by Lauren Layne
“Oh, Claire,” Audrey announced, looking at Claire’s wrist. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s not set to the right time,” Claire pointed out.
“The actual minute’s not important right now,” Naomi insisted. “It’s about the moment.”
Audrey nodded. “Absolutely. It marks phase two of our fresh start.”
“What was phase one?” Claire asked with a smile.
“Us figuring out if we could be friends,” Audrey said as though this were obvious.
She had a point. After that day in Central Park with these ladies, Naomi had wondered if maybe it was a fluke. A strange little bubble of reality fueled by grief and anger and the need to best the man who’d bested them.
No, not bested. Fooled.
But in the past couple of months, Naomi had realized that as different as the three of them were, they had something in common other than having slept with Brayden. They were strong. Resilient. Most important of all, they liked one another. Naomi had never made much time for female friends. Sure, she counted Deena as a friend. She was close with a bunch of her senior team. But for Naomi, work had always come first. Above romance, and above friendship. But these women gave her hope . . . gave her the sense that maybe she could be something more than a girl boss and ballbuster.
“So what’s phase two?” Claire asked, still looking slightly skeptical.
“Moving on. Naomi’s got a head start. Her office is moving. She’s moving. She’s got a date—”
“Business meeting,” Naomi corrected with exasperation.
“Whatever. You’re moving forward.”
Am I?
Naomi’s thoughts flicked back to 517 Park Avenue, to Oliver Cunningham’s glacier-blue eyes. To people who didn’t care how much money you had but how old it was. People who, even now, Naomi was letting make her feel inferior. Less.
And then, as though Fate was looking down on her and reading her very thoughts, Deena knocked on the door and popped her head in. “Sorry to interrupt. Ms. Gromwell from that Park Avenue building is on line one. Says it’s a pressing matter. Her words.”
Huh. Well, at least they wanted to give her the news over the phone instead of reject her over email. It was more than she was expecting.
“Give me one sec,” she told her friends, leaning over her desk and picking up her phone. “Naomi Powell.”
“Ms. Powell? This is Victoria Gromwell, from 517 Park Avenue. I’m calling to check on your availability next week. We know it’s last-minute, but the board is hoping to make a decision by the following weekend.”
It took Naomi a moment to register the woman’s words, and when she did, her response wasn’t exactly eloquent. “What?”
There was a long moment of silence, and Naomi heard it loud and clear as disapproval, but she didn’t care.
“You were approved for the second round of interviews,” Ms. Gromwell said stiffly, as though she herself couldn’t imagine why. “There are only three remaining contenders for the apartment, and you’re among them.”
“Oh, well . . .” Naomi tried to sort this out in her head, but it didn’t make sense. The only person to interview her in the first round had been Oliver Cunningham, and there was no way he’d have put her through to the final round, except . . . apparently, he had.
Naomi opened her mouth to explain the misunderstanding, that she already had a place to live.
But Audrey’s words came back to her.
You’re moving forward.
She was trying. She wanted to. But if her reaction to Oliver Cunningham this week had taught her anything, it was that maybe one couldn’t fully move on until they’d faced the past.
For her mom’s sake. And her own.
“I can make any time next week work,” Naomi said without bothering to check her calendar. Whatever meetings she had could be rescheduled.
Because Naomi was on the cusp of achieving something her mom had spent her entire life wishing for:
An apology from Walter Cunningham—Oliver’s womanizing, heartless father who made even Brayden Hayes look like one of the good ones.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3
Oliver opened the door to his father’s apartment and immediately ducked as an egg went flying over his head and into the hallway.
He winced and looked at Janice Reid, his father’s caretaker. Janice gave him a reassuring smile. “Hard-boiled.”
“Ah.” Oliver had figured. His father had been on a kick with the hard-boiled egg requests lately. That, and celery and peanut butter. It was as though the sixty-one-year-old Walter was channeling his grade school self.
