The Year Everything Changed (18 page)

Chapter Thirty
Ginger

Ginger had every intention of going to work after she dropped Rachel off. She’d only taken half a day, intending to spend the afternoon finishing a report on an employee returning from disability leave, due in the morning. But the idea of voluntarily returning to a windowless cubicle in the human resources division of Selex Electronics on this sun-filled day held as much appeal as a pair of four-inch platform shoes. Instead, on impulse, Ginger stopped for a late lunch of crabcakes at Pisces, a restaurant she and Marc had frequented when she first moved to California. They’d stopped going there after running into the credit manager from the Oakland dealership—not because Marc was concerned about someone discovering them together, but because he was looking for an excuse to fire the manager and didn’t want anything getting in the way. The crabcakes were even better than she’d remembered, and she left promising herself that she would return soon. Maybe with Rachel on their way home from one of their meetings in Sacramento.

Yeah, she liked that idea and hoped Rachel would, too.

Ten million dollars
. She’d had several hours to get used to the idea but simply couldn’t wrap her mind around the figure or the possibilities. It was easy to think of things she could do for her mother and father, but she floundered on ideas for herself. She never had to work again. But if she didn’t work, how did she fill her days? She could buy a house, almost any house she wanted. But where? It all depended on Marc. She could finally get rid of her seven-year-old Camry—and replace it with what? She didn’t like Mercedes, the cars Marc sold, and he’d be hurt if she bought from anyone else.

The thought brought her up short. Where were
her
dreams,
her
goals,
her
ambitions? When had she stopped being an “I” and become a “we”? Her world revolved around Marc. His world included an entire universe.

They weren’t new thoughts, just ones that she’d never given free rein. What was the point? She loved him, and that meant accepting the good and the bad that came with loving him.

If only their being together were a matter of money.

Ginger spotted Marc’s red Mercedes as soon as she rounded the corner into the parking area behind her condo. Surprise and anticipation fluttered in her chest like butterflies released at weddings. Three years she and Marc had been together, and she still felt this way just knowing she was about to see him. Wasn’t that the definition of love?

She glanced at the dashboard clock. Ten minutes after five. He never left work before six. Curious and anxious, she carelessly swung her Camry into the narrow space allotted her, a space made even smaller by her neighbor’s monstrous SUV, and had to back out and park again. Infringing on a neighboring parking space was a sure way to start a turf war, something she didn’t have the patience to put up with or stubbornness to maintain.

Marc met her at the door flashing his you-are-the-most-important-person-in-the-world smile, the one she suspected came as easy as breathing to him, but that she still found impossible to resist. She was so damn easy. “What are you doing here?”

Instead of answering, he reached for her and took her into his arms, pressing a quick kiss on her forehead followed by a longer, not-for-public-consumption kiss on the lips. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting over an hour.”

Not exactly accusatory, but close. “There was construction on 580. Traffic was backed up for—”

“What were you doing on 580? I thought I told you it would be shorter to take 680.”

It used to amuse her that he automatically assumed she followed his advice, as if by asking a question she subjugated herself to his answer. Lately, she’d begun to find it more annoying than charming. “Rachel went with me. I dropped her off at the BART station in—”

“So, how did it go?” He helped her out of her jacket and laid it over the end of the sofa.

“It was actually a little sad. I wasn’t expecting that.” Ginger put her purse in the closet and noticed a bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice on the coffee table. “I think Lucy Hargreaves was more than Jessie’s lawyer. It was obvious his death affected her pretty deeply. It makes me wonder if—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Marc said. He paused, waited for her, and when she didn’t say anything, prodded gently, “The will, Ginger.” When she still didn’t say anything, he added, “What was in it?”

Unexpectedly, unreasonably, she resented his asking. “I thought you weren’t interested. At least that’s what you said when I asked you to go with me.” She’d only asked because she knew he’d expected it and was relieved when he’d said he couldn’t get away.

“You’re right. And since you obviously think it’s none of my business, we’ll just let it go at that.”

Zing, a blow to the midsection, calculated to do the most damage and put her on the defensive. Damn, he was good. “You know that’s not what I think. I’m just tired. It’s been a rough day.”

“Then you should let me take care of you. That’s what I’m here for.”

