Shadow Creek (7 page)

Val had met Melissa when she and Evan used her travel agency to book a trip to the Grand Canyon about a dozen years earlier. She’d met James through Melissa, who’d grown up on the same street as James and used to babysit him when he was a child. Val credited the two of them with getting her through the last year with her sanity largely intact.

“What’s wrong?” James asked as soon as he saw Val’s face.

“Nothing.”

“Let me guess,” Melissa said, already walking toward the living room. “Evan’s running a bit late. Oh, my God,” she said, stopping in the doorway, staring at the young woman sitting in the middle of the purple velvet couch. “Tell me that’s not who I think it is.” Her jeweled fingers quickly covered her coral-colored lips.

“Is that ‘the Slut’?” James whispered, resting his chin on Val’s shoulder in order to muffle the sound of his words.

“Don’t call her that,” Brianne said, approaching the trio from behind and pushing past them into the living room.

Val was relieved, both for her daughter’s sudden appearance and the fact she was wearing clothes.

“Hi, Jen,” Brianne said, joining the young woman on the sofa.

Jennifer’s relief was so palpable, she looked as if she might burst into tears. “Your dad’s running a little late.”

“So I gather. Love your shoes.”

“Thank you. Those jeans are fabulous.”

Val found her jaw tightening at the easy camaraderie that existed between her daughter and her husband’s fiancée. We used to have that, she thought, feeling Brianne slip even farther from her reach. “These are my friends, Melissa and James,” she said, forcing the words from her mouth. “This is Jennifer, Evan’s …”

“We know,” James said. “Those are fabulous shoes. Louboutins?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said. “I’m impressed.”

“James is a shoe freak.” Brianne laughed. “You’re such a cliché,” she told him, managing to make the barb sound endearing.

“Right back at you,” James said.

The phone rang.

“That’s probably my mother,” Val said, quickly excusing herself from the room.

“Mom says you have tickets for
Wicked
tomorrow night,” she heard Brianne say on her way to the kitchen. “Haven’t you already seen it, like, thirteen times?”

“Eighteen,” James was saying as Val picked up the phone. “I’m going for lucky number twenty-one.”

“A total cliché.” Brianne’s laugh filled the house.

“Hello?” Val said.

“Hey, you,” said Evan.

Two minutes later, Val returned to the living room. “Brace yourself, everyone,” she said. “There’s been a change of plans.”

A
RE WE THERE YET?” Brianne asked from the front passenger seat of Val’s crowded SUV some three and a half hours later.

“Still a ways to go,” Val said.

“How much longer?”

“At least an hour. Maybe more.”

“Shit.” Brianne pulled her BlackBerry out of her oversized leather purse.

“Who are you texting now?” her mother asked.

“Sasha.”

“You just saw her.”

“So?”

Val gripped the steering wheel, watching her knuckles grow white. This wasn’t going quite the way she’d expected when
she’d agreed—against her better judgment—to act as chauffeur for her daughter and her husband’s fiancée, then somehow managed to cajole Melissa and James into postponing their trip into Manhattan in order to drive to the Adirondacks and the Inn at Shadow Creek.

First of all, she’d forgotten what a long trip it was—five hours of twisting and congested highway—and while it was true she’d driven up here dozens of times and probably knew the way blindfolded, all previous trips had been with Evan, and he’d always insisted on doing the lion’s share of the driving.

Second, while it was also true that Jennifer’s car was too small to hold Evan’s daughter, his fiancée, and their combined luggage, they could have simply postponed their trip until Evan’s business was completed, as Jennifer had suggested repeatedly. It hadn’t really been necessary for Val to put her own plans on hold to accommodate her soon-to-be ex. So why had she?

The answer was sitting in the seat beside her, pointedly ignoring her.

Silly me, Val acknowledged, reluctantly dismissing her erstwhile fantasies of mother-daughter bonding. Brianne had said barely two words to her since they’d left Brooklyn, spending almost all her time on that damn BlackBerry. Had Val really thought she might be able to mitigate Jennifer’s influence on her daughter, at least a little, by going head-to-head with her?
She may be younger and prettier, but I’m smarter and a much better driver
. Was she seeking to remind the other woman that even though she might have taken her place in Evan’s heart, this would never be the case with his only child?
I’m still Brianne’s mother. No one can take that away from me
.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” James remarked from
the backseat, glancing out his side window at the passing panorama of woodlands, meadows, and streams, as the car continued along Route 9N toward Prospect Mountain.

