He probably preferred being alone, alone with his daydreams of Susan Riley. Jean clenched her hands around her purse and tried to remain calm.
After the trial. She'd wait until after the trial to have it out with Paul.
"See you later." She blew a kiss in his direction, but he made no attempt to catch it. Resolute, she hurried down the stairs. She was not going to cry. She was through being weak.
In the garage, she slid onto her leather seat and sat in the car to collect herself. For a fleeting moment she considered how easy it would be to lock the garage doors and turn on the engine. She would just drift off to sleep.
No. She was through taking the easy way out.
Jean eased the car out of the garage and went to pick up Maggie. Before heading off to the courthouse, they sat together at Maggie's kitchen table drinking coffee.
"How's it going with Beth Ann?" Jean asked.
"She's getting better, I think. Slowly." Maggie stirred two lumps of sugar in her coffee. She'd put on weight since Christmas, and new lines were etched around her mouth. "I never knew how she felt. Bill and I were so happy, so absorbed in each other, and Beth Ann felt totally left out. Unloved . . . God, Jean, how could I make my own daughter feel unloved?"
"You didn't do it intentionally, Maggie. You're being too hard on yourself."
"That's what Dr. Walters says."
"He's right. You should listen to him."
They sipped in silence while rain pattered against the windows.
"Everything's going to turn out all right, Maggie."
"I hope so. I really hope so." Maggie finished her coffee, then gathered the cups and put them in the dishwasher. With her back to Jean, she asked, "How are things with you?"
"I'm afraid we're not going to make it, Maggie."
"Yes, you will. All you have to do is hang in there. Paul will come around."
"I don't know anymore whether I want him to come around."
"Jean!" Maggie spun around. "How can you say that, after all you've been through?"
"Look, Maggie. We've both tried. God knows, we have. But it's simply not working."
"Give it time, Jean."
"How long, Maggie. A year? Two years? Ten?" Jean stood up and gathered her purse. "The fact is, there's something essential missing between Paul and me, and all the time in the world's not going to put it back."
"Do you still love him, Jean?"
Jean swallowed the tears she felt clogging her throat. "I don't know, Maggie. I don't know."
Maggie squeezed her hand. "You'll be okay, Jean."
"So will you."
As they walked together, arms linked, to Jean's car, she prayed that it would be so ... for both of them.
o0o
Jo Lisa stood on the beach staring out over the ocean. With the rain beating down on her head, she relived the past.
Dead. Brett was dead.
She pictured him guiding the car over the beach, deliberately shutting her out of his mind as he headed toward the water.
Dead.
She pictured the look of surprise on his face as the first wave caught the car and pulled him toward his watery grave.
Had he tried to escape? At the very last minute did he remember that he loved her and try to turn his car around and drive back toward the shore?
She'd lied to her sister. She'd loved Brett. Not in the beginning. At first it had been a game with her, a game to prove to herself that she was better than her sister, at least in this one way.
Struggling under the burden of a sick child and a wife who spent most of her energy in child care, Brett had been ripe for the picking.
And she'd picked him.
Every time he'd been alone, she was there waiting for him. She'd worn clothes to entice him, lavished compliments on him, flirted outrageously with him..
She remembered their first time. It had been in the front seat of his car. They'd left the rest of the family and gone to pick up hamburgers. It had been dark and raining.
She'd moved close, rubbed her hands on his legs.
"Jo Lisa . . . Stop that." Playfully he had slapped her hands away.
"Why?" She ran a fingernail down his zipper. "Don't you like it, Brett?"
"I like it, Jo Lisa. I like it too much." They stared at each other, and the windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm in the rain.
Suddenly he swerved onto a back road, racing the car recklessly over potholes and mud holes until they came to a small turnoff into the trees.
They grabbed at each other. Hunger made them wild, guilt made them desperate. Then afterward they’d pulled apart and stared straight ahead.
"Jo Lisa. I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me."
"I don’t either.” That was only partially true. She’d wanted him to like her, but has she really meant to go that far?
“Susan can never know.”
“She won’t hear it from me.”
"Promise?"
"I promise."
They straightened their clothes, and he started the car.
"It won't happen again, Jo Lisa."
They'd both known it would, even then.
And it had, repeatedly. They were wild for each other. Once they'd even made furtive love in the bathroom at Bessie's house while the whole family sat around the dining room table eating turkey.
She'd loved him all right, and he'd loved her, loved her to death. His death. In the end he hadn't been able to bear the guilt. He'd spared Susan the pain of saying good-bye, but he hadn't spared Jo Lisa. They'd made love on her bed with the windows open and the smells of spring filling the room.
"I'm leaving, Jo Lisa."
"Where are you going?"
"Leaving and never coming back."
With her skirt hiked over her hips and her rhinestone buttons pressing into his chest, she'd tried to make him forget all the reasons he had for going. And when it was all over, she knew she'd failed.
He'd held her face in his hands and gazed into her eyes.
"Jo Lisa, I can't decide if hell is in leaving you or in keeping you." He'd kissed her softly on the lips and walked away without looking back.
Jo Lisa knelt on the beach and picked a seashell out of the sand. Its pearly pink center gleamed in the palm of her hand. Still wearing her high heels she walked out into the sound and washed the seashell. Waves lapped at her ankles and sand sucked at her shoes. On the horizon she could see the outlines of the barrier islands. They seemed deceptively close, as if she might walk there.
For a moment Jo Lisa thought about keeping on walking. The water would eventually close over her head and the tides would carry her away, perhaps to the same place they'd carried Brett. Then the two of them could be together, sinners, joined in death.
She pushed her wet hair back from her face, then felt her cheek. It still stung where Susan had hit her.
