widow. Harry had never seen Amy Ryan or her children, except on the front of the Christmas cards he always received from them, and he hadn’t known what to say to her.
It had been a damn shame, a man like Tyler dying in his prime like that, and Harry could find no words of comfort inside himself.
Now, however, he had business with Tyler’s lovely lady, and he would have to open this last door that protected his own grief and endure whatever emotions might be set free in the process.
Harry tossed aside his tie and began unfastening his cuff links. Maybe he’d even go and stand by Tyler’s grave for a while, tell his friend he was a cheeky lot for bailing out so early in the game that way.
He pulled the sweater on over his head, replaced his slacks with jeans, then stood staring at himself in the mirror. Like the bed, chairs and bureau, it was bolted down.
Where Tyler had been handsome in an altar-boy sort of way, Harry was classically so, with dark hair, indigo-blue eyes and an elegant manner. He regarded his exceptional looks as tools, and he’d used them without compunction, every day of his life, to get what he wanted.
Or most of what he wanted, that is. He’d never had a real family of his own, the way Tyler had. God knew, Madeline hadn’t even tried to disguise herself as a wife, and she’d sent the child she’d borne her first husband to boarding school in Switzerland. Madeline hadn’t wanted to trouble herself with a twelve-year-old daughter, and Eireen’s letters and phone calls had been ignored more than answered.
Harry felt sick, remembering. He’d tried to establish a bond with the child on her rare holidays in Australia, but while Madeline hadn’t wanted to be bothered with the little girl, she hadn’t relished the idea of sharing her, either.
Then, after another stilted Christmas, Madeline had decided she needed a little time on the “the continent,” and would therefore see Eireen as far as Zurich. Their plane had gone down midway between New Zealand and the Fiji Islands, and there had been no survivors.
Harry had not wept for his wife—the emotion he’d once mistaken for love had died long before she did—but he’d cried for that bewildered child who’d never been permitted to love or be loved.
Later, when Tyler had died, Harry had gotten drunk—something he had never done before or since—and stayed that way for three nightmarish days. It had been an injustice of cosmic proportions that a man like Tyler Ryan, who had had everything a man could dream of, should be sent spinning off the world that way, like a child from a carnival ride that turned too fast.
“Mr. Griffith?”
Mark’s voice, coming over the intercom system, startled Harry. “Yes?” he snapped, pressing a button on the instrument affixed to the wall above his bed, a little testy at the prospect of landing in Seattle.
“We’re starting our descent, sir. Would you like to come back and take the controls?”
“You can handle it,” Harry answered, removing his finger from the button. He thought of Tyler’s parents and the big house on Mercer Island where he’d spent some of the happiest times of his life. “You can handle it,” he repeated gravely, even though Mark couldn’t hear him now. “The question is, can I?”
Amy had had a busy day, but she’d managed to finish work on time to pick up Oliver and Ashley at day camp, and she was turning hot dogs on the grill in her stove when the telephone rang.
Oliver answered with his customary “Yo!” He listened to the caller with ever-widening eyes and then thrust the receiver in Amy’s direction. “I think it’s that guy from the movies!” he shouted.
Amy frowned, crossed the room and took the call. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Ryan?” The voice was low, melodic and distinctly Australian. “My name is Harry Griffith, and I was a friend of your husband’s—”
The receiver slipped from Amy’s hand and clattered against the wall. Harry Griffith? Harry Griffith! The man Tyler had mentioned in her dream the night before.
“Mom!” Ashley cried, alarmed. She’d learned, at entirely too young an age, that tragedy almost always took a person by surprise.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Amy said hastily, snatching up the telephone with one hand and pulling her daughter close with the other. “Hello? Mr. Griffith?”
“Are you all right?” he asked in that marvelous accent.
Amy leaned against the counter, not entirely trusting her knees to support her, and drew in a deep breath. “I’m fine,” she lied.
“I don’t suppose you remember me…”
Amy didn’t remember Harry Griffith, except from old photographs and things Tyler had said, and she couldn’t recall seeing him at the funeral. “You knew Tyler,” she said, closing her eyes against a wave of dizziness.
“Yes,” he answered. His voice was gentle and somehow encouraging, like a touch. “I’d like to take you out for dinner tomorrow night, if you’ll permit.”
If you’ll permit. The guy talked like Cary Grant in one of those lovely old black-and-white movies on the Nostalgia Channel. “Ah—well—maybe you should just come here. Say seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock,” he confirmed. There was brief pause, then, “Mrs. Ryan? I’m very sorry—about Tyler, I mean. He was one of the best friends I ever had.”
Amy’s eyes stung, and her throat felt thick. “Yes,” she agreed. “I felt pretty much the same way about him. I-I’ll see you at seven tomorrow night. Do you have the address?”
“Yes,” he answered, and then the call was over.
It took Amy so long to hang up the receiver that Oliver finally pulled it from her hand and replaced it on the hook.
“Who was that?” Ashley asked. “Is something wrong with Grampa or Gramma?”
“No, sweetheart,” Amy said gently, bending to kiss the top of Ashley’s head, where her rich brown hair was parted. “It was only a friend of your daddy’s. He’s coming by for dinner tomorrow night.”
“Okay,” Ashley replied, going back to the table.
Amy took the hot dogs from the grill and served them, but she couldn’t eat because her stomach was jumping back and forth between its normal place and her windpipe. She went outside and sat at the picnic table in her expensive suit, watching as the sprinkler turned rhythmically, making its chicka-chicka sound.
She tried to assemble all the facts in her mind, but they weren’t going together very well.
Last night she’d dreamed—only dreamed—that Tyler had appeared in their bedroom. Amy could ascribe that to the spicy Mexican food she’d eaten for dinner the previous night, but what about the fact that he’d told her his friend Harry Griffith would call and ask to see her? Could it possibly be a wild coincidence and nothing more?
She pressed her fingers to her temples. The odds against such a thing had to be astronomical, but the only other explanation was that she was psychic or something. And Amy knew that wasn’t true.
If
