by Nancy Bush
She got in her silver Ford Escape and drove toward the Pembroke Inn and Mark the bartender.
* * *
Layla pulled away from the gallery with a check in hand. One of her paintings had sold and she’d received the proceeds after the gallery took its cut. She felt almost gleeful, except for the weight on her chest. She needed to make things right for her and Eddie, but it was going to be a tough road.
She went to the bank and deposited the check, feeling slightly better. She wasn’t due back to the local bistro where she waited tables until Friday. Luckily, she wasn’t working until after the meeting her father had invited her to. Invited, hah! He’d called her up and practically ordered her to attend. Not that she didn’t want to go; she did. But it killed her, the way Abbott treated her. Like she was the unwanted child who had to be dealt with. The one he wished would just disappear.
She drove past the Easy Street Bistro on her way home. The place always seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy, and she sometimes worried she wouldn’t be paid for the weekend hours she put in. She wouldn’t be surprised to find a sign on the door when she showed up for work sometime. It was a popular spot but horribly mismanaged, and the owner didn’t take kindly to suggestions on improving customer service. Layla had quit for a while when she and Neil were first together. She’d wanted her weekend time to spend with him and thought she could make it on the money she received from her home-staging job and the occasional piece of art that sold. But it had been too tight to pay the rent, so she’d gone back to the bistro.
And she would rather die than touch Neil’s twenty thousand.
Her appointment with her lawyer to discuss a lawsuit to fight him over custody was slated for tomorrow afternoon. Initially, she would have been satisfied with visitation rights, but since Neil had shown his true colors, she wasn’t interested in anything less than joint custody.
She pushed the button on the fob to open the gate to her apartment complex. The building’s apartments had been renovated and turned into condominiums during the height of the last recession. None of them had sold right away, but a real estate mogul who’d seen their potential had bought up as many as he could. He’d ended up renting them out as he waited for the prices to rise, which they had. Layla was lucky he’d left her apartment alone so far. She didn’t want to move and she could still afford the rent, at least at this point. Having Ian move in with her had made things dicey for a while. His dope smoking was noticed by the next-door neighbors, who didn’t want the smell around, even if it was legal now, at least in the State of Oregon, and Layla had been on pins and needles, worrying she might be kicked out at any time.
It hadn’t happened yet. The real estate mogul still held a number of units as rentals, Layla’s apartment being one of them.
She parked in her designated spot and used her key fob again to open the door to the stairs that led to the interior lobby. Once inside her unit, she dropped her keys and headed toward the kitchen. Her cell phone rang as she was hanging on to the refrigerator door, wishing there was something inside.
She reached over and picked up her cell from the counter, where she’d left it. The name that popped up on her screen was Naomi Beecham, their surrogate.
Layla straightened abruptly. The surrogate didn’t call her, as a rule; Layla called her. “Hi, Naomi,” she answered. She softly closed the refrigerator door and paced across the room.
“Hi, Layla. I just wanted to call to see how you were, considering everything.”
She sounded a bit anxious, and “considering everything” made Layla anxious, too.
“I’m fine,” Layla said.
“Okay. Good.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. Ooh . . . he just kicked under my ribs! He’s head down and bicycling right there. Jeremy was just like him.”
Jeremy was her own seven-year-old son. She had a daughter, too, who was six going on thirty, and a husband, who accepted that she was making a baby for Layla and Neil. Layla had marveled that she wanted to do it, but Naomi said she loved being pregnant, and Neil’s substantial payment and all medical costs hadn’t hurt. “Many of the best surrogates are happily married and have their own families,” Neil had informed her when Layla had first marveled about Naomi’s choice to be a surrogate. Neil had then explained that she’d already been a surrogate once before.
“Great,” Layla had said, slightly envious because her own body would never be able to perform this basic biological function.
Neil had learned of Naomi from satisfied customers: a wealthy, middle-aged couple who ran in his circles. They’d been delighted to learn that Layla was a Crissman and had raved about Naomi. Layla had felt a little uncomfortable with their assumption, and Neil’s, that her family name was what really mattered, but they were right about one thing: Naomi was wonderful.
