Table For Five
Table For Five
Susan Wiggs
When Derek and Crystal Maguire are killed in a car accident, their three children are left to be raised by their designated guardians–Lily Robinson and Sean McGuire. Brought together by tragedy, the two strangers are joined in grief and their mutual love for these orphaned children.Sean and Lily are about to embark on the journey of ups and downs, patience and understanding that makes a family. And along the way they will find a future filled with hope, happiness and the certainty that love is the best choice of all.
Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs
“Wiggs writes with an even hand, thus adding another excellent title to her already outstanding body of work.”
—Booklist on Table for Five
“Wiggs excels at portraying the delicate dynamics among lovers, friends and family members, and her keen awareness of sensory detail ensures that the scents and sounds of Rosa’s kitchen are just as palpable as heady attraction between the protagonists.”
—Publishers Weekly on Summer by the Sea
Rave Reviews from Publishers Weekly
starred review
“Wiggs’s characterizations are strong, jumping off the page with a winning blend of realism and warmth. A richly textured story…this book will polish Wiggs’s already glowing reputation.”
—on Passing Through Paradise
starred review
“Wiggs richly evokes her multi-faceted setting while depicting equally complex human relationships…the story’s theme—the all-encompassing power of love—is timeless, and it is this theme, along with the author’s polished prose and well-rounded characters, that make Wiggs’s story so satisfying.”
—on A Summer Affair
starred review
“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”
—on Halfway to Heaven
Also by SUSAN WIGGS
SUMMER BY THE SEA
THE OCEAN BETWEEN US
A SUMMER AFFAIR
HOME BEFORE DARK
ENCHANTED AFTEROON
PASSING THROUGH PARADISE
HALFWAY TO HEAVEN
THE YOU I NEVER KNEW
JUST BREATHE
The Chicago Fire trilogy
THE FIREBRAND
THE MISTRESS
THE HOSTAGE
THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER
THE CHARM SCHOOL
THE DRIFTER
THE LIGHTKEEPER
Susan Wiggs
Table for Five
To Jay
Contents
part one
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
part two
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
part three
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
part four
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
chapter 32
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
part five
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
chapter 40
chapter 41
chapter 42
chapter 43
chapter 44
chapter 45
chapter 46
chapter 47
chapter 48
chapter 49
chapter 50
chapter 51
Acknowledgments
part one
Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.
—Leo Rosten
chapter 1
Friday
2:45 p.m.
“Hey, Miss Robinson, want to know how to figure out your porn-star name?” asked Russell Clark, bouncing on the balls of his feet toward the school bus.
“I think I’ll make it through the day without that.” Lily Robinson put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to keep him from bouncing off the covered sidewalk and into the driving rain.
“Aw, come on, it’s easy. You just say the name of your street and—”
“No, thank you, Russell,” Lily said in her “enough’s enough” tone. She hoped he didn’t really know what a porn star was. “That’s inappropriate, and you’re supposed to be line leader this afternoon.”
“Oops.” Reminded of the privilege, Russell stiffened his spine and marched in a straight line, dutifully leading twenty-three third-graders to the area under the awning by the parking lot. “I’m going to Echo Ridge today,” he said, heading for Bus Number Four. “I have a golf lesson.”
“In this rain?”
“It’ll clear up, I bet. See you, Miss Robinson.” Russell went bounding toward the bus, hopscotching around puddles in the parking lot.
Lily doled out goodbyes and have-a-good-days to the rest of her students, watching them scatter like a flock of startled ducklings to buses and carpools. Charlie Holloway and her best friend, Lindsey Davenport, were last in line, holding hands and chattering together while they waited for Mrs. Davenport’s car to pull forward.
When Charlie caught Lily’s eye, she ducked her head and looked away. Lily felt a beat of sympathy for the little girl, who was painfully aware that her parents were coming in for a conference after school. The child looked small and fragile, trying to disappear into her yellow rain slicker. Lily wanted to reassure her, to tell her not to worry.
Charlie didn’t give her a chance. “There’s your mom,” she said, giving Lindsey’s hand a tug. “’Bye, have a good weekend,” she called to Lily, and the girls dashed for the blue Volvo station wagon.
Lily smiled and waved, making an effort not to appear troubled, but seeing them like that, best friends skipping off together, reminded her of her own childhood best friend—Charlie’s mother, Crystal. This was not going to be an easy conference.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” asked Greg Duncan, the PE teacher. After school, he coached the high school golf team, though he was known to be a full-time flirt.
“You’re not supposed to notice that anything’s the matter,” Lily told him.
He grinned and loped to her side, a big, friendly Saint Bernard of a guy, all velvet brown eyes, giant paws, a silver whistle on a lanyard around his neck. “I know exactly what’s wrong,” he said. “You don’t have a date tonight.”
Here we go again, thought Lily. She liked Greg a lot, she really did, but he exhausted her with his need for attention. He was too much guy, the way a Saint Bernard is too much dog. Twice divorced, he had dated most of the women she knew and had recently set his sights on her. “Wrong,” she said, grinning back. “I’ve got plans.”
“Liar. You’re just trying to spare my feelings.”
Guilty as charged, Lily thought.
“Is he hitting on you again?” Edna Klein, the school principal, joined them under the awning. In her sixties, with waist-length silver hair and intense blue eyes, Edna resembled a Woodstock grandmother. She wore Birkenstocks with socks and turquoise-and-silver jewelry, and she lived at a commune called Cloud Mountain. Yet no one failed to take her seriously. Along with her earth-mother looks, she possessed a Ph.D. from Berkeley, three ex-husbands, four grown children and ten years of sobriety in AA. When it came to running a school, she was a consummate professional, supportive of teachers, encouraging to students, inspiring confidence in parents.
“Harassment in the workplace,” Lily stated. “I’m thinking of filing a complaint.”
“I’m the one with the complaint,” Greg said. “I’ve been hitting on this woman since Valentine’s Day, and all I get from her is a movie once a month.”
“At least I let you pick the movie. Hell on Earth was a real high point for me.”
“You’re a heartless wench, Lily Robinson,” he said, heading for the gym. “Have a nice weekend, ladies.”
“He’s barking up the wrong tree,” Lily said to Edna.
“Are you this negative about all men or just Coach Duncan?”
Lily laughed. “What is it about turning thirty? Suddenly my love life is everyone’s business.”
“Of course it is, hon. Because we all want you to have one.”
People were always asking Lily if she was seeing anyone special or if she intended to have children. Everyone seemed to want to know when she was going to settle down. They didn’t understand. She was settled. Her life was exactly the way she wanted it. Relationships were scary things to Lily. Getting into an emotional relationship was like getting into a car with a drunk driver. You were in for a wild ride, and it was bound to end with someone getting hurt.
“I’m meddling, aren’t I?” Edna admitted.
“Definitely.”
“I can’t help myself. I’d love to see you with someone special, Lily.”
Lily took off her glasses and polished the lenses on a corner of her sweater. The world turned to a smear of rain-soaked gray and green, the principal palette of an Oregon spring. “Why won’t anyone believe that I’m satisfied with things just the way they are?”
“Satisfaction and happiness are two different matters.”
Lily put her glasses on and the world came back into focus. “Feeling satisfied makes me happy.”
“One of these days, my friend, you’ll find yourself wanting more,” said Edna.
“Not today,” Lily said, thinking of the upcoming conference.
A group of students clustered around to tell her goodbye. Edna took the time to speak to each child personally, and each turned away with a big smile on his or her face.
Lily felt a small nudge of discontent. Satisfaction and happiness are two different matters. It was hard enough to make herself happy, let alone another person, she thought. Yet when she looked around, she had to admit that she saw people do it every day. A mother coaxed laughter from her baby, a man brought flowers to his wife, a child opened a school lunch box to find a love note from home.
But the happiness never lasted. Lily knew that.
She lingered for a few minutes more while the children were set free for the weekend. They ran to their mothers, getting hugs, showing off papers or artwork, their happy chatter earning fond smiles. Watching them, Lily felt like a tourist observing a different culture. These people weren’t like her. They knew what it was like to be connected. By contrast, Lily felt curiously distant and unencumbered, so light she could float away.
While waiting for the Holloways to arrive, Lily checked the conference table, low and round and gleaming, surrounded by pint-size chairs.
The desks were aligned in neat rows, the chairs put up so the night crew could vacuum. The smells of chalk dust, cleaning fluid and the dry aroma of oft-used books mingled with the ineffable burnt-sugar smell of small children.
She set out two things on the table—a manila folder, thick with samples of Charlie’s work, and the requisite box of tissues, Puffs with lotion, which Lily bought by the case at Costco. A roomful of eight-and nine-year-olds tended to go through them fast.
She moved along the bank of windows, adjusting the shades so they were all even at half mast. The glass panes were decorated with the children’s cutout ducks in galoshes, each bearing the day’s penmanship practice: “April showers bring May flowers.” Outside, a jagged bolt of lightning raked across the sky, punctuating the old adage.
With a grimace, she turned to the calendar display on the bulletin board and silently counted down the column of Fridays. Nine weeks left until the end of school. Nine weeks to go, and then it would be sunshine and blue skies and the trip she’d been planning for months. Going to Europe had always seemed such a lofty, barely reasonable goal for a schoolteacher in a small Oregon town, but maybe that was what made it so appealing. Each year, Lily saved her money and headed off to a new land, and this would be her most ambitious trip yet.
She tugged her mind away from thoughts of summer and concentrated instead on preparing for a difficult meeting. She inspected the classroom as she always did before conferences. Lily believed it was important for people to see that their children spent the day in a neat, organized, attractive environment.
At the center of the front of the room was a dark slate blackboard. She’d been offered a whiteboard but declined. She preferred the crisp, controlled quality of her Palmer-method script on the smooth, timeless surface. She liked the coolness of the slate against her hand when she touched it, and the way her fingertips left a moist impression, before evaporating into nothingness. The sound of chalk on an old-fashioned blackboard always reminded her of the one place she had always felt safe as a child—in a schoolroom.
This was her world, the place she best belonged. She couldn’t imagine another life for herself.
Glancing at the clock, she went to the door and opened it. Her nameplate read “Ms. Robinson—Room 105” and was surrounded by each child’s name, neatly printed with a photo on a yellow tagboard star.
Lily adored children—other people’s children. For one special year of their lives, they were hers to care for and nurture, and she put all of her heart into it. Thanks to her job, she was able to tell people she did have children, twenty-four of them. And in the fall, she would get twenty-four different ones. They gave her everything she could ever want from a family of her own—joy and laughter, pathos and tears, triumph and pride. Sometimes they broke her heart, but most of the time, they gave her a reason for living.
She loved her students from September to June, and when school ended, she sent them out the door, giving them back to their families, pounds heavier, inches taller, drilled in their multiplication and division tables, reading at grade level or better. In the fall, she shifted her attention to the next crop of students. And so it went, year after year. It was the most satisfying feeling in the world, and best of all, it was safe.
Having children of your own—now, that was not so safe. Kids were part of you forever, subjecting you to crazed heights of joy and bitter depths of sorrow. Some people were cut out for that, others weren’t. A good number weren’t cut out for it but fell in love and had kids, anyway. Then they usually fell out of love and everyone within shouting distance got hurt. Charlie Holloway’s parents were a case in point, Lily reflected.
“My Favorite Things” had been today’s creative writing lesson. The children had three minutes to write down as many of their favorite things as possible. Lily always did the exercises right alongside her students, and she always took them seriously. The kids stayed more interested and involved that way. Her list, written hastily but neatly on a large flip chart, included:
Japanese satsumas
snow days
science projects
the sound of kids singing
TV miniseries
mystery novels
first day of school
take-out restaurants
sightseeing
stories that end happily ever after
She ripped down the chart and crumpled it into a ball. It was a little too revealing. Not that her list would surprise Crystal Holloway. They’d known each other since Lily was Charlie’s age, maybe younger, and Crystal had been a gum-popping preteen babysitter.
What a long way we’ve come together, thought Lily. This was a new one for them both, though. Telling parents their child was failing third grade was hard enough. The fact that Lily and Crystal were best friends only made it worse. In doing what was best for Charlie, Lily was going to have to say some difficult things to her dearest friend. And on top of that, the divorced Holloways couldn’t stand each other.
Ordinarily, the idea of teaching Crystal’s kids was uniquely gratifying. Lily was like their special aunt, and when each one was born—first Cameron, then Charlie and finally Ashley—Lily had wept for joy right alongside Crystal.
Cameron was bright, eager to please and as quick to grasp academics as he was to pick up tips on his golf swing from his pro-golfer father. Now fifteen, Cameron was the best player on the high school golf team.
Charlie, however, was a different story. From the first day of school, she’d struggled and balked at basic concepts. Lily had met with Derek and Crystal separately throughout the year. They’d engaged a tutor and claimed to be working hard on Charlie’s reading outside of school. Despite everyone’s efforts, though, Charlie had shown no improvement. She seemed caught in a mysterious block that could not be attributed to learning disabilities or detectable disorders. She was simply…stuck.
Lily looked again at the clock and smoothed her lilac cotton sweater over her hips. The Holloways were due any minute.
“How about some bottled water for your conference?” asked Edna, poking her head inside Lily’s classroom.
“Thanks. I think they might be delayed because of this weather.”
Edna glanced at the windows, gave an exaggerated little shudder and pulled her hand-knit Cowichan shawl tighter around her. She set a six-pack of bottled water on the table.
“To tell you the truth,” Lily said, “I’m not looking forward to this one.”
Edna studied Charlie’s school photograph at the center of her yellow star. She looked like Pippi Longstocking, complete with strawberry-blond pigtails, freckles and a missing front tooth. “I take it she’s not handling the divorce well?”
“It’s been pretty chaotic. Derek and Crystal have only been divorced a year, and the breakup caught everyone by surprise. Although of course,” she added, remembering her own family, “an unhappy marriage is never much of a surprise to the children.”
Looking at her ghostly reflection in the classroom windows, Lily remembered the day Crystal had come to her with the news of the separation nearly three years ago. Her stomach had been big with her third pregnancy, and her cheeks were glowing. Up to that point, Lily had believed Crystal led a charmed life. She was a former Miss Oregon USA who became a devoted wife and mother with beautiful children and a hugely successful husband. Her life looked like a dream, so Lily was shocked when she announced that her marriage was over.
“They handled the split as well as can be expected, under the circumstances,” she added, cautioning herself to be fair to both parents. Crystal had wanted custody, but Derek took her to court over the matter, forcing her to settle for joint custody. Since the parenting plan had been finalized last year, the kids were required to spend alternating weeks with each parent. The summer would be split up between them, five weeks with Crystal, then five with Derek.
Edna hesitated, studying Lily. “This is going to be hard for you, isn’t it?”
“You know my opinion of Derek as a husband. He makes a much better ex, but I’ve always thought he was a good father. I promise you, I’ll keep the focus on Charlie.”
“If you’d like me to stay for the conference, I’m happy to do so,” Edna offered.
Now, that was tempting. Calm, centered and mature, Edna always brought balance and wisdom to the table. They had worked together since Lily had graduated from college, and they’d built a strong mutual trust. However, Edna’s indisputable authority could also be a liability, overshadowing the classroom teacher’s role.
“Thank you. For this meeting, I think I’m better off dealing with the parents on my own.” Lily squared her shoulders.
“All right. I need to check something. There’s a car in the parking lot with its lights left on. After that, I’ll be in my office. Let me know if you need me.”
Lightning slashed from the sky, causing the lights to blink, and thunder crashed, reverberating through the building.
Alone in her classroom, Lily massaged her throat, but the ache there wouldn’t go away. She felt torn between her loyalty to a friend and the needs of a student. In all her life, she had only had one true friend—Crystal. They were closer than sisters. Crystal was the reason Lily came to live in the town of Comfort in the first place. She guarded her heart from everyone else.
chapter 2
Friday
3:15 p.m.
Derek Holloway was the first to arrive, a whirlwind in a dark raincoat and broad-brimmed waxed cotton hat. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, removing his dripping hat.
“I’ll take that. Your coat, too.” Holding them away from her, Lily carried the sopping garments to the cloakroom and hung them over the boot tray. The jacket was made of Gore-Tex, according to the label, size large/tall. The company logo—Legends Golf Clubs—was stitched on the front breast. Probably one of his sponsors, she thought.
His body warmth and the intriguing woodsy scent of after-shave lingered in the lining of the coat, and she chided herself for even noticing. Biology at work, she insisted to herself. Derek Holloway was a scoundrel, a man who had cheated on his pregnant wife. The fact that he was a hunk with a dazzling smile who smelled good was no compensation for that, although some women believed it was a reason for forgiveness.
“Sorry about your floor.” He tugged several brown paper towels from the dispenser over the sink and laid them along the wet trail.
“Not a problem.” She welcomed him with a smile she hoped didn’t look forced. Might as well start on a friendly note. She couldn’t think about the fact that not so long ago, Crystal had nearly collapsed from weeping thanks to the terms Derek forced her to agree to in the divorce decree. Hostility, Lily told herself, would not be in Charlie’s best interest.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she offered. “I’ve got water, and there’s coffee and soft drinks in the faculty lounge.”
“Nothing, thanks.”
The scale of the furniture in the room made him seem even larger than he was, which was plenty large. He was impeccably dressed in creased wool slacks and a V-neck sweater of fine-gauge cashmere. He appeared little different than he had when Lily was in the Holloways’ wedding sixteen years before. His looks had grown more mature and refined over the years, his personal style more sophisticated. And of course, his sense of entitlement had risen along with his success as a professional golfer. One of the top players in the PGA, he seemed to have no doubt that he deserved everything that came his way, and that included the women who threw themselves at him on tour.
“Here’s some of Charlie’s artwork.” She indicated a molded plastic tote tray with “Charlene” neatly printed on it. “You can have a look while we wait for Crystal.” She hadn’t seen him since the last meeting about Charlie. At that conference, he and Crystal had agreed to engage a tutor—which they had—and put their daughter’s difficulties at the top of their priority lists—which they had not.
He glanced at his watch, a Rolex that was probably another freebie from a sponsor. “She’s always late.”
What did he think, that Lily was going to agree with him? “The weather’s horrible,” she pointed out. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” Though she was careful not to show it, Lily was a tad irritated, too. This meeting was about their daughter. Lily had not summoned them lightly. The least Crystal could do was show up on time.
“That’s a sweet one,” she said as Derek studied a crayon drawing of a koala, its baby clinging to its back. “She drew that after our field trip to the Portland Zoo. Charlie has a real eye for detail. When her curiosity is piqued, she doesn’t miss a thing.”
He nodded and looked at the next one. It showed a ladder running up the long side of the paper, a tiny plank with a figure perched on the edge, about to jump into an even tinier bucket of water. “And this?”
“Vocabulary work. The word of the day was dare, I believe.” The other children had written dare on their drawings, but not Charlie. She avoided writing or reading anything at all. “She’s very clever,” Lily said. “She has an inventive mind and uses some sophisticated thought patterns.”
He came to a picture of a house surrounded by spiky green grass and blooming flowers, blue sky and sunshine in the background. The house had four windows lined up in a row. All the windows were filled with black scribbles.
When Lily had asked Charlie why she’d scribbled the windows black, the little girl had shrugged. “So you can’t see what’s inside.” She always tried to give a minimal response.
Derek didn’t ask about the drawing but moved on to the next, a remarkably vivid study of a small brown-and-white dog with a black patch around one eye. “And this?”
“Vocabulary again. The word was wish.”
“She’s been bugging me for a dog,” he said. “Maybe this summer.”
Just don’t tell her maybe unless you mean yes, Lily thought. Charlie had enough uncertainty in her life.
Finally, Crystal arrived in a swirl of haste and apologies.
“My God, I am so sorry,” she said, talking rapidly as Lily took her coat, hat and umbrella. “The roads are a nightmare. I nearly got killed on Highway 6, trying to make it on time.”
When Lily emerged from the cloakroom, Crystal offered her trademark beauty-queen smile. Despite the weather, her makeup looked freshly applied. Knowing Crystal, Lily guessed that she’d taken time in the car to fix her hair and face.
“Hello, Derek.” Wafting the scent of Gucci Rush, Crystal sailed in front of her ex-husband and sat down, a silk Hermès scarf fluttering around her shoulders, her shapely legs crossed at the ankles and angled demurely despite the awkwardness of the low chair. Crystal had always known how to use the power of her beauty.
Together, she and Derek resembled a toothpaste commercial. But looking like the all-American success story hadn’t saved their marriage.
Lily put on her glasses. Even though they were Fiorelli, with handmade barrister-style frames, she knew they made her look like a dork. She ought to quit wasting her money on trendy glasses, because once she put them on, they tended to look like any discount brand. There was something about her earnest face that could transform designer frames into blue-light specials. She’d tried contact lenses, but had an allergic reaction every time she put them in.
Tamping the manila file folder on the table, she took a deep breath and looked from Crystal to Derek, who sat as uncomfortably as she did in the undersize chairs. Lily caught Crystal in an unguarded moment, and the expression on her face was startling. She was eyeing Derek with raw, undisguised yearning, her lovely face registering a wounded animal’s uncomprehending pain.
Lily ached for her friend, yet at the same time she felt a faint nudge of exasperation. Today was about Charlie, not about Crystal and Derek and what they’d let love do to them.
With controlled, precise movements, Lily handed them each a copy of the ORAT printout. “This chart shows the results of the Oregon Reading Abilities Test,” she explained. “It’s given to every third-grader in the state, every March.” With the eraser end of her pencil, she traced the gray line on the chart. “This is the average score for the whole state. This red line above it is the average for Laurelhurst students.” As a private, selective school, Laurelhurst always showed test results well above the norm.
Lily cleared her throat. “The blue line shows Charlie’s performance on the test.” The line crawled miserably amid the lowest percentile rankings, at intervals even flirting with zero. She watched the Holloways’ faces, seeing the expected surprise and disappointment. She’d been disappointed, too—but not surprised. As Charlie’s third-grade teacher, she had seen the child’s struggles from day one. She’d tried to prepare the Holloways in previous conferences, but the reality simply hadn’t sunk in. Maybe today, it would.
Crystal gazed at Lily, her eyes filled with bewilderment. She seemed fragile, as though everything hurt her these days. Derek merely looked angry, defensive perhaps. Both were classic reactions of loving parents. No one wanted to see that their child was having trouble, and once they did, the child’s failure not only hurt, but attacked the character of the parents themselves.
“As you know,” Lily said, “I’m not a fan of standardized testing. This was state-mandated. So this test doesn’t really tell us any more than we already know about Charlie.”
“She still can’t read.” Derek’s voice was almost accusatory. His large hands, tanned from a recent golf round in Scottsdale, pressed down on the surface of the table. “You know, I’m getting pretty damned sick and tired of hearing this. I pay that tutor what, a hundred dollars an hour? And we’re still not seeing results. What kind of teacher are you?”
“Derek.” Crystal reached out a hand as though to touch his sleeve, but then seemed to think better of it. She folded her hands tightly together, her flawless manicure gleaming.
“I don’t blame you for being frustrated,” Lily said. “I think we all are, Charlie included. Believe me, I know how hard everyone’s been working on this all year.” She was careful with her choice of words. It was true that, in addition to engaging the tutor, the Holloways had subjected Charlie to seemingly endless testing, from a pediatric checkup to psychological evaluations to a battery of tests by a reading specialist in Portland. The results were inconclusive. There was no scientific name for the sort of block Charlie seemed to be experiencing. Lily wished she could believe the homework she sent for Charlie to do with each parent was done with diligence. She knew better, though. Crystal and Derek loved their daughter, but given the state of their lives, they hadn’t made her schoolwork a priority.
“I know we all hoped to see more progress,” she added. “However, that’s not the case. Given that it’s nine weeks from the end of school, we need to talk about Charlie’s options for summer, and for the coming year.”
Crystal nodded and blinked away tears. “I think we should hold her back.”
“Oh, now we’re talking about flunking her. That’s just great,” said Derek.
Lily bit her tongue and kept her face immobile. Derek clearly had issues with failure. But this was about Charlie, not him. It was not even about Crystal, whose heart was breaking right before Lily’s eyes. Urging retention was often the panicked, knee-jerk reaction of a parent. Lacking a complete knowledge of all the options, some parents tended to favor repeating a grade, unaware of how the extreme solution could traumatize a child. “In this case, I don’t think retention is the answer.”
“So you’re just going to promote her like they’ve done since first grade?” Crystal’s tears evaporated on the heat of anger. “That’s been a huge help, let me tell you. A huge help.”
Lily swallowed hard, feeling her friend’s anguish. A parent-teacher conference was such a theater of the soul. Everyone involved was stripped bare, their emotions stark and honest. So much of a parent’s identity was wrapped up in the child: love, pride, self-worth, validation. It was an unfair burden on a small human being, but every child bore it, the lofty, seemingly unreachable expectations of her parents.
“I’ve mapped out several options for Charlie,” Lily told them, handing each a packet. “You can go over these at home. For now, let’s assume we see some progress this summer and she goes on to fourth grade here at Laurelhurst.”
“In other words,” Derek said stiffly, “you might not want her back here.”
Behind Lily’s left eye, a tiny headache flared to life like a struck match. Laurelhurst was a nationally recognized independent school; the waiting list for admissions was years long. A man like Derek—successful, accomplished, privileged—regarded any other school as subpar. “This is about what’s best for Charlie, not about what I want. What we should really focus on is the summer. I’m hoping that intensive training at the Chall Reading Institute in Portland will initiate some real progress for Charlie.” The program was a huge commitment of time and money for the whole family, but its success rate was unparalleled.
“This is ten weeks long,” Crystal said, studying the brochure. She regarded Lily with dismay and flipped open a well-worn leather Day-Timer. “We’re booked on a Disney cruise for ten days in June. In July, she’s got riding camp. And August—”
“The kids are with me in August,” Derek said. “We’ve got a rental booked on Molokai.”
Lily had trained herself to hold back and choose her words carefully during a conference. It was particularly hard in this case to assert the child’s needs. How easy it would be to simply say, “Sounds great! Have a wonderful summer.” And then next year, Charlie would be some other teacher’s problem.
However, Charlie was Lily’s main concern, no matter what she felt for Crystal. The outcome of today’s meeting could very well test their lifelong friendship. But a child’s future hung in the balance, and Lily was determined to save her at any cost.
“I’m hoping to stay focused on Charlie’s needs throughout the summer,” she said.
“Weren’t you listening? It’s a Disney Cruise,” Crystal said, an edge in her voice. “It’s all about kids and fun. I’ve been promising them all year. And camp, that’s totally about Charlie. You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull just to get her in. It’s at Sundance, for heaven’s sake. She probably had to edge out Demi Moore’s kids just to get a spot there this summer.”
“How much is this riding camp going to cost?” Derek asked.
“Probably less than your damned house on Molokai,” Crystal snapped.
“I’m still paying off your Christmas trip to Sun Valley.”
“I know where you rank in the PGA. Unfortunately for you, I can find that out on ESPN. You can afford Sun Valley.”
“Not the way you spend. You’ve given a whole new meaning to ‘spousal maintenance.’”
Lily sat impassively, biting her tongue until it hurt. When a couple argued about money, it was never about money. It was about power and self-worth and judgment; that much Lily had learned from her own parents as she lay awake at night in the dark like a shipwreck victim adrift in a storm at sea, with the tempest raging around her.
In the eight years she’d been a teacher, she’d held a number of conferences. She had weathered many spats, and she found that it was best to allow them to play out and lose their intensity. It was like allowing a pressure cooker to let off some steam, making room inside for something else—in this case, Lily’s input about Charlie.
Her headache deepened, the pain turning arrow-sharp and burrowing into a tender spot behind her eye. Neither Crystal nor Derek seemed to notice. Lily had sat too many times in the presence of a couple sniping at each other in the age-old tug-of-war over the most fragile prize of all—a child.
Sometimes it took all of Lily’s self-control to keep in the righteous anger, to stop herself from blurting, Will you listen to yourselves? How is this helping your child? And she hadn’t even told them everything about Charlie yet. A tiny devil of impulse tempted her to hold back, to keep Charlie’s secret for her, but Lily couldn’t do that. The little girl had issued a cry for help.
“Could we get back to Charlie?” she asked. “Please?” Taking advantage of a pause in the argument, she said, “There is something else to discuss.”
Crystal and Derek glared at each other, visibly shelving the argument. Derek clenched his jaw and folded his arms across his chest as he swiveled to face Lily. Crystal pursed her lips and closed her Day-Timer, also turning her attention to Lily. Whatever their differences, they still had their love for their children in common and were trying to put aside their own agendas for the sake of Charlie.
Lily did her best to ignore the splitting headache an regarded them both. “We’ve talked a lot about Charlie’s academic challenges,” she said. “Lately, I’ve seen some behavioral changes in her, as well.”
“What do you mean, behavioral changes?” Derek remained defensive, no surprise to Lily.
She didn’t want to sugarcoat anything. “In the past couple of weeks, she’s been stealing.”
The room filled with silence. Shocked, disbelieving silence. Both faces lost the ability to register expressions. Finally, Lily had their attention.
She took advantage of the silence. “First off, I need to tell you that stealing is very common in kids this age. A lot of them go through it. And second, in most cases, definitely in Charlie’s, stealing is not about the objects stolen.”
“Whoa,” said Derek. “Just a damned minute. Stealing? You say she’s stealing. What the hell are you talking about?”
“We’ve always given Charlie everything she’s ever needed or wanted,” Crystal swore, and Lily could tell she genuinely believed it.
“Of course you have,” she agreed, though her tone conveyed an unspoken however. “As I mentioned, it’s a fairly specific behavior. With a basically honest child like Charlie, its significance is not what it seems to be on the surface.” She wondered how technical to get at this juncture. The syndrome was deep, complex and far-reaching. Yet it was also a problem that was solvable if dealt with appropriately. For now, she thought, she needed to stick to the facts and let Charlie’s parents work through their shock and denial.
In a gentle voice, she said, “Let me tell you what I’ve observed and what I think is going on with Charlie.”
“Please do,” said Crystal, her voice faint. For a moment she looked so utterly lost and sad that Lily flashed on Crystal as a teenager, Lily’s idol and role model. They had needed each other from the start, and now their roles were reversing. Crystal was the needy one. Lily was desperate to help her.
She felt a peculiar malevolence emanating from Derek. It would not be the first time a parent regarded her with suspicion and distrust. Hazard of the profession, Edna always assured her.
Trying to project calm competence, she said, “At the beginning of the week—it was Monday after PE—a student reported to me that a harmonica he’d brought for show-and-tell was missing from his tote tray.” She gestured. “That’s the plastic tub each child gets for storing his things. I assumed he’d misplaced it, but even when I helped him look around, we couldn’t find the thing.”
“A freaking harmonica,” Derek said.
“Hush, let her finish,” Crystal told him.
“Then on Tuesday after music, three different children were missing things. At that point, I questioned the whole class collectively. No one spoke up, but I noticed that Charlie seemed agitated.” Lily had questioned both the PE and music teachers, and both seemed to recall that Charlie had asked to use the restroom during class. “As I said before, she’s a very honest child. Being deceptive is foreign to her nature.”
Crystal took a tissue from the box on the table and idly shredded it. “She’s never been good at hiding things.”
“I agree,” Lily said. “At recess, I spoke with her privately, asking her again if she knew anything about the missing objects. She wouldn’t meet my eye, and when I asked if she’d show me what was in her desk and tote tray, she got upset. I told her it would be a lot less trouble if the items were found sooner rather than later. One of the girls claimed her charm bracelet was a family heirloom, so I was anxious to find it by the end of the day.” She didn’t reveal that the theft victim was Mary Lou Mattson, the class drama queen, who had sworn her father, a prominent lawyer, would sue the school for millions. “Charlie was very cooperative. She went straight to her book bag, opened a zippered compartment and handed over the missing items.”
“Oh, dear God,” Crystal said, practically whispering. “A harmonica? A charm bracelet? Doesn’t she know I’d buy those things for her if she would only ask?”
“Maybe that’s the trouble,” snapped Derek. “You’re always giving her everything she wants. She’s spoiled.”
“Actually,” Lily intervened, “I believe this behavior is more about wanting something else.”
“What else could she want?” asked Crystal. “What could she possibly want?”
Lily had a list. “We should discuss that. Let me just finish going through the week with you. I talked the situation over with Ms. Klein and the school counselor. Together we agreed to take a low-key approach. Often when a child steals, the correct response is to require her to give the items back and apologize. In Charlie’s case, we told her I would return the objects and no more would be said. That way, she could save face and the kids would get their belongings back. All I wanted was her assurance that this wouldn’t happen again, and her promise that we would talk about why she did it. On Wednesday there were no incidents, but yesterday I discovered something of mine missing.”
“Great,” said Derek. “You let her get away with it, so she tried it again.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Don’t get defensive, she reminded herself. Just work the problem. “To make a long story short, I questioned Charlie and she handed it over.” She picked up the snow globe paperweight Charlie had taken from her desk. It had been a gift from the Holloways’ firstborn, Cameron, seven years before, when he’d been in Lily’s class. The figure inside the globe was an angel in winter, wrapped in a swirling white robe. “After she gave it back, I called both of you rather than waiting for conference week to go over the test scores.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Crystal said loyally. “We need to get to the bottom of this immediately.”
“We are at the bottom,” Derek said. “How much worse can things get with this kid? She can’t read, and now she’s turned to a life of crime.”
“Maybe she’s troubled by your hostility,” Crystal said.
