She saw no one as she exited through the front door and jogged slowly down the long driveway. Rhododendrons, bare of flowers at this time of year, turned the driveway into a tunnel. Funny she hadn’t noticed it so much driving in, but her slower pace, or maybe passing clouds, made it feel dark and confined. Relieved when she reached the road, she turned right and set an easy pace, tension draining from her shoulders, chest, and thighs with each yard she put between her and Cygne. The trees had started to change, and flashes of scarlet, gold, and orange lifted her spirits. The humidity brought on a quick sweat, but running was easier here, at less than half of Denver’s altitude, and she picked up the pace. Timing herself, she reckoned she’d run almost three miles and was ready to turn around when the sound of a car approaching from behind made her step off the paved road into a slight ditch filled with soggy leaves left over from last year. No poison ivy, she hoped.
It was the white van. It blasted toward her at speeds more suited for a Ferrari, and Laurel glimpsed Ray’s profile as the van barreled past, peppering her with heat and road debris. He seemed to be alone; at any rate, no one sat in the front passenger seat. His attention was fixed on the road ahead, and she was sure he hadn’t spotted her. Where was he going in such a hurry? She eased back onto the pavement and headed toward the inn. She pushed herself hard for two miles and was breathing heavily by the time she slowed for a cool-down. Ray seemed nice enough, she mused, although she’d learned surprisingly little about him over lunch. She’d assumed a guy as gregarious as he appeared to be would be forthcoming, but he’d turned her questions—about where he’d gone to school, what he did for a living, and how he’d met Evangeline—aside in a way she might not have noticed if she hadn’t dealt with lawyers and clients who employed similar tactics.
“Have you known each other a long time?” she’d asked.
He smiled, teeth very white against his tan skin. Wiry black hairs poked from the neckline of his T-shirt, and Laurel glimpsed the top of a tattoo that crossed his collar bone. “It feels like all my life. You know, I’m trying to teach that woman to love basketball. I mean, we live in the heart of NCAA country with Duke and NC State right down the road. I’m a Blue Devils fan myself—have been since high school when I played a little ball myself as a Blue Demon. Almost the same, right?” Not waiting for a reply, he drank some tea and continued, “I wasn’t good enough to play in college, though.”
“Oh? Where did you go to—” Laurel started.
“Anyway, I’ve got a friend who gets me Blue Devils tickets a few times a year. Do you know how hard those are to get? You got a better chance of being hit by lightning than of scoring Devils tickets without connections. I got Evangeline to go to three or four games with me, but she said watching ten sweaty men fight over an orange ball didn’t do it for her.” He laughed, apparently not overly dismayed by Evangeline’s lack of interest, and gestured with the hand holding half a club sandwich. “I’m getting her a Duke T-shirt for Christmas, though. You know, kind of a gag gift. Don’t tell her. It’s a secret.”
He raised his voice on “It’s a secret,” so Evangeline broke off her conversation with Dawn and asked with a smile, “What’s a secret, love? Husbands and wives aren’t supposed to have secrets from each other.” She spoke gaily, kidding him.
“We’re not married yet,” Ray had replied, raising his iced tea glass to her in a toast. “But I’m counting the days.” He half-rose from his seat and leaned across Dawn to kiss his bride-to-be.
Such mushy, in-your-face romance seemed like something from a Hallmark movie, but it was sweet. Laurel knew she and George had never made goo-goo eyes at each other. She laughed inwardly at the idea of sophisticated George making goo-goo eyes at anyone. Not his style. Geneva seemed pleased by their display, if her sappy smile was any indication. Ellie, though, eyed the couple skeptically, and Dawn looked vaguely nauseated as she scooted her chair back.
Most likely, Laurel now figured, Ray was off to pick up something for the dinner tonight. A rustling in the underbrush presaged a squirrel’s dash across the road and she took a startled step back as it passed mere inches in front of her toes. She laughed and the squirrel froze at the sound before skittering up a tree. Buoyed by the encounter, Laurel picked up her pace. She spotted Cygne’s gates when she rounded a curve and was conscious of a slight feeling of oppression. She shook it off. She had time for a soak in the bathtub, an indulgence she didn’t usually make time for, before dressing for dinner. If Geneva was ready a little early, maybe they could have that chat. She found herself suddenly eager to discuss the possibility of having a baby.
