The Last House on Sycamore Street

by Paige Roberts

  “Spoken like a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer who misses and loves her friend.”

  “Okay. You have a deal.”

  Jess scurried over to the bidding table and made an offer on the purse, and Amy surveyed the room. She didn’t recognize many people here, but then that wasn’t surprising since she was still relatively new to the city and didn’t actually work for Julian. Everyone seemed to be having fun, and Rob had even managed to introduce Dave to a few MediaCom employees who would make useful contacts. In Amy’s fantasies, one of them would eventually offer Dave a job, and he and Jess would move to Philadelphia with their kids. She knew the likelihood of such a thing happening was infinitesimal (Dave seemed to love his job, and they both seemed to enjoy Seattle), but she held out hope that maybe, someday, it would happen.

  The one person in the crowd Amy didn’t see was Julian. She figured he was probably pressing the flesh with as many of the 148 attendees as he could, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t locate him. Grace was standing behind her making small talk with an older couple she seemed to know, and when the couple moved on, Amy came up beside her.

  “This seems to be going really well. Julian must be thrilled.” Amy waited for Grace to reply, but she just nodded. “Where is he, by the way? I haven’t seen him.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.” She took a sip of her wine and stared out over the crowd.

  “Oh. I didn’t . . . did you guys . . .” Amy tripped over her words. “Sorry. I’m not trying to . . . you just looked upset when you arrived, and I wanted to make sure—”

  “I’m fine,” Grace said, a little coolly.

  “Good. I’m glad. But if you ever want to talk about anything—”

  “Now doesn’t seem like a great time for that, does it?”

  “No, definitely not. I just meant—”

  “You guys, I just went crazy at the bidding table,” Jess said, coming up behind them. “I hope Dave likes soft pretzels. . . .”

  Amy forced a grin, but Jess could tell by her expression that she’d walked into an awkward situation.

  “Sorry—did I just interrupt something? Ignore me. Carry on.”

  “No, I was just telling Amy I needed to check on the caterer,” Grace said. “I’ll see you ladies inside.”

  Then she walked away, sipping her wine, looking like the loneliest woman in the room.

  * * *

  They all took their seats around 7:30. Amy knew (or at least knew of) most of the people at her table: Emily and Brent, Jess and Dave, another couple from Beth Israel, and then another mid-thirties couple she didn’t recognize. Her table wasn’t far from the head table, where she saw Grace chatting to an older couple. As she looked at them more closely, she realized they must be Grace’s parents. The man looked to be in his early seventies and was tall and thin, with a head of gray hair that was thinning at the top. His wife looked a bit younger—maybe early sixties—and was the woman Amy had seen at camp dropoff.

  She still didn’t see Julian, but she figured he was probably milling around somewhere in the crowd. Grace’s frostiness had definitely piqued her interest about what had happened earlier this afternoon. Whatever problems had occurred in the past, Grace seemed very adept at putting on a happy face and pretending like nothing was wrong. If she hadn’t let it slip at the brewhouse that Julian was in recovery, Amy probably never would have guessed. But tonight was different. Grace wasn’t happy, and she wasn’t doing a very good job at disguising it. Even talking to her parents, she looked irritated, though Amy figured she might often look that way when in their presence, given what she had said about their relationship. Were they asking where Julian was? Were they as curious as Amy was about the sudden change in Grace’s demeanor?

  “I should introduce myself—I’m Emily. My son Jake is in school with Noah and Ethan.”

  Amy snapped out of her trance and saw Emily leaning in to chat with Jess.

  “I’m Jess. Amy and I went to college together.”

  “Sorry,” Amy said. “I should have introduced everyone. Jess, Emily. Emily, Jess.”

  “No worries,” Emily said. “We were on top of it. You know me—incapable of minding my own business.”

  Amy laughed. “I probably wouldn’t have put it that way, but since you’re the one who said it . . .”

  “Seriously, I’m terrible. Did Amy tell you I basically stalked her at a local coffee shop? Oh, yeah. Came right up to her and interrupted her work so that I could introduce myself and set up a playdate.”

