Wild about Harry

“Are you all right?” he asked in that marvelous accent.

Amy leaned against the counter, not entirely trusting her knees to support her, and drew in a deep breath. “I’m fine,” she lied.

“I don’t suppose you remember me…”

Amy didn’t remember Harry Griffith, except from old photographs and things Tyler had said, and she couldn’t recall seeing him at the funeral. “You knew Tyler,” she said, closing her eyes against a wave of dizziness.

“Yes,” he answered. His voice was gentle and somehow encouraging, like a touch. “I’d like to take you out for dinner tomorrow night, if you’ll permit.”

If you’ll permit. The guy talked like Cary Grant in one of those lovely old black-and-white movies on the Nostalgia Channel. “Ah—well—maybe you should just come here. Say seven o’clock?”

“Seven o’clock,” he confirmed. There was brief pause, then, “Mrs. Ryan? I’m very sorry—about Tyler, I mean. He was one of the best friends I ever had.”

Amy’s eyes stung, and her throat felt thick. “Yes,” she agreed. “I felt pretty much the same way about him. I-I’ll see you at seven tomorrow night. Do you have the address?”

“Yes,” he answered, and then the call was over.

It took Amy so long to hang up the receiver that Oliver finally pulled it from her hand and replaced it on the hook.

“Who was that?” Ashley asked. “Is something wrong with Grampa or Gramma?”

“No, sweetheart,” Amy said gently, bending to kiss the top of Ashley’s head, where her rich brown hair was parted. “It was only a friend of your daddy’s. He’s coming by for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Okay,” Ashley replied, going back to the table.

Amy took the hot dogs from the grill and served them, but she couldn’t eat because her stomach was jumping back and forth between its normal place and her windpipe. She went outside and sat at the picnic table in her expensive suit, watching as the sprinkler turned rhythmically, making its chicka-chicka sound.

She tried to assemble all the facts in her mind, but they weren’t going together very well.

Last night she’d dreamed—only dreamed—that Tyler had appeared in their bedroom. Amy could ascribe that to the spicy Mexican food she’d eaten for dinner the previous night, but what about the fact that he’d told her his friend Harry Griffith would call and ask to see her? Could it possibly be a wild coincidence and nothing more?

She pressed her fingers to her temples. The odds against such a thing had to be astronomical, but the only other explanation was that she was psychic or something. And Amy knew that wasn’t true.

If she’d had any sort of powers, she would have foreseen Tyler’s death. She would have done something about it, warned the doctors, anything.

Presently, Amy pulled herself together enough to go back inside the house. She ate one hot dog, for the sake of appearances, then went to her bathroom to shower and put on shorts and a tank top.

Oliver and Ashley were in the family room, arguing over which program to watch on TV, when Amy joined them. Unless the exchanges threatened to turn violent, she never interfered, believing that children needed to learn to work out their differences without a parent jumping in to referee.

The built-in mahogany shelves next to the fireplace were lined with photo albums, and Amy took one of the early volumes down and carried it to the couch.

There she kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the cushion, opening the album slowly, trying to prepare herself for the inevitable jolt of seeing Tyler smiling back at her from some snapshot.

After flipping the pages for a while, acclimating herself for the millionth time to a world that no longer contained Tyler Ryan, she began to look closely at the pictures.

2

The next day, on the terrace of a busy waterfront restaurant, Amy tossed a piece of sourdough bread to one of the foraging sea gulls and sighed. “For all I know,” she confided to her best friend, “Harry Griffith is an ax murderer. And I’ve invited him to dinner.”

Debbie’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “How bad can he be?” she asked reasonably. “Tyler liked him a lot, didn’t he? And your husband had pretty good judgment when it came to human nature.”

Amy nodded, pushing away what remained of her spinach and almond salad. “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly.

A waitress came and refilled their glasses of iced tea, and Debbie added half a packet of sweetener to hers, stirring vigorously. “So what’s really bugging you? That you saw Tyler in a dream and he said a guy named Harry Griffith would come into your life, and now that’s about to come true?”

“Wouldn’t that bother you?” Amy countered, exasperated. “Don’t look now, Deb, but things like this don’t happen every day!”

