Fragments of conversation drifted up to her from the cars that were parked along the curb—laughter, bits of gossip, promises to get together in the weeks ahead; then, booming above the rest, she heard the bullhorn voice of Hoagie Atkinson.
“Remember how we used to come back from a day on the water and Kate would toss our fish on the grill and haul the cold beer out of the fridge, and we’d sit around that old picnic table laughing our damn-fool heads off? Now there was a woman who knew how to throw a party!”
* * *
The phone was ringing as Allison re-entered the house. She plunged across the foyer to answer it, twisting her ankle as one stiletto heel caught the edge of the mat.
On the fourth ring she fell against the wall, grabbed for the phone, and snatched the receiver off the hook. “Burke?” she gasped.
“No, it’s Brianna. Where’s my dad?” Burke’s only child had not been home since the wedding. On the phone, she treated Allison more like an answering service than a member of the family.
“Your father’s on his way back to work,” Allison said. “You might be able to reach him on his cell phone.”
“Work? You let him go to work on his birthday?”
“It’s not as if I had a choice, Brianna. It was an emergency.”
There was a long silence on the line. “Well, I’ll try to call his cell,” Brianna said. “But I can’t believe he’s working tonight. Good grief, what are his managers for?”
Allison’s left eyelid had begun to twitch, heralding what was apt to be a murderous headache. “Just in case you can’t get through, is there anything you’d like me to tell him?”
“Just happy birthday. I sent him a present—he should be getting it in the next couple of days. Oh, and I found a car I like. I’ll have the dealer call him tomorrow.” There was a pause. Allison could hear girls’ voices in the background. “All right, I’m coming! Just hang on!” Brianna shouted, muffling the receiver. Then her voice came back. “Gotta go. You will tell him I called, won’t you?”
“Of course.” Allison’s twitch had migrated into her temple and begun to throb. “Take care of yourself, Brianna.”
The only answer was a click. Allison sagged against the wall. From the kitchen, she could hear the caterer and his crew cleaning up the dishes. How much would Anthony’s bill be? A thousand dollars? Two thousand? She’d paid scant attention when she’d ordered the food and service. Until now, a few hundred dollars either way hadn’t mattered.
Limping on her twisted ankle, she made it to the couch and collapsed on the black leather upholstery. Her eyes roamed the splendid great room, from the cathedral ceiling with its hand-hewn beams to the tall flagstone fireplace.
After their wedding, Burke had given her carte blanche to decorate the two-story frame house on Peaceful Lane, with its stunning view of the lake. He had bought the property sixteen years ago and kept it after Kate’s death. When Allison had moved in, the inside was much as her predecessor had left it.
Kate had favored homey florals, ginghams, quilted wall hangings, and framed Thomas Kinkade prints. Allison had replaced the sun-faded curtains and sheers with plantation shutters. The timeworn flowered chintz furniture and baby-blue carpet had been hauled off to Goodwill. Polished hardwood now gleamed on the floors. The black sofa and earth-tone chairs, decorated with bright red and gold cushions, were arranged around a glass coffee table in a conversational group that seemed to drift on the thick, white flokati rug.
The walls had been stripped of their patterned paper and refinished in cool tones of ivory, pewter, and latte. Around the room, Allison had hung her precious collection of Australian Aboriginal paintings—the one thing she’d lavished money on in her single days. The Kathleen Petyarre above the fireplace—a five-foot expanse of tiny dots that looked like the surface of a rough granite slab—had cost more than her old car. These days the painting was worth three times what she’d paid. Maybe she could sell it. She would sell the whole lot of them if it would help Burke. What did it matter?
The sound of closing doors told her the caterers were leaving by way of the kitchen. They would send her the bill in the morning. She would pay it in full, of course, along with a generous tip for the servers.
Deep in her chest, a tangled thread of annoyance jerked into a hard knot of anger. Why hadn’t Burke told her about his problems? Why had he let her blunder ahead, spending money like a drunken sailor while his friends sneered at her extravagance?
Why in heaven’s name hadn’t he stopped her?
More to the point, why hadn’t she stopped herself?
The pain in her temple had mushroomed into a blinding headache. Trying to read or watch TV until Burke came home would only make her feel worse. For now, there was nothing to do but gulp down some ibuprofen, go to bed, and try to sleep it off.
Rousing herself from the sofa, she dragged herself up the stairs to the second-floor landing. The guest bathroom was on her right. She opened the medicine cabinet, dumped two extra-strength ibuprofen tablets into her palm, and tossed them down with a glass of water. The pills would help the pain. Too bad they couldn’t help anything else.
Across the hall was the one room Allison had known better than to redecorate. From the stuffed animals and ruffled cushions on the bed to the old Lord of the Rings Orlando Bloom poster on the ceiling, Brianna’s bedroom remained exactly as she’d left it when she went off to college. Allison rarely ventured into her stepdaughter’s territory, but tonight, with her mind in turmoil, it seemed like a natural place to wander.
Or maybe she craved some deeper punishment to take her mind off the pain in her head.
The door was ajar, probably left that way by the cleaning woman when she’d finished dusting. Allison slipped into the alien space and switched on a dresser lamp with a ruby glass shade. The reddish glow cast Brianna’s childhood collection of stuffed unicorns, dragons, and other mythical creatures into monster shadows on the walls.
It was a child’s room, a teenager’s room, a young woman’s room, every corner crammed with the memorabilia of growing up. Allison had never known such a room. Her own single mother had dragged her from job to job, from town to town. Life had been a string of dingy furnished apartments and motel rooms, her childhood treasures whatever could be crammed into a cardboard box and tossed into the back seat of a rusty Chevrolet Impala.
She would have died for a room like this, a place to keep and call her own.
Brianna was nineteen now, a striking young woman with her mother’s red hair and her father’s chiseled features and long-limbed stature. She’d been accepted into a prestigious journalism program at Northwestern University, where she was working toward a career as a TV reporter.