Second Child (14 page)

She pushed through the door to the shop. A moment later the owner, a chic-looking woman in her thirties, stood up from her chair behind a small desk toward the back of the store and strode toward them.

“Melissa!” she said. “I’ve been wondering when you’d come in. Your mother called and told me to let you charge whatever you want today.” She winked conspiratorially. “Stretching out your birthday?”

Melissa flushed and shook her head. “It’s not for me,” she explained. “It’s for my sister. Well, she’s not really my sister. We’re half sisters. This is Teri MacIver.” She turned to Teri. “This is Polly Corcoran, but everyone calls her Corky.”

Teri smiled and held out her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

Corky Corcoran’s eyes sparkled as she shook Teri’s proffered hand. “Well, there certainly isn’t any mistaking whose daughter you are, is there?” she asked. Her smile faded away as a sad frown creased her forehead. “I always loved your mother so much—I used to pretend I was named after her, even though it wasn’t true. I—I’m so sorry about what happened.”

Teri’s own smile ebbed away as she cast her eyes toward the floor and managed a slight nod. “Th-Thank you,” she murmured. “I still can hardly believe it. Without Daddy …” Her voice trailed off and there was an awkward moment before Corky suddenly clapped her hands together and forced her expression back into a cordial smile.

“Well, we’re not here to dwell on our sorrows, are we?” she asked, wincing at the false brightness that had come into her voice, but determined not to make Teri any more uncomfortable than she already had. “Did you see something in the window you liked?”

Teri nodded. “The white skirt? The one with the blue flowers?”

Corky’s smile broadened. “Perfect,” she declared. “In fact I was just thinking about the very same skirt for you myself.” Her eyes expertly scanned Teri’s figure. “A size
four?” Teri nodded, and Corky disappeared into a back room.

While Corky was gone, Teri glanced around the shop. It was set up more like a living room than a store, with only a few garments on display, and those laid casually over the backs of chairs or hanging from mannequins discreetly posed in the corners.

It was exactly the kind of shop Teri had seen before, except today she was not on the outside looking in. She felt a shiver of anticipation as she waited for Corky to reappear with the skirt.

Five minutes later the shop’s proprietor returned from the back room, her arms laden with half a dozen items. “I thought you might like to try a blouse or two with the skirt, and perhaps a sweater,” she said, spreading the garments on a mahogany library table for Teri’s inspection. Teri’s eyes immediately went to a silk blouse whose color perfectly matched the blue flowers on the skirt, and as she picked it up, Corky nodded approvingly. “I thought you might like that.” She nodded toward a changing room concealed behind a three-paneled oriental screen, and when Teri had disappeared with the skirt and blouse, turned her attention to Melissa. “What about you?” she asked. “I have some beautiful things for fall that are just your colors.”

Melissa hesitated, recalling her mother’s words just before they’d left the house. “Now remember, Melissa, you’re
not
shopping for yourself. You have all the things you need—Lord knows your father’s bought you more than you ever wear anyway—and today you’re shopping for Teri. And for heaven’s sake,” she’d added, “try not to talk Teri into all the drab things you like so much. With her coloring, she can wear all the wonderful colors that only make you look like you have the flu.” Now, the words still stinging, even though she tried to tell herself her mother hadn’t meant them to sound mean, she shook her head. “I—I don’t think so,” she murmured.

Before Corky could urge her any further, Teri emerged from the dressing room. “Well?” she asked Melissa. “What do you think? Is it just perfect, or what?”

Melissa gazed at her half sister, doing her best to put down the feelings of envy that rose unbidden from somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind. But when she saw
the eager look in Teri’s eyes, the feeling died away. It wasn’t Teri’s fault that clothes seemed to fit her as if they’d been made just for her. The blouse, a soft blue that seemed to turn Teri’s blond hair almost flaxen, had full sleeves that were caught at the wrists with tight cuffs, and its bodice clung to Teri’s bosom with just the right draping to set off her figure yet not appear too revealing. The skirt flowed down from her waist in a gentle line to a point just below her knees. Altogether it was, indeed, perfect.

“It’s beautiful,” Melissa murmured.

“How much is it?” Teri asked.