“What are you complaining about now?” Melissa asked from the other side of the car. “Can’t you just enjoy the scenery?”

“The only scenery I like is on a Broadway stage.”

“So picture Julie Andrews coming up over that ridge singing ‘The hills are alive …’ ”

“Please … that was in the movie. It was Mary Martin who originated the role on Broadway. Julie, sweet though she may be, doesn’t compare to Mary.”

“That had to be, what, fifty years ago?” Melissa reminded him. “You weren’t even born then.”

“So what? My grandmother attended the premiere, and she told me it was spectacular.”

“It’s spectacular here, too, if you’d give it a chance,” Val interrupted, again glancing over at Brianne. “Nature at its most breathtaking.”

“I hate nature,” James said. “It makes me nervous.”

Brianne laughed.

So, she
is
listening, Val thought.

“You laugh, but there’s something very unnatural about it,” James said. Now everybody laughed.

Everyone except Jennifer.

What does she think of all this? Val wondered, deciding that the poor woman probably didn’t know what hit her. She looks as if she’s about to burst into tears, Val thought, almost feeling sorry for her. Maybe that was the real reason she’d agreed to act as chauffeur—to stick it to her husband’s young lover.

It couldn’t have escaped Jennifer’s radar that it was Val whom Evan had called, and not her, that he hadn’t even bothered to check with her first, and that he’d left it to Val to spring
the change in plans on her as a fait accompli. What must she be thinking?

“Look at that gorgeous waterfall,” Melissa suddenly exclaimed. “You don’t get that in Manhattan.”

“And poison ivy and mosquitoes. You don’t get those in Manhattan, either,” James said.

“Oh, my God. Is that a real deer?” Brianne asked with surprising enthusiasm, pointing one out at the side of the road.

Val resisted the impulse to reach over and hug her daughter.

“Yuck,” James said. “Deer ticks. Hello? Lyme disease, anyone? Please tell me this isn’t happening.”

My sentiments exactly, thought Jennifer from her cramped position in the backseat between James and Melissa. She was still trying to figure out how what had originally been intended as a weekend getaway with her fiancé and his daughter, designed for the express purpose of bringing them closer together, had turned into an alarming free-for-all involving her fiancé’s about-to-be ex-wife and her two decidedly weird friends.

It doesn’t bode well
, she thought in her father’s voice.

“It doesn’t bode well,” he’d told her this morning when she’d dropped by his apartment in Queens to tell him she was going away for a three-day weekend with her fiancé and his daughter.

She never should have told her father that Evan was still legally married, although she really hadn’t given the matter serious thought. She certainly hadn’t been expecting a response. They’d been sitting in the hot, musty stillness of his run-down, third-floor apartment for what felt like hours but was likely closer to fifteen minutes at most. Her father disliked both noise and light, so the one-bedroom apartment was dark and the air conditioner that was jammed into a small front window
turned off, despite the oppressive summer heat. Jennifer had insisted on opening a window, but the results were negligible. There was no breeze, no relief. Her father didn’t seem to notice or care. If he did, he didn’t let on. He hadn’t spoken more than a dozen sentences since her arrival.

“Cameron and Andrew got a new car,” he’d said, offering up his dry cheek to be kissed, his own lips remaining stubbornly closed.

“So I hear. Have you seen it?”

Her father returned to the shabby, rust-colored wing chair in the corner of the living room, across from the small TV that was always on and tuned to Fox News. His white shirt was spotted with old food stains, as was his maroon-colored tie. Her father always insisted on wearing a tie. As a child, Jennifer had sometimes wondered if he wore one to bed. Even after he’d been forced to retire from his job as manager for a canned goods supply company, he’d continued to wear a tie every day. At first it made him look dignified. Now it made him look pathetic.

Jennifer noted that the fly of his heavy wool trousers was only halfway done up. She didn’t want to contemplate the cause of the dark stains to either side of the zipper.