That surprised her and instantly lifted her mood. Yeah, he was good, and yeah, she was easy. So what? “Oh, and just what was it you had in mind?” She gave him a smile. A peace offering he readily accepted.

He led her to the sofa, and when she was seated, propped a pillow at her back. He opened the champagne and poured each of them a glass. “Dinner will arrive at six-thirty,” he announced, handing her a glass and sitting close beside her. “I had the chef at Luraine’s personally prepare all your favorites—Caesar salad, filet mignon with orange Bearnaise sauce, wild rice pilaf with scallions—and fresh whipped cream.”

They were menu items, not something out of the ordinary that the chef would have to “personally” prepare, but to say so, to even think it, made her sound petty and ungrateful. “Just whipped cream? Nothing to put it on?”

His slow, answering smile said it all—she was the dessert.

He tucked his head into her neck, nipping her ear, and kissing the sensitive skin at the base of her jaw. “God—you smell incredible. What are you wearing?”

“Too much,” she said turning into his kiss.

“Not so fast. You’re always complaining there’s never enough time for us to talk. Now’s your chance.”

She licked her lips and then his. “Later.”

“But what about the whipped cream? I promise you that you’re going to like what I have in mind.”

She got up and went into the kitchen, coming back with an aerosol can of low-fat, low-calorie, low-taste whipping cream. “Will this do?”

He grinned. “It’ll do just fine.”

She held out her hand and led him upstairs, tossing the can on the bed and adjusting the blinds. Slowly, the way he liked her to do, she began undressing. He stopped her when all she had left were her bra and panties. She reached back to unhook her bra.

“Let me do that,” he said.

She turned her back to him, the silk parted, and he traced a line of kisses the length of her spine. She sighed and leaned into him when he reached around to cup her breasts, kneading them with gentle insistence. Her nipples grew hard and pressed into his palms.

“You have the most incredible breasts,” he whispered against her hair. “They’re perfect. You’re perfect.” He turned her to face him, smiling. “I see other men looking at you, undressing you in their minds, and I want to tell them whatever they’re imagining, they don’t have a clue.” He leaned down to take one nipple into his mouth and then the other, tugging gently, circling with his tongue, and then suddenly pulling hard. She gasped.

He slid his hands down her stomach, caught her panties, and slid them over her hips. When she was naked, he held her at arm’s length to gaze at her. “Even like this, no one would ever guess that you’re thirty-two.”

“Even like this?” she echoed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. You could make a fortune as a body double for all those aging movie stars.”

“Enjoy it while you can,” she teased. “One of these days it’s going to head south.”

He removed his clothes and hooked them on the bedpost. “When it does, we’ll just find someone to prop it back up again.”

She would expect Marc to give her gentle jabs if she ever let herself go. Aging wouldn’t come without a fight or without regret, but she absolutely would not become a tucked and padded and Botoxed replica of the woman she’d been at twenty. She wanted him to accept her as she aged naturally, the way he accepted the growing bald spot at the back of his head and the beginning of the spare tire riding on top of his belt. Growing old together, sharing the ups and downs, the good and bad, was the best part of loving someone.

Naked, armed with the can of whipped cream and a wicked smile, Marc reached past Ginger and pulled back the bedspread. He brought her onto the bed with him, opening her legs and sitting between her knees. He came forward and kissed her, drawing her tongue into his mouth and then thrusting his tongue into hers. Sitting up again, he shook the can, sending her an erotic, almost malevolent look as he drew a circle of foaming cream that covered her areolas. He then dipped his finger into the center of the cream, brought it to his mouth, took half and transferred the rest to hers. Slowly, deliberately he shared the cream this way until only traces remained on her breasts.

Marc had always been a creative lover, but this was something new, something that left Ginger curious and quivering in anticipation. He drew a line of cream from her breasts to her belly and into the dark triangle between her thighs. He didn’t like oral sex, at least he didn’t like giving it, saving going down on her for “special occasions” when he wanted her especially sated by their lovemaking. He’d always denied that was the motivation, and she let him. She had her own “special occasion” ways to please him. Wasn’t that a part of any good relationship?

