“Why do you look at the menu?” Ryan asked as she sipped her black coffee.
“You never know. Something new might pop out at me.” Nicole scanned the laminated menu book.
“You’ve ordered the same thing for the past two years.” Ryan teased. “Sausage gravy and buttermilk biscuits. Eggs. Over easy.”
Nicole put the menu down. “I appreciate tradition.” She took a drink of her orange juice, but not before playfully sticking her tongue out at Ryan.
“What are we having, ladies?” Tracey, a middle age African-American woman, had been waiting on Ryan and Nicole since they first started coming to the restaurant. Only a few blocks from their house, the Sip and Bite made for great late night snack runs, and early morning hangover cures.
“French toast with a side of scrambled eggs, please.” Ryan smiled as she handed the waitress her menu.
Nicole quickly scanned the menu. “I - let me have - oh, crap. Give me my usual.” She handed Tracey the menu without looking up.
Chuckling, the waitress shoved her pen behind her right ear and tucked the two menus under her arm. “Just won me a five dollar bet.”
Nicole blushed. “Perfect.”
Ryan smiled. This wasn’t the first time the staff had given Nicole grief over her predictability. The familiarity of it, this place, the people, made the last four days fade a little further into the background for Ryan.
“You look too serious. What’s wrong?” Nicole looked intently at her friend.
Ryan shrugged. “Just glad to be home.”
Covering Ryan’s hand with hers, Nicole smiled. “You were missed. Another day and I might have given in, and actually gone out with Greg.”
Ryan eyed her friend suspiciously. “Something just occurred to me. You’ve been very careful - considerate almost - about not asking too many questions about the trip.”
Leaning back, Nicole ran her index finger over the Formica table top. “I’m nothing if not considerate.” She looked out of the top of her eyes at Ryan. “And you could reward my patience by - telling me everything.”
Shrugging, Ryan wasn’t sure what she was ready to share. “My mom died. We hadn’t talked in over six years, and honestly hadn’t known each other for even longer.” Her voice faltered, and Ryan took a quick sip of coffee.
“Hey, if it’s too soon.” Nicole said, her eyes full of worry.
Shaking her head, Ryan continued. “It’s fine. The house was the same as I remembered it. Huge and lavish, and everything was too much.” Rolling her eyes, she thought about Andrew. “And my lecherous cousin Andrew was exactly the same.”
“But you got to see Carol.” Nicole offered hopefully.
“I did. She’s wonderful, and with any luck can make it down for a visit in May.”
“And the infamous Aunt Lucy?” Nicole lowered her voice ominously.
“The perpetual social butterfly. She managed the funeral like she would manage a dinner party.”
Nicole shivered. “God. That’s in poor taste.”
“Actually, she was kind of amazing. You know - as in horrifically overbearing and tyrannical. Amazing.” Ryan sat back as Tracey slid her French toast and eggs down in front of her.
Nicole smiled when she saw her biscuits and gravy. “Amazing indeed.”
Pouring syrup over her French toast, Ryan hesitated before continuing. “I did meet someone interesting. It was sort of odd. We sat next to each other on the train, and then she shows up at the funeral.” Putting the syrup down, the image of Leah formed perfectly in Ryan’s mind. “She was kind of awesome too.”
Realizing Nicole wasn’t responding, Ryan looked up. Her friend sat with an amused expression on her face, with a piece of gravy covered biscuit dangling from the end of her fork.
“What?” Ryan looked down and began to focus on cutting her French toast.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight - pun intended. You met a woman at a funeral? Quote, an awesome woman?” Nicole popped the bite in her mouth, a smug smirk on her face.
Without looking up, Ryan shook her head. “You misunderstood me. She was nice. That’s all I meant.”
“Right. Nice.”
Waving her hand in the air, Ryan was struggling not to get defensive. “You’re twisted.”
Nicole laughed. “Yeah. Because I’m the one picking chicks up at my mom’s funeral.”
Ryan dropped her fork. The clattering sound as it hit the floor sent a jolt up her back. “Shit.” Leaning over, she fished the utensil out from under the table. A split second later, Tracey slid another one in front of her.
