On Common Ground
On Common Ground
Tracy Kelleher
When Lilah Evans graduated from Grantham U, she was ready to leave college behind and change the world. Now, at a crossroads, she's doing something she never wanted to do: attending her ten-year reunion. And that means running into Justin Bigelow.A decade ago, Justin was the big man on campus–Mr. Self-Involved himself. So why did he nominate Lilah for the Distinguished Alumni award? One thing that's clear this nostalgia-filled weekend, he isn't the partying jock she remembers.What's also clear is that the attraction that used to simmer between them is now more intense–and impossible to ignore. With the stakes higher, do they finally have the courage to go for it?
You never forget the one who got away
When Lilah Evans graduated from Grantham U, she was ready to leave college behind and change the world. Now, at a crossroads, she’s doing something she never wanted to do: attending her ten-year reunion. And that means running
into Justin Bigelow.
A decade ago, Justin was the big man on campus—Mr. Self-Involved himself. So why did he nominate Lilah for the Distinguished Alumni award? One thing that’s clear this nostalgia-filled weekend, he isn’t the partying jock she remembers.
What’s also clear is that the attraction that used to simmer between them is now more intense—and impossible to ignore. With the stakes higher, do they finally have the courage to go for it?
He bit back a smile and the sudden impulse to take her in his arms
Instead, Justin enjoyed the warm glow that permeated his being and had nothing to do with the sun beating through the car windows.
Lilah cocked her head and stared at him.
Justin held his breath.
She wet her lips.
The only noise was the whizzing of traffic outside and the occasional honk of a car horn. Not to mention the violent thumping of his own heart.
This would be it...their first kiss. Finally.
Dear Reader,
I live in a small college town. Every spring, the azaleas bloom in candy cane colors, the daffodils and tulips blanket the lawns and flowerbeds and the spirited alumni return for their class reunions. These annual rituals bring together the bittersweet memories of past joys and disappointments as well as the promise of beautiful and fulfilling things to come—all the elements of a great romance, in my opinion. Is it any wonder that I had to write a series of stories set during Grantham University’s reunions? I hope you enjoy reading this first installment as much as I took pleasure in writing it.
Let me mention the inspiration for my heroine, Lilah Evans. I happened to read an op-ed piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on the organization Run for Congo Women and its founder, Lisa Shannon. As a woman and a mother, I couldn’t help but be moved by Ms. Shannon’s valiant efforts, and I knew I wanted to create a heroine who embodied her spirit. While I was influenced by elements of her story, the characters and events in my book are, of course, strictly fictional.
As always, I love to hear from my readers. Email me at tracyk@tracykelleher.com.
Tracy Kelleher
On Common Ground
Tracy Kelleher
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tracy sold her first story to a children’s magazine when she was ten years old. Writing was clearly in her blood, though fiction was put on hold while she received degrees from Yale and Cornell, traveled the world, worked in advertising, became a staff reporter and later a magazine editor. She also managed to raise a family. Is it any surprise she escapes to the world of fiction?
Many thanks to Renée Dinnerstein,
an inspired teacher. You’re a good sport.
For her insights into early childhood education,
see Renée’s blog, Investigating Choice Time: Inquiry, Exploration, and Play, at investigatingchoicetime.com.
This book is dedicated to Peter and James:
two great guys who are generous, smart and funny.
Plus you give the best hugs!
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u49f3ed5b-2fe6-5c9e-b2ff-6c3f063a4553)
CHAPTER TWO (#u2d5294fe-867e-5a79-be23-000b692f1a6e)
CHAPTER THREE (#uec9bc0ac-fd7a-5d72-8d4b-671d2e2f05bf)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u3b406761-6093-5c67-895c-ecc368f3eb9a)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ub1442989-cfd2-5452-9ca1-8f406eb227d6)
CHAPTER SIX (#uf451a4c0-d63a-5946-b213-1b2f82e0bf90)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u77543480-b5b8-504b-8d9e-aea741bebbdd)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u1e9fff10-808d-5e91-b81a-08f249360dcb)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
March
THE VILLAGE WOMEN STOMPED their bare feet to the rhythm of the drums. They kicked up dirt that collected on the hems of their long cotton dresses, making an earthen border of red clay. The bright, bold patterns of their bandannas created a swirl of color. And the joyous sounds they intoned combined in a song in celebration.
To say the least, Lilah Evans was a long way from home.
You couldn’t get much farther from Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington State, than the remote jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo. But whatever the distance—indeed, whatever the differences—the primal African beat had a universal appeal. And a special one for Lilah.
Because the women who sang and danced? They were singing and dancing for her.
It was a gift from the hearts of women who owned almost nothing and had lost so much—husbands and children and homes in the ongoing civil war.
Growing up on an idyllic island, surrounded by fishermen, artists and executive escapees from Seattle, Lilah wouldn’t have been able to imagine that people were capable of such cruelty. After her schoolteacher mother had read her Grimm’s fairy tales, she’d had nightmares for weeks. To this day, she never looked at gingerbread quite the same way.
So when Esther, her good friend among the Congolese women, had told her what had happened to her, her soft voice mingling with the smoke from the kitchen fire in her small hut, Lilah had cringed.
“Lilah, they came one day—this was after they had raided the village and killed my husband and the other men. And taken my oldest son,” Esther had explained. Her tone was flat, but raw emotion cut the sentences into staccato clips. “They were crazy. The militiamen—crazy on drugs. They went from hut to hut. They raped the women, young daughters no more than children, grandmothers—toothless grandmothers. Then they came to me.” Her voice faltered. “They took me, too, in ways not normal. They made sure that my children were watching. It was a game, a sport, n’est-ce pas? When they were done, they laughed. Then they started to talk among themselves. I knew there was more to come. I tried not to show any fear. That was what they wanted of course.”
“You don’t have to say any more,” Lilah remembered telling her friend. She was too old to hide under the covers, but that was what she wished to do. Barring that, she wished she could cover her ears with her hands. But she didn’t. She owed it to Esther to listen, to be brave in any way she could be.
And her friend finished the story, a story so horrific that now, after the fact, Lilah still blotted out the details of how Ester came to lose her leg and what had happened to the rest of the family. What she did recall vividly was her own reaction—crying and reaching out to her friend. Her own words, thinking back now, seemed so self-centered. “I don’t think I would have been able to withstand that. I don’t know if I am strong enough,” she had said.
And Esther had placed her thin hand, as light as a bird’s, on Lilah’s arm and replied, “You do it because you have to. You have to think of tomorrow. There is no choice.”
But for Lilah, there had been a choice. Back in her senior year of college, suffering from the flu, she’d wrapped herself in a quilt on her couch and killed off a dozen boxes of Kleenex, while flipping through the channels on the TV. By chance she landed on this daytime talk show, the sort that she would have never admitted to watching. It carried a heart-wrenching report on the plight of Congolese women.
By the time the program broke away for a commercial for a new women’s deodorant, Lilah had made that choice. She decided to enlist other women to help provide health care to women and children in the remote areas of Congo—places where medical providers were practically unheard of.
And so Sisters for Sisters was born.
It was one thing to find a cause. It was another to carry it out. First had come the efforts to establish a base of operations in the capital of Kinshasa, staffed with a part-time office manager and a nurse who volunteered when she wasn’t working at the hospital. One year later, Lilah got the first traveling clinic up and running. Equipped with medical supplies and a portable lab, that team of two nurses and a female doctor set out to war-torn villages in eastern Congo. After three years, the organization was finally able to pay the nurse in the main office and had added another two clinics, then two more. In total, five traveling clinics were making the rounds—true, often on a shoestring budget and understaffed, but at least they were providing services.
Through her own outreach efforts, Lilah had also coordinated field operations with a group of volunteer doctors, and this partnership helped increase much-needed manpower and opened up Sisters for Sisters to larger funded studies. Now ten years later, her organization had seen both ups and downs—plenty of downs—but she was still unwilling to give up when there were good people like Esther suffering. But there were times when Lilah found it almost impossible to follow Esther’s credo and “think of tomorrow.”
Lilah shook her head. Tomorrow could wait, especially when this moment in time was perfect. Today, Esther was dancing joyfully with a prosthetic leg thanks to Lilah’s efforts.
The music ended. The performers and villagers erupted in a chorus of cheers.
Esther approached Lilah, her gait awkward but confident. She hugged her. “C’est pour toi.” “It’s for you.”
“C’est fantastique!” Lilah exclaimed in French. The language was a vestige of colonialism, but it was still the common language spoken in Congo. “Tu m’as donné un cadeau énorme! Merci bien.” “You’ve given me a wonderful gift. Thank you so much,” she said in her less than fluent French.
“But it is we who are thanking you, ma petite soeur, my little sister,” Esther said. “We are all sisters helping each other, mais non?” She smiled and her voice held a hint of teasing.
That was another of Lilah’s choices—the whole sibling concept.
Her idea for raising money was to hold 5K road races for women where each participant or “sister” sponsored a “sister” in Congo. The idea had taken off. Now her nonprofit organization had more than twenty local affiliates that sponsored fun runs and competitive races almost every month, all across America. Plans were already set to branch out to Europe and Australia.
But while these runs remained the backbone of Sisters for Sisters’s funding and a way for women to “actively” participate in the organization, Lilah recognized the limitations of races as the sole source of revenue. As a result, much of her time was spent writing grant proposals to funding agencies and foundations. This had led to a collaboration with a Doctors Without Borders type of operation to provide cell phones to women in rural villages, thus allowing them to obtain long-distance medical help. Similar programs in other countries, using towers and satellites that the military or World Health Organization had put in place, were already up and running.
Here at last was a way to supplement Sisters for Sisters’s meager staffing. So far only a pilot program in a few locales, including Esther’s village, had been funded, and if they were going to expand, they’d need more money. Lilah figured she’d have to give up on sleep altogether to get out more grant applications.
As if that weren’t enough to worry about, after a race two months ago in Poughkeepsie, New York, a woman had approached her who was a senior VP at a large investment house. She wanted to help set up a local banking system so that women could establish savings accounts to better the lives of their children.
Lilah felt overwhelmed. What did she know about banking? Microfinancing sounded like a good idea, but was it something Sisters for Sisters should be affiliated with? They always had been associated strictly with medical care. On the other hand, if she said no, would she be turning down an opportunity too good to miss? After all, the link between improved standards of health and financial well-being, not to mention better education, was well documented.
But all these questions would simply have to wait. Now she reveled in the warmth radiating from Esther’s skin as Lilah embraced her “sister.” A late-afternoon shower started to fall, heightening the smells of the village and the jungle.
Esther broke away from their hug and looked to the skies. “It’s time for the feast. It is good we have the school to keep us dry.” That was something of an exaggeration. Made of sticks, the school consisted of a thatched roof and dirt floor.
Esther clapped for her three remaining children to come, and with her head held high she clumped along on her artificial leg. She nodded for Lilah to follow.
Lilah joined the procession, smiling with the thought that she resembled one of the baby ducks following their mother in the children’s book Make Way for Ducklings.
A cell phone rang.
All the women reached into the deep folds of their dresses. Lilah had to laugh. It was a sign of progress that the towers were functioning, and that women were growing familiar with the equipment even though the likelihood of receiving calls was remote. Still, given the loudness of the ring tone, Lilah knew it was for her. She held her phone aloft to let the other women know, then rushed through the raindrops into Esther’s mud hut. “Hello,” she answered. Very few people outside her organization and her family had her number.
“Lilah, it’s Mimi.” The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Mimi Lodge, Lilah’s roommate from college. Always outspoken and very smart—some might say too smart for her own good—Mimi had gone on to be a television news correspondent.
“Talk about a voice out of the blue. Where are you calling from this time? Chechnya? Afghanistan?” Lilah asked. If there was a hot spot in the world, chances were that Mimi was there.
“Close. Waziristan.”
Lilah cringed. People sometimes questioned her sanity about traveling to Congo, but Waziristan? The northwest region of Pakistan was a known stronghold of terrorists. “Promise me you’re calling to tell me you’re safe,” Lilah implored.
“Not to worry about me. I’m in my element. It’s you I’m calling about—with news.”
“Don’t tell me—actually do tell me—that someone has decided to give Sisters for Sisters millions of dollars after seeing your piece on TV?” she asked.
“No, but there’s the possibility.”
“I’m always open to possibilities, long shots, even highly unlikely probabilities.”
“It’s like this. Seeing as you’re such a hard woman to track down, the alumni office of our illustrious alma mater, Grantham University, contacted me through my television network. They were hoping I could hunt you down directly.”
“Oh, please, there is no way I’m making a contribution to Annual Giving. I barely make enough money to pay the rent on my hovel of an apartment—and I use the term hovel generously,” Lilah decried. After college, she’d landed in Brooklyn, and for some mysterious reason that only the gods of real estate understood, her block had defiantly escaped the rampant gentrification that had swept the rest of the outer borough.
“Actually, it’s the other way around. They want to give you something.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Lilah ran her hand through her chestnut-brown hair, which despite the practical clip holding it back in a ponytail, was frizzing madly in the rain and humidity.
“I kid you not. Apparently, the feature I did on you actually penetrated the mostly deaf ears of the ivory tower powers-that-be. Now the university wants to honor you with a big alumni award at Reunions this June. Who’d a thunk it, heh?”
Lilah knew that Mimi didn’t harbor any great fondness for Grantham despite her family’s long history of involvement and support for the Ivy League institution. Nor was Lilah particularly the Reunions “type.” What was the point of rehashing your college days? Or seeing people from your past you really could do without? She could think of one person in particular—boy, could she ever. Then there was the more fundamental anxiety. Ten years out—had she measured up to her own expectations? And the more troubling thought, If I accept the award, will they figure out I’m no longer some sterling idealist?
But those doubts were for her ears alone—something she’d have to work out. So Lilah retorted with the slick sarcasm that so often substituted for wit and intelligence among her fellow Grantham alumni.
“So why exactly would I want to wax poetic about my time at that dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist bastion?” she asked, using Mimi’s withering expression for Grantham. “I mean, can’t I just accept the award without showing up to Reunions? ’Cause I’m not totally convinced I can stand there with a straight face, listening to the university president give some rah-rah speech about all my good works somehow being an outgrowth of that special Grantham spirit. And the thought of rubber chicken served under a tent by the boathouse? Please. Is there anything worse? Oh, right—sleeping in a dorm room all over again.”
Truth was, she’d die for a dorm room right now. Tonight Lilah would be sleeping on the dirt floor on a thin straw mat. Not that she was complaining, mind you, when she had so much compared to the villagers around her.
Speaking of which, Lilah angled to the side to let one of Esther’s daughters carry an earthen platter of baton di manioc, boiled palm leaves filled with a paste made from starchy manioc tubers.
“I feel your pain, really I do,” Mimi responded from thousands of miles away. She, too, had mastered the glib speak. “But look at it this way. Does Miss America get her cr-own in absen-tia?” The satellite line had a slight delay, and the transmission sputtered.
“I get your point. I get your point,” Lilah replied. “But aren’t Reunions in June? That’s…that’s not going to work out. Our first major fundraising race in Europe is at the beginning of that month—in Barcelona. I couldn’t possibly miss that.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re at the end of June, but, c’mon. This is Mimi here. Your bosom buddy? You and I both know you’re manufacturing excuses. The real reason you don’t want to go back to Reunions and accept this award is Stephen.”
Lilah hadn’t spoken her ex-fiancé’s name in almost ten years. And she wasn’t about to start now. And why bother to rail against the cruelty of love when her friend flat out didn’t believe in love? Or so she had claimed many a time over. Too many times over, Lilah sometimes thought.
“From your silence, I presume I hit the nail on the head. Well, let me tell you. I have just one thing to say in response.”
“Grin and bear it?” Lilah offered.
“Oh, please. What do you take me for? A leader of a Girl Scout troop? My kind of pep talk is…” She proceeded to string together several swearwords in a highly creative and visually interesting fashion.
Crude, but effective, Lilah couldn’t help thinking. “So you really think I should go, then?” she asked.
“Yes, of course I think you should go. Not only do you deserve all the praise in the world for what you’re doing, you’ll have those old coots eating out of your hand. They’ll see this brilliant, cute young woman, and they’ll immediately feel the need to help. The next thing you know, they’ll be writing monster-size checks to support your work. You might even think about upping your own salary from near poverty line to something where you could afford to go to a decent hair salon.”
“Hair salons? They still have them?” Lilah asked facetiously. Reflexively she fingered her bangs, slowly growing out from her last feeble attempt at giving herself a cut.
The light shower had turned into a thick curtain of rain, and the sound of drops hitting against the thatched roof formed a steady rumble. The red dirt on the floor was already transforming into a rusty-colored slime, the same mud that coated the soles of her hiking boots.
From her position in the doorway of the hut she could see Esther, along with two other women from the village, cooking rice, beans, bananas and more manioc. Through the haze of smoke she noticed two large cauldrons cooking meat—probably chicken and goat. Today had to be special if meat was on the menu.
These women who had suffered so much were unfailingly generous. Who was she to balk at attending some awkward ceremony and meeting a few strangers at Reunions if it meant helping them out?
Lilah rubbed her sticky palm down her sundress. The outfit was a concession to the festivities, but she’d paired it with her usual hiking boots because there were too many poisonous snakes for her to consider wearing sandals. Not a great look but always practical.
She exhaled through her mouth with resignation. “All right. I hear the wisdom of your words. Just tell me whom to contact about setting up my triumphal return to our beloved alma mater. And in the name of a good cause—and good people—I promise to show the proper humility and speak about the urgency of the problem.” She paused, her mind working on overdrive. “But I have one condition.”
“Hey, I gave you prime time network exposure. Don’t expect me to open my meager checkbook, as well,” Mimi protested.
“I wouldn’t think of it. I know the prices at the salon you frequent. No, my request—no, my ultimatum is this. I’ll go provided you come, too. If I’m going to give a convincing performance for a day—”
“We’re talking days, bubby,” Mimi interrupted.
Lilah groaned. Oh, yeah. Grantham University never did anything by half measures. Their Reunions lasted three days and were scheduled immediately before commencement ceremonies, thus cementing a lifelong hold on graduating students.
Lilah cleared her throat. “Okay, but if I am going through with this charade, I think it’s only right and proper that I have moral support. And nothing says moral support like a forceful female friend close at hand.”
The metaphorical clock ticked away in silence until Lilah heard a sigh. “All right,” Mimi agreed. “Only for you will I set foot on Grantham, New Jersey, soil. I suppose that also means I won’t be able to avoid putting in an appearance at the family manse, will I?”
“I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Besides, once my parents get wind of the award, I’m sure at least one of them will insist on making an appearance, and then you’ll have a parental buffer.”
“If you mean that having a critical mass of people will in any way be enough to preserve my sani—”
Mimi’s voice was drowned out by a decisive rat-tat-tat. It had to be the sound of gunfire.
“Mimi? Mimi? Are you all right?” Lilah asked.
“Never better. This is what I live for, right?” Her words were upbeat, but they couldn’t camouflage the underlying edge. “Listen. Gotta go. I’ll text you the contact numbers at Grantham. Promise.” The call ended abruptly.
Lilah held the phone away from her ear. Her concern didn’t stop just because the conversation was cut short. She shifted her gaze toward the encroaching jungle. Danger from natural predators and roaming militias was never far away here, either. For now, at least, there didn’t appear to be any imminent threats to be fearful of.
But sometimes the bigger fears came from within oneself.
CHAPTER TWO
June
JUSTIN BIGELOW STOOD in the international arrivals area of Newark Liberty Airport with a sign dangling from one hand and wondered if he was making a big mistake. A seriously big mistake.
It wouldn’t be the first one, as his father, a professor of classics at Grantham University, would no doubt have reminded him. Growing up, this pronouncement traditionally came during dinner, where conversational topics were limited to his father’s research on the ancient Greek Punic Wars, with possible digressions into stories from the day’s headlines in the New York Times that were of particular interest to him.
This arrangement, with Stanfield Bigelow as the central star around which all family members orbited, had seemed to please his mother and sister. Naturally. His mother happily trekked over the remains of archaeological sites in Sicily and North Africa while painting watercolors of the landscapes—very well, as it happened. Her book, A Companion’s Guide to Sicilian Wildflowers, was a classic among aficionados.
Justin’s older sister, Penelope—named for Odysseus’s devoted wife—was equally sympathetic to their father’s passion for ancient Roman history and Latin historical authors. She had dutifully followed in his footsteps, graduating first from Grantham University before going to graduate school at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship, then winning a Prix de Rome, and now an appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago—not quite the Ivy League, but somehow more so.
