"I have photos," she grinned, and showed him snapshots of two towheaded little boys and an angelic little girl, all blond curls and dimples. Her husband, Tom, was tall and athletic, with a pleasant smile. All five looked happy together, Travis thought. As though they fit.
"You're fortunate," he said. "A lovely family, Trish."
"And you? Have you married?"
He shifted in the seat. "Never have, no. I've spent most of my time overseas since you and I broke up. You name it, I've been there."
"It wouldn't be easy to meet women when you're on the move a lot, I suppose."
"You can always meet women if you want to."
"So you're still unattached," she said slowly. "Do you remember what I said to you the night I broke our engagement?"
"That you wanted a man who was head over heels in love with you," he said promptly. "Is Tom like that?"
Her face softened. "Yes. Even after three kids and the usual ups and downs of marriage. I lucked out."
"You knew enough to wait for the real thing." With an urgency that took him by surprise, Travis asked, "Did you know the minute you met Tom? Or was it more gradual?"
She took a sip of her martini. "After you left, and even though I was sure I'd done the right thing by breaking up with you, I was lonely. So I got a dog at the animal shelter, kind of an ugly dog actually, that no one else wanted to adopt. I was walking him in Deering Park one evening by the pond when he started to play with a very patrician collie. He fell in love with the collie and I fell in love with the collie's owner. And yes, I knew right away. I can tell you what Tom was wearing that evening and what we said, and how alive I felt. Utterly and wonderfully alive."
"And it's lasted … "
"As I say, we lucked out. It doesn't last for everyone, Travis. But you have to be willing to take the risk. And in the rough times to work your heart out."
Moodily he stared into his Scotch. The moment Julie had stood up on the wharf and turned to face him, hadn't he in some primal sense recognized her?
"You've met someone," Trish ventured.
"Not really." He let a mouthful of the liquor slide down his throat, Julie's face in his mind's eye as clearly as if she were actually standing there.
"Come clean," Trish said pithily.
Exasperated with himself, Travis said, "I met this woman last Friday, you're right, and my hormones have been in an uproar ever since. But that's all it is. Lust."
"If it's lust, anyone will do."
He didn't want anyone. He wanted Julie. But it was still lust.
"One of the things I always admired about you was your honesty," Trish remarked. "You said it like it was. Surely you haven't lost that?"
"She's got me so riled up, I don't know what the truth is!"
"Maybe you've fallen in love with her."
He made an instinctive gesture of repudiation. "I don't know what love is, Trish … didn't you accuse me of that all those years ago?"
"I did, yes. You'd get just so close to me and then you'd back off. I was younger then and I had the world figured out, so I accused you of being afraid of intimacy. You'd lost your mother and you'd decided at the age of six that you weren't going to trust any female ever again." Her smile was rueful. "I wouldn't be quite so frank now. Or so sure that I was right."
"You probably were right, though. My mother disappeared between one day and the next. I don't remember the funeral, or any of the relatives visiting. I do know my dad would never allow her name to be mentioned. And then I was shipped off to boarding school as though nothing had happened. Two years later he married Corinne."
"Little wonder you're afraid to trust. But if this woman is the right one, Travis, she's worth fighting for. Love's worth fighting for, that's what I'm saying. And now I'm going to shut up, and you're going to tell me about some of your adventures overseas."
Travis dredged his memory for events both touching and funny; and half an hour later they left the pub. Trish reached up and kissed him on the cheek. "It was lovely to see you again. Good luck, Travis. Keep in touch and make sure you bring her to dinner to meet the family."
"Don't hold your breath," he said, and watched her leave. Not for the first time, he thought how wise a woman she was. He was glad she was happy.
He was even more glad she'd had the strength of character to break their engagement. He hadn't been in love with her, not really. He'd never fallen in love in his life. Now that he was alone, he could admit something else: while he'd had all the normal sexual urges for Trish of a man in his early twenties, he'd never been pulled to her the way he was to Julie.
But to suggest he'd fallen for Julie was ridiculous.
The condo seemed even more empty after seeing Trish's snapshots. Was this what he wanted for the rest of his life, Travis wondered, putting the bag of groceries down on the kitchen counter. A series of temporary lodgings; and no one to welcome him when he came home at the end of the day.
He'd always prided himself on his self-sufficiency. His independence.
Doggedly Travis cooked the steak and watched the late news. He worked several extra shifts that week, as well as volunteering at a local clinic. He also found out Julie's phone number, although he didn't call her. But he thought about her most of the time, far too much for his peace of mind. When the telephone rang on Friday evening, he raced to pick it up, absurdly certain that Julie would be on the other end of the line.
"Bryce here, Travis. How you doing, buddy?"
Normally Travis was glad to hear from Bryce; but tonight he had to swallow disappointment bitter as gall. "Fine … how are you and where are you?"
The last question was always relevant: apart from being a self-made millionaire and Travis's best friend, Bryce Laribee was an international consultant in computer programming who traveled the world over. "Bangkok. Hotter 'n hell. I'm heading for Hanoi tomorrow. You getting itchy feet yet?"
Bryce had been convinced Travis wouldn't last more than three weeks in Portland, Maine. "The practice is okay. I'm doing some freeby stuff in a downtown clinic as well."
"I knew it," Bryce chuckled. "Where are you headed come September?"
"I've got a couple of prospects. Mexico, near Cuernavaca. Or Honduras … any chance of us connecting this summer?"
"Give me a month. Then I should be back in the States." Bryce paused. "You mentioned you might try to get together with your father-did anything come of that?"
Briefly Travis described the party and the rather puzzling reconciliation with Charles. "It was all too slick, too easy. And for some reason he wants me out of Portland on the first flight. I can't think why."
"Sounds like your father has all the instincts of a Machiavelli without the brains," Bryce said caustically. "But you're not planning on leaving?"
"No. I guess not."
Bryce, who'd grown up in the slums of Boston, was known for directness. "What's up? Did this really bother you? You don't sound like yourself."
Travis hesitated. "I met a woman."
"You meet lots of women. They trample each other to get to you first, you think I haven't noticed that?"
Travis grinned into the telephone. "You're not backward in that department yourself."
"So what's with this woman?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't be sitting in this goddamned condo all by myself on a Friday night!"
There was a small silence. "Give, buddy."
There was no one Travis trusted as much as his old friend Bryce. At the age of twelve, Bryce had been admitted as a scholarship student to the boarding school Travis had been attending for six years. In Bryce's first week, Travis had saved him from certain expulsion at least three times; then, together, they'd put the fear of God in the four bullies who'd been terrorizing the dorms after dark. Travis said, smiling, "Remember Jed Cathcart, the look on his face when you dumped that bucket of spaghetti all over him?"
"And then we wiped the floor with him and the spaghetti. Those were the days, Travis. Things were simpler, you knew who the bad guys were … now tell me about this woman. Name, age and vital statistics."
Stumbling at first, but gathering momentum as he went, Travis told the whole story, from the stormy meeting on the wharf to the equally stormy goodbye in her bedroom. "So that's that," he ended. "I've never chased a woman in my life and I'm not starting with her. Wouldn't do me any good, anyway."