What he did next was beyond her imagining. She caught her breath and jerked into a half-sitting position when something cold was inserted into her vagina and she felt the cavity being filled with cream. He discarded the can, put his hand on her shoulder, and pushed her back down, silencing her protests by covering her mouth with his and giving her a long, plundering kiss. He moved between her legs and thrust deep and hard inside of her. The sensation was unbelievable, the cold of the cream, the heat of his body, the hard driving force. Instantly, she was out of control, meeting his thrusts with an insistent, bruising force. It seemed like only seconds and she was aboard the wild horse, fighting to prolong the ride.

Later, fresh from a bath, dressed in oversized robes and sitting on the floor eating their gourmet meal off her everyday dishes, Marc stretched across the coffee table to wipe the corner of her mouth with his napkin. When he leaned back against the sofa he asked the question Ginger had been waiting for him to ask again. “So, are you going to tell me what happened this morning?”

“A half-million.” The lie slipped out with stunning ease. It was a first between them, at least on her part. She didn’t count the small lies, the ones she told him every day about understanding why they had to wait to be together. They were the thread that held the fabric of their relationship together. This was different.

“That’s it?”

She was stunned at how much she resented his disappointment. Half a million dollars was a lot of money. Instead of backtracking while she still could, she made the lie more complicated. “Divided four ways.”

“That can’t be right. The investigator I hired said he was worth at least fifty times that.”

She tried to wrap her mind around this new piece of information. Her deception no longer seemed so important. “You hired an investigator? Why would you do that?”

“I was afraid something like this would happen. Plainly it’s a good thing I did.”

“How dare you hire someone without telling me? You had no right. Jessie Reed is my father and my business.”

“You used to say Jerome Reynolds was your father.”

“That was a low blow.”

He tossed his napkin on the coffee table. “You know, I gave up a lot to be here with you tonight. If you think I’m going to stick around and let you attack me just because I didn’t tell you everything I was doing to look out for you, you’re crazy. That’s the kind of shit I get from Judy. I’ll be damned if I’m going to take it from you, too.”

She knew what he was doing, how he was manipulating her by comparing her to Judy, but after three years the pattern was as set as her reaction. If she didn’t find a way to pacify him, if he left with the argument unresolved between them, she wouldn’t hear from him for days.

She stared at Marc trying to decide what to do and was bemused when she realized she didn’t have the energy or desire to make the effort to keep him there. She wasn’t going to fall apart or curl up in loneliness if he left. She’d had too much practice getting through such evenings.

Besides, she had someone to talk to if she needed to talk, someone to see if she needed company. Someone who was just as screwed up when it came to men as Ginger was—the sister she actually liked, Rachel.

“Well?” Marc prodded.

“Well what?”

“Are you going to apologize?”

“Absolutely not.” Even that surprised her. “If anyone deserves an apology, it’s me.”

He got up and stood over her. “I should have gone to the opera with Judy.”

She glared at him. “Be my guest. I’m sure if you hurry, you can still make it.” Later, when she was alone and waiting for the phone to ring even knowing it wouldn’t, she would regret saying what she had. But right now it felt too damn good to let what might or might not happen bother her.

Chapter Thirty-one
Elizabeth

“I really have to go, Stephanie.” Elizabeth cradled the phone against her shoulder as she closed the dishwasher with her hip and made one last swipe of the counter. “I’m going to be late if I don’t get out of here right now.”

“Where are you going?”

“I told you, I’m meeting friends.” She still hadn’t told anyone but Sam about her father and sisters. At times she wondered if it was a mistake excluding the kids in something this big, wondered if they would feel left out or angry when the time finally came to tell them. But she wasn’t ready to answer the questions that were sure to come, mostly because she was still asking questions herself.

“They’ll wait. This is important, Mom. You have to talk to Dad for me. You know if I ask him for the money he’s going to tell me to get a job. This is my last summer of freedom.”

“What about graduate school?”

“God, must you always be so literal?”

“I have some money set aside.” She was taking the easy way out even knowing it was a mistake. And it was wrong. It was like eating a piece of pie on a diet. The five- or ten-minute sugar high was never worth the agony of knowing there was no way to exercise enough the next day to burn off the calories. “It’s not as much as you want, but it’s the best I can do. Just don’t tell your father.” She wanted to be the one to tell him.

“I love you, Mom. You’re the best.”

“Yeah, yeah—I’ve heard it before.” She believed it, too. She just wished it was said more often and under other circumstances.

“I mean it. I knew you’d come through for me.”

“How?”

Stephanie laughed. “You always do.”

