“I’ll grab something at the station.”
“Oh sure, some of those pastries from the Yellow Rose. Don’t you realize they’re clogging your arteries?”
“I could just have black coffee,” he joked.
Rolling her eyes, Mrs. Zappa picked up Sean, bouncing him in the air. The baby chortled and drew up his legs.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Rossi.”
He’d asked her to call him Vince, but she wouldn’t.
“You might have lived your life just for yourself for a long time, but now you have the future to think about. You have to stay healthy for this little boy. He’s going to need you around for many, many years to come. So in addition to working out with those weights in your bedroom, you need to eat right and take care of yourself.”
She must have seen the weights when she cleaned and swept his room. “I hear there’s a runners’ path around the lake,” he said. “I’d like to include that in my schedule a few times a week, but it might mean you’d have to stay another hour or so. How do you feel about that?”
“More money in my piggy bank for that cruise I want to take.” She grinned at him and took Sean over to his crib, laid him down and started the wind-up mobile toy above him. The tiny animal figures moved around the circle in time with the music.
“I’m going to make chili for tonight. How hot do you like it?” she asked with a grin.
“Hot.”
She shook her head. “Pretty soon I’ll have all your tastes figured out.”
Crossing to Sean’s crib, Vince adjusted one of the figures on the mobile that had become tangled with another. When he gazed down at Sean, he held out his finger for his son to grasp. Sean grabbed it with his good hand and Vince hoped beyond hope that Dr. Rafferty could give back to the baby the use of his right arm.
Mrs. Zappa gazed at him across the crib. “You know what you need, don’t you?”
He wiggled his finger back and forth with Sean holding on to it. “What? More cookware?” Mrs. Zappa had been dismayed when she’d arrived that he’d only bought a saucepan and a frying pan.
“Not cookware. You need a wife.”
That brought Vince’s gaze to hers. “I don’t need a wife. I have you,” he joked.
“Be serious, Mr. Rossi. I see you worry every time you look at that little boy. A wife would help cut that worry in half. A wife would help lighten the troubles and double the joys.”
Before he thought better of it, he responded, “I tried that once and it didn’t work out.”
If that wasn’t an understatement, he didn’t know what was. He was sure Tessa still blamed him for everything that had happened, including her hysterectomy. He deserved the blame, the guilt and the regrets.
“I’m not husband material, Mrs. Zappa.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because my marriage failed. Because I never had a role model.”
“You didn’t have a dad?”
“I had a dad who drank.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “That doesn’t mean you can’t learn. If you want something bad enough, you do what you have to do. You learn what you have to learn.”
As he thought about that, the end of his marriage played insistently in his head. Tessa had made her decision at the hospital when she chose to go home with her father rather than with him. Had he learned from that? He’d learned some bonds overrode others. He’d just been too smitten with Tessa to see it. “You make life sound so easy.”
“Oh, no. Life isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s a downright struggle. But having the right person beside you makes all the difference in the world. My Tony…” She sighed. “He was the best husband in the world. He told me every day he loved me. He never hesitated to give me a hug or a squeeze. He was a good man who worked hard to make our life the best it could be. I’ll never stop missing him. Thank goodness that, while I miss him, I have all the memories from thirty-six years of marriage to give me comfort. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without him.”
“You have children, right?”
“Two boys—one lives in Austin, the other in San Antonio. And because I have two boys, that’s how I know you need a wife to help you raise your son.”
Since his divorce, Vince never thought about committing to a life partner again. He simply couldn’t imagine it. When he and Tessa had married, everything about the marriage had been strained from the get-go. She’d come from wealth and they’d had no money. She’d come from a ranch with every modern convenience. They’d had a walk-up apartment with very few amenities. She’d thought being married had meant spending time with him. He’d had to work from sunrise to sunset just to give them the basics, just to pay for doctors’ appointments, the utilities, the repairs on his truck that was always breaking down. He’d had no expectations about marriage, but she had.
It was time to leave for work, but he had one more question for Mrs. Zappa. “So many marriages aren’t good ones, so many fail. What was the secret to making yours a good one?”
The older woman saw he was serious and wanted an honest answer. Soberly, she replied, “There are two secrets—compromise and forgiveness. So many young people think love is enough. But it’s not, not unless it grows into selfsacrifice, not unless both people can put the other one first.”
As Vince left the apartment a few minutes later, his mind was on everything Mrs. Zappa had said as well as on every one of the mistakes he’d made when he was eighteen, naive enough to think that love was enough.
That evening Vince paced the kitchen with Sean in the crook of his arm. He did not want to call Tessa.
But Sean coughed once again, a cough that made Vince hurt for the little boy. Sean also sounded as if he was wheezing.
Making the decision that was best for his son, Vince went to the cordless phone, picked it up and dialed. Earlier he’d looked her number up in the phone book and he’d remembered it. If she didn’t answer, if she wasn’t home, he’d take Sean to the emergency room.
Tessa must have had caller ID because when she picked up the phone, she asked, “Vince?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but Sean’s sick. He just had the sniffles this morning, but now he has this cough and a temperature of 101 and he’s wheezing. He’s done the emergency room route before when his parents died and he was in the hospital, too. I want to spare him that if I can.”
After only a moment’s hesitation, Tessa said, “Give me your address.”
He quickly did, telling her what side roads to take off of the main street.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she assured him and cut off the call.
Until Tessa arrived, Vince paced, rubbed Sean’s back and laid him in his crib. When the coughing seemed worse, he picked him up again. Ten minutes seemed like an hour, but Tessa finally rang the doorbell.
He hurried to answer it, Sean in his arms.
Tessa was carrying her doctor’s bag, and although she wore jeans and a short-sleeved blouse, she had a professional air about her. After one look at Vince’s face, she took Sean from him and carried the baby to the sofa.
Vince felt absolutely helpless and hated the feeling.
Now Sean was crying, as well as sniffling and coughing. Tessa tried to soothe him as she examined him. When she listened to his chest with a stethoscope, she frowned. “You said this has