On the other hand, Justin—short for the Byzantine emperor Justinian, a fact that no one, and Justin made sure ab-so-lutely no one, knew about—had been left completely out of the conversation. Sports, his passion growing up and something he excelled at, held no interest for his father. And the only show on National Public Radio that Justin listened to—“Car Talk,” the humorous call-in car repair broadcast—didn’t count as highbrow fare. A real shame, since Justin had been more than handy when it came to keeping his father’s ancient Volvo station wagon up and running. In recognition of which his father would nod silently, turn back to his books and then add while he flipped a page, “Make sure you wash your hands before you touch anything in the house.”
It used to be that statements like that hurt Justin’s feelings, and he would lash out. Now he didn’t bother. What good would it do anyway? People didn’t change. They were who they were, for better or for worse.
Justin smiled at the thought of someone better, lots better. And with that smile still on his face, he stared up at the arrivals screen.
Her plane had just landed.
Justin glanced at his watch, an inexpensive Timex with large numbers. Given the water and sand he came into contact with daily on his job, there was no point in spending more—not that he was into status-y stuff anyway. It was an international flight, so he figured it would be another twenty minutes or so before she’d appear. Enough time to check his messages.
He tucked the sign under his arm and pulled out his smart phone, juggling it with the bouquet of flowers in his hand. He had left work early to drive to the airport, and he wanted to make sure that everyone got home. Then he set about methodically answering anything that required an immediate response. As he did so, he wandered a few steps to a large rectangular pillar, tucked the flowers and sign under his arm.
“Lilah? Lilah Evans?” a female voice called out from behind a few minutes later.
Justin held up a hand and quickly finished replying to a message. “I’m sorry. I just needed to send that.”
“Is that sign for Lilah Evans?”
A woman pointed to the words on his sign. A cascade of sun-streaked brown hair fell across her face, blocking her features.
“Can I help you?” he asked, bending over to address her eye to eye.
She stood up. The hair fell away. She indicated the sign again. “Did you mean Lilah Evans?”
His mouth opened. She looked very familiar, even though he didn’t recognize her immediately.
The Lilah Evans he remembered had that kind of fresh-faced milkmaid appeal—all rosy cheeks and rosy attitude to life—an apple dumpling with a heart of gold, to mix metaphors in a really, really awful way. She’d been rounded, maybe even a little pudgy, not that Justin ever complained about a few extra pounds. If anything, they only served to enhance her womanly appeal. Anyway, she’d always seemed supremely unaware of her own attractiveness. It hadn’t mattered if she had on a sweatshirt and had her hair pulled up and anchored by a pencil, or was wearing some slinky dress and high heels, the woman had invariably produced a catch in his throat even though she’d only thought of him as a friend. Was there anything worse?
Back in college, Lilah was his roommate’s girlfriend. That made her strictly off-limits.
And now? Now that same woman—who was not the same at all—was staring at him with a critical frown. She looked older. There were lines in her forehead and around her mouth, too, and she’d tucked a pair of reading glasses into the neckband of her drab olive T-shirt. Gone were the pillowy-soft curves, replaced by a delicate frame with sinewy muscles and minimal body fat. And instead of that wide-eyed, can-do outlook, she conveyed a weary, been-there-done-that air.
He cleared his throat. “Lilah? Is that really you?” He pointed between her name on the sign and herself in person.
“Well, yes, I’m Lilah Evans, spelled L-I-L-A-H, not L-I-L-L-A.” She hooked a thumb under the strap on her backpack. “You are waiting for the L-I-L-A-H version, right?”
He shrugged off a laugh. “I never could spell. And as to waiting for the L-I-L-A-H version? To tell you the truth, it seemed like I’ve been waiting for a large portion of my adult life.”
CHAPTER THREE
“OH, DON’T TELL ME.” Lilah covered her mouth before slowly dropping her hand. “Justin? Justin Bigelow? From college?” Her voice ended in a high squeak, the kind of girlie sound that Lilah hadn’t emitted since…well…since college.
“In the flesh,” he admitted sheepishly.
Though what he had to be ashamed about Lilah wasn’t quite sure. No, check that. If Justin’s behavior was still consistent with his days in college, he had a lot to apologize for. Which, Lilah reflected, had only made him that much more attractive.
What was it about bad boys? Lilah wondered. Every woman knew they were poison, but that didn’t stop them from wanting to take a bite out of the apple.
Back in college, Lilah had found Justin incredibly attractive. Maybe it was his cherubic blond curls that should have made him seem like Harpo Marx, but somehow they just turned up the sex-appeal quotient instead? Maybe it was the long, loose-limbed body, the kind that never seemed to put on a pound despite an enormous consumption of beer and pizza? But then, he had been a lightweight rower, Lilah reminded herself—all those calories burned away in killer practices. Or maybe it was the way he didn’t mind shooting the breeze with her in the dorm rooms he shared with Stephen. Or when Stephen was off editing the Daily Granthamite, the college newspaper, the way he listened to her worry that her Junior Paper wasn’t original enough, or about the interview she was sure she had messed up for a summer internship at the Guggenheim Museum. She hadn’t, he’d assured her, and sure enough she’d gotten the job.
She studied him now. Gone were the curls. Instead, his hair was close-cropped. He still appeared trim and fit, but he seemed to have lost the red-rimmed and bleary-eyed gaze of someone who burned the candle at both ends.
I guess even a party boy has to know when to quit sometime, she thought. But talk about parties! Much of the social life at Grantham University centered around social clubs, basically coed fraternities, each with its own personality. Stephen had belonged to Contract—the elitist club for political aspirants. Their parties involved a lot of sherry. Justin had joined Lion Inn, the ultimate jock hangout where beer was the beverage of choice. Lilah, on the other hand, had declined to rush any club, claiming the Grantham experience for her was more centered around her studies, her job in the art history library and her position on the board of the film society. But the truth was, she hadn’t gone that route because she’d been afraid she’d be turned down.
Anyway, Justin. There was never any doubt that he would join Lion Inn. Or that he would have just about every woman flocking after him. And since she was Justin’s roommate’s girlfriend, she was somehow supposed to know his every personal detail for all those other women to mine.
“Is it true he’s having an affair with the dean’s wife?” they’d ask.
To which she answered, “She’s old enough to be his mother—not that that would stop him.”
Then there was, “Does he really quote one particular sonnet by Shakespeare to all the women?”
“It may be the same one over and over, but can you beat, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’”
Or her favorite: “Does he compose songs on his guitar for every woman he sleeps with?” To which she answered, “No one has a repertoire that big.”
But what they all really wanted to ask was, “Do you think he likes me?” “Does he want to go out with me?” “Does he want to sleep with me?”
Lilah didn’t worry whether Justin liked her. She wasn’t sure why, but she had always felt that he liked her in the no-pressure kind of way. As friends without benefits. Besides, she had Stephen.
Stephen. Just the thought of her ex-fiancé made her suddenly suspicious. She looked around but didn’t see him. Then she narrowed her eyes at Justin. “Someone we both know didn’t send you to get me, did he?”
“No, you can rest assured. I’m here on my own accord as your official welcoming party.”
“An official welcoming party that’s busy texting instead of keeping an eye out for me? That’s some kind of welcome.”
“This is New Jersey. Give me a break. Though in my defense, I wasn’t expecting you through the doors so fast. But to make up for my grievous faux pas, these are for you.” He reached for the bouquet and handed it to her.
As Lilah reached for the flowers their fingers brushed. She felt the roughness of the pads of his fingers. She wondered if he still rowed, recalling the thick calluses he had built up in college. Then she pulled apart the patterned paper and stopped. Tulips—dozens of Rembrandt tulips, the striated, white-and-red, white-and-orange, and white-and-purple flowers depicted by the Flemish master.
“They’re your favorites, right?” he asked.
She looked up. “I’m amazed. How did you remember?”
“You didn’t think Stephen kept track of those kinds of things, did you? I may not have graduated magna like some people I know—” he tipped his chin down as he eyed her “—but I’ve got a pretty good memory for details.”
Lilah pressed her nose to the flowers. The waxy petals were just starting to open, and their faint perfume was intensely fresh. She closed her eyes for a moment, and felt transported back to a simpler time when her worries consisted of studying Old Masters, not worrying whether she could help yet another woman get proper obstetrical care rather than risk death in childbirth.
She opened her tired eyes. “You always did remember the details—especially when it involved women.” Irony was the only emotion she seemed able to muster.
“I’m not sure that’s entirely a compliment, but I’ll just assume it is.” He looked around, then pointed to her backpack. “Is that all you’ve got?”
“That and my laptop.” She held up the case for him to see. “I prefer to travel light. It’s just easier, faster. I’m all about streamlining.”
He nodded uncertainly. “I can imagine the advantages. Well, let me take your pack.” He didn’t bother to wait and moved to take it off her shoulders. He slipped his long fingers between the padded strap and the thin cotton of her T-shirt.
Lilah felt her skin prickle. She blinked. I really must be tired after the flight from Spain, not to mention the hard work getting the race all sorted out. The race… That’s right. Her muscles were still sore.
Yes, she was tired, but even Lilah couldn’t deny the ego boost of having a good-looking male in his absolute prime touching her body—even if it was strictly on a practical level and wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination accompanied by smoldering looks. Ah, the imagination…
Lilah watched Justin sling her pack over one shoulder as if it contained only a fistful of Ping-Pong balls instead of the forty-pounds-plus of clothing and paperwork stuffed into its bulging sides. Relieved of the weight, she felt as if her spine had decompressed and she’d grown an inch. And she would have felt even more relieved if she didn’t still feel the residual tingle of Justin’s touch.
“Shall we go find the car, then?” he asked with a nod of his head.
That tingle she was feeling just got even more annoying because it appeared that Justin was totally oblivious to the same hypersensitivity. Lilah frowned. The decision to return to Grantham appeared to promise additional obstacles. At least, maybe she could find out about the obvious one that had been bugging her ever since she’d heard about the award. “I was wondering. I know you said you weren’t Stephen’s emissary, but do you know if he’s planning on coming this weekend?” She tried to sound oh-so-casual. She practically had to hop to keep up with Justin’s long strides.
“As far as I know, he’s not coming to Reunions. So you’re safe,” he said, waiting for her to go through the revolving door first.
Lilah stopped. “Safe? I think the embarrassment factor is still pretty high. I can’t begin to remember the number of times I poured out my soul to you. About the only thing I do remember is that it was way more than to Stephen.”
“And you never thought that was one of the problems with your relationship?” He scooted in behind her into the slowly turning segment of the revolving door.
She was conscious of his legs coming perilously close to the back of her thighs. Lilah cleared her throat. “Let’s leave that evaluation aside for now, okay? I don’t need you to lecture me on how I wronged your good buddy. Besides, for all I know, as soon as you’re alone, you’ll immediately contact him to let him know my rear end is bigger than ever.”
Finally, the slowly revolving door deposited them on the sidewalk, and she stumbled out on the pavement. The fresh air should have been a relief, but this was Newark, and fresh air was a relative concept given the bus and taxi fumes.
Justin followed closely behind. “I won’t text, let alone communicate with Stephen in any form. I should let you know, I haven’t kept up with him since graduation.”
Lilah raised her eyebrows. “You’re kidding me.”
“So you’ve nothing to worry about on that score.” He held his arm out toward the street. “We need to cross here. I’m parked in the lot across the way.”
“But you two were practically joined at the hip in college.”
“Except where you were concerned,” he reminded her. “And by the way, I don’t know where you get off saying your butt is too big. Anyone can see you’re incredibly fit and trim.” He started to cross the street when the light changed. “In fact, if anything, you could probably afford to gain a few pounds.”
She shouldn’t have felt pleased, but she was. It was the inner-anorexic in all women who were once overweight. “Well, I run a lot these days—the job kind of requires it. So, it’s hard to gain weight.”
“You could try eating more.”
“Eating? Who has time for eating?”
“Lots of folks do. It’s called three square meals a day.”
“I know. It’s something we try to make happen in the villages.”
He slanted her a glance. “And you don’t practice what you preach?” He kept up a steady pace as they passed the rows of cars.
Lilah frowned. Why did he seem angry with her? She took a few giant strides to catch up. “Wait a minute. I don’t get it,” she called out after him.
Justin stopped. He fished some keys out of his pocket and waited.
She jogged to his side. “Tell me this. If you’re not here because Stephen sent you to escort me, why are you here?”
A giant SUV pulled out of the row near them, and the driver gunned the engine as he raced off.
“Why am I here?” he repeated. “To tell you the truth, I don’t usually get too involved with Reunions stuff.” He wet his top lip. “I’m here because of you.”
“Me?” Lilah stopped while Justin opened the trunk of a green sports car. She looked down. “And this…this…little car is yours?”
“This is not just a little car. It’s a fully restored…well, partially restored—I still have some body work to do—Triumph TR4, a British classic.” He gazed at it lovingly.
The rust around the back fender didn’t exactly induce confidence. “Is it roadworthy?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “Careful, or I’ll change my mind.” He shut the trunk lid and gave it an extra push to make sure it closed. Then he turned to her. “I was the one who recommended you for the Paine Prize, and as a result, I have the enviable task of serving as your personal chaperone for the duration of the Reunions festivities. How can I put this?” He rubbed his chin philosophically. “We’ll be like two peas in a pod.”
“In this thing we will, that’s for sure,” she joked, then from his silence, realized she may have gone too far. “That’s very nice of you,” she said quickly to make up for her insensitivity, “but you know, it’s really not necessary. I’m sure I can find my way around.”
Justin walked over to the passenger-side door and held it open. “You’d deny me the pleasure of your company? Besides, if you don’t toe the line, I’ll be the one to get in trouble. And who knows, on top of all the trouble I caused in my undergraduate days, they might just take away my diploma retroactively.”
Lilah had to laugh. “You didn’t get in that much trouble—okay, you did. But it wasn’t as if you ever flunked a single course—even if I never saw you study.”
“Ah, I had my secret ways.” He pointed to the open door. “Are you going to get in?”
“Are you changing the subject?”
His smile was a little too charming.
“Okay, we’ll let that pass—for now.” She slipped into the seat without further complaining. Until it collapsed under her weight. “I think you need to do some internal renovation in addition to the bodywork,” she said, watching him circle the car.
He slipped into the driver’s side. “Be careful of the loose spring on the right side.”
Lilah shifted closer to the gearshift. “Now you tell me.” The bucket seats were really quite close and the gap separating them, not that wide.
“I’ve been concentrating on working under the hood so far.”
“So you fix cars for a living?”
“It’s just a hobby. And my work is nothing nearly as exciting as yours, that’s for sure.” He turned the key in the ignition and put the car in Reverse, looking over his shoulder before he pulled out.
“No, I’m curious. I mean, what does someone end up doing who spent most of his college years seducing every woman in sight and giving parties that are possibly still talked about in some quarters.”
Justin grinned slyly. “Not possibly. Definitely.”
He still had terrific dimples, Lilah noticed.
“And I didn’t seduce every woman, as you personally can attest to.” He reached across, his forearm almost skimming the front of her shirt. “Excuse me.”
Lilah swallowed with difficulty.
He flipped down the glove box and pulled out a ticket. “Your job is to guard this with your life,” he said and held it out for her.
“And if I don’t?”
“You don’t want to know what the Port Authority will do to you,” he joked.
“Oh, for a minute, I thought you had plans.”
He swung into the lane that led to the payment booths. “Oh, I have plans, but they’ve got nothing to do with parking fees.”
Lilah rolled her eyes. “So what do you do if you’re not in the business of fixing cars? Provide escort service, because I gotta tell you, your pickup lines are getting a bit old.”
He pulled to a stop behind a Cadillac Escalade. “You think? No one’s been complaining lately.”
“Then the women where you live have pretty low standards. Where do you live anyway?”
“In Grantham.” He put the car in first and inched his way up to the booth.
“In Grantham! You’re joking?”
He shook his head. “Ticket, please.” He held out his hand.
Lilah slowly placed the stub in it, careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact. “So you work at the university? Doing what? Coaching crew?”
He paid for the parking and pulled away, smoothly shifting up to second. “No, I gave up rowing a year out of college. I teach.”
Lilah leaned away from him to get a broader view. “You’re kidding me?”
He shook his head and concentrated on the signs.
“You mean at the university?” she asked.
“I have a much higher caliber student.” He deftly avoided a semi crossing three lanes at once. “The turnoff for the turnpike comes up sooner than you think, so I need to get in the far lane.”
“I don’t get it. Higher caliber? What do you mean?”
“Ah, ha! There it is.” He put on his signal and took the sharp exit to the right. “I told you it came up quickly.” He glanced over, obviously pleased with himself. “What do I mean? Isn’t it obvious?”
She shook her head.
“I teach kindergarten.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MIMI HAD HER HEAD BURIED in the refrigerator at her father’s house when she announced loudly, “Well, I for one wouldn’t mind having Justin Bigelow pick me up from the airport—or any place, for that matter.” She shut the stainless-steel door. “Dah, da-ah!” She held a jar of peanut butter triumphantly aloft. Then she spied the label and her enthusiasm diminished. “Wouldn’t you know it? Organic peanut butter with no salt and no sugar. No wonder it was in the fridge.”
“Since when has your dad become all health food conscious?” Lilah asked. She sat on a stool in the Lodge’s sprawling kitchen. Her entire studio apartment could have fit into the center island—with room to spare. The surface gleamed with acres of polished granite.
“It’s not Daddy. People who raid beleaguered companies don’t do organic, or so I’ve been told. It’s the preoccupation of his latest wife, the lovely Noreen, by way of Limerick. It seems no processed food is allowed to touch the lips of my little stepsister Brigid. Noreen even sent Cook to a health food cooking school for further instruction.”
Mimi seemed to think nothing of having “Cook” as part of the household. Ah, the prerogatives of privilege, Lilah thought. Not something that had been part of her upbringing, that was for sure
She watched Mimi unscrew the lid to the peanut butter and stick her finger in. Then she swallowed a glob and gagged. “Oh, yuck,” Mimi howled. “It’s like having sex without an orgasm.”
It had been way too long since Lilah had had sex, let alone an orgasm, for her to comment. Which probably also explained why her next thought was of Justin. She cleared her throat and moved on to the obvious—not about sex. “Noreen? Last I heard your father was married to Adele.”
Adele had originally been Mimi’s nanny before she pushed aside Mimi’s mother to become the second Mrs. Lodge. That was also before Mimi’s mother had committed suicide, a forbidden subject at all times.
“Boy, are you behind the times. After Adele and Daddy had a son, they hired Noreen as a nanny. That son would be my half brother, Conrad Prescott Lodge IV, known to one and all, yourself included, as Press.”
“Which would not have been my first choice for a nickname,” Lilah quipped.
“Be that as it may, Noreen then replaced Adele in the wife department. Daddy, as you may have gathered, seems to focus on the household help when he’s looking for a new mate. It doesn’t require too much legwork, I guess.”
“Look on the bright side. At least he marries them,” Lilah reflected. “Hey, how old is Press now? Last I saw him, he was obsessed with Magic Cards and some little medieval action figures or other.”
“Warhammer figures—the holy grail of prepubescent boys with unwanted blackheads and extensive imaginations.”
“I hope he’s gotten out of that phase—the blackhead part, I mean.”
“Oh, he’s turned out all right, our Press—quite a handsome man-boy. He’s very nice, actually, no thanks to either my father or Adele. I mean, how can you relate to a mother who looks like a boiled prune from playing tennis all day or a father who’s never there? Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he turned out so well?”
“So he’s how old?” Lilah asked.
“He’s just finished up his junior year at Grantham, a biology major but focusing on paleontology. I think he also plays on the tennis team. Anyway, he mentioned that he’s working Reunions, but I don’t know what exactly.”
Mimi abandoned the jar of peanut butter on the counter and wandered over to the adjoining walk-in butler’s pantry. Lilah, being Lilah, screwed the lid back on the jar and put it away in the fridge. Then she followed Mimi, leaning against one of the old-fashioned cabinet drawers that held linens. On one wall, glass-faced cabinets displayed massive amounts of silver serving pieces and glassware. On the others, shelves held neatly arranged packages and jars of whole-wheat flour, honey and granola. Lilah took in the jars of dried beans and legumes of varying dull colors.
“I can see that Noreen has had a major influence on this room, as well,” she said. “When I think back to college, these shelves had the biggest supply of Pop-Tarts I’d ever seen—it just makes me want to cry.”
Mimi let out a dramatic sigh. “You’re right. It’s the fall of civilization as we know it.” She shook her head and marched out of the pantry. “Never mind. There’s still the liquor cabinet.”
Lilah tripped along behind her into the dining room, where drop cloths covered furniture, rugs were rolled up and bundled in plastic, and the walls were denuded of paintings. “So what’s going on? A garage sale?” she said.
