"It's a way out! Fuck the city. Fuck the hospital. We buy this boat. Then we bail out of here and go."
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
"I don't want to go anywhere."
"There's no reason to stay. Not now."
"Yes there is. For me there is. I can't just pack up and leave! I've got three years left, Mark. I have to finish them now, or I'll never be a surgeon."
"I am one, Abby. I'm what you want to be. What you think you want to be. And I'm telling you, it's not worth it."
"I've worked so hard. I'm not going to give up now."
"What about me?"
She stared at him. And realized that, of course, this was all about him. The boat, the escape to freedom. The soon-to-be-married man, suddenly seized with the urge to run away from home. It was a metaphor that perhaps even he did not understand.
"I want to do this, Abby," he said. He went to her, his eyes glittering. Feverish. "I put in an offer, on this boat. That's why I got home so late. I was meeting with the broker."
"You made an offer without telling me?Without even calling me?"
"I know it sounds crazy-'
"How can we afford this thing? I'm way over my head in debt! It'll take me years to pay back my student loans. And you're buying a boat?"
"We can take out a mortgage. It's like buying a second home."
"This isn't a home."
"It's still an investment."
"It's not what I'd invest my money in."
"I'm not spending your money."
She took a step back and stared at him. "You're right," she said quietly. "It's not my money at all."
"Abby." He groaned. "Jesus, Abby-'
The rain was starting to fall again, cold and numbing against her face. She walked back to the car and climbed inside.
He got into the car as well. For a moment, neither one of them spoke. The only sound was the rain on the roof. He said, quietly, "I'll withdraw the offer."
"That's not what I want."
"What do you want?"
"I thought we'd be sharing more. I don't mean the money. I don't care about that. What hurts is that you think of it as your money. Is that how it's going to be?Yours or mine? Should we call in the lawyers now and draw up the prenuptial agreement? Divide up the furniture and the kids?"
"You don't understand," he said, and she heard a strange and unexpected note of desperation in his voice. He started the car.
HARVEST
They drove halfway home without speaking.
Then Abby said: "Maybe we should rethink the engagement.
Maybe getting married isn't really what you want, Mark."
"Is it what you want?"
She looked out the window and sighed. "I don't know," she murmured. "I don't know any more."
It was the truth. She didn't.
Tragedy Claims Family of Three While Dr. Hennessy and his family slept through the night, a killer was creeping up the basement steps. Deadly carbon monoxide gas, produced by a faulty furnace, is blamed for the NewYear's Day deaths of 34-year-old Hennessy, his wife Gail, 33, and their 6-month-old daughter Linda. Their bodies were discovered late that afternoon by friends who'd been invited to the house for dinner…
Abby repositioned the microfiche, and photos of Hennessy and his wife appeared on the screen, his face pudgy and serious, hers seemingly snapped in mid-laugh. There was no photo of the baby. Perhaps the Globe thought all six-month-old babies looked alike anyway.
Abby changed micro-riches to a date three and a half years before the Hennessy deaths. She found the article she was looking for on the front page of the Metro section.
Body of Missing Physician Recovered from Inner Harbor.
A body found floating Tuesday in Boston Harbor was identified today as Dr. Lawrence Kunstler, a local thoracic surgeon. Dr. Kunstler's car was found abandoned last week in the southbound Tobin Bridge breakdown lane. Police are speculating that his death was a suicide. No witnesses, however, have come forward, and the investigation remains open…
Abby centred Kunstler's photograph on the microfilm screen. It was a blandly formal pose, complete with white coat and stethoscope, Dr. Kunstler gazing directly at the camera.
And now, directly at her.
Why did you do it? Why did you jump? she wondered. And she couldn't suppress the afterthought: Or did you?
The one advantage of being relieved of ward duties was that Abby could skip out for the whole afternoon, and no one at Bayside would notice, or even care. So when she walked out of the Boston Public Library, and into the bustle of Copley Square, she felt a sense of both emptiness and relief that she didn't have to return to the hospital. The afternoon, if she so desired, was hers.
She decided to drive to Elaine's house.
For the past few days, she'd been asking around for Elaine's new phone number. Neither Marflee Archer nor any of the other transplant team wives had even known that Elaine's number had been changed.
Now, with the images of Kunstler and Hennessy still painfully sharp in her mind, she headed west on Route 9, to Newton. Talking to Elaine was not something she looked forward to, but over the last few days, whenever she thought about Kunstler and Hennessy, she couldn't help thinking about Aaron as well. She remembered the day of his funeral, and how no one had even mentioned the two previous deaths. Any other group of people would have found it an unavoidable topic. Someone would normally have remarked, This makes number three. Or Why is Bayside so unlucky? Or Do you think there's a common factor here? But no one had said a thing. Not even Elaine, who must have known about Kunstler and Hennessy. Not even Mark.
If he kept this from me, what else hasn't he told me?
She pulled into Elaine's driveway and sat there for a moment, her head in her hands, trying to shake off her depression. But the pall remained. It's all falling apart for me, she thought. My job. And now I'm losing Mark. The worst part about it is, I don't have any idea why it's happening.
Ever since the night she'd brought up the subject of Kunstler and Hennessy, everything had changed between her and Mark. They lived in the same house and slept in the same bed, but their interactions had become purely automatic. Like the sex. In the dark, with her eyes closed, she could have been making love to anyone.
She looked up at the house. And thought: Maybe Elaine knows something.
She got out of the car and climbed the steps to the front door. There she noticed the newspapers, two of them, still rolled up and lying on the porch. They were a week old and already yellowed. Why hadn't Elaine picked them up?
She rang the doorbell.When no one answered, she tried knocking, then rang again. And again. She could hear the bell echoing inside the house, followed by silence. No footsteps, no voices. She looked down at the two newspapers and knew that something was wrong.
The front door was locked; she left the porch and circled around the side of the house, to the back garden. A stone path trailed off into curving beds of well-tended azaleas and hydrangeas. The lawn looked recently mown, the hedges clipped, but the flagstone patio seemed disconcertingly empty. Then she remembered the furniture, the umbrella table and chairs that she'd seen here the afternoon of the funeral. They were gone.
The kitchen door was locked, but just off the patio was a sliding glass door that hadn't been latched. Abby gave it a tug and it glided open. She called: "Elaine?" and stepped inside.
The room was vacant. Furniture, rugs — it was all gone, even the pictures. She stared in bewilderment at the blank walls, at the floor where the missing rug had left a darker rectangle on the sun-faded wood. She went into the living room, her footsteps echoing in the bare rooms. The house was swept clean, vacant except for a few advertisement postcards lying just inside the front door mail slot. She picked one up and saw it was addressed to Occupant.
She went into the kitchen. Even the refrigerator was empty, the surfaces wiped down and smelling of disinfectant. The wall telephone had no dial tone.