Beyond Desire. Gwynne Forster

and join the other guests. She couldn’t think of a way to dismiss him without appearing rude and ungrateful. So she strove to be her normally gentle, courteous self and to make conversation, but her personal problems bore so heavily on her that she couldn’t summon the will to friendliness. I’m in bad shape, she conceded, if I can’t focus well enough to carry on an impersonal conversation with such a man as this one.

      “Your head is almost covered with pink and white petals,” he told her, evidently oblivious to her discomfort. That voice. Could he hear the melodies in his speech? Of course, she immediately concluded; enough women must have told him about it. She forced herself to turn slowly toward him, gaining time to restore her equilibrium.

      “Oh? Flowers in my hair?” She hated that he disconcerted her to such an extent that she lost her poise.

      “Yeah,” he answered, no doubt unperturbed by her aloofness. “Lots of them.” He picked off a few and showed them to her. She backed away, sensitive to the feel of his fingers on her scalp, and resisted the urge to remove her dark glasses. Remove them and get an unobstructed look at eyes she remembered as being the color of dark brown honey and at a flawless almond complexion. She breathed deeply in relief when a beautiful, sepia woman with a mannequin’s build and carriage claimed his attention and took him away. All I need right now is to lose my head over a guy like that one, she told herself, amused that the possibility existed.

      She didn’t tolerate the medicine well and went back to her doctor two weeks later for a new prescription.

      “Nothing has changed,” Jacob Graham told her when she asked again whether he was certain of the diagnosis. “Only time will change this; you know that, so you might as well start right now to adjust to it. It won’t be easy, but I’m confident you’ll manage.”

      “Don’t worry; I’ll be fine. Give my love to Lorrianne.” She doubted that anything could have depressed her more than his declaration that he knew she’d manage. How was she supposed to do that?

      An hour and a half later, she slid into a booth at Caution’s Coffee Bean. She had heard it said that, if you went to the popular eatery often enough, you would eventually see most of the town’s fourteen thousand inhabitants. She barely remembered driving from Elizabeth City to Caution Point, North Carolina, or even parking her car. The waiter brought her usual breakfast of coffee and a plain doughnut and would no doubt have paused for their morning chat, had she not been preoccupied.

      She sipped the coffee slowly, without tasting it. In two weeks, just two short weeks, she had tumbled from a state of euphoria to one of despair. She almost wished she hadn’t gotten that promotion; a department head might get away with it, but never a school principal. It couldn’t be happening to her. But it was and, somehow, she had to find an acceptable solution.

      “It’s ridiculous,” she heard a man in the adjoining booth say. “How can they charge like that? It must be illegal.”

      “They can, and it’s legal,” his companion replied in a deep, resonant, almost soothing voice, a familiar voice. “One hundred thousand dollars for my child’s future. A hundred thousand and she’ll be able to walk like other children. She’s had fourteen months of operations, tubes and needles. Fourteen months in intensive care, and now this. Those doctors charge as much as ten times what the insurance pays. I’ve sold my car, mortgaged my home and my business and borrowed on every credit card I have. And now because the insurance company will pay only thirty thousand of it, I have a little more than a week to come up with seventy thousand dollars, or Amy will never walk again.” Amanda couldn’t help listening to the two men.

      “And the bank turned you down flat yesterday afternoon?”

      “Yeah. Wouldn’t you? I’m a poor risk right now. A year ago, I could call my shots, but now I can’t even take care of my child’s needs. I told the bank officers that I have a strong damage suit in this case, but all that got me was sympathy.”

      “Have you tried Helena? Maybe she’d be willing to help. After all, that British polo player she married is rolling in money.”

      “I wrote her about the accident the day after it happened, and I got a note about six weeks later saying that she hoped everything was all right. Not that I expected more; Helena doesn’t have the maternal instincts of a flea. She hasn’t written since and doesn’t know what her four-year-old daughter’s condition is.” Amanda empathized with the man; compared to his problem, hers seemed slight. If she could solve her problem with seventy thousand dollars, she would stop worrying. As heir to the wealth of her parents, grandparents and great-aunt—derived from their interests in one of the regions most prosperous fish and seafood canning businesses, money was the least of her problems. She wanted to peer around the coat tree to get a look at him, but she wouldn’t know which one was Amy’s father. Surely that voice couldn’t belong to the man she first saw in her doctor’s office and then at Lorrianne’s barbecue brunch. But how could two men have that same voice? She sipped some water. Great-Aunt Meredith had always said that sipping water slowly was very calming. The men continued to search for a way to pay for Amy’s surgery.

      “Can’t you pay the doctors on installment?”

      “They want it upfront,” she heard him say. “Every dime of it. But look, Jack, you’d better go. You’ll be late for work, and you’ve sacrificed enough for me.”

      She looked up as “Jack” passed her on his way out, then focussed on the man who remained. Good Lord! He was the same one she’d seen in Dr. Graham’s office and at his home. She regarded Amy’s father, a handsome, clean-cut man whom she thought any woman should be proud to have for a husband. Dr. Graham had said that they could solve each other’s problem. Her gaze held him, seemingly deep in thought, as he stared into his coffee cup. Perhaps…No. She pushed back the absurd idea, paid for her breakfast and left.

      Amanda drove home thinking that spring recess would soon be over and she hadn’t done any of the things she’d planned. Instead, she had been struggling with the most difficult problem she’d ever faced. She didn’t put her car in the garage as she usually did, but left it in front of the house. She had lived alone in the comfortable, two-story home with its spacious grounds since her aunt Meredith’s death and, though she loved the house with its memories, ghosts and treasures, there were times when she had to struggle with the loneliness. The telephone rang just as she closed the front door.

      “Amanda, can you come to my office tomorrow morning?”

      “Why, yes. Is there a problem, Dr. Graham?”

      “Maybe a solution. I have an opening at eleven o’clock. Would that suit you?” She agreed and hung up. A solution. Solution to what? Well, she’d find out when she got there.

      When she walked into Jacob Graham’s office, Amanda supposed that his cheerful greeting was meant to put her at ease but, instead, his smile alarmed her.

      “What is it?” He wasn’t wearing his white coat, and he didn’t indicate that he wanted her to go to the examining room. “Is something wrong, Dr. Graham?”

      “Amanda, I want to talk with you as an old family friend. Caution Point is a small place, and you’ve just been made principal of the junior high. Small-town people are conservative; you know that. I saw you talking with my friend, Marcus Hickson, in the garden the day Lorrianne had that brunch. Both of you have a difficult problem that you could easily solve together. Marcus is a fine man by any measure, or I wouldn’t say this.”

      “Say what?”

      “Well, he’s got a problem with his daughter’s health, and…”

      “I know,” she said when he hesitated as though not wanting to betray a friend’s confidence. “I overheard him telling someone. What does that have to do with me?” The skin seemed to roll on her neck as she anticipated his next words, and her breath lodged in her throat when he leaned back in his old-fashioned swivel chair, made a pyramid of his hands and prepared to continue.

      “Amanda, the answer to your problem and Marcus’, too, is for