The Year Everything Changed (2 page)

Chapter Two
Ginger

Feeling equally hurt and pissed off, Ginger Reynolds went from the living room to the upstairs bedroom extinguishing a hundred dollars’ worth of pumpkin pie–scented candles. Willowy streams of black smoke rose to the ceiling creating a cloud to match her mood.

Anticipating a hefty increase in her car insurance to cover her latest run-in with a concrete pole, she’d hesitated about spending money on something as frivolous as candles. But it had been so long since she and Marc had shared anything fun and foolish that she’d dipped into her savings, something that threatened to move from developing pattern to dangerous habit in the year since she’d moved from Kansas City to San Jose, California.

Even if it turned out the article in
Cosmo
was wrong about pumpkin pie topping the list of erotic smells for men, Marc still would have been pleased. He liked it when she tried new things; it meant she was thinking about him, planning, working to keep their relationship fresh.

But what good was it for her to plan and buy and prepare for a special evening when Marc called at the last minute to say he wouldn’t be there?

She stepped into the bathroom and pinched the wicks on the votives around the tub. Emergencies were one thing, but tonight’s excuse wasn’t even close. He had to have known for weeks that his daughter had a piano recital. His wife left him reminders everywhere—his pager, his voice mail, his steering wheel, the bathroom mirror. She treated him like a child, just one of the reasons on a long list that had made him leave her again a year and a half ago.

For six months.

That was one month longer than the first time three years ago when Ginger had met him at a friend’s house and foolishly assumed his divorce was past the planning stage. Marc Osborne was everything she’d convinced herself she would never find in a man—tender, sexy, intelligent, attentive. Most compelling of all, he was someone who admired her mind over her body. He’d actually managed to focus on her eyes, not her chest, while they were talking and had made her laugh—genuinely, not the practiced laugh she used to make men feel clever and funny when they weren’t. He asked about her work and her dreams and where she wanted to be ten years from that night. He was as different from the last man she’d invested her time and heart in as a pencil is from a computer. She was hopelessly in love an hour into their conversation.

She fell hard, too hard not to compromise, not to admire him for what he was doing, when he decided he owed it to his five-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter to return to his marriage and stay until he could make them understand he was leaving their mother, not them. What was supposed to take months had, with an insidious, irrefutable logic, turned into years. Ultimatums produced promises that were invariably sacrificed on the altar of good intentions.

Ginger opened the walk-in closet and stepped out of the three-inch, sling-back heels Marc encouraged her to wear because he thought they made her legs look sexy. She lifted her skirt and removed the black lace underwear she’d put on solely for him to remove.

Damn him. He knew she’d planned something special tonight. She’d skipped lunch to drive to Los Gatos to buy the Lou Pevre cheese he loved and had even splurged on a bottle of Merlot that the wine expert at Late Harvest had pulled from his private stock when she asked for something extra special.

It was their anniversary, or what was passing for it this year. They’d missed the actual date by three weeks because of Marc’s sister’s surgery and then a marketing crisis that required an unplanned trip to the home office in Kansas City.

What was it that drew her to men who loved her but couldn’t or wouldn’t take the final step? At twenty-three she’d molded herself into everything Bruce had said he wanted in a woman, and six months after they broke up he’d married someone completely opposite. Tom insisted she was perfect just the way she was, yet as soon as they moved in together he started cheating on her.

She wasn’t rowing the boat alone. Nothing happened to her that hadn’t happened to her girlfriends, or at least the ones who remained single. There were a few seemingly happy marriages along the way, but when kids entered the picture, likely as not, single friends left. Time together became as scarce as divorced men who said they wanted more children with a second wife.

The phone rang. Her heart did a funny skipping dance in breath-stealing certainty that Marc had found a way to be with her after all. He loved surprising her, and she’d somehow let him think she loved being surprised. She dove across the bed and grabbed the receiver. “Hi,” she said, her voice low and sexy and happy.

