Second Time Around (31 page)

“President Tait got busted sleeping with a student and he got to keep his job?” Jeff’s mouth hung open. Jamie could see the glint of gold fillings in his back molars.

“He did not get busted,” she corrected. “He claimed that he was being harassed by a delusional student with a crush. So campus security was dispatched to Henley House to ask around, and I guess they started with Arden’s room. She knew I’d been seeing someone on the sly. Of course, when she saw a copy of the note, she recognized my handwriting and put two and two together. She figured I’d lose my scholarship if anyone found out the truth, so she swore to the security
guy that she’d done it. She took the blame and let herself be known amongst all the administrators as the unhinged coed who went
Fatal Attraction
on the president. And since she corroborated his claim that nothing ever happened between them, the president got to keep his job, but I know for a fact people are still whispering about it.”

“You let her take the blame for all that?” Jeff looked appalled. “What kind of friend are you?”

“A
bad
friend. I know!” Jamie dropped her head into her hands. “Believe me, I get it.”

“Why didn’t you come forward? How did you live with yourself?”

“I didn’t come forward because, when I finally sobered up and found out about all this, she physically restrained me. Disconnected the phone, blocked the doorway. She was shockingly strong for such a skinny girl.”

Jeff was having none of this. “But she couldn’t hold you hostage forever. Ultimately, it was your decision to take the easy way out.”

“Ultimately, yes, it was,” Jamie acknowledged. “First, I was a home-wrecking hussy, and then I was a coward. I let her talk me into it because I was so afraid and she was so vehement. Arden said her family had given so much money to the school over the years that she could get away with anything because her last name was Henley, and you know what? She was right. At the time, I thought she was being noble.”

“And now?”

Jamie sat back in her chair. “Now I think she was being even more self-destructive than I was.”

“But Arden wasn’t self-destructive at all,” Jeff protested. “Not the Arden I knew. Why would she act like that?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this,” Jamie
replied. “And I’ll never know for sure, but maybe it was because of the lupus diagnosis. She didn’t tell us about it until she was halfway through law school, but she’d known for a while by then. Maybe she found out she was sick right around the time of the black-panty debacle. And then you broke up with her, and the downward spiral continued.”

“For the last time, I didn’t break up with her.”

“So you say. But if you didn’t, then this whole thing makes no sense. I thought you’d heard the gossip and dumped her because you thought she was, you know, trying to get with President Tait.”

“I never heard any gossip, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have believed it. Arden and President Tait?” He scoffed. “Give me a break.”

Jamie’s world shifted ever so slightly on its axis. “So it wasn’t my fault that you two broke up?”

“Not as far as I know. And why does it really matter who’s at fault at this point? It’s been ten years.”

“I’ll tell you why.” Jamie hesitated out of loyalty to Arden, but then decided that Jeff had earned her version of the truth by revealing his. “You got over her eventually, right? You’ve had other girlfriends since we graduated college?”

“Of course.”

“Not Arden. She never went out with another guy after that.”

He looked skeptical. “In ten years?”

“Not a single date. She never got over you, and it’s my fault. I ruined her one shot at romantic happiness because I couldn’t keep my underwear to myself.”

“But you didn’t ruin anything,” Jeff said. “Don’t you get it? It wasn’t me that she never got over. It was the diagnosis.”

Jamie shrugged. “We’ll never know for sure.”

“Knock it off. You just said she wasn’t a martyr, so you don’t get to be one, either.”

“Um, ouch.”

“When she broke up with me, she wouldn’t say why. She just said, ‘I can’t.’ I still remember that. And I asked what she meant, and she never gave me a straight answer. She said, ‘I don’t want you to waste your time.’” One corner of his mouth tugged up in a rueful smile. “The irony is, I can’t even tell you how much time I wasted, wondering what I did and why things didn’t work out. I got over it, but I always wondered. That’s why I braved the wrath and showed up at the memorial service. I needed to see her through to the end. And now I know. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t another guy. It certainly wasn’t you.”