Mimi lifted a spattered sheet covering the sideboard. “No, it’s protection from the dust, all part of the current-wife-renovations phenomenon. First comes the new master bedroom—for all the obvious reasons. Then they work their way around the house imprinting their own unique personality. When Adele became the official Number Two, she had the kitchen redone, a wine cellar built and a new pool house put in the back. Now that Noreen rules the roost, she’s converting my old bedroom into a yoga room and turning the library into a screening room. They’ll probably sit around and watch documentaries about eating local.”
Lilah watched Mimi study the labels of various bottles of liquor. “So where are you staying, then?”
Mimi grabbed a bottle by the neck and straightened up. “Why, the pool house of course. It’s my version of the stepdaughter’s revenge. I’m co-opting something that really mattered to that money-grubbing bitch who usurped my mother’s rightful place.” She marched back to the kitchen. “C’mon, I’ve made the unilateral decision that we’re going to have gin and tonics. I think I noticed some designer tonic water in the back of the pantry.”
“And I’m sure there’s organic limes in the fruit bowl.” Lilah yawned. In Spain, where she’d just come from, it was already well after midnight. Between jet lag and the time difference, she was fading fast. “Dare I ask where the ‘money grubbing bitch’ is now?” she asked, trying to keep up with the conversation.
“Oh, in the center of town, ensconced in the new town house development on Grantham Square. It’s supposed to look oldie and charming—all brick Georgian and stately. But of course the places have elevators and the latest in stainless-steel appliances and jetted spa baths. But get this. According to Noreen, they’re asking more than a million for the places, and you still have to pay parking on top. Can you believe it?” After a quick pit stop to the pantry, she marched back in the kitchen and placed the bottles on the counter. She opened a cabinet and took down two highball glasses.
Lilah covered her mouth and stifled another yawn. “Sounds better than the dorm where I’m staying. Mind you, I haven’t seen it yet. I asked Justin to bring me here first.”
“And he didn’t stay for a chat? I’m offended.”
“I offered, but when we pulled up to the house he checked his email, and said that something had come up that he needed to follow up on right away.”
“Ooh! Quel mystère. I can just imagine the type of emergencies Justin Bigelow must have.”
Lilah was about to explain that the Justin of today didn’t totally resemble the Justin of yore, but Mimi had already moved on.
“I don’t know why you want to stay in the dorms when you can bunk here with me.” She didn’t bother with a jigger and instead poured generous amounts of gin in the glasses, stopped, eyed the levels and added more. Then she picked up the glasses and ambled over to the refrigerator. “I’m sure the pool house is bigger than the room they’ll put you in.” The automatic ice maker made a racket when she pressed one glass and then the other against the lever. “I mean, really, a girl could start to feel rejected,” she shouted over it.
Lilah waited for her to finish. “I haven’t looked at my information packet yet. It’s in my knapsack. But like I already told you, I’ll be running around doing my official best, so I figure it’ll be more convenient.”
Mimi poured in the tonic water and added a lime before handing Lilah her drink. “Cheers.”
They clinked glasses. Lilah took a sip, and then coughed. “Whoa. I’m barely standing as it is. After drinking this, I’m not sure I’ll make it to dinner.”
“Not to worry. I already placed an order for takeaway. I thought we’d trip the light fantastic and dine on our favorite Grantham food.” Mimi smiled slyly.
Lilah blinked. “Don’t tell me. Hoagies from Hoagie Palace?” She patted her heart.
Mimi tipped her glass and gulped a generous mouthful. “What else? I ordered a tuna melt for you and a Cheese Steak-Fried Egg Special for me with extra mozzarella cheese sticks and hot sauce. And did I mention the two orders of fries with Ranch dressing?”
“Please, you’re killing me—and that’s before all the cholesterol.”
“Not only that. I bribed Press to pick it all up. I say, what are half brothers for after all, if not to run errands? Plus, I figure that if we’re totally blitzed when it’s time for you to crash, he can give you a lift back to campus.”
“I wouldn’t want to put him out. I can always call a taxi or, really, walk from here. What is it to campus? Half a mile? A mile at most? Heck, I could run that in under five minutes.” The mammoth, yellow stucco house was located on Singleton Street, one of the main arteries leading into town from the west—the fancy side of town. White pillars flanked the front portico. Twelve-foot-high rhododendrons lined the circular drive. The Historical Society of Grantham held their gala under a tent in the gardens every spring.
“Walk? Oh, please. Drink some more.” She followed her own advice.
Lilah took another sip and felt the alcohol go directly to her bones. The nagging ache in her right Achilles tendon from overtraining seemed to magically disappear.
Mimi smacked her half-empty glass on the counter. The ice rattled. “So, let’s get back to the really important things. Like Justin Bigelow. How does he look? Still incredible?”
Lilah took another slow sip and leaned her elbow against the center island. She used her other hand to brace herself from taking an inelegant nosedive into the fruit bowl containing an artful display of limes, lemons and pomegranates.
Pomegranates? Lilah couldn’t help thinking. What real person has pomegranates in their fruit bowl? The answer came to her quickly. She was not among “real” people.
She decided to hold off on her drink. And instead narrowed her eyes, trying to picture Justin driving his little sports car, the windows open to the breeze, the light dancing off the polished wood steering wheel and the tips of his clipped curls. “What can I say? He looked like a god—all sun-kissed and good enough to eat.” She sighed.
“You make him sound like a Florida orange.”
Lilah stared at her. “Vitamin C was the last thing on my mind when he picked me up earlier today.”
Mimi rubbed her chin. “You know, I always wondered how he got into Grantham. I mean, I know he was a terrific athlete, captain of the lightweight crew, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Lilah eyed her drink and went for another sip. Why not? She wasn’t driving.
Mimi, way ahead of her, drained what was left of hers and took that as a cue to make another. She held up the bottle of gin to Lilah.
She shook her head. “I’m not there yet.”
“I am.” Mimi fixed herself another drink. “Somehow I kind of figured that he got special dispensation being a faculty kid,” she said, her back to Lilah. “I mean, it wasn’t as if I ever heard him engage in an intellectual discussion.”
“No, that’s not true. I remember staying up late one night in his and Stephen’s suite. I was haranguing him about how the French Impressionists were overhyped, and that it was their German counterparts who really deserved the attention. He might not have known his Monets from Manets, but we had a real conversation and he made me think.”
“And what did Stephen say?”
Lilah waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, he wasn’t there, as usual—debating or editing or something.” She frowned in thought. “No, Justin wasn’t dumb, not by a long shot. It’s just that for some reason he liked to give the impression that he never studied. I don’t know why. And I’m pretty sure he was a double major—economics and music. So how dumb could he be?”
“Cheers.” Mimi clinked her refreshed glass against Lilah’s. They both took healthy sips. “So maybe I’m wrong. It’s just I always pictured him as this sexy golden retriever—great hair, sunny personality, always willing to roll over and expose his privates—adding a brain to the equation kind of dulls the fantasy.”
Lilah laughed so hard the liquid squirted out her nostrils.
“So he’s remained gorgeous.”
If Mimi only knew how gorgeous, Lilah thought and reflexively put the cool glass to her lips.
“But what else? Did you find out what’s happened to him since college? Wasn’t he working to make the national team or something?” Mimi asked.
Lilah removed her glass and blinked at it, surprised that somehow she’d managed to finish it. “What’s he been up to? Well, let me tell you, you’ll never, ever guess.” She leaned forward with her chin to emphasize her words, grabbing the edge of the countertop at the last minute.
“A challenge.” Mimi closed her eyes. “What is he doing? What does your typical ex–Ivy Leaguer do once he lands in the real world? Let’s see. Investment banker?”
Lilah coughed. “Did I say Justin was typical?”
Mimi opened her eyes wide. “Lawyer?”
Lilah rolled her eyes. “Where are your vaunted investigative reporter instincts?”
“Pole dancer?”
Lilah laughed. “An interesting career choice, but no.”
“I don’t know. Dog trainer? I’m running out of ideas here.”
“Told you you’d never guess.” She raised an eyebrow. “He teaches kindergarten.”
“You’re kidding me. Mr. Sexy Labrador teaches little kids?”
The door to the mudroom off the kitchen opened. A high-pitched squeal and hushing adult tones could be heard. Then a gauzy pink tutu came whirling through the kitchen.
Lilah looked baffled as a young girl wearing a rhinestone tiara—at least, Lilah hoped it was rhinestone—with the word Princess spelled out in large loopy letters on the front of her leotard twirled around them, anointing them with a feathered wand as she did so.
Lilah looked askance at Mimi. “I take it this is not the amazing transformation that Press has undergone over the years?”
Mimi shook her head. “No, this is not Press. Lilah, allow me to introduce my six-year-old half sister, Brigid.” Mimi cocked her head to the mudroom. The sound of steps grew nearer. “And my newest stepmother, Brigid’s mom, Noreen. Noreen, this is Lilah Evans, who’s being honored at Reunions.”
Noreen was a striking woman with a shock of tamed red hair and pale skin with the texture of clotted cream. She circled the island, transferring the BMW key fob to her left hand, and held out her right. The nails had a perfect French manicure. “Of course. What an honor to have you here. I’ve followed your work closely ever since I saw Mimi’s story on you on television.” With her drawn-out vowels and slightly singsong cadence, her voice betrayed the remnants of an Irish accent.
“I’m trying to interest Conrad in giving money to your organization, and in fact, I’d love to talk to you about organizing a run here in Grantham.” She deposited her oversize Prada bag on the counter. “I know all the women in my book group and Pilates class would love to participate, and since I’m active in the PTA at Brigid’s school, I’m sure I can generate interest from other moms.”
Brigid meanwhile continued to twirl around the room, stopping periodically to touch various objects, including the bottle of gin and exclaim, “I hereby pronounce you a knight of the realm.”
Lilah looked at the woman who, on close inspection, was somewhat older than she. Whatever else the birth of a child had affected, it didn’t appear to have altered her twenty-two-inch waist, judging from the way her wide leather belt cinched the top of her pencil skirt. Normally, Lilah would have jumped to conclusions and immediately hated Noreen—her obvious self-indulgence, her unabashed display of wealth. Lilah had never seen a canary-yellow diamond before, and Noreen’s was hard to miss. And she should have hated her on principle because she was Mimi’s stepmother, and Mimi always hated her stepmothers.
But she couldn’t. Not when Noreen stuck out her hand and shook Lilah’s with the force of a longshoreman. The woman had spirit, life, enthusiasm, and clearly a seriously good manicurist.
“Sure, sure. I’m happy to talk about it,” Lilah answered, worried that she sounded less-than-professional after the G and T. “Why don’t we say sometime over the weekend? Right now I’m totally jet-lagged and a little worse for wear after letting Mimi ply me with alcohol.” She indicated her glass.
“Of course. That would be wonderful. You must be exhausted, and as to a drink—I could use a wee dram myself, as they would say in the Old Country.” Her eyes twinkled as she made fun of herself. “I deserve one anyway. Cook has tonight off so she could visit her sister in Moorestown—such a quaint place—and Conrad, as usual, is late in the City, so I took Brigid to Sustenance, the new fusion restaurant in town. All very organic and locavore. I’ve become fanatic about not allowing a single processed bit of food to pass her lips.”
Lilah nodded blankly and out of the corner of her eye saw Mimi push the gin in her direction.
Noreen glanced at the alcohol but shook her head. “I probably shouldn’t. I have yoga first thing in the morning, and I like to feel fresh even before I start.” She glanced over at her daughter who was counting the door pulls on the cupboards and smiled. “Now what was I talking about before? Oh, yes, so there we were in Sustenance, and I started remembering how I grew up on a solid diet of fish and chips, and somehow I managed to survive. That’s when I decided to let Brigid have a hot-fudge sundae.”
Lilah noticed Brigid’s tutu fan over her head as she did a series of somersaults across the kitchen. Ah, yes, signs of a sugar high. Then she glanced back to Noreen, who was nervously strumming her fingers on the granite. “I take it you shared?” she asked.
“Why, yes, how did you know?” She became aware of her strumming. “I’m not usually this much of a motormouth, either. I swear on my grandmother’s Bible.” Then she hooked her arm through her bag. “Brigid, dear, why don’t you give your sister, Mimi, a kiss good-night before we go upstairs for your bath and a bedtime story?”
Brigid closed her eyes and fluttered her arms.
“Brigid O’Reilley Lodge. There will be no bedtime story if you don’t stop that and come now.” Noreen’s voice was firm.
The little girl opened her eyes and inhaled loudly. Then she swiveled on the toe of her Mary Janes and tromped inelegantly to Mimi.
Mimi abandoned her drink and bent down, awkwardly offering her cheek.
Brigid gave her a loud smack, then twirled around to Lilah. “You, too,” she announced. She walked over and raised her chin.
Lilah knelt down, her Achilles tendon smarting despite the infusion of gin, and reached out and gave the six-year-old a hug and kiss. She smelled of ketchup, hazelnuts and baby powder.
Brigid seemed very pleased. She looked at her mother. “I want her to read to me,” she said, pointing with her wand. “You’re beautiful, you know.”
Lilah blinked, amazed at the self-possessed child. “No, I didn’t know. Thank you.”
“But your sneakers are dirty. You should get Mommy to buy you new ones.”
Noreen shook her head. “The scourge of living in an affluent community like Grantham, I’m afraid.”
Lilah laughed. “We should all have such problems.” She looked seriously at Brigid. “I don’t need new ones. I can just wash these.”
“Your next lesson will be how to use the washing machine,” Mimi cracked.
Lilah glanced over. Mimi would never admit it, but Lilah thought she looked jealous. “And I’m sure your big sister, Mimi, will be happy to show you.”
“A worthy idea.” Noreen pried her daughter from Lilah. “Lilah will read to you another night, maybe. Tonight she’s seeing her best friend, Mimi, who she hasn’t seen in a long time.”
“I don’t mind,” Lilah said, painfully standing up.
Noreen clasped Brigid’s small hand. “Don’t be silly. She gets a story every night, so there are plenty of opportunities another time. In fact, because of her fantastic teacher, she won’t go to bed without one. It’s just amazing—to have someone who’s a real proponent of the Reggio Emilia model of early childhood education.”
Lilah and Mimi nodded with a complete lack of comprehension.
“I’m sure my mother would be very intrigued. She’s an elementary school principal,” Lilah said.
“How interesting,” Noreen said and she actually appeared to mean it.
“Anyway, in addition to understanding the importance of play, they read the most wonderful books, lots of the old classics. And then they start doing other things because of the reading. Like building castles after hearing chapters from The Wizard of Oz.”
Brigid wrapped an arm around one of her mother’s legs, clinging to the tight black leggings. The effects of the sugar seemed to be wearing off.
“Naturally there’re those parents who are skeptical because they’re so used to the emphasis on testing even at such a young age. It’s so competitive out there now.” Noreen ruffled Brigid’s fine hair, removing the tiara that was already slipping over one ear. “But I believe that the Reggio Emilia system works better in the long run, producing natural readers and ones with fewer social problems. And even the critics can’t deny that the teacher is good at picking up any learning disability.”
She shook her daughter’s hand playfully. “C’mon, munchkin. Time for bed. It’s late for a school night. You want to be up bright and early for Mr. B tomorrow, don’t you?”
“The early bird catches the worm. But I don’t like worms. I want to catch butterflies.”
“Well, your bird can catch butterflies,” her mother announced and guided her to the door.
“Wait a minute. This Mr. B?” Lilah called out.
“Mr. B, Tweedle B. Tweedle B and Tweedle Bum,” Brigid recited bowing her head back and forth. She pulled on her mother’s arm.
“That’s right, dear.” Noreen didn’t bother to correct her.
“How many six-year-olds know Lewis Carroll?” Mimi asked.
Lilah was almost convinced she detected some sisterly pride.
“Oh, that’s par for the course in Mr. B’s class,” Noreen said over her shoulder. “I’ll catch you later this weekend, then.” She waved.
Lilah pushed away from the island. “Before you go. One question—Brigid’s teacher? Mr. B? His full name wouldn’t be…”
“Justin Bigelow.” Mimi supplied the answer.
“How did you know?” Noreen bent down to pick up Brigid and carried her upstairs.
Left alone in the kitchen, Mimi lowered her chin and looked over her nose at Lilah. “You think she’s in love with him?”
“Brigid or Noreen?” Lilah asked.
“Either one. Both.”
Lilah pursed her lips. “Maybe I will have another drink.” She reached for her glass, and asked casually, a little too casually, “This love thing? You think it’s contagious?”
Mimi raised her eyebrows. “Why? You think you feel symptoms coming on?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“SO, TELL ME AGAIN WHO we’re picking the food up for?” Matt Brown asked as he opened the drinks case at Hoagie Palace. It was a Thursday evening, and the Grantham take-out institution was packed with high school and college students, and Matt, a local kid home for summer vacation after his freshman year at Yale, fit the profile. The smell of hot sauce, fried saturated fat and hormonal imbalance hung in the air.
“My half sister Mimi and a friend of hers from college,” Press Lodge explained as he held out money to the cashier. “She’s this woman named Lilah Evans—the head of a nonprofit in Africa or something.” As he waited for his change, he spoke to Angie, the woman behind the counter who owned the popular food spot with her husband, Sal. “Hey, Angie, I gotta satisfy the hoagie fix for the returning alums in the family. Otherwise they get ornery.”
“That’s what we count on,” Angie said with a laugh and passed the coins and bills to Press. “But if anyone gets ornery with you, hon, you send ’em to me. You’re like family.” Angie beamed over her shoulder at a wall of photographs. Press followed her gaze. Front and center was one from Press’s graduation from his prep school in Connecticut.
He’d invited Angie and Sal, never expecting they’d make the trip. Not only had they come, Sal had handed him an envelope on the side. “If you ever need anything, you know who to call,” Sal had offered with a swift handshake. “We’re proud of you.” Then he’d taken the picture of Angie with her arm around Press, a proud smile on her face, a dopey one on his. In the corner of the photo, slightly out of focus, stood his mother, glancing down at the Rolex on her wrist, probably checking how much time she had before her tennis match. His father—surprise, surprise—was nowhere in sight.
Press blew a kiss to Angie and led the way through the organized throng, asserting himself with one of his wide shoulders. His father had been disappointed that he hadn’t gone out for football at Grantham—he’d been heavily recruited. Just another disappointment in a long line, Press figured. Anyway, practices interfered with his job as a research assistant in his advisor’s lab, and he wasn’t about to give that up.
He waited outside of the store for Matt. The two of them had worked together at Apple Farm Country Club last summer, Matt manning the cash register in the pro shop and Press as a teaching pro for kids. Sometimes when they got in early and before the kids’ Swedish and French au pairs swarmed around Press, they’d go to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. Matt was hopeless, but Press was a natural, hitting three hundred yards every time. It didn’t matter much because the point was really just to talk—about school, music, their parents, life. A bond had formed, and the two kept up on Facebook during the school year when Matt started Yale and Press finished up his junior year at Grantham.
Press watched as Matt stumbled out the front step and onto the sidewalk. He had tried to open his can of Arnold Palmer iced tea and walk at the same time. “Focus, Matt Brown, focus. How many times do I have to tell you,” he ribbed his friend.
Matt managed to stop next to him without tripping. “I know. I’m pathetic. But before I forget. I gotta ask you. Did you say Lilah Evans?”
“I THINK YOU LI-IKE HIM,” Mimi taunted Lilah.
“Oh, please. This isn’t junior high school. And I’m too old to have crushes,” Lilah replied. She let her eyes wander around the kitchen, anywhere but on Mimi. How often did someone use two dishwashers? she wondered.
“I don’t know what you’re so defensive about. What’s the big deal about being forced to stay close to a man who is drop-dead gorgeous—and as we now have personal proof of—gentle and gifted and loves children?”
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” Mimi grabbed for the gin bottle again. “Don’t tell me you still have a thing for Stephen?” She poured two fingers and didn’t bother with the tonic water.
“No, of course not. Not anymore.” Lilah eased herself onto a stool. The night was growing longer by the minute. “You know, I looked him up on Google when I decided to come back.”
“As anyone rightly would.” Mimi took a swallow.
“Seems he’s a partner in a big law firm in Cleveland. They even had a picture up on the website—he’s gotten fat. Which is kind of ironic when you consider how he always used to be on me about my weight.”
“And he’s married with two children and a third on the way.”
“You’re kidding? How did you find out?” She realized she experienced a glimmer of jealousy—but not for Stephen. Her breakup, which was once so heart-wrenching, now only held a faint “what if?” No, the pang she felt was for the idea of children. Lilah rested her chin on her hand.
“Excuse me. I’m a reporter. I’m supposed to get that kind of information.”
“Well, did you also find out that he’s not coming to Reunions?”
“That I don’t know. It seems you have your own sources. Speaking of sources—” She glanced down at her watch. “Where is that little brother of mine? I’m beginning to think he didn’t turn out so well after all.” Then she looked back at Lilah. “Hey, no pooping out yet. The night is still young—especially because we still haven’t cleared up this matter.”
