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  Viv hooted. “Me, determined? You don’t know determined until you know Edie. Once she makes her mind up on something, nothing’s going to change it.”

  “A family trait,” Edie said, thinking of Maude. “So, are you interested in Peter?” she asked Beth. “Personally.”

  “Of course she is,” Viv said. “How could she not be?”

  Edie looked at Beth, waiting for her to answer. With her nondescript brown hair pulled into a straggling ponytail, no makeup and an unflattering orange knit sweater, Beth looked like the before picture of a makeover candidate. Not without potential, but at the moment, clearly untapped.

  An assessment Beth confirmed a moment later. “I don’t think I’m exactly Peter’s type,” she said. “A few weeks ago I was in administration and this tall gorgeous woman came in. Everyone was looking at her. The security guard’s jaw just about dropped. She asked for Peter, and Betty Jean let her into his office. Apparently, she’s this actress he was dating.”

  “But he’s not dating her now,” Viv said. “Ray heard Peter telling her not to bother him anymore.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Beth said. “Clearly, that’s the type of woman he’s interested in.”

  “Beth.” Elbows on the table, Viv looked at her friend. “He needs a mother for those children. Betty Jean told Ray. He’s not looking to marry an actress. You just need to work at it, let him see you’re interested.”

  “But I don’t know if I am,” Beth said. “I think I might feel…inadequate.”

  “No, no.” Viv shook her head. “You and Peter would be perfect together. Men are just sometimes slower to catch up. Although,” she said with a little smile, “sometimes you do get that gut feeling. I remember with Ray. Everyone said, ‘Oh he’s still in love with Edie, he’s just marrying you on the rebound,’ but I knew.”

  Edie clasped her hands. A pain that had started at the top of her scalp was gathering strength. “The thing is,” she said. “It’s sometimes difficult to know what guys are thinking. You know how you can kind of read things into situations? See what you want to see?” Edie really wanted to go home and stick her head under the covers. “All I’m saying is, Beth, a friend of mine told me years later that she really wished someone had told her right from the start that this guy was never in love with her. It was just a difficult call, though.”

  “Excuse me,” Beth said as she hurried from the room.

  “What the hell is with you?” Vivian glared at Edie. “Beth has been glowing all evening and it’s like you just poured a bucket of cold water over her. Why don’t you keep your damn cynical opinions to yourself and quit spoiling things for everyone else?”

  “I honestly didn’t mean to rain on her parade,” Edie said. “I was just telling her—”

  “Next time, try telling yourself to butt out,” Viv snapped.

  Edie returned home to find a message from Maude scrawled on a note under the phone.

  Gone to bed. A man called I told him he had the wrong number but he kept calling back and asking for Fred so I wrote down his number just to get some peace and quiet you better call him we need more toilet paper and don’t get that thin stuff again my fingers go right through it. Love Mom.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WITH A SMILE, Edie folded the note and put it in her pocket. The infrequent letters Maude sent her were written the same way; long, garbled, stream-of-consciousness missives without a hint of punctuation. She dialed the number she knew by heart and reached a colleague and friend she’d known since their days in the Times London bureau. A grizzled bearlike man approaching retirement, Fred Mazare had probably reported from every country in the world during his forty-odd years in journalism. A gold mine of information on anything from overseas press clubs—he knew them all—to public transport in Bangkok—he recommended tuk tuks—Fred was mentor, father figure, confidant and friend all rolled into one untidy, overweight, cigar-smoking curmudgeon. He picked up the phone on the first ring.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, “And who was that old bat who answered the phone?”

  “Out with the girls,” she said, grinning because it felt so damn good to hear his voice. “And watch how you talk about my mother.”

  “How’re things going?”

  “Oh…” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m home. Does that tell you anything?”

  “Yep. It tells me you’re about as out of place as a nun in a brothel.”

  She laughed. “Hmm, I’ll have to think about that one.” Her back against the wall, the phone cord wrapped around her wrist, she slid down to the floor. “Why do I feel so…weird whenever I come home, Fred?”

