by Nancy Bush
She heard a text come in just as Layla blew through the heavy oak door, followed by a swirling, cold January wind that made everyone in the bar sit up a little straighter and glare at her as if the weather was her fault. Her sister was a couple of inches taller than Lucy and her curves were more pronounced. She wore a long, dark blue skirt and black boots beneath a thigh-length black coat, a matching blue scarf with dark symbols that looked like runes from where Lucy sat. Layla saw Lucy and nodded to her, her blondish hair touched with rain, the ends sparkling like diamonds.
“You’re drinking a martini,” she said as she approached, sliding the scarf from around her neck and beginning to unbutton the coat.
“Yes, I am. Grey Goose straight up.” She lofted the glass and nearly spilled some.
“Your first?”
“My fourth,” Lucy lied. “But who’s counting?”
Layla gave her a sharp look, then realized Lucy was putting her on. She shrugged out of her coat to reveal a brick-red peasant-style blouse and hammered, dull gray metal earrings with a matching, looping necklace in a vaguely Native American design. Layla was nothing if not colorful, though she’d never learned the art of makeup, for some reason.
“Since when are you the booze police?” Lucy asked her. Layla was a teetotaler after a traffic accident that, though it hadn’t involved drinking at all, had resulted in a young woman’s death and robbed her child of a mother. Still, she rarely made judgment calls.
“I don’t care if it’s your tenth, except I don’t want you to die of alcohol poisoning. I need to talk to you before Kate gets here, and I want you to remember it.”
“I’ll remember.” Lucy thought this might be close to an untruth, so she forced herself to focus hard.
“I’m . . .” Layla inhaled, held it a moment, then exhaled. “I’m in flux.”
This wasn’t exactly breaking news. Layla was always in some kind of a situation, it seemed. “What kind of flux?”
“Maybe I should wait till Kate gets here, so I don’t have to go through this twice,” she said, changing her mind. Again, true Layla. She could switch gears so fast, you’d suffer vertigo.
“Sounds dire.”
“Not dire ... but life changing.”
“Okay. Now you’ve got my attention.”
Layla shook her head, apparently having made up her mind to wait for Kate. “Tell me about Evie. How’s it going?”
Lucy’s daughter was nine and the apple of her Aunt Layla’s eye. “She’s being watched by Bella Stromvig, who lives down the street. You remember her?”
“The cheerleader?”
“Yeah, well ... yes, though she seems to be entering a new phase. Evie thinks she’s the greatest, no matter what, so that’s good. Sitters are just a challenge; you have no idea. Or maybe it’s just me. Other people seem to manage them without a problem, but I find them needy. Luckily, we’re nearly out of the babysitting phase and it’s just a couple of hours after school these days. And I’ve been shortening my hours.” By simply leaving work.
A frown line was forming between Layla’s brows. Afraid she might actually have heard of Lucy’s new work plan, she added before Layla could speak, “Evie’s piano lessons are coming along. Luckily, we have that old monster upright from John’s mother, and we barely use the living room for anything else, so now it’s a music room.”
“I hated piano,” Layla said on a sigh.
“I remember. Dad made Mom stop giving you lessons because you cried like you were being beaten.”
“I’ve never been good about hiding my feelings.”
“Amen.” Lucy nearly slopped her drink. “At least they didn’t make me take lessons.”
“That’s because you were so bullheaded, no one wanted to fight with you.”
That struck Lucy surprisingly hard. She had been bullheaded. “But I’m not that way any longer,” she said before she could stop herself.
“You try harder now,” Layla agreed, though that wasn’t quite the same thing, in Lucy’s opinion. Layla, the oldest of the three Crissman siblings, had always been more laid-back than Lucy, who was only a year behind her. In that way, they’d seemed to skip the traditional roles. It was Lucy who was the more responsible . . . or at least she had been. Layla was artier and generally considered the nicer of the two sisters, though they’d certainly had their fights growing up. Lyle, the youngest, had been a pleaser when he was a kid, and the way he kowtowed to his wife these days, that personality trait still seemed to be going strong.