“What matter?” Lilah stifled a yawn.
“About Justin? You and Justin? C’mon. Let’s wait outside by the pool. We’ll spot Press sooner that way.”
Lilah took the remnants of her second drink and dutifully followed Mimi. “There is no me and Justin.” Lilah settled into one of the deck chairs around the pool. Tiled dolphins cavorted as in some Roman mosaic. For all she knew, it was a Roman mosaic. She squinted and peered more closely. No, it couldn’t be, could it? “You know, maybe I shouldn’t have had this second drink.”
Mimi settled into the chaise next to her. She flicked off her sandals and ran her bare feet up and down the cedar slats. “Don’t tell me there’s no you and Justin. I mean, in the face of overwhelming positive attributes, can’t you let go for at least a long weekend? No one is expecting you to find true love, after all. But even you, especially you, you little saint, deserve to fall off your pedestal every once in a while.”
“You don’t understand,” Lilah protested. “Every time I look at Justin I’m reminded not only what a total creep Stephen was, but I also unfortunately remember how incredibly self-centered I was, too.”
“Self-centered? That’s the last thing I’d describe you as, Ms. I Don’t Have A Dime To My Name, but go ahead and please take the shirt off my back. Hey, maybe you can use that line on Justin?”
Lilah placed her drink on the side table between them. “Feel free to laugh.”
“Who said I was laughing?”
“Listen, admit in retrospect that Stephen was a creep. But even though he called off the engagement, I really didn’t give him any alternative. Up until then, I had always gone along with his plans. He always seemed so goal-oriented, so focused on our future.”
“His future, with you in tow,” Mimi cracked. “The future corporate attorney with the good little academic wife standing steadfastly at his side.”
“Excuse me. It was my idea to go to graduate school at NYU while he was in law school at Columbia,” Lilah argued.
Mimi threw up her hands. “I don’t even know how you can justify his actions. As far as I remember—and I have a pretty good memory—when you decided on a change in career, it didn’t go down well with him. And when you wouldn’t change your mind, he dumped you and broke your heart.”
Lilah dropped her head. “I’d always been such a good girl up until then,” she said softly.
“Lilah, we were all good girls once upon a time, you especially.”
“I’m still a good girl,” Lilah said despondently.
“Well, get over it. And I can’t think of a better way than with someone warm and sexy by your side. And really. You can’t tell me that you think all these depressing thoughts every time you look at Justin Bigelow?”
Lilah pictured Justin driving again, one hand comfortably on the wheel, the other on his thigh, his fingers tapping out a lazy rhythm on his faded jeans that fit his legs perfectly.... No, not every time.
“Because if that’s the case, why not reintroduce him to me?”
Lilah bit down on her bottom lip. If the Justin she had met today was still the old Justin Bigelow, the one embedded in Lilah’s memory, then there’d be no problem about her having a simple romp with a scrumptious good-time guy. Plus it’d be a snub to an ex. What more could a girl ask for?
But the new Justin Bigelow was…well…new. He seemed much more than the old one. And the voice of her overly developed good-girl conscience told her that was exactly the problem.
CHAPTER SIX
“LILAH EVAN AS IN SISTERS for Sisters Lilah Evans?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know about this Sisters thing, but I guess so. I didn’t know she was such a big deal. I mean, Mimi said something about her getting some alumni award, but I figured it was because she gave big bucks to Grantham.” Press shifted the large bag of food to one arm and fished the car keys out of his jeans. His dad had given him his old BMW convertible when he graduated from high school. He’d left the keys with a card that his secretary had written.
“I don’t think it was for giving money, dude,” Matt said. “She came and gave a talk at Yale last fall at the Political Union. She founded this group that helps women in Congo. You know about the civil war going on there, right?”
“Sorry. If it happened after the Mesozoic era, I’m pretty ignorant,” Press answered. He stepped off the curb, and like most students, didn’t bother to look either way before heading out into traffic. A Lexus SUV screeched to a halt and let him cross. “C’mon, the smell of all this food is reminding me just how starved I am. Let’s head home.”
Matt chugged along beside, holding his can at his side. “Why I’m even friends with such an ignoramus is beyond me.”
“It’s so you have someone to freely lecture.” He beeped open the car and settled the bag in the backseat.
Matt got in the front passenger seat, and before he even put his seat belt on, twisted around and fished out a take-out container of French fries. “So you’re telling me you don’t want to hear all about the warring factions and about how everyone—and his little brother—is trying to get ahold of the diamonds and gold and other metals in the country?”
Press started up the car. “Not really.” He grabbed a French fry. “Hey, crack your window, would you? The smell of this stuff stays around for days otherwise.”
Matt shook his head, but turned to press the window lever. “How you can worry about the smell in your car when millions are being killed is beyond me, and believe me, it’s mostly women who are being brutalized. And besides, didn’t your mother give you Febreze when you went off to college?”
Press slanted him a skeptical look. “My mother?”
“You’re right. What was I thinking? Maybe you could give her some to use with all her tennis shoes? A handy travel size for her sports bag?”
Press didn’t bother to laugh as he pulled out of the parking lot and into Main Street. Some people, like Matt, had good parents and some people didn’t. It was less painful to discuss the state of world politics. “So where does Lilah Evans fit into the whole scenario?”
And naturally Matt was off and running, summarizing Lilah’s work.
Press stopped at the traffic light on the corner of Adams Road. The university library was on the left and the town’s only movie theater on the right. He recognized some friends from school and honked the horn. Then he glanced over at Matt. “Well, I’m glad someone thinks she can save the world. And I have even greater respect for her because given all the culinary delights possible in our fair city, she had the wisdom to choose Hoagie Palace.”
“Laugh all you want. I’d give anything to ask her about an internship.” Matt took a swig of his drink.
“But I thought you said the name of her organization was something like Sisters for Sisters? Is having a sex change operation part of the price to pay for an internship?” He made the remainder of the lights on Main Street, and they passed without incident through the center of town.
Matt rolled his eyes. “It’d almost be worth it, but I’m not sure Babi˘cka would approve,” he said, referring to his great-grandmother, who lived in town.
“Not to mention your dad and Katarina,” Press said, slowing down the car, just barely, to pass over the speed bumps.
“Yeah, my dad,” Matt grumbled. “He’s giving me so much grief about not having a job yet this summer that I’m almost thinking of moving in with Babi˘cka,” he said.
Press knew that Matt’s childhood hadn’t been the easiest, what with his single mother dying of breast cancer when he was still in high school and only discovering who his dad was at the reading of her will. The truth of the matter was it had come as a shock to Matt’s father, as well. The two had butted heads early on, but the relationship had smoothed out pretty well thanks in large part to Katarina, his stepmom, and Katarina’s grandmother. Babi˘cka’s baking also played a major role, in Press’s opinion.
“You don’t think your great-grandmother would have any cookies on hand, do you?”
Matt took another sip. “Maybe later. For now I really want to get this food to your house before it gets cold.”
“If I didn’t know you to be this bleeding heart do-gooder, I’d say you just want a summer job with this Evans woman so you can get your parents off your back and pad your résumé.”
“Okay, Mr. Professional Cynic, you’re so worldly. How do you think it’ll go down if I introduce myself to Lilah Evans on bended knee with her hoagie in hand—” Matt made the appropriate gestures, spraying some of his drink in the process “—all the while running through my stellar freshman-year grades, my majoring in political science with a concentration in foreign affairs, and that I have a fantastic way to broaden the appeal of her outstanding organization by expanding her concept to Sisters and Brothers for Sisters.”
“I think I need another French fry.”
Matt growled.
“One thing. The ‘bended knee’ bit?”
“Yeah?” Matt asked hopefully as Press pulled into the driveway to his dad’s house.
“Definitely use it. No matter what women say, they’re suckers for the big, romantic gesture. Just hold on to something while you do it. Knowing you, you’ll fall flat on your face otherwise, and we need you in one piece if you’re going to save the world.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LILAH FELT SOMEONE KICK her foot. Half-asleep, she decided to ignore it, and let her foot flop over the edge of the chaise longue and stay there.
Next came a shaking of her shoulder. She groaned and scrunched her eyes more tightly shut.
Then someone had the nerve to blow in her ear—hard.
This time, Lilah yelped and practically bounced off the chair.
Mimi turned to Press and Matt. “Works every time,” she said triumphantly. “She’s awake now, trust me. What can I say? Two drinks, and she’s out like a light.”
Press turned to Matt. “I wouldn’t worry about the bended knee. Probably the two-armed boost-up would be more effective in this case.” He rested the bag of food on the patio table.
Lilah opened one eye. “I’m not that far gone that I need help getting up. And it’s not the alcohol. It’s the jet lag that leveled me.” She hoisted herself to an upright position and rubbed her eyes, daring to open both in narrow slits. “Are these two Wise Men bearing gifts?”
“I don’t know how wise they are, but that’s my half brother, Press, and his friend whose name I don’t remember—”
“Matt.”
“And Matt, apparently, who’ve brought your hoagie and fries.”
Lilah made some noise.
“Is that a sound of joy or disgust?” Mimi asked.
Lilah yawned. “Neither. I’m afraid I’m too tired to eat anything.” She shook her head and studied Press and Matt with only the barest of insight. “I may be wrong, but you both seem to be growing boys. I’m sure you can figure out what to do with my share of the food.” She rose, a little wobbly on her feet. “I don’t mean to break up the party, but if it’s not too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it if someone could drive me to campus.”
Mimi crossed her arms. “What a party pooper. Here you force me to come back to Grantham and attend Reunions and act as your bodyguard, and what do you do but crap out on the first night. Is that fair?” She pouted.
Lilah pushed her bangs out of her eyes and felt the back of her head, realizing that her barrette had fallen out. She searched around her chair, then ducking her head underneath, she responded, “There will be other nights, I promise.” She righted herself, barrette in hand. “Tomorrow night, in fact. That’s when my dad comes in. You’re having dinner with us, remember?” She frowned as she looked around the patio. “I wonder where I left my backpack? It’s got all the information about where I’m staying on campus.”
“Where were you besides here? If you were making drinks, maybe the kitchen?” Matt suggested.
“Clever boy. Why don’t you hustle on in there and see if you can find it?” Mimi said. Matt did as he was told.
Press breathed in slowly. “Do you have to be so imperious? I know you think coming back here is a real effort on your part, but how about toning it down a notch where my friend is concerned?”
Mimi rolled her eyes. “Mr. Sensitivity. But all right. I promise to act nice.”
Lilah winced. Even in her half-awake, mildly inebriated state, she recognized the bitter undertones. Mimi’s dysfunctional family had always seemed amusing from afar, and her renditions of the latest family gossip were always bitingly witty. But up close, what had seemed amusing now just appeared mean.
Still, she didn’t want to think badly of her friend—her only old friend, for that matter. But that didn’t mean that Lilah was ignorant of Mimi’s shortcomings.
She heard the sound of the screen door from the kitchen banging shut, and she knew relief was in sight. “Great, my stuff. You’re a lifesaver…ah…what is your name again?”
“Matt,” he said enthusiastically and placed Lilah’s backpack on the table next to the food. His thin shoulders noticeably straightened up when he was relieved of the weight. “And can I tell you what an honor it is to meet you. I’ve read all about your work. You’re so inspiring.”
Lilah offered a trembling smile. “Thank you. I don’t feel very inspiring at the moment, but it’s nice to hear that people your age are still interested in social causes.”
“Oh, he’s interested all right,” Press added. He looked at his friend, who was eyeing him with embarrassment. Then he leaned closer and whispered, “Are you going to ask her about a job, or what?”
“Not now, dude. She’s half-asleep,” Matt said out of the side of his mouth.
Lilah was vaguely aware of their conversation, but she needed all of her concentration just to unzip an outside pocket. “Finally.”
She slipped out a legal-size envelope and sifted through the contents. “Somewhere in here should be directions.” She pushed aside a map of the university campus and her name tag and unfolded a sheaf of bright orange papers. She squinted at the pages. “Did they have to use such a tiny font?” She held the paper closer to her nose, then tried backing it away. “This is hopeless. I’ll have to dig out my reading glasses.” She rifled through a side pocket.
“If you want, I can read it for you?” Matt suggested eagerly.
Lilah studied him. He seemed a nice, polite boy. What was his name again? “How good are you at deciphering mouse-type?” She handed over the piece of paper.
Matt eagerly skimmed over the information. “Let’s see, it’s got your schedule here.”
“I’ll deal with that tomorrow,” Lilah interrupted. “Just go to the part where it tells me which dorm I’m staying in.”
Matt nodded and flipped to the second page. “It says here that you’re staying in Griswold College.”
“That’s my college,” Press explained. Grantham grouped dorms around quadrangles and referred to these larger units as residential colleges. “No air-conditioning, I’m afraid.”
“That’s okay. She wouldn’t know what to do with AC,” Mimi said. “Forget the name of the college. Just tell her which dorm.”
“It says here,” Matt read on, “that you’re in Bayard Hall, room 421.” He looked up.
Lilah blinked once. “Could you repeat that again?”
Matt reread the location.
Mimi looked at Lilah. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Because that was where Stephen and Justin lived senior year. They’ve gone and put me up in their old suite,” Lilah squeaked.
Mimi whistled.
Press and Matt looked at each other, obviously unsure of the importance of the information.
“Is that kismet or what?” Mimi asked.
Lilah was still shaking her head. “The question is, is it good fate or bad or what?” She pursed her lips. “You know, maybe I will have that hoagie, after all.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER DIALING THE PHONE the next morning, Justin switched it to speaker mode so he could look in the mirror to check to see if his tie was straight. The noise of the dial tone permeated the sunny one-bedroom apartment. It was early enough—around eight on a Friday morning—so the sound of commuting traffic was still at a minimum.
Justin lived in a large clapboard Victorian with a wraparound front porch, which in its original state had housed a single upper-middle-class family and their devoted household servant. All very Andy Hardy with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland ready to put on a show in the barn. Now the house was broken up into three separate apartments, one on each floor, with Justin occupying the top floor. And the “barn” out back held his vintage sports car, a Toyota Prius from the first-floor tenant—an assistant professor in the chemical engineering department—and an artificial Christmas tree of unknown ownership.
The best thing about the place in Justin’s view—besides all the light and the relatively modest rent—was the fact that it was located directly downtown in Grantham, a stone’s throw from the cemetery, where he could stroll among the burial plots of Revolutionary War heroes and former U.S. Presidents, and across the street from the public library.
Justin realized all too well the irony of this last convenience since any place with books had once been a source of frustration and embarrassment during his childhood. Now, however, he could think of nothing better than heading out on a Saturday morning, first to get coffee at Bean World, Grantham’s ever-so-chic coffeehouse, before heading to the library to scout out the bestsellers and laze away a few hours reading magazines and newspapers from all over the world.
Justin stared in the mirror and gave his half Windsor knot a tug to the right. He rarely wore a tie, so it took a few tries to get it right. It was important to look properly attired for the luncheon. The university president would be there, after all.
And so would Lilah.
Truth be told, the reason he had debated wearing a blue shirt or a white shirt with his blazer and gray trousers—he’d finally gone with white—was because he wanted to look good, not just proper—good. For Lilah. Even though he was still trying to figure out who this Lilah was.
The Lilah he had remembered from college had been serious about her studies and what she thought was important, but she’d also been bubbly—quick to laugh—an effervescent personality. The new Lilah, the one he had picked up from the airport yesterday, seemed older, wiser. Well, they were both older and hopefully wiser, he thought. And she was probably exhausted from the long flight and the killer schedule she put herself through. And if she lacked the kind of cuddly, rounded body she once had, who was he—a man, after all—to complain about how she’d been transformed into this fit, sinewy presence? Except, he kind of missed the old Lilah, the one who never seemed to judge him, the one he could tease and she could tease back without either ever taking offence. She’d been a pal. More than a pal. Undemanding, yet never taking him for granted. Unavailable, yet constantly alluring. The ripe fruit that begged to be picked but was always out of reach.
In short, a fantasy. And now?
“Hello?” The familiar female voice with a distinct Brooklyn accent answered.
Justin smiled. It was a voice that invariably wrapped around him with the comforting warmth of a favorite afghan. “Roberta,” he answered and picked up the cell, switching back to regular Talk mode. “I just wanted to touch base with you again after our conversation last night.”
“So are you still smarting from the principal calling you into his office yesterday?” she asked good-naturedly. Roberta Zimmerman had been Justin’s professor and guiding light at Bank Street College of Education, where he’d gotten his degree in early education.
“I’m much better. That’s what I wanted to let you know. Besides, there’re only a few weeks left to the school year for public schools in New Jersey, so I might as well chill out—especially since I’ve got a sub covering for me for these few days. I mean, I know that I overreacted last night. Geez, you’d have thought after all the trouble that I’d gotten into as a kid I would have been better prepared. It was just the tone of his email—demanding that I see him as soon as possible and that he’d wait around his office specifically for me. To say the least, it kind of shook me. I mean, I know there’ll always be some parents who’ll grumble about my teaching methods—”
“That’s because you do things differently. Anyway, I don’t understand all the emphasis on testing, testing, testing these days—even before kids get to kindergarten! If I have one more parent ask me if her child is ready for kindergarten, I’m going to scream. I’m not surprised you were upset.”
“I guess it kind of blindsided me because the day before in class had been so terrific.”
“Tell me.”
Justin could practically hear her rub her hands together. That’s what he loved about Roberta—her enthusiasm, her heart. Things he always used to find so great in Lilah…
He smiled and then remembered he was still on the phone. “After I read them a book about the Brooklyn Bridge, there were whole groups of kids building bridges of blocks. They even labeled the tollbooths and made money for the cars to hand in. You should have seen it. There’s even one kid making a GPS system to help drivers get over the bridge back to Grantham. And they did it all on their own.”
“They wouldn’t have done it without you. And that’s because you’re a terrific teacher, Justin. So don’t doubt your abilities just because a new administrator comes through who’s got his own agenda about how to teach. Besides, your kids score very well on these standardized tests—am I right?”
“Are you ever wrong?”
Roberta chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t ask Oscar that question.” Oscar was her husband.
“Oscar would probably agree that you’re always right.”
“True, but then he is a good man. He married me, after all, but then he always said I was quite a babe back in those days.”
Justin grinned. He remembered seeing photos of the two of them taken at Coney Island. Oscar was indeed a lucky man. “Okay, okay. What can I say?” Justin replied. “You’re right. It’s just that the way he told me, saying there’d been complaints, just threw me for a loop—especially when he wouldn’t say who’d been complaining. He claimed confidentiality or something, making me smell a setup.”
“Now you’re being paranoid.”
“Am I?” Justin frowned. “Maybe you’re right. It’s just that when someone questions my abilities, my old insecurities rise to the forefront.”
“Justin,” Roberta said firmly over the line.
“I know, I know. No whining.” He laughed, then looked in the mirror again, pleased that his tie was indeed straight.
“Now, tell me something.”
“Yes?” Justin immediately turned away from his reflection. He had a feeling that Roberta was peering over his shoulder.
“You’re calling on a Friday morning, when you would normally be teaching. You haven’t told me something else that I should know about?”
Justin sighed, knowing he would have to come up with an answer. “I’m taking a personal day. As it turns out, I’m hosting a prizewinning alum for Reunions weekend at Grantham.”
There was a slight pause. “Is that alumnus or alumna?” Roberta asked, differentiating between the male and female varieties.
Justin laughed. “Alumna. And my classics professor father would be proud of you.”
“It’s you he should be proud of.”
“Let’s not go there,” Justin said.
“Tell me, the reason you’re hosting this prizewinning person is because…?”
“Because I was the one who nominated her for the prize.”
“And you did that because…?”
“Because she does fantastic work in Africa and is totally self-sacrificing.”
“I get the picture. She’s a saint. So why do I get the impression that there’s something more than what you’re telling me?”
“Well, this is purely coincidental…”
“Excuse me, Dr. Freud. Nothing is coincidental.”
Justin didn’t bother to refute her statement. “She also happens to have been the ex-fiancée of my senior year roommate.”
“Ex? Now this I got to hear more of. Have you seen her yet? Is she everything you’d hoped for?”
Cupping the phone under his chin, Justin strapped on his watch and looked at the time. He hurriedly slipped his wallet into the back packet of his trousers and grabbed his blue blazer off his unmade bed. “Listen, I don’t have much time because, as a matter of fact, I’m just on my way to do some errands, then pick her up to take her to lunch with the university president.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/tracy-kelleher/on-common-ground/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Tracy Kelleher
When Lilah Evans graduated from Grantham U, she was ready to leave college behind and change the world. Now, at a crossroads, she's doing something she never wanted to do: attending her ten-year reunion. And that means running into Justin Bigelow.A decade ago, Justin was the big man on campus–Mr. Self-Involved himself. So why did he nominate Lilah for the Distinguished Alumni award? One thing that's clear this nostalgia-filled weekend, he isn't the partying jock she remembers.What's also clear is that the attraction that used to simmer between them is now more intense–and impossible to ignore. With the stakes higher, do they finally have the courage to go for it?
