When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

years, when she noticed that in one of the shots his eyes were angled toward a small group of onlookers. And there she was at the edge of the frame, wearing skintight jeans and four-inch heels, her heavily made-up eyes slanting boldly back at Stephen. It was the intimacy of the look that knocked the breath out of Christine, a private moment captured by chance, and for a moment, she found herself trying to remember if there had ever been a time when she and Stephen had looked at each other that way. If there was, she couldn’t remember it. Was that Stephen’s fault or hers? She couldn’t say, but she felt the thought lodge itself in some dark corner of her mind, like a pebble in a shoe that could be ignored for a while but would eventually have to be dealt with. The case clock on the mantel chimed softly, reminding Christine that she had somewhere to be. But as she grabbed her purse from the kitchen counter, her eyes slid to the phone. She’d been checking her messages all week, hoping to hear back from Connelly, but so far there’d been nothing. Eleven new messages awaited her when she pushed the button—reporters, colleagues, even offers of sympathy from neighbors who’d heard the news way down in Sarasota or wherever they went when the leaves began to fall. One by one, she deleted them, but paused when a familiar baritone filled the kitchen. “Christine, it’s Gary. Call me when you get this.” She hit “Save” and moved on, in no mood to deal with Stephen’s agent. To her dismay, th...