The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky Page A

that. Okay, pal. But come right back. You need to finish your essay.” He watched until the boy disappeared. Stirring his sauce again, he gave Amanda a questioning smile. “How are you?”
    “I’ve been better.” She went to his side and peered into the saucepan. What simmered there looked every bit as wonderful as the veal that waited, lightly browned, in a pan on the next burner, and suddenly she felt guilty about this, too. She never cooked anything fancy. Graham was a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, an easily pleased, grilled-whatever kind of guy. When they ate at home, they cooked together, but they went out as often as not.
    This night she wasn’t sure she could eat at all. “I need your help. Gray and I are having an argument. I say Gretchen’s pregnant. He says no. What do you say?”
    She would have sworn Russ went red. Then it occurred to her that it was heat from the stove.
    “Pregnant?” he echoed. “Wow. I don’t know anything about that.”
    “You haven’t noticed her shape?”
    His color deepened. No cooking heat this time. His glasses weren’t steamed in the least. “Her shape?”
    Of course he had noticed her shape. He, Graham, and Lee were abundantly aware of her shape. “Her stomach?” Amanda prodded. “You haven’t seen the change?”
    “No. I haven’t noticed anything.” But he didn’t tell her she was imagining things. “Pregnant? How could that happen?”
    Amanda would have laughed had her life been different. “The normal way, I assume. I told Gray you’d have seen if someone had been coming around to visit.”
    Russ stirred diligently. “Not me. I’m glued to my computer all day.”
    “Wouldn’t you notice if a car came down the street?”
    “I used to, but the parade got boring—mailman, exterminator, UPS guy. I don’t bother looking anymore.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek, pondering something.
    “What?”
    “Just thinking about Ben. He’d have loved fathering a child at his age.”
    Amanda suspected that men loved fathering children at any age. It was a sign of virility. She wondered how much that bothered Graham.
    “Ben’s kids wouldn’t have liked it much,” she said. “They had enough trouble accepting Gretchen. A baby would pour salt on the wound. But this can’t be Ben’s. The timing’s wrong.”
    “Are you sure she’s pregnant?”
    “She sure looked it.”
    “How far along?”
    “Five months, maybe six.” Amanda paused. “Just a guess. I’m not exactly an expert.”
    Russ was silent. Softly then, he asked, “Anything doing with you?”
    Amanda studied his sauce. “No. Maybe I need cooking lessons. I’ve never made anything like this. Maybe cooking is the key to fertility.”
    “Home and hearth?”
    “Mm.” She went to the door. She was suddenly feeling guilty about having walked out on Graham. He was suffering, too.
    “I could run over and ask Gretchen,” Russ offered. “Maybe I’ll do that after the kids are fed and settled in. I haven’t talked with her in a while. You don’t see people in winter the way you do in summer, and summer was eight months ago. Besides, I’m always inside working, then taking care of the kids, and romancing my wife when she stops in at home.” The phone rang. “It’d be really interesting if Gretchen’s pregnant.”
    Having mixed feelings about that, Amanda went out the door but had barely reached the bottom step when Russ stuck his head out. “That was Graham. He wants you home. You have an emergency call.”
    She nodded, setting off just as Karen Cotter came across the grass carrying a foil-covered tray.
    Karen was of average height and weight, a woman who rarely bothered with makeup and routinely used headbands to keep her brown hair off her face. On all physical counts, she was more neutral than bright, but that had been secondary once. When Amanda had first met her, what she had lacked in appearance, she had more than made up for in energy. Back then, she rode the perpetual highof a