Hello, It's Me Page 3

  The screen door groans loudly as she opens it, reminding her that Andre always meant to spray some WD-40 into the hinges. She really should get to that—if only so that she’ll be subjected to one less memory of her husband.

  “Duck,” she reminds Merlin out of habit, and he lowers his towering head to fit through the doorway.

  While house-hunting, Annie and Andre noticed that there are two kinds of old houses: those with towering ceilings, and those with impossibly low ceilings. Theirs falls into the latter category—not that it’s an issue for anyone other than the towering six-foot-five Merlin.

  “I so hope you appreciate the fact that I was decorating your grand old flags until one in the morning,” she tells him.

  “I always appreciate you, honeybun. And they’re fabulous,” Merlin proclaims, peering at the plastic-wrapped trays that line the kitchen countertop.

  “I want one.” Milo reaches for the nearest cookie.

  Annie stops his hand before he can touch it. “No! I told you, sweetie, those are for the snooty people.”

  Merlin laughs. “They’re not that snooty.”

  “Yeah, right.” Annie hands him the invoice she made up this morning, hoping he’ll pay her now. He often does, but last week he had to wait a few days for payroll to take care of it.

  To her relief, Merlin reaches into his pocket and takes out his checkbook.

  “What’s today?” he asks, Montblanc pen poised above the dateline.

  “June fourteenth,” Annie tells him. “Milo, go put your shorts back on.”

  “I don’t like shorts.”

  “I want to put shorts on,” announces Trixie, who insisted on donning a party dress less than twenty minutes ago and is now decked out in pink organza and Mary Janes.

  Annie sighs. “Fine. And Milo, if you don’t want to wear shorts, put jeans on. Now.”

  “Underwear, too,” Merlin advises, as Milo sulks out of the room. “Interesting kid. Think he’ll grow up to be a flasher?”

  “Lord, I hope not.”

  He turns back to his checkbook. “I can’t believe you know the date. What’s up with that?”

  She shrugs. “It’s Flag Day.”

  “Says the woman who’s usually clueless about which day Independence Day falls on.” Merlin finishes filling out the check and hands it to her with a flourish.

  “July fourth,” Annie says, sticking out her tongue.

  “I’m impressed.”

  She would have been, too, prewidowhood.

  That she’s acutely aware of the calendar now is testimony to the approaching anniversary of Andre’s death—which did, indeed, occur on the summer solstice.

  June twenty-first.

  Ironically, for Annie, the longest day of the year will forever feel like the longest day of the year.

  Even more ironically, it wasn’t a shark, or a riptide, or any of the other things Annie used to fear that took Andre’s life.

  No, her daredevil husband was felled by the most horrifically natural and random of causes: a blood clot in his lung.

  Looking back, Annie can’t recall a single warning sign. If Andre wasn’t feeling good in the days or weeks before he keeled over on the beach, he kept it to himself.

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  He learned early on in their relationship that if he mentioned a symptom—any symptom—to Annie, she blew it out of proportion. Andre didn’t like doctors and he didn’t like tests. She had to schedule appointments for him behind his back, and force him to keep them. If she had known he was having trouble breathing, or had the slightest pain in his chest, she’d have dragged him to the ER. Then the blood clot would have been diagnosed, and Andre would have been saved.

  You can’t keep thinking like that, Annie reminds herself. It’s not your fault that he died. If anything, it’s his fault.

  Damn him. Damn him for not taking better care of himself. Damn him for brushing off her frequent worries as hypochondria. Damn him for not thinking they needed life insurance at their ages. Damn him for leaving her alone.

  This, Annie realizes, as the surge of fury toward her dead husband ebbs within her, must be the anger phase her psychiatrist friend Erika keeps warning her about. Oh, well, it’s about damned time Annie feels something other than profound, overwhelming, mind-numbing grief.

  “Listen,” Merlin is saying, as Annie tucks the check into her back pocket and wonders whether the bank is open till noon or one, “how desperate are you for money?”

  “About as desperate as you were for a date last New Year’s Eve. Does that answer your question?”

  Merlin pats her arm, smiling the benevolent smile of one who is confident of never again finding oneself dateless on New Year’s Eve.

  “Can you get a sitter tonight?” he asks Annie.

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on, Annie. Yes, you can.”

  “You act as though all I have to do is snap my fingers and Mary Poppins will appear. It’s not that easy, Merlin. And anyway, why do I need a sitter?”

  “Because I need an extra waitress for the Flag Day fund-raiser tonight.”

  “No way,” Annie says promptly. She may be broke, but she draws the line at waitressing.

  “Come on, Annie. I’ll pay you double.”

  She shakes her head.

  “In cash.”

  She hesitates only briefly, then says, “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  Because I can’t bear the thought of leaving Milo and Trixie at night. What if he falls out of bed trying to fly? What if she wakes up screaming and I’m not there?

  “Because . . . ?” Merlin prods.

  Because I can’t bear the thought of waiting hand and foot on a bunch of snobs. I can’t stomach watching them barely touch meals that cost more than a year’s worth of my mortgage. I can’t—

  “Annie?”

  “Just because,” she says churlishly.

