Seeing her every night when I came home from work was the best part of my day. Unless, of course, Crawford was in the picture.
Everything was perfect.
One weekend before Thanksgiving, Crawford’s daughters were spending the weekend with their mother in Boston, so when we woke up one of those rare Saturdays when we could be together, we had a whole day to spend with each other, uninterrupted. We lay in bed, holding hands and talking about our plans for the day. They didn’t amount to much and weren’t much different from other weekend days we spent in Dobbs Ferry: breakfast at the diner, the Rangers on television if they had a game, lunch, a nap, cocktails, and then some kind of dinner that didn’t involve too much effort. We had turned into one of those couples who didn’t go out much but who didn’t need to; everything we wanted resided within whatever four walls we inhabited together.
We woke up around eight. Crawford rolled over and propped himself up on his hand, his elbow sinking into the pillow. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.” I stretched, and threw the covers off. The sun was streaming through the window and warmed the skin on my arms.
“No, seriously, I was thinking.”
“Oh, no, here we go again. Last time you said that to me, I ended up pantyless, trapped in your apartment.”
He smiled. “Could you be serious for a minute?”
I pursed my lips, trying desperately not to laugh.
“Thank you.” He rolled his eyes. “I realized that I haven’t taken a real vacation in almost five years. Do you want to go away during the Christmas break?”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, my interest piqued. Christmas break wasn’t for several weeks but if he was thinking that far ahead, that was a good sign.
“A cruise? Aruba maybe? Napa?” he asked, and then looked away. “Vegas?”
“Anything but Vegas,” I said, and made fake gagging noises.
He looked crestfallen.
“Do you want to go to Vegas?” I asked, thinking I may have hurt his feelings. The vision of a tacky wedding chapel floated into my mind and I quickly pushed it aside.
He recovered quickly. “No,” he said. “I was just thinking of someplace warm.”
I suspected he was lying about Vegas, but I let it go. “Let’s go to Napa. It won’t be really warm this time of year, but it could be very romantic,” I said, and stroked his bare stomach.
“And I know how much you love romance,” he said, smirking. He rolled on top of me and pinned my hands over my head, kissing me. “Let’s think about it. Having you around all of that wine might make for an interesting trip.”
“I only get uninhibited on painkillers. Wine I can handle.”
We got tangled up in the covers and started peeling off our clothes, still in that stage of the relationship where making love twice a day was not out of the question. I wasn’t sure how Crawford felt, but I couldn’t get enough of him. I suspected he felt the same way and I was hoping we would continue to feel that way for a long time. I heard a knock at the back door at a crucial moment in our wrestling match and I groaned.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I warned Crawford as I got out of bed and reassembled my sleeping outfit—tank top and pajama pants, throwing on the sweatshirt that hung on the back of my bathroom door. My clogs were by the door and I shoved my feet into them, not looking forward to running across cold ceramic tile without them. I ran down the stairs and opened the back door.
It was Accordion Boy, brother of Brendan. “Hi, Mrs. Bergerson.”
At first, I had asked him to call me Alison, but he said his mother didn’t approve of him calling grown-ups by their first names. I didn’t try to disabuse him of the notion that (a) I wasn’t a grown-up, (b) I wasn’t married (if she didn’t want him calling me Alison then she surely didn’t want me telling him that the guy in my bedroom wasn’t my husband), and (c) that my name was Bergeron. No s. So, we left it at “Mrs. Bergerson” for me and “Mr. Bergerson” for Crawford. He and his brother had committed the incorrect name to memory and I let it go. When it came right down to it, I could never remember his name, either, so who was I to complain?
“Can I take Trixie out?” he asked. He was