  “That sounds like being friendly,” Jess said.

  “Does it? I mean that’s how I meant it, but people are always telling me to tone it down a little. Aren’t they, Brent?”

  Brent lifted his shoulders. “There’s really no good way for me to answer that, is there?”

  She pursed her lips. “Agreeing with me is the good way.”

  “Okay, then yes. People tell you to tone it down. Including me. Right now.”

  Jess nearly spit out her wine as Emily glared at her husband.

  “Anyway,” Emily said, “it’s great to meet you. Such a wonderful coincidence that you could visit the same night as this event.”

  “When the stars align, the stars align.”

  “Sounds like Amy had a hand in some of the planning . . . ?” Emily raised an eyebrow as her eyes landed on Amy.

  “I guess so,” Jess said, “though I still haven’t had a chance to meet the mysterious Julian.”

  “Ha! Mysterious.” Emily rolled her eyes. “That’s one way of putting it. Have you met Grace?”

  “We gave her a ride tonight. She seems really nice, though definitely a little . . . stressed.”

  “Stressed? That doesn’t sound like Grace. Grace is full of . . . well, grace. I always called her unflappable. When we were still close.”

  Jess caught Amy’s eye. She knew there was a story there but was studying Amy to see if now was the time to talk about it. It wasn’t.

  “It’s a major event for Julian,” Amy said, moving swiftly along. “I’d probably be stressed if Rob were putting on something like this—especially if I’d had a part in some of the planning.”

  “Yeah, but you did have a part in some of the planning for this, and you don’t seem flustered at all. Anyway, it’s just interesting to hear you say—ah! There’s Julian! Well, he looks dapper, doesn’t he?”

  They all turned and looked as Julian approached the podium. He did look decidedly handsome. His dark brown hair was parted to the side and held in place with some sort of pomade or gel that made his tresses glisten. He wore a slim-cut navy suit with a lavender shirt and dark magenta tie, and though she was seated a bit far to see exactly what kind of shoes he was wearing, she could tell they were brown leather lace-ups that looked as sleek as the rest of the ensemble.

  “That’s Julian?” Jess whispered in her ear. “Meow.”

  Amy elbowed her before she could say anything inappropriate.

  Dave reached across Jess and tapped Amy on the shoulder. “Hey—I think that is the guy I went to school with.”

  “No way,” Amy and Jess said in unison.

  “Yeah, looks just like him. Like I said, we weren’t close, but we knew some of the same people. Remember Henry? He was tight with Julian.”

  “You mean Henry could have set me up with that?” Jess said. She feigned a sigh. “What could have been . . .”

  If only you knew, Amy thought.

  The crowd quieted as Julian adjusted the microphone at the lectern and cleared his throat.

  “Welcome,” he said, “and thank you all for coming. Before I dive in to my remarks, I want to thank the Old Pine Community Center for providing a venue for tonight’s festivities. Community centers like yours all around the Philadelphia area enrich our city and make it the vibrant, diverse, and dynamic place it is today. Without community centers, the work we do at Food Fight wouldn’t have nearly the reach and impact it currently does. And with the funds raised at tonight’s event,
we think we can stretch that reach even farther, and touch corners of the city that have long been ignored, belittled, and abandoned.”

  The audience applauded, and a few people raised glasses while cheering, “Hear, hear.”

  Julian continued with his remarks, outlining the successes the organization had over the previous years and the challenges that lay ahead. At the beginning of the speech, Amy had noticed that he was swaying almost imperceptibly from side to side as he spoke, which she attributed to a nervous public speaking tic. Her former boss Debbie used to do it all the time—they called it the Debbie dance. But as the speech went on, even as his voice became more relaxed, the lilting became more exaggerated. Then, somewhere in the middle of the speech, he started stumbling over words, slurring other words together, and skipping lines so that he needed to apologize and go back. After a stumbling over the phrase “fresh food suppliers” three times in a row, he chuckled and tried to make a joke of it.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have let Bill buy me that whiskey.”

