Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
“I—you want to hear my life story?”
“If you want to tell it.”
Trying to decide whether he’s a sweet, fun guy or some kind of nutcase, she smiles. “Maybe some other time.”
“Sure. Personally, I like to get it out there right from the start, you know? All my baggage. That way, if someone’s not interested, she’s free to move on.”
Interested? Lauren raises an eyebrow.
It’s been a while—okay, decades—since a man flirted with her. So long that she’s not even positive that’s what Sam Henning is doing.
But it sure seems that way.
“You know, you were pretty chatty the other day,” he observes. “Now you don’t have much to say.”
That might be because they’re both standing here half dressed, without the buffer of kids and swings and sunglasses and anonymity.
Plus, he no longer has a wife.
He never even
had
a wife. Well, he has an ex-wife. And the mother of his child. But there doesn’t seem to be a current woman in his life, which makes him more than just some random playground dad.
It makes him…
Potentially…
Oh hell, what do you even call it these days? Dating material? A love interest?
“So you live in the big yellow Victorian house in my backyard, right?” he asks.
“Well, I’m in the only yellow Victorian on our block, so… I guess so.”
“You should cut through the yard and say hello sometime. That is, if poison ivy doesn’t bother you. My yard is full of it. And it turns into a marsh when it rains, so you’d need waders, but otherwise…”
“Sounds inviting.”
“Oh, it is.”
She laughs.
So does he, but he says, “I’m serious. Pop over. I get lonely, living alone.”
So do I
, she wants to say.
But she doesn’t live alone, and she doesn’t want him to think she’s flirting.
Is she?
She’s pretty sure he is. Or maybe that’s just his personality.
After all, what makes you think he’d even be interested in a worn-out mother of three with just as much baggage as he has—if not more?
Sure, he’s acting interested…
But maybe he wants something else from her.
Like what? Your riches? Your body? Your three kids, dog, and rattletrap house?
Puh-leeze.
“I should go check on my daughter,” she tells him, wrapping the towel around her hips like a sarong.
“Sadie? Or Lucy?”
She looks up, startled. “How do you know their names?”
“Yesterday…on the playground. Remember?”
She does remember meeting him. But she doesn’t remember telling him the girls’ names. Maybe she did.
Does it even matter?
“It was good seeing you again,” she tells Sam, not quite sure she means it.
“Interesting” might be a better word. “Unsettling” would be even more accurate.
“You too, Lauren.”
She definitely told him her own name. Yet there’s something about hearing him say it that makes her vaguely… Once again, “unsettled” is the right word.
Most people don’t address others by name in conversation unless they know each other quite well. She doesn’t know Sam Henning at all.
But maybe I’d like to
, she admits to herself as she walks away.
That, perhaps, is the most unsettling thought of all.
Was Mike Fantoni always this good-looking? Elsa wonders, sitting across the round café table from him, nursing a cup of tea.
Probably. She just never noticed before, too devastated by her loss to pay attention.
Today, despite her coffee-fueled jitters, she can’t help but admire his square jaw peppered with a manly five o’clock shadow; his muscular build; his full head of dark, wavy hair worn a little longer than she recalls.
She can’t help but note that he isn’t wearing a wedding ring. Did he ever?
I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. It didn’t matter then.
It doesn’t matter now, either, she reminds herself.
But it’s strange that the details of their meetings in the past are all so fuzzy. For all she knows, this little Italian café was once an upscale trattoria. Maybe she and Mike sat here rubbing shoulders with Boston’s elite, sipping lattes and eating cannoli on china plates.
Not likely, though. She suspects the place always appeared just as it is now. These booths, with white cotton batting peering through cracked red vinyl seats, couldn’t possibly have been installed in this century. The same goes for the individual jukeboxes that haven’t been updated since the soundtrack from
Footloose
—the original movie—was on top of the charts. And the thick cups faintly stained with lipstick in shades Elsa would never wear, and glass cases with congealed, rotating wedges of pie…
“So what brings you into Boston?” Mike stirs a third packet of sugar into his second cup of black coffee—having ordered two at once, downing the first in the amount of time it took him and Elsa to exchange perfunctory pleasantries.