“Closure.” Jamie nodded. “It’s supposed to help you heal. And yet, I still feel like crap.”

“Go ahead and feel guilty for whatever else you want, but don’t feel guilty about me and Arden.” Jeff relaxed and perused the menu. “She and I had our own thing. Nothing you did could have changed that.”

Jamie chugged the contents of her glass and pushed back from the table. “Well, thanks for the ice water. I’d love to stay and catch up, but I’ve got to run.”

“I thought you had thirty minutes for lunch?”

She extracted the cream-colored envelope from her handbag. “I just remembered I have to make a quick stop on the way.”

I
’d like to make a deposit, please.” Jamie handed the reissued check from Arden’s lawyer to the bank teller.

The teller glanced down at the deposit slip Jamie had
filled out. (She had listed Henley House as her permanent residence, because, well, what else was she going to put?) “Do you have an account with us, Ms. Burton?”

“I do. Well, I did, anyway. At one of your branches in Los Angeles.”

Then the teller noticed the amount of the check and her whole demeanor changed. “Step right this way, please. One of our managers will be happy to complete all the necessary paperwork for you.”

“Should I come back later? I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Burton. We pride ourselves on expediting these administrative matters for our preferred customers.”

Ten minutes later, Jamie exited the bank with a deposit receipt in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. She paused in the middle of the parking lot, shivering in her thin suit jacket and trying to avoid getting rock salt stains on her shoes. She flicked open her chrome lighter and rolled the notched metal spark wheel back and forth with her thumb, debating.

“Hey, any chance I can bum a smoke?” A college student sporting a battered backpack and a pierced eyebrow loped up to her.

Jamie shocked herself by handing over the whole pack. “Have ’em all.”

The kid’s eyes lit up like he’d just won the lottery. “Are you serious? Thanks, ma’am!” He seized the pack and strode away, obviously afraid she’d come to her senses and change her mind.

“Don’t thank me,” she called after him. “Those things’ll kill you.” She glanced down at her boxy black blazer and knee-length skirt. “And who the hell are you calling ‘ma’am’?”

N
inety minutes into the bridesmaids’ tea, Mrs. Richmond was clearly having the time of her life.

Maureen made the rounds of the president’s parlor, fluffing her hair and glad-handing guests and doling out professionally gift-wrapped boxes to the bridesmaids.

“Thank you so much for coming all this way. Are you having a good time? Can I get you anything?” She would fawn over each new arrival for a few moments and then, without fail, turn the topic of conversation to her daughter. “Doesn’t Sarah look beautiful? And just wait until you see her in her wedding gown. I broke down in tears at the final fitting last week. I’m so happy for her and Terry and I know her father would be, too.”

Jamie lost track of Sarah soon after the guests started trickling in, but when she ran back to the kitchen to grab some extra spoons, she found the bride holed up in the pantry with a trembling lower lip and a mascara-smudged tissue.

“Uh-oh. What’s the matter?” Jamie put her arm around Sarah. “Whatever the problem, I promise I’ll fix it.”

Sarah walked over to the doorway and nodded out toward the crowd in the parlor. “That necklace.”

“What necklace?”

“On that woman.”

Jamie followed Sarah’s gaze toward the president’s longtime administrative assistant, Linda. “What about it?”

“It’s …”

Jamie waited for her to elaborate, but Sarah took one last swipe at her eyes with the tissue and made a beeline for the slim, stylish older woman. Jamie stumbled as her shoe heel
caught between the wide, weathered planks of the hardwood floor. “Wait up. I’m right behind you.”

“Hi.” Sarah glided up to Linda with a radiant smile and offered her right hand. “I’m Sarah Richmond. I’m—”

“I know exactly who you are, dear. We’ve been introduced, don’t you remember?” Linda clasped her hand over Sarah’s and squeezed. “The alumni mixer in Manhattan last May. I’m Linda.”

