The New Man

Alec, Helen and Ginny found a shady spot at one end of a picnic table. Despite the crowds, Helen was grateful to sit for a few minutes, and she drained her lemonade even before she finished the gyro. They chatted about past craft fairs and how this one compared to others in the region.

When Ginny lost interest in the remnants of her gyro and asked if she could go closer to the band, Helen nodded. “But stay where I can see you.” Once her daughter was out of earshot, Helen asked, “Have your kids been in counseling?”

“We’ve tried it.” His expression still didn’t clear. “Lily seems okay, although I keep wondering what’ll happen when puberty hits. Dev just talks in monosyllables to the counselor. He tells me it’s stupid. He doesn’t want to talk about his mother.” Alec sighed. “We’re taking a break from it this summer.” He looked at her. “How about you? Have you seen anyone, or taken Ginny?”

She shook her head. “My health insurance, such as it is, doesn’t cover stuff like that. I just couldn’t afford it. I’m not sure I’d have wanted to go anyway. I’m afraid I’d have felt a little like your son does.”

She’d earned a shadow of a grin. “Don’t like spilling your guts to a stranger, huh?”

“It’s not at the top of my list,” Helen confessed. Besides, there were things she didn’t want to talk about, didn’t want to tell anyone, not even a counselor. With a sigh of her own, she wadded up her wrappings. “I’d better get back. It must be wall-to-wall in our booth. Nice as it is to sit here…”

“Duty calls.” He gathered his own garbage. “For me, too. I’ve enjoyed the break, though.”

“So have I.” More than she liked to admit even to herself. How long had it been since an attractive man had wanted to spend time with her? Maybe she’d never see him again, but she appreciated the boost to her ego.

She swung her legs over the bench and stood. “Maybe I’ll see you another day.”

“I hope so.” His gaze held hers over the table. “Would you have dinner with me some night, Helen?”

She shouldn’t have been so shocked, but…oh, dear. It had been a long time.

“Dinner?” she squeaked, then felt gauche.

He raised a brow. “Maybe a movie.”

Dinner? A date. That’s what he meant. Did she want to go out with a man? Helen wondered.

“Tough decision?” Alec’s tone was light, but he couldn’t be enjoying having a woman he’d asked out stare as if he’d suggested she strip for him.

“No, I…I’m so sorry! You just took me by surprise. I haven’t…” She flushed. “It’s been a long time, you see, and…” Better and better. “Yes,” she finished in a rush. “I think I’d like that.”

He didn’t puff up with indignation and say, You think? Instead, he nodded in an undemanding way. “I picked up one of your business cards. Is that your home phone number?”

“No, but I check that voice mail daily. Or, if you have a pen, I can give you my home number.”

She scribbled it on one of her business cards and watched as he tucked it carefully into his wallet. Then he smiled at her. “I’ll call,” he promised, and left.

She looked after him until he disappeared into the crowd, then went to fetch Ginny.

“Where’s that man?” her daughter asked, peering around as if he was going to leap out and say, Boo!

“He’s busy making sure the fair runs smoothly.” Helen steered Ginny ahead of her. “I hope Jo managed without us.”

The going was slow, with the crowd shuffling along, exclaiming over new delights and abruptly veering into booths, bumping into each other, apologizing, maneuvering strollers. Her friend looked like a drowning woman when Helen and Ginny squeezed into their tent.

“Did you have a good break?” Jo asked in a low voice as she rang up a sale.

“Wonderful. Thank you!”

“Excuse me,” a woman said right behind her.

Helen turned with a practiced smile. “May I help you?”

As the afternoon wore on, she didn’t have much time to think about Alec Fraser or the fact that he’d asked for her phone number, but it was always at the back of her mind. In brief pauses, she would picture his smile, or his face as he told her his wife had died.

We both knew she was dying, but we pretended.

