Hope Street (35 page)

Bobby hadn’t had an argument for that.

“At least you knew the truth all along,” she’d gone on. “I was the only one who had no idea what had happened way back when in your little Ohio town.”

Not true. Claudia hadn’t known, either. The boys hadn’t known. But he’d let Helen vent, let her babble, let her lean toward him and murmur that she was sure he could appreciate why she felt the way she did, that certainly he understood her feelings in a way her own husband couldn’t begin to grasp.

She’d been coming on to him. Subtly, not openly, but he’d picked up on it. He wasn’t interested—women whose faces were stretched tighter than a bedsheet on a barracks cot weren’t his type—but he was a man, and when a classy New York City lady sent signals, he would have had to be dead not to feel a little flattered.

Helen Crawford was distraught. She was resentful. If it made her feel better to flirt, who was he to stop her? He hadn’t encouraged her, hadn’t reciprocated, but given how unpleasant things were at home, he’d allowed himself to enjoy the moment.

Today he felt guilty. Last night he’d fumed in silence at the fact that Joelle didn’t trust him, and today he was prepared to admit that maybe she’d been right not to trust him. He didn’t like dredging up old crap, probing his emotions, analyzing things to death, but if Joelle wanted to talk to him tonight, they’d talk.

He’d take her out to dinner. He’d massage her shoulders and neck, if she’d let him. He’d fight his way back to her. This had been the angriest week of his life—worse than any week he could remember in ’Nam, even after he’d gotten blown to shit. It was time to assess the damage, time to reset the broken bones and start rehab.

Joelle’s Prius was gone from the garage when he got home, and a note was waiting for him on the kitchen table:

Not a word about where she’d gone or when she’d be back. Just cooking instructions.

He read the note again, crumpled it into a ball and hurled it across the room. Then he retrieved it, grabbed his reading glasses from atop that morning’s newspaper on the kitchen table, smoothed out the note and read it once more. His glasses didn’t alter a word of her message. She was gone, and he should grill the shrimp.

He crossed the room to the cordless phone and punched in her cell-phone number. After four rings, her taped voice answered: “Joelle can’t talk right now. Please leave a message.”

A message, he thought frantically. There were plenty of things he wanted to say. Like,
Jesus Christ, Joelle—where are you? How could you run away like this? Here I am, ready to talk.

All he said, however, was, “Come home. Please.”

He knew why she’d run. Four days ago, he’d stormed into the house drunk from a binge, broken a vase on the floor and thrown up. He’d gotten crocked and acted violently. Shamed by his behavior and infuriated by Joelle’s refusal to pity him, he’d withdrawn. He’d been nowhere, nothing, way out of reach. More accessible to Foster’s wife than to Joelle.

Of course she’d left. Why would she want to hang around with a screwed-up asshole like him?

He swung open the refrigerator and found, along with the tray of shrimp skewers, a few bottles of microbrewery beer. Joelle kept them on hand for when the boys dropped by. They liked gourmet beer, which Bobby considered a contradiction in terms.

He pulled out a bottle and carried it out the back door to the patio. The evening sky was the pink of a dogwood blossom, pale in parts and more richly hued where thin clouds streaked above
the horizon. He sprawled out on one of the lounge chairs, tapped his palm against the bottle’s cap but didn’t twist it off, not yet.

Where would she have gone? She was still close to that woman Suzanne, the senior member of the communal house she’d lived in while he’d been in ’Nam.

Suzanne was living somewhere in the Southwest. She and Joelle still exchanged Christmas cards. He wondered if they kept in touch with e-mail, too.

E-mail. If he could open Joelle’s account, he might find evidence of where she’d gone. He had no idea what her password was, but he could probably figure it out. Her maiden name, maybe, or one of the kids’ names.

No, he couldn’t hack into her software. She’d left him because she didn’t trust him anymore. He wasn’t going to win her back by doing something untrustworthy.

He lifted the bottle again. Its brown surface was slick with condensation. He closed one hand around the cap to twist it off, then hesitated and balanced the unopened bottle on the arm of his chair.

