The check was the key. She lived too frugally to pay for the reunion and not attend. Or at least that was what she’d told herself, and any excuse that worked was a good one. She would rather spend a year on the campaign trail, a job she hated more than any she’d ever had, than have anyone discover the real reason she was there. She’d lived through humiliation: pity she couldn’t handle.
“You haven’t changed,” the woman gushed. “Not one bit.”
Cheryl struggled to connect a name with the face. Her family had moved to Santa Cruz herjunior year, which left her little more than a year and a half to form these lifelong bonds with her graduating class. Twenty years was a long time to remember pass-in-the-hall friends.
“You haven’t either,” Cheryl ventured.
The woman laughed. “Tell that to my bathroom scale. But I’ll bet you haven’t gained a pound. How do you do it?” Before Cheryl could answer, the woman added, “Do you have kids?”
“No,” Cheryl said without elaborating. Finally, she managed to catch the name tag on the woman’s ample breast. Lynn Littrell Sawyer. It didn’t help.
“I have five.” She brought up her hand to display five fingers, hitting her other hand and sending a piece of ice sailing from her highball glass. “I did okay with the first three. But everything went to hell in a handbasket after the twins.” She bent to retrieve the ice. “Max said he’s going to trade me in for a couple of twenties when I turn forty if I don’t do something to get the weight off. I told him there wasn’t one woman–let alone two–who was going to have anything to do with him once she discovered he was paying alimony to me and child support to five kids.” She grinned. “Shut him up real fast.”
Lynn put her hand on Cheryl’s arm. “So tell me about you. Still making those clay things?”
“I gave up sculpting when I got married.” She glanced toward the bar and saw a man looking back. Not the right one. Why was she doing this to herself? What did she hope to gain?
“No time, I’ll bet. I’m not surprised. A bunch of us girls got together a couple of months ago, kind of a prereunion thing, and Julie Thompson said you had to be the most famous person in our class. She said she saw a picture of you in USA Today at some party and that you were there with Tom Cruise.”
Cheryl knew the photograph. It was five years old. “I wasn’t actually with him, we–”
“What’s he like? Is he as handsome in person as he is in the movies? I read somewhere that he’s really short. Is that true?”
The moment captured by a photographer as she and Jerry entered an award ceremony at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center was as close as Cheryl had come to a conversation with Tom Cruise. But that wasn’t what Lynn, or others who asked such questions, wanted to hear. “He’s very nice,” she said.
“Is your husband parking the car?”
“Jerry isn’t with me,” she said, resigned to what would follow.
“Oh.” Lynn tried, but couldn’t hide a look of disappointment. “When I saw you I was hoping he’d be here, too. It’s not every day someone like me gets to meet someone like your husband.” As if realizing how insensitive she sounded, Lynn quickly added, “Of course seeing you again is wonderful, too.”
“Jerry and I are divorced. USA Today wrote about that, too. You must have missed it.”
Lynn’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. When did that happen?”
“Two years ago.”
She recovered enough to sputter, “How awful. Goodness, I’ll bet you were devastated.”
She had been, but not for the reason Lynn undoubtedly believed. The assumption was that no woman in her right mind would walk out on Jerry Walden, a man whose publicity photos made him out to be the Marlboro Man without the cigarette. Movie-star handsome, charismatic, powerful, rich, he looked as good in jeans as in a tuxedo, was adored by women over sixty, lusted after by their daughters and granddaughters, and drooled on and over by the stroller set.
But Jerry hadn’t walked out on her; the decision to divorce was hers. The telling clue to his own apathy over the marriage was how quickly he agreed, not even ordering a poll to see how it would affect his career until she’d made an appointment with an attorney.
When they’d met, Jerry was on a calculated search for a young, vibrant woman he could marry who could help jump-start his stalled political career. She had to be someone who could pull in the male voters without seeming threatening to their wives. Without knowing she was being tested, Cheryl aced the exam, even winning the approval of the political consultants who hovered around Jerry like gulls around a shrimp boat. Caught up in the frenetic excitement of his campaign for reelection and the heady ego of not only being needed but told so nightly, she mistook passion for love and ignored the inner voice that warned about the long fall from such heady heights.
She’d anticipated an adjustment period after the divorce, a time to settle into the cocoon of solitude. It never came. Sadly, she realized she’d been alone the entire time she and Jerry had been together.
Lynn’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, now I know why you came here tonight.” She smiled like a Jeopardy! contestant who knew the final answer. “I told Margo I thought it was strange that you and Andrew were both coming to this reunion when neither of you have ever come before.” She moved in closer. “Who told you he would be here?”
“No one,” she answered truthfully, feeling a momentary sense of violation at having her motive so easily exposed.
“But you were hoping.”