In the event, Laurel couldn’t get any hot water in the bathroom and settled for a frigid, one-minute shower. She slid into the navy sheath that was her go-to for occasions ranging from networking functions to church, clipped on the enameled dragon earrings George had given her, applied eyeliner and a flick of mascara, and slipped into her medium-heeled nude pumps. Footsteps sounded in the hall and seemed to pause outside her door. She was about to ask who it was when they moved on and faded away.
She eyed her reflection in the mirror with dissatisfaction. With the exception of the earrings, swirls of green flecked with gold scales, her outfit was boring. It’s appropriate, her lawyer side said. You look stodgy, an almost-forgotten part of her replied. On impulse, she loosed her hair from its customary low ponytail and ruffled it with her fingers. It fell heavily around her face, a blunt-cut swathe of chestnut hanging between chin and shoulders. Now she looked more like she had in college. The thought brought her up short. She wasn’t one of those sad women trying to relive their college days, was she? Pining for the dewy complexion of a twenty-year-old and breasts that sat an inch north of where they were now? She would have corralled her hair again, but the clock on the dresser said she was already five minutes late, so she left it and hurried from the room.
Mindy emerged from Geneva’s room and dumped a small trash can into her rolling housekeeping cart, sorting recyclables first, it looked like. A young boy with curly brown hair dug his hand into a compartment on Mindy’s cart, coming up with foil-wrapped squares, and asked, “Can I put the mints on the pillow, Mom?” Without waiting for a reply, he dashed through the room’s open door.
“Looks like you’ve got a great helper,” Laurel said with a smile.
Mindy’s head jerked up, as if she hadn’t noticed Laurel before. “Oh, uh, yeah.” She smiled in return. “Yeah, Braden’s great.” The boy reappeared and she rumpled his hair. “He’s my helper, all right.”
He ducked away from her hand, saying, “Mo-om.”
Laughing, Laurel said good night and headed down the hall.
From the foyer, she followed the light and conversation to the sunroom, a space with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides that was much more modern than the castle’s original structure. She was relieved that they weren’t gathering for pre-dinner drinks in the parlor, as Mrs. Abbott called it, where they’d started their ill-fated evening ten years ago. The sunroom was Laurel’s favorite, a bright, happy place during the day, looking out on the rear gardens and the lake. At night, like now, blinds were lowered to shut out the dark and the room was lit by mismatched table lamps and a ceiling fan fixture with brass trim from the 1990s. The sofa, chairs, and tables, too, were more modern, also mismatched but comfy and cheerful. A portable trolley in one corner sported liquor bottles and an ice bucket. Mr. Abbott, a tall man of near-cadaverous thinness, stood behind it, gray-white hair slicked into obedience with a gel that showed the comb’s furrows, and a bow tie askew at the neck of his white shirt. A plinking sound puzzled her, but then she recognized it as rain.
Laurel surveyed the room before entering. Evangeline held center stage in her wheelchair. She was laughing at something, head thrown back so the tanned column of her neck arched, most of her hair piled atop her head with romantic tendrils draping across her brow and around her cheeks. An off-the-shoulder gold lamé top ga
ve her skin a sallow cast, or maybe her tan was fading. Geneva, leaning over her and laughing hard enough to make her eyes squint into crescents, seemed to glow. Baby hormones. Ellie, holding what looked like a gin and tonic, seemed more relaxed than Laurel had yet seen her in skinny jeans and a silky halter top that made the most of her swim-toned arms and shoulders. Of all of them, her fashion style had stayed the most consistent over the years, Laurel thought, remembering Geneva’s experiments with big hair and heavy eye makeup and Dawn changing her look from sweats to goth to punk to “artist.” She was in full artist mode tonight, colorful broomstick skirt swirling around her ankles, blue-painted toenails on display in strappy sandals, and no makeup other than a swoosh of blue eyeliner.
