Cork had called to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner. Jo wasn’t angry. She understood his situation. But she wasn’t happy, either. The children helped with dishes, then turned to their homework.
Jo went into her office at the back of the house to do some work of her own. She was going over the file of Amanda Horton when the phone rang.
“I was hoping you would answer.” The voice was low and certain, and she knew it instantly. “I need to see you.”
“What for?”
“To talk.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Please. Just to talk.”
“We can talk on the phone.”
“There are things you need to know. For your own good. Please.”
She closed her eyes and knew even as she made her decision that it held all the potential for disaster. “All right. My office in the Aurora Professional Building. In fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you.”
She went to the living room, where the children sat among their scattered books and notebooks and pencils.
“I have to go to my office for a while. You guys okay?”
“Sure, Mom,” Jenny said. “A client?”
“Yes.” The lie felt like something piercing her heart.
The rain had ended in the afternoon, but a dreary wetness lingered. It was after seven, the sky a dismal gray that was sliding into early dark. The radio in her Camry was on, tuned to NPR, All Things Considered, but she wasn’t listening. She turned onto Oak Street, pulled to the curb, and stopped half a block from her office. She sat with her hands tight on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at an old tennis shoe abandoned in the street. It looked like a small animal cringing in the beam of her headlights.
She closed her eyes and whispered, “Christ, what am I doing?”
She heard the car approaching, the whish of the tires on wet pavement. A black Cadillac passed and half a block farther turned into the parking lot of the Aurora Professional Building. She took a deep breath and followed.
When she parked beside the Cadillac, he stepped out.
“This way,” she said, and went to a side door where she used her key.
The hallway was quiet and dimly lit, but from somewhere she couldn’t see came the sound of a buffer going over a floor.
“Cleaning staff,” she said, more to herself than to him.
She led the way to her office, unlocked the door, stood aside to let him pass. Closing the door behind her, she walked to her inner office and flipped on the light. She turned around. He stood close to her, smelling of the wet autumn air.
“What do you want, Ben?”
He wore a light-brown turtleneck that perfectly matched his eyes and hair and pressed against his chest and shoulders in a way that made it seem as if the muscles beneath it were about to burst through.
He said, “A very long time ago I built a wall across my life. There was everything before you and everything after.”
“Very poetic,” she said. “And what? The wall crumbles now, our lives suddenly merge again? Ben, you left me, remember? How’s your wife, by the way?”
“She’s dead, Jo.”
“Oh.” She felt the knot of her anger loosen just a little. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been a widower for a year. But even before that we were…” He shrugged in his tight, expensive sweater. “The marriage was over years ago. It was never much of a marriage to begin with.”
She slipped behind her desk, put the big piece of polished oak between her and Benjamin Jacoby. “I’m sorry your life didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, but I put you behind me a long time ago. I went on with my own life. I’ve been very happy.”
He came to the desk. “You never thought of me?”
She didn’t answer.
“It’s a big world, Jo. It’s unthinkable to me that fate would bring us together again without a reason.”
“Fate?” She laughed. “Ben, you never left anything to chance. How long have you known I was here?”
He looked deeply into her eyes. “I always knew it. I just never did anything about it. Then one night, we’re having dinner at my father’s house, the whole family. Eddie’s talking about this casino deal he’s working on in Minnesota, going on about the gorgeous lawyer he was dealing with. I ask him where this casino is. And bingo-Aurora. I don’t know. With Eddie coming here, it made a difference somehow, connected us. Since then I’ve often thought about using him as an excuse to contact you, but I’m not egocentric or stupid enough to believe there could ever be anything between us again. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for what happened to Eddie. I don’t have any desire to complicate your life.”
“You can’t complicate it, Ben. You’re not even a part of it.”
“I’m not looking for that, Jo. My life hasn’t been perfect, but it was the one I chose, and it’s had its advantages.” He moved his hand across the desk but stopped far short of touching her. “You haven’t asked why I left you.”
“It was pretty obvious. You were married within six months.”
“The roads we take aren’t always of our own choosing.”
“What? She was pregnant?”
“There are other compelling reasons to marry.”
“Love?”
“In my whole life, Jo, I’ve loved one woman. I didn’t marry her.”
“I don’t want to go on with this conversation. But I do want to know why the charade? Why pretend that my being here was such a surprise?”
“I was afraid that I’d scare you. I know how crazy all this must seem.”
Jo shook her head. “I haven’t heard you say one thing so far that sounded real to me.”
He looked genuinely hurt. “The wall, Jo, that was real. You did divide my life. For a while, you absolutely defined it. I’m not saying that I’ve thought of you every day for the last twenty years, but whenever I think about a time when I was happy, I think about the summer with you.” He seemed to be at the edge of defeat. “Look, I’m in town for only a couple of days. Could I…” He faltered. “Could I ask a favor? A small one, I promise.”
“What is it?”
“I’d like to meet your family.”
“Why?”
“I’d love to see the life you’ve made for yourself.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Only you and I know the truth about us. It wouldn’t be awkward, I promise. And maybe it would help with closure.”
“After twenty years you need closure?”
“All right. Then just to satisfy my own damn curiosity. An hour of your time and your family’s. Is it really so much to ask?”
“Yes, it is. I can’t believe you don’t understand that.”
“There’s so much you don’t understand. So much you never will.” He put up his empty hands. “I guess that’s it.”
“You said there were things I needed to know, for my own good.”
“I was mistaken. They were things I needed to know, and now I do.”
He turned and walked to the anteroom. At the door that opened onto the hallway, he turned back, his hand on the knob. He took a look around him, at the ordinary room where Fran Cooper worked and Jo’s clients waited. “Do you like this?”
“I love it,” she said.
His eyes held a look of wistful sadness. “I wish I could say that about what I do. I wish I could have said it, ever. Good night, Jo.” He went out and closed the door behind him.
She waited until the sound of his footsteps in the corridor had faded to nothing, then went back into her office, sat down, and put her hands over her face as if she were trying to hide behind a small, fragile fence.