Phillip went over to the counter. A lone muffin sat on a square of paper napkin. Next to it was a cardboard container of orange juice, individual-size. He smiled as he saw she had removed the plastic straw from the side of the box and inserted it in the hole for him.
Who says you’re not domestic?
he thought.
Then she was next to him, her arms loaded with books. “I hate to rush you,” she said, “but I’ve got Ethics this morning. I don’t want to be late.” She stood waiting.
Phillip grabbed the muffin in one hand, the juice in another. “Lead the way,” he said.
When they were out of the apartment and getting onto the elevator, he asked, “Can I see you again?”
“Well,” Nicole replied, her mind clearly now on her studies, “tomorrow I’ll be in the law library.”
“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.” He had planned to go to the law library at some point; he intended to start there to find Jess’s baby. He and Nicole could do their own work but be together. Then maybe after, they could have Chinese food. Chinese food and sex.
Not a bad idea
, he thought with a smile on his face and a tingle in his groin.
It wasn’t until they were out on the street and gone in different directions that Phillip realized Nicole hadn’t given him a chance to kiss her good-bye.
“I could kiss you for letting me come, Mom.” Maura’s voice crackled over the line that had reached all the way from some place called Cat Island and into the phone in the kitchen of Jess’s condo.
Jess was not aware that she’d let her daughter go to the Caribbean; as she recalled, she’d been given little chance to even voice an opinion. But she’d learned long ago that sometimes it was easier not to point out the truth to her children. “I’m glad you’re having fun, honey,” she responded.
“Has Eddie enjoyed himself, too?” She did not want to ask about Charles. She did not want to know—or care—if he and his new wife were partying it up, showing Maura and Eddie the time of their lives.
“He got burned, Mom. God, he was so red!”
“The sun is hotter down there.”
“He’s okay now. Kelly had some really great ointment.”
It took Jess a moment to remember that Kelly was Charles’s wife, that in addition to the youth and the body, the trophy wife had a name. “That’s good,” she said, trying to sound motherly.
“So are you working hard back there where it’s cold?”
Jess laughed. “It’s not so cold now. Spring is coming. But yes, I am working hard. I’m re-doing Fox Hills.”
“The club? Hey, cool, Mom. Maybe you’ll meet some new people.”
She did not tell her daughter that few new people had been granted membership there for at least two decades—and only then if they were connected to someone Jess already knew.
“Have you heard anything else about … Amy?”
Maura’s words came so quickly, they caught Jess unprepared. “Amy?”
“You know, Mom …”
Well, yes, of course she knew. She also knew that now was not the time and this was not the way she planned to tell Maura the news. “We’ll talk about it when you get back, okay, honey?”
Silence drifted across the Caribbean, up the Gulf Stream, and over the Atlantic until it hit land. “You know something, don’t you?” Maura asked accusingly.
“Honey …”
“Has there been another phone call?”
“No.”
The line crackled again.
“A letter?”
“No. Honey, this is foolish. We’ll talk when you get home.”
“I’m not going home, Mom. I’m going right back to school. And stop treating me like a child. I want to know what’s going on. I have a right to know.”
Jess was unsure exactly what Maura’s rights were in this situation, especially since Charles—the enemy—was probably standing nearby. But Jess did not want to spar anymore with her daughter.
She’ll get over it
, Ginny had said. She hoped Ginny was right.
“Amy was not mine, Maura,” Jess finally said.
Static gave way to dead calm.
“So your baby is still alive.”
“Well, I don’t know that for sure.”
“Not yet?”
She knew Maura was asking if Jess was going to pursue this, if Jess was going to be persistent in finding her daughter, her
other
daughter, the one she gave away.
“Not yet, honey. We may never know.”
She did not want to tell Maura that Phillip was looking. She did not want to say that yes, she was persisting. Not until she knew something. Not until she could sit down and discuss this with Maura intelligently, maturely, not over the wire of a long-distance call.
“Well,” Maura said flippantly, “I guess that’s your business. I’ve got to go now. Daddy’s taking us to dinner and a show at one of the casinos tonight. Our last fling before we leave tomorrow.”