It took Laurel a minute to figure out what was missing from the happy gathering: Ray. There was no sign of Evangeline’s fiancé. She moved into the room, greeting her friends, and asked about Ray.
Evangeline pouted. “I’m so disappointed. He got called away on business. I really wanted you all to get to know him, and him to know you, but what can you do?” She shrugged one shoulder. “That’s what happens when you’re the boss, and we’ve all got to pay the bills, after all. He’s hoping to make it back by tomorrow afternoon. If not, well, he’ll send someone back with the van to get me. That’s one of the worst things about this.” She banged her palms on the wheelchair’s arms. “Transporting it is such a pain. But that might not be a problem for too much longer.” She put on a mysterious look.
“Why not?” Ellie asked bluntly. She pulled an ottoman forward and sat on it, favoring her injured foot.
Evangeline hesitated. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you until later—I wanted it to be a surprise—but I’ve been in Mexico for the last few months. You know that their health system is a little less … regulated than the U.S. system. Our government stifles innovation—do you know how long it takes to bring a drug to market here?” She wrinkled her nose. “The doctors down there are trying new things, experimenting with treatments that U.S. doctors can’t use because of all the FDA rules and the like. Anyway”—she took a deep breath—“I had an operation. Three, in fact. Very cutting edge.”
She paused so they could groan at the pun. When the laughter died down, she continued. “There was also some drug therapy. Also experimental. And expensive. There were some unpleasant side effects”—she put a hand on her abdomen—“but it was all worth it.” She took a slow, deep breath and looked into each of their eyes in turn. “It worked. I’m going to walk again. I have walked, in my PT sessions. Just a few steps, but I walked! Before this weekend is over, I’ll show you what I can do with only my cane, if someone will lend me an arm.” She beamed.
The four of them erupted in a babble of exclamations and questions. She turned aside questions about the procedures, saying the technicalities were beyond her, that she’d need a medical degree to understand it all, much less explain it. During the treatments, she’d lived in a small bungalow on the hospital grounds, in a suburb of Mexico City. “Did you know Mexico City was my first international flight, back when I was with the airline? I remember I could hardly wait to shoo the passengers off the plane so I could explore. The altitude zapped me, but I still saw the Frida Kahlo Museum, the National Museum of Anthropology, Chapultepec Castle, and I managed to get a nasty case of Montezuma’s revenge, all in a twenty-four-hour layover.” She laughed. She said she wasn’t yet sure how mobile she’d be, or whether she’d always need a cane or walker, but anything would be better than being chained to the chair. “In a couple of months, when I can get rid of this thing”—Evangeline smacked the wheelchair again—“you can all come back for the ceremonial wheelchair burning. Or maybe I’ll push it over a cliff. I haven’t decided.”
Laurel listened to the questions and answers, happy for Evangeline. Another emotion gave her a sense of lightness and she tried to isolate it. Relief. She felt relieved, as if Evangeline’s recovery had freed her from a guilt she didn’t know she’d been carrying around. It all went back to that last weekend, she realized. She’d felt a sort of communal responsibility for what had happened to Evangeline. And she’d felt guilty about not staying in touch with her former roommate, with letting their connection dry out and get brittle and finally crumble like a dried prom corsage stuck in the back of the fridge. She excused herself to get some chardonnay from Mr. Abbott at the portable bar. The glass looked fragile in his large, work-roughened hand.
“I hear you’re moving to Texas,” she said, making polite conversation. “It’ll be nice to be closer to your grandchildren.”
He didn’t return the smile. In fact, his mouth turned down, carving deep lines in his sunken cheeks. “You think so?” His deep-set eyes challenged her. “When you get kicked out of a job you’ve poured your sweat equity into for two decades, then you tell me how nice it is.” His heavy jaw shifted from side to side. “We’d be prepping for the move this week if Nerys hadn’t insisted on accepting your reservation. For old time’s sake, she said. Pah.”
“It’s got to be hard. I’m sorry.” Taken aback by his hostility, Laurel didn’t know what else to say. She tried to excuse his behavior by reminding herself that the move had to be a scary and depressing change to make at the Abbotts’ time of life.
