“But I’m not an image being beamed out of your deeper mind, either. I’m just as real as you are.”
Amy swallowed hard. “I don’t understand!” she wailed in a low voice, frustrated.
“You’re not supposed to,” Tyler assured her gently. “There’s no need for you to understand.”
Amy stepped closer, needing to touch Tyler, but between one instant and the next he was gone. No fadeout, no flash, nothing. He was there and then he wasn’t.
“Tyler?” Amy whispered brokenly.
“Mom?” Ashley’s voice made Amy start, and she turned to see her daughter standing only a few feet behind her, wearing cotton pajamas and carrying her favorite doll. “Did Mr. Harry go home?”
Apparently Ashley hadn’t heard her mother talking to thin air, and Amy was relieved. She reached out to stop the tire swing, which was still swaying back and forth in the night air.
“Yes, sweetheart,” she said. “He’s really a nice man, isn’t he?”
Ashley nodded gravely. “I like to listen to him talk. I wish he was still here, so he could tell us a kangaroo story.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know any,” she suggested, distracted. If Tyler had known what she was thinking earlier, had he also discerned that his widow felt a powerful attraction to one of his best friends?
“Sure, he does,” Ashley said confidently as they stepped into the kitchen together. Amy closed and locked the sliding door. “Did you know they have yellow signs in Australia, with the silhouette of a kangaroo on them—like the Deer Crossing signs here?”
Amy turned off the outside lights and checked to make sure all the leftovers had been put away. The dishwasher showed no signs of Max’s exploratory surgery. “No, sweetheart,” she said, standing at the sink now and staring out the window at the tire swing. It was barely visible in the deepening darkness. “I didn’t know that. I guess it makes sense, though. Off to bed now.”
“What about the story?”
Amy felt tears sting her eyes as she stared out at the place where Tyler had been. That was what her life was these days, it seemed, just a place where Tyler had been.
Harry sat on the stone bench beside Tyler’s fancy marble headstone, his chin propped in one palm. “Damn it, man,” he complained, “you didn’t tell me she was beautiful. You didn’t say anything about the warm way she laughs, or those golden highlights in her hair.” He sighed heavily. “All right,” he conceded. “I guess you did say she was a natural wonder, but I thought you were just talking. Even the Christmas cards didn’t prepare me…”
He stood, tired of sitting, and paced back and forth at the foot of Tyler’s grave. It didn’t bother him, being in a cemetery at night. He wasn’t superstitious and, besides, he’d been needing this confrontation with Tyler for a good long time.
“You might have stuck around a few more years, you know!” he muttered, shoving one hand through his usually perfect hair. “There you were with that sweet wife, those splendid children, a great career. And what did you do? In the name of God, Tyler, why didn’t you fight?”
The only answer, of course, was a warm night wind and the constant chirping of crickets.
Harry stopped his pacing and stood with one foot braced against the edge of the bench, staring down at the headstone with eyes that burned a little. “All right, mate,” he said softly, hoarsely. “I know you probably had your reasons for not holding on longer—and that’s not to say I won’t be wanting an accounting when I catch up with you. In the meantime, what’s really got under my skin is, well, it’s Amy and those terrific kids.”
He tilted his head back and looked up at the moon for a long time, then gave a ragged sigh. “We were always honest with each other, you and I. Nothing held back. When I laid eyes on that woman, Ty, it was as though somebody wrenched the ground out from beneath my feet.”
While the damning words echoed around him, Harry struggled to face the incomprehensible reality. He hadn’t been with Amy Ryan for five minutes before he’d started imagining what it would be like to share his life with her.
He hadn’t thought of taking Amy to bed, though God knew that would be the keenest of pleasures. No, he’d pictured her nursing a baby…his baby. He’d seen her running along the white sand on the beach near his house in northern Queensland, with Ashley and Oliver scampering behind, and he’d seen her sitting beside him in the cockpit of his jet.
This was serious.
He touched his friend’s headstone as he passed, and started toward the well-lighted parking lot. “If you know what’s good for you, Harry,” he muttered to himself, “you’ll give the lady her money and then stay out of her way.”
Harry got behind the wheel of his rented vehicle and started the engine. Nothing must be allowed to happen between him and Amy Ryan, and the reason was simple. To touch her would be to betray a man who would have trusted Harry with his very life.
3
Amy didn’t sleep well that night. She was filled with contradictory feelings; new ones and old ones, affectionate and angry ones. She was furious with Tyler for ever dying in the first place, and with Harry Griffith for thawing out her frozen emotions. She was also experiencing a warmth and a sense of pleasant vulnerability she’d never expected to know again.
After Oliver and Ashley had gone to camp, Amy didn’t put on a power suit and go out to network with half a dozen potential clients as she normally would have done. Instead, she wore jeans and a pastel blue sun top and pulled her heavy shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail. She was in the spacious room that had once been Tyler’s study, balancing her checkbook and listening with half an ear to a TV talk show, when the telephone rang.
Amy pushed the speaker button. “Hello?”
Harry’s smooth, cultured voice filled the room. “Hello, Amy. It’s Harry Griffith.”
“I know,” Amy answered automatically, before she’d had a chance to think about the implications of those two simple words. She laid down her pen and closed the checkbook, feeling vaguely embarrassed. She wanted to say something witty, but of course nothing came to mind; in an hour or a day or a week, when it was too late, some smidgen of clever repartee would come to mind in a flash.
“I enjoyed last night’s visit with you and the children,” he went on, and Amy leaned back in her chair, just letting that wonderful voice roll over her, like warm ocean water. “Thank you for inviting me, Amy.”
Amy closed her eyes, then quickly opened them again. She needed to be on her guard with this man, lest she say or do something really foolish. “Uh…yes…well, you’re very welcome, of course.” That was really brilliant, Ryan, she added to herself.
“I’d like to return the favor, if I might. I’ve made an appointment to look at a rather unique house over on Vashon Island tomorrow, and I could really use some company—besides the real estate agent, I mean. Would you and Ashley and Oliver care to go out and offer your opinion of the place?”
Amy’s heart warmed as she thought how her son and daughter would enjoy such an outing, especially