“You changed when you had Evie,” Layla added to Lucy’s silence.
I changed when Evie was conceived, Lucy thought. She had a moment of remembrance before she pulled herself back from that precipice. “Why don’t you tell me your big secret before Kate arrives and sucks all the air out of the room?”
“Well . . .” Layla said, hesitating.
Before she could go further, the inn’s front door opened again, and Kate appeared in a hooded white rain jacket. She glanced toward the bar, then looked around with a lifted chin in that way Lucy found distracting and annoying, as if she were royalty surveying her kingdom.
“As soon as she sits down, you’re spilling,” Lucy warned her sister, her gaze fixed on Kate.
She really couldn’t stand her sister-in-law for a whole host of reasons. Kate was single-minded, humorless, and mean-spirited. She didn’t like women at all, in Lucy’s experience. Men, well, men with money, now they interested her, and whenever they were in a social situation that involved males, Kate zeroed in on the wealthiest, usually older guy in the room and beelined toward him. Said older gentlemen always ate up the attention. It was a marvel that men never seemed to see through her, or maybe they just didn’t care. Maybe it was just nice to have someone hang on your every word, no matter that you were boring as dirt. And Kate was certainly pleasant enough to look at. Lucy would never have been able to suffer through it, whereas Kate, always on a mission, appeared attentive and interested.
But, man, was she a sour pill to her sisters-in-law. Maybe to all women, come to that.
Not for the first time, Lucy almost wished Kate would cheat on her brother. Maybe then Lyle would see she was only in it for the family money, of which he, being the only male heir, would get the lion’s share, an antiquated part of the will they’d all been made aware of, though no one had seen fit to change it. It was great-grandfather Lyle Abbott Crissman, Criss’s wish, and it had remained in place throughout the years. Ironically, dear old dad, Abbott, and her grandfather, Junior, had helped themselves to Great-grandfather’s wealth without adding anything to the pot. After a long stretch of profligate spending and bad investments, the once-vaunted Crissman wealth had sorely diminished, and by the time Junior died, after a long stay in a private-care nursing home—a drawn-out misery that had ended the year before—the Crissman fortune was mostly a thing of the past. All, again, according to what she’d heard. Neither Lucy nor Layla had asked for a running account and, as their father was still alive and the sole heir, it also wasn’t their right.
Kate spied them, lifted a palm in recognition, then pulled back her hood and headed their way. She wore her blond-streaked hair in a sleek bob and her cherubic face was split by an insincere smile. Kate swung into the chair opposite Lucy and next to Layla. She had icy-blue eyes that never showed the least bit of warmth or humor. Her coldness put Lucy’s teeth on edge. Lucy tried very hard to keep a smile on her face whenever they were together, but it was difficult.
Lucy slid a look to Layla, wondering how her sister felt about Kate. Lucy was close to her sister in some ways, oddly separated in others. Layla was ... different. On the bohemian side and into performance art, which Lucy didn’t even pretend to understand. Layla currently had an artist boyfriend who didn’t believe in marriage, or working a job, or making money, or pretty much anything bourgeois. As far as Lucy could tell, Layla was barely one step ahead of total ruin, and said boyfriend, Ian, wasn’t doing anything to contribute. Of course, Ian hadn’t been s
poken of for many months, so maybe he was out of the picture. Maybe that was what Layla wanted to talk about? There was another guy she’d mentioned a few times, so maybe not. Lucy couldn’t tell if this new guy was a romantic prospect or something else. If it was the former, she hoped to hell he was better, financially speaking, but then, anyone would be a step up from shiftless, layabout Ian. The last time Lucy had been to Layla’s apartment, he’d been lying on the floor against Layla’s batik-covered cushions smelling of marijuana and incense. His one positive quality was his good looks, and he did the least humanly possible with it. Lucy doubted his man bun had been taken down in over a year.
Her eyes strayed to the bar. She focused again on Mark’s tanned, muscled forearms.