“Maybe she’s troubled because you baby her so much she doesn’t know right from wrong,” he replied.
Lily tried to reel them back in. “Have there been any recent changes in Charlie’s life or routine? I think this behavior could be a response to change.”
“She was six years old when we separated, seven when we divorced,” Derek said. “She’s had plenty of time to adjust.”
Lily wondered if he understood what a tough adjustment divorce was for a kid—at any age. The emotional rug had been pulled out from under Charlie, and she was still trying to find her balance.
“She could be having trouble adjusting to your girlfriend,” Crystal said, clipping off each word with a razor precision.
“Charlie’s known Jane for three years,” Derek said.
“Ever since you had an affair with her.” Crystal sent him a look of disdain and turned to Lily. “They say someone always falls for your ex-husband. I should have stayed married to him as a favor to womankind.”
Lily cleared her throat. This would be an excellent time to bring the conversation back to Charlie. “Actually, Charlie has been telling the class a lot about her uncle Sean. She seems to like him a great deal. He recently moved back from overseas, didn’t he?”
“Everybody likes my younger brother,” said Derek.
“Everybody but the Pan-Asian Golf Association,” Crystal said, still clipping her words. She angled herself toward Lily. “His brother spent the last ten years playing in Asia. Then he cheated in a tournament and was disqualified—”
“He was set up,” Derek said quickly.
“—and eventually he was banned from the tour.”
“It was all political,” Derek said.
“He’s a commitment-phobe,” Crystal said to Lily. “He’s always walked away from any situation that challenges him. I suppose that’s why you haven’t met him yet. He’s been too busy walking away.”
Lily had only a vague memory of Sean…his name wasn’t Holloway because he and Derek were half brothers with different fathers. Maguire, that was it. Sean Maguire. She’d met him sixteen years ago when she was fifteen and he a cocky eighteen-year-old. They’d both been in the Holloways’ wedding. Lily had felt nervous and self-important in her lavender bridesmaid’s gown and dyed-to-match shoes. When she saw him on the dance floor at the reception, she felt sure he had learned his moves from Dirty Dancing, which had been her favorite film that year. Sean kept sneaking beers from behind the bar and hitting on every girl in the room with a sweet, slow smile and husky voice: Want to make out? But he didn’t say that to Lily, of course. No one hit on Lily, except to make fun of her glasses and the braces on her teeth.
“So I take it he’s living in Comfort for good?” she asked, eager to get back to Charlie.
“I don’t think Sean does anything for good,” Crystal said. “Maybe Charlie learned stealing from him.”
“Maybe she learned it from your wacko mother,” Derek said.
At that, Crystal burst into tears. “I can’t believe you said that.” She crushed the tissue in her fist and dabbed at her eyes. “What Derek so rudely brought up reminds me, there has been another change in Charlie’s life. I…finally had to move my mother to a higher-level nursing home in Portland. I knew this was coming, that it was inevitable, but I had no idea it would be so hard.” She stared down at her tightly fisted hand.
Before Lily could even react, Derek was out of his chair and down on one knee in front of his ex-wife. He rested a hand on the edge of the table and the other on the back of the chair, an embrace that didn’t quite touch her. “Jesus, Crys, I can’t believe I said that. I can’t freaking believe it. Please, please forgive me.”
His soft, sincere apology made even Lily want to cry. That was the Derek Holloway charm and charisma, his ability to melt away resentment and anger with a few choice words, a soft-toned voice. Even Crystal, despite all the rage of the past two years, didn’t seem immune to it.
“I’ve always thought the world of your mother,” he added. “I hate that this is happening to her.”
“I know,” Crystal whispered, brushing away the last of her tears. “I know.”
Lily shut her eyes briefly, feeling an echo of that sorrow. She loved Dorothy Baird, too, a woman she’d known since she was Charlie’s age. Growing up, Lily had sometimes escaped her grim home life by stepping into Crystal’s world, a household undimmed by tragedy, where people knew how to forgive one another. It was terrible to know a massive stroke had stripped Dorothy away from everyone, even herself.
The emotional moment marked the end of the meeting, Lily could tell. She could feel them withdrawing and leaving the problem with Charlie suspended in midair. The conversation was far from over, but she knew they needed time to mull over what she had told them. “There’s a lot more to discuss regarding Charlie,” she said, not quite sure they were listening. “For now, I hope you’ll each speak with her calmly and in private about the stealing. Let her know it has to stop and try to get her to talk about what’s behind it. We can discuss it again on Monday.”
“I’m out of town on Monday,” Derek said. “Got a tournament.”
“I’m coordinating a Special Olympics sponsors’ meeting that afternoon,” Crystal said. “I was going to have Mrs. Foster stay late to watch the girls.”
And that, Lily knew with bleak resignation, was exactly why Charlie was in trouble.
chapter 3
Friday
3:45 p.m.
“They want to do the right thing,” Lily told Edna in the teachers’ lounge after the conference. “The trouble is, they’re so wrapped up in other issues that they’re not seeing Charlie.”
Edna took a sip of herbal tea. While most of the faculty consumed coffee by the gallon, Edna favored homeopathic and herbal concoctions, all designed to bring about inner peace. Lily eschewed coffee, too, and only drank organically-grown herbals, but that didn’t bring her inner peace. A better sleep cycle, maybe.
She and Edna were the last two left at the school. Laurelhurst had a relatively small faculty. On a stormy Friday like this, everyone was eager to get home to loved ones, or to get ready for the weekend. It was an unspoken fact that Lily and Edna were the only unattached people on the faculty.
Lily was slightly in awe of Edna, but she also felt a bit sorry for her. Edna’s most marked quality was her willingness to plunge into relationships and to risk her heart. She’d been smashed into the dirt time and time again, but she always dusted herself off and plunged right back into the next doomed relationship. Lily didn’t get it. Why set yourself up for hurt?
“Well, the fact that they adore her means they’ll work with you,” Edna said. She added a small dab of fireweed honey to her tea.
“I hope so,” Lily said, idly perusing the faculty bulletin board. “Available for summer house-sitting,” read one notice. “Prefer beach or river house.” This time of year, teachers were all about summer, and Lily was no exception. She had plans. Big, grand plans. This was something she loved about her job—a teacher had an entire summer to recover from the emotions of loving, educating and cultivating a group of children.
Parents never get that chance, she reflected, thinking of the Holloways. There’s no downtime when you’re a parent.
“It’s going to be a long haul with Charlie,” she told Edna. “We didn’t even finish discussing the reading institute. They didn’t seem to want to hear about it, except to say it would directly interfere with Mom’s plans for a Disney cruise and horse camp, and Dad’s month in Hawaii.”
“Now I want to be their kid,” Edna said.
“I think they already have as many as they can handle,” Lily told her.
“Maybe the reading institute isn’t the right choice for this family,” Edna said. “They might need more flexibility.” She took a sip of her tea, then regarded Lily thoughtfully. “You could be her tutor.”
Against her better judgment, Lily felt drawn to the idea. Like everyone else, she adored Charlie and felt that teaching her one-on-one could lead to the breakthrough Charlie needed. Unfortunately, the situation was complicated.
“I could never do that,” she said. “You know my policy. I need a life separate from school. And I believe in treating all children equally.”
“They don’t all need you equally,” Edna pointed out.
“Not possible,” Lily said. “With this family, it would be extremely tricky.”
“I should think it would be extra easy since you and Charlene’s mother practically grew up together.”
“Her ex can’t stand me,” Lily said. “He thinks I’m a lousy teacher.”
Edna shook her head. “Just like he’s a lousy golfer.”
“Not quite,” Lily said. “A professional golfer loses a game, maybe a bunch of money or even his PGA card. Big deal. When a teacher screws up, it affects a child.”
“True, but that’s not what I see happening with the Holloway girl. You’re doing a good job, even though at present, her progress doesn’t reflect that.”
“I’ve been working on this all year. I don’t have enough time to get Charlie on track.” She could read Edna’s thoughts. So give her more time.
A part of Lily yearned to do just that, to gather the little girl close. But that—well, that would just be dangerous. Life had not equipped Lily for this: quite the opposite. At an early age, she had learned to protect her heart, even from a child like Charlie. Perhaps especially from a child like Charlie.
Outside, lightning flashed and thunder cracked so close that the windowpanes rattled. Rain washed down the glass, smearing the view of the nearly empty parking lot outside. Lily made out two red squiggles of brake lights as a vehicle left the lot. Judging by the size, that was probably Derek’s SUV.
“I’ll be glad when this year is over,” she said, and cinched the belt of her raincoat snugly around her. Summer meant renewal and refuge from troubles she couldn’t solve. She needed that, needed time to recover from the emotional roller coaster of the school term.
“It’s too bad about that family.” Edna sighed, rinsing her mug at the sink. “I’ve known the Holloways since they enrolled Cameron here ten years ago. I sure as heck didn’t see the divorce coming.”
No one, Lily thought, not even the most perfectly matched couple, seemed to make it anymore. They could be blissful one day and in divorce court the next.
Crystal often urged Lily to settle down, marry and have a family, and Lily had no idea why. After all she’d been through, Crystal was still a true believer. Not Lily, though. She was a pragmatist, a planner. It was easy to do when there was no one to plan for but her.
Lily’s life was arranged exactly the way she wanted it. She had children to love and time for herself. This was her own personal formula for contentment, and she guarded it from anything that might upset the balance, never letting herself question the reason.
chapter 4
Friday
3:45 p.m.
Crystal Baird Holloway jabbed the key into the ignition of her station wagon. She forced herself to take a deep breath, close her eyes and count to ten. She needed to get a grip. In this weather, driving angry was a truly bad idea.
She opened her eyes and deliberately reached around for her seat belt. Torrents of rain glazed the windshield with dull silver streaks, distorting her view of Derek. He appeared ghostlike and indistinct under his black-and-white Ping umbrella as he splashed across the asphalt parking lot to his Chevy Tahoe. A crow with ruffled feathers scurried in front of him and then took wing. Watching him get into the late-model, luxurious SUV and drive into a shroud of fog, she felt a twinge of resentment. He got a new car every year from a sponsor.
There were several things she definitely missed about being married to him, though she would never admit it.
All right, she thought, noticing how quickly the windows had fogged. Don’t freak, as Cameron would say. Charlie’s going to be all right. How can she not be all right with Lily as her teacher? Okay, so it’s been a shitty day, but the worst is over.
Giving a firm nod, like a genie magically transforming chaos to order with a blink, she turned the key in the ignition.
Click.
It took just that one dry, dead-sounding click for her to know she was screwed. However, she tried turning the key several times for good measure. Click. Click. Click. Nothing but a weak flutter, like the rhythm of a failing heart on a monitor.
Great. What the heck was wrong now?
Oh, Crystal, she thought. You didn’t. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the headlamp knob, and her stomach sank. It had been left in the on position.
“Could you be any more stupid?” she muttered.
Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she checked to see if the dome light would come on. No such luck. The car was deader than…a stale marriage.
Damn this weather. Where else but in Rain City, Oregon, did you have to use your headlights in the daytime, ensuring that one day you’d be upset or in a hurry and you’d dash out of the car, forgetting to turn off the lights?
This was all Derek’s fault. Every trouble in the world could be traced to smiling, sexy, talented, charming, renowned Derek Charles Holloway. If not for him, she never would have moved out here to the rainiest spot on the planet. If not for him, she’d be fine right now, just fine.
But Derek took up a lot of space in a woman’s world. He was larger than life in every department: athletic prowess, looks, spending habits. Oh, and his appetite for women. Let’s not forget that, Crystal thought. He was definitely larger than life in that department.
It was because of all his appetites, his greed, his carelessness in matters of the heart that she found herself sitting in a dead car with the rain beating down, crying her eyes out.
I’ll hate you forever, Derek Charles Holloway, she thought, digging around in her purse for a Kleenex. She came across everything but a tissue: her prescription slip (yet another errand she needed to run before picking up the kids), an ancient Binky dusted with bottom-of-the-purse lint (Ashley had surrendered her Binky six months ago), a couple of stray ball markers and tees with Derek’s initials on them (Was her purse really that old?), a tiny three-pack of Virginia Slims samples given out at a tournament (Yes. It really was that old.), a pack of matches from Bandon Dunes Golf Course. And she still hadn’t found a Kleenex.
By now the windows of the car were so steamed up, passersby might think there was some hanky-panky going on. Ha. Hanky-panky was a thing of the past for Crystal. Hanky-panky was what got her here in the first place. And the second. And the third.
God, what happened to my life? she wondered. Derek. Derek Holloway happened.
She’d been a student at the University of Portland, with everything going for her. She was a freaking beauty queen, for Pete’s sake. She had stood upon the mountaintop as Miss Oregon U.S.A. of 1989, heavily favored to win the national title. Then along came Derek. Three months later, she’d cheerfully handed her crown over to her first runner-up, a dull-witted, laser-toothed blonde from Clackamas County.
Crystal had been so stupid in love that she hadn’t even cried, giving up her crown. She was pregnant—on purpose, though Derek never knew that—and about to marry a man who, by the age of twenty-two, had already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated three times. Really, what was there to cry about?
She snorted into the wet sleeve of her microfiber raincoat, making up for lost time. Her sleeve made a lousy Kleenex, so she simply gave up crying.
“Enough is enough,” she said. And again: “Get a grip.” Somehow she managed to compose herself. She sat for a moment in the pall of silence. It was a dead car, for Lord’s sake, not a cancer diagnosis. She had weathered childbirth, heartbreak, infidelity, divorce, single parenthood, financial ruin, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Surely a dead battery was not going to finish her off.
Will it matter in five years? Her therapist’s favorite question popped into Crystal’s mind. For once, the answer was no. No, this stupid dead car she was forced to drive because her stupid attorney hadn’t milked enough spousal maintenance out of Derek would be nothing more than a bitter memory five years from now. She glanced at the crumpled pink receipt from the medical lab test on the console. Snatching it up, she stuffed it under the visor. Now, that was something that would matter in five years. It would matter forever.
She wished it wasn’t raining. If the sun was out, she’d abandon this piece-of-shit car, stride with her pageant runway walk over to Rain Shadow Lexus and slide right into the cushy leather interior of a brand-new car, one that shut its own lights off if the driver forgot. She’d sweet-talk the dealer into easy terms and drive off into the sunset.
Driving. She and Derek used to drive all over together. After they’d moved here to Comfort, a short distance from the magnificent Pacific Coast, they used to drive out to the edge of everything and explore the twisting, cliff-draped coastal highway to their hearts’ content. Sometimes they’d even pull off at a scenic vista and make love in the back of their minivan.
It was raining harder than ever now. She briefly considered prevailing on Lily for help, but dismissed the idea. She knew Lily would drop everything to help her. She’d wade through a flood if Crystal asked her to. Crystal didn’t want to ask. Lily had already been such a good friend to her, helping her out of one jam after another. It was high time Crystal started rescuing herself. And frankly, Crystal was tired of feeling like an idiot.
As she took out her cell phone, she held her breath. If this battery was dead, too, she’d shoot herself. She pictured herself slogging back into the school, a two-time loser, needing to use a phone.
“Work, please work,” she said, flipping it open.
The display leapt to glowing blue life, playing its happy little “Turn Me On” ditty. Finally, one thing went right today. Not only that, Crystal had, like the soul of competence and organization, clipped her auto club card to the visor. How smart of her.
She entered the toll-free number, then followed the prompts, submitting her membership number.
“We’re sorry,” said a soothing female voice. “That number is no longer valid. Please call our customer service department between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern time to renew your membership.”
“Screw you,” Crystal muttered, pressing End. The phone’s clock told her it was well past 6:00 p.m. on the stupid East Coast.
Like everything else in their marriage, Derek had let the auto club membership expire and hadn’t bothered to tell her.
Swearing under her breath, she took out the sample package of Virginia Slims and the book of hotel matches. She put one of the ancient cigarettes between her lips and lit up. She gagged on the smoke, being an intermittent smoker at best, but lighting up was an act of defiance, a reaction to all the frustrations building inside her. For one moment, she could do something reckless, senseless, dangerous, and the only one to suffer the consequences would be her.
Calmed by the cigarette, Crystal pressed the button of her seat belt. It retracted with a snaky slither and she felt suddenly unburdened. Free.
Finally, she knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to kill him. She smiled, took another puff on the cigarette and flipped open her phone again. Her fingers remembered his number and dialed it by touch alone. She didn’t even have to look.
He answered on the first ring because she had programmed him to respond quickly. With three kids, you never knew what emergency might be going on.
“My car’s dead,” she said without preamble. “I need you to come back to the school and give me a jump.”
“Call the auto club,” he said easily. “I’m busy.”
She could hear his car radio playing a Talking Heads song in the background. “You let the auto club membership expire,” she said.
“No, you failed to renew it,” he said.
“I would have done so if you’d told me it expired.”
“Call a tow truck, then.”
“Fine. That’ll cost a hundred and fifty bucks. I’ll send you the bill.”
“Oh, no you—”
“And since I’m going to be sitting here for hours, you’ll have to pick up the kids, even though it’s my turn to take them. I’m sure you don’t have any plans for this evening.”
“Come on, Crys. Get somebody from the school to help you. Lily. Get your buddy the schoolteacher to help. Maybe she can help you more than she has Charlie.”
“Oh, don’t start.” Crystal acknowledged to herself that this wasn’t really about getting a jump for her car. This was about getting Derek to jump for her. “Quit trying to hand off your problem to someone else.”
“There’s got to be a maintenance worker at the school, or—”
“Derek. In the time it takes to have this argument, you could drive back here and give me a jump. Then you’ll be a free man.”
“You’re pissing me off, Crys. You are really pissing me off.”
She smiled. “See you soon.”
The phone went dead. Crystal took it away from her ear and looked at the screen. It said Call Ended, not Signal Lost. The bastard had hung up on her.
She thought about what to do next. In a raging storm, with darkness falling all around, in a dead car, no one could hear you scream.
She opened the door and threw out the stale cigarette. Then, through the rain-blurred windshield, she saw a pair of headlights approaching. Friend or foe? she wondered. The day seemed darker than ever. The headlamps blazed, blinding her in a blue-white flash of lightning. The vehicle approached fast, coming straight toward her. Crystal was too surprised to scream. She clutched the steering wheel and braced herself for impact.
The vehicle stopped mere inches from her front bumper. She blinked at the strong stream of light stabbing right at her. And saw a flash of cobalt blue.
Derek. Bless him, the bastard had come back for her.
chapter 5
Friday
3:55 p.m.
The bitch just sat there like a queen, barely acknowledging his presence. Derek had the high beams on intentionally, and left them on, glaring straight at her. Take that.
He offered her a steady stream of opinion in terms so foul it would curl her ears if she could hear him. But she couldn’t, of course, which made him wonder why he bothered.
He stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his Gore-Tex jacket and shrugged the hood up over his head. He reached down and popped the hood of the truck. Without acknowledging Crystal or even glancing in her direction, he went to the back of the Chevy and got out the cables.
He felt her watching him and knew damned well what she was thinking. This was a power play. They both knew it. And by getting him to come back for her, she’d won the first round. But the fight wasn’t over. They both acknowledged that, too.
Propping open the hood, he felt the first cold trickles of rain pouring into his shoe. He looked down to see that the water was ankle deep.
“Fuck,” he said, wishing she could hear, because she hated that word so much. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He clipped the cable to the corresponding battery terminals, hoping like hell he got it right. Then he turned his attention to Crystal’s car. Correction, his car. The one she’d stolen from him, along with the house and everything else in the divorce settlement.
At least she was smart enough to pop the hood release without being told. He found the battery terminals caked with corrosion and had to chip the flakes off with his pocketknife. Then he connected the jumper cables and stepped out from under the hood. With a flick of his wrist, he signaled for her to try the ignition. It was raining so hard he couldn’t hear the engine engage.
She opened her door and shouted, “It’s not working.”
“Try it again.”
She shot him a look and turned the key. With the door open, he could see her do it. Nothing happened—no panel, no dome light, no nothing. Complete failure.
“Try again,” he yelled.
She shook her head. “Still not working.”
Out of patience, Derek motioned for her to move. She had to clamber over the console, and he was treated briefly to a flash of beauty queen leg. Even standing in a puddle in the midst of a storm, even knowing all the reasons he had divorced her, Derek felt a jolt of such irrational sexual hunger that he groaned aloud.
This of course was Crystal’s great power. This was why he’d stayed with her fifteen years instead of fifteen minutes. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.
And now she sat next to him, silent and ungrateful, smelling of designer perfume and…He glared at her questioningly. “Smoking, Crys?”
She offered him a skinny, flat package of cigarettes that had seen better days. “Join me?”
“Those things will kill you.”
“We all have to die of something.”
Derek shook his head in disgust while he confirmed what he’d known since he saw the condition of her battery. “It’s dead,” he said.
Rainwater dripped from his hooded jacket to the cloth upholstery.
She said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her tight-lipped, pale-faced, narrow-eyed expression said it all.
“Fuck,” he said, banging the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She used to wince when he talked that way. That was, actually, his primary reason for talking that way. Now that she had no reaction, he shut up. Then he took a deep, cleansing breath to clear his head, filling his lungs from the top down the way his breathing coach had taught him.
Yes, he had a freaking breathing coach. He had coaches and trainers for every possible angle, physical or mental. If he didn't watch out, one of these days he’d find himself with a coach for taking a piss.
The car was littered with carelessly strewn effluvia. A clump of sodden Kleenex told him she felt as lousy about the teacher conference as he did. A pair of earrings he didn’t recognize lay in the ashtray. Crystal had a way of littering herself throughout the car, stamping it with her presence. It was littered with memories, too. This had been a brand-new car the day they’d driven Charlie to school for the first day of kindergarten. She’d sobbed miserably while big brother Cameron looked on in disgust.
Then, realizing the nest was truly empty, they’d driven to Lovers Lane, a private cliffside parking spot off the coastal highway. It was a place Derek remembered from high school, an outcropping so lofty and sheer that an ordinary car felt like the cockpit of a spaceship. That day, with both their children in school for the first time, he’d made love to her in the back of the station wagon on the scratchy gray carpet littered with golf tees, scorecards, plastic Happy Meal toys and lost pennies. He could’ve taken her home that day, to their own bed, but at home, phone calls and work awaited him.
Back then, she’d wrapped her strong bare legs around him and sighed with satisfaction. Now she handed him her cell phone. “Call your auto club.”
He snatched it from her, got the number from his wallet and made the call. The rain came down harder. The dispatcher said the first available assistance would arrive in three to four hours. When Derek told Crystal this, she said, “I’m not waiting here.”
“Go inside the school and wait.”
“That’s ridiculous. Cameron needs to be picked up in an hour and a half. And then Charlie after that. She’s playing at her friend Lindsey’s house. I don’t know how long you told the sitter to keep Ashley.”
The baby wasn’t with her usual sitter, but Derek wasn’t about to disclose that until he had to. Crystal was pissed enough at him.
“Tell you what,” he said, “get Lily to give you a ride home. I’ll pick up the kids and bring them to your place.”
“No. I’m not imposing on Lily.”
“She’s your freaking best friend,” he said, yelling now. “She’ll bail you out, no problem.”
“Yes, she would, if I asked her to. But I won’t. Our children are not Lily’s responsibility.” She regarded him with those beautiful, cool blue eyes, and it was a look of such obstinacy that Derek felt himself conceding the battle without even saying a word.
Having a family had always seemed like a reasonable prospect to Derek. A wife and kids. What could be simpler or more pleasant?
Where Crystal was involved, nothing was simple and very little was pleasant. And who knew what a circus act it actually was to juggle three kids? The laundry, the phone calls, the homework, the carpools, the scheduling of sports and music lessons. Hell, you needed an air traffic controller to manage everything.
No wonder Charlie was in trouble. Someone had dropped the ball with her, and she was failing in school. A hard knot of guilt formed in Derek’s stomach. Charlie. His little chip shot.
He checked his watch. They still had an hour and a half to kill before it was time to pick up the kids. He drew on the hood of his jacket, shouldered opened the door and went back out into the roaring storm. He disconnected the cables, closed both engine hoods, then went around to Crystal’s door and yanked it open.
“Get in the truck,” he yelled.
“But why—”
“Get in the damned truck.” He turned away, got in the driver’s seat, put on his seat belt and watched her. Even in the teeth of the storm, she moved with the unhurried grace of a queen, opening her red umbrella and then stepping out of the car. She got into the truck, then folded the umbrella and slid it under the seat.
“Did you leave your keys in the car?” he asked.
“Of course. I’m not stupid, Derek.”
“No,” he said, putting the truck in reverse. “You’re not.” Things would be easier if she was.
He headed west on the river road, the wipers thumping rapidly across the windshield.
“Where are you going?”
“We’ve got an hour to talk,” he said, ignoring her question. “So talk.”
He could feel her glare as she clicked her seat belt in place. “Charlie’s in trouble. Fighting about it for an hour isn’t going to solve anything.”
He glanced over at her and saw no trace of sarcasm in her expression.
“Then let’s not fight.” He wondered if she heard the weariness in his voice. It was exhausting, trying to figure out what to do with a love gone wrong, especially when kids were involved.
With sullen reluctance, the rain let up and finally stopped altogether. Derek turned off the river road and drove up the ramp to the highway. Here at the coast road, the sun was trying to peek through the broody, black-bellied clouds over the churning sea.
The view was spectacular no matter how many times he saw it. He and Sean had grown up in Comfort, and on the weekends they liked to come out to the coast to hang out on the beach or play a round of golf at the seaside links course. As they grew older and went up to Portland for college, they continued to come out here. The highway department’s scenic vista pullout was the perfect place to bring girls for make-out sessions.
The first time he’d dated Crystal, he’d brought her here. It was no accident that he’d chosen the spot today.
He maneuvered the truck along the winding road, finding it deserted except for the occasional darting squirrel or deer heading pointlessly from one side of the road to another. The economic recession had hit the county hard, and its budget troubles showed in the condition of the road. Potholes were patched here and there, guardrails were down or missing altogether. The shoulder of the road was collapsing in places from mudslides. The macadam surface was slick and he could feel the tires of the truck trying to hydroplane. In the burgeoning sunlight, wisps of steam rose from the wet pavement.
Derek tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t lead to a fight. An impossible task with Crystal these days. She was as fragile and brittle as her name implied, and the slightest upset could cause her to shatter. However, with Charlie in trouble, they had a difficult conversation ahead of them.
“So,” he said at last, “what do you make of our conference with your friend?”
“Lily was speaking to us in her capacity as Charlie’s teacher,” she said, “not as my friend. And to be honest, I’m actually glad to have Charlie’s problems out in the open. It’s time to stop fooling ourselves. From our first meeting with Lily last September, it’s been clear that Charlie’s way behind the curve. Now we need to figure out what to do.”
“Charlie never had any problems until Lily’s class.” Derek gritted his teeth. That was going to piss Crystal off. Too bad. This was about Charlie. His daughter, his heart.
“Oh, so you think Lily is the cause of Charlie stealing and being behind in school? Lily is the best teacher our kids have ever had.”
He pulled off at the scenic vista. For a moment, he flashed on a vivid memory of the first time he’d brought Crystal here. She was his beauty queen from Beaverton, he was a hot stick striving for his PGA card and they were in love. She gave up her crown for him and he’d vowed to leave his party-animal ways behind. Their future was golden.
That golden future had been tarnished by the patina of time, of betrayal, of all the myriad strains of trying to stay on his game.
“I’m saying you might want to consider the idea that Lily could actually be part of the problem.”
“That would be so much easier than considering the idea that you might be part of the problem.” She caught his glare and amended, “All right, maybe we’re both part of it. I trust Lily implicitly. When she taught Cameron seven years ago, you had no complaints about her. He flourished in her class.”
“Cameron is a no-brainer. A monkey could have educated him. He was the perfect kid.” Derek wondered if his son knew he thought that. Only this morning, they’d had their usual fight over the usual topic—golf.
“What’s that face?” Crystal asked. She could still read him like a rule book.
“Cam’s pissed at me again,” Derek confessed. “He doesn’t want to play in the tournament this weekend. I don’t get it. He’s a brilliant golfer.” He thumped his hand on the steering wheel. “Maybe he was just trying to get a rise out of me. In fact, now that the rain’s stopped, he’s probably hitting a bucket of balls for practice. Kid can’t stay away from the game.”
“Which shows how much you know about your son,” Crystal said.
“Now you’re telling me he doesn’t like golf.”
“He likes you. He thinks he has to play golf so you’ll give him the time of day.”
“That’s shit.” Derek thought about the strained conversation he’d had with Cameron that morning. The strain had flared into out-and-out hostility from both sides. Somehow, battling his son brought out the worst in him. “I can’t believe he’s fighting me over golf. When I offered to talk to Coach Duncan about it, Cam freaked on me, completely freaked.”
“Don’t talk to Greg Duncan,” Crystal said quickly, sharply.
Derek frowned.
She said, “Let me talk to Cameron—later.” She unhooked her seat belt and got out to pace in front of the truck. He had no choice but to join her. The air was still chilly and smelled of damp asphalt, cedar and madrona. Far below, waves breaking on the rocks threw up rainbows of light. This place used to hold such magic for them. Even the abandoned lighthouse way out on Tillamook Rock, miles offshore, had been part of the spell. It was a famous columbarium where old bones and ashes were put to rest. They used to swear they wanted to be placed there when they died, after growing old together.
“We need to focus on Charlie right now,” Crystal said. “Not Cameron. And not Lily.”
“She’s part of Charlie’s troubles,” Derek pointed out.
“She’s my best friend,” Crystal said.
“Maybe that’s clouding your judgment.”
“Damn it, Derek. Look at the facts. Charlie isn’t reading and she’s been stealing. Lily didn’t cause that. She’s trying to fix it. We need to rethink our plans for the summer.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Lily wants us to do what’s best for Charlie, not what’s good for your career.”
“Oh, so you’re just going to cancel your plans and stay home, carting the kid to Portland every day to study.”
“I think we should consider it. Sorry if that interferes with your plans.”
He barked out a short laugh. “It doesn’t interfere, honey. It negates them completely. You know I won’t do anything this summer without Charlie.”
“What a shame you and Joan will have to miss out on Hawaii.”
“It’s Jane,” he said automatically, but of course she knew that. “And it’s not so much that missing Hawaii is a problem. I need to play in the majors. How the hell do you think we’re going to pay for things like a private clinic in Portland, along with everything else you claim you need?”
“Maybe if you managed your money better, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You earn huge amounts, Derek, but you spend even more. How many are on your payroll now, a dozen? Twenty? Do you really need to travel with your own personal massage therapist?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. My people are the engine that keeps this train on track. You know that, Crystal. You know.” He aimed a meaningful look at her designer shoes and the diamond pendant glittering at her throat. “Maybe you should lay off the shopping. Ever think of that?”
She glared at him, then glanced at her watch. “We should go. It’s time to pick up the baby at Mrs. Foster’s and Cameron at the country club.” She got back in the truck and put on her seat belt. She was utterly self-possessed, expecting the world to wait on her.
He got in and started up the truck. Steam still rolled off the hood and the asphalt. It was no longer raining, but fog hung thick in the ditches and vales surrounding the road.
“Cameron doesn’t mind hanging around the club,” Derek said, hoping to deflect her attention from who was watching the baby. “Now that Sean works there, they sometimes get in a round together.” He slammed the truck into reverse and peeled out, rear end fishtailing on the slick surface of the road.
“I think Cameron’s been spending too much time with your brother.”
“For God’s sake, Crystal. The kids have a right to get to know their uncle. Cameron likes him. Sean’s good for his golf game.”
“Giving him pointers, like teaching him how to cheat?”
Derek took the next curve a little too fast, swinging onto the shoulder, veering into the gravel along the shoulder. “That was a low blow. Sean’s no cheater.”
“No? Then he was banned from the Asian Tour for…what? Having a bad hair day?”
“For getting mixed up with the wrong woman,” he said. Then a devil inside him made him add, “God knows, I can relate to that.”
“You bastard, you—” She broke off, looking at the road. “You just missed the turnoff into town.”
“I’m taking Echo Ridge.”
“Then you’ll have to go through town to get to the sitter’s,” she pointed out.
All right, thought Derek. He might as well go for broke. “Ashley isn’t there. She’s with Jane.”
She sucked in an audible breath. “Well, that’s just peachy. The thought of my baby in the hands of your jailbait girlfriend makes my day.”
“Jane Coombs is twenty-four and already has her Ph.D.”
“You love reminding me of that. I don’t give a shit about her academic credentials.”
Derek knew she did. Crystal joked about getting out of college with only her “MRS” degree, but the fact that she had never finished her education was a sore spot, something probably only Derek knew.
“Jane loves Ashley,” he said. Then he took a deep breath. “And you might as well know she’s moving in with me.”
“Ah, living in sin. You’re such a perfect role model for our children.”
“We won’t be living in sin.” His hands were suddenly drenched in sweat, slick upon the steering wheel. “Crystal, we’re getting married. We plan to tell the kids next weekend.”
“You bastard,” she said, her voice eerily quiet. “You damned, fucking bastard.”
He glanced over at her and had the strangest sensation of déjà vu. And then he laughed. He was a bastard. His stepfather used to remind him of that all the time. And the fucking part? Well, that was certainly true. He fucked anything that twitched a tush at him, and on a pro golf tour, there was a lot of twitching.
“You think this is funny?” Crystal demanded.
