Marcia Talley: In Death's Shadow

"Miranda's wedding will come sooner than you think," I reassured her. "Kids. One minute you're handing them a pacifier, the next minute it's the car keys." I chuckled. "But you were going to tell me something about Brian."

"Wait till you hear this, Hannah!" Valerie bounced in her chair like an excited child. "Brian took me on a cruise. Around. The. World!" She tapped my hand. "What do you think about that ?”

I thought it was absolutely marvelous and told her so.

"On the QE2," she continued. "One hundred and twenty glorious days! And every minute of every day I was pinching myself. I just couldn't believe it!"

While she raved on about the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, Hawaii, Pago Pago, and Fiji, I multiplied a couple of hundred bucks a day, times two, times 120, and couldn't believe it, either. Who could afford such a trip? "Pago Pago?" I asked. "There really is a place called Pago Pago?"

She nodded, her bright curls bouncing. "In Samoa. It was dee -vine."

"I've dreamed of visiting the South Pacific," I said. "But a four month cruise? I'd have to talk my husband out of a sabbatical."

"You could always play the cancer card," she suggested.

"Cancer card?"

"You know." She put a hand to her forehead and fluttered her eyelashes. "Oh dah'ling, ah'll jes' be miserable if ah can't see the Great Barrier Reef before ah die!"

I laughed out loud. "You didn't!"

"Oh, but I did ,” she said, "And it worked just as well for my new car." Her eyes ping-ponged about the waiting room as if checking for eavesdroppers before she leaned toward me and confided, "A Mercedes SLK320. Convertible."

"Hannah? Hannah Ives?" A nurse had wandered into the waiting room, brandishing my pink sheet.

"Oops, gotta go." I hooked a thumb in the direction of the examination rooms. "The Inquisition awaits within."

"Wait a minute." Valerie scrabbled around in her bag, retrieving a hairbrush, a lipstick, and a Palm Pilot before producing what looked like a business card. She pressed it into my hand. "Here's our phone number. Please stay in touch, Hannah."

I studied the card: BRIANSTONE it read, FREELANCE WRITER. Brian's logo was a cartoon elephant seated at a typewriter, its trunk rolled up in the platen. Cute. I waved the card and tucked it with elaborate care into my purse. "I'll call you next week," I promised. "We'll do lunch."

Valerie smiled. "I'd like that. Very much."

Freelance writer , I thought, as I followed the nurse toward the examination room. I kicked off my shoes and stood obediently on the scales while she slid weights back and forth along the bar. I wonder what he writes?

"One twenty-five!"

"Huh?"

"One hundred twenty-five pounds." She consulted my chart before making a notation. "You're almost up to your pre-chemo weight."

"Hallelujah," I said, stepping backward off the scale onto the cool linoleum.

"Open up," she said, and poked a thermometer into my mouth. I held it under my tongue, still thinking about Brian and Valerie Stone. That cruise must have cost a small fortune. How did they do it? Maybe he's writing travel articles for Condé Nast Traveler . The thermometer beeped. Next came the blood-pressure cuff.

Maybe he's got a trust fund, I thought as the cuff grew plump around my arm. Or a rich relative who obligingly croaked.

By the time I'd shucked my clothes, draped myself in a hospital gown-"ties up the back, please"-and settled myself uncomfortably on an ergonomically hostile examination table, I'd decided that unless Brian was ghostwriting thrillers for Tom Clancy, there was no way on earth he could have paid for that trip.

Not that it was any of my damn business.

When I got home, I made a beeline for the computer and Googled "QE2" on the Internet: £16,999 per person. $25,500 U.S. plus change. And that was for an inside cabin. A Room with No View.

That night, over a second helping of his favorite lasagna-my late mother's special recipe-I asked Paul what he thought about circumnavigating the globe on a luxury liner. "In your dreams," he mumbled, eyes closed, clearly savoring his last meatball.

"Spoken by a man who has no prayer of getting dessert," I commented, rising from my chair to collect his empty plate. I slid the dirty dishes into the sink, then crossed the kitchen to the blackboard that Emily had decorated with sunflowers as an art project in third grade. Paul, supervised by Emily, had installed it to the left of the back door, where it had hung ever since. Milk , I wrote in bright pink chalk, ½ n ½. At the bottom I scrawled: lottery ticket . One never knows.

Paul was using an iced tea spoon to mine the bottom of a freezer-worn, nearly empty carton of vanilla ice cream, and I was finishing up the dishes, when the telephone rang. Paul tipped the carton to his mouth, tapped the bottom and ignored the ringing. I kissed his cheek as I went by. "You are pitiful," I teased.

The caller was Janey Madigan, begging out of Saturday's Race for the Cure® in Washington, D.C. Over the past several months, I'd put together a Go Navy/Beat Cancer team that would participate in the annual race to raise money for breast cancer research. Not only had I counted on Janey, I'd counted on her van. But, unfortunately, her mother had just broken a hip and Janey and Kip were heading off to her place in Maine. Janey was absurdly confident I'd find somebody to run in her place.

Ha. Ha. Ha. I'd already strong-armed Paul, his sister Connie, and her husband, Chesapeake County police lieutenant Dennis Rutherford, into joining the team. Not to mention my daughter Emily, with my grandchildren in tow. The rest of my family had bailed out.

Dad was on an Elderhostel, exploring Anasazi archaeological ruins at Mesa Verde National Park when he wasn't filling our mailbox with tacky postcards featuring wigwam-style motels with marquees promising!!A TELEPHONE IN EVERY ROOM!!

My sister, Ruth, claimed to be tied up doing inventory at Mother Earth, the New Age shop she owns in downtown Annapolis. A lame excuse, I thought, but even so, I never considered Ruth seriously. The closest Ruth ever comes to exercise is this Indonesian thing she's into-Pancha Tanmantra-picked up from a Buddhist monk on her last trip to Bali.

And, poor Georgina! My younger sister was pregnant. Again. As if she didn't have enough to do what with six-year-old Julie, and Sean and Dylan, the hyperactive twins, who had just turned eight. Somebody ought to wrestle Georgina's husband, Scott, to the ground and tie his tubes!

"Damn." I poured myself a second glass of merlot and carried it into the living room where Paul had settled down in front of the television with the newspaper and a cup of decaf. I sprawled on the sofa, resting the stem of the wineglass on my chest. "Damn," I said again, hoping he'd notice this time.

Paul peered at me over the top of the paper. "Who was that?”

"Janey and Kip have to go to Maine," I complained. "Who do we know with a van?"

"Just about everybody has an SUV," Paul muttered into the Business section of The Capital . "Nobody drives a regular car these days."

"I don't mean an SUV, Paul. I mean a van van, like one of those Ford Econolines."

"Whatever for?"

"Getting everybody to the race on Saturday."

Paul shrugged. "Use cars."

I shook my head. "Parking will be impossible in the District." I sipped my wine and thought for a moment. "Maybe I'll ask everyone to meet at New Carrollton and we'll ride the Metro in."

Paul nodded. "Suits me."

I relaxed into the cushions. "Well, that solves one problem, but who do I get to run in Janey's place?"

"How about that new friend of yours? The one you ran into at Dr. W's?"