  “One, you don’t belong there anymore. Two, you’re trying to convince yourself into believing that you do.”

  “I am?”

  “Sure you are. Probably hooked up with an old boyfriend and he’s trying to talk you into settling down—”

  “Wrong.”

  “Okay. Your biological clock’s ticking.”

  She groaned. “Oh please, if you can’t come up with something more original…”

  “Okay, Edie. Tell Uncle Freddy the problem as you see it.”

  “I just…have this empty feeling inside.”

  “You going soft on me?”

  “No.” She swiped the back of her hand across her nose. “Maybe I’ve had my fill of moving around. Maybe I need to settle, put down some roots.” She swallowed. “Maybe you’re not really so far off the mark about the biological clock.”

  “Highly possible,” he agreed.

  “But I’d hate to settle down in a place like Little Hills.” She thought of Viv and her off-white leather couches and her endless chattering about Ray and the boys. She thought of Peter with his little girls. Beth all shiny-eyed as she’d called them angels. “I have nothing in common with these people.”

  “My guess is that you would if you decided Little Hills is what you’re looking for,” he said. “Ready for some news about Ben?”

  She leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes. “Yeah.”

  “State Department’s arranged for his release. Could be any day now.”

  She breathed a sigh. “Thank God.”

  “I spoke to his wife.”

  “Ex-wife.”

  “Tell her that.”

  “He told me that.”

  Fred laughed. “Ever strike you funny how people can be so cynical and hardheaded about things they want to believe and so damn gullible and stupid about other things?”

  “Not so much funny as pitiful,” she said. You’re not breaking up my marriage, Edie, Ben had told her. It was broken long, long before I met you.

  “Hey, Edie.” Fred was saying, “Cut out the whiny broad stuff.”

  “I’m not whining.”

  “You’re feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “Bull.” Tears burned her nose. “I’m fine. Terrific.”

  “You’ve always had Ben’s number…”

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “Yeah well…listen, here’s something that’ll put a smile on your face. I heard your name mentioned the other day. How does Edie Robinson, Asia bureau chief, strike you?”

  “ASIA? Wow, Edie, how exciting,” Vivian enthused the next morning when Edie told her about the bureau chief job. “You know what, though? I don’t envy you one bit. I tell you, when Ray and I got back from New York after our tenth anniversary, I was never so glad to be home.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine.” Edie stuck the phone between her ear and shoulder and, as Viv rattled on, searched the refrigerator shelves for breakfast material. Another trip to the IGA seemed likely. She wanted to get off the phone with Viv, who was seriously beginning to get on her nerves. Irritation, like a small yappy dog kept on a tight rein ever since she’d hauled her bags into the back of Vivian’s gleaming new SUV, was tugging hard at the leash. She bit experimentally into a withered apple, decided it was too far gone and dumped it into the trash.

  Maude, upstairs clom
ping around, would be down any minute and they were out of coffee creamer, which would inevitably get the day off to a shaky start. I don’t want to be here, Edie thought. I don’t want to hear my mother tell me she needs prunes and I don’t want to listen to my sister bitching to me about her hot flashes and her gourmet club. I am cold, unlovable and I vant to be alone.

  “I know Little Hills seems boring to you,” Viv was saying now. “But as far as we’re concerned, there isn’t a better place to raise kids. And that sort of thing matters to me and Ray,” she said. “We’re very serious about our kids.”

  “I know you are, Viv.” Edie stuck her head in the fridge. The gas oven was also an option. Why didn’t the prospect of a bureau chief job strike her with quite the sense of elation she’d thought it might? She’d stayed awake half the night trying to figure that one out. That and Ben’s release—which she’d never had any doubt about—and the three years she’d wasted with him. “Don’t expect commitment from me,” he’d always say. Something she’d have understood much more readily had he also mentioned a wife back in the States.