“I think it’s hilarious. We’re hilarious. God, look at us, Crystal. Look at the mess we made, me with my pecker and you with your purse.” He chuckled, feeling giddy and light-headed as though he’d just slammed down a shot of tequila. He looked over and caught her staring at him with her heart in her eyes.
“Damn it, Crystal,” he said, “I was so damned in love with you, but you made it so damned hard to stay that way.”
Her eyes misted and for just a moment he saw the girl she had been, the dream lover he thought he wanted for the rest of his life. She had worshiped him with a fervor that was a turn-on. Where had that gone?
“God, Derek,” she said, “it’s so much easier than you—look out!”
He yanked his gaze back to the road in time to see a doe and her spotted fawn gambol down the fogged-in bank, stepping directly into the roadway right in front of him.
Derek had grown up in this place. He knew every curve of the road and every outcrop, every sheer cliff, and every thick-girthed cedar and Douglas fir that bordered the wild highway. He even knew that the Huffelmanns owned property for the next mile along the road and had posted it No Trespassing. Old man Huffelmann would not even give the highway department permission to put a guardrail alongside the steep incline, so there was no barrier to keep him on the road.
The tires screamed on the wet pavement and he dialed the steering wheel frantically in the opposite direction of the skid. Crystal stayed completely silent, though she threw her hands in front of her and braced them on the dashboard. Somehow, Derek wrestled the car back into its lane.
Crystal glowered at him. “You drive like a maniac.”
“You used to like that about me.”
“I used to like a lot of things about you.”
“Hey, at least I didn’t cream Bambi and his mom.” He could tell she was in no mood. Fine, he thought. He might as well get on that last nerve of hers right now and get it over with. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you I have to miss Ashley’s birthday party.”
“Derek, come on.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to be in Vegas for a big tournament, so I need you to change the party date.”
“I’m not changing a thing.”
“She’s only two. She’ll never know. She’s just a baby. It’s no big deal.” A pair of madronas, the bark peeled off to reveal bloodred branches, grew beside the sharp curve in the road ahead. He ignored the yellow-and-black caution sign and accelerated.
“No big deal,” she echoed, her voice soft with restrained fury. “Well then, I suppose that now would be as good a time as any to tell you the baby isn’t yours.”
part two
The beauty of a strong, lasting commitment is often best understood by men incapable of it.
—Murray Kempton
chapter 6
Friday
5:00 p.m.
And here’s the challenger, Sean Maguire, aiming for the green and a possible eagle putt. No one in the crowd is breathing as the challenger selects a Titleist forged-iron pitching wedge, assuming his famous stance. An easy, athletic swing, a flawless follow-through and…he’s on, ladies and gentlemen. He’s on the green and rolling twenty, fifteen, ten! He’s just ten feet from the hole, and that’s one putt away from a historic win. Not only will he take home one million dollars and the championship trophy, but he’ll also be having sex with identical blond twins who magically turn into beer and pizza at midnight. Ladies and gentlemen, you can hear a pin drop as the challenger steps up to address the ball. All that stands between him and victory is ten feet of putting green. This should be no trouble for the legendary Maguire. He adjusts his stance, glides into his famous backswing, preparing to make history. Smoothly the club head descends toward the ball, flawlessly aimed, and—
“Hey, mister.”
Sean’s arm jerked and the head of the putter missed. The golf ball bobbled away from the hole. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he straightened up and scowled at the kid, who stood at the edge of the practice screen.
“Yeah?” Sean immediately regretted the annoyance in his tone. The wide-eyed kid was probably a fan, asking for the autograph of the legendary Sean Maguire. “What can I do for you?”
“You got change for a dollar?”
Great. He scrounged the change from his pocket. He had only thirty-five cents. The coins felt light and insubstantial in his hand.
He leaned down and grabbed the ball from the rain-soaked green. His four o’clock lesson hadn’t shown, probably due to the weather, so he’d passed the time practicing his own game. To what end, he had no idea.
“What do you need, kid?”
“Change for the Coke machine.” He shuffled his feet and, probably prodded by some latent lesson from Mom, added, “Please, mister.”
“You can call me Sean.”
“Really?”
“I just said you could. I can make change in the clubhouse.” He jerked his head toward the long, low building. His place of employment. He’d capped off his stellar career as a professional golfer right where he’d started, here at Echo Ridge.
As the kid fell in step with him, Sean asked, “What’s your name?”
“Russell Clark.”
They shook hands and kept walking.
“Hey, want to know how to figure out your porn-star name?”
“My what?”
“You know, your porn-star name. Porn stars never use their own names.”
The kid was ten years old if he was a day. What did he know about porn stars? “Is this something you ask all strangers, or just me?”
Russell shrugged, so Sean said, “Okay, sure. Sure. I’m dying to know.”
“Tell me the name of the street you live on.”
“Ridgetop Avenue.” In yet another nondescript apartment. He’d never lived in a place he actually cared about.
“Now tell me the name of the first pet you ever had.”
“When I was about your age, I had a shepherd mutt named Duke.”
The kid roared with laughter. “Then your porn-star name’s Duke Ridgetop.”
Oh, that’s brilliant, thought Sean. Just brilliant. “Maybe he’ll pay my bills for me.”
“Guess what mine is. Betcha can’t guess.”
“You’re right. I can’t. What is it?”
“Pepper McRedmond. Cool, huh?” Russell laughed and slapped his thigh.
“Whatever tees you up, kid.”
Inside the clubhouse, Sean made change and then Russell scurried off to the Coke machine. Kids belonged to an alien nation, Sean thought. He’d never understand them. Shaking his head, he noticed his weekly paycheck in his in-box. He stuffed it in his jacket pocket without even looking at the amount. He knew he ought to be grateful for steady money, but hell, he used to tip his caddie more than that amount after just one round. Used to.
Sean checked the time. He was finished here for the day, but in three hours he’d be back in the bar upstairs, fixing Manhattans and cosmopolitans for local lawyers and leather-skinned retirees. It was hardly worth going home in between. Maura, his girlfriend, was at the hospital until late, and early in the morning, she had to drive to Portland for a seminar. Sean was surprised to feel a twinge of sentiment; he would miss her, he thought. These days, he didn’t trust his own judgment about women.
With this current rotation, she tended to crawl into bed and sleep when she wasn’t working, anyway. They didn’t exactly live together, but lately they’d slept at his place every single night, and item by item, her things were migrating over to his apartment. Two days ago, she’d brought her CD collection and a picture of her family. This was as close to a permanent arrangement as Sean had ever had with a woman. Well, almost.
He looked around the clubhouse, where a few groups of golfers milled around, comparing scores and tallying up debts. Due to the storm, there weren’t many of them. Only the diehards were out in weather like they’d had this afternoon. Sean listened to them laughing and talking, and it made him remember that golf was supposed to be fun. A game. He missed those days.
In the locker room, he changed out of his chinos and club-logo windbreaker—Echo Ridge didn’t permit jeans—and slipped on his favorite Levi’s.
His cell phone rang, and when he recognized the number of the incoming call, his pulse sped up. “Yeah?” he said.
“Hello to you, too, pretty boy.” The voice of Harlan “Red” Corliss, Derek’s agent, was broad and smooth with a smile.
“You sound happy with yourself.” Cocking his head to hold the phone, Sean transferred the things from the pockets of his work pants to his jeans.
“What are you doing next Saturday, Maguire?” Red asked.
Sean dropped his keys and clutched the phone hard. “You got me in the Redwing tournament.”
“That I did. I have a few sponsors’ exemptions and I used one just for you, kid.”
Tournament play. It used to be what Sean lived for, what defined him. He used to be a rising star, a hero of the game. Now here he was, shadowed by disgrace, nobody’s hero. No matter what he did, he could still feel the sick sense of shame and guilt that had shrouded him like a pall.
“Hello?” Red asked when the pause drew out too long. “You’re not worried about your game, are you?”
Sean prowled back and forth in the clubhouse. “The talent’s intact.”
“Forget talent. You have a talent that’s almost freakish. So big deal. Forget you know how to hit a ball at all and work your ass off.” Red was quiet for a moment. “It’s not that, is it?”
“You know it’s not, Red.”
“Look, you can’t worry about that. You didn’t cheat. You were set up. It’ll be ancient history before you know it. Hell, it’s already ancient history.”
Sean leaned his forehead against the locker door. It didn’t matter that he’d been set up. He was guilty of stupidity. He deserved to be back where he started, climbing his way out of a hole of his own making.
“Got it, Red. Ancient history.” He stood up straight, turned and looked out the window. Freshened by the rain and bordered by majestic ancient cedars, the golf course looked green and bright enough to hurt the eyes. And in that moment, it hit him. This was a chance to get back in the game.
“Damn, Red.” Throwing off his doubts, Sean grinned until his face ached. Finally. Sure, Maura would tell him it wasn’t practical to go chasing after a game, and Derek would warn him he wasn’t ready, but Sean didn’t care. This was the break he’d been waiting and hoping for. Another chance at the sport he loved. He’d arrived in the States too late to compete in Q School, in which golfers earned—or requalified for—their PGA card, and he’d resigned himself to waiting another year to go through the process. But Red was one of the best in the business, and he was putting Sean on the fast track.
“Damn is right. I’m having Gail messenger the contracts over, and I’ll call you tomorrow with all the details.”
Sean was still grinning when the clubhouse door opened and shut.
“What’s funny?” asked Greg Duncan, the high school golf coach.
“Did you know there’s a way to make up your porn-star name?” Sean didn’t want to say anything to Duncan about his news. It would seem too much like gloating. Greg Duncan was a damned fine golfer who wanted his PGA card with a hunger that was palpable. He’d competed in Q School a few times but never advanced past sectional competitions. The guy needed a break, but that was golf for you. A heartless game, like Red always said.
“Uncle Sean?” Stomping his muddy shoes on the bristled mat, his nephew, Cameron, called to him from the doorway. “Hey, Coach.”
“Hey, Cameron.” Greg Duncan dropped his spikes in his locker and slammed it shut. “I’m out of here. See you Sunday, okay?” Without waiting for a reply, he headed for the parking lot.
Cameron Holloway bore an almost eerie resemblance to Derek. He had the same sandy-colored hair and intense eyes, the same lanky frame that moved with surprising grace, the same startling talent at swinging a club. He was the best thing that had happened to the local golf team in years. And from the looks of him—cheeks reddened by the wind, hair damp, shoes muddy—he’d been out practicing.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Um, my mom was supposed to pick me up a half hour ago, but I guess she forgot.” He looked sullen as he said it. “She forgets everything lately.”
Sean bore no love for his former sister-in-law, who had taken Derek to the cleaners and back in the divorce, but it didn’t seem right to let Cameron badmouth her. “She probably got delayed in the rain,” he suggested. There were a lot of things Sean envied about Derek, but he sure as hell didn’t envy his brother’s crazy-ass ex-wife. Crystal was enough to drive anyone bonkers.
“Naw, she just forgot, and she’s not answering her cell phone. Neither is my Dad.”
Sean dug in his pocket for his keys. “I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thanks.”
“Meet me in the parking lot.” Sean told Duffy, the greenskeeper, that he was taking off and went out to his truck. Cameron was loading in his clubs, a set of Callaways with graphite shafts, which were better quality clubs than some of the well-heeled doctors at Echo Ridge played. The clubs were hand-me-downs from Derek, who got a new set every year from his sponsor.
Sean reminded himself that his brother had earned his success, stroke by stroke, tournament by tournament. He deserved every perk that came his way. And Sean…well, he got what he deserved, too.
As they pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the steep, winding road, he said, “Why don’t you call your mom, tell her you got a ride home with me so she doesn’t come looking for you.”
Cameron took out his phone and thumbed in the number. “She still won’t answer.”
“Just tell her voice mail.”
There was a silence, then Cameron said, “It’s me. You were late picking me up, so Uncle Sean is giving me a ride home. See you.”
Sean glanced sideways at him. “That tone was borderline rude.”
“It’s over-the-border rude to leave me stranded.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
“There’s always an explanation.”
“You shouldn’t be rude to your mother.”
“What do you care?”
Sean ignored the question and turned on the radio. Nickel Creek was playing “Angels Everywhere.” He tried to remember if, at fifteen, he’d been so angry all the time. He was pretty sure he hadn’t. Then again, he’d had nothing to be angry about. He’d been a happy-go-lucky kid, obsessed with golf and girls, in that order. All these years later, a hell of a lot had changed. Maybe he ought to be angry right along with his nephew. But he still had golf and girls on his mind.
“Did you play a round this afternoon?” he asked by way of making conversation.
“Nope. I hit three buckets of balls and practiced chip shots. There’s a tournament this weekend against Portland Prep.”
“So how’s your game?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Good enough to win this weekend.” He spoke with confidence, not vanity.
“That’s good, then.”
“I guess.”
Sean wondered why the boy didn’t show a little more enthusiasm, but he figured it wasn’t his business to ask.
As he turned into the tree-shaded, manicured subdivision where Crystal lived, it occurred to him that he’d never been to the house on Candlewood Street. While he was married, Derek had lived here for years, but Sean had never visited the house his brother had shared with his beauty-queen wife. Sean had been overseas, playing on the Asian Tour, and hadn’t come back to the States until circumstances forced him to.
He knew the house, though. It was the biggest and oldest in Saddlebrook Acres, an area of large, elegant houses built in the era of the timber barons. When he and Derek were kids, they used to ride their bikes past this very house, admiring the vast lawn and the gleaming white cupola, the wraparound porch.
“Someday I’m going to live there” became the boyhood vow. Yet oddly, the vow had come from Sean, not Derek. It was a place of permanence and splendor, the sort of place a person could imagine spending a whole life. But somewhere along the way, he’d set that dream aside, finding a far different sort of life as a professional golfer. And somehow, Derek had appropriated the dream Sean had come to see as an impossibility.
For a long time, Sean’s half brother made it all come together—the career, the family, the house, everything. From Sean’s perspective, it all seemed to work like a charm. He couldn’t believe Derek had managed to blow it. You’d think, with all of this at stake, Derek could have kept his pecker in his pants at that tournament in Monte Carlo. But, Sean supposed, that was Derek’s business. Judging by the way she’d cleaned him out in the divorce settlement, Crystal Baird Holloway was no picnic to live with. Still…
Sean flicked a sideways glance at Cameron. He was a good enough kid even as he navigated the rocky shoals of his parents’ split. Sure, he had an attitude these days, but who wouldn’t, being shuffled back and forth between houses on alternate weeks. It was the one issue in the divorce agreement on which Derek would not budge. He wanted his kids fifty percent of the time, and his lawyer, whose fees made even Derek shudder, secured joint custody.
“So how’s school?” he asked Cameron, trying to shorten the gap of silence between them.
“Okay, I guess.”
Sean grinned over the arch of the steering wheel. “Bad question. I ought to know better than to ask how school’s going.”
“I don’t mind it.”
Communication in the form of meaningful conversation had never been a forte in the family, Sean reflected. Apparently Cameron was carrying on the tradition.
Sean pulled into the smooth asphalt drive of the house on Candlewood Street. He had every intention of dropping Cameron off and heading home for a quick shower and a bite to eat before going back to work. But some indefinable impulse made him shut off the engine and get out.
“I’ll grab your clubs,” he offered, opening the tailgate of the truck.
“Thanks.” Cameron shouldered his backpack and went to unlock the side door.
Sean followed him inside, leaning the clubs against the wall of a small mudroom crowded with shoes in varying sizes, a fold-up baby stroller, a selection of umbrellas and hats, and a basket filled with gloves and mittens. From somewhere in the house, a distant beeping sound pierced the silence.
“Answering machine,” Cameron said. “I’d better go check it.”
They stepped into the kitchen, and Sean took it all in with a glance. This was the house of his boyhood dreams, but he’d never been inside it. Now here he was, and the whole place seemed to enfold him. The cluttered kitchen had a wooden floor and glass-front cabinets filled with Martha Stewart–style green glassware. A refrigerator was plastered with a calendar, various lists and kids’ artwork. As he followed Cameron to the front entranceway, he noticed wood paneling, an imposing staircase, framed pictures of the kids everywhere.
Cameron hit Play on the machine. The first message was from someone who identified herself as Lily. “Hello, Crystal, I was just calling to see how you’re doing. I hope you think the meeting went all right, so call me.”
“Charlie’s teacher,” Cameron explained.
She did sound sort of prim and proper, Sean thought, picturing a blue-haired woman with bifocals. “You don’t want to tangle with a woman like that,” he said, nudging Cameron.
Next: “Crystal, this is Jane Coombs…” In the background, fussy baby noises punctuated the message. “I was expecting Derek to pick Ashley up this afternoon, but he seems to be running late. Anyway, I have a class to teach tonight, so I’d appreciate it if you’d come and get Ashley as soon as you get this message.”
“Oh, Mom’s going to love that,” Cameron said.
The third message was from someone RSVPing for Ashley’s birthday party. It seemed strange, like planning a party in a war zone. Sean’s younger niece had been born into the turmoil of an exploding marriage, but of the three kids, she was the least affected, too young to understand what she’d lost.
Then Charlie had called the machine. “Pick me up,” said a petulant voice. “I’m at Lindsey’s house and you said you’d pick me up and you’re still not here. Pick me up, you’re late.”
The final message was nearly unintelligible, but Sean could tell it was from a girl who was more articulate at giggling than at speaking. Clearly, she wanted to talk to Cameron. Just as clearly, he was mortified that she’d called for him. Sean could see the heat of embarrassment in Cameron’s red ears, his averted gaze, his hands pushing into the pockets of his jeans.
“End of messages,” said the mechanical voice in the machine.
Sean felt a weird tightening of his gut. “Call your mother again.”
Cameron shrugged and dialed the phone. “No answer,” he said.
“Now your dad.”
As he held the phone to his ear a second time, Cameron showed the first sign of worry—a small tick in his jaw. “No answer,” he said again. “I’ve already left them messages.”
“Any idea where they might be?”
“Nope.”
It figured. Kids tended not to keep tabs on their parents. Now what? Sean wondered.
The phone rang, startling them both. Cameron snatched it up.
“Hello?” His face flashed momentarily with hope, then fell. “Oh, hi, Jane. No, my mom’s not here. You can drop Ashley off with me, I guess, since I’m home.” A pause. “You’re welcome.” He hung up. “I have a ton of homework, but I won’t get anything done now,” Cameron said. “Ashley’s a pain in the neck to babysit.”
Sean’s tiny niece was so cute you’d have to be made of stone not to like her. Babysitting her, though, was another issue entirely. The prospect of looking after a barely verbal toddler was terrifying to Sean. “I bet your mother will be home any minute,” he said.
Cameron shrugged again.
“What about Charlie?” Sean asked.
“Sounds like she wants to come home.”
“Any idea who Lindsey is? Where she lives?”
“Nope.” Cameron looked at the small screen on the phone. “The number’s on caller ID.”
“I’d better give them a call.” Sean punched in the number. A woman’s voice answered, and for a moment he blanked, then said, “Ma’am, this is Charlie Holloway’s uncle, Sean Maguire. I’m calling about my niece.”
“Oh! I’m Nancy Davenport. Would you like to speak with Charlie?”
“Actually, I was just calling to let you know…I’m afraid her mother might not be there to pick her up. She’s been…delayed. Charlie’s brother is here with me, so I’ll come and get her.”
“That’s no problem,” the woman said. “I’ll run her home. I haven’t started dinner yet.”
Sean thanked her and hung up. He looked at Cameron.
“No clue,” the boy said, but his gaze shifted to the door and then to the floor, a little too quickly. “My mom’s always got something going on. She probably forgot to tell anybody.”
Sean wandered into the kitchen. He studied the calendar clipped with magnets to the refrigerator. The current date had a notation. “Conf. w/Lily & D., 3:15 p.m.”
“What do you make of this?” he asked Cameron.
“Lily—the teacher on the answering machine. Miss Robinson. She was my third-grade teacher and now Charlie’s in her class. Maybe there was a conference with her. Charlie’s been doing lousy in school all year.” Cameron rolled his eyes. “How does a kid flunk third grade, that’s what I’d like to know.”
They waited. Talked golf a little, just to fill the silence and maybe distract themselves. “So you have a tournament coming up this weekend,” Sean observed, noting the team calendar stuck to the refrigerator with magnets.
Cameron turned away.
“Don’t bowl me over with your enthusiasm, okay?” Sean said.
The kid hunched his shoulders even more. “My coach is a dick, okay?”
“Greg Duncan? He seems all right to me.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Sean dug in his pocket and took out an Indian head penny. “This was my good luck charm. I’ve used it as a ball marker since I was younger than you.”
Cameron turned, took the penny and examined it. “That’s cool.”
“You want to borrow it?”
“You just said it’s your good luck charm.”
“Was. I said ‘was.’ It kind of deserted me.”
Cameron nodded. He knew about the fiasco that had brought Sean home. “Did you like playing over there, in Japan and Indonesia and stuff?”
“Sure, while it lasted.” Sean tried to imagine what he’d be doing in his old life as a tour professional in Asia. Once he’d started seeing Asmida, he used to play in Malaysia every chance he got. After a round, there would be far too much drinking and plenty of mindless, gratifying sex in opulent hotel rooms or in expensive cars. It didn’t last, of course. How could something like that last? Especially, he remembered with a twinge of pain, with the daughter of a yakuza mobster? No one could ever accuse him of having good judgment, that was for sure. Derek often ragged on him about mapping out a career plan. Of course, in order to do that, Sean needed a career.
Cameron pocketed the token. They called both Derek and Crystal again and got no answer. Cameron drank a slug of milk straight from the carton, then offered some to Sean, who declined.
He didn’t like the unfamiliar feeling in his gut. It was a cold, hard squeeze, brief and intense, like a fist of ice. He said nothing to Cameron. No point in worrying the kid.
He took a stroll through the downstairs, checking out the house. This had been Derek’s world for more than a decade. It seemed strange that Sean had never been here. He’d been too busy chasing prize money and easy women half a world away, and hadn’t bothered to come back even for a visit. There was a big living room and a long hallway where, Sean imagined, Derek had obsessively practiced his putts. The dining room had a table and chairs and a tall glass cabinet that was practically empty, probably because it had once held Derek’s favorite trophies. Sean shook his head, thinking about his brother, feeling love and admiration and envy all in the same heavy wave.
“You don’t have to stay,” Cameron told him. “I can handle the girls.”
“That makes one of us, then,” Sean said. “I’ll stick around until we figure out where your mother went.”
Darkness crept down and shadows crowded into the corners of the large, empty rooms. Sean switched on a couple of lamps. The tense quiet in the house was broken when Cameron turned on the radio, tuning it to a hip-hop station.
A few minutes later, a car pulled up, headlights swishing across the living room walls. Sean’s gut turned watery with relief. Crystal might not be thrilled to see him, but that was too damned bad. He had a few choice words for her.
His relief evaporated when he saw that the visitor was Jane Coombs, lugging a red-faced Ashley and an overstuffed diaper bag. Sean liked Derek’s girlfriend well enough, he supposed, though he barely knew her. At the moment she wasn’t looking to be liked. She had that tight-lipped don’t-mess-with-me expression people wore when their last nerve was about to snap.
“Oh, hi, Sean,” she said, clearly surprised to see him. “I can’t believe Crystal stood up her own kid like this. Anyway, here you go.” She dumped the baby into his arms. The two-year-old regarded him with apprehension.
“Have you heard from Derek?” Sean asked, shifting the baby awkwardly.
“Not a word. We must’ve all got our signals crossed. Listen, I’m grotesquely late,” Jane continued, “so I need to hurry.” Spying Cameron, she said, “Come and get the car seat, will you? God, thanks, you’re a lifesaver.”
When Ashley saw her brother, she squealed with delight and reached for him. “Cam! Cam!”
“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” he said, and followed Jane out to her car.
When the baby realized he was walking away, she arched her back and let out a wail that penetrated like an armor piercing bullet.
“Hey, now,” said Sean, his chest filling up with panic. “It’ll be all right. He’s coming back.”
She thrashed her head from side to side and cried harder. Her tiny fists alternately clutched Sean’s shirt and pummeled him. He was reminded of the creature in Alien popping from the stomach of an unsuspecting man. What the hell was it with babies? he wondered feverishly. They were like another life form to him, a dangerous and sinister one at that. She was loud and smelled funky, too. He suspected Jane, in all her self-important rush, had not bothered to check the kid’s diaper.
It felt like an eternity before Cameron returned with the car seat. The second Ashley spotted him, she quit yelling and lurched toward him, nearly leaping out of Sean’s arms. He clutched the writhing little body to keep her from falling, then quickly handed her over. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“Naw, she’s just cranky. Probably tired and hungry, aren’t you, sugar bear?” Cameron jiggled her on his hip. “I’ll go get her something to eat.”
“’Nana. Want a ’nana,” Ashley chortled good-naturedly as he set her down and led her into the kitchen. In a heartbeat, she’d turned from the Tasmanian Devil into an angel. How did she do that so quickly?
A moment later, Charlie came barreling in through the front door, a towheaded dynamo.
“Uncle Sean!”
He caught her up in his arms. Her wiry limbs felt surprisingly strong, and something—her hair or skin—had a bubblegum smell. This was more his speed, a niece who actually liked him. “Hey, short stuff. How you doing?”
“I’m starving to death,” she said, clutching her stomach and reeling in his arms. “Where’s Mom?”
He set her down carefully, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to be staying with you until your mom gets back.”
She gave him a look of skepticism, narrowing her eyes and twirling one pigtail with her finger. “Really?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
“Maybe I do.” She yelled with delight as he chased her to the kitchen.
There, the baby was happily cramming a chunk of banana into her mouth. Charlie helped herself to one. “Did you know monkeys peel bananas like this, from the bottom up?” She demonstrated.
“I guess that makes you a monkey.”
“I wish I was a monkey,” Charlie said.
“You look like one,” Cameron said.
Charlie stuck her tongue out at him.
“Monkey,” Ashley echoed around a mouthful of banana.
“Why do you wish you were a monkey?” asked Sean.
“Then I wouldn’t have to go to yucky, sucky school.”
“Sucky,” Ashley said.
Sean looked at Cameron. “Is she allowed to say that?”
“Probably not.”
Sean turned to Charlie. “Don’t say sucky.”
“Okay.” Charlie bit into her banana.
“Sucky,” Ashley said again.
“I’ll be right back.” Sean hurried out of the kitchen and went to the phone in the front hall. He picked up the handset and glared at it. What the hell was going on? This was starting to be truly…sucky. He wondered how long he should wait before getting seriously worried.
With a scowl, he dialed Derek’s cell phone. Derek always answered his phone, always checked his messages. When the voice mail clicked on, Sean said, “Hey, bro, it’s me. I’m here with your kids at Crystal’s house, and she’s not home. What’s going on? Call me.” He found Crystal’s number by the phone, got her voice mail and left a similar message. He wished, just briefly, that he knew her better. He wished he knew if she was the sort of woman who would temporarily forget her kids.
Now what? he wondered. He tried Maura. He didn’t know why. His girlfriend barely knew Derek and had never met Crystal and the kids. The people in his life didn’t know one another. His connections with family were disparate and shallow, something that had never occurred to him until now.
“Dr. Riley,” she answered with crisp efficiency. A fourth-year medical student, she was working at Portland’s Legacy West Hospital this year.
“Hey, Doc, it’s me.”
“Sean!” A smile brightened her voice. “What’s up?”
“I’m not sure. I’m with my brother Derek’s kids. There was some mix-up and their parents are MIA.”
“So call them and—”
“I can’t get hold of either one of them.”
“Well, then…look, I’m in the middle of rounds. And I’m staying in the city for a seminar, did I tell you that? Can I call you in a few?”
“Sure, whenever. Bye.” He had no idea what he expected her to do. She didn’t even know these kids. This sure as hell wasn’t her problem.
Ashley was yelling and banging something in the kitchen. Cameron had turned the radio up loud again.
Sean hit the caller ID button on the phone and looked at the display. The first came up Private, the second was “Coombs, Jane.” The next one was “Robinson, Lily.”
The schoolmarm, he thought. There was something vaguely familiar about the name. Maybe he’d met her before, though he doubted it. He tended not to hang out with schoolmarms, but maybe that was about to change.
“Help me out here, Miss Robinson,” he muttered as he dialed the number.
chapter 7
Friday
7:30 p.m.
Lily sighed with contentment and snuggled down into her favorite overstuffed chair. There was a large bowl of popcorn and a glass of red wine on the table beside her. On the coffee table in front of her, a map of Italy lay spread out with the sinuous route of the Sorrentine Peninsula highlighted in yellow. The names of the towns, which she’d circled in red, came from story and legend—Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Vietri Sul Mare.
Two more months, she thought. Then summer would be here and she’d go jetting off on an adventure she’d been dreaming about for half a year. She’d be all by herself, gloriously, blissfully alone.
Her colleagues at school thought it odd that she loved to travel solo, but for Lily, making her own way and answering to no one were her favorite parts of the adventure. Her annual summer trip was hugely important to her. It always had been. Travel gave her balance and perspective and made her feel like a different person. It occurred to her to wonder why she would want to be a different person, but she didn’t think too hard about that.
She loved seeing new places and making new friends. Crystal always asked her what was wrong with the old ones. Nothing, Lily thought, except that sometimes they made you do exhausting emotional work. Lily was good at a lot of things, but not at nurturing the deep, sometimes painful bonds of true intimacy. Life simply hadn’t prepared her for that. She could understand the heart of a child, could find ways to inspire and teach, but she’d never been capable of taking a headlong plunge into lifelong commitment. Some people, she had long ago decided, were not cut out for the dizzying, dangerous adventure of loving someone until it hurt.
That didn’t mean she was immune to the occasional pang of yearning. Maybe she’d even have a romantic fling this summer. A flirtation, free of complications and commitments. It was supposed to be easy to do in Italy. At the end of summer, she would return to Comfort refreshed and ready to greet a new crop of students.
This, the cycle of school year and summer, was the rhythm of her life, and it made perfect sense to her. She had only to look at her own family to know she was right. Following a tragedy that was both shrouded in mystery and publicly recorded, her parents had spent their entire marriage making each other miserable. They were still at it to this day.
Lily had taken the lesson to heart and plotted out her life carefully. Her younger sister, Violet, had taken the opposite route, opting for an early marriage and two kids, a husband who earned too little money and a large rental house in Tigard they couldn’t afford.
By comparison, Lily had a job she loved, a small but comfortable place of her own and the freedom to do as she pleased. She meant to keep her life this way, quiet and safe.
You’re all alone, said an inner voice.
She ignored the voice, which sounded remarkably like Crystal, and sipped her wine as she read an article about a ceramics shop in Ravello where Hillary Clinton and Dustin Hoffman ordered their dishes. After a while, she set aside the map and glanced at the clock. Her usual Friday night routine was a movie at the Echo Ridge Pavilion, but the rain had started up again, and she didn’t feel like going out.
A guilty pleasure video, then, she thought, perusing her DVD collection. That was another advantage to being a free agent. If she had a man in her life, she probably wouldn’t be choosing something like Steel Magnolias or Two Moon Junction. To her knowledge, no man in history had ever willingly sat through Sense and Sensibility.
She narrowed her choices down to Under the Tuscan Sun, which would get her in the mood for Italy, and Bull Durham, about a sexually liberated schoolteacher getting it on with Kevin Costner in his prime. She thought about his famous speech about kisses that last for three weeks, and the decision was made.
As she was watching the opening credits, the phone rang. “Great timing,” she muttered, but stopped the disc and went to get the phone. Crystal, probably, calling to talk about Charlie.
Just the thought brought a heaviness to Lily’s heart. Ordinarily, school and personal matters were kept strictly separate, but in this case, they intersected. Her best friend, and her best friend’s precious daughter.
It seemed to amuse Charlie that she knew her teacher outside of school. The little girl usually got a secret smile on her face when she called Lily “Miss Robinson,” but she never took advantage of her intimate knowledge of her teacher’s personal life. In school, Charlie tried not to draw attention to herself at all. Which was why this current habit of stealing was so alarming.
“Hello?”
“Uh, yeah. Is this Miss Robinson?” The male voice was deep and strong, completely unfamiliar.
“I’m afraid I don’t accept solicitation calls,” she said crisply, and started to put down the phone.
“I’m not—wait. This is about Crystal Holloway.”
Lily frowned and cradled the receiver against her cheek. Was Crystal seeing someone? Last time they talked about it, Crystal said she was swearing off men once and for all. “I blame men for all my troubles,” she’d said dramatically, not long ago.
“Don’t you mean one man specifically?” Lily had asked.
“No, actually.” Crystal hadn’t elaborated.
“Who is this?” Lily asked the caller.
“Sean Maguire. I’m Charlie’s uncle.”
Ah, yes, Lily thought. The fabled Uncle Sean, one of Charlie’s favorite topics for show-and-tell. Since he’d moved back to town, Charlie had related several overly long stories about him, but the main point always got lost in translation. Hero worship was usually the topic.
According to Crystal, Sean was cut from the same cloth as Derek, “only younger.”
Lily had the vaguest memories of him from the Holloways’ wedding. He had reminded her of Brad Pitt in his first movie, but that only made her dislike him more. “Never trust a pretty man,” Crystal had once told her.
“Hello?” His smooth, somewhat disturbing voice intruded on her thoughts.
“Mr. Maguire,” Lily said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” There was a muffled sound, as though he was intimately cupping his hand around the mouthpiece. “I’m here at Crystal’s house, watching her kids. She’s not home yet.”