After a moment’s hesitation, a woman’s voice came on the line. “Something tells me you were expecting someone else.”

“Mom—hi.” She tried but couldn’t hide the disappointment.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay.” When Ginger sold her house and left her job and friends in Kansas City to follow Marc to California, the arguments between her and her mother, Delores, had left them on the verge of estrangement. To stem the blood and try to heal the wound, Marc became off limits.

Succeeding at a breezy tone, Ginger asked, “What’s up?”

“Your father wants to know if you got your car fixed.”

She and her father weren’t one generation apart, they were two. In his early forties when she was born, he communicated with her the way his father had communicated with him, through the women in the family. If he had a question or wanted Ginger to know something, her mother linked them.

“Not yet,” Ginger admitted.

A hand over the mouthpiece muffled what came next. “She says ‘not yet,’ Jerome.”

Ginger waited.

“Your father says it’s important for you to get the work done as soon as possible. Just tonight on the news they said there was another car like yours that caught fire. The whole family died. Six of them. It was terrible the way those—”

“I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

She rolled onto her back and covered her eyes with her hand. “I’m writing myself a note right now.” She understood the nagging and tolerated it because it was the only way her parents knew to tell her they loved her. She’d been raised in an undemonstrative household where touching was as rare as buried treasure on a desert island.

“Did I tell you Billy’s coming home for your dad’s birthday?”

A dozen times. “Yes, Mom, you told me. Remember, I said I’d see if I could get a couple of days off and come too?”

“A week would be nice.”

“That’s not going to happen. I don’t get a vacation with this job until I’ve been here a full year. The best I can do is try to get a Friday and Monday off and make it a long weekend.”

“If that’s the best you can do, then it’s the best you can do.”

“Mom, I really have to go. I’m meeting someone in a few minutes.”

“Someone?” she asked.

“A girlfriend.”

After an awkward, strained silence, Delores tried humor. “Does this girlfriend have a brother?”

“As a matter of fact, she does,” Ginger answered, her patience strained to breaking. “But he’s gay.”

Without missing a beat, Delores said, “I understand there are places people like that can go now to be cured.”

Ginger was speechless. And then she laughed. “I love you, Mom. I’ll call in a couple of days when I have more time to talk.”

“Don’t forget about the car.”

“I won’t. Bye.” For a long time she sat on the edge of the bed and stared unseeing at the parking lot behind her condo. She hadn’t just wanted Marc there, she’d needed him. And not just for the sex. Cut off from her friends in Kansas City, who’d tried to talk her out of following Marc to California, and slow to make new friends in California, she was achingly lonely and desperately missed having someone to talk to and confide in. The women she liked whom she’d met at work and at the gym all had lives and loves and careers that left them too busy for anything beyond a cup of coffee or occasional lunch. Friendships, at least the kind Ginger longed for, required time and nurturing. It was something she’d never say aloud, not to Marc, not to anyone. Lonely people were needy people and needy people were pathetic.

She was running out of time. No matter how hard she worked at the gym, her breasts weren’t as high or as firm as they’d once been, and no matter how religiously she applied creams and lotions and makeup, the lines at the corners of her eyes seemed to grow deeper every time she looked in the mirror. She was showing her age. Not in the careless way the women pushing strollers and hauling kids back and forth to school and music lessons and baseball practice were, but in a more frightening, trying-too-hard-not-to-let-it-happen way.

In four years she would be forty. The thought made her sick to her stomach. She’d be able to get away with claiming thirty-six, just as she was able to claim thirty-two now without raising eyebrows. But even thirty-six was old to the men who were her peers. When they reached forty and decided it was time to grow up, they went looking for sweet young things who were easily impressed with money and experience and who wouldn’t have to spend a fortune at a fertility clinic to get pregnant.

Ginger’s stomach rumbled, reminding her she’d skipped lunch. She was hungry. A dangerous kind of hungry. The kind that fed her soul over her body. If she didn’t get out of there she was going to do something stupid, something to feed the 300-pound woman who lived inside her 112-pound body, a woman she had to battle every minute of every day.