Corky smiled. “The skirt’s only one hundred and sixty, but the blouse is a bit more.”

Teri’s eyes widened and she glanced nervously at Melissa. “How much more?” she asked, her voice quavering.

“Two fifty,” Corky replied. “It
is
silk, after all.”

Teri’s eyes, already reflecting disappointment, shifted back to Melissa. “It’s too much, isn’t it?” she asked, and Melissa was sure she heard a pleading note in her voice.

Melissa turned to Corky. “Can I call Mom and ask her if it’s okay?”

“The phone’s on my desk,” she said, “But I already talked to your mother, and she said anything you wanted was fine. And if anyone knows what clothes cost these days,” she added, her brows arching slightly and her voice dropping as if she were taking the girls into her confidence, “it’s your mother.”

“Then we’ll take them,” Teri declared, her expression clearing as she went back to the table and began inspecting another blouse.

Half an hour later they left the shop with two more skirts, five blouses, and a sweater neatly packed in cardboard boxes, each of them with Corky’s champagne-bottle logo emblazoned on its top in gold foil.

“Let’s go back to that other place,” Teri suggested as they started down the street once again. “The one with the sports clothes. This stuff’s all wonderful, but I still need tennis clothes and things to wear at the club during the day.”

“You mean Play Things?” Melissa asked.

Teri nodded. “They had some great bathing suits in the window.”

They walked a block down the street, and soon Teri was busy in the changing room, trying on bathing suits and shorts, knit shirts and cotton slacks. When she was finally done, a stack of garments lay on the counter. They had all looked perfect on her, and they all were exactly the kinds of clothes the other kids in Secret Cove were wearing. The clerk finished writing up the bill, then looked up at Teri. “Will that be all?” she asked.

Teri was about to nod, then changed her mind as she saw Melissa look longingly at a magenta jogging suit with black stripes running diagonally across the top and repeated in a vertical stripe down the legs of the pants. “Why don’t you try it on?” she asked.

Melissa reddened and shook her head. “It wouldn’t look right on me.”

“How do you know?” Teri argued. “You can’t tell anything unless you put it on.” Without waiting for Melissa to reply, she turned to the clerk. “Do you have that in her size?”

The clerk surveyed Melissa doubtfully. “Well, I don’t know. She’s sort of an off-size. But let me take a look.” A few minutes later the clerk returned from a storeroom and handed a hanger to Melissa. “Why don’t you give this a try?” she suggested.

Two minutes later Melissa came out of the dressing room and stared at herself dolefully in the mirror. To her own eye the pants seemed a little too tight and the top a size too large.

And the color—the color that had looked so wonderful until she’d put it on, now seemed to give her complexion an odd, almost yellowish hue. “Oh, God,” she groaned, turning away from the mirror to gaze at Teri. “Why do I even try?”

“But it looks great,” Teri told her. “If we can just get the top a size smaller, it will be perfect.”

“But it won’t,” Melissa protested. “Look at me—it makes me look like I’ve got some kind of disease.”

“Oh, it doesn’t, either,” Teri declared. “Besides, remember what your mom said? You’re not supposed to get anything drab.”

“I’m not supposed to get anything at all,” Melissa reminded her. “I already have enough clothes.”

“Well, maybe you do, but they don’t look right.” Melissa’s eyes clouded with hurt, and Teri instantly apologized. “I don’t mean they look bad,” she said. “But they aren’t very stylish. I mean, look at the way the other kids dress—they always wear white shorts, and polo shirts, and that kind of stuff.” She moved over to a table stacked high with knit shirts and began riffling through them, pulling out one in a bright lime green and another in mustard yellow. “You could wear these,” she said, holding the green one up against Melissa’s chest.

Melissa gazed at the shirts wistfully, comparing them in her mind with the browns and dark greens she always picked for herself. But try as she would, she simply couldn’t see herself in any of the bright colors. “Try on this one,” Teri told her, pushing the shirt into her hands and handing her a pair of white shorts. “And while you’re changing, I’ll see if they have the jogging top in a smaller size.”

A few minutes later Melissa emerged from the dressing room and once again stared at herself in the mirror.

