he knew them himself, Troy said, “Why weren’t you surprised?”
“Not long ago I overheard three of the nurses in the laser clinic bemoaning the fact that you never dated anyone. Since I saw no overt signs that you were homosexual, I could only assume you didn’t feel yourself to be free.”
He had been more than competently diagnosed; trying to shrug off his distaste, both for Martine’s objectivity and her accuracy, he said, “I can’t believe you want me so badly that you’d risk the kind of rejection I just subjected you to—and no, I’m not fishing for compliments.”
“Then you’ll get none.” She widened her dark eyes. “A Spanish omelette?” she asked.
“To really put the lid on my lack of romantic sensibility, I’m extremely hungry,” Troy said in faint surprise. “Why don’t we blow our cholesterol counts and make it a six-egg omelette?”
“Four,” she said, leading him into a kitchen that looked dauntingly efficient. “Three for you and one for me.” Opening the massive refrigerator, she put red and green peppers and a bunch of green onions on the counter. “You may chop these. Very fine.”
Obediently Troy did as he was told. As the small heap of red and green cubes accumulated he heard himself say, “I was offered a job today in Arizona.”
“Ah? Tell me about it.” After he had given her the details, she said, “And will you take it?”
“I plan to go down and check it out.”
“So is this another rejection?”
The oversize apron she had tied round her waist made her look more human, more approachable. He put the knife down and said straightforwardly, “Martine, it’s clear to me—and must be to you as well—that I’m not ready for an affair. Serious or otherwise. Nor do I really want to bare my soul and tell you all about the breakdown of my marriage.”
Moodily he pulled at the rubber bands from the bunch of onions. “I need to get away. Out of Vancouver. Away from nurses who think I should be dating—away from everyone who knew Lucy and me as a couple in the days when I was happy…I need a new start. And Arizona might very well give me that.”
“You’d be missed,” Martine said obliquely.
The thought that she might possibly be falling in love with him filled Troy with dismay. “For a while I might be missed. But not for long. No one’s irreplaceable.”
“Not even Lucy?” she flashed with the first show of temper he’d seen.
Her question flicked him on the raw. And, of course, he had no answer for her. “Shall I chop all these onions?” he said evenly.
“Half would be plenty.” Whisking the eggs vigorously, she added, “I’ve never married, Troy. I’m beginning to feel it’s time I did. Particularly if I want a child.”
The knife in his hands didn’t even falter. “You’re an exceptionally attractive woman. Any number of men would find it a privilege and an adventure to be married to you.”
“But not you.”
“No, Martine. Not me.”
She banged the bowl of eggs down on the counter so hard that the yellow liquid swirled to the rim. “Later on I’ll no doubt be grateful that we had this conversation. That you didn’t take me to bed. But for now I feel anything but grateful.”
Troy was damned if he was going to feel guilty; as far as he was concerned he hadn’t done one single thing to encourage her to fall in love with him. Quite suddenly the stark, efficient kitchen, the perceptive and beautiful woman glaring at him across the expanse of countertop, the false domesticity of the scene, were all too much for him. He said, “Martine, why don’t we skip the omelette? I suspect neither one of us is in the mood for food or small talk—and we seem to have said anything else there is to say.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “You can see yourself out.”
He stood up and said truthfully, “If I’ve done anything to hurt you that wasn’t my intention, and I’m sorry. Goodnight.”
Grabbing his jacket and tie on his way through the living-room, he flicked the lock on the door and stepped out into the corridor. The door shut smartly behind him. He chose the stairs rather than the elevator, taking them two at a time and feeling rather like a little boy let out of school.
He’d learned one thing this evening. He wasn’t ready for any kind of emotional involvement.
It wasn’t until Troy unlocked his own front door and stepped into the house where he’d lived with Lucy that his new-found sense of freedom evaporated. Although Lucy’s clothes were gone from the front closet, although her scent no longer lingered in the hallway and her voice didn’t call a welcome from upstairs, her stamp was everywhere—in every corner of the house.
He walked across the hall and stood in the doorway of the living-room. It wasn’t an elegant room, like Martine’s, but it was full of color and unexpected treasures—ranging from the seashells Lucy had collected in the Virgin Islands, where they had met, to a collection of Tibetan singing-bowls they had found in a bazaar in India. She had had a brief craze for embroidering cushions, the rather uneven results of which were lying on every chair, and the vibrant, Impressionistic watercolor she had fallen in love with in Provence, and which he had taken enormous pleasure in buying for her, hung over the fireplace.
Nothing matched; Troy knew that—an interior decorator would have thrown up her hands in despair. But somehow the room was redolent of Lucy’s warmth and love of life.
He didn’t want Martine. Or anyone else like Martine. He wanted Lucy.
In his mind’s eye he could picture the rest of the house very easily. The kitchen had never been Lucy’s favorite room, although she could make cheesecakes that melted in the mouth and she liked stir fries because no two ever came out the same. She had never used the copper pans that hung from the ceiling; rather, she had loved the way the sun shot turquoise fire from them late in the afternoon. The bathroom she had decorated in forest-green and scarlet as soon as they had moved in, because, she had said, every day with him felt like Christmas Day.
The bedroom, for the sake of his sanity, he had stripped of all her touches.
Reluctantly Troy came back to the present, to the reality of a house empty but for himself and his memories. As though pulled by an unseen hand, he walked upstairs and into the den. The photographs that had been in the bedroom were now in here. Lucy’s face laughed at him from within a gold frame on the bookshelves and in the informal snapshot on the pine desk her arms were wrapped around him, the blue waters of the Virgin Islands tingeing her eyes with the same vivid blue, her tangled mahogany curls standing out from her head like an aureole. Tall, beautiful Lucy, who, when she had married Troy, had made him happier than he had thought it was possible to be.
And then, side by side on the shelf, there were the photos of Michael.
Michael, their son. Who had died when he was seven months old, a year and a half ago. Who was the reason Lucy had left Troy alone in the big house on the bay.
Blond curls, eyes the same color as Sarah’s, and a toothless grin that bespoke Michael’s delight in the world in which