“This has to last you. I don’t—”

“I have to go now. Sharon’s waiting. Love you.” She hung up before Elizabeth could say anything more.

Elizabeth struggled to sort through her feelings. Was it so bad to be taken for granted? Wasn’t that what parents were for—to be there when their children needed them? And weren’t children entitled to unqualified emotional and financial support as long as their parents were able to give it?

The argument didn’t work. At least not completely. Elizabeth would send Stephanie the money she’d been saving to buy something for Sam that didn’t come out of the checkbook or show up on the credit card. But she was only going to send half—not nearly as much as Stephanie wanted. If it wasn’t enough, Stephanie could damn well work to earn the rest, or ask her father.

Elizabeth didn’t need the extra time she’d allowed to find Jessie’s house, which meant she arrived a half-hour early. There were no other cars, not even one that could have been Lucy’s, someone she had expected to be there early. She could either drive around to kill time, find a coffee shop and stoke up on caffeine, or go inside to wait and look around her father’s house—if she could manage it without getting caught.

She decided to go inside.

Christina answered the door dressed in flip-flops, cutoff jeans, and a tank top. A tattoo of a lizard appeared perched on her shoulder as if it were a pet impregnated into her skin. “Well, Elizabeth, how nice to see you again.” She opened the door wider, making room for Elizabeth to enter. “You’re early, you know.”

“How did you get here?”

“What? No nice to see you, too? How have you been? What’s new with you?”

Elizabeth stepped into the marble tiled foyer. “Sorry. I was just surprised when you opened the door. I didn’t see your car outside.”

“It’s in the garage. At least that’s where the car I’m using is. I’m living here now.” Responding to Elizabeth’s stunned expression, she added with a coy smile, “Daddy always did love me best, you know.”

Elizabeth blinked and then laughed at the pure insanity of the statement. “I guess I should be jealous.”

“Oh, please do,” Christina smiled in return. “I have an almost pathological need to feel superior. I feed on jealousy.” She pointed to a room off the main hallway and breezily added, “You can wait in there if you want. I have some stuff to finish in the kitchen.”

Elizabeth glanced into the living room and decided to follow Christina. The room was something she imagined a decorator with an unlimited budget and illusions of grandeur would put together, more model house than home, the fabrics rich silks and brocades, the wooden surfaces shiny and labor-intensive. A television would be as out of place there as a toddler. The only thing that gave it any warmth at all was a fireplace, and even that was surrounded by a carved marble mantle.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, the nook overlooking the backyard. It was in keeping with the architecture of the house, made to look original but filled with state-of-the-art appliances and granite countertops. Christina was at the island sink chopping celery. “Pretty spectacular, huh?” she said.

“The living room reminds me of the houses the robber barons built along the Hudson River in New York—meant to impress.” Elizabeth sat on one of the bar stools at the island. She and Christina would never be friends, but circumstances dictated she at least make an effort to be civil to her younger sister. “I see your jaw is unwired. How are you feeling?”

“Great. I’m even working.” She scooped the celery into a bowl. “Gotta pay the rent, you know.”

“To stay here?” Elizabeth said, putting the clues together.

“What, did you think that I’d move in and—”

“I’m just surprised that Lucy would charge you to live in your own father’s house.”

“She didn’t. It was my idea. I pay my own way or I don’t go.” She picked up a bunch of red grapes, plucked them off the stem, cut each in half, and added them to the bowl. “Well, shit. After that I guess I have to admit that I’m not paying to use the car. But I am thinking about buying it. It’s a nineteen-sixty-five Mustang. Unbelievably cool.” She laughed. “And I thought I was through with old cars.”

A memory hit Elizabeth as bright and intrusive as the shaft of sunlight coming through the window behind Christina. She saw her father pulling into the driveway of their home in Bakersfield, honking the horn on a shiny new car, calling her and Frank outside. Her mother came to the door but refused to go outside or let them out either. Frank grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and ran for the side door, urging her to hurry as he dragged her around to the front, shoving her in the backseat and then climbing in to sit next to their father.

“Sweet,” he said, running his hand over the dash. “Is it mine?” You could tell by the way he asked he didn’t believe it. He was nine months shy of his license. There was no way a brand-new car was going to be dropped in his lap.

“As soon as you can pay for the insurance,” Jessie said.