“Thanks.”
“No trouble.” Tracey winked reassuringly at Ryan.
Without looking at Nicole, Ryan began eating her breakfast again. “I didn’t pick anyone up. She and my mom were friends in high school, and my aunt clearly hates her. So logically, I had to take an immediate liking to her.”
Nicole finished chewing before speaking. “Well, if the maniacal aunt doesn’t like her, the two of you should get married.”
Ryan nearly choked on her eggs. “God, you’re clever.”
Mouth full of biscuit, Nicole grinned. “Brilliantly clever, hon.”
Chapter 4
To avoid dealing with the hassle of street parking, Ryan decided to move the car early the next morning before her interview. Pulling her suitcase behind her, Ryan and Nicole walked back to their house from Sip and Bite. Ryan frowned as they approached the marble stoop leading up to their front door.
“Nic, man, you’ve got to keep this area clean.” Looking down, there were two empty National Bohemian beer cans sitting on the top step of the stoop.
“Those are from last night.” The woman smiled as she unlocked the front door.
One of the first things Ryan had learned when she moved to Baltimore was the importance of maintaining a clean and tidy stoop. What front porches were to people in the south, a well maintained stoop was to Baltimoreans.
“You’re lucky Mrs. Grady hasn’t seen this.” Phyllis Grady was not only their neighbor, but their landlady. She was over eighty, and when Ryan and Nicole had moved in two years ago, the octogenarian had laid down a few rules not outlined in their lease.
“Here. You take this, and no less than once a week, you scrub that marble.” The gray haired, stooped woman gestured toward the four steps leading to the house’s wooden front door. “That’s the same marble they used in our nation’s capital, so you respect it.”
Ryan had taken the cleaning supplies, which consisted of a can of Bon Ami cleaning powder and a bristled scrub brush, and assured the woman they would maintain the steps.
“Stoop, hon.” Mrs. Grady had insisted. “It’s a stoop.” Without another word, she had turned and walked back into her house.
Nicole rolled her eyes at Ryan. “Christ, I’ll come right back out and toss the cans.”
Ryan shook her head. “Here, take my suitcase. I’ll drop the cans in the recycling bin.”
Lifting the Samsonite up so Nicole could take the handle, Ryan grabbed the two beer cans, and walked over to the narrow alley between their house and Mrs. Grady’s. The opening was barely wide enough for the recycling bin and metal trash can to fit. The alley led back to a small yard both houses shared, but Ryan’s minor claustrophobia meant she accessed the yard through the house.
“You’re back, Ms. Myers?” Phyllis spoke from behind Ryan, causing the woman to jump.
“Hi, Mrs. Grady. Yes. Quick trip to New York.” Ryan put the blue lid back on the recycling bin, and turned toward the house.
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
Ryan stopped, and turned to face the woman. “My mother?”
Phyllis nodded as she pulled the collar of her brown camel coat up around her neck. It was then that Ryan realized the woman was only wearing her coat, light blue house dress, and a pair of thick wool socks. “Mrs. Grady, you should get inside. You’ll catch a cold.”
“Please. You’re what - some kind of doctor? You kno
w you can’t get a cold from getting cold, hon.” Phyllis huffed as she shoved her hands inside her coat pockets. “Anyway, sorry about your mother. I saw the obituary in the New York Times, and photos from the funeral. She looked young.”
Ryan didn’t remember seeing any photographers at the services, but knowing her aunt, they were more than likely invited and told to remain discreet.
“Thank you.” Ryan started back toward her house.
“Your family has some money then?” Phyllis could always be counted on for directness.
Ryan wasn’t sure how to answer that, or if the woman was angling toward a rent increase. “Ah, I guess you could say that. I haven’t been close to them in a very long time.”
Shrugging, Phyllis looked up toward the sky. “Beautiful day.”
Ryan continued to be confused by the conversation, and was racking her brain to find a way out of it without offending the woman. “It is lovely. We’re nearly into spring.”
“I admire you.” Phyllis stated casually, clearly redirecting the conversation again.
