Swallowing her uneasiness, Melissa smiled back. She never knew how serious he was when he made jokes like that. If he was looking for a sugar mommy, she sure wasn’t it. Her salary was a hell of a lot higher than his, but she had expenses. And he got tips.
She consoled herself with the understanding that he came in contact with dozens of really rich women every week. He wouldn’t have chosen her if he’d wanted a girlfriend with a huge bank account. And he wouldn’t have offered to drive her all the way to Jill’s house if he didn’t at least like her.
Of course he liked her.
And she wasn’t going to think about real estate for the rest of the drive.
THEY REACHED JILL’S HOUSE at a little before noon, right around when Melissa would have been phoning Jill to announce her imminent arrival at the bus terminal. She’d lived in New York City long enough that the suburban tranquility of her sister’s neighborhood unnerved her. All those fat maple and sycamore trees, their leaves burning with fall color. All those shrubs. All those tidy lawns. All that sky. She felt as if she’d made a wrong turn and wound up on the set of a sit-com, or maybe a Disney movie. She half-expected plump little bluebirds to flit out of the foliage, trailing satin ribbons.
She’d grown up in a neighborhood much like this, so it ought to feel like home. But as she pointed out Jill’s driveway to Luc, she felt distinctly like a guest. Especially because she had Luc with her.
She hoped her family would like him. He really was likeable. He’d freaking driven her here. How much nicer could you get? Even though he’d admitted as they’d approached New London that he loved driving and didn’t get to sit behind the wheel often enough in New York, and if they hadn’t made this trip he probably would have borrowed Alan’s car anyway and just cruised up and down the Henry Hudson Parkway. Maybe someday, if he ever got sick of doing hair—an eventuality he couldn’t imagine right now—he’d become a cab driver.
A Mercedes was parked in the driveway—Doug’s car—and Luc pulled up behind it and yanked on the parking brake, which gave a metallic croak. Melissa hoped it held.
Luc didn’t seem overly awed by Jill’s house. It wasn’t spectacular, just a nice, ordinary colonial with a farmer’s porch. Three bedrooms, finished basement, deck off the back. Pretty much what you’d expect a high school teacher and his family to live in.
They strolled up the walk to the porch. Melissa rang the bell and gave Luc a reassuring smile. He didn’t look as if he needed reassurance. His stance was relaxed, his jacket open and his hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans. Maybe she should have told him to wear khakis—although if he owned a pair, she’d never seen them. Every time they’d gotten together, he’d had been wearing either blue jeans or black jeans. Or no jeans at all.
Jill opened the door, and her smile faded into a near-grimace as she took in the couple on her porch. Then she forced her mouth back into a smile. Melissa could see her cheek muscles exerting themselves. “Melissa!” she said. “I thought you were taking the bus.”
“Hello to you, too,” Melissa retorted, then swallowed her resentment. Jill looked like shit, her cheeks wan and drawn, her hair gathered into a scrunchy at the nape of her neck, her long-sleeve white T-shirt stained by something pale and pink. A splash of wine, Melissa thought hopefully. She could use a glass of wine. Or a margarita, but that stain definitely didn’t say margarita, and Jill’s pinched appearance implied that nothing even remotely festive was being consumed inside the house.
Jill’s gaze shifted to Luc and her smile grew brittle.
“This is Luc Brondo,” Melissa introduced him. “Luc, this is my sister, Jill.”
Doug abruptly materialized in the doorway next to Jill. Unlike her, he didn’t look bedraggled. But then, he never looked bedraggled. He had on a cotton polo shirt—complete with a horseback-riding polo player stitched onto the chest pocket—and pleated twill slacks. His hair was parted and his eyes—eyes that had undergone a Lasik procedure; Melissa wondered if the colleague who’d done the job had charged him for it, not that he’d have had any difficulty coming up with the money—were bright. He didn’t even attempt a smile. “Who the hell is this?” he asked, jabbing his index finger in Luc’s direction.
“And that’s my charming brother, Doug,” she said to Luc. To Doug, she said, “He was kind enough to drive me here.”