Oliver supposed that made sense. The nature of Alzheimer’s meant that his father’s memories were scattered, his place in time sometimes in the right decade, sometimes not. Why not go back to childhood? Lord knew Oliver wished he could these days.
Oliver retrieved the egg from the hall. The shell had cracked but luckily, having landed on the plush red carpet, hadn’t made a mess. He reentered the apartment, setting his briefcase by the door, and dropped the egg into the garbage can. Oliver looked over to the table where Janice sat with his father, plucking an egg from his hand before that, too, was hurled against the door.
“Walter,” she said in a calm, no-nonsense voice. “You said you wanted hard-boiled eggs. Have you changed your mind?”
Walter scooted down in his chair and crossed his arms, looking six years old instead of six decades.
From the first days of Walter’s diagnosis, the doctors had warned Oliver that the disease affected everyone differently and that dramatic personality changes were not uncommon. Oliver thought he’d been prepared. Experiencing those changes, however, had turned out to be vastly different from hearing about them.
Oliver’s father had been under the grips of Alzheimer’s for nearly three years, and Oliver still struggled to reconcile the often surly, tantrum-inclined old man with the strong, rigid role model of his youth.
“Walter,” Janice asked again, her voice patient. “Will you please take a bite of the egg you asked for?”
Walter reached out and picked up an already-peeled egg and ate half of it in a single bite. “I like to peel it myself.”
“You asked me to peel this one for you, but I’ll be sure to leave it for you next time.”
She didn’t add, Don’t you remember? Both Janice and Oliver knew Walter didn’t remember.
Walter glanced over, finally seeming to register Oliver’s presence. “Son.”
“Hey, Dad,” Oliver said, pleased that despite egg-gate, it was one of those increasingly rare moments when his father recognized him. “How’s it going?”
“She peeled my egg,” Walter said, pointing accusingly at Janice.
“I know. Nice of her, wasn’t it?” Oliver loosened his tie and shrugged out of his suit jacket. “You ready to watch the Yankees game with me?”
Not too long ago, they’d have added a jigsaw puzzle to the evening routine, maybe collaborated on a crossword puzzle. In the early stages, the doctors had encouraged anything to keep his brain focused on the task at hand, but as the disease had progressed, the puzzles had gone by the wayside. Jigsaw pieces inevitably were pushed to the ground in a fit of irritation, crossword puzzles a thing of the past.
Walter was already scraping back his chair. “They’d better do better than last night. Jeter’s been in a slump.”
Oliver nodded agreeably, despite the fact that Derek Jeter hadn’t played in several seasons, much less last night. If Oliver had learned anything over the past couple of years, it was to pick his battles, and that correcting his father was pointless and frustrating for everyone.
“Rough day?” Oliver asked Janice quietly after his father had ambled over to the TV and settled into his easy chair. It was the type of leather recliner that Oliver’s mother would never have allowed in her perfectly decorated home. But Margaret Cunningham had passed away four years earlier. Just in time to miss her husband’s descent into dementia and the addition o
f the dreaded recliner.
“Not so bad,” Janice said, clearing away Walter’s plate and taking it to the sink. “The egg throwing was the first bad moment. We had a good walk. He’s been into dogs lately, so we killed a good hour at the dog park, just watching.”
Oliver smiled at the irony. Growing up, all Oliver had wanted was a dog. But despite the fact that he’d asked for one four Christmases in a row and every birthday during the same period, his mother had literally shuddered and ignored the request altogether. His father had impatiently declared dogs “a waste of valuable time.” To this day, Oliver had never owned a dog.
It occurred to him that as an independent thirty-year-old with his own apartment and free will, he could certainly get one now, but caring for his dad was just about all he could manage at the moment. Thank God for Janice. Oliver didn’t know what he would do without the dependable live-in caretaker.
Well, no. That wasn’t true. He did know . . . he’d have to put his father in a home.
