The Homecoming Hero Returns. Joan Elliott Pickart

      “Mmm,” Sandra said.

      She’d been beautiful when she’d nursed the twins? she thought incredulously. For heaven’s sake, why hadn’t David said something like that at the time, when she was feeling fat and frumpy and starving herself to death trying to lose the weight she gained during her pregnancy?

      Before Sandra could decide if she wanted to slug David again, he pulled open the door to the building they had reached and ushered her inside. He stopped at the directory on the wall and nodded.

      “Professor Harrison is on the second floor,” he said, “same office as before. You’d think he would have been eligible for a bigger place by now. Some of those offices are twice the size his was.”

      “Maybe he doesn’t like change. Some people are more comfortable with the familiar. I don’t know, really, because I only spoke to the man twice in my life. You’re the one who had so many different connections to him.”

      “Yes, I did, and I think you have a valid point,” David said, nodding. “Without actually being able to give you an example, I just have a feeling that you’re right, he doesn’t like change.” He paused. “Well, here we go. Hiking up a steep flight of stairs and waiting to see if we need oxygen when we get to the top because we’re a heck of a lot older than when we used to sprint up staircases in a single bound.”

      “Oh, ha,” Sandra said. “You’re in terrific shape, and you know it. I’m the slug who will be gasping.”

      “Once a jock,” David said, placing one hand on his heart, “always a jock.”

      “How profound.”

      At the top of the many stairs, Sandra informed David that she wasn’t even winded and how about that, Mr. Jock?

      “You’re a fine example of womanhood,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can because our children will soon be informing you that you’re old like their father and…”

      “David,” Sandra interrupted, looking down the hallway. “Isn’t that…? Oh, I’m sure it is. Yes.” She started quickly forward. “Rachel Jones? Oh, my gosh, Rachel, is that really you?”

      A tall, slender woman cocked her head slightly and stared at the approaching Westports, an expression of confusion on her face. Then, as though a lightbulb suddenly turned on, a bright smile of recognition lit up her face and she hurried toward the couple.

      “Sandra,” Rachel said, giving her a quick hug, then repeating the gesture as she turned to David. “David. You two look fabulous. David, I swear, you haven’t gained an ounce since you wore that tight sexy baseball uniform. Weren’t those exciting days? I spent more time without a voice than with one from screaming my head off every time you came up to bat. Our star. Our school hero.” She laughed. “And you look just as yummy today, you rotten bum.”

      And Rachel looked even better than she had ten years before, Sandra mused. Goodness, she was a beautiful woman and maturity just added to her uniqueness. She’d always had such lovely, café au lait toned skin, compliments of her African-American mother, she’d said, and she was now wearing her curly black hair longer, brushing the tops of her shoulders.

      She was wearing jeans and a hip-length over-blouse. Just like ten years before, Rachel’s clothes appeared a size too large for her, a trick she’d told Sandra helped conceal what Rachel considered a skinny body she had no desire to put on display. Sandra’s frequent declaration that women would kill for a figure like Rachel’s had no affect on her mind-set.

      “Yeah, those were the glory days,” David was saying as Sandra tuned back in to the conversation between him and Rachel. “Saunders being the state champs in baseball two years in a row was really something. We had great teams back then.”

      “You’re being too modest,” Rachel said, then looked at Sandra. “Isn’t he? He was the star of those teams. We never would have been state champs without him. Right, Sandra?”

      “Absolutely,” Sandra said, shifting her gaze to David.

      David was glowing, she thought, feeling a chill course through her. His green eyes were sparkling, actually sparkling, and the smile on his face couldn’t get any bigger. It had started already, the reminiscing, the dishing up of exciting memories of when David was the campus hero, the golden boy, with a fabulous future before him that included playing professional baseball when he graduated.

      She wanted to go home. Right now. She wanted to grab David and run back to their little apartment and close the door, stay grounded in the reality of the world where they actually existed, not be here in the arena of what might have been possible for him.

      “Are you here because you were invited to Professor Harrison’s reunion, Rachel?” Sandra said, deciding she could at least change the subject from baseball to why the three of them were standing in that hallway.

      Rachel nodded. “Yes, I got in yesterday afternoon. Oh, you’ll never guess who Professor Harrison’s secretary is. Jane Jackson.”

      “No kidding?” Sandra said. “It will be nice to see her again.”

      “Well, she’s on vacation at the moment,” Rachel said. “Professor Harrison has asked me to help him locate Jacob Weber with the hope he’ll attend this shindig.”

      “That jerk?” David said, frowning. “Professor Harrison wants him to be part of this get-together?”

      “Yes, he does,” Rachel said. “Apparently Jacob is a fairly famous fertility specialist now. Hard to fathom, isn’t it? That creepy Jacob could be a sympathetic doctor who is dedicating his life to making it possible for couples to have babies? That’s not the self-centered Jacob we knew. But…” She shrugged. “Ten years is a long time. We should keep an open mind about him, I suppose.”

      “If he’s so famous why is he hard to locate?” David said.

      “Because he has clinics in this country and in Europe,” Rachel said, wriggling her nose. “La-di-da. I guess in order to work uninterrupted by people hoping he’ll take them on as patients or clients or whatever, none of the clinics will say if he’s there but will gladly take a message and blah, blah, blah. So far, he hasn’t called back. I’m trying to get fax numbers for the overseas clinics because Professor Harrison is paying for the calls and I’m running up his personal bill already.”

      “Speaking of the man who decided to have this rather strange…reunion…if you can actually call it that,” Sandra said, “how is he? Has he changed much in ten years from the fun loving, smiling professor we knew?”

      Rachel frowned and wrapped her hands around her elbows.

      “He’s changed a great deal,” she said quietly. “It’s sad, it really is.”

      “What do you mean?” David said, matching her frown.

      “He hardly smiles at all now,” Rachel said. “Did you know his wife, Mary, died eight months ago?”

      “No,” Sandra said. “Oh, that’s awful. What happened?”

      “He told me yesterday that Mary was always frail, had a heart condition, which was why they never had children,” Rachel said. “She’s been almost completely bedridden for several years and… Well, she died. Professor Harrison is only fifty-eight but he seems much older, sort of…defeated.”

      “He must miss his wife very much,” Sandra said.

      “Yes, but I think there’s more going on that just that because…” Rachel said, then shook her head. “No, I’m not going to go there. It’s probably just my imagination working overtime. Forget I said anything.”

      Sandra laughed. “Oh, like I’m just going to erase that enticing little tidbit.”

      “Ha,” David said, with a hoot of laughter. “You might as well give up right now, Rachel, and spill it.”

      “No,