Which is precisely the same thing she assured herself fifteen years ago, when a routine X-ray showed a suspicious shadow on her mother’s lung.
Mom didn’t even smoke and Dad gave it up years ago, so it couldn’t be cancer…
But it was cancer.
Well, Brynn wasn’t going to let it rob her of her mother…
But it did, in the space of a few months.
It robbed her as well of the jovial, loving family man who loved chocolate with nuts, the Red Sox, doo-wop music, and his wife and children. Not in that order.
Her father’s heart and soul died with her mother, leaving in his outer shell a brooding, often-angry stranger. The house was silent and dusty, the fridge filled with expired condiments, no dairy or fresh vegetables.
That stage lasted only a few months, and was replaced with one that was, in Brynn’s opinion, far more disturbing.
At first, though, she was grateful whenever Sue Learner, her mother’s longtime friend from her women’s bowling league, came around with the proverbial casseroles and condolences. Sue was a former nurse practitioner; she had a nurturing, maternal air that Brynn welcomed. She poured out her grief to Sue, along with a flood of adolescent angst.
She finally figured out that Sue was hanging around the house not to comfort her late friend’s motherless children, but to seduce their widowed father.
Mom could never convince Daddy to go bowling, but somehow, Sue did. One of Brynn’s friends spotted them together late one night at Lucky Lanes. Brynn didn’t believe it, but she questioned her father—and he confessed.
That bombshell struck Brynn about twenty-four hours before he threw a far more explosive one: he was getting remarried. To Sue.
“It’s what your mother would want,” he said—so often that Brynn wondered if he was trying to convince himself.
Personally, she doubted her mother had drawn her last breath fervently hoping that her good friend would move into her house, and her bed, before the granite slab was even laid over her grave.
Brynn, who, until that tumultuous loss, had wondered how she would ever go away to college without becoming terribly homesick, lived for the day when she could leave.
Once she did, she rarely looked back.
“Are you okay, Brynn?” Garth asks, and she looks up to see him watching her over the rim of his coffee cup.
“Fine. Just tired.” For emphasis, she tacks on a yawn that starts out forced, but winds up the real thing.
“You didn’t sleep well?”
She shakes her head at the understatement. But then, Garth wouldn’t know she tossed and turned all night behind their closed master bedroom door.
A lifelong insomniac, he rarely joins her in bed before dawn. Some nights—like last night—he stays on campus working on his book until the wee hours. Others, he doesn’t reach the bedroom at all, presumably sitting up in the den either writing or watching television, occasionally snoozing in his easy chair there when she emerges in the morning.
Early in their marriage, Brynn got up often to check on Garth or coax him to bed. Whenever he obliged, she felt like she was trying to sleep alongside a restless animal desperate to escape its cage. She gave up, years ago, the notion of climbing into bed beside her husband every night.
“I guess it’s not surprising that you couldn’t get much sleep last night. After all, yesterday was a major milestone.” Garth tilts his head toward Caleb.
“Definitely a milestone,” she agrees. And not just in the way you think.
Last night, she should have climbed into bed warmed by the afterglow of her son’s big, successful day.
Instead, she was tormented by visions that jabbed like icy fingers into her consciousness, keeping sleep at bay, forcing her to relive in horrifying detail the unthinkable events that unfolded exactly a decade before…
It was Brynn who unwittingly set things in motion.
“Did you notice how bummed Rachel was at dinner tonight?” she asked Fee as they left the library at dusk after a scant ninety minutes of studying.
“Not really,” Fiona returned predictably, her thoughts most likely on her boyfriend—or herself. “Why?”
“She just seemed down, even when Puffy brought out the cake and we were all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.”
Puffy Trovato was the sorority housemother, a warm, maternal woman whose nickname came from her round physique. Nobody knew her real name, and she didn’t seem to mind.
Her specialty was triple-layer Devil’s Food Cake topped with whipped-cream frosting and a spray of fresh red roses—the sorority flower. She made it for every one of the sisters’ birthdays, serving it up with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and a maternal bear hug.
Then everyone would serenade the guest of honor, first with the birthday song, then with the official sorority song.
Tonight, watching Rachel pick at her cake before pushing the plate away and leaving the table, Brynn wanted to ask if everything was okay. Petite Rachel, with her free-spirited gypsy style and easy smile, was usually the most upbeat, laid-back sister in the house. Last year on her birthday, she stood on her chair and laughingly conducted the Happy Birthday chorus, then followed that up with a hammy, operatic solo of her own.
Rachel, pursuing a bachelor of fine arts degree, had been taking voice lessons since childhood. She had a vague ambition to one day have a career on a concert stage; she just hadn’t decided whether it should be at the Met, backed by a full orchestra, or at the Garden, backed by electric guitars.
“Maybe Rach is just feeling old, leaving her teens behind,” Brynn decided, and Fiona rolled her eyes.
“Oh, as if. Who wants to be stuck in their teens? I can’t wait to turn legal so I can officially hang out at the Rat with Pat.”
The Rat, of course, was short for The Rathskeller, the off-campus pub where Fiona’s older boyfriend tended bar. Her fake ID was useless here in town, where the locals had known her since she was born.
