TCOT Absurd Assumption C4

Perry Mason clamped his lips together into a thin, hard line, took three long strides to the front door, flung it open, and was nearly pummeled in the chest by a slender, distinguished, albeit disheveled man standing on the stoop.

"Del – oh…who are you?" Blue eyes blinked rapidly in surprise behind tortoiseshell glasses.

Perry extended his hand, which the man did not take, and used the awkward moment to quickly size up the man who had intrigued Della enough for her to…well, he couldn't allow himself to think exactly how intrigued Della had been. Asher Langlois was probably five or six years younger than himself, a few inches shorter, and a quite a few pounds lighter, the epitome of a gentleman from the top of his thinning, faded sandy hair to the tips of his impeccable oxblood Florsheim wing-tipped shoes. Pounding on a door and shouting was something a man like Asher Langlois would rarely do unless very, very provoked or very, very worried. "Perry Mason. And you are Asher Langlois."

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage…there you are!" Asher Langlois pushed the big attorney's hand out of the way and charged into the house, grabbing Della in a relieved hug. "I was so worried when you didn't answer your telephone, Del."

Perry took two steps back from the embracing couple, unable to look away.

So.

This was Asher Langlois.

"I really appreciate that you came to see me, Ash," Della said quietly, idly stirring elbow macaroni in a large Farberware saucepan. "I – I need all the friends I can get right now."

Following what at best were awkward introductions and Perry's hasty exit to get hamburgers, Della led Asher into the kitchen where she busied herself making a pasta salad. She needed something to do, and it was the first thing that popped into her mind. Perry liked pasta salad made with mayonnaise and mustard.

The surprised expression on his face at finding Della with a man had been replaced with a fractious wariness once that man excused himself and he was left alone with her. Asher pulled out a stool and seated himself at the island, leaning heavily on his elbows, watching her while she efficiently chopped a few vegetables. "I doubt I'll ever be the kind of friend that guy," he paused and nodded his head toward the front door Perry had exited through, "is to you. He's the one, isn't he? The long-term relationship – the man you wouldn't tell me about?"

Della took a deep breath, let it out slowly, hoping it would calm her nerves. "He's my attorney." No, she couldn't hedge the truth. "I – I worked for him. He's very good." Well, maybe a little hedging.

Asher continued to watch Della, brow furrowed. He shouldn't make this visit about Perry Mason. He should be supportive of Della and her plight, not confrontational and jealous. "Perry Mason, hmmm. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember reading something years ago when I was working with the lumber coalition against the Save the Redwoods League…good God, there was a secretary…he fooled around with her for years. You're the secretary?"

"I didn't fool around with him," she replied, her voice coated with frost, defending the choices she had made all those years ago for the first time of what she imagined would be many times between now and her preliminary hearing. "We were…together…for twenty-seven years. The last three years we've mostly been…apart. He's been in San Francisco sitting on the Appellate Court."

"Twenty-seven years! And you never married him?" When she said she'd been in a 'long term relationship' and left it at that he'd thought three years, five at the outside. More than twenty-five years with a romantic partner was a span of time he had only begun to imagine when he met Miss Della Street.

"You know I didn't."

Asher regarded her with startled eyes as he comprehended what she'd just admitted. "It's not just me?"

She shook her head slowly. "I couldn't marry him and I can't marry you. No matter how much I loved him, no matter how much..." She leaned over the island and laid her hand on his arm.

He jerked away from her. "You can't even say it now when it doesn't mean anything, can you?"

"Asher, I..." but she couldn't say it, and it mortified her. There were myriad complicated reasons why she had never married Perry, but there was only one uncomplicated reason why she couldn't marry Asher.

"I thought not." His lips were pressed together in a tight, angry line, furious at himself for steering the conversation in this direction but unable to turn the wheel in the opposite direction. "What's going on here? Why didn't you tell me you were the mistress of the great Perry Mason?"

"Nothing is going on. He's here because…because he's the best criminal attorney in the country and he…he insisted that I have the best. He resigned from the Court to be my attorney, Ash." She stirred the pasta again, back stiff and straight. "I wasn't his mistress. He was unmarried. We were unmarried. Two unmarried adults in a serious, private relationship. Much the same as you and I."

If he wasn't already seated Asher's legs would have collapsed beneath him. Skipping out on yet another rally and flying in from Texas wasn't nearly as dramatic as resigning from a highly prestigious governmental position. How could he compete with something like that? "I guess mistress is an outdated word. But as you so often pointed out, I am outdated. I come from a time when if a man and a woman loved each other they got married – they didn't flaunt their affairs."

