Джон Макдональд - The Widow’s Estate

“So where do we go from here?”

She straightened up abruptly. “Darling, for longer than I care to remember, I’ve been making all the little decisions and all the middle-sized decisions and all the big decisions. From now on I’ll make little ones. I’ll split the middle-sized ones with you. The rest are all yours.”

“Put a price on the place that’ll move it quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It will take two weeks for me to get straightened away to take a month off. I haven’t taken a vacation in years. It could start... August first. Find out the local ground rules so we can be married here August first.”

“Yes sir!”

“Find a good place to park your kids for the month of August.”

“Right!”

“We’ll come back here from our trip, gather up the kids, find temporary quarters in San Francisco and be settled into a house by the time school opens.”

“Consider it done, sir.”

“And there’ll be a platoon of executive wives, honing their little knives for you, Lollie.”

“They don’t know it, but they’ll be playing my song.”

“Rough, huh?”

“No, dear. Just invulnerable. That’s what the loved and loving woman always is. Infuriatingly invulnerable. More so now, I guess, than I’ve ever been.”

“Except to me.”

“Oh, there’s that, yes.”

They beamed at each other and then laughed aloud, each knowing the rareness of that special kind of joy.

“Like kids,” he said.

“I’m kind of a wrinkled kid, Cal.”

He drew her into his arms again. They kissed, and then kissed again, then sat breathless.

“I’ve needed you, Cal,” she said. “I needed you each time you helped, and now it’s all right. I needed the complete change of scene and all the hard work. I needed to put all this time between me and Mitch. I love him still. You know that, don’t you? You accept it.”

“Of course.”

He sat in silence for a little while, his arm around her. “Lollie?”

“Yes dear.”

“How come I missed all my cues?”

She was tempted to chide him in some fond and loving way, but then recalled one of the first commandments of the executive wife. Solemnly she said, “I guess it’s a kind of compensation, dear. You see, you are so very, very good at everything else, you earned the right to have one small blind spot.”

“I still can’t believe it.”

Laura smiled placidly at him. “You will, darling. That I can promise.”