“I hate to break it to you, but legal’s going to take awhile,” Brynn informed her friend. “You’ve got to turn twenty before you can turn twenty-one, remember?”
“When I do, though, I’m throwing myself one hell of a birthday party at the Rat. And I know just who I’m inviting, too.”
“Already?”
“Yup, because by that time, graduation will be right around the corner and I’m going to be networking every chance I get.”
Accustomed to retrieving conversations that had been commandeered and steered off course by the self-centered Fiona, Brynn prodded, “In the meantime, what are we going to do about Rachel? Her birthday is today, and so far it seems to suck.”
“Well…I’ve got a bottle of decent champagne Pat gave me last weekend to celebrate the new semester.”
“You didn’t drink it with him?”
“Nah, he only drinks beer and bourbon. Come on, let’s go find Tildy and Cassie and surprise Rach with a little party.”
“At the sorority house?”
“Uh-uh, then we’d have to invite everyone else.” Fiona was currently feuding with more than one of their fellow sisters, as usual.
Anyway, the five of them were the closest, ironically because of how their birthdays fell. For some reason, the college systematically grouped incoming freshmen into dorms based on when they were born. Brynn, Fiona, Tildy, and Cassie all had October birthdays. Living in close quarters on the same hall, they formed a quick, intimate bond long before they pledged the same sorority.
Rachel, whose birthday was a month earlier, lived at the opposite end of the hall, but latched on to their foursome because, as she put it, “All those September Virgos down at my end are too conservative and unemotional. You Libras are much more easy-going and social.”
Brynn often popped up to point out that she was actually a Scorpio, born on the twenty-ninth. But Rachel, who was into astrology, told her she had more Libra traits—and that strong-willed control-freak Fiona had more Scorpio ones.
“We’
ll do this party for Rachel up at the Prom,” Fiona said in her usual case-closed way.
The Prom was local shorthand for promontory, and referred to an enormous, flat rock outcropping high in
the woods above the campus. Secluded despite relatively easy access via a winding trail, the sweeping vista plus a cluster of makeshift log benches made the
Prom a favorite Stonebridge party spot.
“Just so you know, I’m going to invite my sister, too, if she’s around when we get back to the house,”
Fiona added.
Brynn said nothing to that. She knew that Tildy was getting annoyed about Deirdre’s continued presence in the sorority house, and she wouldn’t be welcome tonight. She had been staying with Fee for over a week now, trying to get her life together after being thrown out of their parents’ house.
Luckily, Dee wasn’t hanging around that night to join the party and further complicate matters.
Only the five sorority sisters slipped out of the house and headed up the trail, armed with flashlights, the champagne, a portable CD player, and jackets or sweaters to ward off the autumn chill.
They gossiped and giggled as they ascended, four of them unaware that the fifth had concealed something lethal beneath her silver-gray and cardinal-red sorority sweater—and that when the night drew to its grim conclusion, only four Zeta Delta Kappa sisters would descend.
“Matilda Harrington,” Tildy says crisply into the telephone receiver.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” a low voice croons.
She quickly looks around to see if anyone is in earshot of her cubicle, lamenting as always the fact that her position as special events manager at the nonprofit doesn’t even warrant walls that reach all the way to the ceiling.
At least the coast is relatively clear this morning. It’s just past nine; most people aren’t at their desks yet. No sign of the perpetually lurking Ray Wilmington, even.
“Hey, there, gorgeous yourself,” she says, low, into the receiver. She pushes aside the yellow legal pad containing the guest list and RSVPs for her thirtieth birthday party in a few weeks. Plenty of time to go through those later. “When did you leave?”
“Oh, around three or so. I kissed you good-bye but you were snoring blissfully.”
That would be thanks to the tranquilizer Tildy had popped shortly before he showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep. Had she known he was coming, she’d have foregone the pill and relied on him instead to provide a distraction from…
From Happy Birthday…to me.
Tildy didn’t tell him about it, of course. That, or the drugs that were necessary when she grasped the full, horrifying implication of the greeting card.
Renewed uneasiness threads its way through her even as she protests lightly into the phone, “Hey, I don’t snore!”
“Oh, but you do. Delicate little snores, like a kitten taking a nap in the sun.”
If Ray said something like that, Tildy would immediately roll her blue eyes.
Funny how the difference in whether a flirtatious line comes across as hopelessly sappy or infinitely sexy lies in the speaker himself.
“So listen…What are you doing for lunch?” Tildy asks throatily, after casting another furtive glance around the office.
“You,” is his satisfying reply.
Smiling, she hangs up a moment later, then belatedly opens her date book to make sure today’s noon slot is free.
It isn’t.
She simply erases her lunch tasting meeting with the caterer who’s doing her birthday party. That can wait until tomorrow or the day after, she thinks, bending over the page to blow away the shreds of pink eraser.
Life has been so much easier ever since Tildy took to writing her appointments in pencil—a necessity when you’re living an active love life strictly on short notice.
She’s flipping through her Rolodex in search of the caterer’s phone number to cancel their lunch when a long shadow falls over her desk.
Ray Wilmington.
