CHAPTER 9

Laura never made the phone call to Bill, although she thought about it more than a few times as the cool-tipped winds of spring warmed into the balmier breezes of summer. She threw herself back into her work with renewed vigor. The work kept other thoughts at bay, like what she would do with her life when she completed her term. She felt that she had lost a little of her footing with Richard when she didn't follow through with her immediate resignation, although her failure to carry out her threat had nothing to do with her ex-lover but everything to do with her commitment to her duties. The months would go by quickly, she reassured herself. Like so many things regarding her and Richard, she wished that she had handled things differently.

A couple of weeks after the decommissioning ceremony, Laura found a small note on the inside cover of the book that she was reading, which she had left on her desk during an earlier meeting. The small yellow sticky, so new and pristine, requested her presence in a few short words. Join me in my office at your convenience. R. She ignored the summons, making it a point to avoid his questing eyes when he sought her out after meetings. She knew that eventually, he'd make it impossible for her to completely elude him – but that wouldn't stop her from prolonging the inevitable.

He came to see her late on a Friday afternoon as she was leaning over her desk to roll up an outdated flow chart. The air conditioner had broken earlier and her blouse stuck to her skin while little beads of moisture framed her forehead. The sweltering heat in the building had caused many of her colleagues to depart early. She was one of the few to remain. Billy had insisted on staying on to help her, even though she had encouraged him to duck out early. Laura smelled Richard's familiar cologne, the sandalwood scent more pronounced in the humidity, even before she saw him approach out of the corner of her eye. She didn't acknowledge his presence as she continued to struggle with the bulky schematic.

"Let me help you with that," he offered.

"I've got it, Mr. President." She rolled the awkward paper into a haphazard cylinder and slipped a rubber band around it with a quick snap. "Billy didn't let me know that you were here."

He looked less presidential without his jacket and he had removed his tie. He was usually so flawlessly put together, never a thread out of place. This more casual Richard made the visit seem more intimate. It made her think of other times - rushing to straighten mussed clothing and smooth tousled hair after a quick liaison in his private office. These were not memories that Laura wanted to recall. "I sent your assistant home - so that we could talk," he informed her. Laura looked past Richard, angling her neck to look for Billy. His desk was empty.

"I really appreciate that," she said. "In addition to making personal sleeping arrangements for me, you are also supervising my staff without my consent."

"Laura – I'm sorr- "

"Don't you dare apologize," she flared. She picked up a stray pencil from her desk, threw it in the drawer, and slammed it. "What did you think would happen? That I'd just slip into your quarters on Galactica and we'd frak on the desk like old times? I have never felt more like an object than I did that night and I am still not over it. And I will never get over it. I'll finish my term because I made a promise and I won't allow our travesty of an affair to compromise the things that I've been trying to accomplish. But if you ever come into my office again unannounced or give unsolicited direction to my staff, I just might lose the discretion that you've prized so highly for all of these years. I'm sure that you wouldn't want a scene with an election year on the horizon, would you?"

Richard was quiet for a moment. "It was a stupid, stupid stunt." He felt a fragment of guilt rising up from the depths of his conscience. The guilt was accompanied by another feeling - a stark realization - that from the first, he'd gotten her the only way he could, lidded with wine and overwhelmed by grief. And even with all of his machinations to keep her, he'd never really had Laura in the first place.

His voice was sad. "I didn't want us to end like this."

"If you hadn't decided to treat me like a piece of property, maybe we wouldn't have. Oh, we would have ended. I think we both know that, but maybe not like this."

"For what it's worth, I'm glad that you're going to stay, even if it's only for a little while, not for myself, but for the administration. You do great work, Laura."

She wanted her intentions to be clear. "I'm only staying until the end of my term."

"I understand." Richard nodded, slowly. "I'll see myself out." He turned and headed toward the door, pausing to look at her once more before he left. He wondered if she would be looking back at him.

She wasn't.

Laura felt a sense of relief as she drove home through the heavy late Friday afternoon traffic. It was over. She and Richard had ended before but never like this. This felt different. It felt final. This was a raw parting, an honest look at what they had been. It wasn't one of the polite farewells that they'd had in the past. She reached into her purse and dug out a pair of sunglasses to shield her eyes from the fading glare, even though she knew that the wetness that she blinked away had nothing to do with the sun. It didn't have to do with Richard either. Her chest felt heavy and she took a slow, unsteady breath. For the first time, in a very long time, Laura simply allowed herself to feel it and to remember.

