The New Man

“Sounds good.” Helen bent to kiss the top of her head. “I’ll have the same.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” Alec said. “Do you ladies mind if I join you?”

Ginny eyed him but remembered her manners. “No, that’s okay.”

Alec did know how to talk to kids well enough to get her chatting about what things she especially liked that were for sale outside.

“There’s pretty jewelry,” she conceded, “but I don’t like jewelry. I’m not old enough. I like some of the paintings, but some of them aren’t very good. The stained glass right next to Mom’s tent is especially beautiful. I wish I knew how to make stained glass.”

“More expensive lessons,” Alec murmured out of the corner of his mouth to Helen.

“Lots of the stuff looks kind of alike,” Ginny continued. “If I had the money today, I’d buy—” she frowned in thought “—one of those mosaic mirrors.” Pushing out her lower lip, she gave a decisive nod. “Have you seen them? You can stand them on your chest of drawers, or hang them on the wall. The lady had one last week with green and blue tiles mixed with silvery ones. It was like a swimming pool. Somebody bought it, though.”

As they emerged into sunlight to the noise of a band tuning guitars in the pavilion set up behind the gym, Alec asked, “Have you seen the porcelain dolls a couple of rows over?”

Ginny gave him a look that spoke louder than words. Why would she have any interest in a doll? But, very politely, she said, “No, I haven’t.”

Alec hid a grin.

“Does your Lily collect dolls?” Helen asked.

“Actually, she does. She doesn’t play with them, but she still seems interested. I thought of picking one out for her birthday.”

They joined the short line to order at the Greek gyro booth.

“When is her birthday?” Helen asked.

“August thirtieth.”

The person ahead of her stepped away and Helen ordered for herself and Ginny. “Lemonade?” she asked her daughter, then confirmed their order with the teenager inside the trailer, “Two lemonades.”

Alec tried to persuade her to let him pay for all three lunches, but she was already handing over bills. Ginny gave him a suspicious look. Helen poked her under the guise of moving her to the next window where they waited for their gyros.

“He was just being nice,” she whispered.

“Why is he being so nice?” Ginny asked, her voice carrying.

“Because he’s a nice man!” Helen hissed, then gave him a bright smile when he joined them. “Your kids here?”

He shook his head. “Lily went swimming with friends, and Devlin…well, in theory he’s mowing our lawn and several of the neighbors’ lawns today. He’s set himself up in business.”

“Enterprising.”

Alec grunted. “Honestly, I think he just wants to buy more CDs and go to more movies with his friends than I’m willing to pay for.”

“But at least he’s willing to work for them.”

“True enough.”

His frown hadn’t entirely cleared, though, telling her that he worried about his son. Helen thought perhaps she was lucky that Ginny had been so young when her father died. The two awful years of Ben’s illness had changed Ginny forever, of course. Helen hadn’t had the time and energy for her the way she once had, and, at four and five years old, Ginny just hadn’t understood what was happening. She became scared of her daddy near the end, and Helen had feared that she would be haunted because she hadn’t said a proper farewell. But so far Ginny hadn’t asked questions and hadn’t expressed regrets.

Maybe it was worse when children did understand what was happening. Alec’s son would have been twelve, a transitional age anyway. Helen remembered how confused she’d been at twelve and thirteen. What if she’d had to say goodbye to her dying mother? She shuddered at the idea. Did the boy blame himself somehow, as kids so often did, for his mother’s illness? Was he mad at her for leaving him? Did he fear that his father would die or desert him, too?

The dreadful thing was, Helen hadn’t been able to afford counseling for Ginny, and she had no idea whether her own daughter harbored anger or fear or guilt. By the time Helen had crawled out of her own grief enough to worry about Ginny, she didn’t want to talk about the past. She claimed she didn’t remember her father that well. Maybe she didn’t. She’d only been three when he was diagnosed, and by her fifth birthday he was a skeleton with tubes going into his veins and nose, the hiss of the respirator enough to drown out his feeble voice. By then all she knew was that her mother cried constantly and spent hours of the day at the scary man’s side. He wasn’t Daddy; couldn’t even pretend to be.

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.”

“Me, too,” Kathleen admitted. “Especially now that I’ve discovered how fabulous it is.” She pursed her lips, fixing a compassionate gaze on Helen. “It can be, you know. Even if it was only pleasant with Ben, at its best, making love is pretty incredible.”

“It was more than pleasant with Ben,” Helen said hastily. “But Ben’s the only man I’ve ever…” She stopped. “What I’m trying to say is, sex isn’t just recreational for me.”