Jess wanted to ask Maura to change her plans, to fly into New York. She wanted to spend some time with her daughter; she wanted to make sure that she was okay.
Then again, hearing the details of Maura’s wonderful vacation was probably not what Jess needed right now.
“Okay, honey,” she said. “Call me when you get back to school.”
After she hung up, Jess wondered if the gap between her and Maura would ever be bridged.
• • •
Ginny decided that Jess had to be out of her mind to try and find her daughter, alive or not. There was definitely something to be said for leaving well enough the hell alone, for not trying to have a relationship with a kid you gave up thirty years ago who you could never hope to get to know, not really, no matter how close you might think you were.
Damn Lisa.
Damn her. Damn her.
Of all the men in the world, of all the stupid things she could do, why was she screwing Brad?
The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree
, she remembered hearing somewhere. Her stomach was hurting again.
She pushed aside the unopened bag of Tostitos. Seeing Brad’s dick in the same room with her daughter—her
naked
daughter—had shut off her appetite, replacing her need for Tostitos with a bowling ball in her gut.
Damn Lisa.
Damn Brad.
She clenched her fists and sputtered.
Then a white-hot thought flashed into her mind: How long had it been going on? How long had it been, and how much did Lisa know?
Had Lisa lied the night of Jake’s funeral, lied when she’d said there was no man in her life? Or had Brad stepped in at that moment and smothered her with his … charm?
The bowling ball careened down the alley of her intestines. Ginny gripped her stomach. Was Brad using Lisa to get to her?
Was this about the money from Jake’s estate … the money Brad would never see?
Did he think he could get to Ginny by screwing her daughter?
Was she losing her mind?
Since the incident, Lisa had not called, not even left a message saying she was sorry, that they needed to talk,
anything.
She had not even called. And suddenly Ginny knew that the longer she waited to face her daughter, the more time Brad would have to get his claws into her, let alone his dick, which he knew how to maneuver with much-practiced skill.
“Oh, God,” Ginny moaned, then got up from the sofa, knowing she had to straighten this out once and for all. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe he hadn’t yet told Lisa about the night that Ginny had screwed his brains out when his father was still very much alive.
Lisa lived in a condominium in Westwood, in a neighborhood overpopulated with UCLA students and too many boom boxes. With the success of
Devonshire Place
, she could well afford to live elsewhere, but Lisa was not only nice but also practical, and had told Ginny she would rather put money away than squander it on a lavish house she might not be able to afford if anything happened and her contract was not renewed.
Brad, Ginny thought now, scanning the parking lot for a red Porsche, might be that “anything” that would ruin Lisa’s career.
Ginny had spent years toughing things out, acting as if she didn’t care about things. How had she done it, and why couldn’t she do it now when it mattered? But as she gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and knocked on Lisa’s door, she knew the answer: She really
hadn’t
cared before; she had never let herself care.
“Ginny,” Lisa said when she opened the door. Her vacant expression did not reveal whether she was still angry or not.
“We need to talk,” Ginny said, stepping past her and marching into the living room. “I hope you’re alone.”
“It’s just Ernestine and me.” Lisa closed the door and followed Ginny into the room. “And Ernestine is asleep in the sun.” Ernestine was the huge calico cat that Lisa had
adopted from the animal shelter—adopted, as she herself had been.
Ginny sat in a high-backed, plump-cushioned rattan chair by the window in which Ernestine lazed. She folded her hands across her lap and tried not to be distracted by the fact that Lisa—even though it was a weekend—was gorgeously attired in designer pants and a silk blouse, while Ginny wore an oversized sweatshirt that covered the straining zipper of her jeans and the unbuttoned metal button that was currently gouging the soft flesh above her navel.
“He wants your money,” Ginny said.
Lisa, sitting across from Ginny, straightened. “You don’t know anything about it. You’ve never given Brad a chance.”
“A chance? Is that what he told you?” She wondered once again if Brad had told Lisa about their one-night fling.
“He’s caring. And he’s kind.”
