The Night We Met (10 page)

And that night, we made a different kind of love. Slow. Lingering. And the completion, when it came, left me languid, relaxed, ready to fal asleep in my husband's arms.

We were blessed.

Very blessed.

Times were changing. In 1972 the largest scandal ever to hit the White House was exposed by a security guard who noticed a piece of adhesive tape on a door that left it unlocked, allowing five men to steal key Democratic documents. By January 1975, at least six government officials had been found guilty in the Watergate conspiracy and were sentenced to thirty years in prison. Also early in that year, The Jeffersons, the first successful black sitcom, premiered on primetime television. And Pennsylvania was the first state to allow girls to compete with boys.

Sometimes it seemed like every day there'd be another radical change, and I lived those years with some uneasiness, but I learned how to be flexible. In September of 1975, Jimmy started kindergarten, leaving his mama at loose ends. But Sarah's death had taught me what I needed to do.

With my out-of-date California teaching degree in hand, I enrolled in classes to earn a current Colorado certification.

I had no plans to work ful -time; I was first and foremost a wife and mother. I just had to keep my mind focused on other things. Positive things. I was room mother for both of my boys that year, joined the PTA, got involved with T-ball. And through the university, I volunteered at a battered women's shelter in Denver one morning a month.

I wrote to my father several times during those years—always with the same result. Nothing. No response. And I continued to have dreams in which he showed up at my door, always bringing gifts for my children. Once I even dreamed I was sitting at mass and he slid into the pew beside me.

Nate was traveling a lot. Walt sold the resort to a wel - known international chain and with travel getting easier, more resorts were popping up around the globe. Nate, who'd been let go after the buy-out, started his own business as an independent consultant on the building and start-up of several resorts in California and Nevada and soon had more jobs than he could handle. He loved the work.

We loved the financial freedom it afforded us. He was enjoying the opportunity to spend some time with his brother, Keith's, buddy Arnold. But he was often gone and the boys and I missed him terribly.

Shortly after Hal oween of 1975, I noticed that Keith and Jimmy were squabbling a lot. At first I put the unusual dissension down to sugar overload and threw away the rest of their candy stash. But as the arguments escalated to the point where I had to separate them on an almost daily basis, and they both started talking back to me in spite of the punishments I handed out, I began to wonder if the problem was a lack of male influence in the household.

I told Nate about my concerns when he called one night and I could hear the frustration in his voice because he couldn't be home with us, helping more. But I also heard laughing in the background and the resentment I'd begun to feel was a little more difficult to fight.

He promised to call the boys the next day. They seemed calmer after that. Until Saturday. I don't know who started it, but while I was cleaning the boys' bathroom, I suddenly heard screaming and slapping, and before I could get to Keith's bedroom, I heard a sickening thud, fol owed by the distinctive cry of a seriously hurt child.

My heart pounded when I burst into the room. There was blood everywhere. Running down Jimmy's face, on the carpet, al over Keith's hands. And on the floor, spreading water and who knew what else onto my new carpet, was the nine-inch globe Nate had brought the boys from California the year before.

Both boys were screaming, tears pouring down their faces.

"Keith, in the bathroom, now!" Grabbing a shirt from the pile of clean laundry on his bed, I held it under my younger son's nose and with a hand on the back of his head, guided him to the bathroom across the hall.

"It hurts..." Jimmy wailed, his words barely discernible. Please, God, don't let him have lost any teeth.

"I know, baby," I told him, lifting him to the counter beside the sink. "Sit here and hold this while I look at your brother."

Sobbing, he took the shirt and did as I asked.

"No, Mommy, it hurts!" Keith screamed as I ran water in the sink and gently placed his hands beneath the faucet.

"I have to see how bad the damage is." I was having a hard time staying calm but I knew that, for them, I had to.

There were two cuts on Keith's hands that concerned me. Across each palm.

"What happened?" I asked when his sobs subsided.