The question went unanswered, her father’s attention captured by the televised image of two body bags being removed from a remote cabin in the woods, surrounded by a cadre of solemn-faced police officers. “A few new details emerging on those grisly murders in the Berkshires,” an accompanying voice announced, with no small degree of enthusiasm.

Jennifer walked over to the television and lowered the volume. Her father stared vacantly into space, said nothing.

“Cameron and Andrew got a new car,” he remarked a few minutes later.

“Good for them. I don’t suppose they’ve stopped by to take you for a ride in that new car, have they?”

“Cameron’s very busy.”

“Really? Doing what?” Having her hair straightened? Having her teeth whitened? Shopping for her fall wardrobe? Jennifer thought, but refrained from saying. “Did you have breakfast, Dad? Do you want some coffee or some toast?”

Her father shook his head. “Cameron and Andrew got a new car,” he said moments later.

“Well, since you asked,” Jennifer said, walking toward the window and gulping at the stale air, staring down at the old-fashioned, black wrought-iron fences lining the front yards of the small houses across the street, “my job is going great. I got a promotion and a new title. I’m now officially an account supervisor, which means I’ll be getting a raise. Not a big one, mind you. But still, every bit helps. I know,” she said before her father could interrupt. “Cameron and Andrew got a new car.”

Her father smiled, his first smile since she’d come over.

“So did I, incidentally. That little silver number about two doors down. See?” She pointed toward it. Her father made no move to get out of his chair. “Evan knows this guy who owns a dealership. He got me this really great deal. Anyway,” Jennifer continued when her father failed to respond, “I just stopped by to tell you that I’m going away for a few days. To the Adirondacks with Evan and his daughter. Dad, have you heard anything I’ve said?”

Her father stared at her blankly.

“I said I’m going to the Adirondacks with Evan and his daughter.”

“The Adirondacks, of course.”

“Evan is my fiancé. You remember I told you about Evan?”

“Cameron has a lovely diamond ring,” he added, pointedly glancing at the empty third finger of Jennifer’s left hand.

“Yes, she does.” And a lovely wedding band and a lovely husband and two lovely children and an even lovelier nanny to look after them because we all know how busy lovely Cameron is. “I’m sure Evan will get me a ring after his divorce is final.”

“His divorce?”

“It’ll be final next month.”

“He has a wife?”

“Not anymore. He left her …”

“For you?”

It was Jennifer’s turn to say nothing.

Now her father looked angry. He began to shake his head and tap his feet on the scratched hardwood floor, a sure sign he was becoming agitated. “It doesn’t bode well,” he said, beginning to rock back and forth in his chair. “If he cheated on his wife, he’ll cheat on you. I’m a man. I know.”

Except what did her father know anymore? Jennifer wondered now. Early onset Alzheimer’s had robbed him of most of his faculties, and in those increasingly rare moments when he was lucid these days, his thoughts were always focused on Cameron.

Her sister. His firstborn.

His clear favorite.

Even though she rarely visited. Even though it was Jennifer who’d borne the brunt of looking after him since their mother had died two years earlier.

“I don’t know if I can just drop everything and drive into Queens just because you’ve decided to go on a ‘dirty weekend,’ ” Cameron had said on the phone the other night.

“It’s hardly a ‘dirty weekend.’ Evan’s daughter will be with us.”

“Whatever.”

“Look, it’s only for three days.”

“Right. Dad will be fine for three days.”

“Not if he forgets to eat.”

“He won’t forget to eat.”

“He forgets everything else.”

“You’re being very dramatic,” Cameron had proclaimed as Jennifer pictured her older sister tucking her newly straightened blond hair behind her right ear.

“And you’re being very selfish,” Jennifer shot back.

“I’m not the one who’s being selfish here.”

“What? You’re saying
I’m
being selfish?”

“I don’t know. Which one of us is married with two children under the age of four? Which one of us has a great job in the city and drives a new sports car?”

“It’s two years old, I’m just leasing it, and Evan is friends with the man who owns the dealership.”

“Which reminds me, which one of us was selfish enough to go after a married man with absolutely no thought to his existing family?”

“Whoa. That was really a low blow.”