“Great. That was very nice of him. Maybe he can wait for you at Starbucks until we’re done here.”
“Doug,” Jill scolded. “He’s not going to wait at Starbucks. He’s Melissa’s friend. Please come in,” she belatedly welcomed Luc. “I’m sorry, but things are a little frazzled here.”
“Things are not frazzled,” Doug argued, although he stepped back, allowing Melissa and Luc to enter the house. “This isn’t a party, Mel. You weren’t supposed to bring a date.”
“He’s not—I mean—”
“I could leave,” Luc offered.
“No, no, of course not,” Jill said, transforming from stressed-out sister to gracious hostess. She hooked her hand around Luc’s elbow and ushered him further into the hallway. “It’s just that we’re in the middle of a family crisis.”
Melissa had figured something was up, given the way Jill had demanded her presence in Massachusetts that weekend. “What crisis?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Jill and Doug said in unison, then exchanged guilty glances.
Before Melissa could question them, she heard a chorus of giggles accompanied by the squeak of sneakers on hardwood. “Aunt Melissa’s here!” the twins shrieked as they barreled into the hallway.
Finally, some relatives behaving normally.
Melissa hunkered down and gathered one twin in each arm. “Madison!” she greeted Mackenzie.
“No, I’m Madison,” Madison shrieked.
“You’re Madison? Then are you—? No, you can’t be Mackenzie!” It was a game she played with the girls, one they hadn’t yet tired of. She was pretty good at telling them apart, but she always pretended to mix them up and they had a grand time setting her straight, snickering and chattering and jumping up and down with excess energy.
“Your hair looks so pretty, Aunt Melissa,” Mackenzie said, once the which-twin-are-you game wound down.
Mackenzie was now Melissa’s favorite family member, followed closely by Madison, who echoed Mackenzie’s compliment. Jill and Doug could screw themselves. She’d stick with the girls, who knew a beautiful hairstyle when they saw one. “Do you like it? Thanks!” She shot Luc a grateful smile, then straightened up and presented him. “These are my nieces, Mackenzie and Madison. I’m not sure which one is which.”
They erupted in fresh peals of laughter and high-pitched explanations of who they were. Luc seemed mystified.
Melissa turned her attention back to her siblings. The hall had gotten quite crowded while she’d been hunkered down. Gordon had joined the mob, and he even managed to give Melissa a brotherly hug—more than her own brother had done. Noah lurked at the end of the hall, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the runner rug and looking bashful. Brooke and Abbie hovered in the arched doorway to the family room, their gazes fixed on Luc. Not that Melissa blamed them. He was the most interesting thing to look at in the hallway, far more interesting than the mail table and the mirror and the stairway up to the second floor. Much more beautiful than her new hairdo.
“All right. I’m sorry, but we have to talk.” Jill clamped her hand on Melissa’s shoulder—one of Melissa’s great regrets in life was that now that they were all done growing, Jill had wound up taller than her—and steered her toward the powder room. Melissa cast a backward glance at Luc, but he was being led down the hall by the twins, each one clinging to one of his hands as they delivered him to their mother and both of them yakking at him nonstop.
The powder room was crowded enough with Melissa and Jill in it, but somehow Doug wedged himself in, too, closing the door and shutting them inside. He took a post by the pedestal sink, Jill stood in front of the toilet, and
if Melissa suffered from claustrophobia she would have started screaming. She was tempted to scream, anyway, just on principle.
“You shouldn’t have brought that man here,” Jill said in a near-whisper.
“Well, duh. You’ve made that pretty clear.” Melissa backed against the wall to give herself a little room and bumped her foot on the wicker trash can. The air smelled flowery, thanks to the air freshener plugged into the wall socket beside the sink. “You said this was a family party.”
“I never used the word party,” Jill argued.
“And he’s not family,” Doug pointed out.
“Gordon and Brooke are here,” Melissa defended herself, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater. The density of the bodies in the room made her uncomfortably warm.
“Well, duh,” Doug mimicked her. “We’re married to them. That makes them family.”
