Looking for Laura (34 page)

“Paul and I had a history,” Laura explained. “Quite a complicated history. He'd been in love with me long before he met you.”

“Right. When he was seven, I heard. Some kind of pedophile thing, was it? Oops—I'm sorry. I forgot. It wasn't a
thing
.”

Laura looked even more sympathetic, as if she felt just terrible about how painful this all must be for poor Sally. “I never knew he loved me until my marriage. He was a senior in high school then. His family and mine had been neighbors and friends, so of course he attended my wedding. He asked to dance with me, and as he spun me around the floor—it was a waltz, as I recall—he told me he loved me. Needless to say, I was stunned. He was just a child—well, a teenager—and I was a new bride. He had tears in his eyes. Of course there was nothing I could do. He was so young and adorable.”

“Oh, yes. Paul was so adorable,” Sally muttered.

Laura overlooked her surly tone. “I'd heard from my parents that he went to college and law school. I was happy for him. Alas, my own marriage was not particularly happy.”

It was damn profitable, though, Sally almost said.

“When I got divorced, my husband retained the vineyard in Tuscany and I took this house. Todd must have heard about the divorce from his parents, and he contacted me. I swear to you that I didn't know he was married.”

“So he lied to you. Welcome to the club.”

“He did tell me eventually, Sally. He told me about your lovely daughter—”

“Keep my daughter out of it.” It pained Sally to think
Rosie might have been named after this gorgeous, privileged, extraordinarily blessed woman. Why couldn't her little girl have been named after a grotesque loser?

Laura sighed, a whisper of breath that seemed to say,
Well, I've tried to be pleasant. I've given it my best effort
. Then she shifted in her chair and crossed her legs in Todd's direction, cutting Sally out of the conversation. “Paul's death was a terrible loss. I grieved as much as anyone.”

Todd nodded. He was obviously willing to be civil enough for himself and Sally both. “It was a nasty accident,” he said. “Black ice. You don't see it until you're on top of it, and then it's too late. He shouldn't have been driving his Alfa Romeo, of course.”

“Not an appropriate vehicle to drive in that weather.”

“He probably thought he was indestructible.”

“I suppose we all do, to some extent,” Laura agreed, lifting her glass and holding it before her, almost as if she wanted to clink glasses with Todd.

How nice, Sally thought. They were making friends, bonding in their shared belief that Paul had thought he was indestructible. Todd stared into Laura's face as though it was physically impossible for him to look away. Maybe it was. She was that spectacular.

Sally watched the two of them talk, paying less attention to the words than to the movements of their mouths, the alternation of their voices. Todd was telling Laura about rooming with Paul at Columbia, how Paul's meticulousness had forced him to become a neater person. Laura said she thought Todd appeared to be a remarkably neat fellow. Todd told her about the time he and Paul took the IRT downtown to a punk club in SoHo and Paul freaked out at the sight of all those rockers with spiked hair and pit bull collars. Laura commented
that she couldn't believe Todd would have been freaked out. “Paul was provincial, in his own way. As a journalist, I'm sure you're much more open to adventure.”

“I try to be,” Todd admitted.

Sally's vision narrowed on Todd. He was basking in Laura's approval, savoring it. When Laura touched his arm he leaned toward her.

Why did she have to fall for the type of man who would fall for Laura? That probably included every type of man in the universe, but here she was, watching Todd, the man she loved, sucking up to the same rich, alluring woman who'd possessed Paul's heart.

Sally couldn't bear it. She was who she was—the Not-Laura, the Un-Laura, the antithesis of Laura—and she was losing Todd to Laura the way she'd lost Paul to her, the way she'd lose any man to her.

“Excuse me,” she said, breaking into their charming chatter. “I need to find a bathroom.”

Laura seemed dazed for a moment, as if she'd forgotten Sally was there. “Oh—well, there are several. If you don't find one, ask Lyman to direct you.”

“Thanks.” Sally pushed to her feet, walked to the French door with as much dignity as she could muster and entered the house.

She didn't want to find a bathroom. She just wanted to get the hell away from Laura's mansion, away from the woman who could so easily woo away the man Sally loved.

Todd. She wanted to weep. Todd was as smitten as a thirty-three-year-old man as Paul had been as a young boy. He was entranced. He was enchanted. One smile from Laura, one touch, and he was melting like ice cream in the sun.

She'd thought he was better. She'd thought he'd cared
for her, wanted her…even loved her. And maybe he had. Maybe it was easy enough to love Sally until someone like Laura came along.

The hell with him. She knew how to survive a heartbreak. She'd done it before, in the very recent past. She was getting the hang of it.

It took her less than a minute to retrace the route to the front door. She stepped outside, closed the door quietly behind her, slipped her sunglasses on and headed down the driveway to the road.

They were less than a mile from the pretty downtown village where they'd stopped for directions. Her sandals were comfortable, and the leaves of the arching trees lining the road provided shade—although she had a tube of sunblock with her, just in case. She could walk to town, find out where the nearest bus station was and take a cab there. She was pretty sure she had enough cash for a cab, and she could put the bus ticket on her credit card.

She'd go home, get Rosie from Trevor's house and swear off men. Not an impossible task. Not even an especially difficult one when she considered what assholes the men in her life were. Her father, her husband, her lover. One she'd never even met, one she'd never really had and one…

One she hated.

She'd fought with him. She'd let him see her anger and sorrow. She hadn't knocked herself out to make him happy, and it hadn't mattered. He'd been happy with her just the way she was.

Until now. Until he'd discovered that a princess was more desirable than a peasant.

Screw him.