Della couldn't hold back a wistful smile. "I assure you that Perry doesn't flaunt," she said, a memory from long ago suddenly bright with affection. She turned off the flame, lifted the pan from the burner and in one swift, efficient movement dumped the macaroni into a metal colander to drain. "I come from that same time, Ash."

Asher's head jerked up. The vivid emotion in her voice was like nothing he had ever heard before. He should be ashamed that she felt compelled to defend herself to him when he had shown up with every intention of supporting her, but it hurt too damn much to realize he had been in love alone, and he discovered that as much as she needed him to live up to his declared feelings for her, he needed to excoriate her furtiveness in order to accept that realization even more. "Why didn't you tell me who it was you had been involved with? Didn't you think I deserved to know?"

Della ran cool water over the steaming pasta and tossed it in the colander before setting the metal sieve in the sink once more and skirting the island to take a seat next to Asher. She placed her hand on his leg. "Part of what attracted me to you was that you weren't from California and you didn't know who I was, and didn't pry into my past. I liked that very much. Twenty-seven years was a lot of life to walk away from, Ash. I didn't want to talk about it. I had to protect myself."

"If it was so horrible, why did you let it go on for so long?" Aside from the fact he must have been even more handsome than he is now, Asher added to himself dolefully, and probably wealthy. Della was by no means shallow, but she was a woman and the man definitely was dashing. Confident. Imposing. Successful. Famous. He did a quick calculation. Thirty years. Della couldn't have been much more than twenty-one or twenty-two when she first met him. Heady stuff for an impressionable young woman, he imagined, grudgingly giving Mason his props for having the good sense to hire Della, and even better sense to make her his own.

Della placed a fingertip to the corner of her eye, pressing to stem threatening tears. "Oh Ash, it wasn't horrible. Every woman should have twenty-seven such years."

Asher grabbed the hand that rested on his leg and held it between both of his. "I don't understand, Della."

Asher felt her withdraw, and knew that whatever pain had caused her to leave this Perry Mason fellow was still very real and raw, obviously difficult to hide from as she wished. "We made mistakes," she said quietly. "We hurt each other and couldn't be together anymore."

Asher wanted to ask her what had happened, but decided she wouldn't give him a satisfactory answer because he suspected there wasn't one. Perry Mason wouldn't be here now, in her house, obviously King of the manor if either of them knew exactly why they weren't still together.

It was a crushing blow to his meager hopes of somehow rekindling their romance that his love for her fell short of what she shared with the man who would defend her. If he had seen it sooner he never would have gotten down on one knee and offered her the singularly unremarkable ring from a chain jewelry store and promised her a life of nomadic instability. No, he would have merely loved her and been with her when he could, as she had been content with, as this Mason fellow had been smart enough to do.

But even the great attorney hadn't been able to keep her…

"Della," he said as the buoyant thought sputtered to life. "Della, is it too late for us? If we forget I ever proposed and I promise never to propose again…"

Her soft chuckle cut off his words and hope simultaneously. "I'm sorry, Ash," she said gently. "I've been able to manage the memories, but I can't forget, and that's not fair to you. I can't change who I am. I was selfish and I – I needed you. You made me feel better and I so desperately wanted to feel better. You are a good man, Asher, and if my life had been different …if I was different – "

"I made you feel better?" Asher shouted, jumping to his feet and walking several paces away before facing her again. "I made you feel better that you weren't with the man who obviously broke your heart?"

"I broke his heart too," she whispered, barely audible. And I broke yours…

Asher tasted bitterness in his mouth. "So that made it okay for you to break mine? Tell me Della, how elite is this club Mason and I belong to? Exactly how many hearts have you broken, sweetheart? Are there notches on your bedpost I can count?"

"You have every right to be angry with me," Della began, but the expression on his face told her she had said the wrong thing this time.

"Every right to be angry?" Asher fumed, backing away a few more steps. "Stop rationalizing this, Della. There is nothing rational or manageable about love. I loved you and I thought, irrationally, that if I said it enough you would someday say it back to me. Little did I know…how do you feel now, Della?"

The abrupt question surprised her. "Awful," she admitted, knowing it was an appropriate yet unsatisfying response. "I was selfish and I'm sorry."

The least selfish person he had ever known thought she was selfish. What a cad he was. He sagged against the door jamb. "You weren't selfish…"

"I should have told you about Perry..."

"Yes, you should have. Or I should have insisted that you tell me, but I was too happy to consider you had a life before me.

A single tear rolled slowly down Della's cheek. "It wasn't you, Ash. It was me."

"Don't kid yourself, Del. It was him. He was there all the time, right between us, only I had no idea he was there. Were you ever going to tell me? Was there anything I could ever have done to make you forget him?"

