A Seahorse in the Thames Read Online Free PDF Page B

if he is married and he paused and said, “I used to be.”
    I waited to see if he would say anything else. He didn’t say a lot about his marriage; just that it had been a long time ago. And that the way it ended was not something he was proud of.
    And that he had been a different kind of man back then.
    I went back inside when my pain medication had fully worn off. I took two more pills, laid down, and when I awoke it was late afternoon. I heard voices outside my bedroom window. I sat up slowly and stood, pulling away the curtain from the window by my dresser. Stephen was measuring boards on a sawhorse and little Rafael was standing nearby, asking Stephen a million questions. Stephen was attentive to his work, but he was smiling at Rafael and answering every one of them.
    The day stretches before me with a full agenda of things I want to do. My appointment with my doctor is at nine-thirty, and then I had made plans to have an early lunch with Mom. I also told Rebecca I would be able to see her later this afternoon in addition to our usual Sunday afternoon get-together because I had the week off from work. I didn’t tell Rebecca in advance why I was off. I am not entirely sure she would’ve comprehended what having a tumor, even a benign one, means, nor what my surgery would entail. Besides, it was fairly probable she would have forgotten anyway. It’s just better to tell Rebecca something at the moment she needs to know it. If it isn’t important to her, she tends to forget.
    Then of course, I want to see Stephen.
    While I eat my breakfast and ponder my reasons for wanting to see him, I mentally somersault back and forth between how to make my visit seem natural.
    If I go, will he be glad I came? Surprised? Concerned? Will he think I’m just a compassionate person concerned for the construction worker who fell from her roof? Or will he be able to see right through me? Will he be able to pick up on my growing attraction to him? Perhaps he has already! Perhaps he is flattered by it. Perhaps he is bothered by it. Perhaps he is humored by it.
    I feel like a timid, unpopular high schooler with a crush on the star quarterback.
    I want to have a bona fide motive for seeing Stephen that he won’t be able spend time guessing about. The motive comes to me as I scrape my cereal bowl into the sink.
    I still have his cell phone and wallet in my purse.

    My doctor’s appointment is routine. Dr. Chou is happy with the way the incision is healing and is fairly certain I won’t need even a small amount of reconstructive surgery. The tumor, though walnut-sized, was removed with a fair amount of surrounding fatty tissue. If I walk around the rest of my life with my right arm raised, people will see a divot and a scar, but since I am not a nude model or a trapeze artist, this does not concern Dr. Chou or me. He tells me to make an appointment to have the stitches removed on Wednesday.
    With a fresh and smaller bandage snuggled under my arm, I head out into the late June sunshine and to my mother’s new world on Coronado. I actually love the drive to my mother’s island home. I love making the heady, short journey across the Coronado Bridge, whose arc over the sparkling bay is like a white and blue rainbow. I love her little house, too, even though it’s less than a twelve hundred square feet and yet cost her nearly a million dollars. I am learning to like her dogs, Humphrey and Margot, though this has taken considerable time and effort on my part. Her pugs are cute little things, but the way she fawns over them is nauseating. Humphrey and Margot have produced three litters so far, tiny suede bundles of canine cuteness which Mom has been able to sell for substantial amounts of money considering, they are, after all, just little dogs. Everything now revolves around the dogs, especially when there are puppies expected or puppies in the house. I’m fortunate that Humphrey and Margot are “in-between jobs” today or I doubt my mother