Debbie looked thoughtful. “The subconscious mind is a fantastic thing,” she mused. “We don’t even begin to comprehend what it can do.”

Amy took a sip of her tea. “You think I projected Tyler from some shadowy part of my brain, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Debbie answered matter-of-factly.

“Okay, fine. I can accept that theory. But how do you account for the fact that Tyler mentioned Harry Griffith, specifically and by name? How could that have come from my subconscious mind, when I never actually knew the man?”

Debbie shrugged. “There were pictures in the albums, and I’m sure Tyler probably talked about him often. I suppose his parents must have talked about the guy sometimes, too. We pick up subliminal information from the people around us all the time.”

Her friend’s theory made sense, but Amy was still unconvinced. If she’d only conjured an image of Tyler for her own purposes, she would have had him hold her, kiss her, tell her the answers to cosmic mysteries. She would never have spent those few precious moments together talking about some stranger from Australia.

Amy shook her head and said nothing.

Debbie reached out to take her hand. “Listen, Amy, what you need is a vacation. You’re under a lot of stress and you haven’t resolved your conflicts over Tyler’s death. Park the kids with Tyler’s parents and go somewhere where the sun’s shining. Sunbathe, spend money with reckless abandon, live a little.”

Amy recalled briefly that she’d always wanted to visit Australia, then pushed the thought from her mind. A trip like that wouldn’t be much fun all by herself. “I have work to do,” she hedged.

“Right,” Debbie answered. “You really need the money, don’t you? Tyler had a whopping insurance policy, and then there was the trust fund from your grandmother. Add to that the pile you’ve made on your own with this real estate thing—”

“All right,” Amy interrupted. “You’re right. I’m lucky, I have plenty of money. But work fills more than just financial needs, you know.”

Debbie’s look was wryly indulgent, and she didn’t speak at all. She just tapped the be-ringed fingers of her right hand against the upper part of her left arm, waiting for Amy to dig herself in deeper.

“Listen,” Amy whispered hoarsely, not wanting diners at the neighboring tables to overhear, “I know what you’re really saying, okay? I’m young. I’m healthy. I should be…having sex with some guy. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, the smart money is on celibacy these days!”

“I’m not telling you to go out and seduce the first man you meet, Amy,” Debbie said frankly, making no apparent effort to moderate her tone. “What I’m really saying is that you need to stop mourning Tyler and get on with your life.”

Amy snatched up her check, reached for her purse and pushed back her chair. “Thanks,” she snapped, hot color pooling in her cheeks. “You’ve been a real help!”

“Amy…”

“I have a meeting,” Amy broke in. And then she walked away from the table without even looking back.

Debbie caught up to her at the cash register. “My brother has a condo at Lake Tahoe,” she persisted gently. “You could go there for a few days and just walk along the shore and look at the trees and stuff. You could visit the house they used in Bonanza.”

Despite her nervous and irritable mood, Amy had to smile. “You make it sound like a pilgrimage,” she replied, picking up her credit card receipt and placing it neatly in a pocket of her brown leather purse. “Shall I burn candles and say, ‘Spirits of Hoss, Adam and Little Joe, show me the way’?”

Now it was Debbie who laughed. “Your original hypothesis was correct, Ryan. You are indeed crazy.”

It was an uncommonly sunny day, even for late June, and the sidewalks were crowded with tourists. Amy spoke softly, “I’m sorry, Deb. I was really a witch in there.”

Debbie grinned. “True, but being a friend means knowing somebody’s faults and liking them anyway. And to show you I do have some confidence in your reasoning processes, expect my cousin Max over tonight.” She paused to think a moment, then her pretty face was bright with inspiration. “Max will wear coveralls and pretend to be fixing the dishwasher or something. That way, there’ll be a man in the house, in case this Griffith guy really is an ax murderer, but Mr. Australia will never guess you were nervous about having him over.”

Amy wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she had neither the time nor the energy to try to talk Debbie out of it. She had an important meeting scheduled and, after that, some shopping to do at the Pike Place Market.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Amy promised, as the two women went in their separate directions.

Because she didn’t know whether to go with elegant or simple and typically American, Amy settled on a combination of the two and bought fresh salmon steaks to be seasoned, wrapped in foil and cooked on the backyard barbecue. She made a potato salad as well, and set out chocolate éclairs from an upscale bakery for dessert.

