Table For Five

Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs

“Wiggs writes with an even hand, thus adding another excellent title to her already outstanding body of work.”

—Booklist on Table for Five

“Wiggs excels at portraying the delicate dynamics among lovers, friends and family members, and her keen awareness of sensory detail ensures that the scents and sounds of Rosa’s kitchen are just as palpable as heady attraction between the protagonists.”

—Publishers Weekly on Summer by the Sea

Rave Reviews from Publishers Weekly

starred review

“Wiggs’s characterizations are strong, jumping off the page with a winning blend of realism and warmth. A richly textured story…this book will polish Wiggs’s already glowing reputation.”

—on Passing Through Paradise

starred review

“Wiggs richly evokes her multi-faceted setting while depicting equally complex human relationships…the story’s theme—the all-encompassing power of love—is timeless, and it is this theme, along with the author’s polished prose and well-rounded characters, that make Wiggs’s story so satisfying.”

—on A Summer Affair

starred review

“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”

—on Halfway to Heaven

Also by SUSAN WIGGS

SUMMER BY THE SEA

THE OCEAN BETWEEN US

A SUMMER AFFAIR

HOME BEFORE DARK

ENCHANTED AFTEROON

PASSING THROUGH PARADISE

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN

THE YOU I NEVER KNEW

JUST BREATHE

The Chicago Fire trilogy

THE FIREBRAND

THE MISTRESS

THE HOSTAGE

THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER

THE CHARM SCHOOL

THE DRIFTER

THE LIGHTKEEPER

Susan Wiggs

Table for Five

To Jay

Contents

part one

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

part two

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

chapter 17

chapter 18

chapter 19

part three

chapter 20

chapter 21

chapter 22

chapter 23

chapter 24

part four

chapter 25

chapter 26

chapter 27

chapter 28

chapter 29

chapter 30

chapter 31

chapter 32

chapter 33

chapter 34

chapter 35

chapter 36

part five

chapter 37

chapter 38

chapter 39

chapter 40

chapter 41

chapter 42

chapter 43

chapter 44

chapter 45

chapter 46

chapter 47

chapter 48

chapter 49

chapter 50

chapter 51

Acknowledgments

part one

Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.

—Leo Rosten

chapter 1

Friday

2:45 p.m.

“Hey, Miss Robinson, want to know how to figure out your porn-star name?” asked Russell Clark, bouncing on the balls of his feet toward the school bus.

“I think I’ll make it through the day without that.” Lily Robinson put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to keep him from bouncing off the covered sidewalk and into the driving rain.

“Aw, come on, it’s easy. You just say the name of your street and—”

“No, thank you, Russell,” Lily said in her “enough’s enough” tone. She hoped he didn’t really know what a porn star was. “That’s inappropriate, and you’re supposed to be line leader this afternoon.”

“Oops.” Reminded of the privilege, Russell stiffened his spine and marched in a straight line, dutifully leading twenty-three third-graders to the area under the awning by the parking lot. “I’m going to Echo Ridge today,” he said, heading for Bus Number Four. “I have a golf lesson.”

“In this rain?”

“It’ll clear up, I bet. See you, Miss Robinson.” Russell went bounding toward the bus, hopscotching around puddles in the parking lot.

Lily doled out goodbyes and have-a-good-days to the rest of her students, watching them scatter like a flock of startled ducklings to buses and carpools. Charlie Holloway and her best friend, Lindsey Davenport, were last in line, holding hands and chattering together while they waited for Mrs. Davenport’s car to pull forward.

When Charlie caught Lily’s eye, she ducked her head and looked away. Lily felt a beat of sympathy for the little girl, who was painfully aware that her parents were coming in for a conference after school. The child looked small and fragile, trying to disappear into her yellow rain slicker. Lily wanted to reassure her, to tell her not to worry.

Charlie didn’t give her a chance. “There’s your mom,” she said, giving Lindsey’s hand a tug. “’Bye, have a good weekend,” she called to Lily, and the girls dashed for the blue Volvo station wagon.