You never forget the one who got away
When Lilah Evans graduated from Grantham U, she was ready to leave college behind and change the world. Now, at a crossroads, she’s doing something she never wanted to do: attending her ten-year reunion. And that means running
into Justin Bigelow.
A decade ago, Justin was the big man on campus—Mr. Self-Involved himself. So why did he nominate Lilah for the Distinguished Alumni award? One thing that’s clear this nostalgia-filled weekend, he isn’t the partying jock she remembers.
What’s also clear is that the attraction that used to simmer between them is now more intense—and impossible to ignore. With the stakes higher, do they finally have the courage to go for it?
He bit back a smile and the sudden impulse to take her in his arms
Instead, Justin enjoyed the warm glow that permeated his being and had nothing to do with the sun beating through the car windows.
Lilah cocked her head and stared at him.
Justin held his breath.
She wet her lips.
The only noise was the whizzing of traffic outside and the occasional honk of a car horn. Not to mention the violent thumping of his own heart.
This would be it...their first kiss. Finally.
Dear Reader,
I live in a small college town. Every spring, the azaleas bloom in candy cane colors, the daffodils and tulips blanket the lawns and flowerbeds and the spirited alumni return for their class reunions. These annual rituals bring together the bittersweet memories of past joys and disappointments as well as the promise of beautiful and fulfilling things to come—all the elements of a great romance, in my opinion. Is it any wonder that I had to write a series of stories set during Grantham University’s reunions? I hope you enjoy reading this first installment as much as I took pleasure in writing it.
Let me mention the inspiration for my heroine, Lilah Evans. I happened to read an op-ed piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on the organization Run for Congo Women and its founder, Lisa Shannon. As a woman and a mother, I couldn’t help but be moved by Ms. Shannon’s valiant efforts, and I knew I wanted to create a heroine who embodied her spirit. While I was influenced by elements of her story, the characters and events in my book are, of course, strictly fictional.
As always, I love to hear from my readers. Email me at tracyk@tracykelleher.com.
Tracy Kelleher
On Common Ground
Tracy Kelleher
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tracy sold her first story to a children’s magazine when she was ten years old. Writing was clearly in her blood, though fiction was put on hold while she received degrees from Yale and Cornell, traveled the world, worked in advertising, became a staff reporter and later a magazine editor. She also managed to raise a family. Is it any surprise she escapes to the world of fiction?
Many thanks to Renée Dinnerstein,
an inspired teacher. You’re a good sport.
For her insights into early childhood education,
see Renée’s blog, Investigating Choice Time: Inquiry, Exploration, and Play, at investigatingchoicetime.com.
This book is dedicated to Peter and James:
two great guys who are generous, smart and funny.
Plus you give the best hugs!
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u49f3ed5b-2fe6-5c9e-b2ff-6c3f063a4553)
CHAPTER TWO (#u2d5294fe-867e-5a79-be23-000b692f1a6e)
CHAPTER THREE (#uec9bc0ac-fd7a-5d72-8d4b-671d2e2f05bf)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u3b406761-6093-5c67-895c-ecc368f3eb9a)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ub1442989-cfd2-5452-9ca1-8f406eb227d6)
CHAPTER SIX (#uf451a4c0-d63a-5946-b213-1b2f82e0bf90)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u77543480-b5b8-504b-8d9e-aea741bebbdd)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u1e9fff10-808d-5e91-b81a-08f249360dcb)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
March
THE VILLAGE WOMEN STOMPED their bare feet to the rhythm of the drums. They kicked up dirt that collected on the hems of their long cotton dresses, making an earthen border of red clay. The bright, bold patterns of their bandannas created a swirl of color. And the joyous sounds they intoned combined in a song in celebration.
To say the least, Lilah Evans was a long way from home.
You couldn’t get much farther from Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington State, than the remote jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo. But whatever the distance—indeed, whatever the differences—the primal African beat had a universal appeal. And a special one for Lilah.
Because the women who sang and danced? They were singing and dancing for her.
It was a gift from the hearts of women who owned almost nothing and had lost so much—husbands and children and homes in the ongoing civil war.
Growing up on an idyllic island, surrounded by fishermen, artists and executive escapees from Seattle, Lilah wouldn’t have been able to imagine that people were capable of such cruelty. After her schoolteacher mother had read her Grimm’s fairy tales, she’d had nightmares for weeks. To this day, she never looked at gingerbread quite the same way.
So when Esther, her good friend among the Congolese women, had told her what had happened to her, her soft voice mingling with the smoke from the kitchen fire in her small hut, Lilah had cringed.
“Lilah, they came one day—this was after they had raided the village and killed my husband and the other men. And taken my oldest son,” Esther had explained. Her tone was flat, but raw emotion cut the sentences into staccato clips. “They were crazy. The militiamen—crazy on drugs. They went from hut to hut. They raped the women, young daughters no more than children, grandmothers—toothless grandmothers. Then they came to me.” Her voice faltered. “They took me, too, in ways not normal. They made sure that my children were watching. It was a game, a sport, n’est-ce pas? When they were done, they laughed. Then they started to talk among themselves. I knew there was more to come. I tried not to show any fear. That was what they wanted of course.”
“You don’t have to say any more,” Lilah remembered telling her friend. She was too old to hide under the covers, but that was what she wished to do. Barring that, she wished she could cover her ears with her hands. But she didn’t. She owed it to Esther to listen, to be brave in any way she could be.
And her friend finished the story, a story so horrific that now, after the fact, Lilah still blotted out the details of how Ester came to lose her leg and what had happened to the rest of the family. What she did recall vividly was her own reaction—crying and reaching out to her friend. Her own words, thinking back now, seemed so self-centered. “I don’t think I would have been able to withstand that. I don’t know if I am strong enough,” she had said.
And Esther had placed her thin hand, as light as a bird’s, on Lilah’s arm and replied, “You do it because you have to. You have to think of tomorrow. There is no choice.”
But for Lilah, there had been a choice. Back in her senior year of college, suffering from the flu, she’d wrapped herself in a quilt on her couch and killed off a dozen boxes of Kleenex, while flipping through the channels on the TV. By chance she landed on this daytime talk show, the sort that she would have never admitted to watching. It carried a heart-wrenching report on the plight of Congolese women.
By the time the program broke away for a commercial for a new women’s deodorant, Lilah had made that choice. She decided to enlist other women to help provide health care to women and children in the remote areas of Congo—places where medical providers were practically unheard of.
And so Sisters for Sisters was born.
It was one thing to find a cause. It was another to carry it out. First had come the efforts to establish a base of operations in the capital of Kinshasa, staffed with a part-time office manager and a nurse who volunteered when she wasn’t working at the hospital. One year later, Lilah got the first traveling clinic up and running. Equipped with medical supplies and a portable lab, that team of two nurses and a female doctor set out to war-torn villages in eastern Congo. After three years, the organization was finally able to pay the nurse in the main office and had added another two clinics, then two more. In total, five traveling clinics were making the rounds—true, often on a shoestring budget and understaffed, but at least they were providing services.
Through her own outreach efforts, Lilah had also coordinated field operations with a group of volunteer doctors, and this partnership helped increase much-needed manpower and opened up Sisters for Sisters to larger funded studies. Now ten years later, her organization had seen both ups and downs—plenty of downs—but she was still unwilling to give up when there were good people like Esther suffering. But there were times when Lilah found it almost impossible to follow Esther’s credo and “think of tomorrow.”
Lilah shook her head. Tomorrow could wait, especially when this moment in time was perfect. Today, Esther was dancing joyfully with a prosthetic leg thanks to Lilah’s efforts.
The music ended. The performers and villagers erupted in a chorus of cheers.
Esther approached Lilah, her gait awkward but confident. She hugged her. “C’est pour toi.” “It’s for you.”
“C’est fantastique!” Lilah exclaimed in French. The language was a vestige of colonialism, but it was still the common language spoken in Congo. “Tu m’as donné un cadeau énorme! Merci bien.” “You’ve given me a wonderful gift. Thank you so much,” she said in her less than fluent French.
“But it is we who are thanking you, ma petite soeur, my little sister,” Esther said. “We are all sisters helping each other, mais non?” She smiled and her voice held a hint of teasing.
That was another of Lilah’s choices—the whole sibling concept.
Her idea for raising money was to hold 5K road races for women where each participant or “sister” sponsored a “sister” in Congo. The idea had taken off. Now her nonprofit organization had more than twenty local affiliates that sponsored fun runs and competitive races almost every month, all across America. Plans were already set to branch out to Europe and Australia.
But while these runs remained the backbone of Sisters for Sisters’s funding and a way for women to “actively” participate in the organization, Lilah recognized the limitations of races as the sole source of revenue. As a result, much of her time was spent writing grant proposals to funding agencies and foundations. This had led to a collaboration with a Doctors Without Borders type of operation to provide cell phones to women in rural villages, thus allowing them to obtain long-distance medical help. Similar programs in other countries, using towers and satellites that the military or World Health Organization had put in place, were already up and running.
Here at last was a way to supplement Sisters for Sisters’s meager staffing. So far only a pilot program in a few locales, including Esther’s village, had been funded, and if they were going to expand, they’d need more money. Lilah figured she’d have to give up on sleep altogether to get out more grant applications.
As if that weren’t enough to worry about, after a race two months ago in Poughkeepsie, New York, a woman had approached her who was a senior VP at a large investment house. She wanted to help set up a local banking system so that women could establish savings accounts to better the lives of their children.
Lilah felt overwhelmed. What did she know about banking? Microfinancing sounded like a good idea, but was it something Sisters for Sisters should be affiliated with? They always had been associated strictly with medical care. On the other hand, if she said no, would she be turning down an opportunity too good to miss? After all, the link between improved standards of health and financial well-being, not to mention better education, was well documented.
But all these questions would simply have to wait. Now she reveled in the warmth radiating from Esther’s skin as Lilah embraced her “sister.” A late-afternoon shower started to fall, heightening the smells of the village and the jungle.
Esther broke away from their hug and looked to the skies. “It’s time for the feast. It is good we have the school to keep us dry.” That was something of an exaggeration. Made of sticks, the school consisted of a thatched roof and dirt floor.
Esther clapped for her three remaining children to come, and with her head held high she clumped along on her artificial leg. She nodded for Lilah to follow.
Lilah joined the procession, smiling with the thought that she resembled one of the baby ducks following their mother in the children’s book Make Way for Ducklings.
A cell phone rang.
All the women reached into the deep folds of their dresses. Lilah had to laugh. It was a sign of progress that the towers were functioning, and that women were growing familiar with the equipment even though the likelihood of receiving calls was remote. Still, given the loudness of the ring tone, Lilah knew it was for her. She held her phone aloft to let the other women know, then rushed through the raindrops into Esther’s mud hut. “Hello,” she answered. Very few people outside her organization and her family had her number.
“Lilah, it’s Mimi.” The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Mimi Lodge, Lilah’s roommate from college. Always outspoken and very smart—some might say too smart for her own good—Mimi had gone on to be a television news correspondent.
“Talk about a voice out of the blue. Where are you calling from this time? Chechnya? Afghanistan?” Lilah asked. If there was a hot spot in the world, chances were that Mimi was there.
“Close. Waziristan.”
Lilah cringed. People sometimes questioned her sanity about traveling to Congo, but Waziristan? The northwest region of Pakistan was a known stronghold of terrorists. “Promise me you’re calling to tell me you’re safe,” Lilah implored.
“Not to worry about me. I’m in my element. It’s you I’m calling about—with news.”
“Don’t tell me—actually do tell me—that someone has decided to give Sisters for Sisters millions of dollars after seeing your piece on TV?” she asked.
“No, but there’s the possibility.”
“I’m always open to possibilities, long shots, even highly unlikely probabilities.”
“It’s like this. Seeing as you’re such a hard woman to track down, the alumni office of our illustrious alma mater, Grantham University, contacted me through my television network. They were hoping I could hunt you down directly.”
“Oh, please, there is no way I’m making a contribution to Annual Giving. I barely make enough money to pay the rent on my hovel of an apartment—and I use the term hovel generously,” Lilah decried. After college, she’d landed in Brooklyn, and for some mysterious reason that only the gods of real estate understood, her block had defiantly escaped the rampant gentrification that had swept the rest of the outer borough.
“Actually, it’s the other way around. They want to give you something.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Lilah ran her hand through her chestnut-brown hair, which despite the practical clip holding it back in a ponytail, was frizzing madly in the rain and humidity.
“I kid you not. Apparently, the feature I did on you actually penetrated the mostly deaf ears of the ivory tower powers-that-be. Now the university wants to honor you with a big alumni award at Reunions this June. Who’d a thunk it, heh?”
Lilah knew that Mimi didn’t harbor any great fondness for Grantham despite her family’s long history of involvement and support for the Ivy League institution. Nor was Lilah particularly the Reunions “type.” What was the point of rehashing your college days? Or seeing people from your past you really could do without? She could think of one person in particular—boy, could she ever. Then there was the more fundamental anxiety. Ten years out—had she measured up to her own expectations? And the more troubling thought, If I accept the award, will they figure out I’m no longer some sterling idealist?
But those doubts were for her ears alone—something she’d have to work out. So Lilah retorted with the slick sarcasm that so often substituted for wit and intelligence among her fellow Grantham alumni.
“So why exactly would I want to wax poetic about my time at that dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist bastion?” she asked, using Mimi’s withering expression for Grantham. “I mean, can’t I just accept the award without showing up to Reunions? ’Cause I’m not totally convinced I can stand there with a straight face, listening to the university president give some rah-rah speech about all my good works somehow being an outgrowth of that special Grantham spirit. And the thought of rubber chicken served under a tent by the boathouse? Please. Is there anything worse? Oh, right—sleeping in a dorm room all over again.”
Truth was, she’d die for a dorm room right now. Tonight Lilah would be sleeping on the dirt floor on a thin straw mat. Not that she was complaining, mind you, when she had so much compared to the villagers around her.
Speaking of which, Lilah angled to the side to let one of Esther’s daughters carry an earthen platter of baton di manioc, boiled palm leaves filled with a paste made from starchy manioc tubers.
“I feel your pain, really I do,” Mimi responded from thousands of miles away. She, too, had mastered the glib speak. “But look at it this way. Does Miss America get her cr-own in absen-tia?” The satellite line had a slight delay, and the transmission sputtered.
“I get your point. I get your point,” Lilah replied. “But aren’t Reunions in June? That’s…that’s not going to work out. Our first major fundraising race in Europe is at the beginning of that month—in Barcelona. I couldn’t possibly miss that.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re at the end of June, but, c’mon. This is Mimi here. Your bosom buddy? You and I both know you’re manufacturing excuses. The real reason you don’t want to go back to Reunions and accept this award is Stephen.”
Lilah hadn’t spoken her ex-fiancé’s name in almost ten years. And she wasn’t about to start now. And why bother to rail against the cruelty of love when her friend flat out didn’t believe in love? Or so she had claimed many a time over. Too many times over, Lilah sometimes thought.
“From your silence, I presume I hit the nail on the head. Well, let me tell you. I have just one thing to say in response.”
“Grin and bear it?” Lilah offered.
“Oh, please. What do you take me for? A leader of a Girl Scout troop? My kind of pep talk is…” She proceeded to string together several swearwords in a highly creative and visually interesting fashion.
Crude, but effective, Lilah couldn’t help thinking. “So you really think I should go, then?” she asked.
“Yes, of course I think you should go. Not only do you deserve all the praise in the world for what you’re doing, you’ll have those old coots eating out of your hand. They’ll see this brilliant, cute young woman, and they’ll immediately feel the need to help. The next thing you know, they’ll be writing monster-size checks to support your work. You might even think about upping your own salary from near poverty line to something where you could afford to go to a decent hair salon.”
“Hair salons? They still have them?” Lilah asked facetiously. Reflexively she fingered her bangs, slowly growing out from her last feeble attempt at giving herself a cut.
The light shower had turned into a thick curtain of rain, and the sound of drops hitting against the thatched roof formed a steady rumble. The red dirt on the floor was already transforming into a rusty-colored slime, the same mud that coated the soles of her hiking boots.
From her position in the doorway of the hut she could see Esther, along with two other women from the village, cooking rice, beans, bananas and more manioc. Through the haze of smoke she noticed two large cauldrons cooking meat—probably chicken and goat. Today had to be special if meat was on the menu.
These women who had suffered so much were unfailingly generous. Who was she to balk at attending some awkward ceremony and meeting a few strangers at Reunions if it meant helping them out?
Lilah rubbed her sticky palm down her sundress. The outfit was a concession to the festivities, but she’d paired it with her usual hiking boots because there were too many poisonous snakes for her to consider wearing sandals. Not a great look but always practical.
She exhaled through her mouth with resignation. “All right. I hear the wisdom of your words. Just tell me whom to contact about setting up my triumphal return to our beloved alma mater. And in the name of a good cause—and good people—I promise to show the proper humility and speak about the urgency of the problem.” She paused, her mind working on overdrive. “But I have one condition.”
“Hey, I gave you prime time network exposure. Don’t expect me to open my meager checkbook, as well,” Mimi protested.
“I wouldn’t think of it. I know the prices at the salon you frequent. No, my request—no, my ultimatum is this. I’ll go provided you come, too. If I’m going to give a convincing performance for a day—”
“We’re talking days, bubby,” Mimi interrupted.
Lilah groaned. Oh, yeah. Grantham University never did anything by half measures. Their Reunions lasted three days and were scheduled immediately before commencement ceremonies, thus cementing a lifelong hold on graduating students.
Lilah cleared her throat. “Okay, but if I am going through with this charade, I think it’s only right and proper that I have moral support. And nothing says moral support like a forceful female friend close at hand.”
The metaphorical clock ticked away in silence until Lilah heard a sigh. “All right,” Mimi agreed. “Only for you will I set foot on Grantham, New Jersey, soil. I suppose that also means I won’t be able to avoid putting in an appearance at the family manse, will I?”
“I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Besides, once my parents get wind of the award, I’m sure at least one of them will insist on making an appearance, and then you’ll have a parental buffer.”
“If you mean that having a critical mass of people will in any way be enough to preserve my sani—”
Mimi’s voice was drowned out by a decisive rat-tat-tat. It had to be the sound of gunfire.
“Mimi? Mimi? Are you all right?” Lilah asked.
“Never better. This is what I live for, right?” Her words were upbeat, but they couldn’t camouflage the underlying edge. “Listen. Gotta go. I’ll text you the contact numbers at Grantham. Promise.” The call ended abruptly.
Lilah held the phone away from her ear. Her concern didn’t stop just because the conversation was cut short. She shifted her gaze toward the encroaching jungle. Danger from natural predators and roaming militias was never far away here, either. For now, at least, there didn’t appear to be any imminent threats to be fearful of.
But sometimes the bigger fears came from within oneself.
CHAPTER TWO
June
JUSTIN BIGELOW STOOD in the international arrivals area of Newark Liberty Airport with a sign dangling from one hand and wondered if he was making a big mistake. A seriously big mistake.
It wouldn’t be the first one, as his father, a professor of classics at Grantham University, would no doubt have reminded him. Growing up, this pronouncement traditionally came during dinner, where conversational topics were limited to his father’s research on the ancient Greek Punic Wars, with possible digressions into stories from the day’s headlines in the New York Times that were of particular interest to him.
This arrangement, with Stanfield Bigelow as the central star around which all family members orbited, had seemed to please his mother and sister. Naturally. His mother happily trekked over the remains of archaeological sites in Sicily and North Africa while painting watercolors of the landscapes—very well, as it happened. Her book, A Companion’s Guide to Sicilian Wildflowers, was a classic among aficionados.
Justin’s older sister, Penelope—named for Odysseus’s devoted wife—was equally sympathetic to their father’s passion for ancient Roman history and Latin historical authors. She had dutifully followed in his footsteps, graduating first from Grantham University before going to graduate school at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship, then winning a Prix de Rome, and now an appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago—not quite the Ivy League, but somehow more so.
On the other hand, Justin—short for the Byzantine emperor Justinian, a fact that no one, and Justin made sure ab-so-lutely no one, knew about—had been left completely out of the conversation. Sports, his passion growing up and something he excelled at, held no interest for his father. And the only show on National Public Radio that Justin listened to—“Car Talk,” the humorous call-in car repair broadcast—didn’t count as highbrow fare. A real shame, since Justin had been more than handy when it came to keeping his father’s ancient Volvo station wagon up and running. In recognition of which his father would nod silently, turn back to his books and then add while he flipped a page, “Make sure you wash your hands before you touch anything in the house.”
