The Lavender List

by Meg Harrington

  “You’re a tremendous actress with a career that puts you in the public eye, and I’m married, and a woman, and supposedly a spy.”

  She feels Amelia’s gaze on her, bright and kind. Her hand’s half outstretched toward Laura. Ready to argue. Always ready to argue.

  “Michel was the one that set you up—do you know that?” She doesn’t wait to hear an answer. “And he only did it because I invited you into our home. After I invited myself back into your life.”

  “I know.”

  Of course she knows. Of course she’s figured it all out.

  Amelia’s always been clever.

  Laura closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at her. It makes things easier.

  “And the men trying to kill you? They were my colleagues.”

  Confusion clouds Amelia’s eyes. “The CIA felt you were a threat and mobilized to deal with you.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Chalmers. That’s what he confessed to last night. He…They needed you dealt with.”

  “And now?”

  “You’re safe. Chalmers knows he can’t go after you without things going very awry for him.”

  “So… we’re safe?”

  Laura laughs. “I wish that were true. We’re safe as we can be, but the fact remains, you nearly lost your life, Amelia, because I invited you into mine.”

  “Laura.” Amelia says her name with such weariness. So much fatigue. They’ve been dancing around this issue from the very beginning, and they always will dance around it. Unless one of them says no. Unless Laura says no.

  She fidgets. Shrugs.

  She has to put a stop to what they could be. For Amelia’s sake. And this time…This time she has to be strong.

  “You’ve always been so fond of calling us a disaster, Amelia. I’ve just finally realized you were right.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Work and family. The balance has waffled a tad over the years, but the two have always been Laura’s primary devotions. Oscar-winning actresses aside.

  Work and family.

  They’re a soothing routine she mires herself in.

  She does not call Amelia.

  She can’t bear to reach out. Not after what happened. Not after what Amelia’s endured under her watch.

  So Laura returns to work and family, and she gets very, very good at one and fails miserably at the other.

  Her boss, Frank Wisner, isn’t happy about her involvement in the death of CIA assets, but when she tells him she has a list that J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy would give an arm for, he changes his tune and tells her what good work she’s done.

  “You knew her before, didn’t you,” he asks at the end of their meeting. Laura’s packing up her things and preparing to go home early. “The actress.”

  She gives Wisner a loaded look, and his mouth drops open in surprise. “I don’t understand it,” he says, and he rubs the growing bald spot on his head. “But in her case, I almost do.”

  It’s the most approval she could ever hope to get from Mr. Wisner. He tolerates, but he does not celebrate.

  Things continue. Missions and praise and notes from Judith asking when they can work together next. She found the nightmarish road trip to be a “delightful romp.”

  At home, she is stiff and quiet, and her misery is never quite hidden.

  It’s Michel who finally looks at her from across the breakfast table and pulls the curtain away from her bit of awful theater. He simply says, “I think we should get a divorce.”

  The children are still upstairs, breakfast is on the table, and Laura’s only just come in from work. There are dark circles under her eyes and every step she takes requires reserves she didn’t know she possesses.

  And when Michel speaks, it’s as comforting as a hot bath.

  She slides into the chair opposite him with a sigh and says nothing.

  “You’re clearly not… in this, and I like myself too damn much to suffer through it.”

  “Are you chucking me out?” She’s prepared to fight if he is. Though she isn’t sure she has the energy to do it in the present moment.

  Perhaps there’s a motor lodge nearby. She should really investigate that.

  He shakes his head and shrugs. “No. I thought about it.” He laughs darkly. “I got another home. One that’s better for entertaining.” Michel holds up a key ruefully. “Figure it’s smarter to give you a copy than find one of your little children spies trying to break in.” He puts it gently on the table and pushes it toward her.

  She won’t tell him it would be good practice for the kids.

  Instead she takes the key and feels, perhaps a little, stunned. The divorce. The break up itself. Everything. She understood it was coming intellectually. It had to after what she’s done. Yet, having a key in her hand, warmed from its stay in Michel’s pocket, makes it all so much more tangible.

  They agree not to tell the twins immediately.

  They agree to keep things quiet.

  He goes to work.

  The children are taken to school.

  Laura collapses onto the couch in her bedroom. It gives her a look into the half-empty closet.

  He even took that old suit of his. The one that’s too short in the legs.

  She’s muses on how efficiently he made his move until sleep grabs at her.

  In her dreams, Amelia’s sitting on the edge of the couch, and her hand is on Laura’s cheek. She’s forgiven Laura and asks why it is they have to be so madly in love.

  Emphasis on the madly. She wakes up in her rumpled work clothes, and the clock on the bedside table reads after four in the afternoon. She realizes it was the squeal of her children playing in the backyard that woke her, and it drags her mouth into a smile.