A Jaguar convertible drove slowly past her, the driver
gaping at her as if he'd never seen a pedestrian before. She ignored him. She also ignored the woman driving the Mercedes SUV and the man driving the dark green Bentley. She just kept walking. The exertion simultaneously soothed and fueled her. By the time she reached town, she'd be over Todd. She promised herself she would.

The distance to town seemed to expand with each step she took. Her feet puffed in the heat, and sweat filmed her skin. Her hair felt heavy on her back, but when she paused to excavate in her tote bag for a barrette, she couldn't find one. The damn bag seemed to have gained five pounds during her walk, but for all the clutter inside it, she couldn't even find a ribbon to tie her hair back with.

It didn't matter. She wanted to feel lousy, and being hot, sticky, frizzy haired and puffy footed fit her mood perfectly.

Eventually she reached the village. An eatery beckoned—the Southport equivalent of the New Day, a small café with round tables and drinks for sale. She'd buy herself a
real
lemonade, not one served in priceless crystal but one served in a plastic tumbler, the way lemonade was meant to be. She'd drink it, catch her breath, then inquire about cab service to the bus station.

The café was cool and gloomy after the bright sun. Sally stood in the doorway until her eyes adjusted, then removed her sunglasses and peered at the prices posted on the wall above the counter. For the cost of a glass of lemonade in this joint, a person could enjoy a tall iced cappuccino and a bagel at the New Day.

But then, this place was probably patronized by the ex-wives of dukes, not college kids and seedy professors, cops and housewives, newspaper staffers and a man
writing the Great American Novel, which he would undoubtedly dedicate to Sally for having kept him in coffee during its creation.

She greeted the middle-aged woman behind the counter with a smile of sisterhood and ordered a lemonade. “Is there a bus station near here?” she asked.

“There's a train station just up the block,” the woman said helpfully as she filled a textured plastic cup with lemonade for Sally, who gratefully wrapped her fingers around its humdrum surface.

“Can I get a train going north from there?”

“The trains go west and east. Where do you want to go?”

“North.”

“Well,” the woman said, collecting the dollar bills Sally extended to her and handing her back a pathetically small amount of change, “you can take the train east to New Haven and then pick up the Amtrak there. That'll get you north.”

“Thanks.” Sally stashed the pennies in her wallet, plucked a napkin from the dispenser on the counter and carried her glass to a marble-topped pedestal table away from the window. She didn't want to look out on the picturesque street. She wanted to sulk and fume. She wanted to pout and be ugly.

The sweat began to dry on her, chilling her. A sip of the lemonade chilled her even more. She lifted her hair off her neck and fanned it up and down, then let it drop against her back again.

She sorted her thoughts.

What surprised her the most was that she was more upset about Todd's betrayal than about Paul's. Paul had been her husband; he'd committed adultery; he'd had a
torrid love affair with that woman, that paragon, that golden goddess.

All Todd had done was embody a bunch of clichéd male reflexes, gazing at her with stars in his eyes and hanging on her every word. All he'd done was indicate to Sally that, given a choice, he'd pick Laura.

Why did it hurt so much she wanted to weep? Why did she suspect that at least some of the perspiration on her face was actually tears? Why did the thought of going back to Winfield alone and spending the rest of her life loathing that no-good son of a bitch leave her feeling desolate?

The door swung open, and a couple of teenage girls bounced in, skinny and giggly. Sally lowered her eyes to her glass and took a heady sip. Sweet and bitter, just the way lemonade was supposed to taste. Sweet for what love could be like, and bitter for what love too often was.

She loved Todd. She hurt because she loved him in a way she'd never really loved Paul. Oh, of course she'd
loved
Paul, because he was her husband and the father of her daughter, because circumstances had compelled them to make a life together and Sally's motto always was to make the best of the life you were living, and if the life you were living was that of a wife in a marriage, you might as well love your husband.

But with Todd…With Todd, circumstances hadn't compelled her. She'd known him long enough to experience a gamut of emotions with him, and all those emotions had come together to create love. Todd had exasperated her. He'd infuriated her. He'd challenged her. He'd actually taken the time to consider who she was and how he felt about it.

Paul never had. He'd married her because it had been
the decent thing to do, and then he'd never really given her much consideration at all—except to snicker about her behind her back when he'd met Todd for drinks after work.

Todd had never done anything with her because it was the decent thing to do. He'd done what he'd done with her because he'd wanted to. Chosen to. Needed to. Because he'd felt something for her, deep inside.

And now he was flirting with the belle of the Connecticut Gold Coast. What he'd felt for Sally deep inside wasn't strong enough to keep him from looking elsewhere, looking for someone wealthier, fancier, classier, lovelier.

The door opened again. She bowed over her drink, uninterested in viewing more giggling teenagers. The lemonade bathed her tongue and sent another chill down her spine. She prayed she wouldn't start blubbering in the back corner of this overpriced café.

A click on the table caused her to shift her eyes. There, lying on the veined-marble surface, was her pocketknife.

She lifted her gaze high enough to view Todd's midsection, then focused back on the knife. It looked okay, the plastic handle faded to a creamy beige, the hula girl's lei draped discreetly to conceal her breasts, her smile nearly rubbed off but still saucy.

“This is all I've got of your dad,” her mother had told her. “This and you. You're the best thing he left me. So if you want, you can have the other thing.”

Her knife. The knife she'd given Paul because she'd wanted to believe he meant that much to her.

Todd pulled out one of the wire-backed chairs and dropped onto it. Sally avoided looking at him.

“I've been driving around this fucking town for a half hour, trying to find you,” he said.

“Well, you found me.”