It used to be that statements like that hurt Justin’s feelings, and he would lash out. Now he didn’t bother. What good would it do anyway? People didn’t change. They were who they were, for better or for worse.
Justin smiled at the thought of someone better, lots better. And with that smile still on his face, he stared up at the arrivals screen.
Her plane had just landed.
Justin glanced at his watch, an inexpensive Timex with large numbers. Given the water and sand he came into contact with daily on his job, there was no point in spending more—not that he was into status-y stuff anyway. It was an international flight, so he figured it would be another twenty minutes or so before she’d appear. Enough time to check his messages.
He tucked the sign under his arm and pulled out his smart phone, juggling it with the bouquet of flowers in his hand. He had left work early to drive to the airport, and he wanted to make sure that everyone got home. Then he set about methodically answering anything that required an immediate response. As he did so, he wandered a few steps to a large rectangular pillar, tucked the flowers and sign under his arm.
“Lilah? Lilah Evans?” a female voice called out from behind a few minutes later.
Justin held up a hand and quickly finished replying to a message. “I’m sorry. I just needed to send that.”
“Is that sign for Lilah Evans?”
A woman pointed to the words on his sign. A cascade of sun-streaked brown hair fell across her face, blocking her features.
“Can I help you?” he asked, bending over to address her eye to eye.
She stood up. The hair fell away. She indicated the sign again. “Did you mean Lilah Evans?”
His mouth opened. She looked very familiar, even though he didn’t recognize her immediately.
The Lilah Evans he remembered had that kind of fresh-faced milkmaid appeal—all rosy cheeks and rosy attitude to life—an apple dumpling with a heart of gold, to mix metaphors in a really, really awful way. She’d been rounded, maybe even a little pudgy, not that Justin ever complained about a few extra pounds. If anything, they only served to enhance her womanly appeal. Anyway, she’d always seemed supremely unaware of her own attractiveness. It hadn’t mattered if she had on a sweatshirt and had her hair pulled up and anchored by a pencil, or was wearing some slinky dress and high heels, the woman had invariably produced a catch in his throat even though she’d only thought of him as a friend. Was there anything worse?
Back in college, Lilah was his roommate’s girlfriend. That made her strictly off-limits.
And now? Now that same woman—who was not the same at all—was staring at him with a critical frown. She looked older. There were lines in her forehead and around her mouth, too, and she’d tucked a pair of reading glasses into the neckband of her drab olive T-shirt. Gone were the pillowy-soft curves, replaced by a delicate frame with sinewy muscles and minimal body fat. And instead of that wide-eyed, can-do outlook, she conveyed a weary, been-there-done-that air.
He cleared his throat. “Lilah? Is that really you?” He pointed between her name on the sign and herself in person.
“Well, yes, I’m Lilah Evans, spelled L-I-L-A-H, not L-I-L-L-A.” She hooked a thumb under the strap on her backpack. “You are waiting for the L-I-L-A-H version, right?”
He shrugged off a laugh. “I never could spell. And as to waiting for the L-I-L-A-H version? To tell you the truth, it seemed like I’ve been waiting for a large portion of my adult life.”
CHAPTER THREE
“OH, DON’T TELL ME.” Lilah covered her mouth before slowly dropping her hand. “Justin? Justin Bigelow? From college?” Her voice ended in a high squeak, the kind of girlie sound that Lilah hadn’t emitted since…well…since college.
“In the flesh,” he admitted sheepishly.
Though what he had to be ashamed about Lilah wasn’t quite sure. No, check that. If Justin’s behavior was still consistent with his days in college, he had a lot to apologize for. Which, Lilah reflected, had only made him that much more attractive.
What was it about bad boys? Lilah wondered. Every woman knew they were poison, but that didn’t stop them from wanting to take a bite out of the apple.
Back in college, Lilah had found Justin incredibly attractive. Maybe it was his cherubic blond curls that should have made him seem like Harpo Marx, but somehow they just turned up the sex-appeal quotient instead? Maybe it was the long, loose-limbed body, the kind that never seemed to put on a pound despite an enormous consumption of beer and pizza? But then, he had been a lightweight rower, Lilah reminded herself—all those calories burned away in killer practices. Or maybe it was the way he didn’t mind shooting the breeze with her in the dorm rooms he shared with Stephen. Or when Stephen was off editing the Daily Granthamite, the college newspaper, the way he listened to her worry that her Junior Paper wasn’t original enough, or about the interview she was sure she had messed up for a summer internship at the Guggenheim Museum. She hadn’t, he’d assured her, and sure enough she’d gotten the job.
She studied him now. Gone were the curls. Instead, his hair was close-cropped. He still appeared trim and fit, but he seemed to have lost the red-rimmed and bleary-eyed gaze of someone who burned the candle at both ends.
I guess even a party boy has to know when to quit sometime, she thought. But talk about parties! Much of the social life at Grantham University centered around social clubs, basically coed fraternities, each with its own personality. Stephen had belonged to Contract—the elitist club for political aspirants. Their parties involved a lot of sherry. Justin had joined Lion Inn, the ultimate jock hangout where beer was the beverage of choice. Lilah, on the other hand, had declined to rush any club, claiming the Grantham experience for her was more centered around her studies, her job in the art history library and her position on the board of the film society. But the truth was, she hadn’t gone that route because she’d been afraid she’d be turned down.
Anyway, Justin. There was never any doubt that he would join Lion Inn. Or that he would have just about every woman flocking after him. And since she was Justin’s roommate’s girlfriend, she was somehow supposed to know his every personal detail for all those other women to mine.
“Is it true he’s having an affair with the dean’s wife?” they’d ask.
To which she answered, “She’s old enough to be his mother—not that that would stop him.”
Then there was, “Does he really quote one particular sonnet by Shakespeare to all the women?”
“It may be the same one over and over, but can you beat, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’”
Or her favorite: “Does he compose songs on his guitar for every woman he sleeps with?” To which she answered, “No one has a repertoire that big.”
But what they all really wanted to ask was, “Do you think he likes me?” “Does he want to go out with me?” “Does he want to sleep with me?”
Lilah didn’t worry whether Justin liked her. She wasn’t sure why, but she had always felt that he liked her in the no-pressure kind of way. As friends without benefits. Besides, she had Stephen.
Stephen. Just the thought of her ex-fiancé made her suddenly suspicious. She looked around but didn’t see him. Then she narrowed her eyes at Justin. “Someone we both know didn’t send you to get me, did he?”
“No, you can rest assured. I’m here on my own accord as your official welcoming party.”
“An official welcoming party that’s busy texting instead of keeping an eye out for me? That’s some kind of welcome.”
“This is New Jersey. Give me a break. Though in my defense, I wasn’t expecting you through the doors so fast. But to make up for my grievous faux pas, these are for you.” He reached for the bouquet and handed it to her.
As Lilah reached for the flowers their fingers brushed. She felt the roughness of the pads of his fingers. She wondered if he still rowed, recalling the thick calluses he had built up in college. Then she pulled apart the patterned paper and stopped. Tulips—dozens of Rembrandt tulips, the striated, white-and-red, white-and-orange, and white-and-purple flowers depicted by the Flemish master.
“They’re your favorites, right?” he asked.
She looked up. “I’m amazed. How did you remember?”
“You didn’t think Stephen kept track of those kinds of things, did you? I may not have graduated magna like some people I know—” he tipped his chin down as he eyed her “—but I’ve got a pretty good memory for details.”
Lilah pressed her nose to the flowers. The waxy petals were just starting to open, and their faint perfume was intensely fresh. She closed her eyes for a moment, and felt transported back to a simpler time when her worries consisted of studying Old Masters, not worrying whether she could help yet another woman get proper obstetrical care rather than risk death in childbirth.
She opened her tired eyes. “You always did remember the details—especially when it involved women.” Irony was the only emotion she seemed able to muster.
“I’m not sure that’s entirely a compliment, but I’ll just assume it is.” He looked around, then pointed to her backpack. “Is that all you’ve got?”
“That and my laptop.” She held up the case for him to see. “I prefer to travel light. It’s just easier, faster. I’m all about streamlining.”
He nodded uncertainly. “I can imagine the advantages. Well, let me take your pack.” He didn’t bother to wait and moved to take it off her shoulders. He slipped his long fingers between the padded strap and the thin cotton of her T-shirt.
Lilah felt her skin prickle. She blinked. I really must be tired after the flight from Spain, not to mention the hard work getting the race all sorted out. The race… That’s right. Her muscles were still sore.
Yes, she was tired, but even Lilah couldn’t deny the ego boost of having a good-looking male in his absolute prime touching her body—even if it was strictly on a practical level and wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination accompanied by smoldering looks. Ah, the imagination…
Lilah watched Justin sling her pack over one shoulder as if it contained only a fistful of Ping-Pong balls instead of the forty-pounds-plus of clothing and paperwork stuffed into its bulging sides. Relieved of the weight, she felt as if her spine had decompressed and she’d grown an inch. And she would have felt even more relieved if she didn’t still feel the residual tingle of Justin’s touch.
“Shall we go find the car, then?” he asked with a nod of his head.
That tingle she was feeling just got even more annoying because it appeared that Justin was totally oblivious to the same hypersensitivity. Lilah frowned. The decision to return to Grantham appeared to promise additional obstacles. At least, maybe she could find out about the obvious one that had been bugging her ever since she’d heard about the award. “I was wondering. I know you said you weren’t Stephen’s emissary, but do you know if he’s planning on coming this weekend?” She tried to sound oh-so-casual. She practically had to hop to keep up with Justin’s long strides.
“As far as I know, he’s not coming to Reunions. So you’re safe,” he said, waiting for her to go through the revolving door first.
Lilah stopped. “Safe? I think the embarrassment factor is still pretty high. I can’t begin to remember the number of times I poured out my soul to you. About the only thing I do remember is that it was way more than to Stephen.”
“And you never thought that was one of the problems with your relationship?” He scooted in behind her into the slowly turning segment of the revolving door.
She was conscious of his legs coming perilously close to the back of her thighs. Lilah cleared her throat. “Let’s leave that evaluation aside for now, okay? I don’t need you to lecture me on how I wronged your good buddy. Besides, for all I know, as soon as you’re alone, you’ll immediately contact him to let him know my rear end is bigger than ever.”
Finally, the slowly revolving door deposited them on the sidewalk, and she stumbled out on the pavement. The fresh air should have been a relief, but this was Newark, and fresh air was a relative concept given the bus and taxi fumes.
Justin followed closely behind. “I won’t text, let alone communicate with Stephen in any form. I should let you know, I haven’t kept up with him since graduation.”
Lilah raised her eyebrows. “You’re kidding me.”
“So you’ve nothing to worry about on that score.” He held his arm out toward the street. “We need to cross here. I’m parked in the lot across the way.”
“But you two were practically joined at the hip in college.”
“Except where you were concerned,” he reminded her. “And by the way, I don’t know where you get off saying your butt is too big. Anyone can see you’re incredibly fit and trim.” He started to cross the street when the light changed. “In fact, if anything, you could probably afford to gain a few pounds.”
She shouldn’t have felt pleased, but she was. It was the inner-anorexic in all women who were once overweight. “Well, I run a lot these days—the job kind of requires it. So, it’s hard to gain weight.”
“You could try eating more.”
“Eating? Who has time for eating?”
“Lots of folks do. It’s called three square meals a day.”
“I know. It’s something we try to make happen in the villages.”
He slanted her a glance. “And you don’t practice what you preach?” He kept up a steady pace as they passed the rows of cars.
Lilah frowned. Why did he seem angry with her? She took a few giant strides to catch up. “Wait a minute. I don’t get it,” she called out after him.
Justin stopped. He fished some keys out of his pocket and waited.
She jogged to his side. “Tell me this. If you’re not here because Stephen sent you to escort me, why are you here?”
A giant SUV pulled out of the row near them, and the driver gunned the engine as he raced off.
“Why am I here?” he repeated. “To tell you the truth, I don’t usually get too involved with Reunions stuff.” He wet his top lip. “I’m here because of you.”
“Me?” Lilah stopped while Justin opened the trunk of a green sports car. She looked down. “And this…this…little car is yours?”
“This is not just a little car. It’s a fully restored…well, partially restored—I still have some body work to do—Triumph TR4, a British classic.” He gazed at it lovingly.
The rust around the back fender didn’t exactly induce confidence. “Is it roadworthy?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “Careful, or I’ll change my mind.” He shut the trunk lid and gave it an extra push to make sure it closed. Then he turned to her. “I was the one who recommended you for the Paine Prize, and as a result, I have the enviable task of serving as your personal chaperone for the duration of the Reunions festivities. How can I put this?” He rubbed his chin philosophically. “We’ll be like two peas in a pod.”
“In this thing we will, that’s for sure,” she joked, then from his silence, realized she may have gone too far. “That’s very nice of you,” she said quickly to make up for her insensitivity, “but you know, it’s really not necessary. I’m sure I can find my way around.”
Justin walked over to the passenger-side door and held it open. “You’d deny me the pleasure of your company? Besides, if you don’t toe the line, I’ll be the one to get in trouble. And who knows, on top of all the trouble I caused in my undergraduate days, they might just take away my diploma retroactively.”
Lilah had to laugh. “You didn’t get in that much trouble—okay, you did. But it wasn’t as if you ever flunked a single course—even if I never saw you study.”
“Ah, I had my secret ways.” He pointed to the open door. “Are you going to get in?”
“Are you changing the subject?”
His smile was a little too charming.
“Okay, we’ll let that pass—for now.” She slipped into the seat without further complaining. Until it collapsed under her weight. “I think you need to do some internal renovation in addition to the bodywork,” she said, watching him circle the car.
He slipped into the driver’s side. “Be careful of the loose spring on the right side.”
Lilah shifted closer to the gearshift. “Now you tell me.” The bucket seats were really quite close and the gap separating them, not that wide.
“I’ve been concentrating on working under the hood so far.”
“So you fix cars for a living?”
“It’s just a hobby. And my work is nothing nearly as exciting as yours, that’s for sure.” He turned the key in the ignition and put the car in Reverse, looking over his shoulder before he pulled out.
“No, I’m curious. I mean, what does someone end up doing who spent most of his college years seducing every woman in sight and giving parties that are possibly still talked about in some quarters.”
Justin grinned slyly. “Not possibly. Definitely.”
He still had terrific dimples, Lilah noticed.
“And I didn’t seduce every woman, as you personally can attest to.” He reached across, his forearm almost skimming the front of her shirt. “Excuse me.”
Lilah swallowed with difficulty.
He flipped down the glove box and pulled out a ticket. “Your job is to guard this with your life,” he said and held it out for her.
“And if I don’t?”
“You don’t want to know what the Port Authority will do to you,” he joked.
“Oh, for a minute, I thought you had plans.”
He swung into the lane that led to the payment booths. “Oh, I have plans, but they’ve got nothing to do with parking fees.”
Lilah rolled her eyes. “So what do you do if you’re not in the business of fixing cars? Provide escort service, because I gotta tell you, your pickup lines are getting a bit old.”
He pulled to a stop behind a Cadillac Escalade. “You think? No one’s been complaining lately.”
“Then the women where you live have pretty low standards. Where do you live anyway?”
“In Grantham.” He put the car in first and inched his way up to the booth.
“In Grantham! You’re joking?”
He shook his head. “Ticket, please.” He held out his hand.
Lilah slowly placed the stub in it, careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact. “So you work at the university? Doing what? Coaching crew?”
He paid for the parking and pulled away, smoothly shifting up to second. “No, I gave up rowing a year out of college. I teach.”
Lilah leaned away from him to get a broader view. “You’re kidding me?”
He shook his head and concentrated on the signs.
“You mean at the university?” she asked.
“I have a much higher caliber student.” He deftly avoided a semi crossing three lanes at once. “The turnoff for the turnpike comes up sooner than you think, so I need to get in the far lane.”
“I don’t get it. Higher caliber? What do you mean?”
“Ah, ha! There it is.” He put on his signal and took the sharp exit to the right. “I told you it came up quickly.” He glanced over, obviously pleased with himself. “What do I mean? Isn’t it obvious?”
She shook her head.
“I teach kindergarten.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MIMI HAD HER HEAD BURIED in the refrigerator at her father’s house when she announced loudly, “Well, I for one wouldn’t mind having Justin Bigelow pick me up from the airport—or any place, for that matter.” She shut the stainless-steel door. “Dah, da-ah!” She held a jar of peanut butter triumphantly aloft. Then she spied the label and her enthusiasm diminished. “Wouldn’t you know it? Organic peanut butter with no salt and no sugar. No wonder it was in the fridge.”
“Since when has your dad become all health food conscious?” Lilah asked. She sat on a stool in the Lodge’s sprawling kitchen. Her entire studio apartment could have fit into the center island—with room to spare. The surface gleamed with acres of polished granite.
“It’s not Daddy. People who raid beleaguered companies don’t do organic, or so I’ve been told. It’s the preoccupation of his latest wife, the lovely Noreen, by way of Limerick. It seems no processed food is allowed to touch the lips of my little stepsister Brigid. Noreen even sent Cook to a health food cooking school for further instruction.”
Mimi seemed to think nothing of having “Cook” as part of the household. Ah, the prerogatives of privilege, Lilah thought. Not something that had been part of her upbringing, that was for sure
She watched Mimi unscrew the lid to the peanut butter and stick her finger in. Then she swallowed a glob and gagged. “Oh, yuck,” Mimi howled. “It’s like having sex without an orgasm.”
It had been way too long since Lilah had had sex, let alone an orgasm, for her to comment. Which probably also explained why her next thought was of Justin. She cleared her throat and moved on to the obvious—not about sex. “Noreen? Last I heard your father was married to Adele.”
Adele had originally been Mimi’s nanny before she pushed aside Mimi’s mother to become the second Mrs. Lodge. That was also before Mimi’s mother had committed suicide, a forbidden subject at all times.
“Boy, are you behind the times. After Adele and Daddy had a son, they hired Noreen as a nanny. That son would be my half brother, Conrad Prescott Lodge IV, known to one and all, yourself included, as Press.”
“Which would not have been my first choice for a nickname,” Lilah quipped.
“Be that as it may, Noreen then replaced Adele in the wife department. Daddy, as you may have gathered, seems to focus on the household help when he’s looking for a new mate. It doesn’t require too much legwork, I guess.”
“Look on the bright side. At least he marries them,” Lilah reflected. “Hey, how old is Press now? Last I saw him, he was obsessed with Magic Cards and some little medieval action figures or other.”
“Warhammer figures—the holy grail of prepubescent boys with unwanted blackheads and extensive imaginations.”
“I hope he’s gotten out of that phase—the blackhead part, I mean.”
“Oh, he’s turned out all right, our Press—quite a handsome man-boy. He’s very nice, actually, no thanks to either my father or Adele. I mean, how can you relate to a mother who looks like a boiled prune from playing tennis all day or a father who’s never there? Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he turned out so well?”
“So he’s how old?” Lilah asked.
“He’s just finished up his junior year at Grantham, a biology major but focusing on paleontology. I think he also plays on the tennis team. Anyway, he mentioned that he’s working Reunions, but I don’t know what exactly.”
Mimi abandoned the jar of peanut butter on the counter and wandered over to the adjoining walk-in butler’s pantry. Lilah, being Lilah, screwed the lid back on the jar and put it away in the fridge. Then she followed Mimi, leaning against one of the old-fashioned cabinet drawers that held linens. On one wall, glass-faced cabinets displayed massive amounts of silver serving pieces and glassware. On the others, shelves held neatly arranged packages and jars of whole-wheat flour, honey and granola. Lilah took in the jars of dried beans and legumes of varying dull colors.
“I can see that Noreen has had a major influence on this room, as well,” she said. “When I think back to college, these shelves had the biggest supply of Pop-Tarts I’d ever seen—it just makes me want to cry.”
Mimi let out a dramatic sigh. “You’re right. It’s the fall of civilization as we know it.” She shook her head and marched out of the pantry. “Never mind. There’s still the liquor cabinet.”
Lilah tripped along behind her into the dining room, where drop cloths covered furniture, rugs were rolled up and bundled in plastic, and the walls were denuded of paintings. “So what’s going on? A garage sale?” she said.
Mimi lifted a spattered sheet covering the sideboard. “No, it’s protection from the dust, all part of the current-wife-renovations phenomenon. First comes the new master bedroom—for all the obvious reasons. Then they work their way around the house imprinting their own unique personality. When Adele became the official Number Two, she had the kitchen redone, a wine cellar built and a new pool house put in the back. Now that Noreen rules the roost, she’s converting my old bedroom into a yoga room and turning the library into a screening room. They’ll probably sit around and watch documentaries about eating local.”
