Uncommon Grounds Read Free

to call it the Bernhard house, after the first owners. The Bernhards were long gone. We were gone too, now.
    Ted and I had always shaken our heads over friends who had jumped ship during the rocky times of their marriages. How could they break up their families? We swore we would never do that to Eric.
    A man of his word, Ted waited until the day our son went off to college to tell me about Rachel, a twenty-four-year-old dental hygienist working in his office. He was sorry, he said as he patted my arm, but he preferred to spend the rest of his life with her.
    But this was no time to speculate on how long, or short, I hoped that life might be. I was feeling desperate to get home. Laurel caught sight of us first.
    “Maggy, what is going on? Matt won’t tell us a thing. Is someone hurt?” Laurel was Brookhills’ information pipeline and she required regular feeding.
    “It’s a fine situation when the police won’t inform the town chairman,” Rudy muttered, glaring at Matt.
    I motioned them over to one side. As we moved, I swear the entire crowd leaned in our direction.
    “There’s been an accident,” I whispered. “Patricia was hurt. I really don’t know any more than that.”
    I turned to Rudy. “I’m sure Chief Donovan will be reporting to you as soon as he—” I stopped as an unmarked car pulled up, stick-on light flashing. Two men got out.
    The man in the passenger seat was Kenneth Williamson, the county medical examiner. The driver of the car was a stranger to me. Probably just under six feet, he had black curly hair and eyes the same dirty gray color as the car he drove. His attitude conveyed authority.
    The crowd, still leaning on its collective right foot, suddenly shifted and parted, letting the stranger pass, followed by the doctor. The door closed behind them and all hell broke loose.
    “Oh, my God, is she de—” Laurel began.
    Rudy started in on Matt, backing him up against the door. “I’m the town chairman, by God, and—”
    I didn’t wait around to hear the rest. Signaling Laurel that I would call her later, I rescued Caron from her pastor, Langdon Shepherd, and we made for my blue Dodge Caravan.
    Nine years old, simulated wood-grain panels, six cup holders—the minivan was one of the last remnants of my former life as wife, mother and PR executive. I wasn’t sure what I was anymore, but it wasn’t that.
    On the other hand, I’d probably be driving the Caravan for ten more years or 200,000 miles—whichever came first—so I should probably shut up about it.
    I pulled the van around the corner of the parking lot, out of sight of the crowd, and stopped at the traffic light leading to Civic Drive. As I waited for our presence to trip the signal, I looked over at Caron. “You okay?”
    She nodded.
    The light changed and I turned left, ignoring the glare of a morning commuter who would now be exactly two and a half minutes late for work because of me. I tried again with Caron. “Should we go to your house? It’s closest.”
    She nodded wordlessly and I made another turn, this one down Pleasant Street. I had always thought “Pleasant” seemed too pedestrian a name for a street on which Caron’s house, at a mere forty-five-hundred square feet, was one of the smaller homes.
    Bernie, Caron’s husband, was a successful corporate lawyer, and Caron had been an ad copywriter. That’s how I’d met her. We had worked together at First National in the marketing department some twenty years before.
    When Caron married Bernie and became pregnant with their oldest, Bernard Jr. (known to everyone, for some reason, as “Nicky”), she decided to stay home. By the time Emma had come along, Caron was happily settled in, as successful at being a full-time wife and mother as she had been a copywriter.
    I, on the other hand, had stayed at First National after I married my dentist, Ted, and gave birth to Eric. I scaled back my hours and managed to achieve a fairly good balance between work and home.