  She changes into pants and a button down shirt that’s just a little too big and rolls the sleeves as she pads down the stairs barefoot.

  The nanny’s in the den putting away freshly polished silver Laura’s grandparents insisted on buying them and looks startled to see her employer home and dressed down.

  “She said you were home, but I didn’t believe her,” she mutters.

  Laura raises an eyebrow. “She?”

  “Your friend watching the children. When we got back from school, she was coming down the stairs.”

  Laura is sure a girlfriend just “popping over” is perfectly normal for many women. Unfortunately, most of her girlfriends were actual girlfriends, and nearly all of them have reasons to want to stab her with a knife.

  She races through the house, her bare feet slapping on cold tile and plush carpets, and lunges out into the yard, just shy of breathless.

  Then she stops. Her toes dig into cool grass. Amelia is there, sitting on a swing with sunglasses hiding half her face. Her high heels are piled with her purse on the ground, and she’s smiling and playing with Laura’s children.

  She’s here.

  She must hear Laura, because she looks up sharply. Her whole head whips around. Her face is impossible to read with the sunglasses, but her smile is sunny.

  Genuine.

  The scars are fading.

  She goes back to playing with the children, and Laura finds her feet carrying her over until she’s sitting in the other swing with her son in her lap.

  He’s nearly too heavy for this sort of thing. He and his sister are both four and well on their way to five. His sister continues to play at pirate, jabbing a wooden cutlass at Amelia and shouting about what a “scurry-less bleeding landlubber” she is.

  Laura should tell her daughter to watch her language, but her children are both so American they ride bald eagles to kindergarten, so she smiles and allows herself a measure of content and never questions why Amelia Maldonado is in her backyard, willi
ngly playing house.

  They dance around each other until dinner, smiling and chatting like the old friends the nanny assumes they are. Their hands sometimes touch, making Laura gasp and Amelia look away. It’s all very quiet and reserved.

  Then dinner comes. That’s when the nanny, who has accidentally acted as chaperone, leaves for the night.

  Suddenly, Amelia is looking at Laura with a poker face that would earn her a job in any spy organization in the Northern Hemisphere. She accepts the proffered drink with a soft “thank you” and is animated only when talking with the children.

  With them, she’s Amelia.

  The glances at Laura, though, reveal some other mystifying and enthralling woman. At one point she winks at Laura, and she’s so startled, her knee flies up into the underside of the table. The impact rattles her wine glass right onto its side.

  When Amelia laughs as Laura mops up the mess, she’s enigmatic.

  It’s maddening. Laura wants to ask why she’s come. Amelia has declared they were doomed ever since the car they took broke down in rural New Jersey. She was particularly clear on her feelings in West Virginia when she whispered them between kisses, looking at Laura as though she needed her there and very far away all at once.

  Laura’s given her the out. She’s let her know it’s okay. She’s made the sacrifice that was needed so Amelia could have a proper and healthy life.

  But she’s sipping her drink and behaving as mysteriously as any of the spies Laura knows. The sphinx gave Greek heroes less trouble.

  “Do you need help getting them ready for bed,” she asks after dinner.

  Laura’s son is already at the top of the stairs, and she’s got her daughter in her arms, her knobby knees poking into her ribs.

  “We’ll be fine,” she says quietly.

  Amelia nods. Squeezes Laura’s upper arm as though they’re something. “I’ll wait in the study then.”

  And she is. When the children are in bed and asleep, Laura climbs back down the stairs. Too softly, judging by the way Amelia startles when she appears in her line of sight.

  She’s lit a fire in the fireplace and poured brandy for the both of them, and until she sees Laura, she stares into that fire and seems to weigh all the troubles of the world in her head.

  But then she snaps around and simply stares. So long that they both might blush.

  “Hi.” A greeting as oblique as Russian code when whispered by Amelia Maldonado.

  Laura doesn’t know what to say, so she takes her brandy and sits in the club chair opposite Amelia. The space between them seems like a chasm.

  She nurses the drink.

  Amelia breaks this second silence by cutting straight to the heart of things. “I have to say, before I got mad, I thought you were joking back at the hospital when you left.” She peers at Laura. “Usually when you risk your life to save a gal, you don’t up and leave her as soon as you got her.”

  “You were hurt because of me.”

  “I was hurt because a fella took a shot at me and broke some glass.”