“I wanted to see you,” she says simply.
Mike raises an eyebrow, and she realizes he might have the wrong idea.
“About Jeremy,” she clarifies. “I wanted to see you about Jeremy.”
Is that a flicker of disappointment in his dark eyes?
It’s gone before she can be sure.
“And I wanted to ask you,” she goes on, “whether you’d found a way past those sealed records yet.”
“I’m working on it.” He looks down at his coffee, stirring it even though the sugar has long dissolved.
Elsa’s heart pounds.
Pointedly, she asks, “Do you have new information, Mike?”
“I wish I did.” He sets down the spoon and meets her gaze head-on. Now there’s no sign of the look that made her wonder if he’d been withholding something from her.
She must have imagined it.
“But I don’t want to go!” Sadie complains, bobbing in the pool on a purple foam noodle as Lauren, standing above her on the concrete deck, holds out a dry towel.
“We can come back tomorrow.”
Sadie shakes her head and leans over to examine a waterlogged dead bug in the slotted drain that runs along the pool’s edge.
Lauren sighs and darts yet another glance toward the lap lanes, where Sam Henning is still swimming back and forth. No wonder he’s so muscular. He’s been at it for almost an hour.
Yes, she’s been keeping track.
No, she can’t figure out why on earth he seems interested in her, but he does. Every once in a while, he takes a short break at the end of the pool to adjust his goggles, and she’s caught him looking at her.
She turns her attention back to her daughter. “Sades, we have to be somewhere in twenty minutes.”
“Where?”
Conscious of a cluster of moms—and their perfect, obedient children—observing the exchange from their usual encampment by the stairs, Lauren keeps her voice at a reasonable level. “Just come
on
.”
“Where do we have to be?”
Lauren lowers her voice even more. “You have…an appointment.”
“What?”
“An appointment. You have an appointment.”
“Where?”
“At the doctor.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Just… come on!”
“Not yet.”
Lauren sighs and shakes her head in exasperation.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
She turns to see a woman in sunglasses and a black bathing suit sitting at the edge of the pool, dunking her feet into the water.
“You’re thinking, ‘What did I ever do to deserve this,’ right?”
Lauren laughs. “How’d you guess?”
“Because I was thinking the same thing myself a little while ago, before he fell asleep.” She indicates the sleeping baby on her lap. “I’m sure you heard him screaming at the top of his lungs. He hates the water.”
“Right now I wish my daughter did.” Lauren watches Sadie splash her way along the edge.
“She’s your youngest, right?”
“Is it that obvious?”
The woman laughs. “No—your son told me. Ryan, right? He’s such a sweet kid.”
“Are we talking about the same Ryan?”
“Over there—the one who’s on the diving board ladder?”
Lauren turns her head. “That’s my Ryan. But…sweet?”
“Really, he was.”
“No, I’m just kidding. He can be sweet. But he’s going through a phase. Kind of like her.” Again, she focuses her attention on Sadie. “You have two minutes, Sadie Walsh. Do you hear me?”
“Can I have five?”
“You can have three.”
“Four.”
“God help me,” Lauren mutters, shaking her head.
“What about Lucy and Ryan?”
“They’re staying here. We’ll pick them up later.”
“That’s no fair, Mommy!”
“Sadie…you’re down to two minutes.” She folds her arms.
“It’s too bad you have to leave on such a beautiful day,” the woman with the baby tells her. “I was hoping I could pick your brain a little.”
“You were?”
“Your son told me your daughter used to be deathly afraid of the water, too. How’d you get her over it?”
“Well, she was older at the time. I mean, I don’t think you have to worry. It’s not like your son needs to learn to swim anytime soon, so…”
“No, it’s not just that. He’s terrified of water. All water. Even the bathtub. That’s why I haven’t been coming to the pool all summer, as much as I love it myself. I’m Jessica Wolfe, by the way.”
“I’m Lauren.”
She smiles. “Lauren Walsh. I know. Your son told me.”
Wow, Ryan certainly was chatty. What else did he tell her?
Remembering her conversation with him about losing friends and making new ones, Lauren wonders if her son was trying to network on her behalf. If that’s the case, it’s pretty sweet—and a welcome effort, because Jessica seems a lot more down-to-earth than some of the other moms around here.