She knows it must be him before she even looks up to find his gaunt, black-bearded Abe Lincolnesque presence looming above her.
“What up?” he asks.
She snorts—aloud—at the ludicrous gangsta greeting spilling from the wimpiest, most white-bread human in all of Boston.
“God bless you,” he says politely.
She doesn’t bother to inform him that it wasn’t a sneeze, but a snort. Of laughter. At him.
“How are the tulips holding up, Matilda?”
Ah, the tulips.
She debates telling him that they wilted and she had to throw them away.
No, he might then decide to send her another bouquet.
Her desire to avoid that scenario is based less on the futile expense to his limited budget than it is on the inconvenience to her.
She’d have to go through the motions of thanking him again, and risk clogging the disposal with all those stems, or cutting herself on the shards of another useless glass vase.
Much less complicated to simply say, “The tulips are fine,” and resume her Rolodex perusal.
“Did your lunch meeting cancel on you?” Ray asks, and she sees that he’s peering over her shoulder at the newly erased twelve o’clock slot in her date book. “Because if you’re suddenly free, I know a great little place—”
“I’m not free,” she interrupts curtly, wishing he would just get lost.
“Then how about tomorrow?”
Presumptuous is the perfect adjective for Ray Wilmington, from his investigative interest in the details of her life to his assumption that she might be willing to share a precious free moment of it with the likes of him.
It isn’t just his looks that are off-putting—although Tildy’s certainly not the least bit drawn to him. He’s tall and dark, yes…though the handsome is conspicuously missing. Put a stovepipe hat on top of his prematurely thinning hair, and he really would be a dead ringer for old Honest Abe.
Abe Lincoln would hardly be Tildy’s type.
Especially if Abe was making a pitiful salary and living at home with his mother in Dedham.
But it’s more that Ray’s blatant interest in her, which began right from the day he started at work here in July, gives her the creeps. Her well-honed inner radar interprets him more as a potential stalker than potential suitor.
Ignoring his query about tomorrow, she tells him pointedly, “I’ve got some phone calls to make,” as she lifts the phone receiver again.
“All right, Waltzing Matilda.” Ray emits a self-satisfied chuckle at his own cleverness, apparently assuming he’s the first person ever to call her that. “I guess I’ll see you later, then.”
God, I hope not, she thinks grimly, dialing the caterer.
CHAPTER 4
Cedar Crest is divided into neighborhoods, each with its own distinct character.
On the outskirts of town, closest to the highway exit, is the ubiquitous commercial strip lined with fast food restaurants, chain hotels, supermarkets, discount stores like Wal-Mart and Target.
Then there’s Stonebridge campus itself, a forested, self-contained enclave connected by a series of winding paths that meander past brick dormitories and academic buildings, a new sports facility, sprawling athletic fields.
Adjacent to the campus is a grid of old streets with two-and three-story homes. Once, they were upper-middle-class family residences; today, most are student housing with bikes and furniture on porches, doors and windows perpetually ajar. Most could use a fresh coat of paint, a handyman, and some yard work. Those in best repair display Greek letters beneath the eaves.
Today’s middle class resides on the opposite end of town, where winding streets like Tamarack Lane reflect architecture from the first half of the twentieth century: primarily Tudor and Arts and Crafts. Here, yards are well kept. Late summer perennials are in bloom, local election signs are already springing up on lawns sprinkled with the season’s first fallen leaves. SUVs and station wagons sit in driveways. There ar
e wooden backyard swing sets and domed curbside mailboxes.
Both residential areas are dotted with churches, parks, and playgrounds; they’re bridged by the central business district, with Main Street running its length. Stores and restaurants spill onto the perpendicular numbered streets along the way.
There are no chains here, but plenty of locally owned bars, sub and pizza shops, and coffeehouses that cater to the college crowd. Those—along with a Laundromat, a coffee shop, and shops that sell books and postcards, T-shirts and Stonebridge memorabilia—are clustered on the north end, closest to campus.
The southern end is home to banks and realtors, cafés and pharmacies, a children’s clothing store, a couple of small markets, a yoga studio.
Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations is here, on the ground floor of a turreted mustard-yellow Victorian mansion that’s been converted to office space.
Brynn makes the fifteen-minute walk over from the bus stop, pushing Jeremy’s collapsible canvas umbrella stroller in the cool September sunshine.
“Come on, little guy, let’s go visit Auntie Fee,” she says with false cheer, and unstraps Jeremy from his stroller.
“No!”
“Yes.”
“No!” Jeremy squirms in her arms.
She’s forced to haul him up the wooden front steps, leaving the stroller behind. Well, if anyone wants to steal it, they’re welcome to it. It’s definitely the worse for wear after carting first Caleb, then Jeremy, around town.
Brynn really should pick up another one at Target before this one gives out altogether. But money is tight this month.
This month?
When isn’t it tight?
Well, it was less tight when they were a two-person household living on two incomes as opposed to a four-person household trying to make it on one.
She supposes she could always put Jeremy in day care and get some kind of job…
But she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to stay at home, fully available, the kind of mother she had.
Except that I’ll live to see my children graduate high school, and college, and get married, and have children of their own…
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