“You think it is for us?” Kathleen asked, just a little tartly.

“No! I didn’t mean… Oh, damn it.” She frowned at them. “You know that’s not what I was suggesting. I just can’t see myself separating sex from love and commitment and so on. And…I don’t want that.”

They knew how she felt, and only shook their heads.

“Someday…” Kathleen muttered.

Jo set down her cup. “When I was falling in love with Ryan, and was all confused, I asked you one night whether it was worth it. Do you remember? You’d been crying, and I wanted to know whether you would have taken it all back if you could. If you’d foreseen how Ben would die, would you have said no when he asked you to marry him?”

Helen was already shaking her head.

“That night, you told me it was all worth it. So…how can you refuse to think about being happy again?”

“You don’t believe in once-in-a-lifetime love?” Helen asked them. “Would I face the agony of losing him again, if I could have him back for a while?” She tried to smile. “Yes. Of course I would. Do I want to face it so I can have a companion in middle age?” She shook her head. “I’d say I’m okay on my own, except that, thanks to you two, I’m not exactly on my own.”

“And isn’t that nice?” Jo said with satisfaction.

Kathleen said nothing, only watched Helen. She knew what was coming.

“I’ve been looking for a small place for Ginny and me,” Helen told them. “Maybe just an apartment.”

Jo’s mug clunked to the table. “What?”

“I think it’s time Kathleen and Logan and Emma had the house to themselves. They’re a family. They’ve been very nice about letting Ginny and me stay, but none of us intended it to be forever.”

“Logan and I did.” Kathleen’s jaw squared. “You are part of the family.”

“He may not feel the same.”

“He does. When he asked me to marry him, we talked about my moving in with him and renting this house to you. But…all of us together makes this home. He wanted that, too.”

“It’s not as though I won’t be over here half the time anyway,” Helen said mildly. Her sidelong glance was aimed at Jo. “Like someone we know and love.”

Jo tilted her head. In the year since her wedding, she had made a habit of dropping by and even studying here on evenings when Ryan’s kids had friends over.

Looking straight at Kathleen, Helen continued, “When you told me you were getting married, I was terrified at the idea of having to find a place for Ginny and myself. I’d come to depend on the two of you. I wasn’t ready then.” She paused a beat. “Now I am.”

“I don’t like it.” Kathleen scowled at her. “I’d miss you!”

“No, you won’t. Like I said, I’ll be over here all the time anyway. What with the business, I’ll have to be, won’t I?”

“Then why move?” Kathleen asked, clearly believing the question was unanswerable.

“I suppose…” Helen groped to explain. “I suppose because I need to know I can take care of myself and Ginny. Because you and Logan ought to be able to have privacy when you want it. And because, honestly, I feel a little like a houseguest, now that you don’t need my rent money.”

Kathleen let out an impatient huff. “This argument isn’t over.”

“I know it isn’t.”

“Did you find some place?” Jo interjected.

“Not yet,” she admitted. So far, everything she’d looked at had either been beyond her means or so crummy she hadn’t been able to contemplate moving in. She didn’t want to live in a place where she’d lie awake at night expecting a break-in, or have to battle cockroaches, or walk from her parking spot to her front door past half a dozen men who seemed to spend their days leaning on their cars eyeing passing women. But sooner or later she’d get lucky. She wanted Kathleen to know that she was serious.

“Business has really taken off, hasn’t it?” Jo sipped tea.

“Um.” Kathleen still watched Helen with a brooding expression, but she went on, “I’m having trouble keeping up with demand.”

“Are you thinking of quitting your job at the chiropractor’s?”

“Actually, yes.”

This was news to Helen. “Really?”

“You know how much I hate it. Logan has been getting really annoyed at me. He makes good money and likes what he’s doing. He wants me to ditch the job and concentrate on making soap, which I enjoy. If I don’t pay half the bills for a while, so what?”

“I think we’re at the point where you need to do that anyway,” Helen said thoughtfully. “I’ve been worrying about it. If we add even a couple more outlets where the soap sells well, we won’t be able to keep up and continue the craft fairs.”

“I was thinking,” Kathleen said, “that if I quit my job, you should, too. We need to expand to other markets. Portland is a natural. Spokane, Boise, even the smaller towns like Walla Walla, Yakima and Bend. As things stand, you can’t travel. I can’t make soap and try to sell it, too.”

Helen didn’t like to be suspicious, but… “Is this an excuse to keep me from moving out?”