“I - thank you?” Ryan wasn’t sure what the woman was talking about.
“You struck out on your own. Made your way in the world. Not many of your generation can say that.” Nodding, the woman turned and walked back toward her house.
Ryan felt tears pushing at the back of her eyes, and she was surprised that a few kind words from Phyllis Grady had triggered them. If she were honest with herself, she had felt like her emotions were teetering on the fringe. Moment to moment she felt she could cry, laugh, or scream. Her family had always had the ability to put her on edge.
A shiver ran through Ryan, and she wrapped her arms around her chest and quickly went inside her house. The distinct smell of stale pipe smoke tickled her nostrils as she entered.
“Nic, was Aaron here?” Aaron Reynolds was an ex-boyfriend of Nicole’s that she still occasionally slept with. Ryan had never taken much of a liking to the man. He was twenty five years old, unemployed and smoked a Dublin style pipe because he still worried about looking cool. He had no idea how his obvious efforts to do so had the opposite effect.
Nicole came down the narrow stairs that sat to the left of the front door. “He was the second Natty Boh outside. Why?”
Ryan shook her head. “I would prefer if he didn’t smoke that awful pipe in the house.”
Nicole started to object and thought better of it. “Fair enough. Sorry.”
Shaking her head, Ryan went into the small galley style kitchen to her right, and got a glass out of the cabinet. She would never understand Nicole’s affinity for slackers and losers. In spite of all of her successes, or perhaps because of them, the woman was a magnet for perpetually clueless and foolish men.
Ryan had often thought her friend’s lackluster taste in men was rooted in Nicole’s need to always be a little smarter and a little prettier than the guys she dated. Nicole thought it made her seem grounded and substantive. The irony was, Nicole was the kindest and most compassionate person Ryan had ever met, regardless of who she dated or slept with.
Nicole’s warm hand was on Ryan’s shoulder as she filled the glass with water from the tap. “Hey, are you okay?”
Taking a long drink of water, Ryan put the nearly empty glass on the counter. “Just tired. I think I’m going to take a nap.”
Nicole nodded, and then a playful grin spread across her lips. “But wait. Something arrived for you yesterday.”
Ryan’s brow arched as she followed her roommate into the living room. She stepped around the wall that divided the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs, and Ryan’s eyes widened.
“They barely fit through the door.” Nicole stood next to the largest arrangement of red roses Ryan had ever seen.
Holding out a small white envelope, Nicole smirked. “I didn’t read it, but I can guess who they’re from.”
Ryan snatched the envelope from Nicole, and pulled the card out. I’m sorry for your loss. Miss you. Jenny.
Ryan exhaled. “They’re beautiful.”
Nicole pulled one of the long stem roses free of the glass vase, and handed it to Ryan. “I personally would have stopped at two dozen, but hey, I don’t have mommy and daddy’s money to burn through.”
Ryan bristled at the comment given the turn of events her finances had recently taken, but she knew Nicole was right about Jenny.
Jenny Garrison and she had been dating off and on for over six months. Jenny was born in Boston and considered coming to Baltimore, and living in a renovated row house while she finished her master’s in public policy, to be slumming it.
“I can’t live a sheltered life forever, Ryan.” Jenny had explained a few weeks after they started dating. “I need to experience the bad with the good; otherwise, I’ll have nothing to offer my constituents.”
Ryan thought Jenny’s heart was in the right place, but Ryan’s efforts to explain the irony of her being able to choose poverty negating the point had fallen on deaf ears.
“Isn’t that what you’ve done with your family?” Jenny had earnestly asked while the two women sat in Ryan’s living room watching an Orioles game.
“Not really.” Ryan had struggled to tamp down her defensiveness. “My mother and I had a terrible disagreement, and even before the argument, we fundamentally viewed the world differently.” Ryan had taken a drink of her beer before continuing. “I didn’t have a choice.”
In spite of her bourgeois leaning tendencies, Jenny was fun to be with, smart, and seemed content to maintain the casualness of their relationship. It didn’t hurt, though Ryan was loath to admit this to anyone, that Jenny was gorgeous.
