Table For Five

“I hope so,” Lily said, idly perusing the faculty bulletin board. “Available for summer house-sitting,” read one notice. “Prefer beach or river house.” This time of year, teachers were all about summer, and Lily was no exception. She had plans. Big, grand plans. This was something she loved about her job—a teacher had an entire summer to recover from the emotions of loving, educating and cultivating a group of children.

Parents never get that chance, she reflected, thinking of the Holloways. There’s no downtime when you’re a parent.

“It’s going to be a long haul with Charlie,” she told Edna. “We didn’t even finish discussing the reading institute. They didn’t seem to want to hear about it, except to say it would directly interfere with Mom’s plans for a Disney cruise and horse camp, and Dad’s month in Hawaii.”

“Now I want to be their kid,” Edna said.

“I think they already have as many as they can handle,” Lily told her.

“Maybe the reading institute isn’t the right choice for this family,” Edna said. “They might need more flexibility.” She took a sip of her tea, then regarded Lily thoughtfully. “You could be her tutor.”

Against her better judgment, Lily felt drawn to the idea. Like everyone else, she adored Charlie and felt that teaching her one-on-one could lead to the breakthrough Charlie needed. Unfortunately, the situation was complicated.

“I could never do that,” she said. “You know my policy. I need a life separate from school. And I believe in treating all children equally.”

“They don’t all need you equally,” Edna pointed out.

“Not possible,” Lily said. “With this family, it would be extremely tricky.”

“I should think it would be extra easy since you and Charlene’s mother practically grew up together.”

“Her ex can’t stand me,” Lily said. “He thinks I’m a lousy teacher.”

Edna shook her head. “Just like he’s a lousy golfer.”

“Not quite,” Lily said. “A professional golfer loses a game, maybe a bunch of money or even his PGA card. Big deal. When a teacher screws up, it affects a child.”

“True, but that’s not what I see happening with the Holloway girl. You’re doing a good job, even though at present, her progress doesn’t reflect that.”

“I’ve been working on this all year. I don’t have enough time to get Charlie on track.” She could read Edna’s thoughts. So give her more time.

A part of Lily yearned to do just that, to gather the little girl close. But that—well, that would just be dangerous. Life had not equipped Lily for this: quite the opposite. At an early age, she had learned to protect her heart, even from a child like Charlie. Perhaps especially from a child like Charlie.

Outside, lightning flashed and thunder cracked so close that the windowpanes rattled. Rain washed down the glass, smearing the view of the nearly empty parking lot outside. Lily made out two red squiggles of brake lights as a vehicle left the lot. Judging by the size, that was probably Derek’s SUV.

“I’ll be glad when this year is over,” she said, and cinched the belt of her raincoat snugly around her. Summer meant renewal and refuge from troubles she couldn’t solve. She needed that, needed time to recover from the emotional roller coaster of the school term.

“It’s too bad about that family.” Edna sighed, rinsing her mug at the sink. “I’ve known the Holloways since they enrolled Cameron here ten years ago. I sure as heck didn’t see the divorce coming.”

No one, Lily thought, not even the most perfectly matched couple, seemed to make it anymore. They could be blissful one day and in divorce court the next.

Crystal often urged Lily to settle down, marry and have a family, and Lily had no idea why. After all she’d been through, Crystal was still a true believer. Not Lily, though. She was a pragmatist, a planner. It was easy to do when there was no one to plan for but her.

Lily’s life was arranged exactly the way she wanted it. She had children to love and time for herself. This was her own personal formula for contentment, and she guarded it from anything that might upset the balance, never letting herself question the reason.

chapter 4

Friday

3:45 p.m.

Crystal Baird Holloway jabbed the key into the ignition of her station wagon. She forced herself to take a deep breath, close her eyes and count to ten. She needed to get a grip. In this weather, driving angry was a truly bad idea.

She opened her eyes and deliberately reached around for her seat belt. Torrents of rain glazed the windshield with dull silver streaks, distorting her view of Derek. He appeared ghostlike and indistinct under his black-and-white Ping umbrella as he splashed across the asphalt parking lot to his Chevy Tahoe. A crow with ruffled feathers scurried in front of him and then took wing. Watching him get into the late-model, luxurious SUV and drive into a shroud of fog, she felt a twinge of resentment. He got a new car every year from a sponsor.

There were several things she definitely missed about being married to him, though she would never admit it.

