“He needs you too. I only see him a couple of hours a day and all we talk about is football, baseball, and homework.”

“That's a start. Maybe you'll all be closer after this.”

“I thought we were.” That was the part that hurt most. He had thought they had everything. The perfect family. The perfect life. The perfect marriage. “I always thought everything was so just right between us … I never understood how you felt about all this … I mean … well, I did when you got pregnant, but I always thought that after that, and even before Sam, you were happy.” It hurt him so much to think that he hadn't given her everything she wanted.

“I was … I have been … I just wanted something you couldn't give me. It has to come from within, and I guess I never found it.” She felt so guilty for making him feel inadequate. He had always been the perfect husband.

“And if you don't find it now?”

“I give up, I guess.” But she knew she would. She already had in part. Just making the decision to go had changed her.

“I think you could find it right here. Maybe all you needed was more freedom.”

She moved closer to him in their comfortable bed, and he put an arm around her. “I had all the freedom I needed. I just didn't know what to do with it.”

“Oh baby …” He buried his face in her hair, and his eyes filled with tears again, but as she laid her face against his chest, he could feel her tears and her shoulders tremble. “Why are we doing this? Can't we just turn the clock back a few weeks and forget this ever happened?”

Even through her tears she shook her head and then looked up at him. “I don't think so. I would always feel I'd missed something. I'll come back … I promise … I swear. I love you too much not to.” But something in his heart told him it just wouldn't happen no matter what she said. It was safer to keep her at home, to never let her go. Once gone, anything could happen.

They lay for a long time, holding each other tight, their faces side by side, their lips meeting from time to time, and at last his hunger for her got the best of him.

For the first time in two weeks, he took her with a passion and a longing that had been long since forgotten. There was a desperation to their lovemaking that had never been there before, a thirst, a loneliness, an insatiable hunger. And she felt it, too, along with guilt, regret, and a sorrow that almost overwhelmed her as they shuddered in unison and lay side by side kissing afterward, until finally he slept in her arms … Oliver … the boy she had loved long since … the man he had become … the love that had begun and now might end at Harvard.





Chapter 4


Christmas morning was a frantic rush. The table, the turkey, the presents, the phone calls from Chicago, and three calls from the Watsons. George called to say that Phyllis wasn't quite herself, and Oliver brushed it off as his father getting too wound up again over nothing. They were expected at noon, and arrived at almost two o'clock, with armloads of gifts for everyone, including a cashmere shawl for Agnes, and a huge soup bone for Andy. And contrary to George's warnings, Phyllis seemed remarkably well and looked lovely in a new purple wool dress she'd bought the day she'd gone shopping for hours and hours and worried her husband.

They opened presents for what seemed like ages, and Sarah was stunned by the emerald ring Ollie had given her early that morning when he sat at the kitchen table, at the crack of dawn, watching her stuff the turkey. She had given him a sheepskin coat, some tapes she knew he wanted, some ties and socks, and silly things, and a beautiful new black leather briefcase. And as a joke, he'd given her a funny little red “school bag,” to remind her that she was just “a kid to him,” and a gold compass to find her way home, inscribed with the words Come Home Soon. I Love You. Ollie.

“What's that for, Dad?” Sam had inquired, noticing the gift when Sarah opened it. “You and Mom going camping? That's a pretty fancy compass.”

“Your mom's a pretty fancy woman. I just thought it might be useful if she got lost sometime.” He smiled, and Sam laughed, and Sarah gently reached out to touch Ollie. She kissed him tenderly, and afterward he followed her out to the kitchen to help carve the turkey.

The meal itself was an uneventful one, except that halfway through, Grandma Phyllis started to get nervous. She seemed to jump out of her seat every chance she got, helping to carry plates that didn't need to go anywhere, bringing things in from the kitchen that didn't belong, and asking everyone ten times if they were ready for another helping.

“What's the matter with Grandma?” Sam whispered to his father at one point, when Phyllis had scurried after Agnes, insisting that she was going to help her. “She never used to like to help in the kitchen that much.” Oliver had noticed it too, but imagined that she was just ill at ease about something. She seemed unusually agitated.