“I see.” What a loser, she thought. Couldn’t look after his own flesh and blood without calling for help. “And how can I help you?” she asked.
“I figured you might know where she is.” Tension crackled in his voice.
“Well, I don’t,” Lily said. “You should call her cell phone. I can give you her number, or you can get it from the kids—”
“I’ve been trying her cell phone all evening,” he broke in. “She doesn’t answer. Derek doesn’t answer his, either.”
Lily’s grip tightened on the receiver. She frowned, causing her glasses to inch down her nose. “That’s not like either of them.” With three kids and two households, both Crystal and Derek were vigilant about making sure they could be reached at all times. They had tormented each other through separation and divorce, but to their credit, they’d tried to shield the kids from the worst of it.
“I agree,” said the stranger.
“When was the last time you were in touch with them?”
“As near as I can tell, you were the last one to speak with them,” he said, and Lily wondered if she detected a hint of accusation in his voice. “Crystal forgot to pick up Cameron from the golf course and Charlie from her friend’s house. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Now the phone felt damp and slick in Lily’s hand. “No. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I see. Well, then.” He made an impatient sound, clearly about to hang up. “Thanks, I guess.”
Lily flashed on the notion of hanging up and going back to her movie. Finishing her wine and reading up on the Amalfi Coast. Now, however, that was no longer a possibility. She would simply worry about Crystal and the kids all night.
“Why did you call me, Mr. Maguire?” she asked.
“I heard your message on the answering machine, so I figured you might know something.”
She wondered what Crystal would think of her ex-brother-in-law, in her home, listening to her messages. “Well, I don’t know where she is. Sorry.”
“All right. Just thought I’d ask. I have a night job, and I figured—never mind. I’ll call in and let them know I can’t make it.”
“Mr. Maguire—” Lily broke off when she realized he’d hung up. “Nice,” she muttered, setting down the phone. She paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. A few minutes ago, this was her living room, her refuge, a cozy place filled with books and one shelf of framed photographs. A favorite shot of her and Crystal, laughing on the beach in front of Haystack Rock, caught her eye. Something was the matter, Lily knew it in her heart.
As she grabbed her purse and rummaged for her keys, she glanced in the hall tree mirror. “Nice,” she said again with an even more sarcastic inflection.
She was dressed for DVD night in heather-gray yoga pants and an oversize hockey jersey, which was the only thing of value left behind by Trent Atkins of the Portland Trailblazers. He hadn’t been a serious boyfriend, just someone she’d gone out with a few times. She couldn’t remember why a basketball player was in possession of a hockey jersey and decided she didn’t care.
She wore no makeup and her brown hair was caught back in a scrunchy. So what? she thought, pushing her feet into a pair of red rubber gardening clogs and donning a rain hat, thus completing the look. “Early frump” might be a good term for it.
Like that mattered, she thought, grabbing her raincoat and dashing out the door.
chapter 8
Friday
7:40 p.m.
Sean Maguire wasn’t pretty anymore, Lily observed the moment she opened the door. He was utterly, undeservedly, unjustly devastating. He was what the girls at school liked to call the whole package, in perfectly faded jeans that hugged his body, a golf shirt with the Echo Ridge logo, a lock of hair falling negligently over his brow and contrasting with the piercing blue of his eyes, a five o’clock shadow outlining the strong lines of his facial structure. He had a mouth that made her think about Kevin Costner’s Bull Durham speech, but at the moment, Maguire wasn’t smiling.
“I was hoping you’d be Crystal,” he said, holding open the door.
How gracious of him.
“Lily Robinson,” she said in her most prim tone. She always sounded insufferably prim when she felt defensive, and she always felt defensive around devastating men. She definitely felt that way now, as she stood dripping on the doormat. Her Totes rain hat was functional though hardly attractive, with its deep brim currently serving as a rain gutter. A steady drip trickled down, right between her eyes, splashing on the mat.
She took off the hat and hung it on a hook behind the door, admonishing herself not to feel self-conscious as she surrendered her coat. He towered over her, even taller than his older brother. Against her will, Lily felt a brief, subtle spasm of reaction to his nearness. He was just a guy, she reminded herself. If not for the kids, they’d have nothing to do with each other.
“Where are the kids?” she asked, removing her fogged-up glasses.
“Upstairs. I told them there’s probably some mix-up in the plans. The girls are watching a video and Cameron’s watching them.”
Or more likely, thought Lily, he was watching instant messages on the Internet. Clearly this man knew nothing about children.
“Any word from Crystal or Derek?” She finished polishing her glasses and put them back on.
“None.” He shot a glance at the stairs. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”
That was all. No “thanks for coming.” He was worried, she conceded. So was she.
As Lily followed him, she couldn’t help but notice the absolute perfection of his butt. Crystal had mentioned his golf career was on the skids. With that butt, he could always turn into a Levi’s model.
A moment later, she realized he’d turned around and caught her staring. Mortified, she shifted her gaze to a stack of three pizza boxes on the cluttered table.
“Want some?” he asked.
For a moment she felt disoriented and a bit flustered. “No, no thanks.”
“So here’s a rundown,” he said, hooking his thumbs into his rear pockets and pacing. “Derek’s fiancée, Jane, has no idea where he is.”
“She’s his fiancée?” Lily felt her stomach lurch. Crystal didn’t know that. If she did, Lily would have been the first to hear of it. Actually, the whole town probably would have heard the screams.
“I guess. As of last weekend, they made it official.”
“When was he planning to tell Crystal?” Lily sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar. She eyed the pizza boxes again, but felt too nervous to eat. Especially pizza. She hadn’t eaten pizza in ages. It was a nutritional nightmare, and stuffing herself with carbs and fats wouldn’t help anything.
Over the years, she’d spent countless hours in this kitchen, sipping herbal tea with organic honey and a slice of orange, savoring the company of her best friend. It felt weird being here with a stranger, speculating.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I bet he told her today. Maybe that’s why they didn’t come home.”
“Why would they disappear with their cell phones turned off?”
“They probably drove somewhere out of range.”
He turned and looked at her, one eyebrow lowered in skepticism. How did he do that with just one? she wondered.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
He wouldn’t.
“Think about it. If Derek remarries, these kids’ lives are going to change drastically. Crystal and Derek have got a lot to talk about.” She didn’t elaborate. Maybe Maguire knew more about the situation, maybe he didn’t. Lily didn’t see it as her place to enlighten him.
“I can’t believe they’d just take off without checking in with the kids,” he said quietly, as though talking to himself.
She drummed her fingers on the counter. An unexplained disappearance wasn’t impossible. In the final years of their marriage, Derek and Crystal had been known as the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald of the PGA, with a reputation for partying, passion and public rows. They had a way of focusing on each other with total absorption, letting the world fall away as they went at each other. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine them so caught up that they temporarily forgot the kids.
Love did strange things to people, Lily reflected, then shivered with the next thought. Had they harmed each other?
She forced herself to ask the hardest question of the night. “Have you called the police?”
He winced. “Yes. I told them the make and model of both cars. There hasn’t been any report of an accident from the highway patrol.”
A small measure of relief seeped through her. “I’m glad to hear that. So are they out searching?”
He shook his head. “No. Once they established that Derek and Crystal are adults with no medical conditions, they put me off. Twenty-four hours seems to be the magic number.”
“This is not going to take twenty-four hours,” Lily said, pushing her hand into her pocket to keep from biting her nail.
“So now what?” Sean asked.
Before she could reply, a crash sounded upstairs, followed by a loud, angry cry from Ashley.
Both Sean and Lily ran to the stairs. He took them two at a time and she followed close behind.
Crystal had remodeled the upstairs some years ago, creating a common playroom for the kids’ toys, plus a nook for a TV and their own computer. Now Lily found Ashley sitting beside a broken bean-pot lamp and howling while Charlie looked on with a tight-lipped disapproval that eerily resembled Crystal. At the computer, Cameron ignored them both as colorful instant-messaging boxes cluttered the screen. They didn’t completely manage to mask the browser window with the ominous title, “Porn Ponies.”
Lily took this all in with a glance. She reached down and scooped Ashley into her arms. She’d always felt proprietary toward Crystal’s children. “Hiya, sweetie,” she said in a soothing whisper. “Are you all right?”
The child’s sobbing subsided. Then she looked at Sean and howled again. “Don’t like you,” she wailed.
He turned his hands palms up. “I never did a thing to her,” he said.
“I like you, Uncle Sean,” Charlie said, climbing him like a tree. “Hello, Lily.” Outside of school, she was allowed to call her teacher Lily. She hung upside down on Sean’s arm and offered a gap-toothed grin.
“How’s my big girl?” Lily patted the baby’s back.
“We’re waiting for Mom,” Charlie said.
“I know.” Lily sidled over to Cameron. “Lose the Porn Ponies,” she murmured. “Now.”
“Porn Ponies?” Sean scowled. “You were looking at porn on the Internet?”
“He always looks at porn,” Charlie said, dropping to the floor.
“Do not,” Cameron said.
“Do so.” She stuck out her tongue at him. “You look at it so much, I bet your pornograph machine’s going to break.”
“Moron.” He clicked the mouse and the screen went black. Ashley stopped crying and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Note to self, thought Lily. Check parental controls on the computer.
“What are you doing here, Lily?” Charlie asked. “If you came to see my mom, she’s not home yet.”
“Tell you what,” Lily said. “You and Cameron get that lamp cleaned up. Your uncle will help you. I’m going to get our little friend here ready for bed.”
Ashley’s mouth made a popping sound as she removed her thumb. “No bed,” she said, and put her thumb back.
“You’re right. You need a bath first, you smelly little thing.”
As she carried the baby to the bathroom, Lily buried her concern behind a smile. She chattered cheerfully away as she ran a shallow bath and peeled off Ashley’s clothes and diaper. The bathroom was cluttered with brightly colored plastic toys and bottles of shampoo and bubble bath, combs and toothbrushes, barrettes and mismatched towels.
Crystal always made this look so easy, Lily reflected, trying to keep hold of the squirming child while opening a bottle of baby shampoo. Lily couldn’t abide the thought of letting go of Ashley or looking away for a single second, so she opened the cap with her teeth. The taste of baby shampoo filled her mouth.
“Ptooey,” she said, wiping her mouth on her shoulder.
Ashley laughed at her and splashed her hands on the surface of the water.
And to think the evening had started out with Italy, wine and Kevin Costner in his prime, thought Lily. Now, with every moment that passed, her conviction that her best friend was missing tightened in her chest.
Missing. There could be no other explanation. Something was terribly wrong.
chapter 9
Friday
9:00 p.m.
Sean stood in the kitchen and contemplated the empty pizza boxes. Nearly empty. He picked up the last piece of hamburger-black olive and stuffed it in his mouth. Whoever heard of hamburger-black olive? That had been Charlie’s suggestion. It wasn’t half bad, he thought, wiping his hand on his pants.
Upstairs, it was quiet at last. Lily Robinson had taken charge. The baby was asleep, and Lily and Charlie were reading a book together in Charlie’s bed.
Miss Lily Robinson to the rescue. She was not the heavyset, blue-haired schoolmarm he’d expected. She just had the personality of one. Still, Sean was grateful that she’d come to help out.
Cameron was back on the Internet, probably surfing for porn even though Sean had warned him not to. Sean had come downstairs to dispose of the broken lamp and clean up the kitchen.
Pizza boxes had been designed, he decided, by someone who had never taken out the trash. There was no way to fit one into a receptacle. He set it on the floor, stepped on it and then folded it in half once, twice, then crammed the cardboard into the kitchen trash can, shoving it down with his foot. He repeated the process for the second box, then the third.
When Lily walked into the kitchen, Sean had one foot in the trash can and his mouth full of pizza. She eyed him as though he were one of the kids in her schoolroom, not with dislike or disapproval, but with a kind of bemused tolerance that made him want to misbehave.
This was the gift of a schoolmarm, he thought. With one look, she could make a grown man feel an inch tall.
He managed to swallow the last of the pizza and extract his foot with a tug, hopping backward and grabbing a chair to keep from falling.
“Hey,” he said, acting casual, crossing his foot at the ankle. “The kids in bed?”
“The girls are. Charlie just fell asleep. Cameron’s doing homework.”
“I’m calling the police again,” Sean said.
“I think you should.” Her face was pale, and she kept worrying a silver-and-turquoise ring around her finger.
She wasn’t bad-looking behind those thick glasses, Sean reflected as he picked up the phone. For a marm.
He hit Redial and got the now-familiar recorded menu of options, pressing three before the falsely soothing canned voice finished the instructions.
“This is Officer Brad Henley.”
“I’m calling for Officer…” Sean consulted the name he’d jotted down. Unable to find a piece of paper, he’d written it in ballpoint pen on the palm of his hand. Lily said nothing but frowned at the hand.
“Nordquist,” Sean said.
“Gone for the day,” Henley said in a bored voice.
Great, they’d changed shifts.
“This is in regard to a matter I called about earlier,” Sean said. “My name is Sean Maguire.”
“Uh-huh. What can I do for you?”
“I called about my brother, Derek Holloway, and his ex-wife, Crystal.” Sean listened to the silence for a few seconds.
“Yeah, okay. I see it in the call log here. What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?”
Find them, he wanted to scream into the phone. Find them and bring them home so I can get back to my life. My sorry-ass life. Which, if things go okay at the tournament next week, I might just have a shot at getting back on track.
“I still don’t know where they are. There’s been no word of them.” Sean glanced over at Lily, who watched him with a furrow of worry on her brow. The conversation felt slightly surreal as he said, “My brother’s missing and so is his ex. You ought to be out searching for them.”
Another pause. Sean could hear the tap of a keyboard. “Do either of them have any type of medical problem or impairment that—”
“I answered all this before,” Sean said, fighting to keep his voice down. “They’re both in perfect health, sound of mind and body. Which is why it’s completely unlike them to disappear.”
“Sir, at this time, it’s not an emergent situation and we can’t give it airtime or attempt to locate missing adults.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re never missing,” the cop said wryly. “I’ll put the info out on the city channel for now.”
“What’s that?”
“Dispatchers’ network.”
“There are three children involved,” Sean reminded him. “Do you have that in your notes?”
“Are they in any danger?” the cop asked.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Then I can’t—” There was a pause on the line. “Is your brother Derek Holloway, the golfer?”
Celebrity had its perks, Sean thought. “The very same.”
“Well, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate at this time, but I’ll send someone out,” said Henley. “What’s the address?”
Sean looked up at Lily. “Address?” he mouthed.
She handed him an envelope from the pile of mail on the table.
Good thinking. At least one of them could still think. He read the address into the phone.
“Someone will be right out,” he reported to Lily after he hung up.
“When?”
“He said right away. I assume that means immediately.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
Sean felt a tic leap in his jaw. “Look, right away means right away. Like now.”
“You don’t have to snap at me.”
“I didn’t snap at you.”
“Yes, you did. And you’re still doing it.”
“Hey, I don’t need a scolding here.”
“I wasn’t scolding.” She sniffed. “I just don’t like being snapped at.”
“I didn’t—” Sean forced himself to stop. It was idiotic, bickering with this woman while Derek was God-knows-where. “Okay,” he said, getting up to pace some more. “All right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
She turned to the sink and started rinsing the dishes. “I’m every bit as worried as you are, Mr. Maguire.”
“Sean. Call me Sean.”
She opened the dishwasher and rolled out the rack. “Why should I do that?”
“Because I’m sure as hell not going to call you Miss Robinson, Lily.”
She pivoted away sharply and began to load the dishwasher. He checked messages on his cell phone, finding nothing new there. Lily lined up the plates in the rack and separated the silverware into baskets according to category—all the forks in one, the spoons in another. She was stymied by a spatula until she laid it carefully in the top rack. Then she put in the glasses, upending each one according to height. Finally she picked up the box of soap powder and appeared to be reading the directions.
“You need some help with that?” he asked, putting away his phone.
“No. It’s just that I’ve never used this brand before. It says ‘super concentrated’ so I think I might need less. Ah, here we go. Two ounces for the normal cycle.” She opened a drawer and rummaged around inside it. “Now, two ounces. I believe that’s the equivalent of two level tablespoons….”
Sean couldn’t help it. He snatched the box of detergent from her, dumped some of it into the trap until it overflowed, then snapped the thing shut. Finally, he closed the dishwasher and gave the knob a twist until he heard the shudder of running water.
When he straightened up, he saw her staring at him as though he’d crossed some line with her. Hell, maybe he had.
He spied a stray coffee mug on the counter. Its rim bore a half moon of lipstick. Without taking his eyes off her, he opened the dishwasher and stuck it in haphazardly, then shut the machine again, pushing the door with his hip.
“There,” he said. “That’s done.”
“Thank you,” she said faintly.
“I guess I could take out the trash,” he said, gesturing at the overflowing receptacle.
“I believe the cans are in the garage. You’ll want to make sure the lid’s on tight to discourage raccoons.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with exaggerated courtesy. He picked up the kitchen garbage and headed out the back door. When he turned to close it, he saw Lily Robinson open the dishwasher and carefully put the coffee mug in its proper place.
chapter 10
Friday
9:25 p.m.
In a way, thought Lily, Sean Maguire was a blessing. He was so incredibly obnoxious that he distracted her from worrying herself to the point of despair. So she supposed he was good for something.
When he came in from taking out the trash, she didn’t acknowledge him. She was busy clearing off the countertops in order to give them a good cleaning.
It wasn’t like this was a social situation, anyway, she thought, feeling unaccountably defensive. They wouldn’t have a thing to do with each other if not for the bizarre situation they found themselves in.
“I’m going to go check on Cameron,” he said.
“That’s probably a good idea.” She set down the bottle of Windex. “So how worried is he?”
“Plenty. It’s completely unlike Derek to just take off without explanation.”
“Crystal would never do that, either.”
“Oh, no?” He lifted one eyebrow. “She left them overnight at Derek’s two weeks ago.”
“That’s different. She missed a flight and she was completely in touch by phone the whole time. Listen, Crystal’s my best friend. I’ve known her since I was Charlie’s age. She’s a good mother, and I’m sure there’s an explanation for whatever’s going on.”
He studied her hard, with a blue-eyed gaze that probed almost insultingly. “Have we met before?”
She went back to cleaning the countertops. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem familiar to me.”
She finished the counter and moved on to the range top. She found plenty of spattered grease to attack there. Crystal had never been the world’s greatest housekeeper. When she was married to Derek, it hadn’t mattered because they employed full-time help. Now Crystal was on her own.
“We were both in their wedding,” she told Sean.
“Oh.” He looked blank.
“Sixteen years ago,” she reminded him. “I was just a kid,” she added. “You wouldn’t remember me.”
He snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact, I do. I made fun of your glasses and braces. ‘When do train tracks have four eyes?’ Remember? I thought that was so hilarious.”
She scrubbed furiously around a knob. “You were a real charmer.”
“I was a punk,” he said easily. “You should have told me to get lost.”
“I believe I did just that.” Agitated, she moved on to the cabinet faces, spritzing the entire row above the counter. When she came to the end of the row, Maguire stood in the way, leaning back against the counter. He didn’t move, so she spritzed him, too.
“Oops,” she said. “Sorry.”
He caught hold of her wrist and gently took the Windex bottle away from her. “Tell you what, Lily,” he said. “Let’s both go talk to Cameron.”
His touch drew a quick, shocked gasp from Lily. She pulled away and cradled her wrist in her other hand.
“All right,” she said, ducking her head. To her dismay, a hot blush crept up into her cheeks. How stupid was that? He’d barely touched her, and she was acting like a complete Sabine.
She told herself to get a grip, but the fact was, good-looking men intimidated her. She was always convinced they were making fun of her. It was ridiculous, at her age, to feel that way, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. No wonder she preferred third-graders.
The phone rang. Sean snatched it up, spoke briefly to the caller and then hung up. “They found Crystal’s car. Dead in the school parking lot. What do you make of that?”
“It means they’re probably together.”
“At least we have something to tell Cameron.”
They found Cameron with a biology book open on the desk in front of him, but he was staring at the clock rather than studying.
“Hey, sport.” Sean went over to the desk and leaned against the edge of it.
Lily had to admit he seemed relaxed and natural around Cameron. Like her, he was being careful not to appear frantic.
“Got a minute?” Sean asked his nephew.
“Who was on the phone? What’s going on?”
“Well, for one thing, your mom’s car has a dead battery and she left it in the parking lot of Charlie’s school. So now we’re guessing your dad gave her a ride.”
“A ride to where? Chicago? They’ve been gone for hours.”
“We don’t know where they are yet, but we’re going to find out. The police are going to drop by and get some more information from us.”
“When? When are the police coming?”
“They said they’d send someone right away,” Lily said.
“What’s that mean, right away?”
Sean looked over at Lily. “I swear, you two…soon, okay? And I’m sure they’re going to want to talk to you.”
“I can’t tell them anything,” Cameron said, closing the textbook with an angry thud. “All I know is my loser mother didn’t show—”
“Cameron,” Lily broke in. “Watch what you say about your mother.” She bit her tongue to keep from taking the thought further. She was thinking of how guilty he’d feel if he found out something terrible had happened.
“I can say what I want,” he retorted.
“Don’t snap at her,” Sean warned.
“I wasn’t snapping.”
“Yes, you were. And you’re still doing it.”
The doorbell rang and the three of them froze. Then, as one, they broke for the stairs and hurried to answer the door.
chapter 11
Friday
10:00 p.m.
This sucks hind tit, thought Cameron, eyeing the cops sitting at the kitchen table. Having two parents missing was actually worse than having them both in your face.
There was a guy and a woman. The guy looked young and kind of geeky, taking notes on some sort of Blackberry device. The woman was older, with a calm demeanor and the no-nonsense air of a math teacher.
Uncle Sean was jumpy but gave them straightforward answers to their questions. Unfortunately, he was clueless. He’d known Cameron’s dad longer than anybody, but didn’t have the first idea of where he might have gone. Lily was trying to act brave, but Cameron could tell she was freaking. Behind her thick-lensed glasses, her eyes seemed too bright, as though she had a fever. She’d bitten off the fingernails of one hand and would probably start on the other when no one was looking.
As for Cameron, he was pretty ticked off by the whole situation. It was probably nothing, just a stupid mix-up. It wouldn’t be the first time his parents caused some big idiotic mess, getting everyone all freaked for nothing. They’d been doing it for years. Just because they were divorced didn’t mean they’d stop.
“So they left the school at three-forty-five,” said Officer Vessey, the guy with the Blackberry.
Lily nodded, her brown ponytail bouncing like a cheerleader’s. “Yes. I went to the faculty lounge to talk with my school principal, and I looked at the clock that hangs over the coffeemaker. It was three-forty-five.”
“Do either Mr. Holloway or his ex-wife suffer from any incapacitating medical condition?”
Everyone looked blank. Officer Franklin said, “Sometimes that accounts for a disappearance.”
“They’re both fine,” Cameron said, and it came out sounding belligerent. Too bad, he thought.
Sean said, “You already have that information.”
“Miss Robinson, did you see them leave together?” asked Officer Franklin, unfazed.
Lily took a sip of her herbal tea. Mom always kept a box of assorted weird tea on hand for her. Lily was a health nut, and chamomile tea was probably the strongest thing she ever put into her body. No wonder she bit off all her fingernails.
“They left my classroom together,” Lily said. “They walked out of the building at the same time. I didn’t actually see them get into Derek’s car together.”
“Would it have surprised you, seeing them drive off together?”
Lily didn’t like the question. Cameron could tell by the way she shifted in her seat.
“I suppose. But maybe not. They both take very laudable interest in their children. Now that we know Crystal’s car had a dead battery, we know why they drove off in the SUV. It makes perfect sense.”
“And what was their state of mind? Can you describe that to us?”
Lily flicked a quick glance at Cameron. He put on a bored expression, like he didn’t give a crap.
“Well, as I said before, it wasn’t a happy meeting. Their daughter Charlene has been struggling in school.”
Like that was a surprise, thought Cameron.
“Were they contentious at the meeting?”
Lily lifted her hand to chew on her nail, then seemed to think better of it and tucked it under her leg. “I wouldn’t say ‘contentious.’ Strained, maybe. Listen, if you’re trying to figure out if they were apt to harm each other—physically—the answer is no. Absolutely not.”
“You’re sure of that.”
It was creepy as hell, Cameron thought, the way these cops assumed the worst of his parents. It must be such a drag, being a cop. You had to deal with people at the worst moments of their lives, and you never got to see their good side.
“As sure as I can be,” Lily said. “I told you, I’ve known Crystal since she was thirteen and I was eight. We’re as close as sisters, maybe closer. I’m her children’s godmother and she is a gentle, loving, reasonable person.”
Cameron sensed his uncle’s skepticism. He didn’t exactly roll his eyes but shifted in his chair and let out a restless sigh. He tried as hard as he could to feel absolutely nothing, just a cool sense of wait-and-see. It was getting tougher by the minute, though. He was starting to wish he hadn’t eaten so much pizza earlier. The way his stomach felt, it was threatening to make an encore appearance.
The cops stayed focused on Lily, like maybe she was holding something back. “Miss Robinson, how long have you known Derek Holloway?”
“Since they got engaged about seventeen years ago. I can’t say I was ever close to him, and since the divorce, I’ve only seen him in my role as Charlie’s teacher.”
“What was your opinion of him?”
Go ahead and say it, Cameron thought. You hated his guts.
“He adores his children,” Lily said. “I don’t believe he would ever harm Crystal.”
“And you have no idea where they might be right now.”
“None,” said Lily. “It’s completely unlike Crystal to fail to come home to her kids.” There was a hitch in Lily’s voice, and the sound of it stabbed into Cameron.
He felt defensive, prodded to speak up. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.
Everyone swung to face him. You could hear the shush of the dishwasher in the stillness. Cameron felt his ears turning red. “She blew us off last month when her flight from Denver was delayed.”
“She called to say she would be late,” Lily stated in her know-it-all teacher voice.
“Yeah, but only after she was like four hours late, and Dad had already left town, too, for a tournament.” Cameron bristled with resentment. “I had to give the girls their supper and put them to bed.” He couldn’t help it. He glanced at the clock over the stove. Way more than four hours had passed. He wondered if he should say anything more. As the one person who had witnessed his parents’ marriage from a front-row seat, he knew things no one else possibly could.
“That’s completely different.” Uncle Sean spoke up, sounding more calm and reasonable than any of them. “Someone knew where they both were.”
Then it was his turn to be interviewed. “Mr. Maguire, can you characterize your relationship with your brother?”
Cameron ground his teeth in frustration. Here they were reviewing the history of his wacko family when they should be out searching for his parents. But where? Where?
Sean’s jaw developed a tic and Cameron sensed his impatience, too. He took a deep breath. “We’re half brothers. We have the same mother. His father passed away in the sixties and our mother married my father. We both grew up right here in Comfort. Both played golf, both went pro. I joined the Asian Tour and Derek kept his PGA card. I moved back here and I’m working at the country club.”
Cameron knew there was a lot more to that story. A whole lot more. Like the fact that Dad’s father had never been married to his mother and was broke when he died. And the fact that Grandma had married Patrick Maguire just six months later. And Uncle Sean was born just a few months after that. But that was all ancient history. It probably wouldn’t help them figure out where his parents had gone.
Something not so ancient burned inside him like a bleeding ulcer. He was never meant to know about Ashley, but he’d found out and now the weight of that crushed him. It wasn’t his to tell, he reminded himself, especially to a room full of strangers.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” the cop asked Sean.
“Last night. He came into the clubhouse for a drink, and we talked.”
“Did you get any sense that there was a problem?” asked Officer Franklin. “Any issues between your brother and his ex-wife?”
Just that they hated each other, Cameron thought bitterly. Just that they kept secrets from each other.
“None at all,” said Sean. “Crystal is the mother of his children, and he’s always been good to her.”
It was on the tip of Cameron’s tongue to address that statement, but he said nothing. He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t imagine talking to strangers about stuff he barely let himself think about. Besides, he could be wrong.
Now it was Lily’s turn to get skeptical. She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she pursed her lips as if thinking, “Uh-huh. I’m so sure.”
The kitchen phone shrilled suddenly. Cameron’s heart leaped. Everybody around the table jumped at the handset. Cameron grabbed it first. He was the one who lived here, after all.
“Hello.”
“Cameron, it’s Jane.”
Great, he thought. He looked at the four expectant faces around the table. “Jane,” he said.
“Derek’s girlfriend,” Uncle Sean explained to the cops.
“Do you know where my dad is?” Cameron asked her.
“Actually,” she said, “I was calling you with the same question.”
Cameron felt his hopes deflate like a pricked balloon. “I think you should probably come over,” he told her in a dull voice. “He and my mom haven’t come home and the police are here asking questions.”
There was a brief, fragile silence, and then she made a terrible sound, like there was something caught in her throat.
“Jane?” Cameron asked.
“I—um, I’ll come right over.”
“Girlfriend?” asked Officer Franklin.
“They’re very close,” Uncle Sean explained. He glanced at Cameron.
“You can talk about it in front of me. It’s not like I didn’t know,” Cameron said, trying to regain his equilibrium after the phone call. He preferred bored impatience to sick dread any day. “She was going to move in with him.”
“Does your mother know this?” asked Lily in an edgy voice.
Cameron shrugged. “I didn’t tell her. I guess Dad was going to eventually.”
A short while later, Jane burst in without knocking. She had really short blond hair and sharp features, and at the moment she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She never smoked around Cameron and the girls.
Cameron knew his mother smoked sometimes, too. Last fall, as they were finalizing the divorce, he found her on the back steps late one night, smoking a Marlboro and flicking a lighter on and off, watching the flame.
She’d turned to him with the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “Don’t ever smoke, baby,” she’d said to him in a tired, husky voice. “It just tells people when you’re unhappy.”
“Got it, Mom. Never let on when you’re unhappy. Check.”
He remembered realizing the sting of his sarcasm hit home. Though it was dark outside, he could see her wince as if in pain.
“I talked to him just before 3:00 p.m.,” Jane was saying. “He was very clear. He would pick Ashley up by four-thirty this afternoon and take her to her mother’s house. I had a class to teach tonight, so I brought the baby here myself.”
Dumping her like a sack of old mail, Cameron added silently. The truth was, he didn’t really mind Jane, but at the moment he was looking for someone to be pissed at.
They briefly filled in Jane on what they knew so far. The two of them had left Charlie’s school together, presumably because his mom’s car wouldn’t start. Neither responded to repeated calls on their cell phones. There had been no reports of accidents despite the inclement weather. The cops explained that some cell phones had a GPS device and could be tracked down, but apparently his parents’ phones didn’t have this feature.
Unexpectedly, giving him no chance to think about his answers, Officer Franklin started questioning Cameron.
“Did you talk with your father before school this morning?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Fought with him would be more accurate, but no one needed to know that.
“Did you talk about anything in particular?”
“Not really. We have to change houses every Friday. That’s in the parenting plan. I said I was going to the golf course after school and I’d see him in a week.” What he’d actually said was, I hate you, you son of a bitch. I hope I never see you again.
His father had responded in kind. Go ahead and hate me, you little shit. Just make sure you don’t screw up in the tournament this weekend.
It’s not like you’ll even be there to see me screw up, Cameron had concluded.
“After that,” he said, “I got my things and caught the bus to school.”
“Did you see your mother today?”
“No. She was supposed to pick me up at the golf course and she didn’t show.” He went to the window and stared at it, seeing only his own ghostly reflection. It weirded him out to imagine what was going on in the cops’ heads about his parents. They were probably thinking of people messing around in a sleazy motel or getting drunk and screaming at each other. “Look, can’t you just go find them? You’re not going to learn anything more here.”
“At this time, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate,” said Officer Franklin. “When two adults in good health are involved, they eventually show up. This has already been put up on the city channel where the dispatchers chat among themselves, but until there’s a true emergent situation, we can’t do a broadcast.”
Which was her way of saying they were shit out of luck. Nobody was being protected and served here, Cameron thought. He wondered if he should point that out.
“For the time being,” Officer Franklin went on, “you can call the state patrol and area hospitals. I appreciate your alarm, but I’m sure they’ll show up with an explanation.”
Uncle Sean stood up, his lips tight with unexpressed anger. “I need to put gas in my car before the station closes. Then I’m going to start looking.”
Cameron stood up, too. “I’ll go with you.”
“We need for you to stay right here,” Officer Franklin said.
Although she barked it like an order, Cameron sensed the compassion beneath the words. It would be a mistake for him to go out looking for his missing parents.
He might not like what he found.
chapter 12
Saturday
12:45 a.m.
“What exactly is an APB, anyway?” Jane Coombs asked Lily. She spoke without looking up from the screen of her cell phone. She’d been staring at it as though willing Derek to call.
“It stands for all points bulletin,” Lily said. “It means each law enforcement agency within a prescribed radius receives a broadcast of the alert.”
“And they’re not going to do that for us,” Jane said, a quaver in her voice.
“Not until they’ve been missing twenty-four hours. That seems to be the magic number.” She felt like quavering, too. She hated the icy knot of worry in her gut.
Other than the sound of the shower running upstairs for Cameron, the house was eerily, uncomfortably quiet. Soon after Jane’s arrival, the police had left, promising that if Crystal and Derek didn’t return by four o’clock tomorrow, they would initiate the mysterious business of conducting a missing-persons search. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait. And worry.
