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His smile was broad as he took her hand in his. “I like older women.”
Renee pulled her hand away, giving him a stern, motherly look. “Peter—”
“Don’t,” he warned her quietly. He saw compassion enter her eyes. “Maybe someday I’ll be ready.” Although he sincerely doubted it. “But right now, this is all I can manage.” In a rare, unguarded moment of honesty, he admitted to her what he barely admitted to himself. “I’m lucky to be sane.” And then he shrugged off the moment. “I didn’t exactly have a thriving social life before Lisa, so this is business as usual for me.” Peter took his mother-in-law’s hand in his. “I know you mean well, Renee, but this is something that’ll work itself out.”
Renee closed her hand over both of his. “Don’t hide from life, Pete,” she told him. “You have far too much to offer—and so does life,” she added pointedly. Then, she withdrew her hands and looked at him through the eyes of a mother. “Now then, have you eaten?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I didn’t come here for you to feed me, Renee.”
“Well, you’re not leaving until I see you have something.” She pulled away from the table, pivoting the wheelchair so that she could access the refrigerator. “It’s the least I can do.”
Peter rose to his feet. He hated seeing her relegated to that chair. “No,” he contradicted, “the least you can do is let me get that prescription filled for you.”
She turned from the refrigerator and sighed, surrendering. “I guess one of us has to stop being stubborn first.”
He grinned back. “Guess so.”
With a resigned nod of her head, Renee propelled herself over to the drawer beside the sink where she kept all the miscellaneous things that she had no given place for. Opening it, she riffled through myriad papers and odds and ends until she found the prescription he had written for her. It was dated several weeks ago and was for a brand-new anti-inflammatory drug that had hit the market.
She held the paper out to him. He knew which pharmacy she frequented. “Go—” she waved Peter on his way “—fill it.”
Triumphant, he gave her a knowing smile. “Thought you’d never ask.”
“By the way,” she called after him. On his way to the front door, he turned to look at her. “Before I forget, next time you see the Songbird girl, see if you can get a scarf for me.” Her face softened and she looked like a young girl, he thought, not an older woman imprisoned in a wheelchair. “I always loved their colors.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promised before heading out.
The phone was ringing by the time he walked into his apartment later that evening. An emergency? he wondered. Undoubtedly it was his answering service. He’d just left the only person who would have called him privately. After Lisa and Becky had died, people didn’t know what to say to him and he had no idea how to field their pity. Eventually, all the friends he and Lisa had had together drifted out of his life.
Pushing the door closed behind him, he quickly crossed to the kitchen where the phone hung on the wall and picked up the receiver.
“Sullivan.”
“You don’t keep banker’s hours, do you?”
He knew it was her. Even though he’d never spoken to Raven on the telephone before, he could tell it was her. The sound of her voice over the line was a little deeper than it was in person, a little like brandy at room temperature, swishing along the sides of a glass. But it was unmistakable.
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