“Hi,” she greeted me. She smiled, a tired smile certainly, but still a smile. She was holding up reasonably well, I thought. I don’t know how I’d have done under the circumstances.
“You okay?” I asked before I stepped in. “I mean, is it okay for me to be here?”
“Of course,” she said, holding the door open for me. “Everyone’s gone. Finally.”
I stepped in. She closed the door behind me, then bent her head down slightly and came toward me with her arms open.
“God, what a day,” she sighed. “Could you just hold me for a minute?”
“Yeah, c’mon,” I agreed. She came to me, and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. I felt her breath through my shirt, each movement of her chest deep, exhausted. She felt good. I had to remind myself of the circumstances; after all, her husband had just been murdered.
“This feels good,” she whispered after a moment. “It’s been a long time since anyone held me.”
“You’ve been through the mill, haven’t you?”
“God, you don’t know. When the police started asking me where I was last night, and how Conrad and I got along, it was just too much. Then there were the phone calls, the arrangements. I had to race to the bank, close all our accounts, reopen them in my name only before the bank shut them down for probate. The insurance people, the calls from the university, the hospital. All Conrad’s friends in New York and Boston.”
“News travels fast, doesn’t it?”
She rocked gently in my arms, leaning against me as if she needed someone to hold her up. “Yes. Fortunately, Dr. Lingo went down to the morgue to identify the body. I didn’t have to do that. But they’ll have him out in the funeral home tomorrow.”
She raised her head. “You must be beat, too.”
“It’s been a rough couple of days. Yeah.”
“Can I make you a drink?” she said, pulling away from me, on her own two feet again now.
“It might put me to sleep.”
“Then you can crash on the couch,” she said. “I could use one, myself. What can I fix you?”
She reached over, turned the dial that controlled the kitchen lights. The level rose enough to where we could get a good look at each other. She looked even better in the light. Apparently, I looked worse.
“What happened to you? What’s that? Harry, you’ve got blood on your shirt.” She gasped.
I looked down. A few splatters of red stained the front of my white shirt. Damn, that stuff’s hard to get out, and I don’t have that many decent dress shirts left.
“I had a little run-in with someone. Seems I did a bounce or two off a wall. Fortunately, it was just my thick skull.”
“Oh, God, let me see.” She spun me around, turned the lights up all the way. “Harry, this looks nasty. What am I going to do with you?”
She disappeared into the small bathroom just off the kitchen. I heard her fumbling around in the medicine cabinet.
“Rachel, it’s no big deal,” I said. “I probably just need to wash it off.”
“No big deal, my eye. Those closure strips are hanging there like laundry on a line. You’ll be lucky not to wind up needing stitches.”
“Really, it’s okay.” Now that she’d mentioned the drink, I wanted that more than anything else.
She came back in with hydrogen peroxide, bandages, antibiotic ointment. “Here, sit down.” She motioned toward the kitchen table. It was easier to take a chair than argue about it.
“You’re a mess,” she chided. “Can’t you stay out of trouble for a minute?”
“I usually don’t have a problem with a minute or two,” I said. “An hour, though, and I’m pushing it.”
Her hands were gentle, professional. She was the only person who’d touched me in the last two days without causing me pain. “You’re a pro,” I said.
“Thanks. Actually, I am. I used to do this for a living.”
“What, patch banged-up detectives?”
“No, silly. I went back to school after Conrad and I got married, when he was in his residency. Got my degree in nursing.”
I turned. “You were a nurse?”
“Yeah, I worked full-time at it until we moved back down here.” She brought her hands up to the side of my head and moved me back into position. “This might hurt a little. I’m going to pull these old closures off and replace them.”
I got set for some serious pain, but got only a minor sting instead. “You are good. So how come you quit working?”
“I don’t know. Connie was making such good money. I worked part-time, but there wasn’t the driving need for it like when we were younger and he was in school. I hate to sound cliched, but those really were the good old days. Our salad days. We were young, up to our ears in debt, living on Hamburger Helper. Sometimes without the hamburger.”
I laughed. She wiped the last of the dried blood off my scalp and got everything taped down. She started pulling the wrappers from the bandage together, knotting them into a neat ball to throw away. Her voice became almost wistful.
“Connie and I loved each other then. Things were really going well for us. Something happened somewhere. I never quite figured out what.”
I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you fix me that drink now? Then I’d like to hear about it.”
She fumbled around under the kitchen cabinet for a minute or so, and came up with a perfectly iced down, exquisite Scotch and soda.
“You remembered,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She was suddenly embarrassed. “Do you not drink Scotch anymore? I can get you something-”
“This is fine,” I said.
“Would you like to go into the den?”
“Sure, as long as you think the old biddies aren’t spying on your house.”
She laughed quietly as she stood up and pushed her chair back under the kitchen table. “It’s past their bedtimes.”
We walked out of the kitchen and down a long carpeted hall. Off to the right, the living room was dark and unoccupied. I could see enough to tell, however, that it was filled with expensive antiques, the kind you can only afford to keep when you’re doing exceptionally well and don’t have children.
“How come you and Connie never had kids?”
She stepped down into the sunken den and turned a knob on the wall. The lights came up. The room was much more relaxed without homicide detectives hanging around. A comfortable couch sat in the middle, with a projection screen TV against the opposite wall. The room was lined with books, an expensive stereo, and shelves of records and CDs.
She sat on the couch and set her drink down on an end table. “Connie didn’t want them,” she said. “Frankly, I never felt the urge either. So I never made an issue of it.”
“What happened between you two?” I asked, settling into the couch a space or so over from her. Instinctively, I knew I wanted to sit next to her, but not too next to her.
“We were married twelve years,” she said after a moment. “A lot can happen in that time. The stresses of professions, especially medicine. Connie worked eighty, a hundred hours a week. We got to where we went days at a time without seeing each other. That puts a strain on a marriage. It’s a brutal system, but you can’t do anything about it. Marriages are a casualty.”
“I can imagine.”
I sipped the drink. She’d made it strong, the Scotch as old as their marriage. It burned down my throat for about three seconds and then exploded into pure pleasure. Good thing I don’t drink much; I’m too prone to enjoy myself at it.
“Then there were the other women.”
“Other women?” I asked, shocked.
Her stare said: oh, you naive and innocent young boy. “Infidelity is another occupational hazard in the medical profession. Think about it. Men and women, intelligent, educated, thrown together in a high-pressure, tense, dramatic environment where lives are lost and saved every day. It’s pure romance. I’m no fool; I knew Conrad was handsome, charming when he wanted to be. And I know nurses, especially the young ones. The ones who go wild over being on an open heart team. Real living on the edge stuff.”