Steve had left her a note, he'd had to go back to the hospital that night, but he promised to be home the next day, by the time she got home from the office. “Welcome home … I love you,” he'd said, and she smiled as she read it.

She wasn't upset that he wasn't there, she was used to it, and she could use the time to read her mail, get her papers in order, and do her laundry. And she was happy later that night when he called her. She was reading in bed, and she jumped when the phone rang.

“Welcome home, Merrie. Sorry I'm not there with you.”

“That's okay. I'm tired anyway. I'm going to go to bed early.” It was six hours later for her, by French time, roughly five o'clock in the morning. “How's work?”

“Crazy as usual. Two head-ons, the usual gang members shooting each other up just for the hell of it, and some lunatic who jumped in front of the subway.”

“Sounds like an ordinary night in your part of the world,” she smiled. By his standards, that was business as usual.

“Yeah. It shouldn't be too bad tonight. I'll be home tomorrow. Everything okay with you?”

“Fine. I'm just tired.” And depressed for some reason. But that happened sometimes when she came home from a road show. It felt good to be home, but there was a kind of a letdown. Her baby had left the nest and flown, and her job with it was finished. On to the next one. But there was an emptiness in the lull.

She slept fitfully that night, thinking of it, and when she got to the office the next day, she saw the proof for the tombstone for Friday's Wall Street Journal. It was just as she expected it to be, their name was on the left, which indicated that her firm had been the keeper of the book, and there were several majors out of order, which meant that some of the smaller firms were listed above them, a sign of how hot the deal was, as she had told Callan, when she explained it to him. And she had been in her office in time to make sure that the stock was trading well.

Everyone was talking about Dow Tech. The stock price was already rising, but not so fast or so much that it made her look foolish for not having priced it higher. It was a textbook offering, and what everyone wanted to happen when they took a company public. She was sitting at her desk, feeling pleased with all of it when Cal called her.

“So what's our next stop, Meredith? I'm ready for the next city.” He was teasing and she laughed.

“Me too. I can't believe it's over. Looking back it all seems so easy.” She smiled as she said it, but it had all gone very smoothly.

“Yeah, like childbirth. It only seems easy now because everything went so well, thanks to you. I don't know what to do with myself now that I'm back.”

“You'll think of something.” She knew he had plenty of new projects on the back burner, they had talked a lot about them.

“How was Steve when you got back?” he asked politely. They seemed like old friends now.

“I haven't seen him yet. He was working. He's taking the weekend off, and he said he was going to lock up my briefcase.”

“I don't blame him. I would too. Tell him to take you dancing.” She laughed at that. Steve was no Fred Astaire, like Callan. In fact, he hated dancing. He'd rather sit home and watch TV with a glass of wine.

“That's not his thing, I'm afraid. We'll probably go to a movie tomorrow. That's more his speed. What about you? How are the kids?”

“Great. I don't think they even missed me.” Cal and Meredith were like two kids home from camp or boarding school, they didn't know what to do at home now. “They have endless plans to torture me all weekend. The girls want me to take them into town, and I have to take Andy to soccer practice. Pretty exciting.” They both led fairly quiet lives, although Meredith suspected that wasn't always the case for Callan. Charlotte had been a good indication on that score.

“No big social doings this weekend?” She was still curious about him, even after the time they had spent together, or perhaps even more so.

“You mean like bingo at my church?” he teased. “I do that on Tuesdays.”

“Yeah, me too,” she laughed. “Actually I'm meeting a new client next week about an IPO, it sounds pretty interesting. They're a small high-tech firm in Boston.”

“I've been gone for less than a day, and you're already being unfaithful to me. I thought you'd want to hang up your spurs after this one, and just live on our memories.” He sounded poetic as he said it.

“How's Charlie doing, speaking of memories? Happy to be back in the fold?”

“I'm not sure,” Cal said vaguely. “He scheduled a meeting with me this afternoon, and I get the feeling something's brewing. He's still ticked off that we went public, but that's no secret. You knew that.”

“Charlie doesn't exactly keep his feelings secret, does he?” she laughed. She didn't miss him. He had remained ornery right up to the last few minutes, but he'd been momentarily gracious when he left them. And even he had to admit that the entire process had gone far better than anyone had expected.

