The Deadline by Ron Franscell Page A

together.  Claire put her arm around his waist.  She was tall enough to rest her head against his shoulder as they walked up tree-lined Lincoln Street toward home.  Morgan rested his arm across her shoulder and held her close.
    “I’m thinking about making the workshed out back into a studio,” she said.  “Someday, we could put in a bigger south window to gather light.  Maybe I could offer a few art lessons in the afternoon, make a little extra money.  I measured it off today and I think the room is big enough for two or three people to work comfortably.  What do you think?”
    Morgan was pleasantly surprised to hear his wife talk about working again.  She hadn’t painted in almost two years.  If she wasn’t escaping the confinement of her grief, she was certainly looking for a way out.
    Claire grew up among the neatly trimmed lawns and shaded lanes of Winnetka, Illinois.  Her father was a corporate accountant in the city.  Her mother stayed at home, dabbling in sculpture and watercolors, selling occasional works for the benefit of local charities.  They kept their lives safely distant from the city, hidden away in a place they called a “small” town.  Their middle daughter was pretty, outgoing and far more serious about academics and life than her two sisters.
    After high school, Claire majored in art at Millikin University, a small, respected and expensive liberal arts college downstate in Decatur, but she drifted naturally toward history, toward what could be known and what could be found with a little effort.  In her, the disciplines of art and history — of unfettered imagination and the precise synthesis of fact — melded perfectly, as if she were the dusk between night and day.  Until Bridger became ill, she painted beautiful pictures, selling a few here and there, but she had learned more than light and shadow in her home and at Millikin:  She was creative, studious, persistent, explicit, beautiful and usually correct.  Ideas always flickered behind her brown eyes.
    “I think it would be a very good thing to do, Claire.  Very good.”
    “It wouldn’t take much.  I’ve still got my easels and brushes somewhere in that mess of boxes in the garage.  You’ve got the attic space for your books and writing and all that strange stuff you accumulate.  This will be my space, just for me.  I thought about the second bedroom for a studio, but that will be the baby’s nursery ...”
    Claire was making plans again, and that was good.  She was happy.  She was telling him, in her way, that she was better now.  She was almost dancing again, twirling in delicate circles in the space she fashioned for herself, breathing in.
    The house was locked when they got home and they were both a little abashed.  They had relished the idea of living in a small town where they needn’t lock their doors or their car, but old habits die hard.  Morgan retrieved a spare key from its hiding place under a rock beside the porch and opened the door.  T.J. met them at the door, so excited he squirted urine all over the foot-worn hardwood floor.
    “I remember when I was that happy to see you come in the door,” Morgan said, embracing his wife.
    “Me, too,” Claire responded, standing on her tiptoes.  “But I like you much better now that you’re housebroken.”
    They kissed.  Morgan slipped his hand down the back of his wife’s jeans as she unknotted his tie and unbuttoned his shirt.  Without their lips parting, they edged toward the living room couch a few feet away, shedding clothing as they went.  They made love there as if they were horny teen-agers again, like kids copping furtive feels on the basement sofa while mom and dad watched TV upstairs.  Their lovemaking was more playful than lusty, more relaxed than deliberate.
    When they finished, Morgan sat naked on the floor beside her, curling her soft, blond hair around his finger while she lay back on the couch.  Her eyes were closed.  He