All right, she thought, noticing how quickly the windows had fogged. Don’t freak, as Cameron would say. Charlie’s going to be all right. How can she not be all right with Lily as her teacher? Okay, so it’s been a shitty day, but the worst is over.

Giving a firm nod, like a genie magically transforming chaos to order with a blink, she turned the key in the ignition.

Click.

It took just that one dry, dead-sounding click for her to know she was screwed. However, she tried turning the key several times for good measure. Click. Click. Click. Nothing but a weak flutter, like the rhythm of a failing heart on a monitor.

Great. What the heck was wrong now?

Oh, Crystal, she thought. You didn’t. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the headlamp knob, and her stomach sank. It had been left in the on position.

“Could you be any more stupid?” she muttered.

Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she checked to see if the dome light would come on. No such luck. The car was deader than…a stale marriage.

Damn this weather. Where else but in Rain City, Oregon, did you have to use your headlights in the daytime, ensuring that one day you’d be upset or in a hurry and you’d dash out of the car, forgetting to turn off the lights?

This was all Derek’s fault. Every trouble in the world could be traced to smiling, sexy, talented, charming, renowned Derek Charles Holloway. If not for him, she never would have moved out here to the rainiest spot on the planet. If not for him, she’d be fine right now, just fine.

But Derek took up a lot of space in a woman’s world. He was larger than life in every department: athletic prowess, looks, spending habits. Oh, and his appetite for women. Let’s not forget that, Crystal thought. He was definitely larger than life in that department.

It was because of all his appetites, his greed, his carelessness in matters of the heart that she found herself sitting in a dead car with the rain beating down, crying her eyes out.

I’ll hate you forever, Derek Charles Holloway, she thought, digging around in her purse for a Kleenex. She came across everything but a tissue: her prescription slip (yet another errand she needed to run before picking up the kids), an ancient Binky dusted with bottom-of-the-purse lint (Ashley had surrendered her Binky six months ago), a couple of stray ball markers and tees with Derek’s initials on them (Was her purse really that old?), a tiny three-pack of Virginia Slims samples given out at a tournament (Yes. It really was that old.), a pack of matches from Bandon Dunes Golf Course. And she still hadn’t found a Kleenex.

By now the windows of the car were so steamed up, passersby might think there was some hanky-panky going on. Ha. Hanky-panky was a thing of the past for Crystal. Hanky-panky was what got her here in the first place. And the second. And the third.

God, what happened to my life? she wondered. Derek. Derek Holloway happened.

She’d been a student at the University of Portland, with everything going for her. She was a freaking beauty queen, for Pete’s sake. She had stood upon the mountaintop as Miss Oregon U.S.A. of 1989, heavily favored to win the national title. Then along came Derek. Three months later, she’d cheerfully handed her crown over to her first runner-up, a dull-witted, laser-toothed blonde from Clackamas County.

Crystal had been so stupid in love that she hadn’t even cried, giving up her crown. She was pregnant—on purpose, though Derek never knew that—and about to marry a man who, by the age of twenty-two, had already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated three times. Really, what was there to cry about?

She snorted into the wet sleeve of her microfiber raincoat, making up for lost time. Her sleeve made a lousy Kleenex, so she simply gave up crying.

“Enough is enough,” she said. And again: “Get a grip.” Somehow she managed to compose herself. She sat for a moment in the pall of silence. It was a dead car, for Lord’s sake, not a cancer diagnosis. She had weathered childbirth, heartbreak, infidelity, divorce, single parenthood, financial ruin, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Surely a dead battery was not going to finish her off.

Will it matter in five years? Her therapist’s favorite question popped into Crystal’s mind. For once, the answer was no. No, this stupid dead car she was forced to drive because her stupid attorney hadn’t milked enough spousal maintenance out of Derek would be nothing more than a bitter memory five years from now. She glanced at the crumpled pink receipt from the medical lab test on the console. Snatching it up, she stuffed it under the visor. Now, that was something that would matter in five years. It would matter forever.

She wished it wasn’t raining. If the sun was out, she’d abandon this piece-of-shit car, stride with her pageant runway walk over to Rain Shadow Lexus and slide right into the cushy leather interior of a brand-new car, one that shut its own lights off if the driver forgot. She’d sweet-talk the dealer into easy terms and drive off into the sunset.