  “And he took that shot because—”

  “Hitler invaded France. Or screwballs in Congress like a witch hunt.” Amelia shakes her head. “Laura, whatever part you think you played doesn’t matter. If I want to blame someone, it’s gonna be the guys who did the attacking.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know. I shouldn’t blame myself. And I’m rational enough to understand that what’s happened to you isn’t my fault. But the fact of the matter is, you were in that car because I invited you into a war and then left you ill-equipped to wage it.”

  “So, when you showed up in New York, you should have had a rifle and some fatigues ready for me.”

  “No. I should never have invited you in the first place. There’s a reason I left back in forty-six. You shouldn’t have to fight this w—”

  “And you should?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Yeah. It’s a job, Laura.” She peers at her. “Not a life, and right now, it seems to me you’re living it like it is.”

  “I have a family,” she fires back.

  “You do. You’ve got two gorgeous kids—”

  “And—”

  Amelia tilts her head. “And Michel left you. He called me a quarter of one to tell me.”

  “He was out of bounds.”

  “Probably. Think he’s still stinging about how you’d rather spend a weekend on the run with me than a night in bed beside him.”

  “How?—”

  “Day you left, I gave him a call. We’ve been chatting since. He feels bad about his part in nearly getting me killed.”

  “Bad enough that he just gave me to you?”

  She laughs. “God no. He was ready to fight, but apparently you were so damn mopey, he couldn’t handle it. Told me I’d ‘won.’” She waves her hand with muted fanfare.

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “So is faking your death.”

  Damn.

  There’s a whisper of fabric, and then Amelia is kneeling in front of her.

  “How did?—”

  Her questions of how Amelia could possibly move so fast are stopped by brandy-brushed lips.

  “Shut up and kiss me, Laura.”

  “I thought—”

  Amelia’s hand combs through Laura’s hair, then pulls her close so they can kiss again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Laura likes kissing. She does. And she likes sex too. She’s had all sorts of partners and found a way to waste quite a bit of her life by doing nothing more than kissing another person.

  But kissing Amelia is like coming home after the longest day. It’s comfort and warmth.

  And sweet. Even as ardent as Amelia is, kneeling between Laura’s thighs and holding her close, hands tangling in her hair and teeth tugging at her lips. Even then, she’s sweet.

  Wonderful.

  God help Laura, she loves Amelia Maldonado. In spite of all the very good reasons she shouldn’t. In spite of how utterly impossible a relationship might be.

  She loves her.

  And not only desires her, but needs her.

  Amelia’s kisses stop much like the flow of water down the side of a house after rain. Her nose brushes against Laura’s before she opens her eyes and smiles at her.

  She’s still close, her hand still in Laura’s hair, but her fingers have relaxed and now just gently cup the back of her head. “There you are,” she says. As if she’s been searching for her. She darts in again for a quick, reassuring kiss. “You know I’m here because I’m crazy about you, don’t you?”

  Laura swallows, tries not to scan Amelia’s face to sort out if she’s telling the truth, and fails miserably.

  One of Amelia’s hands falls onto Laura’s thigh, and her thumb moves in lazy, confident circles. She watches her hand.

  Laura is quiet in her own confession. “I’ve been spending days trying not to be in love with you, reminding myself of how badly it could go. I kept telling myself we were a disaster, Amelia.” She glances up and gives Amelia a sort of watery smile. “Then you tell me you and Michel broke up my marriage behind my back and all I can say is—”

  “Thanks?”

  “Disaster’s a small price if I get to spend the rest of my days with you.”

  One day. Years later. Laura might regret what she said. Might consider disaster too high a price.

  But that night, she curls up naked in the arms of the woman she loves and listens as her heartbeat drums steadily, feels the rise and fall of her chest, and thinks that disaster can try and wreck what she has.

  But it’ll have a helluva time doing it.

  ABO
UT MEG HARRINGTON

  Meg Harrington is the author of several popular fic series online and lives in Brooklyn with her dog, her roommate, and two cats of indeterminate ownership. When she isn’t writing about women loving other women, she’s pondering the evolution of transformative art and working as a tech journalist.

  CONNECT WITH MEG:

  Website: www.meg-harrington.com

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  Twitter: @MegHarrington

  E-Mail: meg@meg-harrington.com

  The Lavender List

  © 2016 by Meg Harrington

  ISBN (mobi): 978-3-95533-624-0

  ISBN (epub): 978-3-95533-625-7

  Also available as a paperback.

  Published by Ylva Publishing, legal entity of Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.

  Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.

  Owner: Astrid Ohletz

  Am Kirschgarten 2

  65830 Kriftel

  Germany

  www.ylva-publishing.com

  First edition: 2016

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Credits

  Edited by Jove Belle, Gill McKnight and Jacqui McCarthy

  Cover Design by Adam Lloyd

  Print Layout by Streetlight Graphics