Turning Point(18)

Wendy Jones appeared to be petite in the photograph, she had a smoldering sexy quality to her, blue eyes and hair as dark as his own. She was striking and beautiful, but he thought her eyes seemed sad. She wasn’t smiling, and didn’t look like a happy person. She seemed as though she had the cares of the world on her shoulders, but he was impressed that she had graduated cum laude from Harvard. He got the impression from her bio and photograph that she was one of those physicians who took herself very seriously. He’d done his residency at Stanford, where she worked now, so they had that in common.

Wendy arrived within five minutes of Bill. She didn’t notice him at first, and was drinking a short nonfat latte with vanilla and cinnamon as she glanced around. Their eyes met and Bill smiled. She was as slim and petite as he had expected her to be, and appeared younger than thirty-seven. Her hair was long and she was wearing it in a neat ponytail. She was traveling in jeans, a black sweater, and a parka, and was carrying a tote bag full of medical journals she intended to catch up on during the flight. It was eleven hours to Paris, so she had her computer in the bag too. She didn’t like to waste time being idle. Neither did Bill, but he wanted to watch a movie and catch up on his sleep. He had been on call for two nights in a row, and hadn’t bothered to shave for the trip. His outfit was much the same as Wendy’s, jeans, heavy black sweater, black down jacket, and running shoes. They looked like twins as they greeted each other and smiled.

    “Exciting trip, isn’t it?” he said warmly, nursing his cappuccino, and his smile lit up his eyes. “I’m really looking forward to it. I have two daughters in London, this gives me a chance to see them before the summer. Their mother’s British so they live over there. I promised to take them to Euro Disney in Paris when they come to France.” He chatted easily as they waited for the two others to arrive. “I’ve been trying to read up on the emergency services structure in France,” he added. “It’s incredibly confusing. They divide all their services by ‘zone’ geographically, at the local, department, and national level. It’s all under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior. Our division of power is a lot simpler.” She nodded and had been reading about it too.



* * *



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    Stephanie had had a hard time leaving the boys. They hadn’t been upset about her trip until then, but Andy looked so distressed that they picked up the signal from him, and started to cry before she left the house. She spent ten minutes trying to console them, although she was already late to meet the others before their flight.

Andy had hardly spoken to her since she told him she was going, and he was chilly when he said goodbye and she hugged him. He didn’t kiss her, and stood in the doorway looking stone-faced with a crying child on either side of him. He didn’t do anything to make the departure easier for her, and didn’t console his sons until she left. He wanted his wife to see what it looked like when you abandoned your family for a month to run off to France, on a program he thought she never should have accepted as a married woman with two children. She had tried to reason with him again before she left, to no avail.

“I’m not going to join the Folies Bergère, for Chrissake. I’m going on a work mission with a bunch of doctors.”

“You can do things like that when the kids are in college,” he said sternly. He made it clear that he hadn’t forgiven her for going, and she wondered if he ever would, but it was so unreasonable in her opinion that she didn’t want to enter into his games, or argue the point with him again. The following weekend, he was planning to take the boys skiing in Tahoe, and putting them in ski school. She would have liked to go with them, but probably would have been on call anyway.

Stephanie was fifteen minutes late to meet her colleagues when she ran through the airport, her long blond hair flying, in running shoes and jeans, a pink sweater, and a fur jacket she was going to wear if they went out to dinner somewhere nice. Her parka was in her suitcase, and she’d been afraid to put her fur jacket in her checked luggage so she wore it. She was out of breath when she spotted Wendy and Bill outside Starbucks, and recognized them both immediately.

    “I’m so sorry I’m late. My sons were crying when I left, I almost forgot my iPad.” She looked stressed and didn’t add that her husband was pissed at her for going.

Bill asked about her sons, and volunteered that he had two daughters in London, a little older than Aden and Ryan. It gave them something to talk about. Wendy said she had no children, but didn’t say it was because she had been the mistress of a married man for six years, and still was, while her biological clock was ticking. She had wanted children when she was younger, but doubted now that she would ever have any. It had begun to feel like it was too late, and she didn’t want a baby while Jeff was still with his wife, nor did he. He was careful to make sure that never happened, and so was she. It would have been a disaster, and he had made it clear that he expected her to have an abortion if she ever got pregnant.

They heard their flight called over the PA system, and walked slowly toward their gate, assuming that the fourth member of the group could get himself on the plane, since he was late. They wanted to board and settle in for the long flight, and just as they reached the gate and handed their boarding passes to the gate agent, Tom Wylie joined them. He was as fair as Stephanie and they looked like brother and sister. They were both tall and thin with long legs. He was wearing a navy turtleneck, jeans, a proper overcoat, and black suede loafers. He seemed sophisticated, and smiled at each of them as he apologized for being late.