  Her mood didn’t improve much that day and it wasn’t much better the next, when someone from Maple Grove Residential Living called to inquire whether Maude was still interested in having her name added to the waiting list for residential apartments.

  Edie, pacing the hallway with the black receiver lodged between her ear and shoulder, moved too far in one direction and the phone clattered to the floor, knocking over the spindly table it had been standing on. “Damn it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.” Edie stood the table up again and replaced the heavy black phone on its crocheted doily. “I was talking to the phone.”

  “Of course.” The administrator cleared her throat. “When your sister and mother paid us a visit recently, they were both very impressed. Your sister did say that there were other places they wanted to investigate, but we were under the impression that they were definitely leaning toward Maple Grove.”

  Literally or figuratively? Edie wanted to ask. “I don’t think my mother’s made a decision yet,” Edie said. “In fact, I’m sure she hasn’t, but let me check with my sister.”

  “That would be Vivian Jenkins?” the administrator asked.

  “That would be,” Edie said, irked by the woman’s officious tone. In the mood she was in, Mother Teresa would have irked her.

  “I was under the impression, from Mrs. Jenkins, that the decision had been made. Mrs. Jenkins is concerned that your mother is no longer capable of living alone. Your mother was so taken with Maple Grove, she wanted to move in on the spot.”

  “Well, that may be,” Edie said. “As I said, I’ll check with my sister.”

  “We have very few vacancies,” the woman said. “In fact, that’s why we were forced to create a waiting list. I would hate to see your mother lose out. She was so impressed—”

  “I’ll call you,” Edie said and slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle. Tinkerbell, the most persistent of Maude’s three cats, watched her balefully, his eyes the color of grapes. “I hate salespeople,” she told him. “Actually, this morning, I hate everyone.”

  The cat mewed and moved to snake its long orange body along Edie’s bare calf.

  “That will get you nowhere, trust me.” On tiptoe, Edie reached for a jar of Ovaltine, thinking for a minute it might be coffee. Maude appeared to be out of coffee, which wasn’t helping matters. She took down the jar, unscrewed the lid and peered inside at the dried-up cake of brown powder. “Yuk.”

  “Meow.” The cat rubbed its ear against Edie’s leg.

  Edie nudged it gently with her toe. “Look, if you want to get into my good books, run down to the corner and get me a double latte, okay? Maybe a bagel, too.”

  Still musing on the phone call, a niggling sense that she’d somehow been shut out of an important decision prompted her to dial her sister’s number. As usual, Vivian sounded harried.

  “I’m trying to do a million things,” she said, “and the phone keeps ringing off the hook. Brad spilled root beer all over the family-room carpet and I’ve got someone coming in to clean it. Ray’s in a permanent funk. By the way, I’m sorry I jumped at you the other night about Beth. You know I didn’t mean it, right? I swear when I’m on a carb diet, I get the worse sugar withdrawal and—”

  “Viv, some woman called from Maple Grove—”

  “Oh right.” A pause. “I meant to tell you about that… Look, if the carpet cleaners don’t take too long, how about I drop by right after and we’ll talk. Where is Mom, by the way?”

  “A woman from church dropped by to pick her up. They were going to a potluck, or something. Mom was up before me this morning, making macaroni and cheese.”

  “Damn.” Vivian exhaled loudly. “Dixie Mueller, right? Little tiny thing with white hair? Well, they’re all little tiny things with white hair, but Dixie’s…first of all she shouldn’t be driving, so every time she takes Mom out, I have to worry about whether they’ll get into an accident. And then Mom goes to these potlucks and eats too much and ends up calling me in the middle of the night convinced she’s having a heart attack…”

  Edie held the phone away from her ear as Vivian railed. I am completely out of my element, she thought. This is my mother, but I have no idea what’s really in her best interests. “I’m sorry,” she said after Vivian finally wound down. “Mom seemed really jazzed to be going out and I didn’t know about—”

  “It’s not your fault, Edie. Don’t blame yourself. It’s just that I’m with Mom and you’re not. And that’s why she needs to be in a place like Maple Grove. She can’t look after herself and I’m honestly worn out with looking after her.”

