Sophie backed away from him and there was a look of almost fear in her eyes. “Reede, I didn’t mean anything bad. I thought you were a jerk. I’m sorry I said that but—”
“Not that part.” He was advancing toward her. “About the highway and the phone.”
She didn’t understand what he meant. “I was trying to find a signal.”
“And where were you?”
“On the way to Edilean.” She backed up more. “I told you that.” Her back was against the kitchen counter; she could go no farther.
“You just said ‘There I was, standing . . . ’ And what was the rest of that sentence?”
Finally, she understood, and she tried to keep her face from turning red. She moved to duck out from under his arm, but he wouldn’t let her. “Well, maybe I was . . . uh, sort of . . . ”
“Standing in the middle of the highway?” His face was nearly touching hers. “A busy highway with vehicles doing sixty miles an hour and you were smack in the middle of it trying to get a cell phone signal? Is that right?”
Sophie’s pretty face lost its look of fear and was replaced with guilt. “Well, you see, my car had stopped and I really needed to call someone and my phone—”
“The one I ran over?”
“Uh, yes. It didn’t work and I had to—”
Reede turned away.
As he’d hoped, her guilt made her shower him with kisses. Their lovemaking that night had been special. Reede hadn’t realized it but he’d been carrying a heavy burden of guilt about nearly having run over someone. While it was good that the incident had shocked him into changing his driving, he still felt bad about it. Sophie’s confession relieved him of that guilt.
From now on he had something to balance out the fact that he and all of Edilean had lied to her. In fact, the next day Heather had referred to the beer-pouring incident.
“She was standing in the middle of the highway to get a signal for her phone,” Reede said as he looked at a chart.
“Did you just find that out?”
“Yes,” he answered.
Heather had smiled. “So now you have something to get back at her. That’s the way all marriages work.” She left the exam room before Reede could reply.
Three days before Christmas everything changed. At five Heather said, “There’s some man here to see you. He says it’s personal.” She was frowning as though she didn’t like the man.
Reede looked into the waiting room and there was his old friend Tyler Becks. They’d spent years together in school, had played soccer and drunk many beers together. Tyler was tall, blond, blue-eyed, and always had a long list of girls’ phone numbers that he never minded sharing. At the time Reede had been so attached to Laura Chawnley that he’d felt almost fatherly as he watched the others arguing over who got what number. In Reede’s mind he might as well have been a married man.
Reede smiled at Tyler and led him back to his office. Once they were out of sight of his nosy employees the two men hugged in the way of old buddies.
“Sit down,” Reede said. “How have you been?”
Tyler practically collapsed into a chair. “If you’d asked me that a month ago I would have said I was in heaven. I had a wife, I was in partnership in a growing practice, had a big house, and was thinking about starting a family. What about you? I bet you have at least three kids by now. Home and family as well as saving the world one village at a time?”
Reede didn’t smile. It had been years since he’d talked to Tyler and they’d shared news about their lives. “No wife, no kids.”
“Right. I forgot. That girl you were so faithful to dumped you, didn’t she?”
“That was a long time ago,” Reede said. “Since then I’ve done a lot of traveling, but now, as you can see, I’m back here in my hometown. Are you just passing through? This area is beautiful at Christmas. It—” He broke off because tears had come to Tyler’s eyes.
Reede grabbed some tissues from the box on the desk and handed them to him.
“I’m sorry,” Tyler said. “I have no right to—”
Reede went to a cabinet along the wall and pulled out a bottle of forty-year-old single malt McTarvit whiskey and poured them both a glass.
Tyler downed his in one shot. “Sorry,” he said again. “It’s been a bad few weeks. My wife told me she wants a divorce. We’ve only been married three years, but she wants out.”