“How’s Junior doing?” the woman, Cathie Hyatt, had asked.
“You mean Abbott, my father?” Layla had answered politely. Her grandfather, Junior, had recently died in a private care facility.
“Oh, yes . . . I meant Abbott. I’m so sorry. I knew Junior had passed. My mistake.” She sighed. “He was a wonderful man.”
Layla smiled. She’d known very little about her father’s father, who’d spent his last few years on a long, slow decline. The only time she’d seen her father show any emotion was after Junior’s death. He’d pressed his lips together, as if holding something in that was about to break, then said abruptly, “He’s gone,” the whole extent of the information she and Lucy were given. Lyle had been with Abbott at the time, but he was quiet and sad, grieving in his own way, and didn’t want to talk about it any more than Abbott had.
It was later that she’d learned how much money was gone, having slipped through Junior and Abbott’s collective fingers over the years. A small shock. Layla had never counted on the money, but it had always been there as a kind of security blanket, something that just was.
What she had counted on was Stonehenge. Not as a source of income, but as a part of their family heritage. The summers she and Lucy and Lyle had spent at Stonehenge, roaming around its grounds and the forests beyond, were her best memories. She wanted that for her child. She wanted it fiercely.
“Well . . . I just called to touch base,” Naomi said. “Feel free to call me, if you want. Any time.”
This was a bit odd as it had already been established that Layla could contact Naomi whenever she wanted. Pulse accelerating, Layla asked, “Has Neil said something to you about me?”
She hesitated. “He said you weren’t . . . going to be as involved.”
Oh, did he? Layla almost blurted out how Neil was planning to force her completely away from Eddie, but she knew confiding in Naomi could be a bad, bad mistake.
“Well, that’s incorrect. I’m going to be involved,” Layla told her, forcing a smile on her face as she spoke the words. Saying something through a smile was supposed to make it brighter and more positive, though she sure as hell felt like snarling. “We’re still working out the details.”
“Oh, good.” She was clearly relieved.
“I was thinking of stopping by tomorrow, just checking in. I have an appointment in the afternoon, but maybe earlier?”
“Would you like to have lunch? Say eleven-thirty?” Naomi invited. “I’ve just been craving pastrami, for some reason, and I’ve been making Reubens like it’s a job. Come by the house and I’ll make you one?”
Layla wasn’t much of a meat eater, but she would tackle a beef hindquarter for a chance to be one-on-one with Naomi. She’d never been invited to her house without Neil before. “Sounds wonderful,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
Chapter Six
Lucy looked at her empty glass on the Pembroke Inn’s shiny, lacquered bar and traced a droplet of condensation from her copper mug along a line in the wood. She was drunk . . . no, pleasantly high . . . no, maybe drunk. She giggled. Uber once again.
She’d asked today’s bartender about Mark, earning her a slow look from
the man, a heavier, muscle-bound guy in his forties or fifties with a trimmed red beard and a supercilious attitude. She was pretty sure it was supercilious. He just had that look.
“Mark comes on at five,” he said.
She sensed he was smiling knowingly at her, but he turned away before she could totally discern if that were true or only her own paranoia. She’d been too obvious by seating herself at the bar and asking about him.
Well, fine. She could wait. Evie was going home with Daphne today, so Lucy was free for hours. She knew she should care more that Evie was under Kate’s influence, even a little, but truthfully, sometimes Evie popped out with these pithy observations about people and situations. If she had anything to say about Kate after this playdate, all the better. Lucy could console herself for today’s lapse in parenting by telling herself it was probably a good thing. She might actually learn something to use in her fight against Kate, and learning something was always good.
“Pithy,” she said aloud, squinting at the face of her phone for the time: 4:30. Half an hour until Mark time.
Mark time. She liked that.
You should text John.
She felt a little thrill of anxiety. John would want to talk to her after he got home from work. Maybe he’d already tried to find her. She’d left too early for him to catch her, though he hadn’t tried to text her yet ... had he?
