When in Doubt, Add Butter (17 page)

Clearly I had to talk to him about this.

I went downstairs and paused in the hallway, taking a bracing breath before going into the kitchen, where he was making another Bloody Mary.

Great. What if he was now buzzed?

“Peter?” I stood straight and went in.

He looked up at me.

“Can we talk about what just happened?” I asked.

“What just happened?” a razor-sharp voice asked behind me.

Angela!
When did she get here? What had he already told her?

“I…” What?
What?

“Again, I’m sorry for spilling tomato all over you,” Peter said pointedly. “I hope your shirt isn’t ruined. Obviously, I’ll pay for cleaning or replacement.”

“Oh.” It was true, he had spilled on me. I don’t know why I had to sound so damn surprised. “Well, that’s fine, then.”

I could feel Angela’s eyes on me from behind, and I turned to her. “It’s a tuna Caesar salad for tonight.”

Her gaze shifted from me to her husband, and back. Then her brow lowered fractionally. “I see.”

What kind of response was that?

What
did she see?

This was a new kind of uncomfortable.

“Okay, then, I guess I’ll be on my way.” I needed to get out of here. Whatever had happened, the evening had taken a weird turn, and I needed to get out. “I’m just going to put the finishing touches on the salad and put it in the fridge.”

Peter raised his glass to his lips but first added, “It looks terrific, as always.” His return to a normal conversation that fit in with the one from fifteen minutes ago was unnerving.

I hurried to arrange the sliced tuna on top of the salad, covered the whole thing in plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator, all under what felt like two watchful gazes.

It felt like hours crept by before I was finally finished and left, but the weird feeling that had bubbled up the moment Peter touched me stayed with me for the rest of the night.

Chapter 11

“You have to quit,” Penny said the minute I told her what had happened with Peter Van Houghten. “Ask Lynn. She’ll agree with me. You have to quit.”

We were sitting on the sofa, having mocktails. Penny always insisted that she didn’t mind if I went ahead and had wine when she couldn’t drink, but it felt rude. So instead, we were drinking seltzer with cranberry and a twist of lime, which she declared unsatisfying just about every time she sipped it.

“I can’t afford to.”

“You can’t afford
not
to!”

I sighed. “Be real, Pen. I don’t have the kind of reserves that can keep me afloat indefinitely while I look for another job. Willa, tough as she might be, was a godsend. I can’t expect to get that lucky every time. Besides”—I set down my glass and she poured more into it—“that’s just how some men are. You know it and I know it. There’s no guarantee that that won’t happen again with someone else. In fact, there’s pretty much a guarantee it will.”

“Yeah.” She sipped thoughtfully. “Remember that Bernard Liski guy I worked for down on Connecticut? Older than dirt and made a stinking, gross attempt to kiss me.”

“Then told you that you were mentally unstable when you quit, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“See? There are a million of them out there.” I leaned back against the embroidered pillows my grandmother had made for both Penny and myself to put in our hope chests when I was twelve. Now it was a “hope not” chest. “Anyway, Vlad didn’t mention anything about me finding a new job, so I don’t think it’s in the stars right now.” I gave a laugh.

“Excuse me? Who is Vlad?”

“You know. Vlad Oleksei. The psychic? Well, the guy I work for who turns out to be a psychic? Come on, I told you about that!”

“You did not! Vlad Oleksei is a
psychic
?” She leaned forward, as much as she could with that baby in her, wide-eyed. “How do you know that?”

“The other night when I was there, he pulled me into his office because he had something important to tell me. Or warn me about. Actually, I’m not totally sure because it ended up being pretty nebulous, whatever it was.”

“Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Tell me everything. Every single detail.”

I told her as much as I could remember. It was the oddness of the whole thing that had stuck with me more than the details of his predictions. Like I said, I didn’t believe in that stuff.

Penny, on the other hand, did. “You’re going to have a TV show. I
know
it. Now you have proof positive.”