What was she going to do about Susan?
Slipping the seashell in her pocket, Jo Lisa turned and walked back onto the beach. Overhead a laughing gull called. She took off her shoes and made her way to Beach Boulevard. The rain washed her tracks away so she might never have been there at all.
Standing on the edge of the beach looking back, Jo Lisa wished it were that easy to erase the past.
o0o
Susan arose slowly from her muddy yard and gazed around as if she had stumbled onto enemy territory. Which way to turn? Which way to go?
She lifted her face, hoping the rain would wash away her hurt. The gesture was futile. Nothing could take away this kind of pain.
Creeping along as if she were breakable, she went inside and stood under the shower, clothes and all, stood while the water washed the mud down the drain, stood while everything she'd believed in went down the drain with it.
o0o
Nurse Cindy O’Connell was on the witness stand. She hated the position she was in – caught between two doctors, both telling a different story.
"Miss O'Connell, you were head nurse in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit the night of Mark Baxter's Code Blue?" She was so nervous she couldn’t speak. “Miss O’Connell?”
Judge Mayhall leaned down and said, “Please answer the question, Miss O’Connell.”
"Yes.”
"You were there when the alarm sounded?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell the court in your own words what happened?"
She was going to be hyperventilating if she didn't settle down. She couldn’t look at the two doctors involved.
"Miss O'Connell?"
She opened her mouth, started to speak. In the back of the courtroom the door flew open and Dr. Scott Matthew strode through. His raincoat flapped around his long legs and droplets of water flew off his wet hair as he made his way to a seat. Heads turned. Paul's lawyer smiled.
Dr. Scott Matthew. How could she have overlooked Dr. Scott Matthew?
She remembered that night—her frantic phone call to Curt announcing the funny murmur she heard, his statement that there was no cause for alarm, the rapid drop in Mark's blood pressure, the Code Blue, the frantic fight to save him, Paul's order to prepare Mark for surgery.
They'd worked with the speed of demons, and just as they'd wheeled him out of SICU, she'd heard footsteps running down the hall.
"Is this the Code Blue?" Dr. Scott Matthew, cardiologist, had bent over the gurney and put his stethoscope on Mark's chest. He'd practically run alongside the gurney as they rushed toward surgery.
Someone had shouted that Paul was waiting, and they'd roared on down the hall, Dr. Scott Matthew forgotten.
He'd heard the murmur that indicated the valve Curt put in had become unseated, the same one she had heard, the same one Paul Tyler had heard. Cindy would stake her life on it. And now he was back to testify.
She was off the hook. Dr. Matthew would corroborate Paul’s story, making Cindy’s testimony merely another piece of supporting evidence rather than putting her in the position of being the key witness who brought Curt down.
Even though Curt was a bit arrogant, he was a good doctor, and fun to work with. On the other hand, Paul was all business. Cindy hated what she had to do.
The plaintiff's attorney, looking more and more puzzled, started to prompt her again, but Cindy began to speak. She started by telling about hearing the strange heart murmur and her subsequent call to Dr. Curtis Blake. At his table Curt looked shell-shocked.
Resolute, she continued her testimony, every word the truth, every word exonerating Dr. Paul Tyler. When it was all over and she made her way back to her seat, a strange peace settled over her. She was nurse, a good one, and she'd just proved it.
o0o
The courthouse hallway was crowded with reporters shouting questions at Paul and his attorneys.
"What does Cindy O'Connell's testimony mean for Dr. Tyler?"
"Is Dr. Scott Matthew a surprise witness?"
"Will Dr. Matthew's testimony corroborate Miss O'Connell's?"
"What does today's testimony mean for Dr. Curtis Blake?"
Paul's attorneys hurried him through the crowd with a terse no comment to all questions. Outside the rain had turned to a light drizzle.
Paul stood in front of his car with his attorneys.
"It looks good for you, Paul," Rice, the youngest partner in the firm said. "Cindy O'Connell helped us, and I think Dr. Matthew will cinch it."
"Yeah, it looks real good," Grimsley, the grizzled old veteran of the firm said. "But don't count on anything. The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings, and the fat lady is those twelve people sitting in the jury box."
Paul shook their hands. "I appreciate everything you're doing."
"We plan to charge you handsomely." Rice clapped him on the shoulder. "Keep your chin up, Doc."
Paul drove along Beach Boulevard, glad that he and Jean were in separate cars. He got out along the stretch of beach where he and Susan had once walked hand in hand. Wet sand clung to his shoes as he made his way down to the water.
Chances of a good verdict were looking better. Then why wasn't he happy?
He skipped a shell across the water, watching it bounce before sinking to the bottom. Somewhere out there in the depths of the sea, dolphins frolicked. Maybe he would get his boat out of dry dock. Maybe that's what he needed, to go skimming over the waves with the wind in his hair and sea spray on his face. Riding the breakers in his sloop he might once again capture the feeling of freedom that had eluded him for the last six months.
He got back into his car and went to the hospital to do rounds. Twice he passed by the doorway to Jeffy's room, and twice he made himself go on by.
He had no right to go inside.
o0o
It was very late when he came home, and Jean was already in bed. Paul eased in beside her, planning to turn on his back and feign sleep. But his conscience smote him.
He touched her shoulder lightly, and she rolled into his arms. Her body was lithe and trim under the satin gown, and he told himself he should feel something more than an overpowering sense of obligation.
Perhaps he wasn't trying hard enough. He thought of pushing aside her straps and trying one more time; but in the end he knew he couldn't.
Perhaps she would be ready and willing and passably passionate, but where was the joy? Where was the love?