And eventually, it would probably come to that. So far his father hadn’t been prone to the violent outbursts often associated with his disease—a particularly alarming development for male patients with Alzheimer’s, given that they tended to be bigger and stronger than their female caretakers.
Janice had been easily able to manage the worst of Walter’s tantrums, but if they progressed beyond throwing hard-boiled eggs, Oliver knew that even the sturdy Janice would be no match for the six-foot Walter.
For now, though, their system worked. Janet lived in the second bedroom of his father’s apartment, and Oliver paid her very well to cook, clean, and keep an eye on Walter.
She took off two days a week, during which Oliver took over watching his dad, and whenever possible, Oliver stopped by after work to give Janice some time to herself.
“I was going to go over to my sister’s for an hour or so,” Janice said as she washed Walter’s plate. “You want me to wait until you have a chance to grab dinner?”
“Nah, I’ll order a pizza or something. Who knows, maybe it’ll revive his pepperoni phase from last month.”
She smiled. “I swear, every time, it was like he never had a piece of pizza before. His happiness was a joy to watch.”
Oliver smiled at the recent memory, though he opted not to mention that pizza hadn’t exactly been a common occurrence in the Cunningham household while Margaret was alive. His mother had been a staunch believer in the merits of a home-cooked, balanced meal. Although, Oliver secretly thought that by balanced his mother had actually meant bland.
A few minutes later, Janice let herself out, and Oliver had just placed the pizza order and settled on the couch to watch the game with his dad when there was a knock at the door.
Walter didn’t even look away from the screen.
With an assessing glance to make sure his father wasn’t on the verge of some tantrum or destructive fit, Oliver recognized that Walter was completely lost inside his head and seemed perfectly content to stay in his chair.
Oliver stood and opened the door to Ruth Butler, his long-time neighbor and the onetime best friend of his mother.
“Hi,” he said, smiling at the petite woman as he bent to kiss her cheek. “Want to come in?”
“Oh, no, dear. You know I don’t care for televised athletics,” Ruth said, folding her hands in front of her as she glanced toward the TV. “How’s Walter this evening?”
Oliver shrugged. “An okay night, all things considered.”
“I stopped by earlier with some muffins, but he and Janice must have gone out. I’ll bring them by later, now that I know that you’re here. I didn’t want to leave them by the door. You know how Chantzy gets.”
“I do.” Chantzy was the aging corgi who lived next door and had once devoured a plate of cookies Ruth left on the floor outside the Cunninghams’ door.
“Now, Oliver,” Ruth said, using the same tone she’d used when he was a boy and had gone sprinting through the living room, disturbing Ruth and Margaret’s teatime. “I know that you’ve been very busy at work.”
“No more than usual,” he said, leaning on the door, knowing she didn’t actually give a crap about his architectural firm. “What’s up?”
“The board meeting this afternoon . . .”
Oliver groaned. “I missed it.”
“Yes, dear.”
“You know, anytime you guys want to kick me off that thing . . .”
He gave her his best grin, and she gave him a reproving look. “A Cunningham has been on the co-op board of 517 for three generations now. And with your father not able—”
“Yeah,” he said, just a touch curtly. “I know. What’d I miss?”
“We took the final vote on 2B.”
“Right. Who’d you decide on?”
“Well, nobody, yet. It was a tie.”
He silently groaned, realizing now why she was here. Oliver, and his missing vote, was the tiebreaker.
“All right. Who am I voting for?” he asked, knowing Ruth had strong opinions about most everything, and the residents of her building were the top of her list.
Her lips thinned. “Well, I’m sure I can’t tell you who to choose. And I’d have thought, with you living next door to the vacant apartment, you’d have a little more interest . . .”
“Who are my options?” he asked, suddenly envisioning a beer along with his pizza and puzzle downstairs in his apartment. Maybe a couple of beers.
“Well, there’s that nice couple from Connecticut. The Newmans. And then that young girl. The redhead.”