The shirt seemed baggy on her, while the shorts stretched too tightly over her hips, making her look even plumper than she already was. Teri, reading her eyes, turned to the clerk.

“Don’t you have something with pleats?” she asked.

Twenty minutes later, over Melissa’s objections, Teri added a pair of white shorts, two of the polo shirts, a bright red bathing suit, and the jogging outfit to the pile of clothes already on the counter.

“Can I charge it?” she asked. “I’m Teri MacIver—Mr. Holloway is my father.”

The clerk smiled. “Of course,” she said. “Mrs. Holloway called this morning—she said you’re to have anything you want.”

Teri stared at the pile of clothes, then her eyes wandered to a tennis outfit she’d looked at earlier. Finally, seeing Melissa’s eyes bulge as she read the total on the cash register, she shook her head. “I guess that’s all,” she said. The clerk wrote up a charge slip for the clothes and handed it to Teri along with a pen.

Teri gazed at the figure at the bottom of the slip. Together with what she’d bought at Corky’s, the total came to more than three thousand dollars. For just a fraction of
a second she thought of the two hundred dollars she’d had to spend on school clothes the year before.

But that was a long time ago, she told herself, putting the thought out of her mind.

With a feeling of intense pleasure, she took the pen from the clerk and scrawled her signature across the bottom of the charge slip.

Phyllis Holloway glared at her husband, her eyes glittering with anger. “But isn’t that what we have lawyers for?” she demanded.

Charles removed his reading glasses and pressed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand against the bridge of his nose, partly in an effort to relieve the headache that was growing along with the argument with his wife, and partly to give himself a moment’s respite from that same argument. Finally he sighed, put his glasses back on, and picked up a stack of papers from his desk. “I’ve already told you—it’s a simple matter, and I can take care of it myself. I suppose I
could
call a firm in L.A. to handle it, but why bother? I am, after all, a lawyer myself—”

“Oh, come on,” Phyllis sniffed. “You haven’t practiced a day in your life, and you know it.”

Charles’s jaw tightened, and, not for the first time, he wondered why he stayed with Phyllis. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken an affectionate word to him—at least when they were alone. Of course, in public, she was the image of the loving wife. She never failed to stay close to him when they were out together, never let an evening go by without telling whomever they were with about her wonderful husband.

But it was all an act, for when they were alone together, she rarely spoke to him at all, except to complain about one thing or another—if it wasn’t one of Cora’s shortcomings, or Melissa’s, it was usually one of his own.

Had she always been like this?

He didn’t know, for when he’d first met her, when his relationship with Polly was already breaking up, she’d seemed perfect.

Bright and vivacious, she’d been like none of the girls he’d grown up with, certainly nothing at all like Polly.
Where Polly had had a natural sense of reserve, Phyllis had seemed a free spirit, doting on his daughter but always ready to take time to chat with him. And after Polly had left, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to come together, both of them mourning the loss of Teri.

When Phyllis had become pregnant, he’d been more than pleased to marry her. And for the first six months, until Melissa was born, everything had been fine. Then everything changed. Indeed, it had changed from the first moment Phyllis had seen her daughter. She’d looked down into Melissa’s tiny face, framed by wisps of brown hair, and her eyes had filled with tears.

“She was supposed to be blond,” Phyllis had said, looking up at Charles. “I wanted her to be just like Teri.”

Charles had picked up the baby, snuggling her close to his chest and kissing her forehead. “But she can’t be just like Teri,” he’d protested. “Teri was Polly’s daughter. Missy is ours.”

Phyllis had said nothing more, at least not directly. But over the years, Charles had always known that for her, Melissa never measured up to the standards set by Teri.

Nor, apparently, had he met her expectations as a husband.

On the other hand, almost from the moment he’d married her, Phyllis had changed.

Her effervescence had vanished, and now Charles sometimes wondered if it had ever been there in the first place, or if he’d simply imagined it, the desire acting as father to the thought.

Within a year Phyllis had transformed herself from the pretty, if not quite beautiful, young nurse from Philadelphia, into her own version of a woman born into the Crowd.

The Secret Cove Crowd.

She shopped at all the right stores and wore all the right clothes.

In New York, where they spent most of the year, she went to all the right restaurants and served on all the right committees.