Read Online Dream Lover by Suzanne Jenkins - Free Book Online Page A

almost thirty years old and he had never said ‘I love you.’ He had never felt love for a woman before. He was willing to face the wrath of his family, to lose their respect, even their love, for this woman. He would give everything up for her. He wouldn’t lie; before, he could only imagine a life with Sandra and her baby if he was able to claim the baby as his own. Now, he knew that he would raise another man’s baby with as much love as if he had provided the sperm himself. This was his wife. This woman was the one that his mother said she had been praying for since the day he was born.
    While they sat outside, listening to the sounds of traffic dying down as rush hour came to an end, Tom thought about the prayer and how hypocritical it was of him to think he could ask for anything when he wasn’t being honest with Sandra or himself. Despite the fact they’d only been together for a short time, they felt passionately about each other. Yet they had already allowed several pink elephants into their lives. For one thing, Tom realized that he was lying to himself and to her when he said that the baby’s parentage wasn’t important. He had said he didn’t care what everyone would think about him and Sandra, but he did care. He expected Sandra to end her relationship with Pam. He wasn’t jealous of a dead man, but he thought that every time the two women would get together, they would talk about Jack and try to keep him alive for the child’s sake.
    Sandra realized that her relationship with Pam might be a temporary thing. She felt it. Even though they needed each other now, it was part of the grieving process. At the beginning, she and Pam were free to share stories about Jack with each other, things that no one else would know. The telling grew very one-sided as the women discovered that only Pam had stories that were validated by her marriage to Jack. The ones Sandra wanted to share were too painful for Pam to hear. They emphasized the emptiness of Pam’s marriage, and nothing more. If Pam and Sandra were going to live in a vacuum for the rest of their lives, making their lives a shrine to Jack would be fine. But they weren’t going to do that. They were going to try to move on.
    Tom and Sandra had spent an afternoon last weekend with Pam and her sister, Marie, in Babylon, and it was an eye-opener. He hadn’t thought he was a prude, but was he? After about an hour in the company of their chef that night, Jeff Babcock who was Pam’s neighbor, Tom realized that his tolerance for the man was near zero. And it wasn’t because he was gay; Tom was not a homophobe. No, it was because Jeff Babcock was a bore. And Marie? Being in her presence on two occasions was two too many. She was a nut case. Tom was only surprised that he had never encountered her before in police matters because her kind made up the bulk of his arrests. Pam reminded him of all the wealthy matrons he had met who had empty, frivolous lives.
    Tom fought the temptation to investigate Jack Smith because if Sandra found out, it would definitely mean the end of them as a couple. But his police intuition smelled a rat; worse than an AIDS-infected rat. He needed to get up and move; these thoughts were making him nervous.
    “Do you want to walk down to the river?” Tom asked. “We can sit in the park and watch the sun go down.” They went back into the house, putting their cups in the kitchen. Sandra got a light sweater even though it was warm. Into her purse she put a bottle of water and a small package of tissues. She went into the bathroom and got bug-repellant wipes out of her beach bag, just in case. Tom watched her with curiosity.
    “We’re just going down to the park, not taking a trip to Coney Island,” he joked.
    “You laugh, but I’m ready for anything.” Not pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, she thought. But if they could avoid talking about that every single time they were together, they might learn a thing or two about each