She had arrived forty minutes early to warm up. Cheryl had put her hair up into an impeccable French twist, leaving a few soft auburn tendrils to brush against her neck. Her emerald green dress, with its swirls of shimmering silk, was Sandra's. It still bore the soft scent of her sister's perfume, orange blossoms and honeysuckle - so different from the lighter, more airy scents that Laura preferred. But the fragrance was pleasantly familiar, easing the flutter of nerves that she felt before any performance.

She knew that the piano had just been tuned; it was a performer's first worry. Pushing the sleek ebony bench aside, she sat down and played a few two-octave scales. Yes, the tuning was fine. She smiled and started right in with the Valieri with its rippling cascade of runs against the mellow triplets on the left hand. After, she moved into the Bergot, with the simple plangent sweetness of the main melody, like a promise never fulfilled. She loved the yearning in the unresolved chords and the rocking motion of the bass. It was her father's favorite.

After the warm up, Laura searched the hall for her family. Kara, who had just turned eighteen and who had ridden with her mother, rushed over to pin the front of Laura's dress, which was showing a little too much cleavage as she leaned over the piano. Laura rarely did recitals anymore with her hectic schedule on the Board of Education and the added hours she volunteered to help with the mayoral campaign. But once in a while she would play in a small, intimate recital - just to keep everything fresh and because she did love performing. She had always preferred teaching but piano was a performance art, and music was meant to be shared.

She would search the small hall for her father and her sisters several times more throughout the course of the recital but she would never find them. There were no tears when the policemen told her about the collision. Laura merely blinked when she heard the news, disbelieving and shaking, as she looked from one pale officer to the other. They couldn't quite meet her eyes as they explained about the accident and offered their condolences. There was the added irony that it had happened only a few miles away. Another couple of minutes of driving and they might have missed the swerving black SUV that had slammed into them head on, might have arrived safely to spend an ordinary evening listening to music and eating cakes and pastries during the intermission. Laura would consider so many little details later. She would wonder, always, what tiny choices might have been made that would have changed the outcome. A fraction here; a second there.

When the tears finally did come, she found that they wouldn't stop, even after they had left her eyes and settled instead into that deep, silent aching place that had once been her heart.

Laura knew which bag she would pack even before she entered her apartment. She darted around the rooms in a rush, throwing things into the large duffle without care. If she thought too much about it, she knew that she wouldn't go and she needed to do this. She packed something to wear to bed and a few changes of comfortable clothes, her makeup case, and hairbrush. She grabbed her cream colored sweater and an extra pair of socks. The lakeside cabin could get cool at night. She pulled a few more toiletries from the bathroom, toothbrush and toothpaste, moisturizer and soaps. Whatever she forgot, she could always pick up in town. She glanced at her watch. If the traffic had died down, she could make it in a little under two hours. The last thing she picked up was the novel that she had been reading. She threw the hardcover mystery into her bag and rooted around hastily in her purse to make sure that she had her cell phone.

She cradled the phone against her ear as she walked out to the car, waving away the doorman as he offered to help her with her bag. Her fingers pushed the speed dial for Kara.

Kara's voice sounded distant. "I'm on the frakin' phone...shut up."

"Is this a bad time?" asked Laura.

"No, Mom, it's fine." Her voice sounded far away again. "I'll be back in five."

"You're on the base?" Laura asked.

"Yeah. Navigational training this weekend. Fun, fun. You sound out of breath."

"I'm just running to the car. I wanted to let you know that I'm going to the cabin for the weekend. Reception can be hit or miss up there and I didn't want you to worry about me if you couldn't reach me."

"Alone? Mom - " Laura hadn't been back to her family's summer cabin since a little while after the accident when she'd had to go through some things for the estate. She still paid for the security alarm and the groundskeeping and had the place cleaned every season. A neighbor kept an eye on things for her, an old friend of the Roslins. But Laura hadn't been able to bring herself to go back. She talked about it from time to time, even making half-hearted plans once in a while to take a trip up with Kara, but somehow she would never make it. And she couldn't bring herself to sell it.

"It's okay, sweetie, really. It's long overdue." Her voice was steady, certain.

"I would have gone with you."

"Oh, I know that. I know. I love you so much. Good luck with your navigation thing. Be careful."

"What fun is there in that? I love you, too, Mom. Look - at least text me when you get in, okay?"

"Of course. Mwuah."

Kara hung up the phone, tracing her fingers against the cool metal as she brought the phone toward her pocket. She hesitated. There was no way she'd be able to leave the base. It would be impossible for her to get to the cabin this weekend.

But there was someone who could.