Frank let out a whoop and turned to look at her. “Did you hear that, Lizzy? We got us a set of wheels.”

It wasn’t the car, it was the
we
that etched the day forever in her mind. She was the tagalong little sister, ten years old to his fifteen, and he’d thought to include her. No one had ever given her a better gift, no one ever did.

The car started moving, backing out of the driveway. Elizabeth knew there would be hell to pay later with her mother if she went with them, but she didn’t care. No way was she going to miss this moment.

She told herself to close her eyes, not to look at her mother as they pulled away, but a thought drew her. If she smiled and waved and let her mother see how happy they were she would understand and it would be all right. Instead, she saw her mother crying. The glitter of the moment turned to sand.

“What color is your Mustang?” Elizabeth asked.

“Dark green—with black upholstery and no air conditioning.” She tossed a grape in her mouth. “Just what you want to be driving around in when it’s a hundred degrees outside.”

“My brother had a car like that.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s right. I remember Lucy saying something about Jessie having a son. Did he die a long time ago?”

“Two years after he got the car.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah—
bummer
.”

“Don’t go turning hostile on me. It’s just an expression.”

One her own kids used all the time. “I’m sensitive about Frank,” she admitted.

Rhona came into the kitchen from a side door that led to the garage. She put a paper grocery bag on the counter and extended her hand. “You must be Elizabeth. I’m Rhona McDowell, your father’s housekeeper. Can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet you. I’ve seen your picture, of course, but you couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven when it was taken.”

“Jessie had a picture of me?” God, now they were going to think she actually cared.

“Would you like to see it?” Rhona asked.

“No.” That only made it worse. “Maybe later.”

“He had a lot of pictures of us,” Christina said. “Surprised me, too.”

Elizabeth changed the subject. “You said you had a new job. What do you do?”

“I work at River City Studio.” She came around the counter to sit on the stool beside Elizabeth. “Where in less than two weeks I have made myself indispensable. No one who’s worked there has ever managed to empty the trash on a regular basis or given better unsolicited editing advice. I answer phones with a sickening cheerfulness and convince clients they really can wait an extra day for their videos because the quality will be better than anything they can get without going to L.A. and paying twice as much.”

“How did you get a job like that?” It was the kind of question someone asked to keep a conversation going, but Elizabeth genuinely wanted to know.

“Lucy knew someone who knew someone. What about you? What do you do?”

“I’m a home— I used to be a homemaker. I’m starting college this fall semester.”

“Why?”

“You mean why would I want to go back to school at my age?” It took effort, but she managed to suppress the testiness.

“Well—yeah.”

Rhona laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

“I’m not
that
old,” Elizabeth protested.

“So what are you studying?”

“I don’t know yet,” she reluctantly admitted. “I’m going to get the basics out of the way and then decide. Right now I’m leaning toward a degree in library science.”

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Get a degree in a field that’s disappearing.”

“Are you always this mouthy?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yep. It’s one of my more charming personality traits.” She handed Elizabeth a grape. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

“There will always be libraries,” Elizabeth said defensively. “Maybe not as we know them now, but—”

“Where have you been the last ten years? What used to be a sacred cow is now one of the first things to go in a budget crunch. A kid with a laptop hooked up to the Internet has access to more research material than any library on earth.”

She was being lectured by someone young enough to be her daughter, and it infuriated her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she shot back for lack of a more clever retort.

“I’ve been doing voice-overs for political ad campaigns for the past six years. It’s kind of a hobby of mine to see how many of the politicians keep their promises once they’re elected and discover there isn’t money to fund dying, antiquated institutions.” She pinned Elizabeth with a stare. “How many politicians’ careers do you follow?”

“Libraries are not dying, antiquated institutions.”

“Maybe not university libraries—” The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it.”

With that the conversation ended, saving Elizabeth from strangling Christina. She glanced at Rhona.

“Times and ideas change,” Rhona said. “People, too. Christina’s a smart one. She has a lot of anger bottled up inside, but give her some time. She’ll come around.”

“Honestly? I couldn’t care less whether she does or not. Once this is over I doubt that any of us will ever see her again.”

“With all due respect, I believe you’re wrong.”

Was ten million dollars really worth putting herself through this for six months?

To her shame, she didn’t even hesitate with the answer. It was. Plainly she wasn’t the pillar of moral certitude she’d believed herself to be.