Page 3 of No Kind of Hero
“. . . hospitalized.” What was shesaying?
“Very good.” Simon actually pushed his glasses up, a rare sign of favor. The dog got to eat the cookie. “Now either go away and work or go away and send me an email telling me about your mother. I prefer the work option.”
“My poor mother, though. It’s like I’m dooming her.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Simon said. “I heard, ‘I’m taking some days off and coming back ready to bust my butt to make partner next year.’ And don’t think this actually means youdohave to go visit your mother just because you said it. I know you. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s keeping an honesty score. Now go away.”
Beth was dreaming that there was a fly buzzing in her ear. She put up her hand to swat it away, and it came right back.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
She sat bolt upright. It was light in the room.Oh, no.Late. I’m late.She’d missed court. The nightmare had happened. Her heart was hammering, the panic rising into her throat.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Oh. The phone. She hadn’t missed court. The case was over, she wasn’t even in Portland, and somebody was calling her. Way too early.
She reached for the phone, glanced at it, and groaned aloud, but she answered it. “Morning, Mom. What time is it?”
“Almost eight.”
“You realize that if I’d succeeded, you’d have been interrupting.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become a lady, darling. And of course I wouldn’t have been interrupting. You know better than to go to bed with a man on the first date. I’ve told you enough times. He’s not going to value what comes that easily. A man who respects a woman, who’s looking for a wife and not just a good time, expects to have to move slowly. Little by little, that’s the way. He’s winning the prize, that’s the mindset you’re instilling.”
“Well, I’ve clearly hit the jackpot, because if he were moving any more slowly, he’d be running in the other direction. Oh, wait.”
Her mother drew in a sharp breath. “You’re joking, I know. It’s not a joking matter. I hope you asked him about himself. That’s what men want.”
“I don’t remember,” Beth lied. She was pretty sure she hadn’t done that. She’d known it was a mistake to tell her mother that she had a date. She’d thought it would make her less worried. Clearly, it hadn’t worked.
She got out of bed and pulled the drapes back, and saw nothing at all like Cabo, Baja, or England. Instead, she saw Wild Horse Lake sparkling in the August sunshine, the Idaho mountains rising beyond in a view that was her first memory. All of it completely unchanged, as if careers and relationships and getting ahead in your life were just the temporary, petty annoyances of the puny beings who came and went in endless self-important succession while the trees grew taller and the water and the land remained, generation upon generation.
Nice idea, anyway. Unfortunately, as one of those puny beings scurrying around on the surface, she couldn’t afford the lofty sentiment. And all right, so she’d ended up in Wild Horse. She hadn’t had the energy to have a breakdown anywhere else.
She basked like a cat in the warmth of the morning sun and wondered what her mother would say if she knew she didn’t wear anything to bed. Probably quote statistics to prove that slutty women who slept naked were doomed to a lonely life as the Other Woman, and that women who went to bed in sleep shorts and tank tops—Beth’s winter sleep wardrobe—married plumbers.
Meanwhile, her mother was still talking. “When are you going out with him again? This time . . . still no cleavage, I think, but maybe a wide V-neck. You have beautiful shoulders, and your skin’s still good. And if he takes you out on his boat for the day—a bikini, but a modest one, andnotred or black. We’ll do some shopping.”
“No, we won’t,” Beth said. “Dr. Anderson St. Clair and I aren’t each others’ type, trust me. If I go out on his boat, it’ll be as the jolly crew or something. I’m friendzoned, and so is he. Which is fine. I’m only here for a month. Also, he has a last name as his first name, and I’ve decided that’s a dealbreaker.”
“Elizabeth,” her mother said, her voice rich with alarm. “What exactly did he say at the end of the evening?”
Beth looked at herself in the pier glass in the corner of the room. She wasn’t going to be featuring on any calendars, but she was fine. Too skinny, and she’d moved from training bra to 34B and never gone any further, but . . . fine. If a guy wasn’t too picky and went for the quiet type. “He said he’d enjoyed the evening.”
“Oh, no,” Michelle Schaefer said in the tone of voice normally associated with war zones and mass movements of refugees. “You didn’t take it seriously. I can tell.”
“Well, no, Mother. I did not. Look. I came home to visit. I came to get over the . . .” Her throat closed up despite her attempt to stay breezy, to be normal. To be somebody who didn’t always care too much. “The case.” More like “the near collapse,” but that was what happened when you put in eight months of fourteen-hour days on the biggest case you’d ever had, and you lost. At least it was what had happened to her. “I appreciate you and Dad offering me your support and your guesthouse,” she went on, desperately clinging to the tattered remnants of her adulthood. “I’m grateful. But I’m not in a spot to look for a husband even if I wanted one. I don’t need to marry a doctor or a lawyer. Iama lawyer. I can be my own hero.” That sounded good. She should put it on a refrigerator magnet.
“Now you’re just being ridiculous. Every woman wants a husband. Did you get that article I left on the table for you yesterday?”
“The one about declining fertility rates for women over thirty?” If Beth’s tone was dry as dust, that was better than tears, or than expressing what she’d felt when she’d looked at the neatly stapled printout with its damning graphs. “Yes, I did see that. But if I haven’t found a suitable husband in six years of working with a hundred fifty Portland lawyers, what are the chances that I’m going to pick him up in Wild Horse during the next three weeks?”And I’m not moving back home, so you can forget it.Another thing she didn’t say.
“There hewas,though,” her mother said.“Interested.Adoctor.If you’d onlytry.It’s like you don’t evencare.Darling, I just want you to behappy.It’s fine now, when you’re young and beautiful. How are you going to feel in ten years, when you’re forty and still single and your best chances have passed you by?”
Maybe about as lousy as I feel right now?Another sentiment best kept to herself. “Thanks. I’ll keep that dismal prospect in mind while I’m working to make partner. It’ll definitely help.”
She heard the sigh at the other end. “All right. I’ll stop. I love you, that’s all.”
