As Time Goes By Read Free Page B

mentioning Ted’s name. I know the trial is on your mind.”
    â€œOf course it is. If I’m disturbing your sleep, I’m sorry.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to infer that you were disturbing me. I was just worried about you.” She blinked back tears. “No matter what I say, you’re always snapping at me,” she observed quietly.
    Scott did not answer. He knew his marriage three years ago was a mistake.
    The ink was hardly dry on his divorce papers when he married her. Now he had three kids in college and an ex-wife who didn’t hesitate to call him and say she was a little short, and would he help? Of course, he would. They both understood that.
    Lisa, twenty years his junior, had been a drug company representative who made sales calls on his office. He usually didn’t have time to speak to detailers, leaving that job to the nurse. But he had made time for Lisa. She was a former Big Ten cheerleader from the Midwest. A great smile and a body to match.
    What he had not taken into account was that after the initial attraction had faded, he neither needed nor wanted her.
    But the last thing he could handle was to try to get rid of her now. He couldn’t let anyone get into an analysis of his finances.
    He’d put up with her until the trial was over and things calmed down. He wondered if she suspected anything.
    Lisa was holding a coffee cup in both hands. It was the one she had had made with his picture and the words “I love you, Scott” scrawled at every possible angle. It was enough to drive him crazy.
    â€œScott,” Lisa said his name hesitantly.
    Now she was crying.
    â€œScott, we both know this marriage isn’t working. Are you having an affair?”
    He stared at her. “Of course not.”
    â€œI’m not sure if I believe you, but I still think that we’re better off going our separate ways. I plan to see a lawyer next week and begin divorce proceedings.”
    I can’t let that happen, Scott thought frantically.
    â€œLisa, listen to me. I know I’ve been curt and inattentive, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I don’t want to lose you. It’s just that Ted’s death and Betsy’s indictment have put a terrible cloud on the practice. Please.”
    Lisa Clifton did not meet her husband’s eyes. She did not believe him. She was sure he was having an affair, but she was still hoping that maybe they could work it out. “Would you go to a marriage counselor with me?” she asked.
    Good God, a marriage counselor, Scott thought, then tried to sound enthusiastic. He said, “Of course, dear, of course.”

6

    D elaney and Alvirah were never at a loss for words. They had become fast friends last year when they both covered the trial of a birth mother who had managed to find the couple who had adopted her baby and stole it back from them. While the judge had sympathy for her, he also reminded the birth mother that she was twenty-five years old when she gave up the baby, at the time had the financial resources to take care of the child and had caused great anguish in the two months that the baby was missing.
    Because of the nature of that case, Delaney had confided to Alvirah the fact that she was adopted, a subject she seldom mentioned. She knew that Jennifer and James Wright were hurt the few times she ever brought it up. “Delaney, I held you in my arms twenty minutes after you were born,” Jennifer had told her tearfully. “I wanted you for years before that. I could visualize a little girl with three big brothers who would always be there for her if your father and I weren’t around.”
    And they had been. All of them. She had been blessed by being raised in a loving, tight-knit family, but now they were all scattered. Maybe that was why her feeling of urgency to find her birth mother had become so pronounced. Now that her adoptive parents were permanently living in Naples,