Lilah watched Mimi study the labels of various bottles of liquor. “So where are you staying, then?”
Mimi grabbed a bottle by the neck and straightened up. “Why, the pool house of course. It’s my version of the stepdaughter’s revenge. I’m co-opting something that really mattered to that money-grubbing bitch who usurped my mother’s rightful place.” She marched back to the kitchen. “C’mon, I’ve made the unilateral decision that we’re going to have gin and tonics. I think I noticed some designer tonic water in the back of the pantry.”
“And I’m sure there’s organic limes in the fruit bowl.” Lilah yawned. In Spain, where she’d just come from, it was already well after midnight. Between jet lag and the time difference, she was fading fast. “Dare I ask where the ‘money grubbing bitch’ is now?” she asked, trying to keep up with the conversation.
“Oh, in the center of town, ensconced in the new town house development on Grantham Square. It’s supposed to look oldie and charming—all brick Georgian and stately. But of course the places have elevators and the latest in stainless-steel appliances and jetted spa baths. But get this. According to Noreen, they’re asking more than a million for the places, and you still have to pay parking on top. Can you believe it?” After a quick pit stop to the pantry, she marched back in the kitchen and placed the bottles on the counter. She opened a cabinet and took down two highball glasses.
Lilah covered her mouth and stifled another yawn. “Sounds better than the dorm where I’m staying. Mind you, I haven’t seen it yet. I asked Justin to bring me here first.”
“And he didn’t stay for a chat? I’m offended.”
“I offered, but when we pulled up to the house he checked his email, and said that something had come up that he needed to follow up on right away.”
“Ooh! Quel mystère. I can just imagine the type of emergencies Justin Bigelow must have.”
Lilah was about to explain that the Justin of today didn’t totally resemble the Justin of yore, but Mimi had already moved on.
“I don’t know why you want to stay in the dorms when you can bunk here with me.” She didn’t bother with a jigger and instead poured generous amounts of gin in the glasses, stopped, eyed the levels and added more. Then she picked up the glasses and ambled over to the refrigerator. “I’m sure the pool house is bigger than the room they’ll put you in.” The automatic ice maker made a racket when she pressed one glass and then the other against the lever. “I mean, really, a girl could start to feel rejected,” she shouted over it.
Lilah waited for her to finish. “I haven’t looked at my information packet yet. It’s in my knapsack. But like I already told you, I’ll be running around doing my official best, so I figure it’ll be more convenient.”
Mimi poured in the tonic water and added a lime before handing Lilah her drink. “Cheers.”
They clinked glasses. Lilah took a sip, and then coughed. “Whoa. I’m barely standing as it is. After drinking this, I’m not sure I’ll make it to dinner.”
“Not to worry. I already placed an order for takeaway. I thought we’d trip the light fantastic and dine on our favorite Grantham food.” Mimi smiled slyly.
Lilah blinked. “Don’t tell me. Hoagies from Hoagie Palace?” She patted her heart.
Mimi tipped her glass and gulped a generous mouthful. “What else? I ordered a tuna melt for you and a Cheese Steak-Fried Egg Special for me with extra mozzarella cheese sticks and hot sauce. And did I mention the two orders of fries with Ranch dressing?”
“Please, you’re killing me—and that’s before all the cholesterol.”
“Not only that. I bribed Press to pick it all up. I say, what are half brothers for after all, if not to run errands? Plus, I figure that if we’re totally blitzed when it’s time for you to crash, he can give you a lift back to campus.”
“I wouldn’t want to put him out. I can always call a taxi or, really, walk from here. What is it to campus? Half a mile? A mile at most? Heck, I could run that in under five minutes.” The mammoth, yellow stucco house was located on Singleton Street, one of the main arteries leading into town from the west—the fancy side of town. White pillars flanked the front portico. Twelve-foot-high rhododendrons lined the circular drive. The Historical Society of Grantham held their gala under a tent in the gardens every spring.
“Walk? Oh, please. Drink some more.” She followed her own advice.
Lilah took another sip and felt the alcohol go directly to her bones. The nagging ache in her right Achilles tendon from overtraining seemed to magically disappear.
Mimi smacked her half-empty glass on the counter. The ice rattled. “So, let’s get back to the really important things. Like Justin Bigelow. How does he look? Still incredible?”
Lilah took another slow sip and leaned her elbow against the center island. She used her other hand to brace herself from taking an inelegant nosedive into the fruit bowl containing an artful display of limes, lemons and pomegranates.
Pomegranates? Lilah couldn’t help thinking. What real person has pomegranates in their fruit bowl? The answer came to her quickly. She was not among “real” people.
She decided to hold off on her drink. And instead narrowed her eyes, trying to picture Justin driving his little sports car, the windows open to the breeze, the light dancing off the polished wood steering wheel and the tips of his clipped curls. “What can I say? He looked like a god—all sun-kissed and good enough to eat.” She sighed.
“You make him sound like a Florida orange.”
Lilah stared at her. “Vitamin C was the last thing on my mind when he picked me up earlier today.”
Mimi rubbed her chin. “You know, I always wondered how he got into Grantham. I mean, I know he was a terrific athlete, captain of the lightweight crew, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Lilah eyed her drink and went for another sip. Why not? She wasn’t driving.
Mimi, way ahead of her, drained what was left of hers and took that as a cue to make another. She held up the bottle of gin to Lilah.
She shook her head. “I’m not there yet.”
“I am.” Mimi fixed herself another drink. “Somehow I kind of figured that he got special dispensation being a faculty kid,” she said, her back to Lilah. “I mean, it wasn’t as if I ever heard him engage in an intellectual discussion.”
“No, that’s not true. I remember staying up late one night in his and Stephen’s suite. I was haranguing him about how the French Impressionists were overhyped, and that it was their German counterparts who really deserved the attention. He might not have known his Monets from Manets, but we had a real conversation and he made me think.”
“And what did Stephen say?”
Lilah waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, he wasn’t there, as usual—debating or editing or something.” She frowned in thought. “No, Justin wasn’t dumb, not by a long shot. It’s just that for some reason he liked to give the impression that he never studied. I don’t know why. And I’m pretty sure he was a double major—economics and music. So how dumb could he be?”
“Cheers.” Mimi clinked her refreshed glass against Lilah’s. They both took healthy sips. “So maybe I’m wrong. It’s just I always pictured him as this sexy golden retriever—great hair, sunny personality, always willing to roll over and expose his privates—adding a brain to the equation kind of dulls the fantasy.”
Lilah laughed so hard the liquid squirted out her nostrils.
“So he’s remained gorgeous.”
If Mimi only knew how gorgeous, Lilah thought and reflexively put the cool glass to her lips.
“But what else? Did you find out what’s happened to him since college? Wasn’t he working to make the national team or something?” Mimi asked.
Lilah removed her glass and blinked at it, surprised that somehow she’d managed to finish it. “What’s he been up to? Well, let me tell you, you’ll never, ever guess.” She leaned forward with her chin to emphasize her words, grabbing the edge of the countertop at the last minute.
“A challenge.” Mimi closed her eyes. “What is he doing? What does your typical ex–Ivy Leaguer do once he lands in the real world? Let’s see. Investment banker?”
Lilah coughed. “Did I say Justin was typical?”
Mimi opened her eyes wide. “Lawyer?”
Lilah rolled her eyes. “Where are your vaunted investigative reporter instincts?”
“Pole dancer?”
Lilah laughed. “An interesting career choice, but no.”
“I don’t know. Dog trainer? I’m running out of ideas here.”
“Told you you’d never guess.” She raised an eyebrow. “He teaches kindergarten.”
“You’re kidding me. Mr. Sexy Labrador teaches little kids?”
The door to the mudroom off the kitchen opened. A high-pitched squeal and hushing adult tones could be heard. Then a gauzy pink tutu came whirling through the kitchen.
Lilah looked baffled as a young girl wearing a rhinestone tiara—at least, Lilah hoped it was rhinestone—with the word Princess spelled out in large loopy letters on the front of her leotard twirled around them, anointing them with a feathered wand as she did so.
Lilah looked askance at Mimi. “I take it this is not the amazing transformation that Press has undergone over the years?”
Mimi shook her head. “No, this is not Press. Lilah, allow me to introduce my six-year-old half sister, Brigid.” Mimi cocked her head to the mudroom. The sound of steps grew nearer. “And my newest stepmother, Brigid’s mom, Noreen. Noreen, this is Lilah Evans, who’s being honored at Reunions.”
Noreen was a striking woman with a shock of tamed red hair and pale skin with the texture of clotted cream. She circled the island, transferring the BMW key fob to her left hand, and held out her right. The nails had a perfect French manicure. “Of course. What an honor to have you here. I’ve followed your work closely ever since I saw Mimi’s story on you on television.” With her drawn-out vowels and slightly singsong cadence, her voice betrayed the remnants of an Irish accent.
“I’m trying to interest Conrad in giving money to your organization, and in fact, I’d love to talk to you about organizing a run here in Grantham.” She deposited her oversize Prada bag on the counter. “I know all the women in my book group and Pilates class would love to participate, and since I’m active in the PTA at Brigid’s school, I’m sure I can generate interest from other moms.”
Brigid meanwhile continued to twirl around the room, stopping periodically to touch various objects, including the bottle of gin and exclaim, “I hereby pronounce you a knight of the realm.”
Lilah looked at the woman who, on close inspection, was somewhat older than she. Whatever else the birth of a child had affected, it didn’t appear to have altered her twenty-two-inch waist, judging from the way her wide leather belt cinched the top of her pencil skirt. Normally, Lilah would have jumped to conclusions and immediately hated Noreen—her obvious self-indulgence, her unabashed display of wealth. Lilah had never seen a canary-yellow diamond before, and Noreen’s was hard to miss. And she should have hated her on principle because she was Mimi’s stepmother, and Mimi always hated her stepmothers.
But she couldn’t. Not when Noreen stuck out her hand and shook Lilah’s with the force of a longshoreman. The woman had spirit, life, enthusiasm, and clearly a seriously good manicurist.
“Sure, sure. I’m happy to talk about it,” Lilah answered, worried that she sounded less-than-professional after the G and T. “Why don’t we say sometime over the weekend? Right now I’m totally jet-lagged and a little worse for wear after letting Mimi ply me with alcohol.” She indicated her glass.
“Of course. That would be wonderful. You must be exhausted, and as to a drink—I could use a wee dram myself, as they would say in the Old Country.” Her eyes twinkled as she made fun of herself. “I deserve one anyway. Cook has tonight off so she could visit her sister in Moorestown—such a quaint place—and Conrad, as usual, is late in the City, so I took Brigid to Sustenance, the new fusion restaurant in town. All very organic and locavore. I’ve become fanatic about not allowing a single processed bit of food to pass her lips.”
Lilah nodded blankly and out of the corner of her eye saw Mimi push the gin in her direction.
Noreen glanced at the alcohol but shook her head. “I probably shouldn’t. I have yoga first thing in the morning, and I like to feel fresh even before I start.” She glanced over at her daughter who was counting the door pulls on the cupboards and smiled. “Now what was I talking about before? Oh, yes, so there we were in Sustenance, and I started remembering how I grew up on a solid diet of fish and chips, and somehow I managed to survive. That’s when I decided to let Brigid have a hot-fudge sundae.”
Lilah noticed Brigid’s tutu fan over her head as she did a series of somersaults across the kitchen. Ah, yes, signs of a sugar high. Then she glanced back to Noreen, who was nervously strumming her fingers on the granite. “I take it you shared?” she asked.
“Why, yes, how did you know?” She became aware of her strumming. “I’m not usually this much of a motormouth, either. I swear on my grandmother’s Bible.” Then she hooked her arm through her bag. “Brigid, dear, why don’t you give your sister, Mimi, a kiss good-night before we go upstairs for your bath and a bedtime story?”
Brigid closed her eyes and fluttered her arms.
“Brigid O’Reilley Lodge. There will be no bedtime story if you don’t stop that and come now.” Noreen’s voice was firm.
The little girl opened her eyes and inhaled loudly. Then she swiveled on the toe of her Mary Janes and tromped inelegantly to Mimi.
Mimi abandoned her drink and bent down, awkwardly offering her cheek.
Brigid gave her a loud smack, then twirled around to Lilah. “You, too,” she announced. She walked over and raised her chin.
Lilah knelt down, her Achilles tendon smarting despite the infusion of gin, and reached out and gave the six-year-old a hug and kiss. She smelled of ketchup, hazelnuts and baby powder.
Brigid seemed very pleased. She looked at her mother. “I want her to read to me,” she said, pointing with her wand. “You’re beautiful, you know.”
Lilah blinked, amazed at the self-possessed child. “No, I didn’t know. Thank you.”
“But your sneakers are dirty. You should get Mommy to buy you new ones.”
Noreen shook her head. “The scourge of living in an affluent community like Grantham, I’m afraid.”
Lilah laughed. “We should all have such problems.” She looked seriously at Brigid. “I don’t need new ones. I can just wash these.”
“Your next lesson will be how to use the washing machine,” Mimi cracked.
Lilah glanced over. Mimi would never admit it, but Lilah thought she looked jealous. “And I’m sure your big sister, Mimi, will be happy to show you.”
“A worthy idea.” Noreen pried her daughter from Lilah. “Lilah will read to you another night, maybe. Tonight she’s seeing her best friend, Mimi, who she hasn’t seen in a long time.”
“I don’t mind,” Lilah said, painfully standing up.
Noreen clasped Brigid’s small hand. “Don’t be silly. She gets a story every night, so there are plenty of opportunities another time. In fact, because of her fantastic teacher, she won’t go to bed without one. It’s just amazing—to have someone who’s a real proponent of the Reggio Emilia model of early childhood education.”
Lilah and Mimi nodded with a complete lack of comprehension.
“I’m sure my mother would be very intrigued. She’s an elementary school principal,” Lilah said.
“How interesting,” Noreen said and she actually appeared to mean it.
“Anyway, in addition to understanding the importance of play, they read the most wonderful books, lots of the old classics. And then they start doing other things because of the reading. Like building castles after hearing chapters from The Wizard of Oz.”
Brigid wrapped an arm around one of her mother’s legs, clinging to the tight black leggings. The effects of the sugar seemed to be wearing off.
“Naturally there’re those parents who are skeptical because they’re so used to the emphasis on testing even at such a young age. It’s so competitive out there now.” Noreen ruffled Brigid’s fine hair, removing the tiara that was already slipping over one ear. “But I believe that the Reggio Emilia system works better in the long run, producing natural readers and ones with fewer social problems. And even the critics can’t deny that the teacher is good at picking up any learning disability.”
She shook her daughter’s hand playfully. “C’mon, munchkin. Time for bed. It’s late for a school night. You want to be up bright and early for Mr. B tomorrow, don’t you?”
“The early bird catches the worm. But I don’t like worms. I want to catch butterflies.”
“Well, your bird can catch butterflies,” her mother announced and guided her to the door.
“Wait a minute. This Mr. B?” Lilah called out.
“Mr. B, Tweedle B. Tweedle B and Tweedle Bum,” Brigid recited bowing her head back and forth. She pulled on her mother’s arm.
“That’s right, dear.” Noreen didn’t bother to correct her.
“How many six-year-olds know Lewis Carroll?” Mimi asked.
Lilah was almost convinced she detected some sisterly pride.
“Oh, that’s par for the course in Mr. B’s class,” Noreen said over her shoulder. “I’ll catch you later this weekend, then.” She waved.
Lilah pushed away from the island. “Before you go. One question—Brigid’s teacher? Mr. B? His full name wouldn’t be…”
“Justin Bigelow.” Mimi supplied the answer.
“How did you know?” Noreen bent down to pick up Brigid and carried her upstairs.
Left alone in the kitchen, Mimi lowered her chin and looked over her nose at Lilah. “You think she’s in love with him?”
“Brigid or Noreen?” Lilah asked.
“Either one. Both.”
Lilah pursed her lips. “Maybe I will have another drink.” She reached for her glass, and asked casually, a little too casually, “This love thing? You think it’s contagious?”
Mimi raised her eyebrows. “Why? You think you feel symptoms coming on?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“SO, TELL ME AGAIN WHO we’re picking the food up for?” Matt Brown asked as he opened the drinks case at Hoagie Palace. It was a Thursday evening, and the Grantham take-out institution was packed with high school and college students, and Matt, a local kid home for summer vacation after his freshman year at Yale, fit the profile. The smell of hot sauce, fried saturated fat and hormonal imbalance hung in the air.
“My half sister Mimi and a friend of hers from college,” Press Lodge explained as he held out money to the cashier. “She’s this woman named Lilah Evans—the head of a nonprofit in Africa or something.” As he waited for his change, he spoke to Angie, the woman behind the counter who owned the popular food spot with her husband, Sal. “Hey, Angie, I gotta satisfy the hoagie fix for the returning alums in the family. Otherwise they get ornery.”
“That’s what we count on,” Angie said with a laugh and passed the coins and bills to Press. “But if anyone gets ornery with you, hon, you send ’em to me. You’re like family.” Angie beamed over her shoulder at a wall of photographs. Press followed her gaze. Front and center was one from Press’s graduation from his prep school in Connecticut.
He’d invited Angie and Sal, never expecting they’d make the trip. Not only had they come, Sal had handed him an envelope on the side. “If you ever need anything, you know who to call,” Sal had offered with a swift handshake. “We’re proud of you.” Then he’d taken the picture of Angie with her arm around Press, a proud smile on her face, a dopey one on his. In the corner of the photo, slightly out of focus, stood his mother, glancing down at the Rolex on her wrist, probably checking how much time she had before her tennis match. His father—surprise, surprise—was nowhere in sight.
Press blew a kiss to Angie and led the way through the organized throng, asserting himself with one of his wide shoulders. His father had been disappointed that he hadn’t gone out for football at Grantham—he’d been heavily recruited. Just another disappointment in a long line, Press figured. Anyway, practices interfered with his job as a research assistant in his advisor’s lab, and he wasn’t about to give that up.
He waited outside of the store for Matt. The two of them had worked together at Apple Farm Country Club last summer, Matt manning the cash register in the pro shop and Press as a teaching pro for kids. Sometimes when they got in early and before the kids’ Swedish and French au pairs swarmed around Press, they’d go to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. Matt was hopeless, but Press was a natural, hitting three hundred yards every time. It didn’t matter much because the point was really just to talk—about school, music, their parents, life. A bond had formed, and the two kept up on Facebook during the school year when Matt started Yale and Press finished up his junior year at Grantham.
Press watched as Matt stumbled out the front step and onto the sidewalk. He had tried to open his can of Arnold Palmer iced tea and walk at the same time. “Focus, Matt Brown, focus. How many times do I have to tell you,” he ribbed his friend.
Matt managed to stop next to him without tripping. “I know. I’m pathetic. But before I forget. I gotta ask you. Did you say Lilah Evans?”
“I THINK YOU LI-IKE HIM,” Mimi taunted Lilah.
“Oh, please. This isn’t junior high school. And I’m too old to have crushes,” Lilah replied. She let her eyes wander around the kitchen, anywhere but on Mimi. How often did someone use two dishwashers? she wondered.
“I don’t know what you’re so defensive about. What’s the big deal about being forced to stay close to a man who is drop-dead gorgeous—and as we now have personal proof of—gentle and gifted and loves children?”
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” Mimi grabbed for the gin bottle again. “Don’t tell me you still have a thing for Stephen?” She poured two fingers and didn’t bother with the tonic water.
“No, of course not. Not anymore.” Lilah eased herself onto a stool. The night was growing longer by the minute. “You know, I looked him up on Google when I decided to come back.”
“As anyone rightly would.” Mimi took a swallow.
“Seems he’s a partner in a big law firm in Cleveland. They even had a picture up on the website—he’s gotten fat. Which is kind of ironic when you consider how he always used to be on me about my weight.”
“And he’s married with two children and a third on the way.”
“You’re kidding? How did you find out?” She realized she experienced a glimmer of jealousy—but not for Stephen. Her breakup, which was once so heart-wrenching, now only held a faint “what if?” No, the pang she felt was for the idea of children. Lilah rested her chin on her hand.
“Excuse me. I’m a reporter. I’m supposed to get that kind of information.”
“Well, did you also find out that he’s not coming to Reunions?”
“That I don’t know. It seems you have your own sources. Speaking of sources—” She glanced down at her watch. “Where is that little brother of mine? I’m beginning to think he didn’t turn out so well after all.” Then she looked back at Lilah. “Hey, no pooping out yet. The night is still young—especially because we still haven’t cleared up this matter.”
“What matter?” Lilah stifled a yawn.
“About Justin? You and Justin? C’mon. Let’s wait outside by the pool. We’ll spot Press sooner that way.”