  “You need the money. And I can find you a sitter if you can’t. I bet Erika would do it.”

  Erika Bauer is Annie’s closest female friend, and she adores Milo and Trixie. But she’s in Florida at a conference, and Annie tells Merlin as much.

  He shrugs, unfazed. “I know for a fact that Jonathan’s niece is available and—”

  “Then let her waitress for you.”

  “She’s only fifteen. That’s too young to waitress.”

  “Too young to babysit, too.”

  “Oh, come on. You and Andre used to have your neighbor’s daughter watch the kids when you went out to dinner Friday nights. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen.”

  She wasn’t.

  Annie closes her eyes briefly, staving off memories of their weekly tradition.

  My dinner with Andre, she used to call it. Funny how they never even rented that movie. They always meant to, but . . .

  But.

  “I can’t help you out, Merlin,” Annie says tersely. “Sorry. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  Find someone else.

  Again, a memory rushes at her like the incoming tide, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to find someone else,” Annie told Andre once when she was worried about some imagined fatal illness or other.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve already got her lined up,” he said, eyes twinkling. “The second you fall into that coma, I’m outa here.”

  “I’m serious, Andre.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d better not find anybody else, babe.”

  She laughed.

  “Hey, I’m serious, too,” he said, eyes still twinkling. “If I’m ever in a coma, I expect you to visit me every day and sit by my bed and hold my hand. You promised to stay by my side forever, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  Their wedding: barefoot on the beach on a warm May sunrise as Merlin sang a cappella, “All I Ask of You” from Phantom of the Opera. Neither
of them was particularly fond of traditional wedding vows.

  “Talk about depressing,” Andre said. “Who wants to discuss the potential for sickness and death on the happiest day of their lives?”

  Not Andre. Not Annie. For them, the future held only happiness.

  Instead of pledging to love each other in sickness and in health, till death do us part, they recited vows they had written themselves, vows that were as blissfully unconventional as they were.

  Andre promised to keep his cold feet on his side of the bed, to never grow a beard, as Annie loathed facial hair, to stay by her side forever, and to tell her that he loved her every day.

  Annie promised to laugh at all his bad puns, to never paint her nails when he was in the room because he hated the smell of polish, to stay by his side forever, and to tell him that she loved him every day.

  “So if I’m in a coma, you’ll stay by my side, and if I’m dead, you’d better not abandon me, Annie. You need to bring flowers to my grave and sit there talking to me for at least four hours a day. That’ll keep you busy so you won’t be tempted to date.”

  Rolling her eyes at the ludicrous notion of ever “dating” again, Annie pointed out, “I thought you wanted to be cremated and scattered in the Caribbean.”

  Their honeymoon: a five-day cruise to the Virgin Islands that depleted their newly established joint bank account but yielded three bulging photo albums filled with glorious memories.

  “Does that mean I don’t get a gravestone?”

  She shook her head, laughing.

  “Not even a memorial plaque somewhere? Listen, I need a stone or something. Where else are you going to brood and plant flowers?”

  “Annie?”

  She looks up, startled by Merlin’s voice and his touch on her shoulder.

  “Are you okay?”

  She realizes tears are trickling down her cheeks.

  “I’m fine,” she lies, brushing them away, remembering something. “It’s just . . . I’m one cookie short of sixteen dozen.”

  “I know, but I love you anyway.”

  “You counted?”

  “Counted what?”

  “The cookies. I’m one short—”

  “Oh! You meant literally.” He chuckles. “I thought you were acknowledging that you’re a little nutty.”

  “I am not nutty!” she protests indignantly.

  “Sure you are. But in an adorable way. Anyway, you were saying . . . ?”

  “I’m one cookie short. I cut the recipe too close and I had exactly enough . . . but then I had to throw one away,” she says, gesturing at the trays. “I, uh, dropped it. Facedown.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure Thom won’t notice.”

  Annie is sure that he will, but he’ll just have to live without the soggy, tear-stained flag.

  Just as she has to live without Andre.

  Okay, it’s not the same thing.

  If she were prone to smiling these days, she’d be amused by the ludicrous comparison of a snooty cookie-counting Southamptonite to the Widow Harlowe.

  But Annie isn’t prone to smiling. She’s prone to tears.

  She sniffles and Merlin removes a neatly folded white linen handkerchief from the pocket of his khakis and passes it to her. “Here,” he says. “Blow.”

  She raises the handkerchief to her nose.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “No.” She leans against him as he pulls her close. At barely five feet tall, she finds her chin in the vicinity of his navel.

  When Andre hugged her, she could put her head on his shoulder. He was only a few inches taller than Annie. They fit together perfectly, in every way. Oh, Lord. How is she going to make it through another day, another hour, another minute without him?

  “When is it going to get easier?” she asks Merlin, closing her eyes against the terrible ache.

  “I wish I knew, Twinkie. But it will. I promise.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know everything, remember?”

  She laughs. So does he. Once upon a time, when she was Annie Grimes of suburban Commack and Merlin was literally, though never figuratively, the boy next door, she used to tease him about being a bossy know-it-all.

  He captures her left hand in his and raises it to look at her fourth finger. “You haven’t taken it off yet.”

