Linda Howard: Sarah's Child

How did she look? She hadn’t checked her appearance. Her lipstick had worn off surely, but she didn’t bother to replace it. With one hand she felt to see if any strands of hair had escaped from the severe twist she wore while working, but it still felt reasonably tidy, so she sighed and forgot about it.

Rome’s dark blue Mercedes was in the driveway, so she parked behind it and got out, walking slowly up the sidewalk to mount the five shallow steps and press her finger to the doorbell. The grass had been kept mowed, she noticed, and the shrubbery was trimmed. The house didn’t look empty, but it was. Heartbreakingly empty.

After a moment, Rome opened the door and stepped aside to let her enter. After a brief glance at him, Sarah felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She hadn’t expected him to be wearing a three-piece business suit, but somehow she’d forgotten how powerfully he was built, how impossibly virile he looked in tight jeans. He wore track shoes, no socks, an old pair of jeans, and a white T-shirt that clung to his muscled torso, and he looked absolutely beautiful to her.

He glanced down at her, taking in the trim business suit she still wore. “You haven’t been home yet?” he asked.

“No. I stopped to eat dinner, but I haven’t gone home.” It was uncomfortably warm in the house; he’d opened some windows but hadn’t turned on the central air-conditioning. She pulled off her light linen jacket and started to hang it in the closet as she’d always done when visiting Diane, then caught herself and instead simply tossed it over the stairway railing. As he led the way upstairs she loosened the collar of her white tailored silk blouse and rolled the sleeves up to her elbows.

Rome paused before the doorway to the bedroom he’d shared with Diane, and his dark eyes were shadowed, his mouth grim, as he looked at the closed door. “It’s in there,” he said briefly. “In the closet. I’ll be in the boys’ bedroom packing their things. Take your time looking through the stuff.”

Sarah waited until he’d gone into the other bedroom before she slowly opened the door and entered Diane’s bedroom, turning on the light and standing for a moment looking around. Everything had been left as it had been the day of the accident. The book she’d been reading was still lying on the bedside table. Her nightgown was tossed across the foot of the bed. Rome hadn’t spent a night here since Diane had died.

Sarah pulled the box out of the closet and sat down on the floor to go through the contents, tears blurring her vision as she picked up the first photograph of her and Diane together. God, if it hurt her this much to lose a friend, how did Rome feel? He’d lost his wife and two sons.

She and Diane had always been best friends, all the way through school. Diane had been a human dynamo, laughing and chattering, propelling the quieter Sarah along the way. Her blue eyes had sparkled, her honey-brown curls had bounced, and she’d infected everyone who came into contact with her with the enthusiasm for life that brightened every day for her. Oh, the plans she’d made! She was never going to marry. She was going to be a famous fashion designer and travel all over the world. Sarah’s dreams had been only of a real family, one with love in it. Somewhere along the way their plans had been switched. Diane had fallen in love with a tall dark-eyed young rising executive who worked for the same company where Sarah had gotten a job, and from that moment on Sarah had known that her dream would never come true. Diane considered a glamorous career as a fashion designer well lost when she could have Rome Matthews, when she could give birth to his two adoring and adorable sons and bask in his love. Sarah quietly devoted herself to the job that was her only solace.

She’d tried not to love Rome, but she’d discovered that emotions weren’t easily controlled. If she hadn’t loved him before he met Diane, she might have kept her feelings from growing into anything serious, but she’d been his from the first. From the moment she’d met him, she’d known, deep inside that he would be more to her than just a colleague. It was his eyes, she thought; they were so deep and dark, eyes with a burning inner intensity. Roman Caldwell Matthews was no lightweight. He had drive and ambition, coupled with a lightning intelligence that had carried him through the ranks of middle management like a meteor. Oh, he wasn’t handsome: his face had a rough-hewn, slightly battered look to it; his cheekbones were too high and sharp; his blade of a nose had been broken once; and his jaw was as solid as a piece of granite. He was a man who would reach out and grasp life, and shape it the way he wanted. He’d been friendly enough to her, but Sarah knew she was too pale and quiet to interest a man with his forceful personality.

Still, the summer when she’d invited Diane to the company picnic she hadn’t expected him to take one look at Diane’s vibrant beauty and claim her for his own. But it had happened, and Diane and Rome had married five months later. Three months after their first anniversary Justin had been born, and two years later Shane. Two beautiful little boys, with their mother’s looks and their father’s determination, and Sarah had loved them because they were Rome’s children.

She’d remained as close to Diane as before, but she’d always been careful not to infringe on the time Rome spent with his family. He traveled a great deal, and Sarah limited her visits to the days he was out of town. She couldn’t say just why, but she sensed that Rome disapproved of her close friendship with Diane, though to her knowledge he’d never said anything. Perhaps it was that he simply didn’t like her, though she’d never done anything to earn it. She’d tried to stay out of his way, and she’d never, never told Diane anything about how she felt. There was no point in it; it would only have distressed Diane, and hurt their friendship.

Sarah had dated, and still did, but only casually. It wouldn’t have been fair to some other man to encourage a closer relationship when there was no way she’d be able to return any love offered to her. Everyone who asked, teasingly, when she was going to marry, had received the same reply: She loved her work too much to wash dirty socks for some man. It had been a lighthearted, stock answer, and it had served the purpose of protecting her vulnerable heart, but it had been a lie. She’d never wanted a career, but it was all she had left, so she’d given it her best. The charade had fooled everyone but herself.

Rome had been devoted to Diane and the boys. The freeway accident, almost two years before, had almost destroyed him. It had destroyed the laughter in him, the fierce-burning fire in his eyes. Diane had been driving the boys to school, and a drunk weaving his way home in the early-morning traffic had crossed out of his lane and hit them head-on. If he hadn’t been killed immediately, Sarah felt that Rome would have choked the man with his bare hands, he’d been so insane with grief when he’d been told. Justin had been killed on impact; Shane had died two days later. Two weeks after the accident Diane had died without ever regaining consciousness or knowing that her sons were gone. During those two weeks, Sarah had spent as much time as she could at her friend’s bedside, holding the limp hand and trying to will her to live, but fearing that Diane wouldn’t want to wake up from her death sleep. Rome had been a permanent fixture on the other side of the bed, holding the hand that bore his ring, his face gray and drawn, locked inside himself. Diane had been his only hope, his only remaining bit of sunshine, and her frail light had flickered and gone out, leaving him in darkness.

Gently Sarah went through all of the snapshots, seeing herself and Diane in various stages of their childhood and adolescence, mixed in with photographs of the boys as babies, toddlers, and rowdy little boys. Rome was in some of those pictures, romping with the boys, washing the car, mowing the grass, doing all of the normal things that fathers and husbands do. Sarah lingered over a picture of him lying on his back in the grass, wearing only a brief pair of denim shorts, holding Justin dangling over his head. His strong brown arms were steady as he held the toddler up, and it was evident that the child felt secure in his father’s hands. Justin had been shrieking with laughter. On the grass beside them, Shane had been trying to climb to his baby feet, and one tiny plump hand had clutched the hair on Rome’s chest in an effort to pull himself up.