“Whew. It’s really trying to rain out there,” Kate said as she eased out of her raincoat. She wore a soft pink sweater graced by a strand of pearls. Lucy wondered if the gems were real and, if so, where Lyle was getting his money. Kate did work for a charter school, April Academy, founded by April McAdams, a bitch on wheels who seemed to bully people into getting what she wanted, but Lucy didn’t think Kate’s job earned her the big bucks. Lucy had gotten her info about April McAdams from Kate herself, in a rare moment of female bonding several years earlier, though Kate would never admit it aloud now. Kate conveniently remembered what she wanted to and forgot the rest. No bringing up the truth would dissuade her either. She fit the facts to her own narrative and that was that.
“It sure is,” Layla agreed.
Kate noticed Lucy eyeing the pearls and said, “They were a Christmas gift. I couldn’t believe it when I opened the box. Lyle is so careful, you know. He’s a really good money manager.”
Lucy battened down a dozen snippy comments that wanted to burst from her mouth and said simply, “They’re beautiful.”
Layla asked dubiously, “Lyle really got those for you?” She was apparently less interested in keeping the peace.
Kate regarded Layla coolly. She didn’t do well with questions that shone too bright a light on her personal fairy tale. “Yes, he did. I know he’s your brother and you have your own opinions about him. I have a brother, too. But Lyle’s really tender under that hard crust he shows the world. He saved and saved for the pearls.”
Lucy wondered how her brother saved anything; he was currently jobless. Well, sort of. Like herself, Lyle worked for their dad, but whereas Lucy worked in the department store’s business office, Lyle worked “from home.” He’d had a job at the store itself a few years earlier, but he hadn’t liked their father telling him what to do, nor had he liked Miranda Wallace, the store’s longest-working employee, being put in charge of teaching him the ropes. Resenting Miranda’s authoritative nature, Lyle had complained to Abbott to get Miranda fired, but their father hadn’t listened, declaring he would be lost without her. Well, somebody had to do the real work, and that was Miranda, who approved of Lucy because of her work ethic. Well, at least she had. Maybe she would feel differently after Lucy’s early disappearance today. In any case, Miranda was still at the store, but Lyle now had the amorphous job of overseeing investments with Abbott. Apart from Crissman & Wolfe and the family property in the Columbia River Gorge, Lucy couldn’t guess what those investments might be.
“I’m glad you both could make it. I tried to pick a centrally located venue.” Kate flashed a smile, but it seemed forced.
“Figured it was a place you frequent,” Lucy said.
Kate acknowledged that with a nod, and one of the white-haired gents mistook the gesture for him. He smiled and winked at her, and she smiled back. “Kenton DiPalma,” she said.
“Friend of Junior’s?” Lucy guessed.
“And your father’s.”
“I’m on the east side of the Willamette. This place isn’t close for me,” Layla reminded.
“Well, there are a lot of bridges,” said Kate shortly.
Lucy shrugged. “It’s not called Bridge City for nothing.” She hefted the remains of her martini. Two down. The buzz was there, but way too slight to dull the anxiety and annoyance she was beginning to feel. She was already tired of waiting for Kate to get to the point, so she took matters into her own hands. “Why did you want to meet?”
“Well, as you know, the days of the brick-and-mortar store—certainly our brick-and-mortar store—are almost over. Like everyone else, we’re relying more and more on internet sales.”
This was hardly a news flash. Lucy knew the store’s sales trajectory over the past few years, and it had been on a slow decline. You couldn’t turn on the news without hearing something similar.
Kate looked at Layla. “Maybe this doesn’t affect you as directly, because you aren’t employed by Crissman and Wolfe, but Lucy . . .” She glanced back at her and gave her a commiserating look. “Both you and John are employed by the company.”
“What are you saying? Where are you going with this?” Lucy demanded. She didn’t need a lecture, and she didn’t like the way this was going. Kate was already seriously getting on her nerves.
“John’s been Abbott’s right-hand man, but now I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, with shrinking market share, changes are going to have to take place.”
“Are you letting John go?” Lucy demanded, her voice rising.
“You know I don’t have that power,” Kate said. “But . . . your father’s been grooming Lyle for that position for a long time.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” Layla held up her hands. “Dad’s giving Lyle John’s job?”
“No,” Lucy said firmly.
