The Night Remembers (10 page)

"Well, I'm
giving
it," Sunny said patiently, as if explaining something to a particularly backward child. "But it's
for
Adam. His thirty-seventh birthday, remember? It's sort of a welcome home, too, of course. We're all glad to see him back in San Francisco where he belongs. Brian thought—"

"You mean you're throwing a birthday party for Adam? And you expect me to come to it?" Daphne could hardly believe her ears.

"Well, yes. That's exactly what I expect." Sunny paused and a huge sigh wound its way through the telephone wires. "I mean, all the old gang's going to be there and you're part of the old gang," she continued. "You wouldn't want to spoil my party, would you?" she asked tremulously, sounding like a small hurt child on the verge of tears.

"I hardly think my not coming is going to spoil your party," Daphne said dryly, knowing quite well that Sunny was doing her level best to manipulate her into going.

"It will," Sunny insisted. Daphne could almost see her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. "I've already told everyone you'll be there. And they're all looking forward to seeing you again."

"Well, I'm sorry but you're just going to have to
un
tell them because I'll be too busy to come."

"Oh, come on, Daphne, don't say a definite 'no,' okay? I know you're terribly busy and everything, and this trip to San Francisco is supposed to be business, but it would be so much fun if you could make it. Say you'll at least try to make it, okay? Please?" she wheedled. "Just
try
to stop by?"

Daphne, realizing that she had been manipulated by a master, said she'd try. "But don't count on it," she warned, knowing it would do no good.

"Terrific!" Sunny squealed, taking Daphne's partial concession as a total capitulation. "See you on the twenty-eighth. And wear something drop-dead sexy," she ordered, hanging up before Daphne could remind her that she'd only said she'd
try
to make it, not that she'd actually be there.

She reached out to put the phone back in its cradle, shaking her head as she did so.
That Sunny,
she thought,
give her an inch and she'll run away with it.

Well, despite what she'd said to Sunny, she had no intention of going to Adam's birthday party. Why ask for trouble? Because that's what it would be, she told herself, trouble. That night with Adam had been a mistake from the get-go. But with him right there in the flesh, looking at her with that burning heat in his eyes, she hadn't really cared.

Well, now she cared. Because now it hurt. And now she missed him as sharply, as deeply, as she had eleven years ago when the wounds were fresh and new. For the past week, she had been weaving crazy, impossible dreams about happily-ever-afters that had ceased to be possible the day he filed for divorce.

No,
she told herself, firmly pushing away the thought of seeing him again.
No, I'm not going to that party.

"I think you should go." Elaine's words, so in tune with what she had just been thinking, made Daphne start with surprise.

She turned to look over her shoulder, the surprise fading as she realized that Elaine was only responding to the conversation she had overheard and not answering Daphne's unspoken comment. "Oh, you do, do you?" she said, a warning light in her eyes.

"Yes, I do," Elaine stated emphatically. She put Daphne's sketch on the drawing board and wiped her hands nervously down the front of her neon-green miniskirt. "And if you'll promise not to bite my head off, I'll tell you why I think you should."

"I have a feeling I'm not going to like this," Daphne said, her voice resigned. "But go ahead, anyway." She cocked her head invitingly, her forearm resting against the edge of the drawing board. "Why do you think I should go to this party?"

"Because," Elaine wiped her hands on her skirt again, pausing at the look in Daphne's eyes, and then rushed ahead. "Because, ever since he kissed you," she said, "you've been moping around like some lovesick prom queen with a crush on the quarterback, that's why."

Daphne snapped upright. "Some lovesick prom—" she began indignantly, then stopped, knowing all too well how true the accusation was.

"You practically jump out of your skin every time the phone rings," Elaine went on as if Daphne hadn't opened her mouth. "You're irritable and cranky. You snap at people for no reason." Elaine fixed her with an accusing stare when Daphne opened her mouth to refute it. "Don't try to deny it, Daphne. You know you have."

"I wasn't going to deny it," Daphne pointed out calmly.

"You weren't?" Elaine looked skeptical, and totally surprised that Daphne hadn't bitten her head off.

"I know I haven't been a joy to be around lately," she admitted with a small smile of self-deprecation. "But what I
don't
know is how you think my going to Adam's birthday party is going to change things. The way I see it, it will only make it worse." She sighed and shook her head, firmly pushing the idea away. "No, the best thing for me to do is stay as far away from Adam as possible. I'll get over it, just like I did the last time," she murmured, lying to herself as well as Elaine.

"Oh, no, that's the worst thing you could do."

Daphne raised her eyebrows in silent query.

"No, really, it is. Just think about it a minute," Elaine urged. "If you stay away from him you'll think about him all the more. You'll wonder what it would be like if you got back together again and you'll remember how it was when you
were
together. Only you'll remember it better than it really was. Then you'll start to miss him so bad that you ache inside and you'll begin to dream about all the good times you had and forget all the bad ones. And there must have been some bad times," she pointed out reasonably, "or your marriage wouldn't have ended the way it did."

Daphne's mouth dropped open slightly as Elaine described her feelings to a T. Every word the younger woman said made perfect sense. It was exactly,
exactly,
what Daphne had been thinking and feeling for the past week.

