LITMIR.BIZ

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instantly. Two years ago their little girl had sustained third-degree burns, and had—mercifully, in his opinion—died. Pushing the letter from Arizona to one side, he said, “Send them in, please, Vera.”

      Trish came in first, her blue eyes smiling; the last time Troy had seen her they had been filled with desolation. Her husband Peter, raw-boned and inarticulate, followed her. With a nasty jolt in his chest Troy saw that Peter was carrying a baby.

      Trish said shyly, “We were here for my six-week checkup and we wanted to come and see you…We’ve never forgotten how kind you were. We thought you’d like to know we have a new baby; we called her Sarah. Show him, Peter.”

      Peter came round the desk, bumping into a chair on the way; for all his clumsiness, he made intricately carved pine furniture that won awards at the local craft fairs. He proffered the baby rather as if she were a chunk of wood.

      Every nerve protesting, Troy took the small bundle in his arms. Sarah, disturbed by the transition, opened smoke-blue eyes, yawned, and fell asleep again. Her dimpled fist and the tiny ovals of her fingernails were perfectly formed and perfectly beautiful. Not sure he could trust his voice, Troy said tritely, “She’s lovely. You must be very happy.”

      “Yes.” Trish’s smile included her husband. “No one can ever replace Mandy, but we needed a new start—didn’t we, Peter?”

      The very words that he himself had used, Troy thought numbly.

      Peter rubbed his jaw, staring at the desk rather than at Troy. “You were straight with us, Doc,” he said. “I don’t like anyone tryin’ to hide the knotholes from me. Doesn’t do any good in the long run; you find ’em anyway. You never did that. Not once.”

      Sarah whimpered in her sleep. Troy said—and at one level it was true—“I’m very happy for both of you, and I wish you and the baby all the best…Here, Peter, you’d better take her before she starts to cry. And do sit down, please.”

      “You got kids, Doc?”

      “No,” Troy said. It was the simplest answer, the easiest; yet he hated himself for making it. He tried to pay attention, because Trish was telling him about the addition Peter had built on their bungalow and about the crib he had hand-carved for Sarah.

      Then she said, “We must go. I know you’re always so busy. I hope things are going as well for you as they are for us.”

      She clearly had no knowledge of his personal life. Troy said heartily, “Fine, thanks, Trish. I’m really glad you dropped in. And it was a pleasure to have met Sarah.”

      As the door closed behind them he let out his breath in a long sigh and wandered over to the window. Above the downtown highrises soared the peaks of Grouse and Seymour Mountains, where he and Lucy had often skied together. It was an enviable view and he didn’t even see it. Trish and Peter’s marriage had held firm under the onslaught of tragedy, he thought heavily, and they’d had the courage to bring a second child into a world that they knew all too well could be both cruel and capricious.

      Trish and Peter had done better than he and Lucy. They’d earned their new start.

      He’d take the job, he thought fiercely. Take it and get the hell out of here. It couldn’t be any worse in Phoenix than it was in Vancouver, and it might well be better—at least there’d be no memories of Lucy there. He’d get out more, too, start dating on a regular basis—maybe remarry.

      To remarry he’d have to divorce Lucy.

      Divorce Lucy? The idea was ludicrous.

      With a low growl of frustration Troy picked up the sheaf of notes Vera had collected for the meeting and left his office. And if he was more than usually intolerant of the bureaucratic bunglings and asinine government cutbacks that were part and parcel of all the hospital meetings nowadays, he wasn’t about to apologise to anyone for his bad temper.

      The meeting ran late. Troy hurried back to his office and changed from the casual cotton trousers and shirt that he wore around the hospital into a gray business suit and a formal white shirt. After adjusting his silk tie in the mirror he ran a comb through his hair. Because it was blond and thick, and streaked by the sun, no one but Troy would have noticed the few gray hairs over his ears. He knew they were there, though. After all, he was thirty-seven years old.

      He’d be forty soon. If he was going to make a new start, he’d better get a move on.

      He read the letter from the institute once again. That they were offering him the job before they opened it for competition was to say the least flattering. The letter concluded with the polite hope that they would hear from him by the first week of September.

      First thing tomorrow he’d get Vera to fax them. He should fly down there and check the situation out before making a decision. He had three weeks’ vacation starting next week, and while he’d tentatively arranged to go sailing with his long-time friend Gavin for about ten days he could cancel out of that with no difficulty. The timing was ideal.

      And if he was into new starts, Troy thought, tucking his wallet in his inner pocket, he did have a date tonight. A bona fide date with the female ophthalmologist who’d set the eye clinic on its heels when she’d arrived from Montreal six months ago.

      Dr Martine Robichaud was intelligent, beautiful and sophisticated, and a brilliant diagnostician to boot. And, unless he was misreading all the signals, she was in serious pursuit of him. While this was their third date he had yet to touch her, other than a casual hand on her elbow, an arm around her shoulders to adjust her raincoat. Maybe tonight he should change that, too. It was time—past time—that he quit being incapacitated by the past. Time to let go of the woman who no longer wanted him and to find one who did.

      He gave himself a defiant grin in the mirror, picked up his car keys and ran down the stairs to the parking lot. He was meeting Martine at a bar on Robson Street at seven; he’d better hurry.

      He got there five minutes before her, and thus had the pleasure of watching her walk across the room toward his table. Heads turned; conversation stilled. She was, he sensed, both aware of this and unaffected by it. He stood up, rested both hands on her shoulders—rediscovering with a small shock how much shorter than he she was—and kissed her cheek. Contradicting the tailored linen dress and classic gold jewelry, her scent was complex, sensual—even a touch flamboyant.

      He was quite sure the contrast was deliberate. With a twinge of excitement he pulled out her chair, watching the swing of her straight dark hair, the grace of her movements, and was not surprised when the waiter came to their table as soon as she was seated.

      “Extra dry martini, no olive, please,” she said in her impeccable English, which was flavored with the slightest of accents from her Francophone heritage. “I’m sorry I’m late, Troy. Another of these cutback meetings—they manage to cut back on everything but my time.”

      He smiled at her. “I behaved disgracefully at the surgery meeting. Not that it’ll make any difference.”

      They talked easily about hospital matters, then moved to the trip Martine had taken to San Francisco and the conference Troy had attended in Texas. And all the while Troy was aware that the whole conversation was window-dressing—interesting, urbane and witty, most certainly, but window-dressing, nevertheless.

      When they had almost finished their second drink, he said casually, “Shall we move on? I thought we might have dinner at the new place on Granville Island that everyone’s raving about.”

      “Or,” Martine said, “we could go to my apartment.”

      Her dark brown eyes were unwavering, her purpose clear. “You’re very direct,” Troy said.

      “I almost always know what I want.”

      He looked down at his hands. A couple of months ago he had tried taking off his wedding-band and putting it away in his bureau, and had found himself unable to do so. So he had compromised, and now wore it on his right hand. “Technically I’m still married,” he replied. “Even though I haven’t lived

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