She was setting the picnic table with good silver when a jolting sensation in the pit of her stomach alerted her to the fact that she wasn’t alone.

Amy looked up, expecting to see Debbie’s cousin Max or perhaps even Tyler. Instead, she found herself tumbling end over end into the bluest pair of eyes she’d ever seen.

“Hello,” the visitor said.

Oliver, who had apparently escorted their guest from the front door, was clearly excited. “He sounds just like Crocodile Dundee when he talks, doesn’t he, Mom?” he crowed.

The dark-haired man was incredibly handsome—Amy recalled seeing his picture once or twice—and he smiled down at Oliver with quiet warmth. “We’re mates, me and Mick Dundee,” he said in a very thick and rhythmic down-under accent.

“Wow!” Oliver shouted.

The visitor chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair. Then he noticed Ashley, who was standing shyly nearby, holding her beloved cat and looking up at the company with wide eyes.

“My name is Ashley Ryan,” she said solemnly. “And this is my cat, Rumpel. That’s short for Rumpelteazer.”

Amy was about to intercede—after all, this man hadn’t even had a chance to introduce himself yet—but before she could, he reached out and patted Rumpel’s soft, striped head.

“Ah,” he said wisely. “This must be a Jellicle cat, then.”

Ashley’s answering smile was sudden and so bright as to be blinding. She’d named Rumpel for one of the characters in the musical Cats: Tyler had taken her to see the show at Seattle’s Paramount Theater several months before his death. Ever since, the play had served as a sort of connection between Ashley and the father she had loved so much.

“Harry Griffith,” the man said, solemnly offering his hand to Ashley in greeting. He even bowed, ever so slightly, and his mouth quirked at one corner as he gave Amy a quick, conspiratorial glance. “I’m very glad to meet you, Ashley Ryan.”

Amy felt herself spinning inwardly, off balance, like a washing machine with all the laundry wadded up on one side of the tub. She reached out, resting one hand against the edge of the picnic table.

Harry’s indigo eyes came back to her face, and she thought she saw tender amusement in their depths. He wore his expensive clothes with an air only a rich and accomplished man could have managed, and Amy concluded that he was used to getting reactions from the woman he encountered.

It annoyed her, and her voice was a little brisk when she said, “Hello, Mr. Griffith.”

His elegant mouth curved slightly, and the ink-blue eyes danced. “I’m very glad to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Ryan. But since Tyler was one of my best friends, I’d be more comfortable having you call me Harry.”

“Harry.” The name came out of Amy’s mouth sounding like primitive woman’s first attempt at speech. “My name is Amy.”

“I know,” Harry answered, and, oddly, his voice affected Amy like a double dose of hot-buttered rum, finding its way into her veins and coursing through her system. Leaving her dizzy.

“S-sit down,” Amy said, gesturing toward the picnic table.

“I’d like that,” Harry replied. “But first I’d better tell you that there’s a man in coveralls out front, ringing your doorbell.”

Debbie’s cousin Max, no doubt. Although she knew intuitively that she wouldn’t need protection from a make-believe dishwasher repairman, Amy was relieved to have something to do besides standing there feeling as if she were about to topple over the edge of a precipice.

“Please,” Amy said. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.” As she hurried into the house, she couldn’t help remembering what Tyler had said, that she was meant to marry Harry Griffith and have two children by him. She was glad no one else could possibly know about the quicksilver, heated fantasies that idea had produced.

Sure enough, she found Debbie’s cousin peering through the glass in the front door.

She opened it. “Max? Listen, you really don’t need—”

“Can’t be too careful,” the balding middle-aged man said, easing past Amy with his toolbox in hand. Then, in a much louder voice, he added, “Just show me to your dishwasher, and I’ll make short order of that leak.”

“You do understand that the dishwasher isn’t broken?” Amy inquired in a whisper as she led the way to the kitchen.

He replied with a wink, set his toolbox in the center of the table, took out a screwdriver and went right to work.

Amy drew three or four deep breaths and let them out slowly before pushing open the screen door and facing Harry Griffith again.