  She flinches and lifts her chin stubbornly, glad he can’t also see Andre’s gold band dangling on a chain inside the collar of her T-shirt. “I’m not going to take it off, Merlin.”

  “Annie—”

  “In my heart, I’ll always be married to him. I’m not taking it off.” Never mind the fact that the ring keeps sliding dangerously close to her second knuckle, thanks to all the weight she lost. She should really have it made a size smaller.

  Yeah. As if there’s money to spare for that.

  Merlin shakes his head. “Wearing a ring a year later is just . . . look, Annie, sooner or later you might meet someone else. You might want to—”

  “No way, Merlin. Andre made me promise that if something happened to him, I’d never replace him.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did so.”

  “If he said that he was teasing. Andre wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I have the kids.”

  Merlin looks as though he’s going to say something else, but just shrugs and drops her hand. After a moment he asks, “So how about bailing me out tonight?”

  Annie thinks about the stack of unpaid bills on her desk and the check in her pocket, which won’t cover half of them.

  It’s tempting. Really tempting. Not just the money, but the idea of getting a sitter and leaving the house, alone. Even if it is just to wait on snooty Thom and his rich friends.

  “Annie? Come on, what do you say?”

  She says, “No, thanks.”

  Then she stands in the doorway flanked by her children as Merlin drives away through the rain in his fancy car.

  “Can we have lunch now, Mommy?” Trixie asks when the sound of crunching gravel has faded.

  “Sure.”

  She makes them sandwiches using the last of the peanut butter and adds that item to the lengthy grocery list stuck to the refrigerator.

  Then, feeling vaguely guilty, she allows the kids to eat in front of the television, something Andre always forbade. As a single parent, Annie finds herself relying on the good old electronic babysitter more and more frequently now that school is out for the summer. In fact, it’s pretty much turned on all day, every day. It’s the only way she can buy herself a few moments’ solitude.

  Back when Andre was alive, she kept the radio on most of the time. She always loved a house that was filled with music. But the radio on the kitchen windowsill has been silent for almost a year now.

  Her appetite having vanished permanently when Andre did, Annie skips lunch. Again.

  Instead, she sits at the kitchen table, listening to the raindrops on the roof, sipping this morning’s cold coffee, and flipping through the stack of bills she hasn’t a prayer of paying in their entirety.

  The trick, Annie realizes, after the third flip-through, is to prioritize. She sets aside the mortgage statement, the electric bill, the health insurance bill. Merlin’s check and the money left in her account will cover these, and leave enough for groceries if she buys generic brands.

  Okay, so far so good. A little caffeine goes a long way.

  She nukes the remainder of this morning’s coffee for good measure, and while she’s waiting in front of the microwave, she again goes through the bills still left in her hand. If she doesn’t pay the minimum on the Visa card soon, they’ll cut her off. And Andre’s cell phone is past due. She can’t let that lapse.

  Can’t you?

  It makes no sense to keep paying it, just so that she can hear his voice every now and then and pretend he’s still there, somewhere, on his way home.

  It makes no sense, and yet she can’t seem to help herself. Try as she m
ight, she can’t let go of the foolish fantasy that someday, she’ll dial the number and he’ll answer and she’ll realize that this whole thing has been a bad dream.

  A night terror.

  Rubbing her exhausted eyes, Annie sinks into her chair again. She sets aside the pile of bills and sips some coffee. It tastes acrid, but she needs the caffeine to make it through the day.

  She lowers her head to the table for a few blessed moments, fighting off sleep, wishing she could crawl back into bed.

  Yawning, she forces her eyes open and stands up, looking around the cluttered kitchen.

  Her gaze falls on the telephone.

  Instinctively, she reaches for it and begins to dial. Just this once, she promises herself. One last time. Then she’ll have the line disconnected and throw away the bill.

  One ring . . .

  This time, of course, she’ll hang up at the beep. She should never have left a message yesterday. Milo overheard her talking and thought she had reached Andre.

  Two rings . . .

  She had to explain to her son that she was talking to herself, not to Daddy. He wanted to know why she was holding the phone if she was talking to herself, a question she found impossible to answer.

  Waiting for the inevitable third ring, Annie reaches for the cell phone bill. This really is ridiculous. It’s time. Time to get rid of the indulgent expense. Time to let go.

  Then, as she’s about to rip the invoice in half . . .

  “Hello?” her dead husband’s voice says in her ear.

  Chapter 2

  God, how I hate these things,” Thom tells his older sister, Susan, as they stand on the flagstone terrace surveying the clusters of white tables and chairs being arranged on the lawn below.

  “You hate rental chairs and tables?”

  “No, I hate occasions that call for rental chairs and tables.”

  He sighs and gazes out at the slate blue Atlantic that lies beneath the still overcast sky just beyond his property. As soon as the thunderstorm that came through earlier rumbled off to the east, the island’s Saturday morning sailors took to the sea.

  How he longs to be aboard one of those cutters skimming the storm-churned waves, rather than out here overseeing a few final details for tonight’s fund-raiser.

  “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun,” Susan says, laying a manicured, bejeweled hand on his arm.