Over Her Dead Body(16)

Louisa didn’t talk about her illness, so I didn’t know how serious it was. She didn’t seem to be in pain, but she was so frail now, and never ventured too far from home anymore. I knew she had a nurse who came to the house twice a week because I saw the canceled checks: $300 to Silvia Hernandez, RN. I was curious about what went on during those nursing visits, but they were none of my business, so I never asked.

I dried the last of the dishes, hung the worn linen dish towel on the oven door, then stepped into the parlor to thank my hostess. My heart broke a little when I saw she had fallen asleep on that crazy uncomfortable high-back sofa. She was ornery, but who wouldn’t be in her situation? She used to be a mogul, a jet-setter, on top of the world. And now she was a sick old woman who couldn’t even stay awake long enough to say goodbye to her dinner guest. Warning sign? Or just a long week? I would come to regret I didn’t bother to find out.





CHAPTER 12




* * *



JORDAN


I knew it was trouble when Ashley came back from her dog walk without the dog.

“Ashley! What happened? Where’s Brando?”

“Oh, Jordan, I messed up bad!”

She tumbled into a chair, and I crouched down across from her. “Take a breath and tell me what happened,” I said, even though I knew exactly what had happened. She’d let Brando off the leash to run ahead—because “he needs his fun, too”—and this time he just kept running.

“I only took him off the leash for a minute!”

I had cautioned her not to let her dog run all willy-nilly in the dead of night—or anytime for that matter. We’d already had too many close calls: a near miss with a pickup truck, a headlong bolt across the Boulevard at rush hour, a tête-à-tête with a pit bull twice his size. And those were just the ones I’d witnessed. But I resisted the urge to I-told-you-so.

“I’ll get changed and we’ll go out and look for him, OK?”

I was barely to my feet when her phone rang. “Hello? . . . Yes, yes it is! Do you have him? . . . I’ll be there in a few minutes!”

“Someone found him?”

She nodded, and then came more tears (but the good kind). I’d found that people cried as often in relief (“Your husband’s going to be just fine”) as they did in agony (“I’m sorry but we’ve lost him”). I used to joke that this is why I didn’t go into emergency medicine—too much crying! I was practiced at staying calm and collected when a stranger collapsed into uncontrollable sobs, but it was different when it was Ashley. I felt her pain as sharp and stinging as a broken bone. I guess that’s how I knew I loved her.

I’d seen Ashley through more than a handful of heartbreaks—after her theater company folded, when she didn’t get that big part she was “perfect” for, and, most devastatingly, after her dad died. She always apologized for “crying all over me,” but I didn’t mind it. I liked being close to her, the one to steady her when life threw her a curveball.

“You’re OK, he’s OK,” I said as I pulled her into a hug. We’d shared a lot of hugs over the years, so I had no reason to think this one was any different. Until she brought up the pact.

“Jordan . . . Do you remember that pact we made? About turning thirty?”

No. No, no! I was not ready for this.

“We made a pact?” I said dumbly, hoping she’d buy my feigned confusion. Of course I remembered the pact. I remembered her exact words, in fact (“Let’s be each other’s backup spouse!”) and how she’d laughed when I said, “OK, dear.” I remembered the kiss, too. I remembered having to stop myself from letting it turn into more, because, yeah, I wanted her, but not after three tequila shots and whatever else we’d imbibed. If we were going to do it, I wanted to do it sober.

“Well, not a pact, exactly,” she backtracked. “It’s just you’ve always been there for me. And I like that. And maybe, y’know, it could always be like that? Like we talked about.”

I had experienced all sorts of scary situations in my life—being down by one with five seconds on the clock, making that first incision on a body that wasn’t a cadaver, having to tell a young, hopeful diabetic I couldn’t save his toe, his foot, his leg—but nothing had scared me quite like Ashley telling me she wanted to make good on that pact.

“Brando’s waiting. I’ll go change.”

I didn’t rebuff her because that’s not what I wanted. I rebuffed her because it was exactly what I wanted. But not like this. Just as I’d backed off after that kiss because I wanted better for Ashley than drunken sex she might regret, I was ducking her marriage question because I wanted better for her than a forgettable proposal she’d had to make herself. If you’re lucky, you only get one proposal in your lifetime. You shouldn’t have to settle for one that slips out while celebrating something else.

I knew the story of how my parents got engaged. It told itself when I was born four short months after their wedding. My mom always denied that it was a marriage of convenience, but I saw the look in her eyes when her friends told the stories of their mountaintop proposals with velvet boxes and champagne flutes hidden in trees. Her proposal was, “So? What are we going to do about this?” I didn’t want to get engaged under the dull fluorescent light of our 1970s-era kitchen. I wanted my mountaintop, too.