“Well, have a good weekend, Meredith, and a good rest. You've earned it.”

“So have you, Cal.”

“I'll call you sometime next week and see how things are going,” he promised.

She hung up, and got caught up in her office all afternoon, and when she got home at six o'clock, Steve was waiting for her. He swept her off her feet as soon as she walked into the living room, twirled her around, and kissed her.

“Boy, have I missed you.”

“I've only been gone a week, you goof.”

“It seemed a whole lot longer. To me at least.” He smiled and kissed her again, poured them both a glass of wine, and an hour later, after they chatted for a while, he started dinner. He had been hungry to talk to her, and see her, and feel her next to him in bed at night.

He made pasta for them, salad, and garlic bread, and halfway through the meal, he got amorous with her, and the rest of the meal went untouched as he carried her into their bedroom. They never got up again that night, and when she got up the next morning, she threw the remains of their dinner away and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Steve was still asleep, and when she checked The Wall Street Journal, the tombstone she had proofed the day before looked exactly as it was meant to.

She left for the office quietly, and Steve called her at the office when he woke up at noon, and for once she managed to go home early. Steve was waiting for her in the living room, he already had dinner on, and as soon as they finished, they went to the movies.

In every possible way, it was an idyllic weekend. They talked and laughed and went for long walks in the park. The weather was still warm and balmy, it was that perfect time of year in New York that felt almost like spring, that happened nearly every year in the last weeks of September.

And on Saturday night, they went out to dinner at a neighborhood restaurant they both liked. It was a far cry from Harry's Bar where she'd spent the previous Saturday night with Callan, but this was just what she wanted. She and Steve managed to spend uninterrupted time with each other for the first time in months. He was off call all weekend, and she lived up to her promise to him not to touch her briefcase. Everything was perfect. And on Monday morning when she left for work, he put on his scrubs and left for the hospital. He was going to be gone for two days this time, some of it on call in the hospital, and the rest actively on duty. And they both had easy weeks ahead of them, or at least Meredith did. With him, he could never quite predict it.

She checked on the Dow Tech stock when she got in, and it was still going up at a good clip, which pleased her. She was thinking about calling Cal to congratulate him again on it, when her secretary buzzed her.

“Callan Dow on the line for you, Mrs. Whitman,” she said briskly, and Meredith stopped what she was doing and took the call.

“Hi there. I was just about to call. The stock's still going up very nicely.” She had bought a fair-sized chunk of it for herself right after the opening, as the SEC permitted, so she now had a personal interest in it as well. “What's new in California?”

“Well, Meredith,” he said, sounding strange to her for a minute, “things have been moving and shaking out here.” A lot had happened since Friday, and he hadn't had a chance to call her all weekend. He'd been busy with his kids.

“What does that mean?” Meredith sounded puzzled, but intrigued by the way he'd said it.

“Charlie handed in his resignation on Friday, which could be a problem, if it upsets the stockholders, or triggers a lawsuit, but I'm hoping that won't happen. We had a long serious talk, and he just can't make his peace with the fact that we're a public company. He doesn't want to answer to shareholders, and he's violently opposed to my acquiring another company eventually. Actually he was pretty decent about it, and he says I've outgrown him. He says he's too old to make the adjustment. And I honestly think he made the right decision, given how he feels.”

Meredith nodded as she thought about it. “It may be for the best, Cal, although I know you have a lot of history with him. You need to find someone now who fits the direction you're taking and is willing to grow with you, and is even enthusiastic about it.”

“That's what I'm hoping,” he said simply.

“Do you have anyone in mind yet? How much notice did he give you?”

“The answers to both those questions are ‘yes,’ and ‘two weeks,’ in that order.”

“That's hardly a generous notice.”

“To tell the truth, I think he made his mind up before the road show, and he was just waiting to tell me when we got back. He doesn't think he should stick around now that he's decided he's going.” And it was hard for him to go too. Callan knew that, in his own way, Charlie loved Dow Tech and what it represented to him. Callan knew that better than Merrie.