He had already won over both the kids; Ashley was beaming with delight as he pushed her higher and higher in the tire swing Tyler had hung from a branch of the big maple tree a few years before. Oliver was waiting his turn with uncharacteristic patience.

Amy had a catch in her throat as she watched the three of them together. Until that moment, she’d managed to kid herself that she could be both mother and father to her children, but they were blossoming under Harry’s attention like flowers long-starved for water and sunlight.

She watched them for a few bittersweet moments, then went to the grill to check the salmon. The sound of her children’s laughter lifted her heart and, at the same time, filled her eyes with tears.

Amy was drying her cheek with the back of one hand when both Oliver and Ashley raced past, arguing in high-pitched voices.

“I’ll do it!” Oliver cried.

“No, I want to!” Ashley replied.

Rumpel wisely took refuge under the rhododendron beside the patio.

“What…?” Amy turned to see Harry Griffith standing directly behind her.

He shrugged and grinned in a way that tugged at her heart. “I didn’t mean to cause a disruption,” he said. “I guess I should have gone back to the car for the cake myself, instead of sending the kids for it.”

Amy sniffled. “Did you know Tyler very well?” she asked.

Harry was standing so close that she could smell his after-shave and the fabric softener in his sweater, and together, those two innocent scents caused a virtual riot in her senses. “We spent the better part of a year together,” he answered. “And we kept in touch, as much as possible, after high school and college.” He paused, taking an apparent interest in the fragrant white lilacs clambering over the white wooden arbor a few yards away. “I probably knew Ty better than most people—” Harry’s gaze returned to her, and her heart welcomed it “—and not as well as you did.”

Smoothly, one hand in the pocket of his tailored gray slacks, Harry reached out and, with the pad of his thumb, wiped a stray tear from just beneath Amy’s jawline. Before she could think of anything to say, the kids returned, each carrying one end of a white bakery box.

Harry thanked them both in turn, making it sound as though they’d smuggled an important new vaccine across enemy lines.

“I guess we’d better eat,” Amy said brightly. “It’s getting late.”

Oliver and Ashley squeezed in on either side of Harry, leaving Amy alone on the opposite bench of the picnic table. She felt unaccountably jealous of their attention, suddenly wanting it all for herself.

“Mom says you and Dad were buddies,” Oliver announced, once the salmon and potato salad and steamed asparagus had been dealt with. He was looking expectantly at their guest.

Harry put his hand on Oliver’s wiry little shoulder. “The very best of buddies,” he confirmed. “Tyler was one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”

Oliver’s freckled face fairly glowed with pride and pleasure, but in the next instant he looked solemn again. “Sometimes,” he confessed, with a slight trace of the lisp Amy had thought he’d mastered, “I can’t remember him too well. I was only four when he…when he died.”

“Maybe I can help you recall,” Harry said gently, taking a wallet from the hip pocket of his slacks and carefully removing an old, often-handled snapshot. “This was taken over at Lake Chelan, right here in Washington State.”

Ashley and Oliver nearly bumped heads in their eagerness to look at the picture of two handsome young men grinning as they held up a pair of giant rainbow trout for the camera.

“Your dad and I were seventeen then.” Harry frowned thoughtfully. “We were out in the rowboat that day, as I recall. Your Aunt Charlotte was annoyed with us and she swam ashore, taking the oars with her. It was humiliating, actually. An old lady in a paddleboat had to come out and tow us back to the dock.”

Amy chuckled, feeling a sweet warmth flood her spirit as she remembered Ty telling that same story.

After they’d had some of Harry’s cake—they completely scorned the éclairs—Amy sent both her protesting children into the house to get ready for bed. She and Harry remained outside at the picnic table, even after the sun went down and the mosquitoes came and the breeze turned chilly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to Ty’s funeral,” he said, after one long and oddly comfortable silence. “I was in the outback, and didn’t find out until some three weeks after he’d passed on.”

“I wouldn’t have known whether you were there or not. I was in pretty much of a muddle.” Amy’s voice went a little hoarse as the emotional backwash of that awful day flooded over her.

Harry ran his fingers through his hair, the first sign of agitation Amy had seen him reveal. “I knew the difference,” he said. “I needed to say goodbye to Tyler. Matter of fact, I needed to bellow at him that he had a hell of a nerve going and dying that way when he was barely thirty-five.”

