Her Man Friday(48)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

For a moment, Caroline hesitated. Then, slowly and silently, she nodded.

"You lost him?"

"Yes," she managed to whisper.

"You loved him?"

"Yes."

For a moment, Kimball said nothing, only gazed at her with that maddeningly bland expression. Finally, very quietly, he said, "I see."

"No, Mr. Kimball, I doubt you do," Caroline replied just as quietly.

She had hoped he would release her hand now, and that they could go back to the safer subject of Chloe’s education. But Schuyler Kimball apparently wanted to keep things right where they were, because although he did indeed let go of her wrist, he opened his hand against hers, palm to palm, his fingertips extending above hers a good inch. Had she wanted to, Caroline could have pulled her hand away from his.

But she didn’t want to.

It was the first time a man had touched her tenderly in almost a year. Although there had been touching that morning in Kimball’s office—oh, had there been touching, she recalled with a shiver now—it had been rife with tension and uncertainty and demand. This time however, there was only gentleness. Softness. Solicitude.

And it was almost more than she could bear.

"What happened?" Kimball asked, not moving his hand from hers, not moving at all. He only continued to hold her gaze with his, and all she could do was try not to drown in the dark, dark depths of his blue, blue eyes.

"His name was Harry," she said. "Harry Beecham. And he… he, ah…" She inhaled a deep, unsteady breath and released it slowly. "He… was wonderful." She cleared her throat with some difficulty before continuing. "He was a police officer, and he was killed in the line of duty. They called me one night—one morning—at three-twenty-two to tell me he’d been shot when he interrupted a robbery attempt. He, uh…" She swallowed again. "H-he was killed instantly. That was eleven months ago. A week after our tenth anniversary."

Caroline had to consciously stop herself from releasing all the words that wanted to come after those, telling Kimball more than he wanted to know. Thoughts of Harry were never far from the very front of her brain. She wanted to tell Schuyler Kimball that Harry had coached Little League, that they’d tried to have children, but had never had any success, that her husband had grown up in South Philly, that they’d vacationed every summer in Cape May, that more than anything else in the world, Harry had loved Clint Eastwood movies—the old ones by Sergio Leone—Killian’s Red beer, "Cheers" reruns, and pizza with extra green peppers and black olives.

Her thoughts and memories were a jumble of images and emotions she could never quite hold onto long enough. Harry had just been such a wonderful, regular guy. And even eleven months after losing him, Caroline didn’t know what she was going to do without him.

"You miss him," Kimball said, curling his fingers between hers until their hands were joined.

Caroline closed her eyes and nodded, then mimicked his action, closing her fingers over his hand, too. It just felt so good, this simple human contact. There was nothing demanding, nothing complicated, nothing untoward in his gesture. And Caroline appreciated his mere closeness, his innocent touch, more than he could possibly know. It had just been so long since she had had anything like this. With anyone.

So long.

"Yes," she said softly, barely able to form the word. "I miss him."

"You’re lonely," Kimball added, more quietly than before.

"Yes. I am." When she opened her eyes, two fat tears tumbled down her cheeks, but she knew any effort to stop them would be pointless. She blinked, and he came into focus, and she realized there was something in his eyes, too. Not tears, but something else. Something that told her he understood. "I’m surprised, Mr. Kimball, that you seem to know so much about something like that. I would have guessed…"

He expelled a rueful chuckle, cutting her off, but with the knuckled index finger of his free hand, he lightly brushed her tears away. "Looking at you," he said, "is like looking in a mirror. Mrs. Beecham… Caroline," he amended, "you and I, I’m afraid, are two of a kind."

"No," she said quickly. "No, that’s not true at all. You’re…"

"What?"

She shook her head, able to say only, "You’re different. From me, I mean." And from Harry Beecham, too. "We’re not two of a kind at all."

"Isolation is isolation," he said, smiling sadly as he cupped her cheek in his hand. "Whether it’s self-inflicted or not is immaterial. It’s still…"

"What?" she asked when he left the observation incomplete.

"Unpleasant," he finished with profound understatement.

Caroline, too, lifted her hand, thinking she would move his away, but her traitorous fingers closed over his wrist and stayed there. Another tear streaked down her cheek, and he nudged it away with the pad of his thumb. Beneath her own thumb, she felt his pulse quicken, and she realized he was as confused and uncertain about all this as she was.

And then she remembered that their reason for being there wasn’t because she was lonely. Or because he was lonely. Or because they were trying to define what, exactly, was going on between the two of them, anyway. There was nothing going on between the two of them. It was that simple.

The reason they were there was because a young girl needed something more in her life to get her back on track. Caroline reminded herself that she was an educator, first and foremost, and in forgetting that, she had let one of her students down.

"Chloe," she said quietly. "We were talking about Chloe."

As if the name were an incantation, that single word broke the odd spell that had descended, and Caroline managed to release Kimball’s wrist and hand and take a step away. When she did, whatever strange illusion had appeared in his eyes vanished, and his features reverted to the expressionlessness she’d grown accustomed to seeing.

For a moment, she wondered if maybe she had just imagined the entire encounter, if maybe she had read something into their conversation that hadn’t been there at all. Then she recalled the gentleness of his fingers against her face, and the tenderness of his palm against hers. She remembered how lonely and confused he had looked himself. And she realized she had imagined none of it.

Maybe he was right, she thought. Maybe they really were two of a kind. But that was no reason they had to have any more to do with each other than was absolutely necessary. No reason to rush off on a pointless pursuit.