"I don't know," she admitted reluctantly, to both questions, her voice low and achingly hollow. "I tried. Please believe me, Ash, I tried. But when you gave me that ultimatum...how could I marry you if I had never married Perry?"

"It's still him."

Another tear slipped down her cheek at the dullness in Asher's voice. "I tried. I really tried…"

"Can't live with him, can't live without him, is that it?" Asher hated seeing her in such misery, hated trying to force an admission out of her she refused to recognize herself.

Della sniffed. "I need him now, Ash. Perhaps more than I ever have. I didn't kill Arthur, but they have so much circumstantial evidence against me…"

She smiled the saddest smile Asher had ever seen and his affection for her resurfaced in an instant. Hell. Talk about selfish. Why was he arguing with her about things she shouldn't have to worry about right now when she had to be scared and confused? Despite a bit of self-loathing, Asher pressed on, curiosity stronger than restraint. Maybe she would tell him now. "What went wrong, Della, with Mason?"

She looked at him with those beautiful, wide eyes filled with tears. "I behaved horribly and forced him to look elsewhere for companionship."

Asher regarded her in silence for a moment. "You didn't want the relationship to end, did you?"

"No. But it had to."

"What do you mean, it had to? Because you couldn't forgive him?"

Della shook her head. "No…there were…extenuating circumstances."

"You're not going to tell me any more about it, are you?"

Della shook her head again. She had told him enough. The whole story was just too long and too sad.

Asher gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Sweetheart, you may think you ended the relationship, but you two are still very much together. After only three minutes of observation I knew I was sunk."

Della gave him a genuinely bewildered look. "We've spoken a few times, but I haven't seen him since I met you."

He laughed again, the same melancholy laugh, and took one of her hands in both of his. "That doesn't mean a damn thing."

Della brought her other hand to his cheek. "I wish things could have been different for us, Ash," she said softly.

By not giving direct answers she told him everything he suspected. "I know, I know. I'm a nice guy. But you know what they say about nice guys."

She leaned forward and gave him a gentle, consoling kiss, lips cool and friendly. "You didn't finish last. Not by a mile."

"What do we do now, Della? I'm going to love you for a long, long time."

"Please don't be insulted, but do you think someday you'll be able to forgive me so we can be friends?"

"I don't know, sweetheart. I'm afraid at my age I don't bounce back like I used to." Who am I kidding? I will do anything for you, no matter how much you've hurt me. Just as I suspect that big lawyer will do anything for you as well no matter how much you hurt him – look what he's already done for you. "We can start by meeting for lunch. And I might not object to a Christmas card. Just don't sign his name."

She kissed him again and to Asher it was perfectly clear the affection she held for him had been forever altered by Arthur Gordon's murder and the return of Perry Mason. "I'll send you a birthday card, too," she said softly.

Asher stood and pulled her to her feet along with him. He drew her close and held her longer than he sensed she was comfortable with, but not nearly as long as he wanted. "It kills me to tell you this, but from one friend to another – you may think what you had is broken, but it's begging to be fixed."

"I need him right now," she repeated. "I'm looking forward to working with him again despite the fact I'm the defendant, but it could be he's doing this out of a maddening sense of obligation I battled for all of those twenty-seven years, and once I'm acquitted he may just go back to San Francisco." To a life that didn't include her and might never include her again.

Asher kissed her nose and chucked her under the chin. He hadn't missed her almost nonchalant 'once I'm acquitted'. Not 'if I'm acquitted', but once I'm acquitted', because Perry Mason would get her acquitted, that's what he did. No matter what the evidence indicated, Asher knew Della wasn't capable of killing anyone, especially not Arthur Gordon, a man for whom she had great respect and admiration. And truth be told, he was glad the most famous criminal attorney in the country had such a stake in her acquittal so he wouldn't worry as much about her as he might have. "Something tells me you've always needed him. Maybe it's time to finally forget the unforgettable, Del."

"I'm like an elephant, you know that. I never forget."

"Are you going to be all right? "

Della smiled. "I'm going to be all right. Perry takes very good care of his clients."

"Can you be just his client?"

"That's all I am, Ash."

Asher pulled her to him in a quicker hug than previously. "I beg to differ on that. Will you stand in the doorway and sadly wave goodbye while I drive away?"

Della actually laughed. "I don't dare. There are cops and reporters parked out there watching my every move. It's bad enough that Perry has been here for…" realizing what she was saying, Della stopped talking and gave Asher Langlois a stricken look. "I'm sorry, Ash. Of course I'll wave goodbye to you."

"No, don't," Asher told her heavily. "I understand."

He did understand. He didn't like it, but he did understand.