Oliver’s gaze had been scanning over Ruth’s head, hoping the delivery guy had made it in record time to give Oliver an out from the conversation, but his attention snapped back to the older woman. “The redhead? That Naomi chick?”
Gray eyebrows lifted in censure.
“Woman,” he amended. “She was in the final running?”
“Yes, because you put her through,” Ruth said.
“I guess I did,” he murmured. The feisty redhead had passed through his thoughts quite a bit the past couple of days, in a sort of nagging, what is with her kind of way.
If he were being honest, he’d approved her to the next round mostly to mess with the elderly co-op board. As the youngest member by at least thirty years, he liked to do his part to push their boundaries a bit.
“I didn’t think she’d make it to the last stage,” he said. From what he’d seen, the woman had been far too volatile for the staid board, who preferred mild mannered, gray haired, and old moneyed.
Naomi Powell checked none of those boxes.
“Yes, well, one of the other candidates pulled out. A larger apartment on the Upper West Side opened up.” She sniffed, to indicate her thoughts on the other side of the park. “Another had some questionable business partners. And though I can’t say I understand the appeal of Ms. Powell’s little jewelry business, there’s no arguing that it’s quite successful. But don’t you think it’s odd for someone so young to apply here?”
Oliver shrugged and glanced over his shoulder to make sure his father was still sitting peacefully in his chair. Ruth was astute enough to pick up on the gesture.
“I won’t keep you. Just give me your vote, and I’ll let you and Walter get back to your evening,” Ruth said with a kind smile. Stuffy as the old woman could be, he knew that Ruth cared for him. Not Walter so much. Ruth had been too close with Oliver’s mother to have any fond feelings toward the man who’d made Margaret’s life hell.
Still, Oliver appreciated that for the most part Ruth hadn’t held Walter’s past sins—and there had been many—against him after he’d been diagnosed.
“Remind me one more time of my options. It’s the redhead—Ms. Powell—or . . .”
“The Newmans,” Ruth said with no small amount of exasperation that he didn’t take this as seriously as the rest of the board. “They are a delightful older couple from Connecticut, empty nesters, looking to live out their golden years here in the heart of t
he city.”
There was no mistaking the change in tone when Ruth spoke of the Newmans compared with Naomi. She may respect Naomi’s right to apply, but clearly the Newmans were the appropriate choice.
“Ah, I guess . . .”
It was on the tip of Oliver’s tongue to make the choice of least resistance. The Newmans would be just like everyone else here. They’d offer unsolicited but amusing dating advice, would enjoy the excruciatingly boring holiday party deemed mandatory for “community development,” and would probably have strong opinions over the fact that he didn’t get the paper version of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times delivered to his front door like everyone else. Oliver also knew that no amount of explaining would ever convince someone over the age of fifty that the digital and paper version were the same thing.
On the other hand, they’d never play their music too loud, would never bring home obnoxious douche bags, and given their own advanced age, would likely be understanding when Walter slipped out into the hallways wearing only his underwear as he was prone to do if Oliver or Janice left him alone for even a moment.
“Wait, you said it was a tie,” Oliver said, belatedly registering what that meant. It meant that half the board had voted for Naomi, which was a surprise. Oliver would have thought the Newmans would have been a shoo-in. He knew these people. They’d practically raised him. And the fact that half had been willing to let in someone as young and “un-pedigreed” as Naomi Powell surprised him.
“Yes, well.” Ruth’s lips pressed together. “I don’t mean to be crude, but many of the male members of the board let themselves be persuaded by Ms. Powell’s brash looks.”
Brash. It wasn’t a word he’d use to describe her. She’d been dressed conservatively; there’d been no tattoos or too-short skirts or unusual piercings. Then he pictured the fire in her eyes, every bit as bright as her hair. Yeah, she was . . . something.
Ruth looked pointedly at her watch. “Oliver, dear, I really need your answer. Whomever you choose will be fine.”
He meant to say the Newmans. To give Ruth the answer he knew she wanted, knowing it would be easier for everyone, and yet . . .