Free Daybreak by Belva Plain

swamped with visitors while you’re in the hospital, but I did tell Francis he could come this afternoon.”
    “You didn’t! For heaven’s sake, my baby’s one day old. I refuse to see anybody but family.”
    “Francis is as good as family. I told him he has to see your boy,” Cecile insisted. “He’ll only stay a minute. He’s got three days’ work ahead of him going over his father’s records, and then he has to rush back to New York. He’ll be gone by the time you come home.”
    Laura was furious. No doubt Francis must be equally so, for Cecile had certainly made him feel an obligation. She was still wondering how she would act toward him, when Francis appeared carrying a box of candy, holding it awkwardly before him as one might hold an object that was about to break or spill. He laid it on the tray-table at the foot of the bed.
    “I remembered that you’re a chocoholic,” he said, looking at the wall behind the bed.
    Immediately she understood that he had not wanted to come, that he was afraid. He should have had sense enough to make an excuse, she thought angrily.
    A terrible physical shame prickled all up and down her skin; she would have been glad to pull the covers over her head and hide; this was like one of thosedreams in which you have forgotten your clothes and, out on the street in your underwear, you are looking in panic for cover. This man who stood uncertainly in the center of the room had brought with him so much more than a box of chocolates! He had brought recollections: There again was that idiotic sofa pillow with which she had run into the bathroom; there the shock, the disbelief and the sickness in the dingy bathroom with the summer afternoon outside.
    “Your aunts tell me you have a beautiful boy.”
    She must retrieve her poise.… Let him know. Let him know that she was not destroyed. Torn apart, yes, but now recovered in full.
    “Yes,” she said, making her voice easy and light. “I can’t argue with that. He is. He is like his father.” And she raised her eyes for Francis to see that there was pride in them.
    But he was still gazing at the wall behind her. She thought he looked humble. And this humbleness, which was almost unmistakable, did restore her poise, so that she lifted herself against the pillows with her head high. He would see that she was established in the world, a cherished woman in a pink satin robe, in a room filled with flowers.
    Good manners required now that she ask him to sit down. Yet why should she care? And he probably didn’t want to stay.
    “Do sit down,” she heard herself say.
    “Thank you.”
    His glance wandered around the room, settling nowhere. Still he could not fail to see how her hair shone, how lavishly it spread about her shoulders. Even against his will, he must be aware of it. Perhaps he was making a comparison. He had a wife, Isabel, a womanhe had not wanted to hurt. How did she look, talk, act? How much did he love her?
It should have been you, Laura
, he had told her that day. And now he slept with Isabel.
    Do they sleep entwined in one bed? Bud Rice, a man desired by women, lies close to me every night. His words are muffled into my neck:
your warm, sweet-smelling hair, you are the loveliest
. “Gentle Laura,” he calls me. “You know so much, you do everything so well, where did I find you?” And he laughs. “I remember. On the library steps.”
    “Your aunts told me I must be sure to look at your boy,” said Francis.
    “You don’t have to be so polite.” She was gracious, magnanimous. “I know you have plenty to do right now at home, things more important than looking at a baby.”
    “I’m not being polite. I want to.”
    Then she remembered, and was embarrassed because it had taken her so long to remember, what had brought Francis home.
    “We are all so sorry about your father. So many, many people loved him.”
    “Yes. He died too young.” He paused. “Will you still give lessons now that you have a