Kate’s lips tightened. “I’m just saying, things are changing. They have to change.”
“How come you’re telling us this and not Lyle?” Layla asked.
“Because it isn’t true,” Lucy snapped.
“I don’t even work there, like you said,” Layla pointed out. “It seems to me—”
“If Dad were going to fire John, he’d tell him himself,” Lucy interrupted. She spoke positively, looking at Kate for corroboration. Her sister-in-law’s hesitation spoke volumes. “You’re kidding. What? Am I supposed to tell my husband he’s been fired?”
“Abbott will talk to everyone when the time’s right. I was just trying to broach the subject to both of you as family,” Kate said.
“As family,” Lucy repeated.
“You’re not the family member who should be telling us this,” Layla pointed out, eyeing Lucy with concern.
“I’m okay,” said Lucy tightly.
“Look, I know how you’re both feeling. I was a little stunned myself when Abbott first talked it over with Lyle. Change is always hard,” Kate murmured.
You don’t know the first thing about how I feel.
Lucy thought of a thousand things she wanted to say back. Actually opened her mouth to say at least some of them but was usurped by Layla, who said, “I have something I want to talk about.”
Chapter Two
“Go ahead,” Lucy said magnanimously. Anything was better than listening to Kate, and she really did want to know what Layla’s big secret was.
“Wait, I’m not finished,” Kate said. “I just want to be straightforward and aboveboard.”
Since when? Lucy thought, downing the last of her martini, wondering if she dared order another. She could take Uber home. Maybe she and Layla could Uber together; that was Layla’s main form of transportation these days.
As if blessed with some kind of server’s ESP, Kitty showed up at just that moment. “Another?” she asked Lucy as she laid down cocktail napkins for Kate and Layla.
“Umm . . .”
“I’ll have a Moscow mule,” Kate ordered.
The waitress looked at Lucy expectantly, then shifted her gaze to Layla.
“Could I have an Arnold Palmer?” Layla asked. “With decaf tea?”
Layla rarely drank anything with alcohol. She was into herbal teas and everything natural and organic, but Lucy thought she was making a mistake today. A meeting with
Kate was surely an occasion to imbibe.
“You?” Kitty asked Lucy.
“Oh, one more,” Lucy said. At this rate, she’d be a screaming alcoholic before sundown, but c’est la vie. Once Kitty departed, she said to Kate, “I think we’ve got the gist of where you’re coming from. I want to hear what Layla has to say.”
Kate turned impatiently to Layla.
And then Layla, being Layla, started talking in circles, slowly winding inward to the crux of the matter. First, she invited them both to a production of poetry, music, and a woman who apparently plucked a lute while twisting her body into all kinds of contortions, to which Kate said basically thanks, but no thanks, while Lucy tried to come up with a convincing excuse to skip it as well. Layla didn’t wait for their response as she went on to talk about the fact that she’d been helping out a local real estate agent with art and decor for staging properties for sale. This was mildly interesting but hardly the earth-shattering news Layla had hinted at.
“Well,” Layla finally said, coming to the point just as Kitty hurried over with their drinks, nearly tipping the tray but catching it at the last moment. “Sorry,” she muttered, carefully depositing the drinks on the table. Only a little of Lucy’s martini had sloshed over.
“She’d better not expect a tip,” Kate observed as Kitty hustled away. She picked up her Moscow mule and took an experimental sip. She liked to drink whatever was the height of fashion at the moment. “Layla, I’m sure you have a lot to say, but I’m really pressed for time.”
“Hold on,” Lucy said.
“Just give me a second,” said Layla at the same moment.
“Fine,” Kate said sourly.
Lucy looked toward her sister expectantly, and Layla drew a breath, then . . . stopped. A full thirty seconds went by before Kate rolled her eyes and looked around, as if hoping someone would come to her aid. For some reason, Lucy had a sudden premonition. Oh, God. Her sister was pregnant. She just knew it. As the French rabbits—or dogs; Lucy was never quite sure what they were—in that cartoon Evie had loved so much, Gaspard and Lisa, often said, “Catastrophe!”