She’d already tucked her phone back in her purse, which she’d set on the floor in front of her barstool. Now she leaned over to try to snatch the handle—she’d done a great job of snagging it a few seconds ago—but it was just out of reach. She bent over farther, could feel herself slipping off the stool, and grabbed for the edge of the bar at the last second.
“Watch out there, now,” the white-haired guy two seats over said to her. One of the old guys who haunted this bar. He looked slightly familiar, so she smiled vaguely and turned away. Was he one of her father’s acquaintances? Or maybe her grandfather’s? Junior might be gone, but he’d been a regular at the Pembroke from what Lucy had heard.
She managed to grab her purse’s handle on her next try and pulled it onto her lap before plopping it on the bar, on the side away from the old guy, who she could still feel staring at her. Was he trying to place her? Lord, she hoped not.
You shouldn’t have come back here. You want to fantasize about some hot guy, do it somewhere else.
But no . . . she wanted to fantasize about Mark.
She concentrated on her phone. No text from John. Something from Layla, though. Ah, yes. In a fit of pique, she’d texted her sister about the meeting on Friday after that phone call with dear old Dad.
“Fit of pique,” murmured Lucy, eyeing Layla’s response.
Dad called. I’m going. We need to stop them.
That’s right. She’d made her father call Layla. No need to text her. Layla was right. They needed to stop them.
White hair said, “Weren’t you here yesterday?”
Lucy pretended not to hear him. Go away, she silently urged. She was here on assignment. A secret agent. A tryst between secret agents.
She drew a breath and reached for the glass of water the red-bearded bartender had thoughtfully placed down along with her second Moscow mule. Yes, she’d ordered Kate’s drink, and had belted them both back as if she were getting ready to have surgery performed without anesthesia. My, my, but those drinks had been strong.
Are you starting to have a problem? Two days of drinking in the afternoon?
She thought that over carefully. She almost wanted that to be her problem. Drinking. Something to open up to a therapist about, confess seriously to her closest friends and family. But instead, she wanted to cheat on her husband. And that was all on her. The blame would be intense.
“How are you doing?” red beard asked.
It took her a moment to realize he was referring to whether she wanted another drink or not. Did she? The alcohol was making her melancholy, which was just a stop on the road to maudlin. “Could I order that artichoke jalapeño dip and chips?”
“Sure thing.”
“Oh, and a glass of Pinot Gris.”
Red beard reappeared with her wineglass a few moments later, and about ten minutes after that with the appetizer she’d remembered from yesterday’s menu. White hair had subsided, but she kept herself half-turned away from him, only to realize as the shift changed that he was no longer there. She forgot him anyway as Mark came on duty, looking wonderfully rakish with that longer, dark chocolate-colored hair and those blue eyes. John’s eyes were blue, too, like Layla’s. She had a thing about them apparently. She always noticed. Her own were a greenish-hazel that Layla had wistfully said she wished she had; but then, Layla was always looking for the offbeat, the different, the winding road.
Time passed ... One moment Lucy was nibbling on the artichoke jalapeño dip—she’d forgotten they served it on toasted slices of baguette and she had to keep wiping the little crumbs from her lips—the next she was looking at Mark’s strong hands as he slipped her empty glass away and slid the second glass of Pinot toward her.
She heard the ding that denoted a text on her phone. Her move to collect her purse was as ungainly as before, but she managed it without falling off her stool, which was room for congratulations. Her cell phone felt a bit slippery in her hands. Everything was slightly slippery. Her mind couldn’t catch on anything.
More dip and baguette, she warned herself, setting her phone down on the bar and then carefully applying the smooth spread on the little piece of bread and taking a bite.
“So, where did your grandmother take off to?” Mark asked.