Ignoring both the real and imagined hunger, Ginger changed into her sweats and running shoes and headed downstairs. She’d pinned her house key to her pocket and was leaning against the door to stretch her calves when the doorbell rang. This time she refused to get excited, to even consider the possibility it might be Marc.

It wasn’t.

“Sorry to disturb you at dinnertime,” the condo manager said, running a hand over his bald pate. “The wife forgot to remind me that this came for you today, and I thought it might be important.” He handed her a FedEx overnight envelope.

Ginger looked at the return address. A law office—in Sacramento. She didn’t know anyone in Sacramento.

“Hope it’s not bad news,” the manager said.

“What? Oh, no, I’m sure it’s not. The company I work for has connections in Sacramento. Someone must have sent this here by mistake.”

Still, he didn’t leave. “I would’ve brought it sooner, but it’s the wife’s birthday, and to be honest, we both forgot about it until now.”

Ginger smiled. “No problem. Please wish her happy birthday for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

She went back inside and tossed the envelope on the sofa. If she didn’t get to the track soon, she’d have to share it with the guys from the local freestyle wrestling club and wade through the testosterone lying around like towels in a locker room. She was almost to the door again when curiosity proved stronger than self-interest. It wasn’t every day a lawyer sent her something. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t remember ever receiving anything from a lawyer.

She sat on the sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table, making a quick mental note to look for a new pair of running shoes the next time she was at the mall.

“Nice . . . ,” she said aloud as she pulled out two velum envelopes. One was from the attorney’s office, the other from a travel agency. She opened the one from the attorney first.

Dear Ms. Reynolds:

I’m writing to you on behalf of your biological father, Jessie Patrick Reed. I regret to inform you that Mr. Reed is dying. He has expressed a desire to meet you, and in light of the finite time left him, I’m sure you will understand the urgency involved. He has asked me to tell you that he understands why you might feel a meeting is not in your best interest, but he is prepared to do whatever necessary to encourage you to rethink your position.

Plainly the letter wasn’t hers. Ginger felt an odd mixture of relief and disappointment. A sad indication of how uneventful her life had become.

To facilitate your travel to Sacramento, I am enclosing a round-trip airline ticket and have arranged for a car and driver to meet you when you arrive. It is not necessary to confirm. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at any time.

Regards,

Lucy Hargreaves

Ginger refolded the letter and put it on top of her briefcase. She’d call from work in the morning and let the attorney know she had the wrong Ginger Reynolds.

Ginger ran her laps in a bemused fog, caught up in thoughts about the woman in the letter, wondering who she was and how they had come to have the same name. She was still thinking about her when she returned home to a ringing telephone.

She picked up in the kitchen.

“I was beginning to worry,” Marc said at her hello.

She glanced at the message light and saw it blinking. “I was at the park.” They used to run together before time became too precious to spend on something so ordinary. “Is the recital over already?”

He groaned. “Not even close. We’re on the first page of the program, and Jenny doesn’t appear until the third. I slipped out to call you. I needed to hear your voice and find out if you were okay.”

She leaned against the counter eyeing the clock. Eight-thirty. There would be no surprise visit that night. What an idiot she was to have allowed herself that thread of hope. “I’m fine.” She fought to hide her disappointment. “You must be proud of Jenny. They always save the best for last.”

“And you always know what to say to make me feel better. You’re an incredible woman. I must have done something wonderful in some past life to have you in my life now.” He paused. His voice dropped to a low, pained whisper. “I really am sorry, Ginger. I know how much tonight meant to you.”

She melted a little. Not as much as if he’d said how much tonight had meant to them both, but enough to keep her going until she saw him again. “We’ll have other anniversaries.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

No, he didn’t. But he would one day. “I received the strangest letter today. From an attorney in Sacramento. She’s—”