Lily smiled and waved, making an effort not to appear troubled, but seeing them like that, best friends skipping off together, reminded her of her own childhood best friend—Charlie’s mother, Crystal. This was not going to be an easy conference.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” asked Greg Duncan, the PE teacher. After school, he coached the high school golf team, though he was known to be a full-time flirt.

“You’re not supposed to notice that anything’s the matter,” Lily told him.

He grinned and loped to her side, a big, friendly Saint Bernard of a guy, all velvet brown eyes, giant paws, a silver whistle on a lanyard around his neck. “I know exactly what’s wrong,” he said. “You don’t have a date tonight.”

Here we go again, thought Lily. She liked Greg a lot, she really did, but he exhausted her with his need for attention. He was too much guy, the way a Saint Bernard is too much dog. Twice divorced, he had dated most of the women she knew and had recently set his sights on her. “Wrong,” she said, grinning back. “I’ve got plans.”

“Liar. You’re just trying to spare my feelings.”

Guilty as charged, Lily thought.

“Is he hitting on you again?” Edna Klein, the school principal, joined them under the awning. In her sixties, with waist-length silver hair and intense blue eyes, Edna resembled a Woodstock grandmother. She wore Birkenstocks with socks and turquoise-and-silver jewelry, and she lived at a commune called Cloud Mountain. Yet no one failed to take her seriously. Along with her earth-mother looks, she possessed a Ph.D. from Berkeley, three ex-husbands, four grown children and ten years of sobriety in AA. When it came to running a school, she was a consummate professional, supportive of teachers, encouraging to students, inspiring confidence in parents.

“Harassment in the workplace,” Lily stated. “I’m thinking of filing a complaint.”

“I’m the one with the complaint,” Greg said. “I’ve been hitting on this woman since Valentine’s Day, and all I get from her is a movie once a month.”

“At least I let you pick the movie. Hell on Earth was a real high point for me.”

“You’re a heartless wench, Lily Robinson,” he said, heading for the gym. “Have a nice weekend, ladies.”

“He’s barking up the wrong tree,” Lily said to Edna.

“Are you this negative about all men or just Coach Duncan?”

Lily laughed. “What is it about turning thirty? Suddenly my love life is everyone’s business.”

“Of course it is, hon. Because we all want you to have one.”

People were always asking Lily if she was seeing anyone special or if she intended to have children. Everyone seemed to want to know when she was going to settle down. They didn’t understand. She was settled. Her life was exactly the way she wanted it. Relationships were scary things to Lily. Getting into an emotional relationship was like getting into a car with a drunk driver. You were in for a wild ride, and it was bound to end with someone getting hurt.

“I’m meddling, aren’t I?” Edna admitted.

“Definitely.”

“I can’t help myself. I’d love to see you with someone special, Lily.”

Lily took off her glasses and polished the lenses on a corner of her sweater. The world turned to a smear of rain-soaked gray and green, the principal palette of an Oregon spring. “Why won’t anyone believe that I’m satisfied with things just the way they are?”

“Satisfaction and happiness are two different matters.”

Lily put her glasses on and the world came back into focus. “Feeling satisfied makes me happy.”

“One of these days, my friend, you’ll find yourself wanting more,” said Edna.

“Not today,” Lily said, thinking of the upcoming conference.

A group of students clustered around to tell her goodbye. Edna took the time to speak to each child personally, and each turned away with a big smile on his or her face.

Lily felt a small nudge of discontent. Satisfaction and happiness are two different matters. It was hard enough to make herself happy, let alone another person, she thought. Yet when she looked around, she had to admit that she saw people do it every day. A mother coaxed laughter from her baby, a man brought flowers to his wife, a child opened a school lunch box to find a love note from home.

But the happiness never lasted. Lily knew that.

