Lex and Lu(48)

Willa wanted to be delicate in the way she said this, but she just didn’t have it in her. “He’s never going to want you.”

If her bluntness hurt Lu, she didn’t show it. She grabbed Willa’s hand. “I know that. I’m letting it go. Can’t you see that?”

“You’re moving on?” Willa asked, doubtful.

“Yes, I’m moving on. I’ll even date. I’ll make you both proud.”

Sky and Willa exchanged doubtful glances.

Lu acknowledged the looks. “Seriously,” she said, trying to convince them. She turned away, not wanting to face their skepticism. “I know we all came home to bury Mr. P. But my childhood fantasies died right along with him.”

Neither Sky nor Willa had any response to that.





20





As the last of the guests left the Pellitteris’, Amber, with Stacy and Natalie’s help, wiped down the counters and cleaned the rest of the kitchen. Jo and Chris holed up in the library, discussing the terms of Mike’s will. Lu, through Pete, had encouraged Lex to come over and read to Nina before she went to bed. Amber couldn’t be sure about Willa. She’d left a while before in a huff but had refused to tell Amber anything. When everything was clean, they grabbed a bottle of wine and set out for the porch.

Pouring a glass for the three of them, Amber sat back, exhausted. Closing her eyes, she let her head fall back on the chair. “I still can’t believe he’s gone,” she said to no one in particular.

And no one responded. What was there to say? Their twenty-year friendship had seen it all—all except death. How did they recover from it? What would it be like without Mike? Would Jo still come around? Once, long ago, they’d talked about death. But it was a subject that one avoided in the throes of life. Amber distinctly remembered Jo saying that she wouldn’t want to be around all the people who were constant reminders of her life with her husband if he were gone.

“Do you remember—” Natalie began.

Both Amber and Stacy responded “Yes!” quickly, effectively halting the conversation. They all knew that the cornerstone of their relationship had begun to crumble.

Lu walked up to the morose group right then. In hindsight, Amber would think that if she had caught her at a different point, she might have reacted differently, things might not have gone the way they did. But she didn’t.

“Ladies,” Lu said as she made her way around the table kissing them all. “I know this glass is waiting for Dr. J., but since she and Dad seem to be in deep discussion, can I hijack it?”

Natalie lifted the bottle, filled the glass, and pushed it toward Lu.

“How ya doing?” Stacy asked. They all knew the story, had in fact been intimately acquainted with most of the details of the “tragic teenage pregnancy,” so their inquiries seemed natural.

“OK,” Lu said. Leaning back and capturing her mother’s eyes, she continued, “In fact, I received a rather interesting proposition.”

Amber looked at her, waiting to hear about all the undercurrents that had been bouncing through the house that day.

Lex and Lu had always strategically told their parents information. The pregnancy, for instance—they told them about that following Supper Club one night. By the time they were teenagers, they’d figured out that Supper Club meant their parents were probably pleasantly buzzed and generally in a good mood. So they’d waited at Lu’s house for their parents to get home. As their parents pulled the golf cart into the driveway, Lex had run across and asked them to come over. The only one of the four of them who knew at that point was Mike. Mike’s buzz dissipated right then and there. It had softened the reaction, but not the blow. The problem, they all said later, was that Lu was too smart and Lex was too worldly.

Perhaps they’d been wrong in their assessment. Either that or Lu had learned from the master.

“Lex wants Nina and me to move to England,” she said matter-of-factly.

Amber stilled. “What? Why?”

Stacy and Natalie exchanged glances and started to get up from the table.

“You can stay,” Lu said. “It will save her from having to recount the story later.”

Amber looked at them and nodded her assent. “How do you feel about that?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. He has a career that isn’t mobile right now. I don’t. He wants an opportunity to get to know his daughter. He can’t do that from over there. And quite frankly, it wouldn’t be fair to Nina to have to constantly fly back and forth across the ocean.”

Frustration lanced through Amber like a sword in the back. “So once again you put your life on hold to accommodate the dreams of Lex Pellitteri? How did I raise you to be at the mercy of a man?”