“Of course! Linda!” Sarah smote herself on the forehead. “I apologize. I’ve got a mind like a sieve these days, what with—”

“All the wedding activities. I completely understand. And you’re just glowing, dear. You’ll be such a beautiful bride.”

Something about the way Linda kept repeating the word “dear” set off Jamie’s infallible drama detector.

“Thank you.” Sarah was still fixated on the pendant adorning the other woman’s throat: a tiny gold apple with an underlayer of white gold peeking through where a “bite” had been taken out. It was simultaneously subtle and sassy. “You know, I was just telling my wedding planner here how much I love your necklace.”

Linda raised her hand to her throat and preened. “How kind. I call it my Garden of Eden necklace.”

“It’s very unusual,” Sarah said with just a hint of an edge in her voice.

“Isn’t it?”

“Would you mind if I asked where you got it?”

“Oh, it was a Christmas gift.” Linda held her smile for one more beat, then lowered the boom. “From Terry.”

“Terry.” Sarah swallowed so hard, Jamie could hear it over the clinking dishware and female chatter. “
My
Terry?”

“Yes, Terry—pardon me, President Tait—does have excellent taste, doesn’t he?”

Sarah stared at her.

“He chose
you
, after all.”

“Oookay. You’ll have to excuse us, Linda.” Jamie stepped in between the two women like a ref at a boxing match. “The lovely bride-to-be needs a drink.”

“Forget a drink,” Sarah said as Jamie hauled her bodily across the room toward the catering table. “What I need is a cigarette.”

“Can’t help you there.”

“Don’t hold out on me! I know you smoke.”

“Smoked. Past tense. Sorry.” Jamie snapped her fingers at Anna. “Crumpets and Chardonnay, stat.”

Anna took her time walking over with a tray of doily-framed pastries. To Jamie, she said, “If you ever snap your fingers at me again, you’ll have a hook where your hand used to be.” To the bride, “May I offer you a petit four?”

The tiny cake was coated in baby blue fondant and topped with a spun sugar rendering of a diamond ring. “This is beautiful.” Sarah took a bite and stopped freaking out long enough to tell Anna, “I never imagined I could love cake more than I already did, but you’ve proved me wrong.”

Anna brushed this off. “Thank you, but I can’t take the credit. Trish actually did most of the work.”

“I thought she was on bed rest,” Jamie said.

“She is,” Anna said. “She lies on her couch and barks orders to me in the kitchen. We set up a card table next to the couch so she can do the icing designs. She says it’s a great upper-body workout, but I know it’s because she considers my piping abilities substandard.” Anna got a load of Sarah’s
expression, shot a questioning look at Jamie, and then promptly excused herself to go check on something in the kitchen.

Jamie hustled Sarah upstairs into an empty bathroom and returned two minutes later with a suit jacket and a cigarette she’d cadged from one of the waiters.

“Menthol,” she said with a shudder. “Sorry, but it’s the best I could do on short notice.” She cracked open the window for ventilation, then handed Sarah the jacket. “Bundle up. We don’t want you sneezing and sniffling when you walk the aisle. Now tell me: What am I missing here?”

Sarah lit up the cigarette and took a long drag. “That necklace with the gold apple? Terry gave me the exact same thing two months after we started dating.”

“Well, maybe he bought a few of them at once,” Jamie suggested. “You know, like a go-to gift. A lot of guys hate picking out jewelry.”

“Even if that’s the case, don’t you think jewelry is an inappropriate present for your secretary? I mean, a gift
certificate
to a jeweler, I could see, maybe, but—” Sarah took another drag. “And did you see her smug little smile? She hates me.”

“Well, I’ll admit she was a bit catty, but—”

“Do you think he slept with her?”

Jamie’s face felt hot despite the frigid draft seeping in through the open window. “I have no idea.”

Sarah turned to her with beseeching eyes. “If he did, do you think it was before or after I started seeing him?”

Jamie wrapped her shapeless black jacket tighter around her waist. “You should probably talk to him about all this.”