She lingered for a few minutes more while the children were set free for the weekend. They ran to their mothers, getting hugs, showing off papers or artwork, their happy chatter earning fond smiles. Watching them, Lily felt like a tourist observing a different culture. These people weren’t like her. They knew what it was like to be connected. By contrast, Lily felt curiously distant and unencumbered, so light she could float away.

While waiting for the Holloways to arrive, Lily checked the conference table, low and round and gleaming, surrounded by pint-size chairs.

The desks were aligned in neat rows, the chairs put up so the night crew could vacuum. The smells of chalk dust, cleaning fluid and the dry aroma of oft-used books mingled with the ineffable burnt-sugar smell of small children.

She set out two things on the table—a manila folder, thick with samples of Charlie’s work, and the requisite box of tissues, Puffs with lotion, which Lily bought by the case at Costco. A roomful of eight-and nine-year-olds tended to go through them fast.

She moved along the bank of windows, adjusting the shades so they were all even at half mast. The glass panes were decorated with the children’s cutout ducks in galoshes, each bearing the day’s penmanship practice: “April showers bring May flowers.” Outside, a jagged bolt of lightning raked across the sky, punctuating the old adage.

With a grimace, she turned to the calendar display on the bulletin board and silently counted down the column of Fridays. Nine weeks left until the end of school. Nine weeks to go, and then it would be sunshine and blue skies and the trip she’d been planning for months. Going to Europe had always seemed such a lofty, barely reasonable goal for a schoolteacher in a small Oregon town, but maybe that was what made it so appealing. Each year, Lily saved her money and headed off to a new land, and this would be her most ambitious trip yet.

She tugged her mind away from thoughts of summer and concentrated instead on preparing for a difficult meeting. She inspected the classroom as she always did before conferences. Lily believed it was important for people to see that their children spent the day in a neat, organized, attractive environment.

At the center of the front of the room was a dark slate blackboard. She’d been offered a whiteboard but declined. She preferred the crisp, controlled quality of her Palmer-method script on the smooth, timeless surface. She liked the coolness of the slate against her hand when she touched it, and the way her fingertips left a moist impression, before evaporating into nothingness. The sound of chalk on an old-fashioned blackboard always reminded her of the one place she had always felt safe as a child—in a schoolroom.

This was her world, the place she best belonged. She couldn’t imagine another life for herself.

Glancing at the clock, she went to the door and opened it. Her nameplate read “Ms. Robinson—Room 105” and was surrounded by each child’s name, neatly printed with a photo on a yellow tagboard star.

Lily adored children—other people’s children. For one special year of their lives, they were hers to care for and nurture, and she put all of her heart into it. Thanks to her job, she was able to tell people she did have children, twenty-four of them. And in the fall, she would get twenty-four different ones. They gave her everything she could ever want from a family of her own—joy and laughter, pathos and tears, triumph and pride. Sometimes they broke her heart, but most of the time, they gave her a reason for living.

She loved her students from September to June, and when school ended, she sent them out the door, giving them back to their families, pounds heavier, inches taller, drilled in their multiplication and division tables, reading at grade level or better. In the fall, she shifted her attention to the next crop of students. And so it went, year after year. It was the most satisfying feeling in the world, and best of all, it was safe.

Having children of your own—now, that was not so safe. Kids were part of you forever, subjecting you to crazed heights of joy and bitter depths of sorrow. Some people were cut out for that, others weren’t. A good number weren’t cut out for it but fell in love and had kids, anyway. Then they usually fell out of love and everyone within shouting distance got hurt. Charlie Holloway’s parents were a case in point, Lily reflected.

“My Favorite Things” had been today’s creative writing lesson. The children had three minutes to write down as many of their favorite things as possible. Lily always did the exercises right alongside her students, and she always took them seriously. The kids stayed more interested and involved that way. Her list, written hastily but neatly on a large flip chart, included:

Japanese satsumas

snow days

science projects

the sound of kids singing

TV miniseries

mystery novels

first day of school

take-out restaurants

sightseeing

stories that end happily ever after

She ripped down the chart and crumpled it into a ball. It was a little too revealing. Not that her list would surprise Crystal Holloway. They’d known each other since Lily was Charlie’s age, maybe younger, and Crystal had been a gum-popping preteen babysitter.