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Susan Wiggs
When Derek and Crystal Maguire are killed in a car accident, their three children are left to be raised by their designated guardians–Lily Robinson and Sean McGuire. Brought together by tragedy, the two strangers are joined in grief and their mutual love for these orphaned children.Sean and Lily are about to embark on the journey of ups and downs, patience and understanding that makes a family. And along the way they will find a future filled with hope, happiness and the certainty that love is the best choice of all.
Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs
“Wiggs writes with an even hand, thus adding another excellent title to her already outstanding body of work.”
—Booklist on Table for Five
“Wiggs excels at portraying the delicate dynamics among lovers, friends and family members, and her keen awareness of sensory detail ensures that the scents and sounds of Rosa’s kitchen are just as palpable as heady attraction between the protagonists.”
—Publishers Weekly on Summer by the Sea
Rave Reviews from Publishers Weekly
starred review
“Wiggs’s characterizations are strong, jumping off the page with a winning blend of realism and warmth. A richly textured story…this book will polish Wiggs’s already glowing reputation.”
—on Passing Through Paradise
starred review
“Wiggs richly evokes her multi-faceted setting while depicting equally complex human relationships…the story’s theme—the all-encompassing power of love—is timeless, and it is this theme, along with the author’s polished prose and well-rounded characters, that make Wiggs’s story so satisfying.”
—on A Summer Affair
starred review
“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”
—on Halfway to Heaven
Also by SUSAN WIGGS
SUMMER BY THE SEA
THE OCEAN BETWEEN US
A SUMMER AFFAIR
HOME BEFORE DARK
ENCHANTED AFTEROON
PASSING THROUGH PARADISE
HALFWAY TO HEAVEN
THE YOU I NEVER KNEW
JUST BREATHE
The Chicago Fire trilogy
THE FIREBRAND
THE MISTRESS
THE HOSTAGE
THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER
THE CHARM SCHOOL
THE DRIFTER
THE LIGHTKEEPER
Susan Wiggs
Table for Five
To Jay
Contents
part one
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
part two
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
part three
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
part four
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
chapter 32
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
part five
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
chapter 40
chapter 41
chapter 42
chapter 43
chapter 44
chapter 45
chapter 46
chapter 47
chapter 48
chapter 49
chapter 50
chapter 51
Acknowledgments
part one
Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.
—Leo Rosten
chapter 1
Friday
2:45 p.m.
“Hey, Miss Robinson, want to know how to figure out your porn-star name?” asked Russell Clark, bouncing on the balls of his feet toward the school bus.
“I think I’ll make it through the day without that.” Lily Robinson put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to keep him from bouncing off the covered sidewalk and into the driving rain.
“Aw, come on, it’s easy. You just say the name of your street and—”
“No, thank you, Russell,” Lily said in her “enough’s enough” tone. She hoped he didn’t really know what a porn star was. “That’s inappropriate, and you’re supposed to be line leader this afternoon.”
“Oops.” Reminded of the privilege, Russell stiffened his spine and marched in a straight line, dutifully leading twenty-three third-graders to the area under the awning by the parking lot. “I’m going to Echo Ridge today,” he said, heading for Bus Number Four. “I have a golf lesson.”
“In this rain?”
“It’ll clear up, I bet. See you, Miss Robinson.” Russell went bounding toward the bus, hopscotching around puddles in the parking lot.
Lily doled out goodbyes and have-a-good-days to the rest of her students, watching them scatter like a flock of startled ducklings to buses and carpools. Charlie Holloway and her best friend, Lindsey Davenport, were last in line, holding hands and chattering together while they waited for Mrs. Davenport’s car to pull forward.
When Charlie caught Lily’s eye, she ducked her head and looked away. Lily felt a beat of sympathy for the little girl, who was painfully aware that her parents were coming in for a conference after school. The child looked small and fragile, trying to disappear into her yellow rain slicker. Lily wanted to reassure her, to tell her not to worry.
Charlie didn’t give her a chance. “There’s your mom,” she said, giving Lindsey’s hand a tug. “’Bye, have a good weekend,” she called to Lily, and the girls dashed for the blue Volvo station wagon.
Lily smiled and waved, making an effort not to appear troubled, but seeing them like that, best friends skipping off together, reminded her of her own childhood best friend—Charlie’s mother, Crystal. This was not going to be an easy conference.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” asked Greg Duncan, the PE teacher. After school, he coached the high school golf team, though he was known to be a full-time flirt.
“You’re not supposed to notice that anything’s the matter,” Lily told him.
He grinned and loped to her side, a big, friendly Saint Bernard of a guy, all velvet brown eyes, giant paws, a silver whistle on a lanyard around his neck. “I know exactly what’s wrong,” he said. “You don’t have a date tonight.”
Here we go again, thought Lily. She liked Greg a lot, she really did, but he exhausted her with his need for attention. He was too much guy, the way a Saint Bernard is too much dog. Twice divorced, he had dated most of the women she knew and had recently set his sights on her. “Wrong,” she said, grinning back. “I’ve got plans.”
“Liar. You’re just trying to spare my feelings.”
Guilty as charged, Lily thought.
“Is he hitting on you again?” Edna Klein, the school principal, joined them under the awning. In her sixties, with waist-length silver hair and intense blue eyes, Edna resembled a Woodstock grandmother. She wore Birkenstocks with socks and turquoise-and-silver jewelry, and she lived at a commune called Cloud Mountain. Yet no one failed to take her seriously. Along with her earth-mother looks, she possessed a Ph.D. from Berkeley, three ex-husbands, four grown children and ten years of sobriety in AA. When it came to running a school, she was a consummate professional, supportive of teachers, encouraging to students, inspiring confidence in parents.
“Harassment in the workplace,” Lily stated. “I’m thinking of filing a complaint.”
“I’m the one with the complaint,” Greg said. “I’ve been hitting on this woman since Valentine’s Day, and all I get from her is a movie once a month.”
“At least I let you pick the movie. Hell on Earth was a real high point for me.”
“You’re a heartless wench, Lily Robinson,” he said, heading for the gym. “Have a nice weekend, ladies.”
“He’s barking up the wrong tree,” Lily said to Edna.
“Are you this negative about all men or just Coach Duncan?”
Lily laughed. “What is it about turning thirty? Suddenly my love life is everyone’s business.”
“Of course it is, hon. Because we all want you to have one.”
People were always asking Lily if she was seeing anyone special or if she intended to have children. Everyone seemed to want to know when she was going to settle down. They didn’t understand. She was settled. Her life was exactly the way she wanted it. Relationships were scary things to Lily. Getting into an emotional relationship was like getting into a car with a drunk driver. You were in for a wild ride, and it was bound to end with someone getting hurt.
“I’m meddling, aren’t I?” Edna admitted.
“Definitely.”
“I can’t help myself. I’d love to see you with someone special, Lily.”
Lily took off her glasses and polished the lenses on a corner of her sweater. The world turned to a smear of rain-soaked gray and green, the principal palette of an Oregon spring. “Why won’t anyone believe that I’m satisfied with things just the way they are?”
“Satisfaction and happiness are two different matters.”
Lily put her glasses on and the world came back into focus. “Feeling satisfied makes me happy.”
“One of these days, my friend, you’ll find yourself wanting more,” said Edna.
“Not today,” Lily said, thinking of the upcoming conference.
A group of students clustered around to tell her goodbye. Edna took the time to speak to each child personally, and each turned away with a big smile on his or her face.
Lily felt a small nudge of discontent. Satisfaction and happiness are two different matters. It was hard enough to make herself happy, let alone another person, she thought. Yet when she looked around, she had to admit that she saw people do it every day. A mother coaxed laughter from her baby, a man brought flowers to his wife, a child opened a school lunch box to find a love note from home.
But the happiness never lasted. Lily knew that.
She lingered for a few minutes more while the children were set free for the weekend. They ran to their mothers, getting hugs, showing off papers or artwork, their happy chatter earning fond smiles. Watching them, Lily felt like a tourist observing a different culture. These people weren’t like her. They knew what it was like to be connected. By contrast, Lily felt curiously distant and unencumbered, so light she could float away.
While waiting for the Holloways to arrive, Lily checked the conference table, low and round and gleaming, surrounded by pint-size chairs.
The desks were aligned in neat rows, the chairs put up so the night crew could vacuum. The smells of chalk dust, cleaning fluid and the dry aroma of oft-used books mingled with the ineffable burnt-sugar smell of small children.
She set out two things on the table—a manila folder, thick with samples of Charlie’s work, and the requisite box of tissues, Puffs with lotion, which Lily bought by the case at Costco. A roomful of eight-and nine-year-olds tended to go through them fast.
She moved along the bank of windows, adjusting the shades so they were all even at half mast. The glass panes were decorated with the children’s cutout ducks in galoshes, each bearing the day’s penmanship practice: “April showers bring May flowers.” Outside, a jagged bolt of lightning raked across the sky, punctuating the old adage.
With a grimace, she turned to the calendar display on the bulletin board and silently counted down the column of Fridays. Nine weeks left until the end of school. Nine weeks to go, and then it would be sunshine and blue skies and the trip she’d been planning for months. Going to Europe had always seemed such a lofty, barely reasonable goal for a schoolteacher in a small Oregon town, but maybe that was what made it so appealing. Each year, Lily saved her money and headed off to a new land, and this would be her most ambitious trip yet.
She tugged her mind away from thoughts of summer and concentrated instead on preparing for a difficult meeting. She inspected the classroom as she always did before conferences. Lily believed it was important for people to see that their children spent the day in a neat, organized, attractive environment.
At the center of the front of the room was a dark slate blackboard. She’d been offered a whiteboard but declined. She preferred the crisp, controlled quality of her Palmer-method script on the smooth, timeless surface. She liked the coolness of the slate against her hand when she touched it, and the way her fingertips left a moist impression, before evaporating into nothingness. The sound of chalk on an old-fashioned blackboard always reminded her of the one place she had always felt safe as a child—in a schoolroom.
This was her world, the place she best belonged. She couldn’t imagine another life for herself.
Glancing at the clock, she went to the door and opened it. Her nameplate read “Ms. Robinson—Room 105” and was surrounded by each child’s name, neatly printed with a photo on a yellow tagboard star.
Lily adored children—other people’s children. For one special year of their lives, they were hers to care for and nurture, and she put all of her heart into it. Thanks to her job, she was able to tell people she did have children, twenty-four of them. And in the fall, she would get twenty-four different ones. They gave her everything she could ever want from a family of her own—joy and laughter, pathos and tears, triumph and pride. Sometimes they broke her heart, but most of the time, they gave her a reason for living.
She loved her students from September to June, and when school ended, she sent them out the door, giving them back to their families, pounds heavier, inches taller, drilled in their multiplication and division tables, reading at grade level or better. In the fall, she shifted her attention to the next crop of students. And so it went, year after year. It was the most satisfying feeling in the world, and best of all, it was safe.
Having children of your own—now, that was not so safe. Kids were part of you forever, subjecting you to crazed heights of joy and bitter depths of sorrow. Some people were cut out for that, others weren’t. A good number weren’t cut out for it but fell in love and had kids, anyway. Then they usually fell out of love and everyone within shouting distance got hurt. Charlie Holloway’s parents were a case in point, Lily reflected.
“My Favorite Things” had been today’s creative writing lesson. The children had three minutes to write down as many of their favorite things as possible. Lily always did the exercises right alongside her students, and she always took them seriously. The kids stayed more interested and involved that way. Her list, written hastily but neatly on a large flip chart, included:
Japanese satsumas
snow days
science projects
the sound of kids singing
TV miniseries
mystery novels
first day of school
take-out restaurants
sightseeing
stories that end happily ever after
She ripped down the chart and crumpled it into a ball. It was a little too revealing. Not that her list would surprise Crystal Holloway. They’d known each other since Lily was Charlie’s age, maybe younger, and Crystal had been a gum-popping preteen babysitter.
What a long way we’ve come together, thought Lily. This was a new one for them both, though. Telling parents their child was failing third grade was hard enough. The fact that Lily and Crystal were best friends only made it worse. In doing what was best for Charlie, Lily was going to have to say some difficult things to her dearest friend. And on top of that, the divorced Holloways couldn’t stand each other.
Ordinarily, the idea of teaching Crystal’s kids was uniquely gratifying. Lily was like their special aunt, and when each one was born—first Cameron, then Charlie and finally Ashley—Lily had wept for joy right alongside Crystal.
Cameron was bright, eager to please and as quick to grasp academics as he was to pick up tips on his golf swing from his pro-golfer father. Now fifteen, Cameron was the best player on the high school golf team.
Charlie, however, was a different story. From the first day of school, she’d struggled and balked at basic concepts. Lily had met with Derek and Crystal separately throughout the year. They’d engaged a tutor and claimed to be working hard on Charlie’s reading outside of school. Despite everyone’s efforts, though, Charlie had shown no improvement. She seemed caught in a mysterious block that could not be attributed to learning disabilities or detectable disorders. She was simply…stuck.
Lily looked again at the clock and smoothed her lilac cotton sweater over her hips. The Holloways were due any minute.
“How about some bottled water for your conference?” asked Edna, poking her head inside Lily’s classroom.
“Thanks. I think they might be delayed because of this weather.”
Edna glanced at the windows, gave an exaggerated little shudder and pulled her hand-knit Cowichan shawl tighter around her. She set a six-pack of bottled water on the table.
“To tell you the truth,” Lily said, “I’m not looking forward to this one.”
Edna studied Charlie’s school photograph at the center of her yellow star. She looked like Pippi Longstocking, complete with strawberry-blond pigtails, freckles and a missing front tooth. “I take it she’s not handling the divorce well?”
“It’s been pretty chaotic. Derek and Crystal have only been divorced a year, and the breakup caught everyone by surprise. Although of course,” she added, remembering her own family, “an unhappy marriage is never much of a surprise to the children.”
Looking at her ghostly reflection in the classroom windows, Lily remembered the day Crystal had come to her with the news of the separation nearly three years ago. Her stomach had been big with her third pregnancy, and her cheeks were glowing. Up to that point, Lily had believed Crystal led a charmed life. She was a former Miss Oregon USA who became a devoted wife and mother with beautiful children and a hugely successful husband. Her life looked like a dream, so Lily was shocked when she announced that her marriage was over.
“They handled the split as well as can be expected, under the circumstances,” she added, cautioning herself to be fair to both parents. Crystal had wanted custody, but Derek took her to court over the matter, forcing her to settle for joint custody. Since the parenting plan had been finalized last year, the kids were required to spend alternating weeks with each parent. The summer would be split up between them, five weeks with Crystal, then five with Derek.
Edna hesitated, studying Lily. “This is going to be hard for you, isn’t it?”
“You know my opinion of Derek as a husband. He makes a much better ex, but I’ve always thought he was a good father. I promise you, I’ll keep the focus on Charlie.”
“If you’d like me to stay for the conference, I’m happy to do so,” Edna offered.
Now, that was tempting. Calm, centered and mature, Edna always brought balance and wisdom to the table. They had worked together since Lily had graduated from college, and they’d built a strong mutual trust. However, Edna’s indisputable authority could also be a liability, overshadowing the classroom teacher’s role.
“Thank you. For this meeting, I think I’m better off dealing with the parents on my own.” Lily squared her shoulders.
“All right. I need to check something. There’s a car in the parking lot with its lights left on. After that, I’ll be in my office. Let me know if you need me.”
Lightning slashed from the sky, causing the lights to blink, and thunder crashed, reverberating through the building.
Alone in her classroom, Lily massaged her throat, but the ache there wouldn’t go away. She felt torn between her loyalty to a friend and the needs of a student. In all her life, she had only had one true friend—Crystal. They were closer than sisters. Crystal was the reason Lily came to live in the town of Comfort in the first place. She guarded her heart from everyone else.
chapter 2
Friday
3:15 p.m.
Derek Holloway was the first to arrive, a whirlwind in a dark raincoat and broad-brimmed waxed cotton hat. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, removing his dripping hat.
“I’ll take that. Your coat, too.” Holding them away from her, Lily carried the sopping garments to the cloakroom and hung them over the boot tray. The jacket was made of Gore-Tex, according to the label, size large/tall. The company logo—Legends Golf Clubs—was stitched on the front breast. Probably one of his sponsors, she thought.
His body warmth and the intriguing woodsy scent of after-shave lingered in the lining of the coat, and she chided herself for even noticing. Biology at work, she insisted to herself. Derek Holloway was a scoundrel, a man who had cheated on his pregnant wife. The fact that he was a hunk with a dazzling smile who smelled good was no compensation for that, although some women believed it was a reason for forgiveness.
“Sorry about your floor.” He tugged several brown paper towels from the dispenser over the sink and laid them along the wet trail.
“Not a problem.” She welcomed him with a smile she hoped didn’t look forced. Might as well start on a friendly note. She couldn’t think about the fact that not so long ago, Crystal had nearly collapsed from weeping thanks to the terms Derek forced her to agree to in the divorce decree. Hostility, Lily told herself, would not be in Charlie’s best interest.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she offered. “I’ve got water, and there’s coffee and soft drinks in the faculty lounge.”
“Nothing, thanks.”
The scale of the furniture in the room made him seem even larger than he was, which was plenty large. He was impeccably dressed in creased wool slacks and a V-neck sweater of fine-gauge cashmere. He appeared little different than he had when Lily was in the Holloways’ wedding sixteen years before. His looks had grown more mature and refined over the years, his personal style more sophisticated. And of course, his sense of entitlement had risen along with his success as a professional golfer. One of the top players in the PGA, he seemed to have no doubt that he deserved everything that came his way, and that included the women who threw themselves at him on tour.
“Here’s some of Charlie’s artwork.” She indicated a molded plastic tote tray with “Charlene” neatly printed on it. “You can have a look while we wait for Crystal.” She hadn’t seen him since the last meeting about Charlie. At that conference, he and Crystal had agreed to engage a tutor—which they had—and put their daughter’s difficulties at the top of their priority lists—which they had not.
He glanced at his watch, a Rolex that was probably another freebie from a sponsor. “She’s always late.”
What did he think, that Lily was going to agree with him? “The weather’s horrible,” she pointed out. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” Though she was careful not to show it, Lily was a tad irritated, too. This meeting was about their daughter. Lily had not summoned them lightly. The least Crystal could do was show up on time.
“That’s a sweet one,” she said as Derek studied a crayon drawing of a koala, its baby clinging to its back. “She drew that after our field trip to the Portland Zoo. Charlie has a real eye for detail. When her curiosity is piqued, she doesn’t miss a thing.”
He nodded and looked at the next one. It showed a ladder running up the long side of the paper, a tiny plank with a figure perched on the edge, about to jump into an even tinier bucket of water. “And this?”
“Vocabulary work. The word of the day was dare, I believe.” The other children had written dare on their drawings, but not Charlie. She avoided writing or reading anything at all. “She’s very clever,” Lily said. “She has an inventive mind and uses some sophisticated thought patterns.”
He came to a picture of a house surrounded by spiky green grass and blooming flowers, blue sky and sunshine in the background. The house had four windows lined up in a row. All the windows were filled with black scribbles.
When Lily had asked Charlie why she’d scribbled the windows black, the little girl had shrugged. “So you can’t see what’s inside.” She always tried to give a minimal response.
Derek didn’t ask about the drawing but moved on to the next, a remarkably vivid study of a small brown-and-white dog with a black patch around one eye. “And this?”
“Vocabulary again. The word was wish.”
“She’s been bugging me for a dog,” he said. “Maybe this summer.”
Just don’t tell her maybe unless you mean yes, Lily thought. Charlie had enough uncertainty in her life.
Finally, Crystal arrived in a swirl of haste and apologies.
“My God, I am so sorry,” she said, talking rapidly as Lily took her coat, hat and umbrella. “The roads are a nightmare. I nearly got killed on Highway 6, trying to make it on time.”
When Lily emerged from the cloakroom, Crystal offered her trademark beauty-queen smile. Despite the weather, her makeup looked freshly applied. Knowing Crystal, Lily guessed that she’d taken time in the car to fix her hair and face.
“Hello, Derek.” Wafting the scent of Gucci Rush, Crystal sailed in front of her ex-husband and sat down, a silk Hermès scarf fluttering around her shoulders, her shapely legs crossed at the ankles and angled demurely despite the awkwardness of the low chair. Crystal had always known how to use the power of her beauty.
Together, she and Derek resembled a toothpaste commercial. But looking like the all-American success story hadn’t saved their marriage.
Lily put on her glasses. Even though they were Fiorelli, with handmade barrister-style frames, she knew they made her look like a dork. She ought to quit wasting her money on trendy glasses, because once she put them on, they tended to look like any discount brand. There was something about her earnest face that could transform designer frames into blue-light specials. She’d tried contact lenses, but had an allergic reaction every time she put them in.
Tamping the manila file folder on the table, she took a deep breath and looked from Crystal to Derek, who sat as uncomfortably as she did in the undersize chairs. Lily caught Crystal in an unguarded moment, and the expression on her face was startling. She was eyeing Derek with raw, undisguised yearning, her lovely face registering a wounded animal’s uncomprehending pain.
Lily ached for her friend, yet at the same time she felt a faint nudge of exasperation. Today was about Charlie, not about Crystal and Derek and what they’d let love do to them.
With controlled, precise movements, Lily handed them each a copy of the ORAT printout. “This chart shows the results of the Oregon Reading Abilities Test,” she explained. “It’s given to every third-grader in the state, every March.” With the eraser end of her pencil, she traced the gray line on the chart. “This is the average score for the whole state. This red line above it is the average for Laurelhurst students.” As a private, selective school, Laurelhurst always showed test results well above the norm.
Lily cleared her throat. “The blue line shows Charlie’s performance on the test.” The line crawled miserably amid the lowest percentile rankings, at intervals even flirting with zero. She watched the Holloways’ faces, seeing the expected surprise and disappointment. She’d been disappointed, too—but not surprised. As Charlie’s third-grade teacher, she had seen the child’s struggles from day one. She’d tried to prepare the Holloways in previous conferences, but the reality simply hadn’t sunk in. Maybe today, it would.
Crystal gazed at Lily, her eyes filled with bewilderment. She seemed fragile, as though everything hurt her these days. Derek merely looked angry, defensive perhaps. Both were classic reactions of loving parents. No one wanted to see that their child was having trouble, and once they did, the child’s failure not only hurt, but attacked the character of the parents themselves.
“As you know,” Lily said, “I’m not a fan of standardized testing. This was state-mandated. So this test doesn’t really tell us any more than we already know about Charlie.”
“She still can’t read.” Derek’s voice was almost accusatory. His large hands, tanned from a recent golf round in Scottsdale, pressed down on the surface of the table. “You know, I’m getting pretty damned sick and tired of hearing this. I pay that tutor what, a hundred dollars an hour? And we’re still not seeing results. What kind of teacher are you?”
“Derek.” Crystal reached out a hand as though to touch his sleeve, but then seemed to think better of it. She folded her hands tightly together, her flawless manicure gleaming.
“I don’t blame you for being frustrated,” Lily said. “I think we all are, Charlie included. Believe me, I know how hard everyone’s been working on this all year.” She was careful with her choice of words. It was true that, in addition to engaging the tutor, the Holloways had subjected Charlie to seemingly endless testing, from a pediatric checkup to psychological evaluations to a battery of tests by a reading specialist in Portland. The results were inconclusive. There was no scientific name for the sort of block Charlie seemed to be experiencing. Lily wished she could believe the homework she sent for Charlie to do with each parent was done with diligence. She knew better, though. Crystal and Derek loved their daughter, but given the state of their lives, they hadn’t made her schoolwork a priority.
“I know we all hoped to see more progress,” she added. “However, that’s not the case. Given that it’s nine weeks from the end of school, we need to talk about Charlie’s options for summer, and for the coming year.”
Crystal nodded and blinked away tears. “I think we should hold her back.”
“Oh, now we’re talking about flunking her. That’s just great,” said Derek.
Lily bit her tongue and kept her face immobile. Derek clearly had issues with failure. But this was about Charlie, not him. It was not even about Crystal, whose heart was breaking right before Lily’s eyes. Urging retention was often the panicked, knee-jerk reaction of a parent. Lacking a complete knowledge of all the options, some parents tended to favor repeating a grade, unaware of how the extreme solution could traumatize a child. “In this case, I don’t think retention is the answer.”
“So you’re just going to promote her like they’ve done since first grade?” Crystal’s tears evaporated on the heat of anger. “That’s been a huge help, let me tell you. A huge help.”
Lily swallowed hard, feeling her friend’s anguish. A parent-teacher conference was such a theater of the soul. Everyone involved was stripped bare, their emotions stark and honest. So much of a parent’s identity was wrapped up in the child: love, pride, self-worth, validation. It was an unfair burden on a small human being, but every child bore it, the lofty, seemingly unreachable expectations of her parents.
“I’ve mapped out several options for Charlie,” Lily told them, handing each a packet. “You can go over these at home. For now, let’s assume we see some progress this summer and she goes on to fourth grade here at Laurelhurst.”
“In other words,” Derek said stiffly, “you might not want her back here.”
Behind Lily’s left eye, a tiny headache flared to life like a struck match. Laurelhurst was a nationally recognized independent school; the waiting list for admissions was years long. A man like Derek—successful, accomplished, privileged—regarded any other school as subpar. “This is about what’s best for Charlie, not about what I want. What we should really focus on is the summer. I’m hoping that intensive training at the Chall Reading Institute in Portland will initiate some real progress for Charlie.” The program was a huge commitment of time and money for the whole family, but its success rate was unparalleled.
“This is ten weeks long,” Crystal said, studying the brochure. She regarded Lily with dismay and flipped open a well-worn leather Day-Timer. “We’re booked on a Disney cruise for ten days in June. In July, she’s got riding camp. And August—”
“The kids are with me in August,” Derek said. “We’ve got a rental booked on Molokai.”
Lily had trained herself to hold back and choose her words carefully during a conference. It was particularly hard in this case to assert the child’s needs. How easy it would be to simply say, “Sounds great! Have a wonderful summer.” And then next year, Charlie would be some other teacher’s problem.
However, Charlie was Lily’s main concern, no matter what she felt for Crystal. The outcome of today’s meeting could very well test their lifelong friendship. But a child’s future hung in the balance, and Lily was determined to save her at any cost.
“I’m hoping to stay focused on Charlie’s needs throughout the summer,” she said.
“Weren’t you listening? It’s a Disney Cruise,” Crystal said, an edge in her voice. “It’s all about kids and fun. I’ve been promising them all year. And camp, that’s totally about Charlie. You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull just to get her in. It’s at Sundance, for heaven’s sake. She probably had to edge out Demi Moore’s kids just to get a spot there this summer.”
“How much is this riding camp going to cost?” Derek asked.
“Probably less than your damned house on Molokai,” Crystal snapped.
“I’m still paying off your Christmas trip to Sun Valley.”
“I know where you rank in the PGA. Unfortunately for you, I can find that out on ESPN. You can afford Sun Valley.”
“Not the way you spend. You’ve given a whole new meaning to ‘spousal maintenance.’”
Lily sat impassively, biting her tongue until it hurt. When a couple argued about money, it was never about money. It was about power and self-worth and judgment; that much Lily had learned from her own parents as she lay awake at night in the dark like a shipwreck victim adrift in a storm at sea, with the tempest raging around her.
In the eight years she’d been a teacher, she’d held a number of conferences. She had weathered many spats, and she found that it was best to allow them to play out and lose their intensity. It was like allowing a pressure cooker to let off some steam, making room inside for something else—in this case, Lily’s input about Charlie.
Her headache deepened, the pain turning arrow-sharp and burrowing into a tender spot behind her eye. Neither Crystal nor Derek seemed to notice. Lily had sat too many times in the presence of a couple sniping at each other in the age-old tug-of-war over the most fragile prize of all—a child.
Sometimes it took all of Lily’s self-control to keep in the righteous anger, to stop herself from blurting, Will you listen to yourselves? How is this helping your child? And she hadn’t even told them everything about Charlie yet. A tiny devil of impulse tempted her to hold back, to keep Charlie’s secret for her, but Lily couldn’t do that. The little girl had issued a cry for help.
“Could we get back to Charlie?” she asked. “Please?” Taking advantage of a pause in the argument, she said, “There is something else to discuss.”
Crystal and Derek glared at each other, visibly shelving the argument. Derek clenched his jaw and folded his arms across his chest as he swiveled to face Lily. Crystal pursed her lips and closed her Day-Timer, also turning her attention to Lily. Whatever their differences, they still had their love for their children in common and were trying to put aside their own agendas for the sake of Charlie.
Lily did her best to ignore the splitting headache an regarded them both. “We’ve talked a lot about Charlie’s academic challenges,” she said. “Lately, I’ve seen some behavioral changes in her, as well.”
“What do you mean, behavioral changes?” Derek remained defensive, no surprise to Lily.
She didn’t want to sugarcoat anything. “In the past couple of weeks, she’s been stealing.”
The room filled with silence. Shocked, disbelieving silence. Both faces lost the ability to register expressions. Finally, Lily had their attention.
She took advantage of the silence. “First off, I need to tell you that stealing is very common in kids this age. A lot of them go through it. And second, in most cases, definitely in Charlie’s, stealing is not about the objects stolen.”
“Whoa,” said Derek. “Just a damned minute. Stealing? You say she’s stealing. What the hell are you talking about?”
“We’ve always given Charlie everything she’s ever needed or wanted,” Crystal swore, and Lily could tell she genuinely believed it.
“Of course you have,” she agreed, though her tone conveyed an unspoken however. “As I mentioned, it’s a fairly specific behavior. With a basically honest child like Charlie, its significance is not what it seems to be on the surface.” She wondered how technical to get at this juncture. The syndrome was deep, complex and far-reaching. Yet it was also a problem that was solvable if dealt with appropriately. For now, she thought, she needed to stick to the facts and let Charlie’s parents work through their shock and denial.
In a gentle voice, she said, “Let me tell you what I’ve observed and what I think is going on with Charlie.”
“Please do,” said Crystal, her voice faint. For a moment she looked so utterly lost and sad that Lily flashed on Crystal as a teenager, Lily’s idol and role model. They had needed each other from the start, and now their roles were reversing. Crystal was the needy one. Lily was desperate to help her.
She felt a peculiar malevolence emanating from Derek. It would not be the first time a parent regarded her with suspicion and distrust. Hazard of the profession, Edna always assured her.
Trying to project calm competence, she said, “At the beginning of the week—it was Monday after PE—a student reported to me that a harmonica he’d brought for show-and-tell was missing from his tote tray.” She gestured. “That’s the plastic tub each child gets for storing his things. I assumed he’d misplaced it, but even when I helped him look around, we couldn’t find the thing.”
“A freaking harmonica,” Derek said.
“Hush, let her finish,” Crystal told him.
“Then on Tuesday after music, three different children were missing things. At that point, I questioned the whole class collectively. No one spoke up, but I noticed that Charlie seemed agitated.” Lily had questioned both the PE and music teachers, and both seemed to recall that Charlie had asked to use the restroom during class. “As I said before, she’s a very honest child. Being deceptive is foreign to her nature.”
Crystal took a tissue from the box on the table and idly shredded it. “She’s never been good at hiding things.”
“I agree,” Lily said. “At recess, I spoke with her privately, asking her again if she knew anything about the missing objects. She wouldn’t meet my eye, and when I asked if she’d show me what was in her desk and tote tray, she got upset. I told her it would be a lot less trouble if the items were found sooner rather than later. One of the girls claimed her charm bracelet was a family heirloom, so I was anxious to find it by the end of the day.” She didn’t reveal that the theft victim was Mary Lou Mattson, the class drama queen, who had sworn her father, a prominent lawyer, would sue the school for millions. “Charlie was very cooperative. She went straight to her book bag, opened a zippered compartment and handed over the missing items.”
“Oh, dear God,” Crystal said, practically whispering. “A harmonica? A charm bracelet? Doesn’t she know I’d buy those things for her if she would only ask?”
“Maybe that’s the trouble,” snapped Derek. “You’re always giving her everything she wants. She’s spoiled.”
“Actually,” Lily intervened, “I believe this behavior is more about wanting something else.”
“What else could she want?” asked Crystal. “What could she possibly want?”
Lily had a list. “We should discuss that. Let me just finish going through the week with you. I talked the situation over with Ms. Klein and the school counselor. Together we agreed to take a low-key approach. Often when a child steals, the correct response is to require her to give the items back and apologize. In Charlie’s case, we told her I would return the objects and no more would be said. That way, she could save face and the kids would get their belongings back. All I wanted was her assurance that this wouldn’t happen again, and her promise that we would talk about why she did it. On Wednesday there were no incidents, but yesterday I discovered something of mine missing.”
“Great,” said Derek. “You let her get away with it, so she tried it again.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Don’t get defensive, she reminded herself. Just work the problem. “To make a long story short, I questioned Charlie and she handed it over.” She picked up the snow globe paperweight Charlie had taken from her desk. It had been a gift from the Holloways’ firstborn, Cameron, seven years before, when he’d been in Lily’s class. The figure inside the globe was an angel in winter, wrapped in a swirling white robe. “After she gave it back, I called both of you rather than waiting for conference week to go over the test scores.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Crystal said loyally. “We need to get to the bottom of this immediately.”
“We are at the bottom,” Derek said. “How much worse can things get with this kid? She can’t read, and now she’s turned to a life of crime.”
“Maybe she’s troubled by your hostility,” Crystal said.
“Maybe she’s troubled because you baby her so much she doesn’t know right from wrong,” he replied.
Lily tried to reel them back in. “Have there been any recent changes in Charlie’s life or routine? I think this behavior could be a response to change.”