“Of course,” she admitted. “Isn’t that the reason we all come to these things? It’s an opportunity to see old friends.” She couldn’t tell if her attempt at casualness had worked and wasn’t sure if she cared. Did it really matter if a woman she hadn’t seen in twenty years and would likely never see again knew she’d come to the reunion to find the man who’d broken her heart and never bothered to find out if she’d survived?
Lynn swung around to study the crowd. “I saw him by the pool talking to Joan earlier.”
“Joan Beatty?”
“It’s Joan Fisher now–or at least it was last week. She’s either on her fourth or fifth husband. I lost track at three. Wait till you see her. She’s every woman’s nightmare–buns of steel with boobs to match. I hate her. I’m going to take charge of the invitations next reunion and make sure hers gets lost.”
Cheryl laughed harder than the comment deserved. She needed a drink, something to hold in her hands beside her purse to keep them busy, something to put to her mouth to bridge awkward silences, something to bolster her flagging courage. “And she says such nice things about you.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet she does.”
Cheryl’s gaze settled on a man standing at the bar with his back to her. He was the right height, weight, and hair color but was wearing a plaid jacket she knew Andrew would never wear. She should have questioned knowing this: seventeen years was a long time. People changed. Knowing Andrew as she had, having him so integrated into her mind and heart that thoughts of him still intruded into the most ordinary moments of her day-to-day life, was a burden she had come there to shed.
Slowly, she began to sense a change in the air around her. It was as if it had grown heavy, sending gentle, insistent ripples charged with electricity against her skin. Unbelievably, she was still intune to Andrew’s presence, could still feel him before seeing him, was still drawn to him without a word being spoken. The feeling was so compelling, so powerful, so deeply familiar that she knew she’d been right about seeing him again. It was the only way to find a way to forget him.
“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” Andrew said softly.
In a room echoing with talking and laughter and raised voices, Cheryl heard the whispered words as if he had shouted them.
She turned.
He was no longer the boy she’d held frozen in the recesses of her mind, but a man she had not accurately imagined. His lean body and confident posture, the premature wrinkles on his forehead and at the corners of his
eyes, the threads of gray in jet-black hair were all expected. What she hadn’t foreseen, what nearly stole her composure, was the pain and loneliness she saw in his eyes and in the unguarded way he looked at her.
“I almost didn’t,” she said.
Moving to Cheryl’s side to turn what had become a one-on-one into a triangle, Lynn said, “Twenty years seems to be a magical number. The reunion planner who helped us said we could expect a lot of people who’d never attended.”
Andrew studied Lynn. “Lynn Littrell? Didn’t we have chemistry together?”
She nodded, a smile showing she was pleased that he’d remembered.
“You married Max Sawyer.”
“Eighteen years this October. And five kids,” she added. “Have you seen him yet?”
“Only for a second. He was looking for you.”
“Really?” She glanced around the room. “I wonder why.” Obviously torn between going and staying, she said, “I guess I’d better find out what he wants.”
When Lynn was gone, Cheryl said, “Max wasn’t looking for her.”
Andrew gave her a questioning look. “What makes you think he wasn’t?”
“Because I know you.” The simple truth was an acknowledgment that cut through the years. For a time after Andrew left her she’d managed to convince herself that love wasn’t singular, that the belief two people were destined for each other and no one else was poetic fantasy.
When she married Jerry and still dreamed of Andrew, she’d dismissed those dreams with the reasoning that a first love was never forgotten. Then, after the divorce, when she was alone again and found herself looking for Andrew in every man she dated, she accepted that he would always be a part of her. Acceptance gave an illusion of peace…. until the invitation arrived. She knew then that she would never have any real peace until what had once been between her and Andrew was resolved.
“I heard you were divorced,” he said.
“I heard you never married,” she countered.
He looked at her, his gaze a connection. “A long time ago I made a mistake. I’ve had to live with the consequences.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“Are you saying you don’t?”
“How could I possibly know what consequences you’ve lived with?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But then, I didn’t come here to listen to how hard your life has been.”
“What did you come for?”
“An apology. Better yet, an explanation–one that I can believe this time.”
“You deserve more than me telling you how sorry I am,” he said with heart-stopping humility. “And I don’t know how to explain something I no longer understand myself.”
“Why did you come here tonight?” She fought to maintain her emotional footing, to remember the pain he’d so easily inflicted on her, to remind herself that if she let him, he would have the power to hurt her that way again.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Just me?”
“Just you.”
In the background she heard someone announce that dinner was being served. Panic set in at the thought of spending the next hour making small talk between bites of salad and prime rib. Cheryl glanced at the double doors leading to the dining room. “Do you want to stay?”
He shook his head. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere we can be alone to talk.”
She didn’t know anyplace. She’d only been back to Santa Cruz twice since her parents moved sixteen years ago. So much had changed since the earthquake, she hardly recognized what had once been favorite haunts. “The Last Wave?”
“Closed down a couple of years ago.”
“Wilson’s?”
“Never reopened after the earthquake.”
