“Grief’s a bugger.” Sarah had explained some of that to him just today, though she hadn’t told him the loss had led her to make such a decision. Poor Ben. “Takes a while to get your brain back in working order.”
Ben nodded. His voice seemed to come from far away. “I understand. Who wouldn’t? But that means I have to either live without children or live without Sarah.”
Jack said, “You know, it’s entirely possible she could change her mind a couple of years down the road.”
“I don’t know. And what if she doesn’t?”
“I guess if you can’t live with that possibility, then make sure you think it through before you go any further.”
Ben shrugged. “I’m thinking...you know...maybe it’ll somehow resolve itself.” He ran a hand over his face and groaned. “Yeah. Like that’ll happen.”
“Having kids is a tough choice for some people. If you think disease is hard on children, you should see what war does to them.”
Jack understood Sarah, he just didn’t agree with her. He wanted children—an SUV full. Yeah, kids were very vulnerable to all of life’s evils, but he’d survived a childhood at least as toxic as a horrible disease.
He’d decided in Afghanistan that the best way to save the warring world was to populate it with peaceful people who were loving and tolerant. They would become that way by being loved and tolerated themselves. He imagined all the things he’d longed for as a child... Someone to smile at him, not just once in a great while but every day. Someone to put a loving hand on him, to offer him security and comfort and love him just because he existed. He’d decided to give all that to his own children so they wouldn’t be haunted by bad memories and old fears. So that, one day, they could change the world.
All he had to do was find a woman who agreed with him.
He understood Sarah, but she was wrong.
* * *
SARAH PULLED UP in front of the Cooper Building on Saturday afternoon. The string of sunny days continued, and shoppers were wandering around downtown, determined to enjoy the weather before it turned to the usual Oregon coastal wind and rain of mid-fall and winter.
Jack stepped out of the passenger side and looked up at the two-story Italianate structure built of brick and stone. Arched windows on the second floor softened the line and empty window boxes on the first floor begged for a gardener’s touch.
He stood for a long time. Sarah looked up at his pleated brow. “You don’t like it?”
“No, I do.” He came out of his thoughts to catch her arm and lead her toward the door. “It’s just that I know this place.”
She redirected him toward the rear door. “I don’t have a key,” she said. “But the cleaning crew usually leaves it open. If you’ve lived here all your life, I’m not surprised you know it. It started out as a bank at the turn of the twentieth century, but it’s had all kinds of incarnations since then.”
“When I was a kid,” he said, opening the door for her, “it was a nightclub called Cubby’s. My mother sang here.”
Sarah stopped just inside, the large main room to their right dim and quiet. “You were allowed in?” she asked in surprise.
“Only in the back.” He turned left instead of right into a smaller, windowless room, twelve by twelve, according to the building specs she’d printed out for herself. He shone the flashlight he’d brought around the room. A built-in bookcase stood against the opposite wall. “In those days,” he said, walking in, “I used to play in this room while my mother worked. Somebody from the kitchen would bring us something to eat. I remember liking the crème brûlée.”
Sarah smiled in the dark, happy he had some good memories of that time. “Pretty sophisticated palate for a little kid.”
“No. It’s just really good custard.” He walked up to the bookcase and put a hand on it. “This was a storeroom then, but the guy who owned the place used to keep games and books in here for us.”
“Us?”
“Yeah. Corie was just a toddler, but she came when Donald wasn’t home to watch her, and there was another kid. Can’t remember his name right now. His mother played guitar. He had red hair and freckles and his front teeth were missing. I used to feel sorry for him, but he was always cheerful. He liked to play with a red Tonka dump truck Mrs. Brogan—I think she’s one of your clients—had given me. She’d filled it with cookies—I ate all of them—but he filled it with gum balls. There was a machine by the back door and for twenty-five cents in pennies, he could almost fill it.”
Sarah laughed at that picture. “Good times, huh?”
“Yeah.” He turned off the flashlight. “I’d forgotten there’d been any.”
Together, they walked through the main room. Tall windows let in the bright afternoon. Two Ionic columns flanked an arch at the back of the room that had once separated teller windows from the vault when it had been a bank, the sales floor from the cash registers when it was a clothing store and the dining area from the kitchen when it was a nightclub. The restaurant that had most recently occupied the building had put in a large kitchen at the back, on the right.
Jack looked up at the stains on the ceiling.
Sarah looked up with him. “The city assures us the roof was fixed when the restaurant was here,” she said. “They also rewired, but there’s still a problem in the room where you played. They’re not sure what happened, but the power was fried in there and still doesn’t work. Plumbing’s a little old, but functional.”
Jack glanced around at the walls that had once been a soft gold but were now dull with age. “No cracks,” he said. “That’s good.” He turned his gaze down to the pockmarked fir floor. “This flooring will be beautiful once it’s sanded and restained.”
“That’s what I thought.” She was happy with his observations so far. “Come see the kitchen.”
The walls were white and the floor and backsplash were black-and-white tiles. “It’s institutional looking,” she said, “but the appliances are big because of the restaurant, and the specs say they work.” The window looked out onto the green wall of the fabric store next door.
“Is the water on?”
“Yes.”
Jack went to the double sink and turned on the hot faucet. The pressure was strong and steam rose almost immediately.
“That’s good,” he said. “If anything, you might want to turn the water heater down a notch. There’s an elevator, as I recall.”
“Yes. At the back, just beyond the kitchen.”
The slightly musty-smelling car was small and a little rickety, but there was a new inspection sticker near the controls. Sarah and Jack stood side by side while the car rose.
* * *
JACK PUT HIS hands in his pockets. Awareness of her closed in on him, applying more pressure on his body than the rising elevator. It was difficult to see her pretty profile and the soft roundness of her and know she didn’t want children. She seemed so perfect a vessel! But he did want kids and he wasn’t a perfect prospect for fatherhood at all. He guessed everyone put limits on themselves that greatly underestimated what they were capable of.
Still, in her case it seemed a shame. And Ben had gone off to work that morning looking as though someone had hammered him into his clothes. Jack was determined not to mention her refusal of Ben’s proposal unless she brought it up.
The elevator doors parted on a big room, empty except for two men wearing ventilators, who were putting a pile of trash into black plastic bags.
“What was up here?” Jack asked.