  The crowd laughed, a little uncomfortably Amy thought. She also wondered if someone named Bill really had bought him a whiskey. Aside from the fact that Julian supposedly didn’t drink anymore, the event had an open bar. There was no need for anyone to “buy” him anything. Maybe it was just a turn of phrase? Or maybe he was covering for being nervous. Or maybe it was something else.

  The speech went on and became increasingly awkward, at which point Amy’s phone started buzzing on the table. She looked down. Sherrie was calling.

  She couldn’t answer right there in the middle of Julian’s speech, so she grabbed the phone and slipped out the door to the cocktail area. By the time she was in a quiet place, she had just missed the call, but before she could call back, the phone rang again. Sherrie.

  “Sherrie, hi—sorry, Julian was in the middle of his speech, and I—”

  “Amy!” Sherrie shouted. “Stop. We have an emergency.”

  Amy nearly stopped breathing. Noah. Oh God. “What happened?”

  “We ate dinner, and then I gave the boys some of those brownies for dessert and Ethan . . . you said he wasn’t allergic to peanuts!”

  “He isn’t.”

  “Well, his face is blowing up like a balloon and he’s wheezing, and I can’t find his EpiPen anywhere. He pointed to his bag, but it isn’t in there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “YES, I’m sure.” Amy had never heard Sherrie like this. She sounded utterly panicked.

  “I don’t . . . I mean . . . shit. Can you take him to the ER?”

  “Of course, but I’m worried he’ll stop breathing before we get there. It’s bad, Amy. BAD.”

  Amy thought she might throw up. If Ethan died on her in-laws’ watch . . . the bile crept up the back of her throat.

  “Wait,” she said. “Rob has an extra EpiPen in his medicine cabinet.”

  “Oh, thank God. Is it in date?”

  “I think so? Go—it’s upstairs.”

  “I’m going.”

  Amy could hear her thumping up the stairs as she made her way into their bathroom. Amy’s palms were so sweaty she could barely hold on to the phone.

  “I found it. It’s here. But it’s the adult one. Not the one for kids.”

  “Fuck.” Amy took a deep breath. “Hang on. Two seconds.”

  She raced back into the banquet hall and snuck over to her table. She grabbed Rob’s arm and pulled him out of the room with her.

  “What the—”

  “Can your mom use your Epi on Ethan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s having a reaction and doesn’t have one with him.”

  “Oh. Shit. I don’t know. Mine is for people over sixty-five pounds. He needs the junior dose.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t have the junior dose. My question is: Will the adult dose give him a heart attack, or will he just feel shitty? Because the latter is better than him dying of anaphylaxis.”

  Rob looked completely freaked out. He obviously didn’t feel comfortable having another kid’s life in his hands.

  “From what I remember learning when I was a kid . . . I think any epinephrine is better than no epinephrine.”

  “Sherrie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Give it to him. And then go straight to the ER. We’ll meet you there with Ethan’s parents.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I am. We’ll be there in, like, forty minutes. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Amy hung up and ran back in the banquet hall, trying to find the words to break the news to Grace.

  Chapter 20

  Forty minutes later, they arrived at the Abington Hospital ER. All five of them came—Amy, Rob, Jess, Dave, and Grace. Given that they’d carpooled, there was no other way to split up the group. Julian couldn’t leave in the middle of his speech, and they couldn’t abandon out-of-town friends at an event where they knew no one. So they stormed into the ER as a posse, one outfitted in satin, chiffon, and worsted wool.

  Grace was immediately taken back to see Ethan, the pleated hem of her chiffon skirt fluttering as she hurried beside the nurse. The rest of them sat in the waiting area, still dumbstruck at the unexpected turn the evening had taken.

  “Do you think Julian is okay?” Jess asked. It was the first any of them had really said since leaving the fund-raiser. “I mean, we all just took off before he’d finished his speech without any explanation.”

  “I’m sure Grace’s parents filled him in.”

  “Why didn’t they drive her here?”