“I think she just wants to help your mom and Agnes.

Old people get like that sometimes. They want everyone to know that they're still useful.”

“Oh.” Sam nodded, satisfied, but the others had noticed it too. And Mel looked worried as she glanced at her mother. Sarah only shook her head, not wanting the questions to form in words. It was suddenly obvious to her that her mother-in-law had some kind of a problem.

But the meal went smoothly other than that. And everyone ate too many helpings of everything, and then collapsed in the living room, while Sarah, Agnes, and Phyllis tidied up the kitchen. Melissa joined them for a while, but then came to sit with the men and her two brothers.

She looked worriedly at Grandpa George, and sat down next to him when she returned. “What's the matter with Grandma? She seems so nervous.”

“She gets like that sometimes, agitated. It's difficult to calm her down, sometimes it's just better to let her wear herself out as long as she's not doing any harm. Is she okay out there?”

“I think so. She's running around the kitchen like a whirlwind.” But the truth was she wasn't really doing anything, just talking incessantly and moving dirty plates from here to there and back again without getting anything accomplished. Sarah and Agnes had noticed it, too, but no one had said anything, and eventually they had told Mel to go on into the other room. And with that, her grandmother had looked up, at the sound of her name, looking straight at her only female grandchild.

“Mel? Is she here? Oh I'd love to see her, where is she?” Melissa had been stunned into silence and her mother had motioned her to go into the other room, but she was still shaken when she sat down next to her grandfather, and asked for an explanation.

“She's so confused. I've never seen her like that before.”

“It's been happening to her more and more often.” George Watson looked sadly at his son. It was exactly what he had been trying to explain to Ollie. Yet sometimes she was right as rain, and he wondered if he himself was imagining her confusion. It was hard to know what to think. One day she seemed totally out of control, and the next she seemed fine again, and sometimes she changed from hour to hour. It was both frightening and confusing. “I don't know what it is, Mel. I wish I did. Old age, I suppose, but she seems too young for that.” Phyllis Watson was only sixty-nine years old, and her husband was three years older.

And a few minutes later, Phyllis and Sarah walked back into the room, and the older woman seemed much calmer. She sat down quietly in a chair, and chatted with Benjamin, who was telling her about applying to Harvard. He was applying to Princeton, too, Stanford on the West Coast, Brown, Duke, and Georgetown. With his grades and athletic skill, he had a host of great schools to choose from. But he still hoped that he would get into Harvard, and now so did Sarah. It would be exciting to be in school with him. Maybe if that happened, he would forgive her for leaving home eight months before he left for college. Ollie had even suggested that she wait until Benjamin left for school, but she didn't want to postpone anything. She had waited too many years for this to be willing to wait another hour. It was the kind of reaction Phyllis had foretold years before, but now she might not even remember or understand that.

“How soon will you hear from all those schools?” George Watson was excited for his grandson.

“Probably not until late April.”

“That's a long time to wait, for a boy your age.”

“Yes, it is.” Benjamin smiled and looked at his father lovingly. “Dad and I are going to tour the schools this spring while I wait. I know most of them, but I've never been to Duke, or Stanford.”

“That's much too far away. I still think you should go to Princeton.” George's old school, and everyone smiled. George always thought that everyone should go to Princeton.

“I might, if I don't get into Harvard. Maybe you'll get Mel to go there one day.” She groaned and threw a half-eaten cookie at him.

“You know I want to go to UCLA and study drama.”

“Yeah, if you don't get married first.” He usually said “knocked up,” but he wouldn't have dared in front of his parents. She was having a hot romance with a boy in his class, and although he didn't think she had gone “all the way” yet, he suspected that things were getting closer. But she had also recently become aware of his new romance, with a good-looking blond girl with a sensational figure, Sandra Carter.

The evening wore on, and eventually the senior Watsons went home, and just after they did, Oliver looked questioningly at Sarah. She had been oddly quiet for the last half hour, and he knew she was thinking about what she would say to the children. In a way, they were all so tired that it would have been better to wait another day, but she had thought about it for so long that now she wanted to tell them.