Read While I Was Gone for Free Online Page B

didn’t really think they would help the dog, but I felt they might help her—or at least give her time to adjust to what had happened.
    She seemed to pull herself up taller.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Yes, let’s go ahead with that, certainly. And then, if it doesn’t work…”
    “Then we’ll talk about what comes next,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. She stood up.
    “Poor old Arthur indeed.”
    She reached over and patted him, so I let my hands fall away.
    She frowned suddenly and looked at me.
    “Actually, the thing is,” she said, “you won’t be talking to me. It won’t even be my decision.”
    “Oh?”
    “No. Arthur’s my husband’s dog.” She produced a low, throaty, sorrowful laugh, her face stricken.
    “They’ve been married much longer than we have. I’m handling all this just for now while he’s traveling a lot—or not handling it, I guess I should say. But he should be home by Friday. So he’ll have to decide, if a decision becomes necessary.
    And in fact”—she pointed—“you should probably change the name on the folder. Take mine off. He’ll be the one you’ll need to contact about anything that happens.”
    I picked up a marker and crossed out her name. My hand was poised.
    “So he’s… ?”
    “Mayhew. Eli Mayhew.”
    It took a second or two to register. Then I looked up at her.
    “Really!” I said.
    “Eli Mayhew?”
    She nodded.
    “I knew someone with that name once.”
    “Did you? It’s kind of an unusual name.”
    “Yes. It is.” I wrote it now on the folder, under the crossed-out Jean Bennett. I looked at her again.
    “I wonder if it could be the same Eli Mayhew. This guy went to graduate school at Harvard. We lived together. I mean, in a group. In a kind of commune, I guess.”
    “This is so strange.” She shook her head, and the mass of her wild hair swayed slightly.
    “I think it probably is. My husband did go to Harvard. He did do his graduate work there. He was a biochemist.”
    “That’s it. It was a lab science anyway, I know that.
    Though I was pretty out of it at the time. He’d be maybe in his mid-fifties now?”
    She smiled quickly.
    “Amazing! The world is a smaller and smaller place all the time, isn’t it?”
    “Well, please tell him hello from me. I’mJo.Joey Becker.
    Give him my warm greetings.” I looked at Eli’s name on the folder, the big black letters, trying to call up his face. Instead I was seeing others in the house—Dana, and Larry. And then it occurred to me, “Actually, he knows me as Licia, come to think of it. Felicia. I suppose what you should tell him is that Licia Stead said hello.”
    “Oh!” she said. She looked quizzical.
    “A nom de plume?”
    “It’s complicated.” I looked up at her and smiled ruefully.
    “More like… a kind of alias, I guess. Another life anyway.” My hands were trembling, I noticed. I reached over and stroked Arthur’s head to steady myself as much as to comfort him.
    “What’s he doing now?” I asked.
    “Eli.”
    “Well, right now he’s on a sabbatical. We’ve both just left jobs on the West Coast, but he hasn’t started his new one yet. He’s got the semester off, so he’s in and out of town, lecturing. But he starts in January at Beth Israel in Boston, teaching and doing research. He’s mostly a research scientist. Sort of well known in his field, actually. I thought for a second maybe you were recognizing his name because you’d heard of his work.”
    “No. To me he’s just old Eli.” Arthur lay passive under my hands. I felt almost dizzy with the rush of memories.
    “Well, I’ll certainly tell him I ran into you,” she said.
    “Do. Please,” I said.
    I picked up the folder for a moment, I made a note or two on Arthur, mostly to gather myself in, to make myself think again about him. Then I turned back to Jean, and we talked about how to handle the steroids. She wanted to administer the pills at home.
    “It’s the least I can do for Eli,” she said. We