Kathleen tried to look wounded but wasn’t a good enough actress. “What do the two things have to do with each other?”

“You know I can’t afford to pay for my own place on what I make from Kathleen’s Soaps.”

Kathleen leaned forward. “But you can if we expand. And we can’t expand if we don’t both commit ourselves full-time.”

Catch-22. Helen, too, had dreams of Kathleen’s Soaps expanding throughout the Pacific Northwest and even farther. The idea of making Kathleen’s hobby a business had been hers in the first place! They needed a better Web site, to run ads in national magazines and perhaps create a catalog. Kathleen had been making some soaps lately with patterns and even pictures embedded in them. Now was the time to be aggressive.

But Helen also knew the time had come for her and Ginny to have their own home.

“I’ll think about it.”

Kathleen nodded.

“Logan’s boxes seemed to sell well,” Jo remarked.

“We sold out this weekend,” Helen said. “In fact, I’ve been thinking that we should be selling soap dishes, too. I saw a wire one with curlicue feet in an antique store the other day. It had been painted white and was really distinctive. I wonder if we could find someone to copy it?”

Kathleen got up to pour herself another cup of tea. “Do you think we could make them ourselves?”

Helen mulled it over and finally nodded. “I’ll try.”

They continued chatting about upcoming craft shows, a change in packaging, and Jo’s plans for the branch library she’d be taking over in a few weeks.

Eventually, inevitably, Kathleen asked again about Alec. “What’s he do for a living?”

“I have no idea,” Helen admitted. “I didn’t think to ask.”

“He must live on Queen Anne or he wouldn’t be involved in something like the fair.”

“I guess so.”

Her friends gazed at her in exasperation. “Don’t you know anything about the man?” Jo asked.

“He has an eleven-year-old daughter and a fourteen-year-old son. His wife died of leukemia. He said she felt tired one day, and six weeks later she was dead.”

“Okay, okay. It’s a start.” Jo studied Helen critically. “What are you planning to wear?”

“Nothing fancy. It’s supposed to be casual.”

“You won’t wear your hair up.” Kathleen sounded as if she were announcing an undisputed fact.

“Why not?” Feeling defensive, Helen touched her ponytail. “It doesn’t look that bad.”

“You have glorious hair,” Kathleen said. “The way you yank it back looks…”

“Repressed,” Jo finished for her.

As sulky as a teenager, Helen just about snapped, If I want to be repressed, I will be!

Instead she muttered, “I don’t like hair in my face.”

The way Kathleen scrutinized her, Helen felt like a mannequin in a store window waiting to be posed and dressed.

“If you won’t wear it loose, we can do something to it that’s still softer.”

“Maybe.” And they wondered why she was ready to move out! Deliberately she changed the subject. “You’re sure you don’t mind watching Ginny?”

“She lives here. It hardly qualifies as baby-sitting.”

“No, but it does mean you and Logan can’t go out.”

“Unless Emma is home.” But they both knew that wasn’t likely. Emma, between her junior and senior years in high school and nearly eighteen, was dating a freshman at Seattle U. She was almost never home on Friday or Saturday nights anymore. “Besides—” Kathleen had a gleam in her eye “—I have every intention of being here when he picks you up.”

“So you can quiz him about his intentions?” Helen asked with deceptive tranquility.

Kathleen flashed a grin. “So I can satisfy my curiosity.”

Helen had to laugh. So, okay, they were busybodies. They irritated her sometimes. But the two women were her closest friends. No, they were family. Way more important to her than Alec Fraser ever could be.

ALEC PARKED his Mercedes on the street a few driveways down from Helen’s place. It was a nice brick house dating from the 1920s, if he was any judge. Big leafy maples and sycamores overhung the street, buckling sidewalks, while flowers tumbled over retaining walls. The flower bed above Helen’s wall looked new, the earth dark and the rosebushes spindly.

At six in the evening, the sun still baked the un-shaded pavement and the small, dry lawns. At midsummer in Seattle, night didn’t fall until nearly ten o’clock.

It was irrational but Alec felt better leaving the kids alone with the sun still shining. As if teenage boys only did stupid things in the dark.

He rang the doorbell. A woman he didn’t know answered. Beautiful and assured, she had honey-blond hair worn in a loose French braid.

“Hi. You must be Alec Fraser?”

“That’s right. I’m here for Helen.”

“I’m Kathleen Carr.” Smiling, she held out her hand. “Her housemate.”

He shook. “The Kathleen.”

“Of Kathleen’s Soaps, you mean? The same.” She stepped back. “Come on in.”