"But," Elaine continued, warming to the subject, "if you go out to California, see him again, even have an affair, maybe... Well—" she shrugged philosophically "—it'll give you a chance to get him out of your system. See? And you'll probably realize that your relationship wasn't as good as you remembered."

"My God, Elaine," Daphne said, awed at her uncannily accurate reading of the situation. "How do you know so much?"

"Well, Suzie told me what you'd told her," she admitted reluctantly. "About how you got married so young and the divorce and everything."

"No, I didn't mean that," Daphne murmured absently, too bemused by the good sense of what Elaine had said to be bothered by the fact that her friends had been gossiping about her. "I meant how did you know..." Her voice trailed off and she stared at Elaine for a moment without seeing her, her golden-brown eyes focused inward.

"How did I know what?" Elaine prodded.

"What? Oh, nothing. It wasn't important." She shook her head as if to clear it, and then smiled. "Do you think you could stand taking care of my cats for a couple of days?" she asked.

"You're going, then?"

"Yes," Daphne said decisively. "Yes, I'm going."

Chapter 6

Daphne's resolve wasn't quite so firm as she sat in her rented LeBaron, trying to work up the nerve to get out from behind the wheel and go on into the party.

It looked like a fairly big party she thought, eyeing the cars that lined both sides of the steep street for half a block in either direction. And it appeared to be in full swing.

The McCorkle house was brightly lit, a beacon of welcome and gaiety in the thin, wispy fog that curled in from the bay. Light spilled through the fanciful stained-glass window above the door, casting oblongs of color across the wide brick steps and the multi-leveled redwood decking and potted shrubs that took the place of a front yard. Strategically placed spotlights highlighted the slanted roofs and sharp angles of the house, while a starkly modern street lamp cast its soft welcoming glow in a golden pool at the foot of the stairs. The muted throb of sixtie
s rock music drifted out through the night air, punctuated now and again by sharp bursts of laughter, beckoning her to come join the fun.

And still Daphne sat in the car, her stomach fluttering worse than it did before a fashion show.

Oh, come on,
she scolded herself.
Just get out and go in. There's nothing to be afraid
of.
Be brave,
she told herself, her fingers fussing with the red satin ribbon on Adam's birthday gift.

She had finally, after much thought, decided on a one-pound box of gourmet chocolate chunk cookies, soft and chewy and rich with Hawaiian macadamia nuts. They were homey without being homemade, extravagant without being expensive, impersonal without being uncaring, friendly without being intimate. And they said absolutely nothing about how she felt. Which was exactly what she wanted.

After all,
she
might have come to San Francisco with the idea of starting up an affair with her ex-husband as a way to finally get him out of her system for good, but there was no telling what
he
had in mind. Once could have been enough for him. In any case, Daphne wasn't about to announce her intentions for Adam and all of Sunny's other guests to see, by giving him the skimpy black silk briefs that had been her first inclination.

Although, she thought, grinning to herself, he would have looked absolutely magnificent in them.

A ghost of a smile still hovering on her lips, Daphne got out of the car and, mindful of the height of her heels, carefully made her way up the steep incline of the street and the even steeper angle of the stairs, to the front door. Taking one last deep breath, she pasted a wide smile on her face, and rang the doorbell.

"I'll get it! I'll get it!" A high-pitched, childish voice rang out above the music. "Let me get it."

"I'll
get it," another, older voice said. The door was yanked open. "You go back upstairs before I blister your rear," Sunny threatened cheerfully, shooing the oldest of her three children back up the wide stairs to the second floor with a careless wave of her hand.

Daphne couldn't help but notice that the nail polish on that hand was a bright orange red; almost an exact match for the silky hostess pajamas Sunny wore, and a beautiful foil for her spiky, short-cropped auburn hair.

Sunny turned toward her newly arrived guest then, a smile splitting her face from ear to ear as she saw who it was. "Daphne!" she cried, swooping to enfold her in a Giorgio-scented hug. "You look great! Elegant as all get out, dammit," she exclaimed, standing back a little to take in Daphne's loosely belted ivory silk big shirt and form-fitting brown leather pants.

"I'm so glad you came," she said, moving in for another quick hug. "I knew you would. I told Brian—" She broke off and turned her head, raising her voice over the noise of the stereo coming from the living room. "Brian, come look who's here. It's Daphne."

Sunny's tall rangy husband, his placid gray-eyed calm the exact opposite of his wife's wacky exuberance, put his drink down on a glass side table and ambled over to greet her.

"Daphne, honey," he said warmly, and leaned down to kiss her cheek. "It's good to see you again. Where've you been keeping yourself?"

"New York, mostly," she said, her gaze darting past his shoulder to the crowded room beyond. Adam wasn't anywhere to be seen. She brought her gaze back to Brian's. "Hong Kong three or four times a year to hunt for fabrics and visit the factories. Dallas and L. A. during the markets. And San Francisco every month or so." She grinned up at him. "You're just never around when I drop by."

"That's because nobody ever tells me when you're dropping by," he grumbled good-naturedly, casting a teasing eye at his wife.

"That's because you're never home," his wife grumbled back. She reached out, taking Adam's birthday present from Daphne. "Here, put this on the table with the others," she ordered, giving it to Brian.

"Yes, ma'am," he said crisply, and bowed like a hotel bell captain before he turned away to do his wife's bidding.