What a long way we’ve come together, thought Lily. This was a new one for them both, though. Telling parents their child was failing third grade was hard enough. The fact that Lily and Crystal were best friends only made it worse. In doing what was best for Charlie, Lily was going to have to say some difficult things to her dearest friend. And on top of that, the divorced Holloways couldn’t stand each other.

Ordinarily, the idea of teaching Crystal’s kids was uniquely gratifying. Lily was like their special aunt, and when each one was born—first Cameron, then Charlie and finally Ashley—Lily had wept for joy right alongside Crystal.

Cameron was bright, eager to please and as quick to grasp academics as he was to pick up tips on his golf swing from his pro-golfer father. Now fifteen, Cameron was the best player on the high school golf team.

Charlie, however, was a different story. From the first day of school, she’d struggled and balked at basic concepts. Lily had met with Derek and Crystal separately throughout the year. They’d engaged a tutor and claimed to be working hard on Charlie’s reading outside of school. Despite everyone’s efforts, though, Charlie had shown no improvement. She seemed caught in a mysterious block that could not be attributed to learning disabilities or detectable disorders. She was simply…stuck.

Lily looked again at the clock and smoothed her lilac cotton sweater over her hips. The Holloways were due any minute.

“How about some bottled water for your conference?” asked Edna, poking her head inside Lily’s classroom.

“Thanks. I think they might be delayed because of this weather.”

Edna glanced at the windows, gave an exaggerated little shudder and pulled her hand-knit Cowichan shawl tighter around her. She set a six-pack of bottled water on the table.

“To tell you the truth,” Lily said, “I’m not looking forward to this one.”

Edna studied Charlie’s school photograph at the center of her yellow star. She looked like Pippi Longstocking, complete with strawberry-blond pigtails, freckles and a missing front tooth. “I take it she’s not handling the divorce well?”

“It’s been pretty chaotic. Derek and Crystal have only been divorced a year, and the breakup caught everyone by surprise. Although of course,” she added, remembering her own family, “an unhappy marriage is never much of a surprise to the children.”

Looking at her ghostly reflection in the classroom windows, Lily remembered the day Crystal had come to her with the news of the separation nearly three years ago. Her stomach had been big with her third pregnancy, and her cheeks were glowing. Up to that point, Lily had believed Crystal led a charmed life. She was a former Miss Oregon USA who became a devoted wife and mother with beautiful children and a hugely successful husband. Her life looked like a dream, so Lily was shocked when she announced that her marriage was over.

“They handled the split as well as can be expected, under the circumstances,” she added, cautioning herself to be fair to both parents. Crystal had wanted custody, but Derek took her to court over the matter, forcing her to settle for joint custody. Since the parenting plan had been finalized last year, the kids were required to spend alternating weeks with each parent. The summer would be split up between them, five weeks with Crystal, then five with Derek.

Edna hesitated, studying Lily. “This is going to be hard for you, isn’t it?”

“You know my opinion of Derek as a husband. He makes a much better ex, but I’ve always thought he was a good father. I promise you, I’ll keep the focus on Charlie.”

“If you’d like me to stay for the conference, I’m happy to do so,” Edna offered.

Now, that was tempting. Calm, centered and mature, Edna always brought balance and wisdom to the table. They had worked together since Lily had graduated from college, and they’d built a strong mutual trust. However, Edna’s indisputable authority could also be a liability, overshadowing the classroom teacher’s role.

“Thank you. For this meeting, I think I’m better off dealing with the parents on my own.” Lily squared her shoulders.

“All right. I need to check something. There’s a car in the parking lot with its lights left on. After that, I’ll be in my office. Let me know if you need me.”