Lilah took the remnants of her second drink and dutifully followed Mimi. “There is no me and Justin.” Lilah settled into one of the deck chairs around the pool. Tiled dolphins cavorted as in some Roman mosaic. For all she knew, it was a Roman mosaic. She squinted and peered more closely. No, it couldn’t be, could it? “You know, maybe I shouldn’t have had this second drink.”
Mimi settled into the chaise next to her. She flicked off her sandals and ran her bare feet up and down the cedar slats. “Don’t tell me there’s no you and Justin. I mean, in the face of overwhelming positive attributes, can’t you let go for at least a long weekend? No one is expecting you to find true love, after all. But even you, especially you, you little saint, deserve to fall off your pedestal every once in a while.”
“You don’t understand,” Lilah protested. “Every time I look at Justin I’m reminded not only what a total creep Stephen was, but I also unfortunately remember how incredibly self-centered I was, too.”
“Self-centered? That’s the last thing I’d describe you as, Ms. I Don’t Have A Dime To My Name, but go ahead and please take the shirt off my back. Hey, maybe you can use that line on Justin?”
Lilah placed her drink on the side table between them. “Feel free to laugh.”
“Who said I was laughing?”
“Listen, admit in retrospect that Stephen was a creep. But even though he called off the engagement, I really didn’t give him any alternative. Up until then, I had always gone along with his plans. He always seemed so goal-oriented, so focused on our future.”
“His future, with you in tow,” Mimi cracked. “The future corporate attorney with the good little academic wife standing steadfastly at his side.”
“Excuse me. It was my idea to go to graduate school at NYU while he was in law school at Columbia,” Lilah argued.
Mimi threw up her hands. “I don’t even know how you can justify his actions. As far as I remember—and I have a pretty good memory—when you decided on a change in career, it didn’t go down well with him. And when you wouldn’t change your mind, he dumped you and broke your heart.”
Lilah dropped her head. “I’d always been such a good girl up until then,” she said softly.
“Lilah, we were all good girls once upon a time, you especially.”
“I’m still a good girl,” Lilah said despondently.
“Well, get over it. And I can’t think of a better way than with someone warm and sexy by your side. And really. You can’t tell me that you think all these depressing thoughts every time you look at Justin Bigelow?”
Lilah pictured Justin driving again, one hand comfortably on the wheel, the other on his thigh, his fingers tapping out a lazy rhythm on his faded jeans that fit his legs perfectly.... No, not every time.
“Because if that’s the case, why not reintroduce him to me?”
Lilah bit down on her bottom lip. If the Justin she had met today was still the old Justin Bigelow, the one embedded in Lilah’s memory, then there’d be no problem about her having a simple romp with a scrumptious good-time guy. Plus it’d be a snub to an ex. What more could a girl ask for?
But the new Justin Bigelow was…well…new. He seemed much more than the old one. And the voice of her overly developed good-girl conscience told her that was exactly the problem.
CHAPTER SIX
“LILAH EVAN AS IN SISTERS for Sisters Lilah Evans?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know about this Sisters thing, but I guess so. I didn’t know she was such a big deal. I mean, Mimi said something about her getting some alumni award, but I figured it was because she gave big bucks to Grantham.” Press shifted the large bag of food to one arm and fished the car keys out of his jeans. His dad had given him his old BMW convertible when he graduated from high school. He’d left the keys with a card that his secretary had written.
“I don’t think it was for giving money, dude,” Matt said. “She came and gave a talk at Yale last fall at the Political Union. She founded this group that helps women in Congo. You know about the civil war going on there, right?”
“Sorry. If it happened after the Mesozoic era, I’m pretty ignorant,” Press answered. He stepped off the curb, and like most students, didn’t bother to look either way before heading out into traffic. A Lexus SUV screeched to a halt and let him cross. “C’mon, the smell of all this food is reminding me just how starved I am. Let’s head home.”
Matt chugged along beside, holding his can at his side. “Why I’m even friends with such an ignoramus is beyond me.”
“It’s so you have someone to freely lecture.” He beeped open the car and settled the bag in the backseat.
Matt got in the front passenger seat, and before he even put his seat belt on, twisted around and fished out a take-out container of French fries. “So you’re telling me you don’t want to hear all about the warring factions and about how everyone—and his little brother—is trying to get ahold of the diamonds and gold and other metals in the country?”
Press started up the car. “Not really.” He grabbed a French fry. “Hey, crack your window, would you? The smell of this stuff stays around for days otherwise.”
Matt shook his head, but turned to press the window lever. “How you can worry about the smell in your car when millions are being killed is beyond me, and believe me, it’s mostly women who are being brutalized. And besides, didn’t your mother give you Febreze when you went off to college?”
Press slanted him a skeptical look. “My mother?”
“You’re right. What was I thinking? Maybe you could give her some to use with all her tennis shoes? A handy travel size for her sports bag?”
Press didn’t bother to laugh as he pulled out of the parking lot and into Main Street. Some people, like Matt, had good parents and some people didn’t. It was less painful to discuss the state of world politics. “So where does Lilah Evans fit into the whole scenario?”
And naturally Matt was off and running, summarizing Lilah’s work.
Press stopped at the traffic light on the corner of Adams Road. The university library was on the left and the town’s only movie theater on the right. He recognized some friends from school and honked the horn. Then he glanced over at Matt. “Well, I’m glad someone thinks she can save the world. And I have even greater respect for her because given all the culinary delights possible in our fair city, she had the wisdom to choose Hoagie Palace.”
“Laugh all you want. I’d give anything to ask her about an internship.” Matt took a swig of his drink.
“But I thought you said the name of her organization was something like Sisters for Sisters? Is having a sex change operation part of the price to pay for an internship?” He made the remainder of the lights on Main Street, and they passed without incident through the center of town.
Matt rolled his eyes. “It’d almost be worth it, but I’m not sure Babi˘cka would approve,” he said, referring to his great-grandmother, who lived in town.
“Not to mention your dad and Katarina,” Press said, slowing down the car, just barely, to pass over the speed bumps.
“Yeah, my dad,” Matt grumbled. “He’s giving me so much grief about not having a job yet this summer that I’m almost thinking of moving in with Babi˘cka,” he said.
Press knew that Matt’s childhood hadn’t been the easiest, what with his single mother dying of breast cancer when he was still in high school and only discovering who his dad was at the reading of her will. The truth of the matter was it had come as a shock to Matt’s father, as well. The two had butted heads early on, but the relationship had smoothed out pretty well thanks in large part to Katarina, his stepmom, and Katarina’s grandmother. Babi˘cka’s baking also played a major role, in Press’s opinion.
“You don’t think your great-grandmother would have any cookies on hand, do you?”
Matt took another sip. “Maybe later. For now I really want to get this food to your house before it gets cold.”
“If I didn’t know you to be this bleeding heart do-gooder, I’d say you just want a summer job with this Evans woman so you can get your parents off your back and pad your résumé.”
“Okay, Mr. Professional Cynic, you’re so worldly. How do you think it’ll go down if I introduce myself to Lilah Evans on bended knee with her hoagie in hand—” Matt made the appropriate gestures, spraying some of his drink in the process “—all the while running through my stellar freshman-year grades, my majoring in political science with a concentration in foreign affairs, and that I have a fantastic way to broaden the appeal of her outstanding organization by expanding her concept to Sisters and Brothers for Sisters.”
“I think I need another French fry.”
Matt growled.
“One thing. The ‘bended knee’ bit?”
“Yeah?” Matt asked hopefully as Press pulled into the driveway to his dad’s house.
“Definitely use it. No matter what women say, they’re suckers for the big, romantic gesture. Just hold on to something while you do it. Knowing you, you’ll fall flat on your face otherwise, and we need you in one piece if you’re going to save the world.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LILAH FELT SOMEONE KICK her foot. Half-asleep, she decided to ignore it, and let her foot flop over the edge of the chaise longue and stay there.
Next came a shaking of her shoulder. She groaned and scrunched her eyes more tightly shut.
Then someone had the nerve to blow in her ear—hard.
This time, Lilah yelped and practically bounced off the chair.
Mimi turned to Press and Matt. “Works every time,” she said triumphantly. “She’s awake now, trust me. What can I say? Two drinks, and she’s out like a light.”
Press turned to Matt. “I wouldn’t worry about the bended knee. Probably the two-armed boost-up would be more effective in this case.” He rested the bag of food on the patio table.
Lilah opened one eye. “I’m not that far gone that I need help getting up. And it’s not the alcohol. It’s the jet lag that leveled me.” She hoisted herself to an upright position and rubbed her eyes, daring to open both in narrow slits. “Are these two Wise Men bearing gifts?”
“I don’t know how wise they are, but that’s my half brother, Press, and his friend whose name I don’t remember—”
“Matt.”
“And Matt, apparently, who’ve brought your hoagie and fries.”
Lilah made some noise.
“Is that a sound of joy or disgust?” Mimi asked.
Lilah yawned. “Neither. I’m afraid I’m too tired to eat anything.” She shook her head and studied Press and Matt with only the barest of insight. “I may be wrong, but you both seem to be growing boys. I’m sure you can figure out what to do with my share of the food.” She rose, a little wobbly on her feet. “I don’t mean to break up the party, but if it’s not too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it if someone could drive me to campus.”
Mimi crossed her arms. “What a party pooper. Here you force me to come back to Grantham and attend Reunions and act as your bodyguard, and what do you do but crap out on the first night. Is that fair?” She pouted.
Lilah pushed her bangs out of her eyes and felt the back of her head, realizing that her barrette had fallen out. She searched around her chair, then ducking her head underneath, she responded, “There will be other nights, I promise.” She righted herself, barrette in hand. “Tomorrow night, in fact. That’s when my dad comes in. You’re having dinner with us, remember?” She frowned as she looked around the patio. “I wonder where I left my backpack? It’s got all the information about where I’m staying on campus.”
“Where were you besides here? If you were making drinks, maybe the kitchen?” Matt suggested.
“Clever boy. Why don’t you hustle on in there and see if you can find it?” Mimi said. Matt did as he was told.
Press breathed in slowly. “Do you have to be so imperious? I know you think coming back here is a real effort on your part, but how about toning it down a notch where my friend is concerned?”
Mimi rolled her eyes. “Mr. Sensitivity. But all right. I promise to act nice.”
Lilah winced. Even in her half-awake, mildly inebriated state, she recognized the bitter undertones. Mimi’s dysfunctional family had always seemed amusing from afar, and her renditions of the latest family gossip were always bitingly witty. But up close, what had seemed amusing now just appeared mean.
Still, she didn’t want to think badly of her friend—her only old friend, for that matter. But that didn’t mean that Lilah was ignorant of Mimi’s shortcomings.
She heard the sound of the screen door from the kitchen banging shut, and she knew relief was in sight. “Great, my stuff. You’re a lifesaver…ah…what is your name again?”
“Matt,” he said enthusiastically and placed Lilah’s backpack on the table next to the food. His thin shoulders noticeably straightened up when he was relieved of the weight. “And can I tell you what an honor it is to meet you. I’ve read all about your work. You’re so inspiring.”
Lilah offered a trembling smile. “Thank you. I don’t feel very inspiring at the moment, but it’s nice to hear that people your age are still interested in social causes.”
“Oh, he’s interested all right,” Press added. He looked at his friend, who was eyeing him with embarrassment. Then he leaned closer and whispered, “Are you going to ask her about a job, or what?”
“Not now, dude. She’s half-asleep,” Matt said out of the side of his mouth.
Lilah was vaguely aware of their conversation, but she needed all of her concentration just to unzip an outside pocket. “Finally.”
She slipped out a legal-size envelope and sifted through the contents. “Somewhere in here should be directions.” She pushed aside a map of the university campus and her name tag and unfolded a sheaf of bright orange papers. She squinted at the pages. “Did they have to use such a tiny font?” She held the paper closer to her nose, then tried backing it away. “This is hopeless. I’ll have to dig out my reading glasses.” She rifled through a side pocket.
“If you want, I can read it for you?” Matt suggested eagerly.
Lilah studied him. He seemed a nice, polite boy. What was his name again? “How good are you at deciphering mouse-type?” She handed over the piece of paper.
Matt eagerly skimmed over the information. “Let’s see, it’s got your schedule here.”
“I’ll deal with that tomorrow,” Lilah interrupted. “Just go to the part where it tells me which dorm I’m staying in.”
Matt nodded and flipped to the second page. “It says here that you’re staying in Griswold College.”
“That’s my college,” Press explained. Grantham grouped dorms around quadrangles and referred to these larger units as residential colleges. “No air-conditioning, I’m afraid.”
“That’s okay. She wouldn’t know what to do with AC,” Mimi said. “Forget the name of the college. Just tell her which dorm.”
“It says here,” Matt read on, “that you’re in Bayard Hall, room 421.” He looked up.
Lilah blinked once. “Could you repeat that again?”
Matt reread the location.
Mimi looked at Lilah. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Because that was where Stephen and Justin lived senior year. They’ve gone and put me up in their old suite,” Lilah squeaked.
Mimi whistled.
Press and Matt looked at each other, obviously unsure of the importance of the information.
“Is that kismet or what?” Mimi asked.
Lilah was still shaking her head. “The question is, is it good fate or bad or what?” She pursed her lips. “You know, maybe I will have that hoagie, after all.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER DIALING THE PHONE the next morning, Justin switched it to speaker mode so he could look in the mirror to check to see if his tie was straight. The noise of the dial tone permeated the sunny one-bedroom apartment. It was early enough—around eight on a Friday morning—so the sound of commuting traffic was still at a minimum.
Justin lived in a large clapboard Victorian with a wraparound front porch, which in its original state had housed a single upper-middle-class family and their devoted household servant. All very Andy Hardy with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland ready to put on a show in the barn. Now the house was broken up into three separate apartments, one on each floor, with Justin occupying the top floor. And the “barn” out back held his vintage sports car, a Toyota Prius from the first-floor tenant—an assistant professor in the chemical engineering department—and an artificial Christmas tree of unknown ownership.
The best thing about the place in Justin’s view—besides all the light and the relatively modest rent—was the fact that it was located directly downtown in Grantham, a stone’s throw from the cemetery, where he could stroll among the burial plots of Revolutionary War heroes and former U.S. Presidents, and across the street from the public library.
Justin realized all too well the irony of this last convenience since any place with books had once been a source of frustration and embarrassment during his childhood. Now, however, he could think of nothing better than heading out on a Saturday morning, first to get coffee at Bean World, Grantham’s ever-so-chic coffeehouse, before heading to the library to scout out the bestsellers and laze away a few hours reading magazines and newspapers from all over the world.
Justin stared in the mirror and gave his half Windsor knot a tug to the right. He rarely wore a tie, so it took a few tries to get it right. It was important to look properly attired for the luncheon. The university president would be there, after all.
And so would Lilah.
Truth be told, the reason he had debated wearing a blue shirt or a white shirt with his blazer and gray trousers—he’d finally gone with white—was because he wanted to look good, not just proper—good. For Lilah. Even though he was still trying to figure out who this Lilah was.
The Lilah he had remembered from college had been serious about her studies and what she thought was important, but she’d also been bubbly—quick to laugh—an effervescent personality. The new Lilah, the one he had picked up from the airport yesterday, seemed older, wiser. Well, they were both older and hopefully wiser, he thought. And she was probably exhausted from the long flight and the killer schedule she put herself through. And if she lacked the kind of cuddly, rounded body she once had, who was he—a man, after all—to complain about how she’d been transformed into this fit, sinewy presence? Except, he kind of missed the old Lilah, the one who never seemed to judge him, the one he could tease and she could tease back without either ever taking offence. She’d been a pal. More than a pal. Undemanding, yet never taking him for granted. Unavailable, yet constantly alluring. The ripe fruit that begged to be picked but was always out of reach.
In short, a fantasy. And now?
“Hello?” The familiar female voice with a distinct Brooklyn accent answered.
Justin smiled. It was a voice that invariably wrapped around him with the comforting warmth of a favorite afghan. “Roberta,” he answered and picked up the cell, switching back to regular Talk mode. “I just wanted to touch base with you again after our conversation last night.”
“So are you still smarting from the principal calling you into his office yesterday?” she asked good-naturedly. Roberta Zimmerman had been Justin’s professor and guiding light at Bank Street College of Education, where he’d gotten his degree in early education.
“I’m much better. That’s what I wanted to let you know. Besides, there’re only a few weeks left to the school year for public schools in New Jersey, so I might as well chill out—especially since I’ve got a sub covering for me for these few days. I mean, I know that I overreacted last night. Geez, you’d have thought after all the trouble that I’d gotten into as a kid I would have been better prepared. It was just the tone of his email—demanding that I see him as soon as possible and that he’d wait around his office specifically for me. To say the least, it kind of shook me. I mean, I know there’ll always be some parents who’ll grumble about my teaching methods—”
“That’s because you do things differently. Anyway, I don’t understand all the emphasis on testing, testing, testing these days—even before kids get to kindergarten! If I have one more parent ask me if her child is ready for kindergarten, I’m going to scream. I’m not surprised you were upset.”
“I guess it kind of blindsided me because the day before in class had been so terrific.”
“Tell me.”
Justin could practically hear her rub her hands together. That’s what he loved about Roberta—her enthusiasm, her heart. Things he always used to find so great in Lilah…
He smiled and then remembered he was still on the phone. “After I read them a book about the Brooklyn Bridge, there were whole groups of kids building bridges of blocks. They even labeled the tollbooths and made money for the cars to hand in. You should have seen it. There’s even one kid making a GPS system to help drivers get over the bridge back to Grantham. And they did it all on their own.”
“They wouldn’t have done it without you. And that’s because you’re a terrific teacher, Justin. So don’t doubt your abilities just because a new administrator comes through who’s got his own agenda about how to teach. Besides, your kids score very well on these standardized tests—am I right?”
“Are you ever wrong?”
Roberta chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t ask Oscar that question.” Oscar was her husband.
“Oscar would probably agree that you’re always right.”
“True, but then he is a good man. He married me, after all, but then he always said I was quite a babe back in those days.”
Justin grinned. He remembered seeing photos of the two of them taken at Coney Island. Oscar was indeed a lucky man. “Okay, okay. What can I say?” Justin replied. “You’re right. It’s just that the way he told me, saying there’d been complaints, just threw me for a loop—especially when he wouldn’t say who’d been complaining. He claimed confidentiality or something, making me smell a setup.”
“Now you’re being paranoid.”
“Am I?” Justin frowned. “Maybe you’re right. It’s just that when someone questions my abilities, my old insecurities rise to the forefront.”
“Justin,” Roberta said firmly over the line.
“I know, I know. No whining.” He laughed, then looked in the mirror again, pleased that his tie was indeed straight.
“Now, tell me something.”
“Yes?” Justin immediately turned away from his reflection. He had a feeling that Roberta was peering over his shoulder.
“You’re calling on a Friday morning, when you would normally be teaching. You haven’t told me something else that I should know about?”
Justin sighed, knowing he would have to come up with an answer. “I’m taking a personal day. As it turns out, I’m hosting a prizewinning alum for Reunions weekend at Grantham.”
There was a slight pause. “Is that alumnus or alumna?” Roberta asked, differentiating between the male and female varieties.
Justin laughed. “Alumna. And my classics professor father would be proud of you.”
“It’s you he should be proud of.”
“Let’s not go there,” Justin said.
“Tell me, the reason you’re hosting this prizewinning person is because…?”
“Because I was the one who nominated her for the prize.”
“And you did that because…?”
“Because she does fantastic work in Africa and is totally self-sacrificing.”
“I get the picture. She’s a saint. So why do I get the impression that there’s something more than what you’re telling me?”
“Well, this is purely coincidental…”
“Excuse me, Dr. Freud. Nothing is coincidental.”
Justin didn’t bother to refute her statement. “She also happens to have been the ex-fiancée of my senior year roommate.”
“Ex? Now this I got to hear more of. Have you seen her yet? Is she everything you’d hoped for?”
Cupping the phone under his chin, Justin strapped on his watch and looked at the time. He hurriedly slipped his wallet into the back packet of his trousers and grabbed his blue blazer off his unmade bed. “Listen, I don’t have much time because, as a matter of fact, I’m just on my way to do some errands, then pick her up to take her to lunch with the university president.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/tracy-kelleher/on-common-ground/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Tracy Kelleher
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: When Lilah Evans graduated from Grantham U, she was ready to leave college behind and change the world. Now, at a crossroads, she′s doing something she never wanted to do: attending her ten-year reunion. And that means running into Justin Bigelow.A decade ago, Justin was the big man on campus–Mr. Self-Involved himself. So why did he nominate Lilah for the Distinguished Alumni award? One thing that′s clear this nostalgia-filled weekend, he isn′t the partying jock she remembers.What′s also clear is that the attraction that used to simmer between them is now more intense–and impossible to ignore. With the stakes higher, do they finally have the courage to go for it?