"We bumped the wall and the shelf broke and I tried to catch the globe but it broke and the wood hit Jimmy in the nose."

Jimmy let out another wail. His pupils weren't dilated, but I knew I should have him checked for a concussion. And a broken nose. Keith had to get stitches.

And my husband was off at a celebrity opening in Los Angeles, being wined and dined and entertained.

Where was Nate when I needed him? Jimmy's nose wasn't broken. The doctors weren't so sure about the concussion and were keeping him, at least for a few hours, for observation. Eyes wide with fright, he begged me not to leave him.

But I could hear Keith screaming in the next cubicle and had to hurry away. Thirty minutes later, I was sweating and exhausted from wrestling with a panicked child while a doctor put needles in his cuts.

He had a total of fifteen stitches. Nine in one hand. Six in the other.

I called Nate's hotel from the emergency room. After I explained to a girl at the front desk that Nate's sons had been in a smal accident and were at the hospital, she said she'd seen him leave about an hour earlier, but promised to see that he got the message as soon as he returned.

At the last minute I asked her to reassure him that both boys were going to be fine. Nate might not be here when I needed him, but he was exactly where I wanted him to be. Living out the chance of a lifetime.

I could handle stitches. Screaming boys. Nate had been there for me when we'd dealt with things I couldn't handle.

* * *

"Daddy's here, Mom," Jimmy added, his voice a little weaker than his brother's.

I turned around and almost melted when my gaze locked on the tall, dark-haired, handsome but obviously harried man hurrying toward us.

He'd come. One phone cal and he'd hopped on a plane to meet us at the hospital.

"Look, Daddy, I got fifteen stitches and can't take a bath for a whole week."

That wasn't entirely true. He couldn't get his hands wet. There were other ways to bathe him. But I decided this wasn't the rime to impart the bad news.

"What's going on? What happened? Is everyone okay?"

Nate's questions came more quickly than I could answer them. He knelt down by Jimmy, scrutinizing the boy's swollen face.

"What's up, Jimbo?"

Jimmy looked like he might start crying again. "The globe hit me on the head. It hurts."

"He's not concussed," I said before Nate could ask. "We've been here all day so they could watch him. The water globe you brought them last year fell off the shelf. Keith saw it falling and tried to catch it."

"Yeah, that's how I cut my hands." Keith, shorter and huskier than his younger brother, showed no sign of the fear he'd exhibited earlier.

Nate's eyes met mine again, and his were fil ed with apology. "I came the minute I heard," he said.

"I know."

Two weeks later, Nate sold his consulting business and with the money he made, plus a sizable bank loan, he bought a smal er, more family-oriented resort with minor ski slopes halfway between Denver and Boulder.

The day he drove me out to the resort and handed me the signed contract showed me, once again, how much my husband loved me. Loved all of us. He had no intention of missing any more of the important moments in our lives.

One of those moments, an unexpected one, came along the following year. I'd received my Colorado teaching certificate and filed it away. One afternoon in June of 1976, when I was home fingerpainting with the boys, now almost six and seven, a young woman knocked at my door.

She seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't figure out why. Tall and slender, in her early twenties, she smiled nervously. "Mrs. Grady?"

"Yes?" I had about three minutes before there'd be colors splattered on the kitchen tile.

"My name is Lori Gilbert."

Was the name supposed to mean something to me? The boys' voices floated in from the other room.

"Is your husband Nate Grady?"

"Yes." My voice, my whole being, grew hesitant. Dressed in jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, with long, dark hair and no makeup, my visitor looked more girl than woman.

But that certainly didn't mean she couldn't claim an association with my husband. She was only four or five years younger than I was. Yet I felt old, standing there barefoot wearing an old cotton smock over a sleeveless summer shift I'd had for several years.

"He's forty-one?"

"Yes."

"Mo-o-ommm!" Keith's battle cry.

"Coming!"

"Jimmy's throwing paint!"