I laughed. “Okay, despite the fact that you know me, and you know I have never so much as liked having my picture taken, you’re going to twist the words of a psychic into meaning I’ll have a TV show rather than consider the possibility that the guy’s not right?”

“Um, hello? He’s
psychic.
”

“Well…”

“How much does he charge?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t charge
me
anything. Why?” She’d always been into this kind of thing. “Don’t tell me you want a consultation.”

“Actually, that could be interesting.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Good chance to test him on a basic boy-or-girl thing”—she indicated her belly—“but, no, I was asking because the really good ones either charge a fortune or nothing. None of this five-dollar psychic reading shit like they have in storefronts. They’re criminals. Somehow, it always ends up that you’re ‘cursed,’ and for a mere five hundred dollars, they can fix you—”

I looked at her. “Are you serious?”

“What?”

“Have you paid some lying gypsy five hundred bucks to lift a curse from you?”

“Of course not!” But I could tell from the way she said it that she had.

“Good Lord, Penny, who raised you? Why don’t you have more sense than that?”

“Can we get back to the point?” She shifted uneasily in her seat. “What else did Vlad say to you?”

“Something about a woman around me being really angry.”

“Marie Lemurra.”

“I guess. If
anyone,
I mean. See, they say all this vague stuff, like the speeding ticket stuff, and then you make it fit.”

“What speeding ticket stuff?”

“He saw me talking to someone in uniform and warned me to drive safely so I don’t get a speeding ticket.” Funny enough, that I’d taken a little bit seriously. Not that I thought he was predicting anything real, but if it impacted my already-depleted bank account, I tended to be extra careful.

“Maybe you’re going to
date
someone in uniform.”

I drained my “wine” and set down the glass. “You are such a sucker.”

She put down her glass, too, though it was still half full. “Say what you will, but you can’t prove he’s a fake any more than I can prove he’s real. All you can do is wait and see what happens.”

“Right.”

A quiet moment passed. Then she asked, “Gemma?”

“Yeah?”

She touched her hand to her belly, a gesture I later thought had to have been subconscious. “Do you ever think about … you know…” Her eyes met mine. “The baby?”

I knew exactly what she meant. No need to play coy. “Yes. Not as much now as I used to, but, of course, there are times when I think about it more than others.” I gestured at her stomach and smiled. “Little reminders.”

She looked concerned. “Is that hard for you?”

“What?”

“Me being pregnant, sitting here with me, waiting for the big moment. Is that all really melancholy for you?”

What did she want? The truth or some vague reassurance that her happiness didn’t equal pain for me? “No,” I said. Then, when she looked at me skeptically, I added sincerely, “That was a long time ago. I will never forget and of
course,
seeing you pregnant reminds me of my own experience, but it doesn’t make me feel bad. In a way, it’s interesting to remember.”

“Good.”

“And I’m also glad I’m not pregnant now,” I added, then laughed.

She laughed as well. “Right? This ninth-month business sucks.”

“
That
I remember. The not being able to bend without this huge and seemingly permanent obstacle in your way.”

“Not being able to see your toes.”

“Sometimes not being able to
feel
your toes.”

“And what about peeing every three minutes?”

“I don’t miss that!”

We laughed; then she sobered and asked, “Do you ever hope he or she will come looking for you?”

I shook my head. “That is one thing I think I did right. For every other decision I have made and questioned, I made
sure
that this was a closed adoption.”

“But surely there’s a way around that!”

“No. And I don’t want there to be.”

“You don’t want to meet her or him?” she asked incredulously.

I sighed and looked at a woman who was completely immersed in motherhood right now, a woman who loved her children so much that she couldn’t imagine another woman loving her own children in a different way. Of course, she couldn’t imagine not wanting to meet her own child … because imagining that required her to put Charlotte’s face on the baby or to come nine months in her current pregnancy, set up the nursery and study sonogram pictures for hours, and then reject him.