She was meticulous with her body, hair and dress without being overly fussy. Her shoulder length brown hair framed a defined jaw, full lips and blue eyes accented by long thick lashes. When Ryan had first seen her at the student center, she had reminded her of someone out of a J. Crew catalog.
“You can’t leave these down here, you know.” Nicole was looking suspiciously at the three dozen roses.
“I doubt I could get them up the stairs.” Ryan joked.
Picking the vase up, Nicole walked toward the back door. “Perfect. I’ll put them on the deck.”
“Wait.” Ryan rushed after her roommate. “It’s fifty degrees out there.”
“Aren’t you supposed to refrigerate flowers?” Nicole teased. She was not a fan of Jenny’s. The two women were polar opposites and though they made nice for Ryan’s sake, neither pretended there was any love lost between them.
“I’ll take them up to my room.” Ryan carefully retrieved the vase and its contents from an amused Nicole.
“Fine, but if you’re not back down in ten minutes, I’ll assume you’ve been suffocated by the flora.”
Rolling her eyes, Ryan carefully traversed the narrow wooden stairs to the second floor of the house. “I’ll be asleep in ten minutes, so don’t bother.”
Walking into her room, Ryan breathed a sigh of relief to be alone for the first time in days. She balanced the vase precariously on her hip as she cleared a space on the top of her oak dresser. She had found the piece discarded on the curb, drug it home, cleaned and refinished it. She liked the Frank Lloyd Wright design feel the dresser had, even though it had nearly killed Nicole and her getting it up the stairs.
Stepping around her suitcase Nicole had put near the side of the bed, Ryan kicked off her navy and gray Merrill tennis shoes and fell into bed. Pulling the black throw that lay at the foot of her bed over her, Ryan closed her eyes, content to sleep for an hour before unpacking and doing her laundry.
But after five minutes, Ryan sat up, her mind whirling through the past week. She had put the inheritance to the back of her mind until she had to meet with an attorney. She had even managed to push aside her irritations with her aunt, but she had not successfully stopped thinking about Leah. Ryan reasoned the woman remained on her mind because she was a bit of an enigma.
I’m curious. That’s all. The coincidence of how I me
t her, and then her being an estranged friend of my mother’s. That’s it.
Ryan lay back down; her eyes open as she stared at the white ceiling of her room. She had more important things to contend with, and was growing to resent the perpetual presence Leah seemed to have taken up in her head.
Willing her mind toward the practical, Ryan began to go through her list. She had done this since she was a small child. It gave her a sense of order and control. As she got older she realized it was her equivalent of counting sheep.
Nap, unpack, do laundry, get outfit for interview ready, double check directions to interview, call Jenny and thank her for the flowers, charge phone, shower, read some mindless genre dribble.
Ryan’s list halted on the last bullet point as the task of reading shot her train of thought back over to Leah. Damnit! Do it again, Myers.
Ryan began repeating her list, skipping the reading part and going straight to bed.
***
“I’m going to Kislings to watch the Capitals with Greg. Want to come?” After a half hour of tossing and turning, Ryan had given up on her nap, called her friend, and was now pulling her coat and gloves on.
Nicole was sitting in the small dining area adjacent to the living room, and looked up from her laptop she was hovering over. “Hockey and stalker - I’ll pass.”
Ryan frowned. “Be nice. I’m convinced the two of you are destined to get married and live the dream.” She opened the front door. “You wouldn’t want little Mary Sue and Bobby knowing mommy once had a restraining order out on daddy.”
Nicole wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at Ryan. “Stow it!”
Ryan laughed. “Pick that up, please.” Nodding toward the paper on the floor, she closed the door and began the mile walk to meet Greg.
The clear sky, crisp air and the brisk walk had Ryan feeling more like herself by the time she reached the tavern. She had always loved how you could be walking along a sidewalk lined with row houses, and then round a corner and be standing in front of a bar, restaurant or dairy store. Baltimore was an eclectic blend of neighborhoods, each unique unto itself.
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