Desert Gift by Sally John

to not answer his e-mails or a call. Not that he calls all that much.”
    Jack heard his incoherent rambling and paused to order his thoughts. “Let me think on this for a week, okay? Or tell me if you have a better idea.” Like she wouldn’t. “I hope things are going well. I’m sure the women there at that big church think you’re the cat’s meow.” He rolled his eyes. Lame. “Be safe. And take off those heels.”
    Jack closed the phone and sighed. He should have skipped the inside joke.
    But how did one start skipping inside jokes with a close friend of twenty-five years?
    Probably as slickly as he’d skipped mentioning the past seventy-two hours. Grocery shopping, cooking a new recipe for salmon, getting upset enough to inadvertently scrub open the gash on his head, working on a Saturday with Baxter, visiting his parents . . .
    He’d always told her the minutest details.
    Except . . . except about the accident that totaled his car. There were a few particulars that seemed irrelevant at the time. Or something.
    He shook his head and started Jill’s car, cracked open a window to air out the scent of her perfume, and mentally put car shopping on the agenda.
    * * *
    Later that evening Jack picked up his ringing cell from the kitchen counter, saw Gretchen’s number, and stirred the risotto in the saucepan.
    He had spent most of his life answering telephones and pagers at inconvenient times. His service would call when he was off duty because even patients with nonemergency foot problems needed his attention. He was always on duty for his aging parents. Ditto for Connor, of course. Typically Jill phoned him several times a day.
    He had never minded. Being available was a doctor’s way of life. But Gretchen, two days in a row? Overkill.
    The phone’s doorbell chime ring continued.
    He sighed, set down the wooden spoon, and put the lid on the pan. She was calling because Jill wasn’t. Had Jill listened to his voice mail? “Hello.”
    “We’re in the middle of a crisis here.”
    “It’s my fault. Blame me.”
    “No question about that.” Gretchen exhaled loudly. “Jack, she lost it today. Totally and irrevocably.”
    He turned off the stove. Today was Jill’s big day, the most important one in her schedule, the one she’d been giddy about for months. That big church, Coast something or other, was a feather in her cap. “I already said it’s my fault. What else do you want from me?”
    “Your help.”
    “Gretch, you two do just fine without me. You always have. Please, I don’t want to be involved.”
    “She was talking at that big kahuna of a church to maybe a hundred women and she announced that you want a divorce.”
    He closed his eyes. Dear Lord, I’m sorry.
    “Tell me, Jack, how am I supposed to fix it? Huh? With one little sentence she blew every speck of her credibility to smithereens.”
    “How is she?”
    “Galloway, give me a break. She’s a mess. I’ve never seen her so furious. She—”
    “What is she doing right now?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Working out in the hotel’s fitness center.” At least that was his hope.
    “Yes.”
    “Then she’s okay. She’s handling it. If she were comatose in a corner and not eating, then we might want to consider—”
    “Oh, stop being a doctor for one minute and be her husband!”
    At Gretchen’s high-pitched voice, he held the phone out from his ear.
    “It hasn’t hit her yet that her future is over! She ended it today.”
    “That’s ridiculous. She knows how to interview. She knows everything there is to know about communication skills. None of that involves me or—or us.”
    “Where have you been for the past twenty years, Jack? That’s the whole premise of her work! You two communicate and you make marriage work. You know the secret of keeping each other happy.”
    “Now that is totally ridiculous. Nobody makes someone else happy or sad.”
    “Then why have you left her? Huh? Because you are not happy with the