Rachel's Hope. Carole Page Gift

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СКАЧАТЬ wide mouth curled at one corner. “A baby? That’s really something. I mean, I never thought of a baby. You aren’t too old or anything?”

      Rachel’s irritation was returning. “No, I’m not too old,” she snapped. Then, more softly, “But it was a surprise to me, too.”

      “Does Dad know?” he quizzed eagerly.

      Rachel shook her head. “No, I haven’t told him yet.”

      “Boy, will he be flipped out. When are you going to tell him?”

      “I’ll tell him tonight, after dinner. That’s why I’d rather your friend come over another time.”

      “Yeah, sure. Okay,” he said, nodding, then added, “But Dad won’t be home for dinner.”

      A knot of disappointment tightened in her chest. “Why not?”

      “He called a while go. I told him you were out shopping. He said he had to work late. Said he’d grab a bite on the way home.”

      “Great.” She sighed. There goes my porterhouse-steaks-and-candlelight plan, she thought She knew she should have called David at the office to see if he’d be home at his usual time, but she’d had no chance.

      “We still gotta eat,” Brian reminded her.

      Rachel felt deflated. Her energy had vanished. “How about a hamburger?”

      “Rad. How about the Hamburger House, where Dad takes us sometimes? They have great shakes.”

      She was too tired to argue. “All right, if you get the food to go. I don’t feel like going in.”

      Dutifully, her spirits ebbing, Rachel drove Brian to the Hamburger House and waited in the car while he went in for hamburgers, shakes and fries. She sat with the window rolled partly down, her polished fingernails lightly tapping the leather-wrapped steering wheel, her eyes momentarily catching a glimpse of passing strangers. She focused briefly on a gas station being torn down across the street, then turned her gaze to the restaurant’s neatly lettered window signs advertising the special of the week: Fudge Sundae Delight, with whipped cream and nuts.

      The sky had remained the same. Dusky gray clouds ready to burst into drenching rain hovered overhead, swollen and heavy like a great woman in waiting, as she herself would be in time. Why didn’t it just rain and get it over with? Why did things have to stand still, horribly, oppressively still?

      Rachel’s mind was somewhere else, her thoughts wandering, so she might have missed David and the girl entirely. At first she only vaguely realized it was David coming out the door, David and a young girl who looked familiar and yet was a stranger.

      Rachel’s first impulse was to call out to her husband, to say, “Here I am, David. Funny to run into you here.” The impulse was squelched immediately by something else, a dread, a terrible feeling of being trapped in a bad dream. David was walking with some girl—a pretty, stylishly dressed blonde. Who was she? Why were they together? He was supposed to be at the office, working late.

      Could Rachel be wrong? Could the man be someone who only looked like David? No. She watched as they strolled to a vehicle and climbed in. It was David’s fiery red sports car with the auto club sticker on the bumper. No doubt about it. The man was David. The way they had walked, the two of them, with a close, companionable air, her cheek nearly brushing his shoulder, and the way his hand touched her waist as he helped her into the car suggested there was something between them. They looked comfortable together, more than friendly; totally focused on each other in an intense way that filled Rachel’s heart with cold dread.

      Rachel could feel it like a shock. They were more than acquaintances. Maybe even more than friends. There was something heavy going on, and the knowledge of it shot through Rachel’s body like hot gunfire, leaving her wrists and ankles weak. Without a word, with only an unintended glimpse, her worst suspicions had been confirmed and the plain facts made her numb. Her husband had strayed. Had found someone else. And while Rachel’s world reeled and spun around her, David and the girl simply got into his car and drove away without once seeing Rachel there at all.

       Chapter Four

      “Are you hungry, David?” Rachel asked, watching her husband with cool, careful eyes.

      “No,” he said. He was loosening his tie, pulling it off from around his neck. He looked weary but unruffled, his charcoal gray suit impeccable, his handsome features as boyishly appealing as ever. There was nothing to suggest this night wasn’t the same as every other night. “Where’s Brian?”

      “In his room, studying.”

      “Is there any cold soda in the fridge?”

      “I don’t know. You can check.”

      “How about you? You check, okay? I’m bushed.”

      “All right.” Rachel went to the kitchen and returned to the living room with an open can of cola. David took it, drank and set the can on a coaster on the coffee table. He unbuttoned his shirt, found the evening newspaper, the Press-Telegram, and sat down in his chair, the nubby, adobe-brown recliner that was adjustable to several positions. Rachel hated that chair. It was an eyesore amid her elegant Queen Anne chairs and velvet sofa. But David didn’t care. He seemed to take a perverse delight in keeping his recliner in a prominent place in the living room. Even now, he tilted back expansively and opened his paper with a self-satisfied flourish.

      “I heard the stock market went down again today, more than a hundred points,” he said from behind the paper, his voice sounding as if he weren’t really talking to anyone in particular and didn’t care whether he got a reply.

      “Really?” she murmured distractedly.

      “Of course, the economists are saying it’s a normal market correction,” he mused. “But one of these days it’s going to plunge again and take us all to the cleaners. Maybe we should be pumping more of my 401K savings into bonds instead of stocks. What do you think?”

      When Rachel didn’t reply, he went on, as if talking to himself. “It’s not like things have completely recovered in aerospace. The bottom could fall out again, you know, and where would we be?” He took another drink, then set the can back into the coaster. “They laid off three guys in manufacturing last week, three of them, and I mean they were top guys, right up there. Trouble is, there’s not enough work. We’ve lost out on several big contracts lately. I say management’s to blame. We’ve got clients beating a path to the competition. I tell you, if I were running the show, I’d make some real changes.”

      For a moment he became absorbed in an item in the paper. When he spoke again, he picked up the same thread of conversation. “Of course, no one’s asking me what I think. I guess I should just be grateful no one’s taken a hatchet to my job.”

      Sitting silently on the sofa, her legs crossed comfortably, listening to David ramble on amiably, Rachel wondered if her mind might be playing tricks on her. This was just like any other night, like every night. David in his chair, having a soda, reading the paper, talking about work and the economy and what was happening to whom. It was all very natural, very right. Only it wasn’t right, not when she forced her mind to remember the afternoon, СКАЧАТЬ