Happy Ever After
Page 45

“I remember that dress,” Parker whispered. “I can see her in that dress.”
“She’d had the top down, and her hair was all windblown, and she wore these big sunglasses. I thought, Jesus, she looks like a movie star.Anyway, she didn’t have a blowout. She had a slow leak she didn’t notice until she did, and pulled over, called for service.
“I’d never seen anybody who looked like her. Anybody that beautiful. Until you. She talked to me the whole time.Where did I go to school, what did I like to do. And when she got that I was Kay Kavanaugh’s boy, she asked about her, how she was doing. She gave me ten dollars over the bill, and a pat on the cheek. And as I watched her drive away I thought, I remember thinking, that’s what beautiful is.What it really is.”
He lifted his beer again, caught the look on Parker’s face.
“I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“You didn’t.” Though her eyes stung. “You gave me a little piece of her I didn’t have before. Sometimes I miss them so much, so painfully, it’s comforting to have those pieces, those little pictures. Now I can see her in her spring rosebud dress, talking to the boy changing her tire, a boy who was marking time until he could go to California. And dazzling him.”
She reached out, laid a hand over his on the table. “Tell me about California, about what you did when you got there.”
“It took me six months to get there.”
“Tell me about that.”
She learned he’d lived in his car a good portion of the time, picking up odd jobs to pay for gas, for food, for the occasional motel.
He made it sound funny, adventurous, and as they ate, she thought it had been both. But she also imagined how hard, how scary it would have been all too often for a boy that age, away from home, living on his wits and whatever he could pocket from work on the road.
He’d pumped gas in Pittsburgh, picked up some maintenance work in West Virginia, moved on to Illinois where he’d worked as a mechanic outside of Peoria. And so had worked his way cross-country, seeing parts of it Parker knew she had never seen, and was unlikely ever to see.
“Did you ever consider coming back? Just turning around and heading home?”
“No. I had to get where I was going, do what I was going to do.When you’re eighteen you can live off stubborn and pride for a long time. And I liked being on my own, without somebody watching and waiting to say I knew you wouldn’t make it, knew you were no good.”
“Your mother would never—”
“No, not Ma.”
“Ah.” His uncle, she thought, and said nothing more.
“That’s a long, ugly story. Let’s take a walk instead.”
On the busy main street they ran into people she knew, or people he knew. On both sides there was enough puzzlement and curiosity to amuse him.
“People wonder what you’re doing with me,” he commented, “or what I’m doing with you.”
“People should spend more time on their own business than speculating on other people’s.”
“In Greenwich everybody’s going to speculate about the Browns.They’re just going to be careful when it’s you.”
“Me?” Honestly surprised, Parker frowned at him. “Why?”
“In your business you get to know a lot of secrets. In mine, too.”
“How’s that?”
“People want their car detailed, for instance, and don’t always make sure everything’s out of it they don’t want other people to see.”
“Such as?”
“That would be telling.”
She elbowed him. “Not if I don’t know who left the what.”
“We have a running contest at the garage. Whoever finds the most women’s underwear in a month gets a six-pack.”
“Oh. Hmmm.”
“You asked.”
She considered a moment.“I can beat that,” she determined.“I can beat that.”
“Okay.”
“I once found a Chantelle demi-cut bra—black lace, thirty-six-C, hanging on a branch of a willow by the pond and the matching panties floating in the water.”
“Chantelle who?”
“That’s the lingerie designer.You know cars. I know fashion.”
“Something about cars and weddings,” he said as he opened the passenger door for her, “must make women want to take off their underwear.” He grinned as she slid in. “So feel free.”
“That’s so sweet of you.”
When she settled back in the car again, she considered it a successful evening. She’d enjoyed it, enjoyed him, learned a little more—even if she’d had to nudge, poke, and pry the more out of him.
And had only had to excuse herself twice to take calls from clients.
“Big wedding this weekend,” he commented.
“Two big, two medium, and a coed wedding shower Thursday evening, right after rehearsal. Plus two off-site events.”
“Busy.Why does a guy want to go to a wedding shower?”
She started to give him the diplomatic, professional response, then laughed. “Because their fiancee makes them. We set up a cigar bar on the terrace. It helps get them through.”
“Morphine wouldn’t do it for me.The wedding deal. I meant Carter’s sister.”
“Oh yeah. We’re all looking forward to that. Sherry’s been nothing but fun to work with.We don’t get many like her.You’re at table twelve.You’ll have a good time.”
“Planning on it.”
When he turned into the drive, she was as sorry to see the evening ending as she’d been skittish to have it begin.
“Summer’s done,” she said as she got out of the car into the crisp.“I love fall, the color of it, the smells, the change of the light. But I’m always sorry to say good-bye to the green and the summer flowers. I guess you’re sorry to say good-bye to your bike until next year.”
“I’ll get a few more runs in.Take a day off and we’ll have one together.”
“Tempting.”And it was.“But we’re packed for the next couple weeks.”
“I can wait. I’d rather not.” He stepped closer, and though he didn’t touch her, she felt the spike of excitement.“Why don’t you ask me in, Parker?”