Ginny put her thumb in her mouth to stifle a laugh. “You don’t know him, Lisa. It’s your hormones talking, nothing more. I know Brad. I’ve known him for years. He is not caring. And he is not kind. He is a lazy man who uses women for whatever he can get. Then he dumps them.”
“He is not going to dump me.”
“No? Would it help if I gave you a list of the other women who said that? Let’s see … there was Betty, the one who owned the restaurant. He dumped her after the papers were signed over to him.” Despite her best intentions, Ginny’s hands started to shake. “And then there was Denise. And Lori. And—”
“Stop it,” Lisa said.
Ginny shut her mouth and averted her eyes to the cat, who purred softly in its sleep, undisturbed. “How long has it been going on?”
Lisa did not answer.
Ginny turned back to her daughter. “How long, Lisa?”
“A while,” she said vaguely. “Not long.”
“Since Jake’s death? Because if that’s true, then surely you can see it’s all about the money.”
Again, Lisa did not answer.
“Are you in love with him?”
Lisa stood up and crossed the room. She bent down and scratched the cat behind its ears. “I don’t know why you mistrust Brad, Ginny, nor do I know if I am in love with him. But I do know he makes me feel like no other man has been able to. He makes me feel wanted, and he makes me feel complete. And he’s been there for me in my sadness about losing Jake. The way I’ve been there for him.”
“Oh, Christ,” Ginny said.
For a long time, neither of them spoke in that small, neat living room, with the cushions and rattans and glass-topped end tables that did not show the teeniest speck of dust. Ginny considered telling Lisa about Brad—about them. But Lisa might think it had been Ginny’s own fault, that she had asked for it, that she was a slut. If she told Lisa, Ginny might have to accept that about herself.
So instead of telling her, Ginny said, “You’re not from the streets, Lisa. You don’t know Brad’s kind.”
“I know I’m almost thirty years old and I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about him.”
Ginny mentally fast-forwarded to a wedding of daughter and stepson, with Brad smiling his snakelike smile at Ginny, toasting her in mock respect; a child or two born soon after, grandchildren to whom she would not be able to say no; then his desertion, stripping Lisa of her self-esteem along with the money she’d worked so hard to earn and probably a chunk of Ginny’s, too.
If she told Lisa about them, it might make a difference. Or it might not.
“When you first moved to L.A.,” Ginny said quietly, “I vowed to do everything in my power to help you have a wonderful life.”
“And you have, Ginny. And I appreciate it.”
“If it means anything, Lisa, Jake would not be pleased about this match. He knew what his son was. Which is why he cut him out of his will.”
“Because you convinced him to?”
An odd sense of warmth rose in Ginny’s cheeks. “Is that what Brad told you?”
“He said that you had turned Jake against him. Against Jodi, too.”
“Brad and Jodi are the only ones who ‘turned Jake against’ them. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You have all his money.”
Clearly, Brad had gotten to Lisa. And if Ginny knew anything, it was that arguing with hormones was a damn waste of time. “That’s right,” she said, standing up. “I do have all of Jake’s money. And you can tell your boyfriend that’s not going to change until I’m dead.” With a weighted heart, Ginny walked to the door.
“Ginny,” Lisa said, following her. “I can’t believe you’re going to let this come between us. Can’t you be happy for me? Can’t you see how much Brad means to me?”
“No,” Ginny said flatly, and left.
She barely remembered the drive home, her eyes aching with unshed tears, her thoughts a jumble of loss: first Jake, now Lisa. The two people who had meant more to Ginny than she’d ever before allowed—the only two people who meant anything to her—were gone from her life.
Pulling into the driveway, Ginny was overcome by a loneliness like she had not even known when her mother died, when she’d thought there was nothing left for her in the world, when she’d known her life was only going to go on if she forced it. But she had been young then; she still had her dreams. Now it was different.
As she entered the foyer, the telephone began to ring.
Lisa
, she thought. Lisa had come to her senses; Lisa had realized that scum Brad was not worth the loss of her mother.
“I’ll get it,” Ginny screeched to Consuelo, who might or
might not even be in the house. She bolted into the family room and grabbed the phone. It was not Lisa. It was Jess.
“Ginny,” came the sweet voice of that distant friend. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”