“I was angry with him, too,” Amy said softly. “One day he was fine, the next he was in the hospital. The doctor said it would be a routine operation, nothing to worry about, and when I saw Ty before surgery, he was making jokes about keeping his appendix in a jar.” She paused, and a smile faltered on her mouth, then fell away. She went on to describe what happened next, even though she was sure Harry already knew the tragic details, because for some reason she needed to say it all.

“Tyler had some kind of reaction to the anesthetic and went into cardiac arrest. The surgical team tried everything to save him, of course, but they couldn’t get his heart beating again. He was just…gone.”

Harry closed warm, strong fingers around Amy’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

One of the patio doors slid open, and Amy looked up, expecting to see Ashley or Oliver standing there, making a case for staying up another hour. Instead, she was jolted to find cousin Max, complete with coveralls and toolbox.

Amy was horrified that she’d left the man kneeling on the kitchen floor throughout the evening, half his body swallowed up by an appliance that didn’t even need repairing. “Oh, Max…I’m sorry, I—”

Max waggled a sturdy finger at her. “Everything’s fine now, Mrs. Ryan.” He looked at Harry and wriggled his eyebrows, clearly stating, without another word, that he had sized up the dinner guest and decided he was harmless.

In Amy’s opinion, Max couldn’t have been more wrong. Harry Griffith was capable of making her feel things, remember things, want things. And that made him damn dangerous.

“Mr. Griffith was just leaving,” she said suddenly. “Maybe you could walk him to his car.”

Harry tossed her a curious smile, gave his head one almost imperceptible shake and stood. “I’ve some business to settle with you,” he said to Amy, “but I guess it will keep until morning.”

Amy closed her eyes for a moment, shaken again. She knew what that business was without asking, because Tyler had told her. This was all getting too spooky.

Harry was already standing, so Amy stood, too.

“It’s been a delightful evening,” he said. “Thank you for everything.”

His words echoed in Amy’s mind as he walked away to join Max. It’s been a delightful evening. She wasn’t used to Harry’s elegant, formal way of speaking: Tyler would have swatted her lightly on the bottom and said, Great potato salad, babe. How about rubbing my back?

“You’re making me sound like a redneck,” a familiar voice observed, and Amy whirled to see Tyler sitting in the tire swing, grinning at her in the light of the rising moon.

She raised one hand, as if to summon Harry or Max back, so that someone else could confirm the vision, then let it fall back to her side. “It’s true,” she said, stepping closer to the swing and keeping her voice down, so the kids wouldn’t think she was talking to herself again. “Don’t deny it, Ty. You enjoyed playing king of the castle. In fact, sometimes you did everything but swing from vines and yodel while beating on your chest with both fists.”

Tyler, or his reflection, raised one eyebrow. “Okay, so I was a little macho sometimes. But I loved you, Spud. I was a good provider and a faithful husband.”

Instinct, not just wishful thinking, told Amy that Ty’s claim was true. He’d been the ideal life partner, except that he’d thrown the game before they’d even reached halftime.

“Go ahead, gloat,” Amy said, folding her arms. “You told me Harry Griffith would turn up, and he did. And he said something about discussing business with me tomorrow, so you’re batting a thousand.”

Tyler grinned again, looking cocky. “You thought you were dreaming, didn’t you?”

“Actually, no,” Amy said. “It’s more likely that you’re some sort of projection of my subconscious mind.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tyler made the swing spin a couple of times, the way he’d done on so many other summer nights, before he’d single-handedly brought the world to an end by dying. Somewhere in that library of albums inside the house, Amy had a picture of him holding an infant Ashley on his lap while they both turned in a laughing blur. “How could your subconscious mind have known Harry was about to show up?”

Amy shrugged. “There are a lot of things going on in this world that we don’t fully understand.”

“You can say that again,” Tyler said, a little smugly.

He still couldn’t resist an opportunity to be one up on the opposition in any argument, Amy reflected, with affection and acceptance. It was the lawyer in him. “Debbie’s theory is that you represent some unspoken wish for love and romance.”

Tyler laughed. “Unspoken, hell. I’m telling you straight out, Spud. You’re not going to find a better guy than Harry, so you’d better grab him while you’ve got the chance.”