Lisa thought back to that night. Marcus had gone into the office the minute they’d arrived home. He’d come back out with the completed stack of papers in record time and tossed it on the hall table, as if it wasn’t the least bit important. He’d just wanted to be done with it, so sure that they weren’t going to need anything but the basic tests to set their minds at ease, certain they’d conceive as soon as they quit trying so hard. He hadn’t read the papers.
“It’s notarized,” was all she could think of to say, still staring at the form. The other information had been typed in. Marcus had simply scrawled his signature across the bottom.
Beth was nodding. “I had it done here, along with a stack of other things. At the time, I really didn’t think we were going to need it.”
Lisa remembered Beth saying much the same thing that first day. She’d thought that having the tests would simply help them relax and let nature take its course. It was probably the only thing Marcus had heard that whole afternoon. The only thing he’d wanted to hear. Which was another reason it had hit him so hard when they’d finally learned the truth. Until that point he hadn’t even allowed the possibility of sterility to enter his mind.
“He didn’t read what he was signing,” Lisa finally said.
“Were you with him?”
“No.” She’d been in the bathroom, drying tears she didn’t want him to see. Because she’d had a feeling, even if he hadn’t, that they had a problem. She was a doctor, and her instincts had been crying out for months. Oftentimes a couple couldn’t conceive while trying too hard because they made love strictly to have babies. She and Marcus had always made love because they couldn’t stop themselves.
“Then you don’t know that he didn’t read it, Lis. It’s possible that he read what he was signing and, dismissing it as an impossibility, signed it, anyway, just to avoid further discussion. Marcus has always thought he could control the world, or at least his part of it.”
Lisa smiled sadly. “He’s always been able to until now.”
Beth’s eyes softened. “So what’s it going to be, Lis? Are you going to pull out that ovulation kit?”
Lisa looked at the paper again. At Marcus’s scrawl across the bottom. Unable to speak through her tears, she shook her head.
CHAPTER FOUR
OLIVER WEBSTER was worried. His thirty years as a professor of law at Yale had in no way prepared him to deal with the problems facing his daughter’s marriage. He had no idea how to help Lisa and Marcus, what to even suggest to them. But he knew someone who might have more answers than he did. Lisa’s friend, Beth Montague. He had a hunch just talking with Beth would make him feel better. It usually did.
He stopped by her office on his way home from his volunteer shift at the hospital. He’d been taking a stint every week since Barbara had died, having found during his wife’s prolonged illness how badly the hospital was in need of volunteers. Helping other people who were suffering as she had made him feel a little closer to Barbara. But lately he’d been looking in on Beth on a fairly regular basis, as well.
Her office door was open and she was sitting behind her desk engrossed in a textbook that looked as big as his law tomes.
He tapped lightly on the door. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Oliver!” Her head shot up, her studious expression replaced with a welcoming grin. “I was wondering if you were going to stop by. How were things on the ward this afternoon?”
It pleased him that she remembered his schedule. “Rosie Gardner’s back in. She’s developed an infection at her dialysis sight, but they’ve got it under control.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of the tweed jacket he wore even in the heat. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about something. Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Of course not. Have a seat.” She came around the desk and joined him. “What’s up?”
“I’m more than a little concerned about Lisa and Marcus. The last time we had dinner together, all three of us, was two months ago. They’re both working themselves to death.”
Beth grimaced, her round features serious. “I know.”
“The thing is, I know what the loss of a child, or the loss of the ability to have a child, can do to a marriage.” It chilled him even to think about that time in his life.
“I know you do.” Her eyes brimmed with sympathy.
“Eighty percent of the marriages that go through it fail afterward, did you know that?”
“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised. I also don’t think Lisa and Marcus are in that eighty percent.”
Oliver smiled, feeling better already. “Somehow I didn’t think you would. And I remember John saying that once you’d made your mind up about something, everyone involved may just as well accept it as fact.”
Though Beth’s husband had been several years his junior, he’d enjoyed his conversations with his younger colleague. It was through Oliver’s connection with John that Beth and Lisa had first met. During one of her mother’s bad spells, Lisa had accompanied Oliver to a university function where John and Beth were in attendance. Lisa had just started her residency at Thornton Memorial Hospital at the time, and Beth had immediately taken her under her wing.
“So, are we going to have dinner or do you have to hurry off?” Beth asked. Her plump cheeks had a way of dimpling when she smiled that made him feel like smiling, too.
“Dinner, most definitely,” Oliver replied, offering her his arm. He refused to dwell on the twinge of unease he felt as he escorted Beth out to his car. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the friendship he and Beth had developed over the past year. Neither of them was looking for passion; each respected that the other had already had that once-in-a-lifetime privilege. But neither had mentioned the friendship to Lisa, either. Oliver wasn’t sure how his daughter would feel about his befriending a woman almost young enough to be his daughter.
Almost, but not quite, Oliver reminded himself as he sat across from Beth at their favorite Chinese restaurant. At fifty-three, he still had a lot of years ahead of him. And if dinner once a week with a woman who made him smile made those years happier ones, where was the harm in that?