“You choose.”
“What about my place?”
“You live here?”
“Twenty minutes away.”
Her immediate thought was to say no. But then she questioned her reasoning. Why not his place? “I’ll follow you.”
She turned toward the door. He put his hand in the small of her back. The casual, intimate gesture stole her breath. She stopped and stepped away from him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not going with you for anything but conversation.”
“It’s me, Cheryl,” he said softly. “I know why you’re going with me. And no matter how much I wish it were different, I know what to expect.”
If so, he was a step ahead of her.
2
CHERYL LEANED AGAINST THE RAILING that surrounded the small, flagstone deck at the back of Andrew’s house and tasted the Chardonnay he had poured for her. She stared at the ocean from the vantage point of being on top of a fifteen-foot cliff, took a deep breath, and let a sense of homecoming fill her mind. She knew this beach; it was one she and Andrew had come to when they wanted to escape the crowds at Santa Cruz. Every memory they’d created here was a good one. Nothing painful had happened that she could summon to use as a shield if she felt herself slipping too close to forgetting the years between then and now.
The beach beckoned. She could almost feel the warm grains of sand between her toes. She knew exactly how the water would feel as it hit her legs,how free she would feel if she dove into a wave and released herself to its power. From the day her father had moved the family from the mountains of Idaho to the beaches of Santa Cruz and she saw the ocean for the first time, she knew she’d found her spiritual home.
Andrew came to stand beside her. “I can see it still holds you the way it used to.” He put his hand on the railing next to hers, close but not touching, and turned to face her.
She both loved and hated that he knew her so well. “How long have you lived here?” More than that, she wanted to know why he lived there. Why this house on this beach?
“Twelve years, off and on. When my grandfather died I wound up with a great deal of money that no one knew he had.”
“Your grandfather was still alive all the time you were in foster care?”
“He and my mother were estranged. Or at least that’s the way the lawyer put it. Seems he didn’t know I existed until the detective I hired to find my mother showed up on his doorstep.”
Andrew had refused even to consider the possibility of looking for his mother when Cheryl had suggested it. What could have happened to make him change his mind? “Did you find her?”
“There was nothing to find. She died of a drug overdose when I was two.”
“What about your father?”
“He could have been any one of a dozen men she hung around with at the time, or a stranger passing through with drugs and willing to trade for sex.”
She winced at the flat retelling of something that must have devastated him at the time. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t what I’d hoped to find, but I’ve learned to live with it.”
“Did you get a chance to know your grandfather?” She told herself that she was asking as an old friend, nothing more, that she was interested more out of politeness than caring.
Andrew let out a short, harsh laugh. “He didn’t want anything to do with me. At least not while he was alive. I guess it satisfied some hidden sense of family to leave his money to me when he died. But then it was either me or the local men’s club if I decided I didn’t want it.”
“Are you happy?” This came from curiosity and a raw need to believe he hadn’t walked away unscathed.
“I have my moments.” He turned to look at her. “What about you?”
“Most of the time.” The truth would make her too vulnerable.
They slipped into an awkward silence. Cheryl turned her attention to a man racing a small boy across the sand. They were headed toward the stairs that led to the path beside Andrew’s house. Laughing and out of breath when they r
eachedthe landing, they paused for one last look at the ocean.
“I don’t wanna go yet,” the boy said, tugging on the man’s hand, trying to lead him back to the water.
“Mom’s waiting for us.”
“She won’t care,” the boy coaxed. “She likes us to have fun. She told me so.”
“How’s this for fun?” He reached down and lifted the boy, swinging him around and up to sit on his shoulders.
Not trusting herself to look at Andrew, Cheryl watched the man climb the stairs, the boy hanging on to his ears as he twisted to have one last look at the ocean. “I always imagined you with children,” she said.
“And I thought for sure that you would have a houseful of your own by now. You and Jerry must have been happy in the beginning. Why didn’t you–” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the railing, staring at the palate of oranges, pinks, and reds coloring the horizon. “Forget that. What happened between you and Jerry is none of my business.”
Jerry had told her up front that children were a part of the package. He insisted he wanted them even more than she did. Only later did she discover he wanted them for completely different reasons. Along with producing an heir, he saw the media attention and photo opportunities that having children would bring. She saw an end to herloneliness. As disheartened as she was when all their physical and medical efforts to conceive failed, she was glad the end of the marriage was uncomplicated and she could walk away without ties.
“I do have kids in a way,” she said. “They don’t go home with me, but I get to see them almost every day.”
“You’re a teacher?”
“A social worker with a private agency. We’re funded by endowments and a trust.”
The man stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to face the ocean. “Say good-bye,” he told the boy.
“We’ll be back,” he said instead, leaning over and pressing his cheek to the side of the man’s face.
“I know how he feels,” Cheryl said, anger rising in her like bubbles in a pot of boiling water.
Another Summer Page 2