Lucy had already forgotten they’d been having quite the conversation about her family. She wiped more crumbs from her lips. “No one knows. She was my great-grandmother. Did I not say that? She was a great-grandmother and she left my great-grandfather back at a time when it just wuvn’t done.” She cleared her throat, aware she’d slurred a bit there. “Criss, my great-grandfather, was a real sonuvabitch apparently. I asked my grandfather about him a few times, but he never said much. Grandpa’s gone now. I haven’t even tried to talk to my dad about any family history. He would just shut me down before we got started. I got my information from my mom, but she only knows bits and pieces about my dad’s family. Her family isn’t much better. She’s an only, and her parents are also gone. I never saw them much anyway. Ah, well.” Lucy prepared another slice of baguette and squinted at Mark. “What started this conversation?” She took a sip of wine.
“You said marriages don’t last and that your grandmother ran away.”
“My great-grandmother.”
“Okay.”
“I meant, it’s hard to make a marriage last, no matter how hard you try.”
Was he looking amused at her, or was he just thinking she was another drunk groupie, something red beard had implied with that look he’d given her.
Another ding. Oh, right. John.
She checked the screen of her phone and read his text: Where are you? Where’s Evie?
She was feeling more clearheaded. The food. The water ... but her heart was pounding as if she’d run a marathon.
“Could I have another glass of water?” she asked Mark.
“Sure thing.”
Mark went to fill up her glass and several other drink orders as well. Lucy chewed on her lower lip, then texted back that she was at the Pembroke and Evie was with Daphne at Kate’s. She was feeling guilty, but she reminded herself she’d done nothing wrong ... yet.
John texted back: We need to talk.
Yeah, well ... yeah . . . they did need to talk. About a whole lot of things she didn’t want to talk about but knew were coming. Things that had gotten away from them over the course of their marriage. Her family ... his remoteness . . . their lack of sex . . .
When I get home, she texted back.
Mark was back with her glass of water. He was looking at her in a way that made her glad she’d taken a trip to the ladies’ room to re
fresh her makeup before she’d found her seat at the bar.
“Ever found talking to somebody you talk to every day just so damn hard?” she said on a sigh.
“You mean your friends yesterday?”
Lucy blinked. “You saw me and them?”
He nodded.
It made her feel kind of squirrelly, thinking about him noticing her, well, and Layla and Kate.
“It looked intense,” he said.
“It was,” she admitted. “But no, I was thinking of something else.”
Was he holding her gaze a little too long, a little too intimately? She’d never been good at reading the signals. She’d made one ghastly error in her youth and had never trusted herself since.
“I’m going out for a cigarette.” This was from one of the waitresses, not Kitty, who seemed to be MIA this evening.
“When you get back, take over for me for a minute or two while I take a break,” Mark said easily.
“You barely got here,” she complained.
“Call the EEO,” he drawled, and she simply waved him off and headed through a door behind the bar.
He said to Lucy, “There’s a covered walkway around the back.”
She eyed him cautiously. “Okay.”
“Great place to meet. Private. You can walk out the doors, follow the sidewalk around . . .” He gestured the way to go and to turn around two corners. He lifted his eyebrows at her, his gaze intense.
“Interesting,” she said, her mouth dry.
He smiled lazily and brought her the check. He then went back to work, filling orders.
Lucy paid the bill by rote, her gaze flicking toward Mark, away, and then back again. She was still thinking over his words when the waitress returned and took her place at the bar. The crowd was smaller than the night before, maybe a typical Wednesday. Hard to say. Mark gave the waitress a few instructions and then headed through the back door, shooting Lucy a last look before disappearing. Lucy slid off her stool, picked up her coat, which she’d thrown over the stool next to her, casually shouldered her bag, and headed for the door. As she turned to start her trek around the outside of the building, she heard the front door open behind her and glanced back to see white hair heading outside. So, he hadn’t left earlier. He lifted his chin at her in recognition and pulled a cigar from an inner pocket, walking the requisite ten feet from the door to light up. Lucy almost chickened out, but he seemed so involved in the ritual of preparing his cigar that she slipped around the first corner when he wasn’t looking. She walked rapidly along the side of the building. There were no windows; it was the kitchen end of the restaurant.