“Which is neither here nor there,” Jill said, using her peace-maker voice. Obviously, there was no time for arguments. They had a crisis. “This is an awkward situation, Mel,” Jill went on. “Mom and Dad’ll be here any minute, and—”
“So what’s going on?” Melissa asked.
“Nothing,” Jill and Doug chorused, this time deliberately avoiding each other’s gazes.
“Oh, come on!” Melissa heard the whine in her voice, the wail of the baby sister getting ignored. They used to leave her out of their games, out of their trips to the movies or the mall. They’d soared into adolescence years ahead of her, abandoning her to the games and toys they could no longer be bothered with once they’d succumbed to hormones. She’d always felt like a stupid afterthought of her parents. Her parents insisted she was very much wanted, but that was what parents were supposed to say. She was the accident, the oops, destined to be left behind by her older siblings.
Now Jill and Doug were leaving her behind again. They knew something she didn’t, and if she had to be trapped in this tiny powder room with the two of them, inhaling that cloying lilac scent while the toilet paper roll poked her hip, they’d damned well better not treat her like a baby. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Jill eyed Doug, who shook his head. It wouldn’t take much effort for Melissa to kick his shin. She was wearing ankle boots, not as pointed as Luc’s cowboy boots, but she could probably leave a small bruise. Or at the very least a smudge of dirt on his crisp khakis.
“None of us is supposed to know anything,” Jill said.
“But you and Doug know something and I don’t.”
“But we’re not supposed to.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Doug grumbled.
“What?” Melissa bellowed.
Doug and Jill both looked at the door, as if they expected the rest of the party to storm into the bathroom to see what the shouting was all about. After a moment, Jill sighed and said, “Mom didn’t want to tell me, but I said I wouldn’t have everyone over to the house unless she did. She swore me to secrecy.”
“But you told Doug,” Melissa said.
“And I was sworn to secrecy,” Doug informed her.
“Fine. Swear me to secrecy, too.” Melissa held up her right hand, willing to take an oath.
“They’re getting a divorce,” Jill said.
“Who?”
“Mom and Dad.”
“What?” Impossible. Absolutely impossible. Not her parents. Not Ruth and Richard Bendel. No way.
“They wanted us all here so they could tell us in person,” Jill explained.
“Without any boy-toys to share the celebration,” Doug added dryly.
“He’s not a boy-toy,” Melissa snapped. “He’s my age.” At least she thought he was. Next time they had loud sweaty sex, she’d ask him.
In the meantime, she had to deal with the notion that her parents, the two steadiest, sanest, most dependable people in her entire life, were planning to do something totally bizarre. Totally surreal. Totally unlike them.
“They can’t be serious,” she said.
“I hope they’re not,” Jill agreed. “Whatever is going on with them—”
“Is Daddy cheating on her?”
“Why do you assume it’s Dad’s fault?” Doug said indignantly, although he looked a little sheepish.
“Because Mom wouldn’t cheat. She just wouldn’t.”
“Neither would Dad,” Jill said.
“Dad’s a guy,” Melissa pointed out. “He’s got one of those little guy-brain things between his legs.”
“Eeuw!” Jill closed her eyes and shuddered.
“All right, all right. It’s just, I’ve known more guys than you have.” That was one thing Melissa had on her older sister, who’d met her husband in college and gotten married shortly after she’d graduated. “They all have those little guy-brain things.”
“Can it, Melissa,” Doug scolded. “Stop being such a sexist.”
“Oh, right. I’m the sexist.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Jill said, holding her hand up like a traffic cop. “Mom and Dad will be here any minute. Now remember, Melissa, you aren’t supposed to know about the divorce. Neither is Doug.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. I promised Mom I wouldn’t tell.”
“Okay,” Melissa said impatiently.
“We’ll act calm and sympathetic, and hopefully we’ll be able to work this out so they won’t get a divorce.”
“Fine. We’ll act calm and sympathetic,” Melissa said. A wave of sorrow rushed at her, and she felt her knees wobble. “A divorce? I don’t want them to get a divorce.”
“None of us do.”