Damn it, JoJo.

The coppery sun rode along the spiked tips of the pine trees that edged the horizon beyond his yard. Purple shadows stretched across the grass and reached into Joelle’s vegetable garden. Her tomato vines were covered in yellow flowers, her zucchini shaped a tangle of dark green along the ground and her chard looked like miniature shrubs leafing out from the soil. He’d created that garden for her. He’d bought the house and rebuilt it for her. He’d bought her the damn Prius she’d run off in because she wanted to save the environment. Everything he’d done, everything he’d become—it was for Joelle. He’d given her everything he could.

Apparently everything wasn’t enough. The one thing he couldn’t give her was marriage to the man she’d loved.

Thirty-seven years. He and Joelle had had good times, great times, tender times, but the knowledge that he wasn’t the man she’d been in love with burned like a pilot light inside him, never extinguished. She’d married Bobby only because she’d had to, because the alternatives had been worse. Bobby DiFranco had been her second choice, her desperation choice.

He sat outdoors long after the light faded from the sky, after the crickets began to chirp and the mosquitoes to bite, and the air cooled down and filled with the pure scent of evergreens and grass. He sat listening to the emptiness of the house behind him and wondering whether marrying Joelle had been the smartest thing he’d ever done in his life, or the stupidest.

Finally, after slapping a mosquito dead on his cheek, he rose from the lounge chair and went inside to wash the bits of bug from his hand and face. He put the unopened beer back into the refrigerator.

Drinking wasn’t going to help.

A
FTER HOURS OF INSOMNIA
, he rose from bed early the following morning. His forehead felt tight, his throat was dry and his empty stomach grumbled. He threw on an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt, staggered down the stairs and entered the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he saw the skewers of marinated shrimp and lost his appetite again.

Joelle’s absence was like an invisible beast. All night long, lying in their bed alone, he felt that beast’s hot breath against his neck. Never in his life had he felt so alone.

He put up a pot of coffee to brew, then wandered into the
living room and crossed to the hutch that held their stereo equipment. Doors, he thought—he needed the Doors. He slid four Doors CDs onto the carousel, punched the “shuffle” button and returned to the kitchen to get some coffee.

Damn. He had an appointment to meet with a potential client that morning. Joelle was supposed to dust and vacuum and scour the sinks, and Bobby was supposed to traipse around yet another estate with yet another proud new home owner and promise to create yet another weekend paradise of flowering shrubs and hot tubs and stone walls.

He couldn’t even bring himself to shave. Dealing with a new customer was way beyond him.

Mike could handle it, he decided, grabbing the phone in the kitchen. He punched in Mike’s number, apologized for calling so early, said he wasn’t feeling well and asked Mike to walk the property with the prospective client and write up his specs. “Bring Danny with you,” Bobby suggested. “Between the two of you, you’ll get it right.”

“Danny’s with Lauren,” Mike said.

The symphony girl. “Are they at Tanglewood again?”

“No—I think they’re at his place.”

“Then it’s not a problem. He can go with you.” Being one half of a couple didn’t mean you stopped doing what you were supposed to do.

Being one half of a couple when the other half had vanished, however…That was enough to stop Bobby dead.

“Have you been drinking, Dad?” Mike asked.

Great. His wife was gone, and now he had Mike distrusting him, too. “No,” he said coldly. “I only drink when I’m with you.”

“Right.” Mike sounded just as cold.

“I’m not hungover, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m just…”
All alone and scared to death.
“Not feeling well. Take the client for me, would you?”

“Sure.”

He said goodbye to Mike, listened as Jim Morrison ordered him to break on through to the other side and lifted the phone’s handpiece again. He entered Joelle’s cell-phone number, then pressed the phone to his ear. Four rings and her taped voice requesting that he leave a message.

He’d already left the only message he had for her.
Come home
. He disconnected the call and lowered the phone to its base.

He poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d made it too strong, and it scorched the length of his digestive tract.