  “They didn’t have a car nearby. Apparently they have a pied-à-terre on Rittenhouse Square, and the car was parked somewhere around there. We were two blocks away.”

  “The whole thing is just so crazy. Why didn’t he have his EpiPen?”

  “I don’t know. Grace seemed really flustered and upset when she showed up late. Maybe she just forgot.”

  “I guess . . . But an EpiPen seems like something you wouldn’t forget.”

  “You say that, but have you ever switched to a different purse and forgotten something you always carry around? I’ve done that at least a dozen times. Just last week, I accidentally left my wallet in my gym bag and got all the way through the grocery checkout before I realized I couldn’t actually pay for anything.”

  Jess chuckled. “Nice.”

  “What, you’ve never done anything like that?”

  “Oh, no, I totally have. I once forgot to refill the diapers in the diaper bag, and Dave took Penny while he did some errands and she did an epic poop. He ended up having to wrap her in a bunch of paper towels—which, in case you’re wondering, are in no way a diaper substitute.”

  “See? Shit happens.”

  “Literally.”

  They both laughed, but caught themselves when they saw Sherrie heading toward them. Rob rushed to meet her and gave her a hug.

  “How are you? How’s Ethan?”

  “He’s okay. Very nauseous, but okay.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We gave him the adult Epi. They say it saved his life, but he won’t feel well for a few days.”

  “No, I mean, how did he have a reaction in the first place?”

  “The doctor says it must have been something in the brownies. I told him I didn’t use any tree nuts, but he said sometimes there are traces in chocolate or peanut butter. I didn’t even think to check the label. It’s been so long since I’ve had to think about anything like that.” Her voice caught. “I feel awful. Just awful.”

  “Mom, it isn’t your fault. You didn’t even know he had an allergy when you baked them.”

  “But if I hadn’t fed him those brownies, I’d be sitting in your family room with Bruce while the boys slept upstairs. Poor Noah. I’ve never seen him so scared. He’ll probably be having nightmares for months.” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh God, I can’t believe it.”

  Rob hugged her close and rubbed her back. “It isn’t you
r fault. He’s going to be fine. You did everything right—you saved his life.”

  She sniffled. “Thanks to your EpiPen. You’ll need a new one by the way. Which I’m sure will cost you a pretty penny.”

  “Mom, stop. It’s fine. I’m glad you were able to use it—especially since he didn’t have his own.”

  She wiped her eyes and pulled away. “I couldn’t believe it. With an allergy like that, to not have an EpiPen . . .”

  “I’m guessing Grace forgot it,” Amy chimed in. “She was in such a rush after Julian overslept that she probably just threw a bunch of stuff into a bag without really thinking about it.”

  She didn’t know why she kept defending Grace. She didn’t know that Grace had forgotten it. But Grace was a good mother. Amy knew that. She’d never done anything brazenly irresponsible in all the time they’d known each other. Amy couldn’t imagine her knowingly doing anything reckless when it came to her son, and as a fellow mother, Amy wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “Maybe.” Sherrie glanced over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. “Is she usually that . . . scattered?”

  “No, but tonight wasn’t a typical night. This event was a big deal for Julian. He’s had some issues in the past, and this fund-raiser was meant to be sort of a comeback for him.”

  Sherrie’s antennae went up. Even Jess seemed to lean in a little closer.

  “Issues?” Sherrie said.

  “Just . . . you know. Business stuff. Funding issues.”

  “Mmm.” Sherrie looked suspicious. Amy could see the wheels turning, as if she were trying to figure out how Ethan’s incident could be tied to some sort of nefarious behavior by Julian.

  A nurse appeared in the waiting area and made for their group as soon as her eyes landed on Sherrie.

  “Mrs. Kravitz?”

  Both Amy and Sherrie turned around, but within seconds it was clear she was referring to Rob’s mother.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Durant is going to stay with Ethan until we release him from observation, so you are free to go.”

  “Oh. Okay. He’s going to be okay?”

  “We think so. We have to wait four hours to make sure he doesn’t have a secondary reaction, but right now his biggest complaint is the nausea from the epinephrine.”