Oh, how well she knew what that was like! The smiles, the way you avoided meeting each other’s eyes, the chatter to cover the sick dread, the wondering. Had Ben really thought he could get better, or had he known, too, that he was dying? Or she would ask herself, Am I being a coward in pretending to believe? In insisting on believing? Would it have been better for Ben to talk about his impending death than to keep up the front? Would she have been able to work through her own grief sooner if they had talked more frankly early on, when he still could? She didn’t know.

She hadn’t joined a support group for widows, but she’d thought about it. There were so many things she’d never say even to Jo and Kathleen because they hadn’t gone through that kind of loss. And her friends from before had disappeared from her life after the funeral and brief sympathy calls. Death made them uncomfortable. Or perhaps her ties with them had already eroded during the two years she’d been so occupied nursing Ben. She wasn’t sure. All she did know was that within a week or two of the funeral, the doorbell and phone had quit ringing. Maybe she’d ask Alec if it was the same for him.

It wasn’t very romantic of her to be excited about going on a date because he was a widower and they could talk about illness and death and grieving. But still… She knew he, too, had felt the connection. He might have regrets and guilt of his own he’d want to talk about.

Yes, she decided with new confidence, dating would be good for her. It didn’t have to be the first step to love, commitment and loss.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU HAVE A DATE?” Kathleen exclaimed in delight. “Good for you!”

“With a hottie,” Jo told her, grinning at Helen.

The three women sat at the kitchen table in the big brick house in Seattle’s Ravenna district where Helen and Kathleen still lived. Of the original three housemates, only Jo, now married, had moved out. She had just finished getting her master’s degree in librarianship at the University of Washington and had accepted a job with the Seattle Public Library.

Feeling pleasantly reminiscent as she sipped her orange spice tea, Helen thought of the huge changes in all their lives since that September when they came together under one roof. Three women used to living independent lives, they had rubbed along together with some difficulty at first. Jo had been sure she didn’t like children, and was appalled to discover that Helen had a six-year-old. Kathleen, the perfectionist—or the “princess,” as Jo had dubbed her—had made all her housemates uncomfortable with her insistence on a perfectly ordered and spotless home. Once upon a time, she’d alphabetized the soup cans, for goodness’ sake! Blond and elegantly beautiful, she had seemed out of place without a housekeeper and gardener.

And Helen… Well, she’d lived in such a daze of grief and forgetfulness, she could have stepped on their toes until they were black and blue, and never noticed. Neither she nor Ginny had been good company for a long time.

Helen was intensely grateful that Kathleen had let her move in, and that both women had been kind but not pitying. They had let her mourn, but also dragged her along with them on their journey of self-discovery as they began new lives.

They had both found love along the way, Jo with Kathleen’s brother Ryan and Kathleen with Logan, the cabinetmaker who had built the gorgeous cabinets that gave this old high-ceilinged kitchen such warmth. Unfortunately, that meant the other two women thought Helen should also be seeking true love. She could see the gleam in their eyes now.

“I thought,” she said sedately, “Alec and I could talk about what it’s like losing someone you love. And helping kids through it, and so on.”

Jo’s merriment faded.

Kathleen cleared her throat. “I suppose that is part of getting to know each other, but…gosh, as conversation goes, it sounds pretty grim. Surely the fact that he’s a widower isn’t the only reason you’re having dinner with him!”

Helen laughed at their shock. “No, of course not! Having that in common is an attraction for me, though. Honestly, I’m not very interested in dating. But I liked him, and he sounds like he’s going through a tough time with his son, and…I did think it might be good for me to be able to talk to someone who’d understand.”

Jo lifted her mug in salute. “Sex is a nice thing to have in common.”

Helen felt her cheeks warm. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

“Of course you are! It’s been three years.” Jo gave her a shrewd look. “No, it’s probably been way longer than that, hasn’t it?”

“Four years, two months,” she blurted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Oh, Lord, had she actually admitted she knew to the month?

Jo only gave a brisk nod. “There you go. I enjoy sex. Four years of celibacy sounds way too long to me.”