He knew he should eat something. Instead he returned to the living room with his Number One Dad mug, sank onto the overstuffed sofa, rolled his head back and closed his eyes. The music washed over him like a warm tide. He wished it would lift him up and carry him to some other, happier shore. A golden beach where Joelle would be waiting for him, smiling, her arms spread wide.

The sound of the doorbell jarred him from his trance. “Riders on the Storm” had been playing, slow and bluesy and mournful. He didn’t want to drag himself off the sofa. He didn’t want to see anyone. But what if it was the police? What if they were here to tell him something awful had happened to Joelle?

He forced himself to his feet, strode across the living room to the entry and opened the door. Claudia stood on the porch, holding the morning newspaper he’d never bothered to bring inside. “What’s going on?” she asked, shoving past him and across the threshold.

“Why are you here?” he retorted, too tired to bother with manners.

“Mike phoned and said something was wrong. He and Danny had to go meet with a client because you said you were sick. Where’s Mom?”

Claudia was as brisk and focused as he was hazy. He watched her poke her head through the living-room doorway before stalking down the hall to the kitchen, calling for her mother.

Reluctantly, he followed her into the kitchen. She stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips. “Where’s Mom?”

What was the point in pretending? “She left,” he said.

“She left? What do you mean, she left?”

He moved to the counter and located the wrinkled sheet of paper with Joelle’s note on it. “I mean she left,” he said, handing the note to Claudia.

She read it, her brow furrowing. “When did she leave?”

“She was gone when I got home last night.” He sipped his coffee. It had cooled off, but its bitterness scorched his throat.

“Did you phone her?”

“Twice. She won’t answer.”

Claudia pursed her lips. “She’s got caller ID on her cell, right? Let me try her from my phone. Maybe she’ll take my call.” She set her purse down on the table and rummaged through it. “Have you eaten anything?”

“I’m drinking coffee. Don’t baby me.”

Her lips pursed harder, compressing tighter than a kiss. She dug out her cell phone. “Any idea where she might have gone?”

“She took her car. How far do you think she’d drive?”

“The airport isn’t that far,” Claudia pointed out. “She could be anywhere.” She tapped her thumb against the buttons on her cell, then held it to her ear. After a few seconds, she started talking. “Mom? It’s Claudia. Where are you?”

Bobby dropped onto one of the chairs. He no longer had the
strength to refill his mug. The comprehension that Joelle would accept a call from Claudia but not from him cut through him like a stiletto, so sharp it took him a minute to realize how badly he was bleeding.

“Okay, I understand,” Claudia said into the phone. “It’s just…” She glanced toward Bobby. “No, he’s fine,” she said, and Bobby closed his eyes and nodded his thanks. “He says he tried to phone you.”

“Tell her I want her to come home,” Bobby murmured.

“He wants you to come home,” Claudia told her mother, then listened some more. “All right. Yes. I’ll tell him. I’ll talk to you again later.” She folded her phone shut, then regarded her father sternly. “She said she needs a little time to herself to think things through. She also said to let you know the Prius got excellent mileage on the highway.”

“Where is she?”

“Holmdell.” Claudia lifted the coffee decanter, studied the gravy-thick sludge inside it and emptied it into the sink. She rinsed it and prepared a fresh pot. Then she walked to the refrigerator, opened it and pulled out a package of English muffins and a tub of butter. Without a word, she slid two split muffins into the toaster oven and turned it on. While the muffins browned, she returned to the refrigerator, removed the platter of skewered shrimp and dumped its contents into the trash.

Bobby felt a rush of gratitude that she’d disposed of the damn shrimp. When she presented him with a plate holding the toasted muffins, he felt a little less grateful. “You don’t have to feed me,” he said. “I’m not one of your babies. Where are they, anyway?”

“They’re with their father,” she said crisply. She set the tub of butter in front of him. Then she filled his mug with the freshly
brewed coffee, poured some into another mug for herself and joined him at the table. “Is this all because of me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mom’s disappearing act. Is it because of me?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it and used the time it took to butter his muffin halves to sort his thoughts. “None of this is because of you, Claudia. I don’t ever want you thinking that.”