“She was six years old when we separated, seven when we divorced,” Derek said. “She’s had plenty of time to adjust.”
Lily wondered if he understood what a tough adjustment divorce was for a kid—at any age. The emotional rug had been pulled out from under Charlie, and she was still trying to find her balance.
“She could be having trouble adjusting to your girlfriend,” Crystal said, clipping off each word with a razor precision.
“Charlie’s known Jane for three years,” Derek said.
“Ever since you had an affair with her.” Crystal sent him a look of disdain and turned to Lily. “They say someone always falls for your ex-husband. I should have stayed married to him as a favor to womankind.”
Lily cleared her throat. This would be an excellent time to bring the conversation back to Charlie. “Actually, Charlie has been telling the class a lot about her uncle Sean. She seems to like him a great deal. He recently moved back from overseas, didn’t he?”
“Everybody likes my younger brother,” said Derek.
“Everybody but the Pan-Asian Golf Association,” Crystal said, still clipping her words. She angled herself toward Lily. “His brother spent the last ten years playing in Asia. Then he cheated in a tournament and was disqualified—”
“He was set up,” Derek said quickly.
“—and eventually he was banned from the tour.”
“It was all political,” Derek said.
“He’s a commitment-phobe,” Crystal said to Lily. “He’s always walked away from any situation that challenges him. I suppose that’s why you haven’t met him yet. He’s been too busy walking away.”
Lily had only a vague memory of Sean…his name wasn’t Holloway because he and Derek were half brothers with different fathers. Maguire, that was it. Sean Maguire. She’d met him sixteen years ago when she was fifteen and he a cocky eighteen-year-old. They’d both been in the Holloways’ wedding. Lily had felt nervous and self-important in her lavender bridesmaid’s gown and dyed-to-match shoes. When she saw him on the dance floor at the reception, she felt sure he had learned his moves from Dirty Dancing, which had been her favorite film that year. Sean kept sneaking beers from behind the bar and hitting on every girl in the room with a sweet, slow smile and husky voice: Want to make out? But he didn’t say that to Lily, of course. No one hit on Lily, except to make fun of her glasses and the braces on her teeth.
“So I take it he’s living in Comfort for good?” she asked, eager to get back to Charlie.
“I don’t think Sean does anything for good,” Crystal said. “Maybe Charlie learned stealing from him.”
“Maybe she learned it from your wacko mother,” Derek said.
At that, Crystal burst into tears. “I can’t believe you said that.” She crushed the tissue in her fist and dabbed at her eyes. “What Derek so rudely brought up reminds me, there has been another change in Charlie’s life. I…finally had to move my mother to a higher-level nursing home in Portland. I knew this was coming, that it was inevitable, but I had no idea it would be so hard.” She stared down at her tightly fisted hand.
Before Lily could even react, Derek was out of his chair and down on one knee in front of his ex-wife. He rested a hand on the edge of the table and the other on the back of the chair, an embrace that didn’t quite touch her. “Jesus, Crys, I can’t believe I said that. I can’t freaking believe it. Please, please forgive me.”
His soft, sincere apology made even Lily want to cry. That was the Derek Holloway charm and charisma, his ability to melt away resentment and anger with a few choice words, a soft-toned voice. Even Crystal, despite all the rage of the past two years, didn’t seem immune to it.
“I’ve always thought the world of your mother,” he added. “I hate that this is happening to her.”
“I know,” Crystal whispered, brushing away the last of her tears. “I know.”
Lily shut her eyes briefly, feeling an echo of that sorrow. She loved Dorothy Baird, too, a woman she’d known since she was Charlie’s age. Growing up, Lily had sometimes escaped her grim home life by stepping into Crystal’s world, a household undimmed by tragedy, where people knew how to forgive one another. It was terrible to know a massive stroke had stripped Dorothy away from everyone, even herself.
The emotional moment marked the end of the meeting, Lily could tell. She could feel them withdrawing and leaving the problem with Charlie suspended in midair. The conversation was far from over, but she knew they needed time to mull over what she had told them. “There’s a lot more to discuss regarding Charlie,” she said, not quite sure they were listening. “For now, I hope you’ll each speak with her calmly and in private about the stealing. Let her know it has to stop and try to get her to talk about what’s behind it. We can discuss it again on Monday.”
“I’m out of town on Monday,” Derek said. “Got a tournament.”
“I’m coordinating a Special Olympics sponsors’ meeting that afternoon,” Crystal said. “I was going to have Mrs. Foster stay late to watch the girls.”
And that, Lily knew with bleak resignation, was exactly why Charlie was in trouble.
chapter 3
Friday
3:45 p.m.
“They want to do the right thing,” Lily told Edna in the teachers’ lounge after the conference. “The trouble is, they’re so wrapped up in other issues that they’re not seeing Charlie.”
Edna took a sip of herbal tea. While most of the faculty consumed coffee by the gallon, Edna favored homeopathic and herbal concoctions, all designed to bring about inner peace. Lily eschewed coffee, too, and only drank organically-grown herbals, but that didn’t bring her inner peace. A better sleep cycle, maybe.
She and Edna were the last two left at the school. Laurelhurst had a relatively small faculty. On a stormy Friday like this, everyone was eager to get home to loved ones, or to get ready for the weekend. It was an unspoken fact that Lily and Edna were the only unattached people on the faculty.
Lily was slightly in awe of Edna, but she also felt a bit sorry for her. Edna’s most marked quality was her willingness to plunge into relationships and to risk her heart. She’d been smashed into the dirt time and time again, but she always dusted herself off and plunged right back into the next doomed relationship. Lily didn’t get it. Why set yourself up for hurt?
“Well, the fact that they adore her means they’ll work with you,” Edna said. She added a small dab of fireweed honey to her tea.
“I hope so,” Lily said, idly perusing the faculty bulletin board. “Available for summer house-sitting,” read one notice. “Prefer beach or river house.” This time of year, teachers were all about summer, and Lily was no exception. She had plans. Big, grand plans. This was something she loved about her job—a teacher had an entire summer to recover from the emotions of loving, educating and cultivating a group of children.
Parents never get that chance, she reflected, thinking of the Holloways. There’s no downtime when you’re a parent.
“It’s going to be a long haul with Charlie,” she told Edna. “We didn’t even finish discussing the reading institute. They didn’t seem to want to hear about it, except to say it would directly interfere with Mom’s plans for a Disney cruise and horse camp, and Dad’s month in Hawaii.”
“Now I want to be their kid,” Edna said.
“I think they already have as many as they can handle,” Lily told her.
“Maybe the reading institute isn’t the right choice for this family,” Edna said. “They might need more flexibility.” She took a sip of her tea, then regarded Lily thoughtfully. “You could be her tutor.”
Against her better judgment, Lily felt drawn to the idea. Like everyone else, she adored Charlie and felt that teaching her one-on-one could lead to the breakthrough Charlie needed. Unfortunately, the situation was complicated.
“I could never do that,” she said. “You know my policy. I need a life separate from school. And I believe in treating all children equally.”
“They don’t all need you equally,” Edna pointed out.
“Not possible,” Lily said. “With this family, it would be extremely tricky.”
“I should think it would be extra easy since you and Charlene’s mother practically grew up together.”
“Her ex can’t stand me,” Lily said. “He thinks I’m a lousy teacher.”
Edna shook her head. “Just like he’s a lousy golfer.”
“Not quite,” Lily said. “A professional golfer loses a game, maybe a bunch of money or even his PGA card. Big deal. When a teacher screws up, it affects a child.”
“True, but that’s not what I see happening with the Holloway girl. You’re doing a good job, even though at present, her progress doesn’t reflect that.”
“I’ve been working on this all year. I don’t have enough time to get Charlie on track.” She could read Edna’s thoughts. So give her more time.
A part of Lily yearned to do just that, to gather the little girl close. But that—well, that would just be dangerous. Life had not equipped Lily for this: quite the opposite. At an early age, she had learned to protect her heart, even from a child like Charlie. Perhaps especially from a child like Charlie.
Outside, lightning flashed and thunder cracked so close that the windowpanes rattled. Rain washed down the glass, smearing the view of the nearly empty parking lot outside. Lily made out two red squiggles of brake lights as a vehicle left the lot. Judging by the size, that was probably Derek’s SUV.
“I’ll be glad when this year is over,” she said, and cinched the belt of her raincoat snugly around her. Summer meant renewal and refuge from troubles she couldn’t solve. She needed that, needed time to recover from the emotional roller coaster of the school term.
“It’s too bad about that family.” Edna sighed, rinsing her mug at the sink. “I’ve known the Holloways since they enrolled Cameron here ten years ago. I sure as heck didn’t see the divorce coming.”
No one, Lily thought, not even the most perfectly matched couple, seemed to make it anymore. They could be blissful one day and in divorce court the next.
Crystal often urged Lily to settle down, marry and have a family, and Lily had no idea why. After all she’d been through, Crystal was still a true believer. Not Lily, though. She was a pragmatist, a planner. It was easy to do when there was no one to plan for but her.
Lily’s life was arranged exactly the way she wanted it. She had children to love and time for herself. This was her own personal formula for contentment, and she guarded it from anything that might upset the balance, never letting herself question the reason.
chapter 4
Friday
3:45 p.m.
Crystal Baird Holloway jabbed the key into the ignition of her station wagon. She forced herself to take a deep breath, close her eyes and count to ten. She needed to get a grip. In this weather, driving angry was a truly bad idea.
She opened her eyes and deliberately reached around for her seat belt. Torrents of rain glazed the windshield with dull silver streaks, distorting her view of Derek. He appeared ghostlike and indistinct under his black-and-white Ping umbrella as he splashed across the asphalt parking lot to his Chevy Tahoe. A crow with ruffled feathers scurried in front of him and then took wing. Watching him get into the late-model, luxurious SUV and drive into a shroud of fog, she felt a twinge of resentment. He got a new car every year from a sponsor.
There were several things she definitely missed about being married to him, though she would never admit it.
All right, she thought, noticing how quickly the windows had fogged. Don’t freak, as Cameron would say. Charlie’s going to be all right. How can she not be all right with Lily as her teacher? Okay, so it’s been a shitty day, but the worst is over.
Giving a firm nod, like a genie magically transforming chaos to order with a blink, she turned the key in the ignition.
Click.
It took just that one dry, dead-sounding click for her to know she was screwed. However, she tried turning the key several times for good measure. Click. Click. Click. Nothing but a weak flutter, like the rhythm of a failing heart on a monitor.
Great. What the heck was wrong now?
Oh, Crystal, she thought. You didn’t. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the headlamp knob, and her stomach sank. It had been left in the on position.
“Could you be any more stupid?” she muttered.
Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she checked to see if the dome light would come on. No such luck. The car was deader than…a stale marriage.
Damn this weather. Where else but in Rain City, Oregon, did you have to use your headlights in the daytime, ensuring that one day you’d be upset or in a hurry and you’d dash out of the car, forgetting to turn off the lights?
This was all Derek’s fault. Every trouble in the world could be traced to smiling, sexy, talented, charming, renowned Derek Charles Holloway. If not for him, she never would have moved out here to the rainiest spot on the planet. If not for him, she’d be fine right now, just fine.
But Derek took up a lot of space in a woman’s world. He was larger than life in every department: athletic prowess, looks, spending habits. Oh, and his appetite for women. Let’s not forget that, Crystal thought. He was definitely larger than life in that department.
It was because of all his appetites, his greed, his carelessness in matters of the heart that she found herself sitting in a dead car with the rain beating down, crying her eyes out.
I’ll hate you forever, Derek Charles Holloway, she thought, digging around in her purse for a Kleenex. She came across everything but a tissue: her prescription slip (yet another errand she needed to run before picking up the kids), an ancient Binky dusted with bottom-of-the-purse lint (Ashley had surrendered her Binky six months ago), a couple of stray ball markers and tees with Derek’s initials on them (Was her purse really that old?), a tiny three-pack of Virginia Slims samples given out at a tournament (Yes. It really was that old.), a pack of matches from Bandon Dunes Golf Course. And she still hadn’t found a Kleenex.
By now the windows of the car were so steamed up, passersby might think there was some hanky-panky going on. Ha. Hanky-panky was a thing of the past for Crystal. Hanky-panky was what got her here in the first place. And the second. And the third.
God, what happened to my life? she wondered. Derek. Derek Holloway happened.
She’d been a student at the University of Portland, with everything going for her. She was a freaking beauty queen, for Pete’s sake. She had stood upon the mountaintop as Miss Oregon U.S.A. of 1989, heavily favored to win the national title. Then along came Derek. Three months later, she’d cheerfully handed her crown over to her first runner-up, a dull-witted, laser-toothed blonde from Clackamas County.
Crystal had been so stupid in love that she hadn’t even cried, giving up her crown. She was pregnant—on purpose, though Derek never knew that—and about to marry a man who, by the age of twenty-two, had already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated three times. Really, what was there to cry about?
She snorted into the wet sleeve of her microfiber raincoat, making up for lost time. Her sleeve made a lousy Kleenex, so she simply gave up crying.
“Enough is enough,” she said. And again: “Get a grip.” Somehow she managed to compose herself. She sat for a moment in the pall of silence. It was a dead car, for Lord’s sake, not a cancer diagnosis. She had weathered childbirth, heartbreak, infidelity, divorce, single parenthood, financial ruin, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Surely a dead battery was not going to finish her off.
Will it matter in five years? Her therapist’s favorite question popped into Crystal’s mind. For once, the answer was no. No, this stupid dead car she was forced to drive because her stupid attorney hadn’t milked enough spousal maintenance out of Derek would be nothing more than a bitter memory five years from now. She glanced at the crumpled pink receipt from the medical lab test on the console. Snatching it up, she stuffed it under the visor. Now, that was something that would matter in five years. It would matter forever.
She wished it wasn’t raining. If the sun was out, she’d abandon this piece-of-shit car, stride with her pageant runway walk over to Rain Shadow Lexus and slide right into the cushy leather interior of a brand-new car, one that shut its own lights off if the driver forgot. She’d sweet-talk the dealer into easy terms and drive off into the sunset.
Driving. She and Derek used to drive all over together. After they’d moved here to Comfort, a short distance from the magnificent Pacific Coast, they used to drive out to the edge of everything and explore the twisting, cliff-draped coastal highway to their hearts’ content. Sometimes they’d even pull off at a scenic vista and make love in the back of their minivan.
It was raining harder than ever now. She briefly considered prevailing on Lily for help, but dismissed the idea. She knew Lily would drop everything to help her. She’d wade through a flood if Crystal asked her to. Crystal didn’t want to ask. Lily had already been such a good friend to her, helping her out of one jam after another. It was high time Crystal started rescuing herself. And frankly, Crystal was tired of feeling like an idiot.
As she took out her cell phone, she held her breath. If this battery was dead, too, she’d shoot herself. She pictured herself slogging back into the school, a two-time loser, needing to use a phone.
“Work, please work,” she said, flipping it open.
The display leapt to glowing blue life, playing its happy little “Turn Me On” ditty. Finally, one thing went right today. Not only that, Crystal had, like the soul of competence and organization, clipped her auto club card to the visor. How smart of her.
She entered the toll-free number, then followed the prompts, submitting her membership number.
“We’re sorry,” said a soothing female voice. “That number is no longer valid. Please call our customer service department between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern time to renew your membership.”
“Screw you,” Crystal muttered, pressing End. The phone’s clock told her it was well past 6:00 p.m. on the stupid East Coast.
Like everything else in their marriage, Derek had let the auto club membership expire and hadn’t bothered to tell her.
Swearing under her breath, she took out the sample package of Virginia Slims and the book of hotel matches. She put one of the ancient cigarettes between her lips and lit up. She gagged on the smoke, being an intermittent smoker at best, but lighting up was an act of defiance, a reaction to all the frustrations building inside her. For one moment, she could do something reckless, senseless, dangerous, and the only one to suffer the consequences would be her.
Calmed by the cigarette, Crystal pressed the button of her seat belt. It retracted with a snaky slither and she felt suddenly unburdened. Free.
Finally, she knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to kill him. She smiled, took another puff on the cigarette and flipped open her phone again. Her fingers remembered his number and dialed it by touch alone. She didn’t even have to look.
He answered on the first ring because she had programmed him to respond quickly. With three kids, you never knew what emergency might be going on.
“My car’s dead,” she said without preamble. “I need you to come back to the school and give me a jump.”
“Call the auto club,” he said easily. “I’m busy.”
She could hear his car radio playing a Talking Heads song in the background. “You let the auto club membership expire,” she said.
“No, you failed to renew it,” he said.
“I would have done so if you’d told me it expired.”
“Call a tow truck, then.”
“Fine. That’ll cost a hundred and fifty bucks. I’ll send you the bill.”
“Oh, no you—”
“And since I’m going to be sitting here for hours, you’ll have to pick up the kids, even though it’s my turn to take them. I’m sure you don’t have any plans for this evening.”
“Come on, Crys. Get somebody from the school to help you. Lily. Get your buddy the schoolteacher to help. Maybe she can help you more than she has Charlie.”
“Oh, don’t start.” Crystal acknowledged to herself that this wasn’t really about getting a jump for her car. This was about getting Derek to jump for her. “Quit trying to hand off your problem to someone else.”
“There’s got to be a maintenance worker at the school, or—”
“Derek. In the time it takes to have this argument, you could drive back here and give me a jump. Then you’ll be a free man.”
“You’re pissing me off, Crys. You are really pissing me off.”
She smiled. “See you soon.”
The phone went dead. Crystal took it away from her ear and looked at the screen. It said Call Ended, not Signal Lost. The bastard had hung up on her.
She thought about what to do next. In a raging storm, with darkness falling all around, in a dead car, no one could hear you scream.
She opened the door and threw out the stale cigarette. Then, through the rain-blurred windshield, she saw a pair of headlights approaching. Friend or foe? she wondered. The day seemed darker than ever. The headlamps blazed, blinding her in a blue-white flash of lightning. The vehicle approached fast, coming straight toward her. Crystal was too surprised to scream. She clutched the steering wheel and braced herself for impact.
The vehicle stopped mere inches from her front bumper. She blinked at the strong stream of light stabbing right at her. And saw a flash of cobalt blue.
Derek. Bless him, the bastard had come back for her.
chapter 5
Friday
3:55 p.m.
The bitch just sat there like a queen, barely acknowledging his presence. Derek had the high beams on intentionally, and left them on, glaring straight at her. Take that.
He offered her a steady stream of opinion in terms so foul it would curl her ears if she could hear him. But she couldn’t, of course, which made him wonder why he bothered.
He stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his Gore-Tex jacket and shrugged the hood up over his head. He reached down and popped the hood of the truck. Without acknowledging Crystal or even glancing in her direction, he went to the back of the Chevy and got out the cables.
He felt her watching him and knew damned well what she was thinking. This was a power play. They both knew it. And by getting him to come back for her, she’d won the first round. But the fight wasn’t over. They both acknowledged that, too.
Propping open the hood, he felt the first cold trickles of rain pouring into his shoe. He looked down to see that the water was ankle deep.
“Fuck,” he said, wishing she could hear, because she hated that word so much. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He clipped the cable to the corresponding battery terminals, hoping like hell he got it right. Then he turned his attention to Crystal’s car. Correction, his car. The one she’d stolen from him, along with the house and everything else in the divorce settlement.
At least she was smart enough to pop the hood release without being told. He found the battery terminals caked with corrosion and had to chip the flakes off with his pocketknife. Then he connected the jumper cables and stepped out from under the hood. With a flick of his wrist, he signaled for her to try the ignition. It was raining so hard he couldn’t hear the engine engage.
She opened her door and shouted, “It’s not working.”
“Try it again.”
She shot him a look and turned the key. With the door open, he could see her do it. Nothing happened—no panel, no dome light, no nothing. Complete failure.
“Try again,” he yelled.
She shook her head. “Still not working.”
Out of patience, Derek motioned for her to move. She had to clamber over the console, and he was treated briefly to a flash of beauty queen leg. Even standing in a puddle in the midst of a storm, even knowing all the reasons he had divorced her, Derek felt a jolt of such irrational sexual hunger that he groaned aloud.
This of course was Crystal’s great power. This was why he’d stayed with her fifteen years instead of fifteen minutes. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.
And now she sat next to him, silent and ungrateful, smelling of designer perfume and…He glared at her questioningly. “Smoking, Crys?”
She offered him a skinny, flat package of cigarettes that had seen better days. “Join me?”
“Those things will kill you.”
“We all have to die of something.”
Derek shook his head in disgust while he confirmed what he’d known since he saw the condition of her battery. “It’s dead,” he said.
Rainwater dripped from his hooded jacket to the cloth upholstery.
She said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her tight-lipped, pale-faced, narrow-eyed expression said it all.
“Fuck,” he said, banging the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She used to wince when he talked that way. That was, actually, his primary reason for talking that way. Now that she had no reaction, he shut up. Then he took a deep, cleansing breath to clear his head, filling his lungs from the top down the way his breathing coach had taught him.
Yes, he had a freaking breathing coach. He had coaches and trainers for every possible angle, physical or mental. If he didn't watch out, one of these days he’d find himself with a coach for taking a piss.
The car was littered with carelessly strewn effluvia. A clump of sodden Kleenex told him she felt as lousy about the teacher conference as he did. A pair of earrings he didn’t recognize lay in the ashtray. Crystal had a way of littering herself throughout the car, stamping it with her presence. It was littered with memories, too. This had been a brand-new car the day they’d driven Charlie to school for the first day of kindergarten. She’d sobbed miserably while big brother Cameron looked on in disgust.
Then, realizing the nest was truly empty, they’d driven to Lovers Lane, a private cliffside parking spot off the coastal highway. It was a place Derek remembered from high school, an outcropping so lofty and sheer that an ordinary car felt like the cockpit of a spaceship. That day, with both their children in school for the first time, he’d made love to her in the back of the station wagon on the scratchy gray carpet littered with golf tees, scorecards, plastic Happy Meal toys and lost pennies. He could’ve taken her home that day, to their own bed, but at home, phone calls and work awaited him.
Back then, she’d wrapped her strong bare legs around him and sighed with satisfaction. Now she handed him her cell phone. “Call your auto club.”
He snatched it from her, got the number from his wallet and made the call. The rain came down harder. The dispatcher said the first available assistance would arrive in three to four hours. When Derek told Crystal this, she said, “I’m not waiting here.”
“Go inside the school and wait.”
“That’s ridiculous. Cameron needs to be picked up in an hour and a half. And then Charlie after that. She’s playing at her friend Lindsey’s house. I don’t know how long you told the sitter to keep Ashley.”
The baby wasn’t with her usual sitter, but Derek wasn’t about to disclose that until he had to. Crystal was pissed enough at him.
“Tell you what,” he said, “get Lily to give you a ride home. I’ll pick up the kids and bring them to your place.”
“No. I’m not imposing on Lily.”
“She’s your freaking best friend,” he said, yelling now. “She’ll bail you out, no problem.”
“Yes, she would, if I asked her to. But I won’t. Our children are not Lily’s responsibility.” She regarded him with those beautiful, cool blue eyes, and it was a look of such obstinacy that Derek felt himself conceding the battle without even saying a word.
Having a family had always seemed like a reasonable prospect to Derek. A wife and kids. What could be simpler or more pleasant?
Where Crystal was involved, nothing was simple and very little was pleasant. And who knew what a circus act it actually was to juggle three kids? The laundry, the phone calls, the homework, the carpools, the scheduling of sports and music lessons. Hell, you needed an air traffic controller to manage everything.
No wonder Charlie was in trouble. Someone had dropped the ball with her, and she was failing in school. A hard knot of guilt formed in Derek’s stomach. Charlie. His little chip shot.
He checked his watch. They still had an hour and a half to kill before it was time to pick up the kids. He drew on the hood of his jacket, shouldered opened the door and went back out into the roaring storm. He disconnected the cables, closed both engine hoods, then went around to Crystal’s door and yanked it open.
“Get in the truck,” he yelled.
“But why—”
“Get in the damned truck.” He turned away, got in the driver’s seat, put on his seat belt and watched her. Even in the teeth of the storm, she moved with the unhurried grace of a queen, opening her red umbrella and then stepping out of the car. She got into the truck, then folded the umbrella and slid it under the seat.
“Did you leave your keys in the car?” he asked.
“Of course. I’m not stupid, Derek.”
“No,” he said, putting the truck in reverse. “You’re not.” Things would be easier if she was.
He headed west on the river road, the wipers thumping rapidly across the windshield.
“Where are you going?”
“We’ve got an hour to talk,” he said, ignoring her question. “So talk.”
He could feel her glare as she clicked her seat belt in place. “Charlie’s in trouble. Fighting about it for an hour isn’t going to solve anything.”
He glanced over at her and saw no trace of sarcasm in her expression.
“Then let’s not fight.” He wondered if she heard the weariness in his voice. It was exhausting, trying to figure out what to do with a love gone wrong, especially when kids were involved.
With sullen reluctance, the rain let up and finally stopped altogether. Derek turned off the river road and drove up the ramp to the highway. Here at the coast road, the sun was trying to peek through the broody, black-bellied clouds over the churning sea.
The view was spectacular no matter how many times he saw it. He and Sean had grown up in Comfort, and on the weekends they liked to come out to the coast to hang out on the beach or play a round of golf at the seaside links course. As they grew older and went up to Portland for college, they continued to come out here. The highway department’s scenic vista pullout was the perfect place to bring girls for make-out sessions.
The first time he’d dated Crystal, he’d brought her here. It was no accident that he’d chosen the spot today.
He maneuvered the truck along the winding road, finding it deserted except for the occasional darting squirrel or deer heading pointlessly from one side of the road to another. The economic recession had hit the county hard, and its budget troubles showed in the condition of the road. Potholes were patched here and there, guardrails were down or missing altogether. The shoulder of the road was collapsing in places from mudslides. The macadam surface was slick and he could feel the tires of the truck trying to hydroplane. In the burgeoning sunlight, wisps of steam rose from the wet pavement.
Derek tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t lead to a fight. An impossible task with Crystal these days. She was as fragile and brittle as her name implied, and the slightest upset could cause her to shatter. However, with Charlie in trouble, they had a difficult conversation ahead of them.
“So,” he said at last, “what do you make of our conference with your friend?”
“Lily was speaking to us in her capacity as Charlie’s teacher,” she said, “not as my friend. And to be honest, I’m actually glad to have Charlie’s problems out in the open. It’s time to stop fooling ourselves. From our first meeting with Lily last September, it’s been clear that Charlie’s way behind the curve. Now we need to figure out what to do.”
“Charlie never had any problems until Lily’s class.” Derek gritted his teeth. That was going to piss Crystal off. Too bad. This was about Charlie. His daughter, his heart.
“Oh, so you think Lily is the cause of Charlie stealing and being behind in school? Lily is the best teacher our kids have ever had.”
He pulled off at the scenic vista. For a moment, he flashed on a vivid memory of the first time he’d brought Crystal here. She was his beauty queen from Beaverton, he was a hot stick striving for his PGA card and they were in love. She gave up her crown for him and he’d vowed to leave his party-animal ways behind. Their future was golden.
That golden future had been tarnished by the patina of time, of betrayal, of all the myriad strains of trying to stay on his game.
“I’m saying you might want to consider the idea that Lily could actually be part of the problem.”
“That would be so much easier than considering the idea that you might be part of the problem.” She caught his glare and amended, “All right, maybe we’re both part of it. I trust Lily implicitly. When she taught Cameron seven years ago, you had no complaints about her. He flourished in her class.”
“Cameron is a no-brainer. A monkey could have educated him. He was the perfect kid.” Derek wondered if his son knew he thought that. Only this morning, they’d had their usual fight over the usual topic—golf.
“What’s that face?” Crystal asked. She could still read him like a rule book.
“Cam’s pissed at me again,” Derek confessed. “He doesn’t want to play in the tournament this weekend. I don’t get it. He’s a brilliant golfer.” He thumped his hand on the steering wheel. “Maybe he was just trying to get a rise out of me. In fact, now that the rain’s stopped, he’s probably hitting a bucket of balls for practice. Kid can’t stay away from the game.”
“Which shows how much you know about your son,” Crystal said.
“Now you’re telling me he doesn’t like golf.”
“He likes you. He thinks he has to play golf so you’ll give him the time of day.”
“That’s shit.” Derek thought about the strained conversation he’d had with Cameron that morning. The strain had flared into out-and-out hostility from both sides. Somehow, battling his son brought out the worst in him. “I can’t believe he’s fighting me over golf. When I offered to talk to Coach Duncan about it, Cam freaked on me, completely freaked.”
“Don’t talk to Greg Duncan,” Crystal said quickly, sharply.
Derek frowned.
She said, “Let me talk to Cameron—later.” She unhooked her seat belt and got out to pace in front of the truck. He had no choice but to join her. The air was still chilly and smelled of damp asphalt, cedar and madrona. Far below, waves breaking on the rocks threw up rainbows of light. This place used to hold such magic for them. Even the abandoned lighthouse way out on Tillamook Rock, miles offshore, had been part of the spell. It was a famous columbarium where old bones and ashes were put to rest. They used to swear they wanted to be placed there when they died, after growing old together.
“We need to focus on Charlie right now,” Crystal said. “Not Cameron. And not Lily.”
“She’s part of Charlie’s troubles,” Derek pointed out.
“She’s my best friend,” Crystal said.
“Maybe that’s clouding your judgment.”
“Damn it, Derek. Look at the facts. Charlie isn’t reading and she’s been stealing. Lily didn’t cause that. She’s trying to fix it. We need to rethink our plans for the summer.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Lily wants us to do what’s best for Charlie, not what’s good for your career.”
“Oh, so you’re just going to cancel your plans and stay home, carting the kid to Portland every day to study.”
“I think we should consider it. Sorry if that interferes with your plans.”
He barked out a short laugh. “It doesn’t interfere, honey. It negates them completely. You know I won’t do anything this summer without Charlie.”
“What a shame you and Joan will have to miss out on Hawaii.”
“It’s Jane,” he said automatically, but of course she knew that. “And it’s not so much that missing Hawaii is a problem. I need to play in the majors. How the hell do you think we’re going to pay for things like a private clinic in Portland, along with everything else you claim you need?”
“Maybe if you managed your money better, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You earn huge amounts, Derek, but you spend even more. How many are on your payroll now, a dozen? Twenty? Do you really need to travel with your own personal massage therapist?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. My people are the engine that keeps this train on track. You know that, Crystal. You know.” He aimed a meaningful look at her designer shoes and the diamond pendant glittering at her throat. “Maybe you should lay off the shopping. Ever think of that?”
She glared at him, then glanced at her watch. “We should go. It’s time to pick up the baby at Mrs. Foster’s and Cameron at the country club.” She got back in the truck and put on her seat belt. She was utterly self-possessed, expecting the world to wait on her.
He got in and started up the truck. Steam still rolled off the hood and the asphalt. It was no longer raining, but fog hung thick in the ditches and vales surrounding the road.
“Cameron doesn’t mind hanging around the club,” Derek said, hoping to deflect her attention from who was watching the baby. “Now that Sean works there, they sometimes get in a round together.” He slammed the truck into reverse and peeled out, rear end fishtailing on the slick surface of the road.
“I think Cameron’s been spending too much time with your brother.”
“For God’s sake, Crystal. The kids have a right to get to know their uncle. Cameron likes him. Sean’s good for his golf game.”
“Giving him pointers, like teaching him how to cheat?”
Derek took the next curve a little too fast, swinging onto the shoulder, veering into the gravel along the shoulder. “That was a low blow. Sean’s no cheater.”
“No? Then he was banned from the Asian Tour for…what? Having a bad hair day?”
“For getting mixed up with the wrong woman,” he said. Then a devil inside him made him add, “God knows, I can relate to that.”
“You bastard, you—” She broke off, looking at the road. “You just missed the turnoff into town.”
“I’m taking Echo Ridge.”
“Then you’ll have to go through town to get to the sitter’s,” she pointed out.
All right, thought Derek. He might as well go for broke. “Ashley isn’t there. She’s with Jane.”
She sucked in an audible breath. “Well, that’s just peachy. The thought of my baby in the hands of your jailbait girlfriend makes my day.”
“Jane Coombs is twenty-four and already has her Ph.D.”
“You love reminding me of that. I don’t give a shit about her academic credentials.”
Derek knew she did. Crystal joked about getting out of college with only her “MRS” degree, but the fact that she had never finished her education was a sore spot, something probably only Derek knew.
“Jane loves Ashley,” he said. Then he took a deep breath. “And you might as well know she’s moving in with me.”
“Ah, living in sin. You’re such a perfect role model for our children.”
“We won’t be living in sin.” His hands were suddenly drenched in sweat, slick upon the steering wheel. “Crystal, we’re getting married. We plan to tell the kids next weekend.”
“You bastard,” she said, her voice eerily quiet. “You damned, fucking bastard.”
He glanced over at her and had the strangest sensation of déjà vu. And then he laughed. He was a bastard. His stepfather used to remind him of that all the time. And the fucking part? Well, that was certainly true. He fucked anything that twitched a tush at him, and on a pro golf tour, there was a lot of twitching.
“You think this is funny?” Crystal demanded.
“I think it’s hilarious. We’re hilarious. God, look at us, Crystal. Look at the mess we made, me with my pecker and you with your purse.” He chuckled, feeling giddy and light-headed as though he’d just slammed down a shot of tequila. He looked over and caught her staring at him with her heart in her eyes.