“I knew,” I said evenly, “that I would spend the rest of my life wondering if every child who looked even vaguely like Cal or me, and who appeared to be about the right age, was the One. And I have.” My throat tightened. I didn’t usually feel this emotional about this anymore. Something about looking at Penny, in her full bloom of pregnancy, reminded me of my last moments of thinking I was going to keep my baby before suddenly, and irrevocably, deciding on adoption. “If I had to wonder now if every knock at the door might be him or her, or any ring of the phone, or even every stupid spam e-mail that gets caught in the junk file might be an attempt at contact, I’d go mad.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I can imagine. I think I’m just being overly romantic or something, dreaming of the great reunion.”

“It’s not romantic,” I said sternly. “It’s just wrong. I wanted the baby to have a life free of any possible eventual feeling of obligation to the woman who conceived her or him. Free of any stray idea that his or her mother—the adoptive mother—is anything less than a
real
mother. Whatever they say about his or her origins”—now tears burned in my eyes—“I never wanted there to be one iota of conflict because of the circumstances of the birth.”

She was crying openly now. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental.”

“You didn’t. I understand where you’re coming from. Totally.” I gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile. I certainly didn’t want her to feel bad. How could she understand? She was a grown woman with a good husband and a solid family. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be seventeen, pregnant, and terrified. “This isn’t a hot button for me anymore. Honest.”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’m
absolutely
okay.”

“Do you ever hear from Cal? Like on Facebook or anything?”

It had been so long since I’d heard his name out loud that he’d started to feel like a dream, or something I’d made up. “Never. Once in a while he’ll show up as ‘someone you might know’ because we have mutual friends, but he never contacts me and I never contact him.”

“Did you see his picture?”

“Of course.” I laughed. “Don’t we all do that after a few drinks, Internet-stalk people we used to know? When they leave all their information open, it’s like Christmas morning.”

“Right? So what does he look like now?”

“He’s big. Kind of doughy. I wouldn’t have known it was him, to be honest.” Funny how time shakes things out. Once, I had thought I’d never get over him. That he was this gorgeous, hot Prince Charming, and no guy could ever compete with him.

Now, he just looked like some guy who worked a job he hated in the accounting department of some large, anonymous company.

And when I saw his pictures—I’d seen maybe fifteen or twenty of them—I felt nothing. Truly, nothing.

I only wished I could go back and tell my seventeen-year-old self that someday none of the stuff she was so worried about would matter much anymore.

“Good,” Penny said. “I’m glad. I hope he never gets laid.”

“He’s married,” I said, remembering the woman in the pictures with him. A woman who actually looked so middle-aged, it was hard to imagine her with the Cal I used to know. “So, yeah, he probably doesn’t.”

“Um.” She gestured at her stomach. “Don’t count on it.” After a pause, she asked, “Does he have any kids as far as you can tell?”

I shook my head. “I wondered, but I don’t think so.”

“That’s probably best. The SOB.”

“Come on, Penny. He was just a scared eighteen-year-old himself.”

She shrugged. “Well, he didn’t demonstrate a lot of character, and at that age, he should have.”

“Good that I’m not stuck with him, then, right?”

“Right.”

I stood up. “I’m
exhausted,
and I’m sure you are, too. Get some sleep.”

“I
am
pretty tired.”

“Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’m waiting eagerly for the Call. I don’t want to put any undue pressure on you or anything, but I’m completely psyched about this baby.”

“Well, I’m completely psyched about not being pregnant anymore, so we have something in common.” She laughed, but there was a weariness under it. “Call me if you think of anything else Vlad said. I’m serious. You know I absolutely love this stuff.”

Chapter 12

I was on my way to Mr. Tuesday’s when my phone rang. It was Makena Gallagher, one of my contacts at the country club.

“Bad news,” she said. “The Foutys have canceled.”

For a moment, this didn’t compute. Foutys was a major local construction company that was having a huge party at the club next month. I was catering and had already hired a considerable support staff to assist. The job paid three times what normal weekend jobs paid—and they were already half my income—and promised to become an annual event if they were pleased with my work.

“How can they just
cancel
that party this late in the game?” I asked. “They’re going to lose thousands on the deposit!”