Luckily, Dawn appeared beside her and asked Mr. Abbott for a glass of merlot. When he handed her the glass, she told him, “The hot water in my bathroom isn’t working.”
“Mine either,” Laurel said.
“I’ll have a look at the hot water heater when I get a chance,” he said, bottles clinking as he stowed them back in the cooler. His expression and tone implied they’d asked him to clamber up Mount Everest. “It acts up sometimes, like old things do.”
Laurel and Dawn edged away from the bar. “Doesn’t sound like he’s going to hop right on it, does it?” Laurel asked sotto voce.
Dawn shook her head, making her curls dance. “He’s always been a surly bastard. He scared me to death that first weekend, all stern-faced and grim. He reminds me of Christopher Lee in one of those old horror movies.”
Laurel stifled a giggle at the idea. “I can see that.”
They stood a ways apart from the others, both of them watching Evangeline. She was in her element as the center of attention, laughing and gesturing widely with her champagne glass. Ellie began to wheel her toward the dining room, with Geneva leaning down to say something to her.
“Quite the miracle, isn’t it?” Dawn said, her gaze tracking Evangeline.
Laurel couldn’t read her tone “Sounds like it.”
Dawn tugged at her earlobe, jingling a delicate silver chandelier earring. “Evangeline was always the luckiest of us,” she said. Before Laurel could ask what she meant, Dawn followed the others into the dining room.
Eight
Ten years earlier
For once, Dawn wasn’t even the slightest bit reluctant to attend one of their girls’ weekends. In fact, she’d set out to make the drive from New Orleans a full half-day before she needed to, with the result that she had to kill three hours in a café in Asheville so she wouldn’t be the first to arrive. Her red Ford Fiesta was a wreck on its last legs, but now that the exhibit and sales had gone so well, she could afford to replace it, or at least get the brakes fixed and buy new tires. The memory of Wednesday’s phone call from the gallery, saying she’d sold all of the pieces in the exhibit, made her float. People did appreciate her art. She could make a living as an artist. Maybe she’d xerox the check when it came and send the copy to her dad, to show him how wrong he’d been. Rattling up the driveway, noting the way sunlight blaring through the rhododendrons streaked the leaves with viridian, she wondered if it was too soon to resign from her teaching job.
She greeted Mrs. Abbott and then Mindy with cheery hellos, climbed the stairs to her usual room, and hurriedly unpacked, slotting the yellow organza monstrosity into the wardrobe after fluffing it out. She was trying to move to an
artier style and the dress didn’t fit her image, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She’d worn it in her sister’s wedding two months ago and had packed it because Evangeline had insisted on everyone bringing “festive” attire for a celebration she was being very secretive about. Evangeline got off on being mysterious. Dawn couldn’t imagine what she wanted to celebrate. Surely she hadn’t gotten engaged. A new job? Whatever, Dawn was happy to whoop it up. Once she deposited the gallery’s check she could buy a new dress if she wanted, something that didn’t shout “prom” or “bridesmaid.” She was twenty-eight, for heaven’s sake. Twenty-eight and finally on her way to success. She pirouetted three times, arms out, hair flying, making herself dizzy. Laughing at her silliness, she took the stairs down two at a time. Where were the others? She wanted to tell them.
Muted clanging of pots and pans sounded from the kitchen, indicating dinner preparations were underway, and Dawn glimpsed Mindy running the vacuum in the dining room. She didn’t want to tell her—rejoicing in her good fortune when Mindy barely got by seemed callous—so she was glad the vacuum’s roar drowned out her footsteps. She wound her way through the rarely used parlor and music room and headed for the sunroom. Through its open door and long windows, she spotted Geneva and Evangeline making their way toward the lake. She started through the sunroom, eager to catch up with them, but a muffled sob halted her.
Blinded by the room’s brightness, she didn’t see anyone. As her eyes adjusted, she made out tanned legs drawn up on the papasan chair and encircled by strong arms. Long blond hair spilled over them, hiding the woman’s face against her knees. “Ellie?”
That Last Weekend Page 7