“Damn it, Crystal,” he said, “I was so damned in love with you, but you made it so damned hard to stay that way.”
Her eyes misted and for just a moment he saw the girl she had been, the dream lover he thought he wanted for the rest of his life. She had worshiped him with a fervor that was a turn-on. Where had that gone?
“God, Derek,” she said, “it’s so much easier than you—look out!”
He yanked his gaze back to the road in time to see a doe and her spotted fawn gambol down the fogged-in bank, stepping directly into the roadway right in front of him.
Derek had grown up in this place. He knew every curve of the road and every outcrop, every sheer cliff, and every thick-girthed cedar and Douglas fir that bordered the wild highway. He even knew that the Huffelmanns owned property for the next mile along the road and had posted it No Trespassing. Old man Huffelmann would not even give the highway department permission to put a guardrail alongside the steep incline, so there was no barrier to keep him on the road.
The tires screamed on the wet pavement and he dialed the steering wheel frantically in the opposite direction of the skid. Crystal stayed completely silent, though she threw her hands in front of her and braced them on the dashboard. Somehow, Derek wrestled the car back into its lane.
Crystal glowered at him. “You drive like a maniac.”
“You used to like that about me.”
“I used to like a lot of things about you.”
“Hey, at least I didn’t cream Bambi and his mom.” He could tell she was in no mood. Fine, he thought. He might as well get on that last nerve of hers right now and get it over with. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you I have to miss Ashley’s birthday party.”
“Derek, come on.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to be in Vegas for a big tournament, so I need you to change the party date.”
“I’m not changing a thing.”
“She’s only two. She’ll never know. She’s just a baby. It’s no big deal.” A pair of madronas, the bark peeled off to reveal bloodred branches, grew beside the sharp curve in the road ahead. He ignored the yellow-and-black caution sign and accelerated.
“No big deal,” she echoed, her voice soft with restrained fury. “Well then, I suppose that now would be as good a time as any to tell you the baby isn’t yours.”
part two
The beauty of a strong, lasting commitment is often best understood by men incapable of it.
—Murray Kempton
chapter 6
Friday
5:00 p.m.
And here’s the challenger, Sean Maguire, aiming for the green and a possible eagle putt. No one in the crowd is breathing as the challenger selects a Titleist forged-iron pitching wedge, assuming his famous stance. An easy, athletic swing, a flawless follow-through and…he’s on, ladies and gentlemen. He’s on the green and rolling twenty, fifteen, ten! He’s just ten feet from the hole, and that’s one putt away from a historic win. Not only will he take home one million dollars and the championship trophy, but he’ll also be having sex with identical blond twins who magically turn into beer and pizza at midnight. Ladies and gentlemen, you can hear a pin drop as the challenger steps up to address the ball. All that stands between him and victory is ten feet of putting green. This should be no trouble for the legendary Maguire. He adjusts his stance, glides into his famous backswing, preparing to make history. Smoothly the club head descends toward the ball, flawlessly aimed, and—
“Hey, mister.”
Sean’s arm jerked and the head of the putter missed. The golf ball bobbled away from the hole. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he straightened up and scowled at the kid, who stood at the edge of the practice screen.
“Yeah?” Sean immediately regretted the annoyance in his tone. The wide-eyed kid was probably a fan, asking for the autograph of the legendary Sean Maguire. “What can I do for you?”
“You got change for a dollar?”
Great. He scrounged the change from his pocket. He had only thirty-five cents. The coins felt light and insubstantial in his hand.
He leaned down and grabbed the ball from the rain-soaked green. His four o’clock lesson hadn’t shown, probably due to the weather, so he’d passed the time practicing his own game. To what end, he had no idea.
“What do you need, kid?”
“Change for the Coke machine.” He shuffled his feet and, probably prodded by some latent lesson from Mom, added, “Please, mister.”
“You can call me Sean.”
“Really?”
“I just said you could. I can make change in the clubhouse.” He jerked his head toward the long, low building. His place of employment. He’d capped off his stellar career as a professional golfer right where he’d started, here at Echo Ridge.
As the kid fell in step with him, Sean asked, “What’s your name?”
“Russell Clark.”
They shook hands and kept walking.
“Hey, want to know how to figure out your porn-star name?”
“My what?”
“You know, your porn-star name. Porn stars never use their own names.”
The kid was ten years old if he was a day. What did he know about porn stars? “Is this something you ask all strangers, or just me?”
Russell shrugged, so Sean said, “Okay, sure. Sure. I’m dying to know.”
“Tell me the name of the street you live on.”
“Ridgetop Avenue.” In yet another nondescript apartment. He’d never lived in a place he actually cared about.
“Now tell me the name of the first pet you ever had.”
“When I was about your age, I had a shepherd mutt named Duke.”
The kid roared with laughter. “Then your porn-star name’s Duke Ridgetop.”
Oh, that’s brilliant, thought Sean. Just brilliant. “Maybe he’ll pay my bills for me.”
“Guess what mine is. Betcha can’t guess.”
“You’re right. I can’t. What is it?”
“Pepper McRedmond. Cool, huh?” Russell laughed and slapped his thigh.
“Whatever tees you up, kid.”
Inside the clubhouse, Sean made change and then Russell scurried off to the Coke machine. Kids belonged to an alien nation, Sean thought. He’d never understand them. Shaking his head, he noticed his weekly paycheck in his in-box. He stuffed it in his jacket pocket without even looking at the amount. He knew he ought to be grateful for steady money, but hell, he used to tip his caddie more than that amount after just one round. Used to.
Sean checked the time. He was finished here for the day, but in three hours he’d be back in the bar upstairs, fixing Manhattans and cosmopolitans for local lawyers and leather-skinned retirees. It was hardly worth going home in between. Maura, his girlfriend, was at the hospital until late, and early in the morning, she had to drive to Portland for a seminar. Sean was surprised to feel a twinge of sentiment; he would miss her, he thought. These days, he didn’t trust his own judgment about women.
With this current rotation, she tended to crawl into bed and sleep when she wasn’t working, anyway. They didn’t exactly live together, but lately they’d slept at his place every single night, and item by item, her things were migrating over to his apartment. Two days ago, she’d brought her CD collection and a picture of her family. This was as close to a permanent arrangement as Sean had ever had with a woman. Well, almost.
He looked around the clubhouse, where a few groups of golfers milled around, comparing scores and tallying up debts. Due to the storm, there weren’t many of them. Only the diehards were out in weather like they’d had this afternoon. Sean listened to them laughing and talking, and it made him remember that golf was supposed to be fun. A game. He missed those days.
In the locker room, he changed out of his chinos and club-logo windbreaker—Echo Ridge didn’t permit jeans—and slipped on his favorite Levi’s.
His cell phone rang, and when he recognized the number of the incoming call, his pulse sped up. “Yeah?” he said.
“Hello to you, too, pretty boy.” The voice of Harlan “Red” Corliss, Derek’s agent, was broad and smooth with a smile.
“You sound happy with yourself.” Cocking his head to hold the phone, Sean transferred the things from the pockets of his work pants to his jeans.
“What are you doing next Saturday, Maguire?” Red asked.
Sean dropped his keys and clutched the phone hard. “You got me in the Redwing tournament.”
“That I did. I have a few sponsors’ exemptions and I used one just for you, kid.”
Tournament play. It used to be what Sean lived for, what defined him. He used to be a rising star, a hero of the game. Now here he was, shadowed by disgrace, nobody’s hero. No matter what he did, he could still feel the sick sense of shame and guilt that had shrouded him like a pall.
“Hello?” Red asked when the pause drew out too long. “You’re not worried about your game, are you?”
Sean prowled back and forth in the clubhouse. “The talent’s intact.”
“Forget talent. You have a talent that’s almost freakish. So big deal. Forget you know how to hit a ball at all and work your ass off.” Red was quiet for a moment. “It’s not that, is it?”
“You know it’s not, Red.”
“Look, you can’t worry about that. You didn’t cheat. You were set up. It’ll be ancient history before you know it. Hell, it’s already ancient history.”
Sean leaned his forehead against the locker door. It didn’t matter that he’d been set up. He was guilty of stupidity. He deserved to be back where he started, climbing his way out of a hole of his own making.
“Got it, Red. Ancient history.” He stood up straight, turned and looked out the window. Freshened by the rain and bordered by majestic ancient cedars, the golf course looked green and bright enough to hurt the eyes. And in that moment, it hit him. This was a chance to get back in the game.
“Damn, Red.” Throwing off his doubts, Sean grinned until his face ached. Finally. Sure, Maura would tell him it wasn’t practical to go chasing after a game, and Derek would warn him he wasn’t ready, but Sean didn’t care. This was the break he’d been waiting and hoping for. Another chance at the sport he loved. He’d arrived in the States too late to compete in Q School, in which golfers earned—or requalified for—their PGA card, and he’d resigned himself to waiting another year to go through the process. But Red was one of the best in the business, and he was putting Sean on the fast track.
“Damn is right. I’m having Gail messenger the contracts over, and I’ll call you tomorrow with all the details.”
Sean was still grinning when the clubhouse door opened and shut.
“What’s funny?” asked Greg Duncan, the high school golf coach.
“Did you know there’s a way to make up your porn-star name?” Sean didn’t want to say anything to Duncan about his news. It would seem too much like gloating. Greg Duncan was a damned fine golfer who wanted his PGA card with a hunger that was palpable. He’d competed in Q School a few times but never advanced past sectional competitions. The guy needed a break, but that was golf for you. A heartless game, like Red always said.
“Uncle Sean?” Stomping his muddy shoes on the bristled mat, his nephew, Cameron, called to him from the doorway. “Hey, Coach.”
“Hey, Cameron.” Greg Duncan dropped his spikes in his locker and slammed it shut. “I’m out of here. See you Sunday, okay?” Without waiting for a reply, he headed for the parking lot.
Cameron Holloway bore an almost eerie resemblance to Derek. He had the same sandy-colored hair and intense eyes, the same lanky frame that moved with surprising grace, the same startling talent at swinging a club. He was the best thing that had happened to the local golf team in years. And from the looks of him—cheeks reddened by the wind, hair damp, shoes muddy—he’d been out practicing.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Um, my mom was supposed to pick me up a half hour ago, but I guess she forgot.” He looked sullen as he said it. “She forgets everything lately.”
Sean bore no love for his former sister-in-law, who had taken Derek to the cleaners and back in the divorce, but it didn’t seem right to let Cameron badmouth her. “She probably got delayed in the rain,” he suggested. There were a lot of things Sean envied about Derek, but he sure as hell didn’t envy his brother’s crazy-ass ex-wife. Crystal was enough to drive anyone bonkers.
“Naw, she just forgot, and she’s not answering her cell phone. Neither is my Dad.”
Sean dug in his pocket for his keys. “I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thanks.”
“Meet me in the parking lot.” Sean told Duffy, the greenskeeper, that he was taking off and went out to his truck. Cameron was loading in his clubs, a set of Callaways with graphite shafts, which were better quality clubs than some of the well-heeled doctors at Echo Ridge played. The clubs were hand-me-downs from Derek, who got a new set every year from his sponsor.
Sean reminded himself that his brother had earned his success, stroke by stroke, tournament by tournament. He deserved every perk that came his way. And Sean…well, he got what he deserved, too.
As they pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the steep, winding road, he said, “Why don’t you call your mom, tell her you got a ride home with me so she doesn’t come looking for you.”
Cameron took out his phone and thumbed in the number. “She still won’t answer.”
“Just tell her voice mail.”
There was a silence, then Cameron said, “It’s me. You were late picking me up, so Uncle Sean is giving me a ride home. See you.”
Sean glanced sideways at him. “That tone was borderline rude.”
“It’s over-the-border rude to leave me stranded.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
“There’s always an explanation.”
“You shouldn’t be rude to your mother.”
“What do you care?”
Sean ignored the question and turned on the radio. Nickel Creek was playing “Angels Everywhere.” He tried to remember if, at fifteen, he’d been so angry all the time. He was pretty sure he hadn’t. Then again, he’d had nothing to be angry about. He’d been a happy-go-lucky kid, obsessed with golf and girls, in that order. All these years later, a hell of a lot had changed. Maybe he ought to be angry right along with his nephew. But he still had golf and girls on his mind.
“Did you play a round this afternoon?” he asked by way of making conversation.
“Nope. I hit three buckets of balls and practiced chip shots. There’s a tournament this weekend against Portland Prep.”
“So how’s your game?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Good enough to win this weekend.” He spoke with confidence, not vanity.
“That’s good, then.”
“I guess.”
Sean wondered why the boy didn’t show a little more enthusiasm, but he figured it wasn’t his business to ask.
As he turned into the tree-shaded, manicured subdivision where Crystal lived, it occurred to him that he’d never been to the house on Candlewood Street. While he was married, Derek had lived here for years, but Sean had never visited the house his brother had shared with his beauty-queen wife. Sean had been overseas, playing on the Asian Tour, and hadn’t come back to the States until circumstances forced him to.
He knew the house, though. It was the biggest and oldest in Saddlebrook Acres, an area of large, elegant houses built in the era of the timber barons. When he and Derek were kids, they used to ride their bikes past this very house, admiring the vast lawn and the gleaming white cupola, the wraparound porch.
“Someday I’m going to live there” became the boyhood vow. Yet oddly, the vow had come from Sean, not Derek. It was a place of permanence and splendor, the sort of place a person could imagine spending a whole life. But somewhere along the way, he’d set that dream aside, finding a far different sort of life as a professional golfer. And somehow, Derek had appropriated the dream Sean had come to see as an impossibility.
For a long time, Sean’s half brother made it all come together—the career, the family, the house, everything. From Sean’s perspective, it all seemed to work like a charm. He couldn’t believe Derek had managed to blow it. You’d think, with all of this at stake, Derek could have kept his pecker in his pants at that tournament in Monte Carlo. But, Sean supposed, that was Derek’s business. Judging by the way she’d cleaned him out in the divorce settlement, Crystal Baird Holloway was no picnic to live with. Still…
Sean flicked a sideways glance at Cameron. He was a good enough kid even as he navigated the rocky shoals of his parents’ split. Sure, he had an attitude these days, but who wouldn’t, being shuffled back and forth between houses on alternate weeks. It was the one issue in the divorce agreement on which Derek would not budge. He wanted his kids fifty percent of the time, and his lawyer, whose fees made even Derek shudder, secured joint custody.
“So how’s school?” he asked Cameron, trying to shorten the gap of silence between them.
“Okay, I guess.”
Sean grinned over the arch of the steering wheel. “Bad question. I ought to know better than to ask how school’s going.”
“I don’t mind it.”
Communication in the form of meaningful conversation had never been a forte in the family, Sean reflected. Apparently Cameron was carrying on the tradition.
Sean pulled into the smooth asphalt drive of the house on Candlewood Street. He had every intention of dropping Cameron off and heading home for a quick shower and a bite to eat before going back to work. But some indefinable impulse made him shut off the engine and get out.
“I’ll grab your clubs,” he offered, opening the tailgate of the truck.
“Thanks.” Cameron shouldered his backpack and went to unlock the side door.
Sean followed him inside, leaning the clubs against the wall of a small mudroom crowded with shoes in varying sizes, a fold-up baby stroller, a selection of umbrellas and hats, and a basket filled with gloves and mittens. From somewhere in the house, a distant beeping sound pierced the silence.
“Answering machine,” Cameron said. “I’d better go check it.”
They stepped into the kitchen, and Sean took it all in with a glance. This was the house of his boyhood dreams, but he’d never been inside it. Now here he was, and the whole place seemed to enfold him. The cluttered kitchen had a wooden floor and glass-front cabinets filled with Martha Stewart–style green glassware. A refrigerator was plastered with a calendar, various lists and kids’ artwork. As he followed Cameron to the front entranceway, he noticed wood paneling, an imposing staircase, framed pictures of the kids everywhere.
Cameron hit Play on the machine. The first message was from someone who identified herself as Lily. “Hello, Crystal, I was just calling to see how you’re doing. I hope you think the meeting went all right, so call me.”
“Charlie’s teacher,” Cameron explained.
She did sound sort of prim and proper, Sean thought, picturing a blue-haired woman with bifocals. “You don’t want to tangle with a woman like that,” he said, nudging Cameron.
Next: “Crystal, this is Jane Coombs…” In the background, fussy baby noises punctuated the message. “I was expecting Derek to pick Ashley up this afternoon, but he seems to be running late. Anyway, I have a class to teach tonight, so I’d appreciate it if you’d come and get Ashley as soon as you get this message.”
“Oh, Mom’s going to love that,” Cameron said.
The third message was from someone RSVPing for Ashley’s birthday party. It seemed strange, like planning a party in a war zone. Sean’s younger niece had been born into the turmoil of an exploding marriage, but of the three kids, she was the least affected, too young to understand what she’d lost.
Then Charlie had called the machine. “Pick me up,” said a petulant voice. “I’m at Lindsey’s house and you said you’d pick me up and you’re still not here. Pick me up, you’re late.”
The final message was nearly unintelligible, but Sean could tell it was from a girl who was more articulate at giggling than at speaking. Clearly, she wanted to talk to Cameron. Just as clearly, he was mortified that she’d called for him. Sean could see the heat of embarrassment in Cameron’s red ears, his averted gaze, his hands pushing into the pockets of his jeans.
“End of messages,” said the mechanical voice in the machine.
Sean felt a weird tightening of his gut. “Call your mother again.”
Cameron shrugged and dialed the phone. “No answer,” he said.
“Now your dad.”
As he held the phone to his ear a second time, Cameron showed the first sign of worry—a small tick in his jaw. “No answer,” he said again. “I’ve already left them messages.”
“Any idea where they might be?”
“Nope.”
It figured. Kids tended not to keep tabs on their parents. Now what? Sean wondered.
The phone rang, startling them both. Cameron snatched it up.
“Hello?” His face flashed momentarily with hope, then fell. “Oh, hi, Jane. No, my mom’s not here. You can drop Ashley off with me, I guess, since I’m home.” A pause. “You’re welcome.” He hung up. “I have a ton of homework, but I won’t get anything done now,” Cameron said. “Ashley’s a pain in the neck to babysit.”
Sean’s tiny niece was so cute you’d have to be made of stone not to like her. Babysitting her, though, was another issue entirely. The prospect of looking after a barely verbal toddler was terrifying to Sean. “I bet your mother will be home any minute,” he said.
Cameron shrugged again.
“What about Charlie?” Sean asked.
“Sounds like she wants to come home.”
“Any idea who Lindsey is? Where she lives?”
“Nope.” Cameron looked at the small screen on the phone. “The number’s on caller ID.”
“I’d better give them a call.” Sean punched in the number. A woman’s voice answered, and for a moment he blanked, then said, “Ma’am, this is Charlie Holloway’s uncle, Sean Maguire. I’m calling about my niece.”
“Oh! I’m Nancy Davenport. Would you like to speak with Charlie?”
“Actually, I was just calling to let you know…I’m afraid her mother might not be there to pick her up. She’s been…delayed. Charlie’s brother is here with me, so I’ll come and get her.”
“That’s no problem,” the woman said. “I’ll run her home. I haven’t started dinner yet.”
Sean thanked her and hung up. He looked at Cameron.
“No clue,” the boy said, but his gaze shifted to the door and then to the floor, a little too quickly. “My mom’s always got something going on. She probably forgot to tell anybody.”
Sean wandered into the kitchen. He studied the calendar clipped with magnets to the refrigerator. The current date had a notation. “Conf. w/Lily & D., 3:15 p.m.”
“What do you make of this?” he asked Cameron.
“Lily—the teacher on the answering machine. Miss Robinson. She was my third-grade teacher and now Charlie’s in her class. Maybe there was a conference with her. Charlie’s been doing lousy in school all year.” Cameron rolled his eyes. “How does a kid flunk third grade, that’s what I’d like to know.”
They waited. Talked golf a little, just to fill the silence and maybe distract themselves. “So you have a tournament coming up this weekend,” Sean observed, noting the team calendar stuck to the refrigerator with magnets.
Cameron turned away.
“Don’t bowl me over with your enthusiasm, okay?” Sean said.
The kid hunched his shoulders even more. “My coach is a dick, okay?”
“Greg Duncan? He seems all right to me.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Sean dug in his pocket and took out an Indian head penny. “This was my good luck charm. I’ve used it as a ball marker since I was younger than you.”
Cameron turned, took the penny and examined it. “That’s cool.”
“You want to borrow it?”
“You just said it’s your good luck charm.”
“Was. I said ‘was.’ It kind of deserted me.”
Cameron nodded. He knew about the fiasco that had brought Sean home. “Did you like playing over there, in Japan and Indonesia and stuff?”
“Sure, while it lasted.” Sean tried to imagine what he’d be doing in his old life as a tour professional in Asia. Once he’d started seeing Asmida, he used to play in Malaysia every chance he got. After a round, there would be far too much drinking and plenty of mindless, gratifying sex in opulent hotel rooms or in expensive cars. It didn’t last, of course. How could something like that last? Especially, he remembered with a twinge of pain, with the daughter of a yakuza mobster? No one could ever accuse him of having good judgment, that was for sure. Derek often ragged on him about mapping out a career plan. Of course, in order to do that, Sean needed a career.
Cameron pocketed the token. They called both Derek and Crystal again and got no answer. Cameron drank a slug of milk straight from the carton, then offered some to Sean, who declined.
He didn’t like the unfamiliar feeling in his gut. It was a cold, hard squeeze, brief and intense, like a fist of ice. He said nothing to Cameron. No point in worrying the kid.
He took a stroll through the downstairs, checking out the house. This had been Derek’s world for more than a decade. It seemed strange that Sean had never been here. He’d been too busy chasing prize money and easy women half a world away, and hadn’t bothered to come back even for a visit. There was a big living room and a long hallway where, Sean imagined, Derek had obsessively practiced his putts. The dining room had a table and chairs and a tall glass cabinet that was practically empty, probably because it had once held Derek’s favorite trophies. Sean shook his head, thinking about his brother, feeling love and admiration and envy all in the same heavy wave.
“You don’t have to stay,” Cameron told him. “I can handle the girls.”
“That makes one of us, then,” Sean said. “I’ll stick around until we figure out where your mother went.”
Darkness crept down and shadows crowded into the corners of the large, empty rooms. Sean switched on a couple of lamps. The tense quiet in the house was broken when Cameron turned on the radio, tuning it to a hip-hop station.
A few minutes later, a car pulled up, headlights swishing across the living room walls. Sean’s gut turned watery with relief. Crystal might not be thrilled to see him, but that was too damned bad. He had a few choice words for her.
His relief evaporated when he saw that the visitor was Jane Coombs, lugging a red-faced Ashley and an overstuffed diaper bag. Sean liked Derek’s girlfriend well enough, he supposed, though he barely knew her. At the moment she wasn’t looking to be liked. She had that tight-lipped don’t-mess-with-me expression people wore when their last nerve was about to snap.
“Oh, hi, Sean,” she said, clearly surprised to see him. “I can’t believe Crystal stood up her own kid like this. Anyway, here you go.” She dumped the baby into his arms. The two-year-old regarded him with apprehension.
“Have you heard from Derek?” Sean asked, shifting the baby awkwardly.
“Not a word. We must’ve all got our signals crossed. Listen, I’m grotesquely late,” Jane continued, “so I need to hurry.” Spying Cameron, she said, “Come and get the car seat, will you? God, thanks, you’re a lifesaver.”
When Ashley saw her brother, she squealed with delight and reached for him. “Cam! Cam!”
“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” he said, and followed Jane out to her car.
When the baby realized he was walking away, she arched her back and let out a wail that penetrated like an armor piercing bullet.
“Hey, now,” said Sean, his chest filling up with panic. “It’ll be all right. He’s coming back.”
She thrashed her head from side to side and cried harder. Her tiny fists alternately clutched Sean’s shirt and pummeled him. He was reminded of the creature in Alien popping from the stomach of an unsuspecting man. What the hell was it with babies? he wondered feverishly. They were like another life form to him, a dangerous and sinister one at that. She was loud and smelled funky, too. He suspected Jane, in all her self-important rush, had not bothered to check the kid’s diaper.
It felt like an eternity before Cameron returned with the car seat. The second Ashley spotted him, she quit yelling and lurched toward him, nearly leaping out of Sean’s arms. He clutched the writhing little body to keep her from falling, then quickly handed her over. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“Naw, she’s just cranky. Probably tired and hungry, aren’t you, sugar bear?” Cameron jiggled her on his hip. “I’ll go get her something to eat.”
“’Nana. Want a ’nana,” Ashley chortled good-naturedly as he set her down and led her into the kitchen. In a heartbeat, she’d turned from the Tasmanian Devil into an angel. How did she do that so quickly?
A moment later, Charlie came barreling in through the front door, a towheaded dynamo.
“Uncle Sean!”
He caught her up in his arms. Her wiry limbs felt surprisingly strong, and something—her hair or skin—had a bubblegum smell. This was more his speed, a niece who actually liked him. “Hey, short stuff. How you doing?”
“I’m starving to death,” she said, clutching her stomach and reeling in his arms. “Where’s Mom?”
He set her down carefully, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to be staying with you until your mom gets back.”
She gave him a look of skepticism, narrowing her eyes and twirling one pigtail with her finger. “Really?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
“Maybe I do.” She yelled with delight as he chased her to the kitchen.
There, the baby was happily cramming a chunk of banana into her mouth. Charlie helped herself to one. “Did you know monkeys peel bananas like this, from the bottom up?” She demonstrated.
“I guess that makes you a monkey.”
“I wish I was a monkey,” Charlie said.
“You look like one,” Cameron said.
Charlie stuck her tongue out at him.
“Monkey,” Ashley echoed around a mouthful of banana.
“Why do you wish you were a monkey?” asked Sean.
“Then I wouldn’t have to go to yucky, sucky school.”
“Sucky,” Ashley said.
Sean looked at Cameron. “Is she allowed to say that?”
“Probably not.”
Sean turned to Charlie. “Don’t say sucky.”
“Okay.” Charlie bit into her banana.
“Sucky,” Ashley said again.
“I’ll be right back.” Sean hurried out of the kitchen and went to the phone in the front hall. He picked up the handset and glared at it. What the hell was going on? This was starting to be truly…sucky. He wondered how long he should wait before getting seriously worried.
With a scowl, he dialed Derek’s cell phone. Derek always answered his phone, always checked his messages. When the voice mail clicked on, Sean said, “Hey, bro, it’s me. I’m here with your kids at Crystal’s house, and she’s not home. What’s going on? Call me.” He found Crystal’s number by the phone, got her voice mail and left a similar message. He wished, just briefly, that he knew her better. He wished he knew if she was the sort of woman who would temporarily forget her kids.
Now what? he wondered. He tried Maura. He didn’t know why. His girlfriend barely knew Derek and had never met Crystal and the kids. The people in his life didn’t know one another. His connections with family were disparate and shallow, something that had never occurred to him until now.
“Dr. Riley,” she answered with crisp efficiency. A fourth-year medical student, she was working at Portland’s Legacy West Hospital this year.
“Hey, Doc, it’s me.”
“Sean!” A smile brightened her voice. “What’s up?”
“I’m not sure. I’m with my brother Derek’s kids. There was some mix-up and their parents are MIA.”
“So call them and—”
“I can’t get hold of either one of them.”
“Well, then…look, I’m in the middle of rounds. And I’m staying in the city for a seminar, did I tell you that? Can I call you in a few?”
“Sure, whenever. Bye.” He had no idea what he expected her to do. She didn’t even know these kids. This sure as hell wasn’t her problem.
Ashley was yelling and banging something in the kitchen. Cameron had turned the radio up loud again.
Sean hit the caller ID button on the phone and looked at the display. The first came up Private, the second was “Coombs, Jane.” The next one was “Robinson, Lily.”
The schoolmarm, he thought. There was something vaguely familiar about the name. Maybe he’d met her before, though he doubted it. He tended not to hang out with schoolmarms, but maybe that was about to change.
“Help me out here, Miss Robinson,” he muttered as he dialed the number.
chapter 7
Friday
7:30 p.m.
Lily sighed with contentment and snuggled down into her favorite overstuffed chair. There was a large bowl of popcorn and a glass of red wine on the table beside her. On the coffee table in front of her, a map of Italy lay spread out with the sinuous route of the Sorrentine Peninsula highlighted in yellow. The names of the towns, which she’d circled in red, came from story and legend—Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Vietri Sul Mare.
Two more months, she thought. Then summer would be here and she’d go jetting off on an adventure she’d been dreaming about for half a year. She’d be all by herself, gloriously, blissfully alone.
Her colleagues at school thought it odd that she loved to travel solo, but for Lily, making her own way and answering to no one were her favorite parts of the adventure. Her annual summer trip was hugely important to her. It always had been. Travel gave her balance and perspective and made her feel like a different person. It occurred to her to wonder why she would want to be a different person, but she didn’t think too hard about that.
She loved seeing new places and making new friends. Crystal always asked her what was wrong with the old ones. Nothing, Lily thought, except that sometimes they made you do exhausting emotional work. Lily was good at a lot of things, but not at nurturing the deep, sometimes painful bonds of true intimacy. Life simply hadn’t prepared her for that. She could understand the heart of a child, could find ways to inspire and teach, but she’d never been capable of taking a headlong plunge into lifelong commitment. Some people, she had long ago decided, were not cut out for the dizzying, dangerous adventure of loving someone until it hurt.
That didn’t mean she was immune to the occasional pang of yearning. Maybe she’d even have a romantic fling this summer. A flirtation, free of complications and commitments. It was supposed to be easy to do in Italy. At the end of summer, she would return to Comfort refreshed and ready to greet a new crop of students.
This, the cycle of school year and summer, was the rhythm of her life, and it made perfect sense to her. She had only to look at her own family to know she was right. Following a tragedy that was both shrouded in mystery and publicly recorded, her parents had spent their entire marriage making each other miserable. They were still at it to this day.
Lily had taken the lesson to heart and plotted out her life carefully. Her younger sister, Violet, had taken the opposite route, opting for an early marriage and two kids, a husband who earned too little money and a large rental house in Tigard they couldn’t afford.
By comparison, Lily had a job she loved, a small but comfortable place of her own and the freedom to do as she pleased. She meant to keep her life this way, quiet and safe.
You’re all alone, said an inner voice.
She ignored the voice, which sounded remarkably like Crystal, and sipped her wine as she read an article about a ceramics shop in Ravello where Hillary Clinton and Dustin Hoffman ordered their dishes. After a while, she set aside the map and glanced at the clock. Her usual Friday night routine was a movie at the Echo Ridge Pavilion, but the rain had started up again, and she didn’t feel like going out.
A guilty pleasure video, then, she thought, perusing her DVD collection. That was another advantage to being a free agent. If she had a man in her life, she probably wouldn’t be choosing something like Steel Magnolias or Two Moon Junction. To her knowledge, no man in history had ever willingly sat through Sense and Sensibility.
She narrowed her choices down to Under the Tuscan Sun, which would get her in the mood for Italy, and Bull Durham, about a sexually liberated schoolteacher getting it on with Kevin Costner in his prime. She thought about his famous speech about kisses that last for three weeks, and the decision was made.
As she was watching the opening credits, the phone rang. “Great timing,” she muttered, but stopped the disc and went to get the phone. Crystal, probably, calling to talk about Charlie.
Just the thought brought a heaviness to Lily’s heart. Ordinarily, school and personal matters were kept strictly separate, but in this case, they intersected. Her best friend, and her best friend’s precious daughter.
It seemed to amuse Charlie that she knew her teacher outside of school. The little girl usually got a secret smile on her face when she called Lily “Miss Robinson,” but she never took advantage of her intimate knowledge of her teacher’s personal life. In school, Charlie tried not to draw attention to herself at all. Which was why this current habit of stealing was so alarming.
“Hello?”
“Uh, yeah. Is this Miss Robinson?” The male voice was deep and strong, completely unfamiliar.
“I’m afraid I don’t accept solicitation calls,” she said crisply, and started to put down the phone.
“I’m not—wait. This is about Crystal Holloway.”
Lily frowned and cradled the receiver against her cheek. Was Crystal seeing someone? Last time they talked about it, Crystal said she was swearing off men once and for all. “I blame men for all my troubles,” she’d said dramatically, not long ago.
“Don’t you mean one man specifically?” Lily had asked.
“No, actually.” Crystal hadn’t elaborated.
“Who is this?” Lily asked the caller.
“Sean Maguire. I’m Charlie’s uncle.”
Ah, yes, Lily thought. The fabled Uncle Sean, one of Charlie’s favorite topics for show-and-tell. Since he’d moved back to town, Charlie had related several overly long stories about him, but the main point always got lost in translation. Hero worship was usually the topic.
According to Crystal, Sean was cut from the same cloth as Derek, “only younger.”
Lily had the vaguest memories of him from the Holloways’ wedding. He had reminded her of Brad Pitt in his first movie, but that only made her dislike him more. “Never trust a pretty man,” Crystal had once told her.
“Hello?” His smooth, somewhat disturbing voice intruded on her thoughts.
“Mr. Maguire,” Lily said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” There was a muffled sound, as though he was intimately cupping his hand around the mouthpiece. “I’m here at Crystal’s house, watching her kids. She’s not home yet.”
“I see.” What a loser, she thought. Couldn’t look after his own flesh and blood without calling for help. “And how can I help you?” she asked.
“I figured you might know where she is.” Tension crackled in his voice.
