The Invitation Read online

  “Do you miss your husband as much as I miss my wife?” he asked softly, so softly that Jackie almost didn’t hear him.

  His question was from his heart, so Jackie answered from the same place. “Yes,” she said, then waited for him to speak again. There was an air of sadness about him, a romantic air, she thought and again realized why Terri and the other women were trying so hard to get him married.

  “You know what I miss the most?” When she shook her head, he continued. “I miss having someone who knows me. My wife and I were married a very long time, and she could look at me and say, ‘You have a headache, don’t you?’ Every year at Christmas our grown children give me slippers and ties, but my wife gave me little ships in bottles or scrimshaw carvings of ships, because only she knew of my dream to sail around the world when I retire. She bought all my clothing in exactly my taste, cooked just what I liked. It took us many years together to reach that stage of comfort, and now it’s what I miss the most.”

  Jackie was silent for a while as she thought of Charley and how he’d also known so much about her, both good and bad. “When my husband wanted me to do something that I didn’t want to do, he knew just how to wheedle me into doing it.”

  Edward smiled at her. “Cora always spent too much money. Not on herself but on me and the kids. Sometimes I’d get furious at her, but she always knew just how to soothe me.”

  As the salad plates were taken away, Jackie knew that they were talking about loneliness, the great loneliness that one felt after having been close to someone and then having lost that person. They were talking about the things that they missed. Like the affectionate names Charley had called her. On the day she met Charley, he’d called her an angel and she’d liked that very much, but after a week he stopped calling her his angel. A year or so after they were married she asked him why he’d stopped. Charley had smiled and said, “Because you, my dear, are not an angel. You are a little devil.”

  Jackie feared that she was attracted to William because of her deep loneliness. Wasn’t a warm body better than no body? She and William were actually ill-suited, weren’t they? He was too set in his ways for her, wasn’t he? There were too many differences between them, weren’t there?

  “What are you planning to do in the future?” Edward asked.

  “I’m expanding my freight and passenger service with William Montgomery as my partner.”

  “William Montgomery? Oh, you mean little Billy?” He chuckled. “But I guess he’s not so little anymore, is he? How old is he now?”

  “Twenty-eight,” she said as she gripped the stem of her wineglass.

  “These children do grow up, don’t they? Doesn’t it amaze you that one day you see a child riding his tricycle and the next day he’s getting married?” He smiled warmly at her as the waiter delivered the entrée. “Of course there’s our own mirror, too. One day we’re laughing teenagers and the next we’re middle-aged.”

  Jackie tried to share his smile. Was it a shock to every woman the first time she heard herself referred to as middle-aged? Jackie guessed that thirty-eight was middle age, but the term still seemed more suitable for her parents than for her.

  “You didn’t have any children, did you?”

  “No,” Jackie answered softly. The way he asked the question made her sound as though her chances were over.

  He looked down at his plate, and she could see that he had something he considered important to say. “The woman who marries me will get to have children.”

  “Oh?” Jackie asked encouragingly.

  “Yes.” He smiled warmly at her, obviously liking her enthusiasm. His wife had always felt sorry for any woman who didn’t have children. She said that a woman without children was “incomplete.” “I have a son and a daughter in Denver, and I am proud to say that I have two grandchildren—a boy six months old and a girl two years old. Beautiful, brilliant, talented—” He cut himself off and laughed self-consciously.

  “I’ll be showing you pictures in a minute.” When Jackie opened her mouth to ask to see them, he waved his hand. “Absolutely not. I want to hear about you. You say that you’re planning to expand your flying business. I think it’s wise of you to go into business with a young man like Billy. He has the backing of the Montgomery money, and with his youth he can do the flying for you.”

  Jackie gave him an intense look. “William’s not a very good pilot.”

  “Ah, too bad, but I’m sure you can hire others. Doesn’t he have young cousins who fly? I seem to remember a few of them buzzing around.”

  “I rather like buzzing around myself,” she said, her head down.

  Immediately Edward knew that he had offended her. “Of course you do. Forgive me. I didn’t mean anything. You are years away from retirement. It’s just that retirement is close at hand for me, so I think it’s that way for others too.”

  He was protesting too much, and it was obvious that he was backtracking merely to make her feel better. There was an awkward silence in which Jackie kept her head down and moved her fish about on her plate. She’d ordered fish so she could cut it with a fork; she wouldn’t have liked to ask a man to cut her steak for her. Only William—Stop it! she commanded herself.

  Edward didn’t fully understand what he had said to offend her. When his wife had reached forty—an age Jackie was fast approaching—she had cried for two days. She’d said it was the end of youth and that she didn’t want to be middle-aged. Maybe that was Jackie’s problem. She was refusing to face the fact that she wasn’t a kid anymore. No longer would the newspapers write stories about her being the youngest person to do so and so. Maybe her eyesight was failing, or her reflexes. Maybe she was seeing the younger pilots doing so well, then seeing her own body aging, and it was making her angry. Aging often made a person angry at first.

  Maybe, he thought, she was worried about whether or not she was still attractive to men.

  “I like mature women,” he said. “They know more about life.” His eyes twinkled. “They don’t expect so much of a man.”

  He meant to make light of himself, but Jackie didn’t take the remark that way. “Do you mean that an older woman knows she has to take what she can get in a husband, that she can no longer expect some gorgeous young man to sweep her off her feet?”

  That was not at all what he meant, but he didn’t say so. Something seemed to be bothering her, and he didn’t know enough about her to figure out what it was. He decided it would probably be better just to change the subject.

  “I’m going to sail around the world someday,” Edward said brightly, trying to introduce a whole new topic. A more pleasant one than aging.

  “Are you?” Jackie asked, trying to work up some interest in what he was saying. She knew that he hadn’t meant to demean her by saying that he liked mature women. She was a mature woman. So why did William’s words—“I’d love to marry you and give you as many kids as you want”—echo in her head? He hadn’t said, “as many kids as you have fertile years left.” Could a mature woman have a dozen children?

  “Have you always been a sailor?” she forced herself to ask.

  The question embarrassed Edward, for he knew she thought he’d meant that he was going to sail a boat himself. Considering her skills with a plane, it was understandable that she would assume others were as capable as she was.

  “I meant that I’m going on a cruise ship with a few hundred other people.”

  “Oh” was all that Jackie could reply. She had been in towns when a cruise ship had pulled into port and suddenly every shop, every restaurant, would be overrun with tourists buying anything that could possibly be called a souvenir.

  “Come with me, Jackie,” Edward said, surprising both of them.

  “What?”

  “I’ll make all the arrangements, pay for everything. I don’t expect you to marry me. I’ll book us separate cabins, and we’ll be traveling companions, friends. We’ll see the world together. Or maybe you’ll be seeing the world again.” He reached acr