"I am not!"

"James Grady, if I find one spot of paint on the floor when I get in there, there'll be no TV for a week."

The punishment was harsh. Unlike me. Born of a tension I created by this stranger on my doorstep.

"You have children?"

"Yes." I wouldn't give her any more than that. "Is there something I can do for you?"

The woman shifted an oversize denim bag on her shoulder. In some ways she looked more like a throwback to the sixties than a child of the seventies. Except that her clothes weren't loose and wild.

And she wasn't wearing beads.

"I...um...you know..." She stopped. Smiled. And my heart began to beat faster. I recognized that mouth.

Had I seen her before?

Had she worked at the resort during my stint there after Sarah died? Or been a guest?

"This is a lot harder than I thought it would be," she said.

"Mo-o-ommmm! Keith's bossing me!"

"Listen to him!" I cal ed over my shoulder, then turned back to the young woman. "Who are you?" I was out of time. Patience. Ever since Sarah's death things I would've taken in stride seemed to unhinge me.

"Have you ever heard of Holly Gilbert?"

"No." And I had a strong premonition that I didn't want to, either.

"She's my mother."

The boys were laughing. I told myself that I could always repaint the kitchen.

"She was married to Nate Grady."

I said nothing. Nate had never told me either of his previous wives' names. I'd overheard his conversation with Walt on my wedding day, when they'd referred to a Karen, but I'd refused to ask.

The woman licked her lips. "They were eighteen. It lasted a couple of months. Mom moved to New Jersey with her parents before she even knew she was pregnant. They agreed to help her, support us, if she promised not to get in touch with my father. My grandparents were afraid Mom and..

.Nate...would get back together and be miserable for the rest of their lives."

The drama in that last sentence revealed the girl's youth, so I concentrated on that for a few seconds.

But her story rang true.

"You're Nate's daughter."

"Yeah." She smiled again. And now I knew why I recognized her. She had Nate's mouth. And eyes.

"He doesn't know about you?" Somehow it was important to firmly establish that feet.

"Uh-uh." Lori shook her head.

"When did you learn about him? Being your father, I mean."

"Two weeks ago. I was helping Mom move and found some papers in a box in her bedroom. She always told me my dad died...."

I hated the woman. She'd robbed Nate of his firstborn child. She'd had Nate's firstborn child.

"Would you like to come in?" I had no idea what else to say. To do.

"Are you sure it's okay?"

No. The world was rocking beneath my feet again. "Of course. Nate's at work. We own a small resort half an hour outside town. He runs a summer camp there."

She came into my home. I closed the door.

"How long have you been married?"

"Eight years." Didn't sound nearly as long or solid as it felt.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

"Just four years older than me."

I didn't thank her for pointing that out.

Chapter 9

Nate was a little late getting home that night. This was his first year of offering a summer camp for kids at the resort, and with the place being so much smaller, a lot more rested on the venture.

He was tired when he pulled in. There seemed to be new lines on his face every day now. I watched as he parked our station wagon in the garage and stood at the edge of the lawn waiting for him.

To tell him that while our daughter was dead, he still had a daughter. Lori had asked me to be the one to break the news.

And I wanted to be the one. I wanted, at least, to have some part in this very major event in my husband's life.

I'd changed for the occasion, wearing my tightest pair of bel -bottom jeans and a halter top I'd bought but never had the courage to wear. I'd even put on some makeup.

I couldn't explain my actions, except that I was feeling threatened. And feeling as if I had very little ammunition with which to fight.

"What's up? Where are the boys?"

Briefcase in one hand, keys in the other, he stopped just inches from me.

"They're inside. Playing Candyland." Don't worry, your daughter's in there watching them.

In slacks and a polo shirt, with his broad shoulders, rock-hard stomach and thick, dark hair, Nate was every bit as handsome as he'd always been. The new lines on his face only added to that. To me, they were evidence of the experiences we'd shared.