“Well, I don’t,” Lily said. “You should call her cell phone. I can give you her number, or you can get it from the kids—”
“I’ve been trying her cell phone all evening,” he broke in. “She doesn’t answer. Derek doesn’t answer his, either.”
Lily’s grip tightened on the receiver. She frowned, causing her glasses to inch down her nose. “That’s not like either of them.” With three kids and two households, both Crystal and Derek were vigilant about making sure they could be reached at all times. They had tormented each other through separation and divorce, but to their credit, they’d tried to shield the kids from the worst of it.
“I agree,” said the stranger.
“When was the last time you were in touch with them?”
“As near as I can tell, you were the last one to speak with them,” he said, and Lily wondered if she detected a hint of accusation in his voice. “Crystal forgot to pick up Cameron from the golf course and Charlie from her friend’s house. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Now the phone felt damp and slick in Lily’s hand. “No. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I see. Well, then.” He made an impatient sound, clearly about to hang up. “Thanks, I guess.”
Lily flashed on the notion of hanging up and going back to her movie. Finishing her wine and reading up on the Amalfi Coast. Now, however, that was no longer a possibility. She would simply worry about Crystal and the kids all night.
“Why did you call me, Mr. Maguire?” she asked.
“I heard your message on the answering machine, so I figured you might know something.”
She wondered what Crystal would think of her ex-brother-in-law, in her home, listening to her messages. “Well, I don’t know where she is. Sorry.”
“All right. Just thought I’d ask. I have a night job, and I figured—never mind. I’ll call in and let them know I can’t make it.”
“Mr. Maguire—” Lily broke off when she realized he’d hung up. “Nice,” she muttered, setting down the phone. She paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. A few minutes ago, this was her living room, her refuge, a cozy place filled with books and one shelf of framed photographs. A favorite shot of her and Crystal, laughing on the beach in front of Haystack Rock, caught her eye. Something was the matter, Lily knew it in her heart.
As she grabbed her purse and rummaged for her keys, she glanced in the hall tree mirror. “Nice,” she said again with an even more sarcastic inflection.
She was dressed for DVD night in heather-gray yoga pants and an oversize hockey jersey, which was the only thing of value left behind by Trent Atkins of the Portland Trailblazers. He hadn’t been a serious boyfriend, just someone she’d gone out with a few times. She couldn’t remember why a basketball player was in possession of a hockey jersey and decided she didn’t care.
She wore no makeup and her brown hair was caught back in a scrunchy. So what? she thought, pushing her feet into a pair of red rubber gardening clogs and donning a rain hat, thus completing the look. “Early frump” might be a good term for it.
Like that mattered, she thought, grabbing her raincoat and dashing out the door.
chapter 8
Friday
7:40 p.m.
Sean Maguire wasn’t pretty anymore, Lily observed the moment she opened the door. He was utterly, undeservedly, unjustly devastating. He was what the girls at school liked to call the whole package, in perfectly faded jeans that hugged his body, a golf shirt with the Echo Ridge logo, a lock of hair falling negligently over his brow and contrasting with the piercing blue of his eyes, a five o’clock shadow outlining the strong lines of his facial structure. He had a mouth that made her think about Kevin Costner’s Bull Durham speech, but at the moment, Maguire wasn’t smiling.
“I was hoping you’d be Crystal,” he said, holding open the door.
How gracious of him.
“Lily Robinson,” she said in her most prim tone. She always sounded insufferably prim when she felt defensive, and she always felt defensive around devastating men. She definitely felt that way now, as she stood dripping on the doormat. Her Totes rain hat was functional though hardly attractive, with its deep brim currently serving as a rain gutter. A steady drip trickled down, right between her eyes, splashing on the mat.
She took off the hat and hung it on a hook behind the door, admonishing herself not to feel self-conscious as she surrendered her coat. He towered over her, even taller than his older brother. Against her will, Lily felt a brief, subtle spasm of reaction to his nearness. He was just a guy, she reminded herself. If not for the kids, they’d have nothing to do with each other.
“Where are the kids?” she asked, removing her fogged-up glasses.
“Upstairs. I told them there’s probably some mix-up in the plans. The girls are watching a video and Cameron’s watching them.”
Or more likely, thought Lily, he was watching instant messages on the Internet. Clearly this man knew nothing about children.
“Any word from Crystal or Derek?” She finished polishing her glasses and put them back on.
“None.” He shot a glance at the stairs. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”
That was all. No “thanks for coming.” He was worried, she conceded. So was she.
As Lily followed him, she couldn’t help but notice the absolute perfection of his butt. Crystal had mentioned his golf career was on the skids. With that butt, he could always turn into a Levi’s model.
A moment later, she realized he’d turned around and caught her staring. Mortified, she shifted her gaze to a stack of three pizza boxes on the cluttered table.
“Want some?” he asked.
For a moment she felt disoriented and a bit flustered. “No, no thanks.”
“So here’s a rundown,” he said, hooking his thumbs into his rear pockets and pacing. “Derek’s fiancée, Jane, has no idea where he is.”
“She’s his fiancée?” Lily felt her stomach lurch. Crystal didn’t know that. If she did, Lily would have been the first to hear of it. Actually, the whole town probably would have heard the screams.
“I guess. As of last weekend, they made it official.”
“When was he planning to tell Crystal?” Lily sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar. She eyed the pizza boxes again, but felt too nervous to eat. Especially pizza. She hadn’t eaten pizza in ages. It was a nutritional nightmare, and stuffing herself with carbs and fats wouldn’t help anything.
Over the years, she’d spent countless hours in this kitchen, sipping herbal tea with organic honey and a slice of orange, savoring the company of her best friend. It felt weird being here with a stranger, speculating.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I bet he told her today. Maybe that’s why they didn’t come home.”
“Why would they disappear with their cell phones turned off?”
“They probably drove somewhere out of range.”
He turned and looked at her, one eyebrow lowered in skepticism. How did he do that with just one? she wondered.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
He wouldn’t.
“Think about it. If Derek remarries, these kids’ lives are going to change drastically. Crystal and Derek have got a lot to talk about.” She didn’t elaborate. Maybe Maguire knew more about the situation, maybe he didn’t. Lily didn’t see it as her place to enlighten him.
“I can’t believe they’d just take off without checking in with the kids,” he said quietly, as though talking to himself.
She drummed her fingers on the counter. An unexplained disappearance wasn’t impossible. In the final years of their marriage, Derek and Crystal had been known as the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald of the PGA, with a reputation for partying, passion and public rows. They had a way of focusing on each other with total absorption, letting the world fall away as they went at each other. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine them so caught up that they temporarily forgot the kids.
Love did strange things to people, Lily reflected, then shivered with the next thought. Had they harmed each other?
She forced herself to ask the hardest question of the night. “Have you called the police?”
He winced. “Yes. I told them the make and model of both cars. There hasn’t been any report of an accident from the highway patrol.”
A small measure of relief seeped through her. “I’m glad to hear that. So are they out searching?”
He shook his head. “No. Once they established that Derek and Crystal are adults with no medical conditions, they put me off. Twenty-four hours seems to be the magic number.”
“This is not going to take twenty-four hours,” Lily said, pushing her hand into her pocket to keep from biting her nail.
“So now what?” Sean asked.
Before she could reply, a crash sounded upstairs, followed by a loud, angry cry from Ashley.
Both Sean and Lily ran to the stairs. He took them two at a time and she followed close behind.
Crystal had remodeled the upstairs some years ago, creating a common playroom for the kids’ toys, plus a nook for a TV and their own computer. Now Lily found Ashley sitting beside a broken bean-pot lamp and howling while Charlie looked on with a tight-lipped disapproval that eerily resembled Crystal. At the computer, Cameron ignored them both as colorful instant-messaging boxes cluttered the screen. They didn’t completely manage to mask the browser window with the ominous title, “Porn Ponies.”
Lily took this all in with a glance. She reached down and scooped Ashley into her arms. She’d always felt proprietary toward Crystal’s children. “Hiya, sweetie,” she said in a soothing whisper. “Are you all right?”
The child’s sobbing subsided. Then she looked at Sean and howled again. “Don’t like you,” she wailed.
He turned his hands palms up. “I never did a thing to her,” he said.
“I like you, Uncle Sean,” Charlie said, climbing him like a tree. “Hello, Lily.” Outside of school, she was allowed to call her teacher Lily. She hung upside down on Sean’s arm and offered a gap-toothed grin.
“How’s my big girl?” Lily patted the baby’s back.
“We’re waiting for Mom,” Charlie said.
“I know.” Lily sidled over to Cameron. “Lose the Porn Ponies,” she murmured. “Now.”
“Porn Ponies?” Sean scowled. “You were looking at porn on the Internet?”
“He always looks at porn,” Charlie said, dropping to the floor.
“Do not,” Cameron said.
“Do so.” She stuck out her tongue at him. “You look at it so much, I bet your pornograph machine’s going to break.”
“Moron.” He clicked the mouse and the screen went black. Ashley stopped crying and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Note to self, thought Lily. Check parental controls on the computer.
“What are you doing here, Lily?” Charlie asked. “If you came to see my mom, she’s not home yet.”
“Tell you what,” Lily said. “You and Cameron get that lamp cleaned up. Your uncle will help you. I’m going to get our little friend here ready for bed.”
Ashley’s mouth made a popping sound as she removed her thumb. “No bed,” she said, and put her thumb back.
“You’re right. You need a bath first, you smelly little thing.”
As she carried the baby to the bathroom, Lily buried her concern behind a smile. She chattered cheerfully away as she ran a shallow bath and peeled off Ashley’s clothes and diaper. The bathroom was cluttered with brightly colored plastic toys and bottles of shampoo and bubble bath, combs and toothbrushes, barrettes and mismatched towels.
Crystal always made this look so easy, Lily reflected, trying to keep hold of the squirming child while opening a bottle of baby shampoo. Lily couldn’t abide the thought of letting go of Ashley or looking away for a single second, so she opened the cap with her teeth. The taste of baby shampoo filled her mouth.
“Ptooey,” she said, wiping her mouth on her shoulder.
Ashley laughed at her and splashed her hands on the surface of the water.
And to think the evening had started out with Italy, wine and Kevin Costner in his prime, thought Lily. Now, with every moment that passed, her conviction that her best friend was missing tightened in her chest.
Missing. There could be no other explanation. Something was terribly wrong.
chapter 9
Friday
9:00 p.m.
Sean stood in the kitchen and contemplated the empty pizza boxes. Nearly empty. He picked up the last piece of hamburger-black olive and stuffed it in his mouth. Whoever heard of hamburger-black olive? That had been Charlie’s suggestion. It wasn’t half bad, he thought, wiping his hand on his pants.
Upstairs, it was quiet at last. Lily Robinson had taken charge. The baby was asleep, and Lily and Charlie were reading a book together in Charlie’s bed.
Miss Lily Robinson to the rescue. She was not the heavyset, blue-haired schoolmarm he’d expected. She just had the personality of one. Still, Sean was grateful that she’d come to help out.
Cameron was back on the Internet, probably surfing for porn even though Sean had warned him not to. Sean had come downstairs to dispose of the broken lamp and clean up the kitchen.
Pizza boxes had been designed, he decided, by someone who had never taken out the trash. There was no way to fit one into a receptacle. He set it on the floor, stepped on it and then folded it in half once, twice, then crammed the cardboard into the kitchen trash can, shoving it down with his foot. He repeated the process for the second box, then the third.
When Lily walked into the kitchen, Sean had one foot in the trash can and his mouth full of pizza. She eyed him as though he were one of the kids in her schoolroom, not with dislike or disapproval, but with a kind of bemused tolerance that made him want to misbehave.
This was the gift of a schoolmarm, he thought. With one look, she could make a grown man feel an inch tall.
He managed to swallow the last of the pizza and extract his foot with a tug, hopping backward and grabbing a chair to keep from falling.
“Hey,” he said, acting casual, crossing his foot at the ankle. “The kids in bed?”
“The girls are. Charlie just fell asleep. Cameron’s doing homework.”
“I’m calling the police again,” Sean said.
“I think you should.” Her face was pale, and she kept worrying a silver-and-turquoise ring around her finger.
She wasn’t bad-looking behind those thick glasses, Sean reflected as he picked up the phone. For a marm.
He hit Redial and got the now-familiar recorded menu of options, pressing three before the falsely soothing canned voice finished the instructions.
“This is Officer Brad Henley.”
“I’m calling for Officer…” Sean consulted the name he’d jotted down. Unable to find a piece of paper, he’d written it in ballpoint pen on the palm of his hand. Lily said nothing but frowned at the hand.
“Nordquist,” Sean said.
“Gone for the day,” Henley said in a bored voice.
Great, they’d changed shifts.
“This is in regard to a matter I called about earlier,” Sean said. “My name is Sean Maguire.”
“Uh-huh. What can I do for you?”
“I called about my brother, Derek Holloway, and his ex-wife, Crystal.” Sean listened to the silence for a few seconds.
“Yeah, okay. I see it in the call log here. What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?”
Find them, he wanted to scream into the phone. Find them and bring them home so I can get back to my life. My sorry-ass life. Which, if things go okay at the tournament next week, I might just have a shot at getting back on track.
“I still don’t know where they are. There’s been no word of them.” Sean glanced over at Lily, who watched him with a furrow of worry on her brow. The conversation felt slightly surreal as he said, “My brother’s missing and so is his ex. You ought to be out searching for them.”
Another pause. Sean could hear the tap of a keyboard. “Do either of them have any type of medical problem or impairment that—”
“I answered all this before,” Sean said, fighting to keep his voice down. “They’re both in perfect health, sound of mind and body. Which is why it’s completely unlike them to disappear.”
“Sir, at this time, it’s not an emergent situation and we can’t give it airtime or attempt to locate missing adults.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re never missing,” the cop said wryly. “I’ll put the info out on the city channel for now.”
“What’s that?”
“Dispatchers’ network.”
“There are three children involved,” Sean reminded him. “Do you have that in your notes?”
“Are they in any danger?” the cop asked.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Then I can’t—” There was a pause on the line. “Is your brother Derek Holloway, the golfer?”
Celebrity had its perks, Sean thought. “The very same.”
“Well, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate at this time, but I’ll send someone out,” said Henley. “What’s the address?”
Sean looked up at Lily. “Address?” he mouthed.
She handed him an envelope from the pile of mail on the table.
Good thinking. At least one of them could still think. He read the address into the phone.
“Someone will be right out,” he reported to Lily after he hung up.
“When?”
“He said right away. I assume that means immediately.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
Sean felt a tic leap in his jaw. “Look, right away means right away. Like now.”
“You don’t have to snap at me.”
“I didn’t snap at you.”
“Yes, you did. And you’re still doing it.”
“Hey, I don’t need a scolding here.”
“I wasn’t scolding.” She sniffed. “I just don’t like being snapped at.”
“I didn’t—” Sean forced himself to stop. It was idiotic, bickering with this woman while Derek was God-knows-where. “Okay,” he said, getting up to pace some more. “All right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
She turned to the sink and started rinsing the dishes. “I’m every bit as worried as you are, Mr. Maguire.”
“Sean. Call me Sean.”
She opened the dishwasher and rolled out the rack. “Why should I do that?”
“Because I’m sure as hell not going to call you Miss Robinson, Lily.”
She pivoted away sharply and began to load the dishwasher. He checked messages on his cell phone, finding nothing new there. Lily lined up the plates in the rack and separated the silverware into baskets according to category—all the forks in one, the spoons in another. She was stymied by a spatula until she laid it carefully in the top rack. Then she put in the glasses, upending each one according to height. Finally she picked up the box of soap powder and appeared to be reading the directions.
“You need some help with that?” he asked, putting away his phone.
“No. It’s just that I’ve never used this brand before. It says ‘super concentrated’ so I think I might need less. Ah, here we go. Two ounces for the normal cycle.” She opened a drawer and rummaged around inside it. “Now, two ounces. I believe that’s the equivalent of two level tablespoons….”
Sean couldn’t help it. He snatched the box of detergent from her, dumped some of it into the trap until it overflowed, then snapped the thing shut. Finally, he closed the dishwasher and gave the knob a twist until he heard the shudder of running water.
When he straightened up, he saw her staring at him as though he’d crossed some line with her. Hell, maybe he had.
He spied a stray coffee mug on the counter. Its rim bore a half moon of lipstick. Without taking his eyes off her, he opened the dishwasher and stuck it in haphazardly, then shut the machine again, pushing the door with his hip.
“There,” he said. “That’s done.”
“Thank you,” she said faintly.
“I guess I could take out the trash,” he said, gesturing at the overflowing receptacle.
“I believe the cans are in the garage. You’ll want to make sure the lid’s on tight to discourage raccoons.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with exaggerated courtesy. He picked up the kitchen garbage and headed out the back door. When he turned to close it, he saw Lily Robinson open the dishwasher and carefully put the coffee mug in its proper place.
chapter 10
Friday
9:25 p.m.
In a way, thought Lily, Sean Maguire was a blessing. He was so incredibly obnoxious that he distracted her from worrying herself to the point of despair. So she supposed he was good for something.
When he came in from taking out the trash, she didn’t acknowledge him. She was busy clearing off the countertops in order to give them a good cleaning.
It wasn’t like this was a social situation, anyway, she thought, feeling unaccountably defensive. They wouldn’t have a thing to do with each other if not for the bizarre situation they found themselves in.
“I’m going to go check on Cameron,” he said.
“That’s probably a good idea.” She set down the bottle of Windex. “So how worried is he?”
“Plenty. It’s completely unlike Derek to just take off without explanation.”
“Crystal would never do that, either.”
“Oh, no?” He lifted one eyebrow. “She left them overnight at Derek’s two weeks ago.”
“That’s different. She missed a flight and she was completely in touch by phone the whole time. Listen, Crystal’s my best friend. I’ve known her since I was Charlie’s age. She’s a good mother, and I’m sure there’s an explanation for whatever’s going on.”
He studied her hard, with a blue-eyed gaze that probed almost insultingly. “Have we met before?”
She went back to cleaning the countertops. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem familiar to me.”
She finished the counter and moved on to the range top. She found plenty of spattered grease to attack there. Crystal had never been the world’s greatest housekeeper. When she was married to Derek, it hadn’t mattered because they employed full-time help. Now Crystal was on her own.
“We were both in their wedding,” she told Sean.
“Oh.” He looked blank.
“Sixteen years ago,” she reminded him. “I was just a kid,” she added. “You wouldn’t remember me.”
He snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact, I do. I made fun of your glasses and braces. ‘When do train tracks have four eyes?’ Remember? I thought that was so hilarious.”
She scrubbed furiously around a knob. “You were a real charmer.”
“I was a punk,” he said easily. “You should have told me to get lost.”
“I believe I did just that.” Agitated, she moved on to the cabinet faces, spritzing the entire row above the counter. When she came to the end of the row, Maguire stood in the way, leaning back against the counter. He didn’t move, so she spritzed him, too.
“Oops,” she said. “Sorry.”
He caught hold of her wrist and gently took the Windex bottle away from her. “Tell you what, Lily,” he said. “Let’s both go talk to Cameron.”
His touch drew a quick, shocked gasp from Lily. She pulled away and cradled her wrist in her other hand.
“All right,” she said, ducking her head. To her dismay, a hot blush crept up into her cheeks. How stupid was that? He’d barely touched her, and she was acting like a complete Sabine.
She told herself to get a grip, but the fact was, good-looking men intimidated her. She was always convinced they were making fun of her. It was ridiculous, at her age, to feel that way, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. No wonder she preferred third-graders.
The phone rang. Sean snatched it up, spoke briefly to the caller and then hung up. “They found Crystal’s car. Dead in the school parking lot. What do you make of that?”
“It means they’re probably together.”
“At least we have something to tell Cameron.”
They found Cameron with a biology book open on the desk in front of him, but he was staring at the clock rather than studying.
“Hey, sport.” Sean went over to the desk and leaned against the edge of it.
Lily had to admit he seemed relaxed and natural around Cameron. Like her, he was being careful not to appear frantic.
“Got a minute?” Sean asked his nephew.
“Who was on the phone? What’s going on?”
“Well, for one thing, your mom’s car has a dead battery and she left it in the parking lot of Charlie’s school. So now we’re guessing your dad gave her a ride.”
“A ride to where? Chicago? They’ve been gone for hours.”
“We don’t know where they are yet, but we’re going to find out. The police are going to drop by and get some more information from us.”
“When? When are the police coming?”
“They said they’d send someone right away,” Lily said.
“What’s that mean, right away?”
Sean looked over at Lily. “I swear, you two…soon, okay? And I’m sure they’re going to want to talk to you.”
“I can’t tell them anything,” Cameron said, closing the textbook with an angry thud. “All I know is my loser mother didn’t show—”
“Cameron,” Lily broke in. “Watch what you say about your mother.” She bit her tongue to keep from taking the thought further. She was thinking of how guilty he’d feel if he found out something terrible had happened.
“I can say what I want,” he retorted.
“Don’t snap at her,” Sean warned.
“I wasn’t snapping.”
“Yes, you were. And you’re still doing it.”
The doorbell rang and the three of them froze. Then, as one, they broke for the stairs and hurried to answer the door.
chapter 11
Friday
10:00 p.m.
This sucks hind tit, thought Cameron, eyeing the cops sitting at the kitchen table. Having two parents missing was actually worse than having them both in your face.
There was a guy and a woman. The guy looked young and kind of geeky, taking notes on some sort of Blackberry device. The woman was older, with a calm demeanor and the no-nonsense air of a math teacher.
Uncle Sean was jumpy but gave them straightforward answers to their questions. Unfortunately, he was clueless. He’d known Cameron’s dad longer than anybody, but didn’t have the first idea of where he might have gone. Lily was trying to act brave, but Cameron could tell she was freaking. Behind her thick-lensed glasses, her eyes seemed too bright, as though she had a fever. She’d bitten off the fingernails of one hand and would probably start on the other when no one was looking.
As for Cameron, he was pretty ticked off by the whole situation. It was probably nothing, just a stupid mix-up. It wouldn’t be the first time his parents caused some big idiotic mess, getting everyone all freaked for nothing. They’d been doing it for years. Just because they were divorced didn’t mean they’d stop.
“So they left the school at three-forty-five,” said Officer Vessey, the guy with the Blackberry.
Lily nodded, her brown ponytail bouncing like a cheerleader’s. “Yes. I went to the faculty lounge to talk with my school principal, and I looked at the clock that hangs over the coffeemaker. It was three-forty-five.”
“Do either Mr. Holloway or his ex-wife suffer from any incapacitating medical condition?”
Everyone looked blank. Officer Franklin said, “Sometimes that accounts for a disappearance.”
“They’re both fine,” Cameron said, and it came out sounding belligerent. Too bad, he thought.
Sean said, “You already have that information.”
“Miss Robinson, did you see them leave together?” asked Officer Franklin, unfazed.
Lily took a sip of her herbal tea. Mom always kept a box of assorted weird tea on hand for her. Lily was a health nut, and chamomile tea was probably the strongest thing she ever put into her body. No wonder she bit off all her fingernails.
“They left my classroom together,” Lily said. “They walked out of the building at the same time. I didn’t actually see them get into Derek’s car together.”
“Would it have surprised you, seeing them drive off together?”
Lily didn’t like the question. Cameron could tell by the way she shifted in her seat.
“I suppose. But maybe not. They both take very laudable interest in their children. Now that we know Crystal’s car had a dead battery, we know why they drove off in the SUV. It makes perfect sense.”
“And what was their state of mind? Can you describe that to us?”
Lily flicked a quick glance at Cameron. He put on a bored expression, like he didn’t give a crap.
“Well, as I said before, it wasn’t a happy meeting. Their daughter Charlene has been struggling in school.”
Like that was a surprise, thought Cameron.
“Were they contentious at the meeting?”
Lily lifted her hand to chew on her nail, then seemed to think better of it and tucked it under her leg. “I wouldn’t say ‘contentious.’ Strained, maybe. Listen, if you’re trying to figure out if they were apt to harm each other—physically—the answer is no. Absolutely not.”
“You’re sure of that.”
It was creepy as hell, Cameron thought, the way these cops assumed the worst of his parents. It must be such a drag, being a cop. You had to deal with people at the worst moments of their lives, and you never got to see their good side.
“As sure as I can be,” Lily said. “I told you, I’ve known Crystal since she was thirteen and I was eight. We’re as close as sisters, maybe closer. I’m her children’s godmother and she is a gentle, loving, reasonable person.”
Cameron sensed his uncle’s skepticism. He didn’t exactly roll his eyes but shifted in his chair and let out a restless sigh. He tried as hard as he could to feel absolutely nothing, just a cool sense of wait-and-see. It was getting tougher by the minute, though. He was starting to wish he hadn’t eaten so much pizza earlier. The way his stomach felt, it was threatening to make an encore appearance.
The cops stayed focused on Lily, like maybe she was holding something back. “Miss Robinson, how long have you known Derek Holloway?”
“Since they got engaged about seventeen years ago. I can’t say I was ever close to him, and since the divorce, I’ve only seen him in my role as Charlie’s teacher.”
“What was your opinion of him?”
Go ahead and say it, Cameron thought. You hated his guts.
“He adores his children,” Lily said. “I don’t believe he would ever harm Crystal.”
“And you have no idea where they might be right now.”
“None,” said Lily. “It’s completely unlike Crystal to fail to come home to her kids.” There was a hitch in Lily’s voice, and the sound of it stabbed into Cameron.
He felt defensive, prodded to speak up. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.
Everyone swung to face him. You could hear the shush of the dishwasher in the stillness. Cameron felt his ears turning red. “She blew us off last month when her flight from Denver was delayed.”
“She called to say she would be late,” Lily stated in her know-it-all teacher voice.
“Yeah, but only after she was like four hours late, and Dad had already left town, too, for a tournament.” Cameron bristled with resentment. “I had to give the girls their supper and put them to bed.” He couldn’t help it. He glanced at the clock over the stove. Way more than four hours had passed. He wondered if he should say anything more. As the one person who had witnessed his parents’ marriage from a front-row seat, he knew things no one else possibly could.
“That’s completely different.” Uncle Sean spoke up, sounding more calm and reasonable than any of them. “Someone knew where they both were.”
Then it was his turn to be interviewed. “Mr. Maguire, can you characterize your relationship with your brother?”
Cameron ground his teeth in frustration. Here they were reviewing the history of his wacko family when they should be out searching for his parents. But where? Where?
Sean’s jaw developed a tic and Cameron sensed his impatience, too. He took a deep breath. “We’re half brothers. We have the same mother. His father passed away in the sixties and our mother married my father. We both grew up right here in Comfort. Both played golf, both went pro. I joined the Asian Tour and Derek kept his PGA card. I moved back here and I’m working at the country club.”
Cameron knew there was a lot more to that story. A whole lot more. Like the fact that Dad’s father had never been married to his mother and was broke when he died. And the fact that Grandma had married Patrick Maguire just six months later. And Uncle Sean was born just a few months after that. But that was all ancient history. It probably wouldn’t help them figure out where his parents had gone.
Something not so ancient burned inside him like a bleeding ulcer. He was never meant to know about Ashley, but he’d found out and now the weight of that crushed him. It wasn’t his to tell, he reminded himself, especially to a room full of strangers.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” the cop asked Sean.
“Last night. He came into the clubhouse for a drink, and we talked.”
“Did you get any sense that there was a problem?” asked Officer Franklin. “Any issues between your brother and his ex-wife?”
Just that they hated each other, Cameron thought bitterly. Just that they kept secrets from each other.
“None at all,” said Sean. “Crystal is the mother of his children, and he’s always been good to her.”
It was on the tip of Cameron’s tongue to address that statement, but he said nothing. He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t imagine talking to strangers about stuff he barely let himself think about. Besides, he could be wrong.
Now it was Lily’s turn to get skeptical. She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she pursed her lips as if thinking, “Uh-huh. I’m so sure.”
The kitchen phone shrilled suddenly. Cameron’s heart leaped. Everybody around the table jumped at the handset. Cameron grabbed it first. He was the one who lived here, after all.
“Hello.”
“Cameron, it’s Jane.”
Great, he thought. He looked at the four expectant faces around the table. “Jane,” he said.
“Derek’s girlfriend,” Uncle Sean explained to the cops.
“Do you know where my dad is?” Cameron asked her.
“Actually,” she said, “I was calling you with the same question.”
Cameron felt his hopes deflate like a pricked balloon. “I think you should probably come over,” he told her in a dull voice. “He and my mom haven’t come home and the police are here asking questions.”
There was a brief, fragile silence, and then she made a terrible sound, like there was something caught in her throat.
“Jane?” Cameron asked.
“I—um, I’ll come right over.”
“Girlfriend?” asked Officer Franklin.
“They’re very close,” Uncle Sean explained. He glanced at Cameron.
“You can talk about it in front of me. It’s not like I didn’t know,” Cameron said, trying to regain his equilibrium after the phone call. He preferred bored impatience to sick dread any day. “She was going to move in with him.”
“Does your mother know this?” asked Lily in an edgy voice.
Cameron shrugged. “I didn’t tell her. I guess Dad was going to eventually.”
A short while later, Jane burst in without knocking. She had really short blond hair and sharp features, and at the moment she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She never smoked around Cameron and the girls.
Cameron knew his mother smoked sometimes, too. Last fall, as they were finalizing the divorce, he found her on the back steps late one night, smoking a Marlboro and flicking a lighter on and off, watching the flame.
She’d turned to him with the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “Don’t ever smoke, baby,” she’d said to him in a tired, husky voice. “It just tells people when you’re unhappy.”
“Got it, Mom. Never let on when you’re unhappy. Check.”
He remembered realizing the sting of his sarcasm hit home. Though it was dark outside, he could see her wince as if in pain.
“I talked to him just before 3:00 p.m.,” Jane was saying. “He was very clear. He would pick Ashley up by four-thirty this afternoon and take her to her mother’s house. I had a class to teach tonight, so I brought the baby here myself.”
Dumping her like a sack of old mail, Cameron added silently. The truth was, he didn’t really mind Jane, but at the moment he was looking for someone to be pissed at.
They briefly filled in Jane on what they knew so far. The two of them had left Charlie’s school together, presumably because his mom’s car wouldn’t start. Neither responded to repeated calls on their cell phones. There had been no reports of accidents despite the inclement weather. The cops explained that some cell phones had a GPS device and could be tracked down, but apparently his parents’ phones didn’t have this feature.
Unexpectedly, giving him no chance to think about his answers, Officer Franklin started questioning Cameron.
“Did you talk with your father before school this morning?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Fought with him would be more accurate, but no one needed to know that.
“Did you talk about anything in particular?”
“Not really. We have to change houses every Friday. That’s in the parenting plan. I said I was going to the golf course after school and I’d see him in a week.” What he’d actually said was, I hate you, you son of a bitch. I hope I never see you again.
His father had responded in kind. Go ahead and hate me, you little shit. Just make sure you don’t screw up in the tournament this weekend.
It’s not like you’ll even be there to see me screw up, Cameron had concluded.
“After that,” he said, “I got my things and caught the bus to school.”
“Did you see your mother today?”
“No. She was supposed to pick me up at the golf course and she didn’t show.” He went to the window and stared at it, seeing only his own ghostly reflection. It weirded him out to imagine what was going on in the cops’ heads about his parents. They were probably thinking of people messing around in a sleazy motel or getting drunk and screaming at each other. “Look, can’t you just go find them? You’re not going to learn anything more here.”
“At this time, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate,” said Officer Franklin. “When two adults in good health are involved, they eventually show up. This has already been put up on the city channel where the dispatchers chat among themselves, but until there’s a true emergent situation, we can’t do a broadcast.”
Which was her way of saying they were shit out of luck. Nobody was being protected and served here, Cameron thought. He wondered if he should point that out.
“For the time being,” Officer Franklin went on, “you can call the state patrol and area hospitals. I appreciate your alarm, but I’m sure they’ll show up with an explanation.”
Uncle Sean stood up, his lips tight with unexpressed anger. “I need to put gas in my car before the station closes. Then I’m going to start looking.”
Cameron stood up, too. “I’ll go with you.”
“We need for you to stay right here,” Officer Franklin said.
Although she barked it like an order, Cameron sensed the compassion beneath the words. It would be a mistake for him to go out looking for his missing parents.
He might not like what he found.
chapter 12
Saturday
12:45 a.m.
“What exactly is an APB, anyway?” Jane Coombs asked Lily. She spoke without looking up from the screen of her cell phone. She’d been staring at it as though willing Derek to call.
“It stands for all points bulletin,” Lily said. “It means each law enforcement agency within a prescribed radius receives a broadcast of the alert.”
“And they’re not going to do that for us,” Jane said, a quaver in her voice.
“Not until they’ve been missing twenty-four hours. That seems to be the magic number.” She felt like quavering, too. She hated the icy knot of worry in her gut.
Other than the sound of the shower running upstairs for Cameron, the house was eerily, uncomfortably quiet. Soon after Jane’s arrival, the police had left, promising that if Crystal and Derek didn’t return by four o’clock tomorrow, they would initiate the mysterious business of conducting a missing-persons search. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait. And worry.
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Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: When Derek and Crystal Maguire are killed in a car accident, their three children are left to be raised by their designated guardians–Lily Robinson and Sean McGuire. Brought together by tragedy, the two strangers are joined in grief and their mutual love for these orphaned children.Sean and Lily are about to embark on the journey of ups and downs, patience and understanding that makes a family. And along the way they will find a future filled with hope, happiness and the certainty that love is the best choice of all.