“Are you new in town?” Lauren asks.
“Not that new. But I haven’t been out much. First I was pregnant for, like, a year—that’s what it felt like, anyway—and I was sick as a dog with morning sickness 24–7, the whole pregnancy. Then I had him, and trying to get used to being a mom was so insane. I couldn’t get my act together. So I’ve kind of been, you know—hibernating.”
Do I ever know.
“It’s hard when the kids are little,” Lauren agrees.
And even harder when they’re older, and your husband dumps you for another woman.
“So where do you live?” Jessica asks her.
“We’re over on Elm.”
“Oh, I love the big old houses there. I was hoping we could buy one of those, but we wound up in a development.”
“Which one?”
“Glenhaven Crossing.”
“Want to trade?” Lauren asks wryly.
Jessica laughs, and her son stirs in her arms.
“Uh-oh—he’s so overtired,” she whispers, stroking his head. “I should probably just take him home for a regular nap but I hate to be stuck in the house on a beautiful day, and it’s supposed to rain later and tomorrow.”
“You can always put him on a blanket in the shade. I used to do that when my kids were little. A lot of people do.” Lauren gestures at the smattering of sleeping babies and toddlers on the grassy area beneath the trees.
“Good idea. Next time I will. I’ll be around here a lot. The pediatrician told me the best thing I can do is keep exposing him to water and eventually, he’ll get used to it. So I guess that’s my only plan for now. Come here every day until he stops screaming—or someone kicks us out.”
“Trust me, that won’t happen. They’re pretty laid back here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Not the lifeguards, I hope.”
“No, but—”
“Mom!”
She turns to see Lucy, holding her pink phone. “What’s wrong?”
“I texted Daddy last night and asked him where he is—you know, home or still on vacation. I just checked my phone and he answered.”
“Just now?”
“No…a while ago, but—”
“What did he say?”
“It was kind of weird.”
“Weird, how? Here, let’s see.”
Lucy gives her the phone. The sun glares on the screen no matter which way Lauren turns it.
“I have to go over there into the shade.” She hands over the towel. “Can you please get your sister out of the pool for me?”
“Sure.”
Lauren starts away, then remembers Jessica. “Oh…it was nice meeting you.”
“You too.” The woman smiles and waves.
“Sadie,” Lucy is calling, “come on.”
Hurrying over to the shade beneath several towering oaks, Lauren examines Lucy’s phone.
I’m still on vacation with Elizabeth. I will be back soon.
What’s so weird about that?
Other than the fact that it’s completely selfish and callous…
She looks around to see that Sadie is out of the pool and wrapped in a towel, little stinker.
“Lucy, come here for a minute,” she calls.
Lucy hurries over. “Did you see it?”
“I did. Why is it weird?”
“Because her name is Beth. Not Elizabeth.”
“Beth is a nickname for Elizabeth.”
“No, I know that, but… I mean, Dad never calls her that. Ever.”
“Oh, well…” Uncomfortable, she shrugs. “Maybe he does sometimes, and you’ve just never heard him.”
“No. I’m worried that maybe…you know.”
“What?”
Lucy takes a deep breath. “I’m worried that maybe Dad’s trying to tell us something—you know, like maybe he’s trapped somewhere or someone’s holding him hostage and he’s sending a signal.”
“Oh, Lucy…are you still reading that Robert Ludlum spy book?”
“That’s not why, Mom. I seriously feel like something’s wrong with Dad.”
Lauren looks at her, then, again, at the phone.
Just yesterday, she herself was consumed with the same feeling. But then they heard from Nick, and she felt better.
Now she wonders uneasily why he’s so cagey, avoiding the kids, and his job…
Maybe something really is wrong. Maybe he’s in some kind of trouble.
“Mom? You’re worried about him, too, aren’t you?”
Slowly, Lauren nods.
“What are we going to do?” All at once, Lucy sounds—and looks—like a frightened little girl.
This
, Lauren tells herself,
is why you can’t admit to her that Nick might be in some kind of trouble. You’re the mother. You have to be the optimistic one.