They hadn't had a real vacation since that long-planned but somehow disappointing tour of Europe five years ago. They needed to get away, for starters, needed to get on a plane going someplace warm and lush-Jamaica, perhaps, or Barbados. So he didn't say anything at all for several moments he just stared at the false tears in Linda's eyes and thought about the things they needed, he and she. He was in fact more focused and aware than he had been in a long, long time. But Jeff wasn't distracted he didn't give a damn about Sidey's ramblings. "Do you know what we need, Jeff?" And he was supposed to say, "What's that, hon?" was supposed to say it distractedly and without interest as he read Hugh Sidey's column about the presidency in Time. Linda had been chopping onions at the counter when she said it, and maybe the tears at the corner of her eyes were what had set him thinking, had lent her question more import than she'd intended. He'd been sitting at the kitchen table, in what Linda liked to call the "breakfast nook," although it wasn't really a separate space at all, just a little formica table with two chairs placed awkwardly between the left side of the refrigerator and the front of the clothes drier.
Just the week before, she'd said something similar, had said, "Do you know what we need, Jeff?" and there'd been a pause-not infinite, not final, like this mortal pause, but a palpable interim nonetheless.
The phone fell from his hand and cracked the glass paperweight on his desk. "We need-" she'd said, and he never heard her say just what it was they needed, because something heavy seemed to slam against his chest, crushing the breath out of him. EVersion 1.0 - click for scan notes REPLAY Ken Grimwood For my mother and father ONE Jeff Winston was on the phone with his wife when he died.
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