Amy pulled herself together enough to go back inside the house. She ate one hot dog, for the sake of appearances, then went to her bathroom to shower and put on shorts and a tank top.
Oliver and Ashley were in the family room, arguing over which program to watch on TV, when Amy joined them. Unless the exchanges threatened to turn violent, she never interfered, believing that children needed to learn to work out their differences without a parent jumping in to referee.
The built-in mahogany shelves next to the fireplace were lined with photo albums, and Amy took one of the early volumes down and carried it to the couch.
There she kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the cushion, opening the album slowly, trying to prepare herself for the inevitable jolt of seeing Tyler smiling back at her from some snapshot.
After flipping the pages for a while, acclimating herself for the millionth time to a world that no longer contained Tyler Ryan, she began to look closely at the pictures.
2
The next day, on the terrace of a busy waterfront restaurant, Amy tossed a piece of sourdough bread to one of the foraging sea gulls and sighed. “For all I know,” she confided to her best friend, “Harry Griffith is an ax murderer. And I’ve invited him to dinner.”
Debbie’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “How bad can he be?” she asked reasonably. “Tyler liked him a lot, didn’t he? And your husband had pretty good judgment when it came to human nature.”
Amy nodded, pushing away what remained of her spinach and almond salad. “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly.
A waitress came and refilled their glasses of iced tea, and Debbie added half a packet of sweetener to hers, stirring vigorously. “So what’s really bugging you? That you saw Tyler in a dream and he said a guy named Harry Griffith would come into your life, and now that’s about to come true?”
“Wouldn’t that bother you?” Amy countered, exasperated. “Don’t look now, Deb, but things like this don’t happen every day!”
Debbie looked thoughtful. “The subconscious mind is a fantastic thing,” she mused. “We don’t even begin to comprehend what it can do.”
Amy took a sip of her tea. “You think I projected Tyler from some shadowy part of my brain, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Debbie answered matter-of-factly.
“Okay, fine. I can accept that theory. But how do you account for the fact that Tyler mentioned Harry Griffith, specifically and by name? How could that have come from my subconscious mind, when I never actually knew the man?”
Debbie shrugged. “There were pictures in the albums, and I’m sure Tyler probably talked about him often. I suppose his parents must have talked about the guy sometimes, too. We pick up subliminal information from the people around us all the time.”
Her friend’s theory made sense, but Amy was still unconvinced. If she’d only conjured an image of Tyler for her own purposes, she would have had him hold her, kiss her, tell her the answers to cosmic mysteries. She would never have spent those few precious moments together talking about some stranger from Australia.
Amy shook her head and said nothing.
Debbie reached out to take her hand. “Listen, Amy, what you need is a vacation. You’re under a lot of stress and you haven’t resolved your conflicts over Tyler’s death. Park the kids with Tyler’s parents and go somewhere where the sun’s shining. Sunbathe, spend money with reckless abandon, live a little.”
Amy recalled briefly that she’d always wanted to visit Australia, then pushed the thought from her mind. A trip like that wouldn’t be much fun all by herself. “I have work to do,” she hedged.
“Right,” Debbie answered. “You really need the money, don’t you? Tyler had a whopping insurance policy, and then there was the trust fund from your grandmother. Add to that the pile you’ve made on your own with this real estate thing—”
“All right,” Amy interrupted. “You’re right. I’m lucky, I have plenty of money. But work fills more than just financial needs, you know.”
Debbie’s look was wryly indulgent, and she didn’t speak at all. She just tapped the be-ringed fingers of her right hand against the upper part of her left arm, waiting for Amy to dig herself in deeper.
“Listen,” Amy whispered hoarsely, not wanting diners at the neighboring tables to overhear, “I know what you’re really saying, okay? I’m young. I’m healthy. I should be…having sex with some guy. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, the smart money is on celibacy these days!”
“I’m not telling you to go out and seduce the first man you meet, Amy,” Debbie said frankly, making no apparent effort to moderate her tone. “What I’m really saying is that you need to stop mourning Tyler and get on with your life.”
Amy snatched up her check, reached for her purse and pushed back her chair. “Thanks,” she snapped, hot color pooling in her cheeks. “You’ve been a real help!”
“Amy…”
“I have a meeting,” Amy broke in. And then she walked away from the table without even looking back.
Debbie caught up to her at the cash register. “My brother has a condo at Lake Tahoe,” she persisted gently. “You could go there for a few days and just walk along the shore and look at the trees and stuff. You could visit the house they used in Bonanza.”
Despite her nervous and irritable mood, Amy had to smile. “You make it sound like a pilgrimage,” she replied, picking up her credit card receipt and placing it neatly in a pocket of her brown leather purse. “Shall I burn candles and say, ‘Spirits of Hoss, Adam and Little Joe, show me the way’?”
Now it was Debbie who laughed. “Your original hypothesis was correct, Ryan. You are indeed crazy.”
It was an uncommonly sunny day, even for late June, and the sidewalks were crowded with tourists. Amy spoke softly, “I’m sorry, Deb. I was really a witch in there.”
Debbie grinned. “True, but being a friend means knowing somebody’s faults and liking them anyway. And to show you I do have some confidence in your reasoning processes, expect my cousin Max over tonight.” She paused to think a moment, then her pretty face was bright with inspiration. “Max will wear coveralls and pretend to be fixing the dishwasher or something. That way, there’ll be a man in the house, in case this Griffith guy really is an ax murderer, but Mr. Australia will never guess you were nervous about having him over.”
Amy wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she had neither the time nor the energy to try to talk Debbie out of it. She had an important meeting scheduled and, after that, some shopping to do at the Pike Place Market.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Amy promised, as the two women went in their separate directions.
Because she didn’t know whether to go with elegant or simple and typically American, Amy settled on a combination of the two and bought fresh salmon steaks to be seasoned, wrapped in foil and cooked on the backyard barbecue. She made a potato salad as well, and set out chocolate éclairs from an upscale bakery for dessert.
She
