Free Mountain Song by Ruby Laska Page B

make a decision using your
heart rather than your mind?”
    Andy stood and
followed her into the other room. “I can’t believe you said that. Don’t
Canfields calculate every decision? Don’t forget, you’re the one who taught me
that there’s a bottom line for every choice.”
    Claudia’s sleepy eyes
flew open and regarded him with the sparks of anger.
    “What’s that supposed
to mean?”
    “Come on, Claudia. I’ve
been on the losing end of one of your comparison shopping expeditions,
remember? When things got a little problematic for the two of us, what tipped
the scales? Tell me that. What lured you home? Tired of picking up the tab
every time we went out? My mattress too uncomfortable? My clothes too shabby to
be seen with me? Don’t tell me about
letting your heart guide you, sweetheart. I don’t for a minute think it had any
place in your decision to leave me.”
    Claudia sat up
straight and her skin drained of color. “How...” she began, then shut her mouth
and stared at him with something that looked a lot like disbelief.
    Too far. He’d gone too
far, again. What was it about her that took away any sense of discretion, of
common sense? In the twenty four hours since he’d seen her again, he’d managed
to anger her, hurt her, and keep coming back for more.
    “I’m sorry, again,” he
sighed. “You know, I think I’d better say good night before I say anything else
that I’m going to regret. I’ll have the social worker give you a call.”
    He was about to
retrieve his briefcase, lighter now since he’d unburdened it of its stacks of
literature, when her soft voice stopped him.
    “I know you called,”
she said, so quietly he had to turn and look for proof that he’d heard right. He
let the leather handle of the briefcase slip from his fingers, and against his
better judgment returned to the living room. Remembering the broken springs in
the lumpy chair he’d chosen earlier in the day, Andy lowered himself onto the
couch, leaving some distance between himself and Claudia.
    “I know you called me,
after I...left,” she repeated. “Daddy didn’t want me to know, but my sister
Tina told me. Everyone was treating me like a child, letting me stay in bed
half the day and bringing up food to my room. Tina finally told me you were
calling me every day, but Daddy was yelling at you.”
    Andy would have liked
to forget those calls. The represented a risk to his heart that he could ill
afford, especially when each call met with the same response: “She has no interest
in talking to you, young man.”
    “You could have told
me yourself.” Andy shook his head, trying to adjust to this new information. He’d
always thought Claudia had returned to a life that barely registered the
interruption, resuming her tennis and shopping and whatever else she did. Staying
in bed—grieving—were not part of the picture in his mind.
    “I should have talked
to you,” Claudia said slowly, her voice careful. “I think I owe you an apology
for that. It was—a rough time for me. A very difficult time.”
    “Go on.”
    She sighed heavily. “You
keep saying that I left you, as though it were a—a whim, or a caprice. But
you seem to forget the talk we had the night before.”
    “I’ve forgotten
nothing.”
    “Really? Well, maybe
there was something the matter with my hearing because...” She paused and
chewed her lower lip, staring into the middle distance.
    “You dangled a
proposition in front of me,” Andy said. If she wouldn’t finish, he’d do it for
her—anything would be better than sitting here mutely, avoiding the real
issue. “You spoke of marriage, of family, as though you ever for a minute
planned to have those things with me.”
    “I did.” Sudden fury
flashed in her eyes. “I did. Do you know how hard it was for me to bring those
things up?”
    “You were a child,” he
said shortly. “Twenty-one. On your way back to a life you hadn’t even begun. A
child with very particular