Merrion during the same period had been getting used to being around Diane a lot. In the course of helping her to master the financial matters that Walter had covertly managed out of her sight (as he had prudently kept them from Jaquie's view as well, thus saving more than a few dollars in the divorce settlement, obeying Larry Lane's rule against confiding financial data to possibly treacherous kinfolk with no honest need to know it), he grew accustomed to spending time with her, several hours during the weekend or an evening or two during the week. He enjoyed his new habit of her company, and saw no reason to discontinue seeing her after they had rearranged her assets under her control.
By then he had long since recovered very nicely and completely from the real but transient sorrow he had felt at Walter's death. He had not become happy that Walter had died, but he admitted to himself that he would have been seriously inconvenienced if Walter, as much fun as he'd always been in life, had somehow managed to come back. Life goes on, Merrion reminded himself firmly, when he felt his first and only feathery twinge of guilt after an evening of enjoying the company of Walter's widow. Walter knew that and he left it just the same, and it went on without him. Poor judgment on his part; probably wishes now he hadn't done it. Tough shit for him.
Once a week, most often Thursdays because he seldom could be absolutely sure until late Friday afternoon that he wouldn't have to be available Friday and Saturday evenings for bail hearings, he invited Diane to join him after work for drinks and dinner, usually at the Old Post Road Tavern his established familiarity there had bred superior service and access to special dishes off the menu.
When she resumed entertaining two years after Walter's death, it was assumed Merrion would act as host. From time to time she cooked for him on winter weekend evenings. Once or twice each summer, as he was going to do on that third Sunday in August, he drove her out to Tanglewood to hear the concerts her stepdaughter had selected as her birthday gift each March, and she made dinner reservations for them afterwards at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge.
Merrion more or less assumed that she would be available for any outings, the regular Thursday dinners or movies on the spur-of-the-moment. He would have been disappointed if she had said she had another commitment, but she never did. She would have been at least irked had he pleaded a prior social engagement made it impossible for him to bring over a bottle of red wine and share a pheasant she had bought on a whim and just finished roasting, but every time she had an impulse and called to invite him to do some such thing, he was always ready to do it. "We do pretty well for each other, don't we, Amby?" she said to him very early one morning, kissing him safe-home just inside the half-opened door. "Not badly at all," he replied.
Hilliard, meddling in his business as usual, asked him one evening idly in the bar at Grey Hills showing off for other people standing around within earshot having drinks after a budget committee meeting if he was 'still at it, keeping company with the Widow Fox," knowing the answer.
When Merrion said that he was, adding that Hilliard damned right well knew it, he was vexed to feel his ears and cheeks getting hot. Thus rewarded, Hilliard prying further had asked him why he kept on seeing her. "An excellent cook," Hilliard said, 'but she can be a controlling woman."
Merrion said irritably that he guessed it was something that he did, not something he had thought about doing, so therefore he supposed the reason that he did it was because he wanted to. Hilliard had nodded and said grandly that his many years of extensive experience and close personal observation enabled him to state unequivocally and without fear of contradiction that that was indisputably the very best reason, bar none, that Amby Merrion had ever given for going out with a woman.
That brought a little polite applause and a 'hear, hear' or two.
Merrion thought about it for a moment and said that the reason he had tolerated Hilliard for so many years was that from time to time not very often, but still, now and then he showed absolutely brilliant insight into human nature, and this was one of those times.