“I mean, it’s terrible.” She thought of Luc flying out to Vegas to gawk at showgirls with his father. She thought of everyone she knew who came from broken homes. Her friend Lindsay, who had to pass messages between her parents because they refused to talk to each other. Her friend Natalie, whose father had celebrated his fiftieth birthday by dumping her mother and marrying a twenty-year-old waitress. Her colleague Garth, whose father liked to trade in for a new model every year and whose mother now lived with four cats.
Oh, God. The thought of having of a twenty-year-old stepmom and a mother who was a cat lady brought Melissa to the brink of tears.
The doorbell rang. “That’s probably them now,” Jill whispered. “Remember, calm and sympathetic, and none of us knows what this is about.”
Melissa and Doug nodded. Gordon’s voice sounded muffled through the bathroom door as he said, “Hey, Ruth and Richard! Come on in.”
“Calm and sympathetic,” Jill repeated.
Melissa hardly heard her. She burst out of the bathroom and charged down the front hall, screaming, “Mommy, Daddy, you can’t get a divorce!”
Chapter Five
It took Jill a good fifteen minutes to herd the family from the hallway to the dining room. Parents and siblings only; Gordon was charged with steering Brooke, Melissa’s studly chauffeur and the kids, whom her parents had greeted as if nothing was wrong, back to the family room.
In the midst of embracing, kissing and fussing over her assorted grandchildren, Jill’s mother had sent her a lethal look. All right, so she’d told Doug and Melissa about the divorce. She wasn’t going to apologize. Siblings had certain bonds that superseded the promises a person made to her mother, especially if those promises were made against her will. Wasn’t there some legal thing about contracts signed under duress being invalid? This was practically the same.
Even so, that one fierce stare had caused Jill’s stomach to shrivel into a hard, throbbing nugget of tension. She was supposed to be the Good Daughter. Her mother had trusted her, and the disapproving glare her mother had given her after Melissa had exploded out of the bathroom wailing like a police siren announced: You have deeply disappointed me. Jill stood two inches taller than her mother, but her mother could still make her feel small. Small and crappy.
She’d chosen the dining room for the family meeting because it contained the fewest distractions and because the table—which she’d covered
with fresh linen and a centerpiece of silk flowers she’d wound up buying from the Prairie Wind catalogue, thanks to the irresistible blurb she herself had written for the item—could hold cups, saucers and her father’s rugelach. She’d boiled water for Melissa’s tea and brewed a pot of Starbucks House Blend for everyone else, filled the Waterford creamer and sugar bowl she and Gordon had received from his cousin Roberta as a wedding present, and arranged a platter of grapes and sliced Jarlsburg.
She’d also downed two cans of Diet Coke before ten a.m. That had been purely medicinal. She was sure she’d need another can once this meeting was over. Maybe two more cans. Maybe six. She’d climb back on the wagon tomorrow.
“Do you have any wine?” Melissa asked, her gaze circling the table. Her eyes glistened, as if she were a nanosecond away from erupting in tears. How the hell were they going to persuade their parents to forget this silly divorce idea if Melissa was falling apart?
It was possible her falling apart would keep their parents together. Histrionics might work, especially histrionics from Melissa, who was, after all, their precious baby.
“No wine,” Jill said, then added for Doug’s benefit, “No scotch, either. We’re doing this sober.”
“Shit,” Melissa muttered before plucking a raspberry-patch tea bag from the straw basket in which Jill had stacked an assortment of teas.
“Who is that man?” their mother asked Melissa as she carried a steaming cup of coffee to one of the dining room chairs and sat. So casual, so relaxed, as if she hadn’t ordered Jill to assemble everyone for the purpose of announcing the dissolution of her marriage—and as if she wasn’t thoroughly pissed at Jill for having pre-announced the announcement.
“Lucas Brondo,” Melissa answered, compulsively bobbing her tea bag in and out of her cup. He’d been introduced to Jill’s parents when they’d arrived, but with everyone crowded in the hallway and Noah performing an elaborately choreographed hand-shake-hand-slap with his grandfather while the twins babbled simultaneously and Abbie wrapped her grandmother in a much more enthusiastic hug than she ever gave Jill, Melissa’s guy had faded into the background.
Goodbye To All That Page 5