Lightning slashed from the sky, causing the lights to blink, and thunder crashed, reverberating through the building.

Alone in her classroom, Lily massaged her throat, but the ache there wouldn’t go away. She felt torn between her loyalty to a friend and the needs of a student. In all her life, she had only had one true friend—Crystal. They were closer than sisters. Crystal was the reason Lily came to live in the town of Comfort in the first place. She guarded her heart from everyone else.

chapter 2

Friday

3:15 p.m.

Derek Holloway was the first to arrive, a whirlwind in a dark raincoat and broad-brimmed waxed cotton hat. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, removing his dripping hat.

“I’ll take that. Your coat, too.” Holding them away from her, Lily carried the sopping garments to the cloakroom and hung them over the boot tray. The jacket was made of Gore-Tex, according to the label, size large/tall. The company logo—Legends Golf Clubs—was stitched on the front breast. Probably one of his sponsors, she thought.

His body warmth and the intriguing woodsy scent of after-shave lingered in the lining of the coat, and she chided herself for even noticing. Biology at work, she insisted to herself. Derek Holloway was a scoundrel, a man who had cheated on his pregnant wife. The fact that he was a hunk with a dazzling smile who smelled good was no compensation for that, although some women believed it was a reason for forgiveness.

“Sorry about your floor.” He tugged several brown paper towels from the dispenser over the sink and laid them along the wet trail.

“Not a problem.” She welcomed him with a smile she hoped didn’t look forced. Might as well start on a friendly note. She couldn’t think about the fact that not so long ago, Crystal had nearly collapsed from weeping thanks to the terms Derek forced her to agree to in the divorce decree. Hostility, Lily told herself, would not be in Charlie’s best interest.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she offered. “I’ve got water, and there’s coffee and soft drinks in the faculty lounge.”

“Nothing, thanks.”

The scale of the furniture in the room made him seem even larger than he was, which was plenty large. He was impeccably dressed in creased wool slacks and a V-neck sweater of fine-gauge cashmere. He appeared little different than he had when Lily was in the Holloways’ wedding sixteen years before. His looks had grown more mature and refined over the years, his personal style more sophisticated. And of course, his sense of entitlement had risen along with his success as a professional golfer. One of the top players in the PGA, he seemed to have no doubt that he deserved everything that came his way, and that included the women who threw themselves at him on tour.

“Here’s some of Charlie’s artwork.” She indicated a molded plastic tote tray with “Charlene” neatly printed on it. “You can have a look while we wait for Crystal.” She hadn’t seen him since the last meeting about Charlie. At that conference, he and Crystal had agreed to engage a tutor—which they had—and put their daughter’s difficulties at the top of their priority lists—which they had not.

He glanced at his watch, a Rolex that was probably another freebie from a sponsor. “She’s always late.”

What did he think, that Lily was going to agree with him? “The weather’s horrible,” she pointed out. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” Though she was careful not to show it, Lily was a tad irritated, too. This meeting was about their daughter. Lily had not summoned them lightly. The least Crystal could do was show up on time.

“That’s a sweet one,” she said as Derek studied a crayon drawing of a koala, its baby clinging to its back. “She drew that after our field trip to the Portland Zoo. Charlie has a real eye for detail. When her curiosity is piqued, she doesn’t miss a thing.”

He nodded and looked at the next one. It showed a ladder running up the long side of the paper, a tiny plank with a figure perched on the edge, about to jump into an even tinier bucket of water. “And this?”

“Vocabulary work. The word of the day was dare, I believe.” The other children had written dare on their drawings, but not Charlie. She avoided writing or reading anything at all. “She’s very clever,” Lily said. “She has an inventive mind and uses some sophisticated thought patterns.”

He came to a picture of a house surrounded by spiky green grass and blooming flowers, blue sky and sunshine in the background. The house had four windows lined up in a row. All the windows were filled with black scribbles.