  “But there are other options besides a residential facility,” Edie said. “She could have someone come in to help her. A live-in assistant, maybe. That way she could stay in the house—”

  Vivian laughed. “Edie, Edie. You have no idea, do you? Live-in assistants cost money—”

  “So do residential facilities,” she pointed out. “I might not be with Mom on a day-to-day basis, but I’m not entirely out of touch with the real world.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest that you were,” Viv said. “It’s just that…well, I hate to keep saying the same thing over and over, but I’m here, Edie, and you’re not.”

  A theme that was beginning to sound so familiar, Edie thought, she could almost predict the moment Vivian would say it. Almost as predictable as Vivian’s breathless complaints that she had a million things to do and really didn’t have time to talk about this right now.

  “…And I’m going out of my mind,” Viv was saying now. “Do you have any idea at all how much food two teenage boys can consume?”

  “Of course I don’t,” Edie said. “I don’t have children.”

  A moment of silence from the other end of the line. “Are you being sarcastic?” Vivian wanted to know. “Because if you are—”

  “I was just stating a fact,” Edie said. “You have kids and I don’t.”

  “I know, but you get that snippy tone in your voice… Anyway, I really don’t have time to argue. I don’t want to argue, let’s put it that way. I don’t see you often enough to spend time when you are here bickering with you.”

  Having established the moral high ground, Viv then went on to complain about the paintwork in her newly finished upstairs bathroom, her neighbor’s obnoxious dog who barked half the night and the ridiculous price of the boneless pork roast she’d bought for tomorrow’s dinner with some friends who probably wouldn’t be impressed, anyway.

  As she listened, Edie wondered whether it would seem insufferably self-righteous if she attempted to lend some perspective to her sister’s problems by describing the young girl she’d seen in Sarajevo—all dressed up in high heels and full makeup as she picked her way through the rubble from a recent mortar attack because, war or no war, life goes on. Or the women who sent their children to school during shell fire with the reassuranc
es that they were probably safer at school than at home. Yeah, it would be insufferable, she decided, not to mention hypocritical. You’ve never dwelled endlessly on your own petty problems?

  “By the way,” Viv said, “I really am sorry for jumping on you lately. You must think I’m a total bitch. When I’m on a low-carb diet, I swear I get sugar withdrawal. Anyway, look, bottom line is we both have Mom’s best interests at heart.”

  “Exactly,” Edie agreed, “Which—”

  “I’m sure it isn’t easy for you to be back here, feeling that you’re doing everything wrong, but face it, Eed, that’s reality. You made your choice to go off and lead…your kind of life.”

  “But—”

  “And I have no problem at all with looking after Mom. I mean, I told Ray, I said I don’t even know why Edie’s coming back, as busy as she is…but look, sweetie, I know you’re concerned. Tell you what, how about we take Mom out to Maple Grove tomorrow and you can see the place for yourself?”

  Meanwhile, Edie decided as she hung up the phone, she would have a little talk with Maude when she got back from her visit with Dixie—just the two of them. She might never know or understand Maude the way Viv did, but she could at least try to get to know her a little better.

  Tomorrow, she would take Maude to lunch.

  PETER’S PHONE RANG during the middle of a parent conference. Since he’d told Betty Jean to hold all calls other than emergencies, his first thought as he excused himself to pick up the receiver was that it was one of the girls. “Your sister,” Betty Jean said. “She insisted that I put her through immediately.”

  Peter exhaled. “Yes, Sophia?”

  “I’m calling for a progress report.”

  He frowned. “On what?”

  “The wife search. What else?”

  “Oh, that,” Peter said, irritated. “Do you honestly think that I have nothing else… Listen, I’m in a meeting—”

  “I just thought you might have given it a little thought.”

  “I have,” Peter said without thinking first.

  “And?”