Driving. She and Derek used to drive all over together. After they’d moved here to Comfort, a short distance from the magnificent Pacific Coast, they used to drive out to the edge of everything and explore the twisting, cliff-draped coastal highway to their hearts’ content. Sometimes they’d even pull off at a scenic vista and make love in the back of their minivan.

It was raining harder than ever now. She briefly considered prevailing on Lily for help, but dismissed the idea. She knew Lily would drop everything to help her. She’d wade through a flood if Crystal asked her to. Crystal didn’t want to ask. Lily had already been such a good friend to her, helping her out of one jam after another. It was high time Crystal started rescuing herself. And frankly, Crystal was tired of feeling like an idiot.

As she took out her cell phone, she held her breath. If this battery was dead, too, she’d shoot herself. She pictured herself slogging back into the school, a two-time loser, needing to use a phone.

“Work, please work,” she said, flipping it open.

The display leapt to glowing blue life, playing its happy little “Turn Me On” ditty. Finally, one thing went right today. Not only that, Crystal had, like the soul of competence and organization, clipped her auto club card to the visor. How smart of her.

She entered the toll-free number, then followed the prompts, submitting her membership number.

“We’re sorry,” said a soothing female voice. “That number is no longer valid. Please call our customer service department between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern time to renew your membership.”

“Screw you,” Crystal muttered, pressing End. The phone’s clock told her it was well past 6:00 p.m. on the stupid East Coast.

Like everything else in their marriage, Derek had let the auto club membership expire and hadn’t bothered to tell her.

Swearing under her breath, she took out the sample package of Virginia Slims and the book of hotel matches. She put one of the ancient cigarettes between her lips and lit up. She gagged on the smoke, being an intermittent smoker at best, but lighting up was an act of defiance, a reaction to all the frustrations building inside her. For one moment, she could do something reckless, senseless, dangerous, and the only one to suffer the consequences would be her.

Calmed by the cigarette, Crystal pressed the button of her seat belt. It retracted with a snaky slither and she felt suddenly unburdened. Free.

Finally, she knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to kill him. She smiled, took another puff on the cigarette and flipped open her phone again. Her fingers remembered his number and dialed it by touch alone. She didn’t even have to look.

He answered on the first ring because she had programmed him to respond quickly. With three kids, you never knew what emergency might be going on.

“My car’s dead,” she said without preamble. “I need you to come back to the school and give me a jump.”

“Call the auto club,” he said easily. “I’m busy.”

She could hear his car radio playing a Talking Heads song in the background. “You let the auto club membership expire,” she said.

“No, you failed to renew it,” he said.

“I would have done so if you’d told me it expired.”

“Call a tow truck, then.”

“Fine. That’ll cost a hundred and fifty bucks. I’ll send you the bill.”

“Oh, no you—”

“And since I’m going to be sitting here for hours, you’ll have to pick up the kids, even though it’s my turn to take them. I’m sure you don’t have any plans for this evening.”

“Come on, Crys. Get somebody from the school to help you. Lily. Get your buddy the schoolteacher to help. Maybe she can help you more than she has Charlie.”

“Oh, don’t start.” Crystal acknowledged to herself that this wasn’t really about getting a jump for her car. This was about getting Derek to jump for her. “Quit trying to hand off your problem to someone else.”

“There’s got to be a maintenance worker at the school, or—”

“Derek. In the time it takes to have this argument, you could drive back here and give me a jump. Then you’ll be a free man.”

“You’re pissing me off, Crys. You are really pissing me off.”

She smiled. “See you soon.”

The phone went dead. Crystal took it away from her ear and looked at the screen. It said Call Ended, not Signal Lost. The bastard had hung up on her.

She thought about what to do next. In a raging storm, with darkness falling all around, in a dead car, no one could hear you scream.

She opened the door and threw out the stale cigarette. Then, through the rain-blurred windshield, she saw a pair of headlights approaching. Friend or foe? she wondered. The day seemed darker than ever. The headlamps blazed, blinding her in a blue-white flash of lightning. The vehicle approached fast, coming straight toward her. Crystal was too surprised to scream. She clutched the steering wheel and braced herself for impact.

The vehicle stopped mere inches from her front bumper. She blinked at the strong stream of light stabbing right at her. And saw a flash of cobalt blue.

Derek. Bless him, the bastard had come back for her.

chapter 5

Friday

3:55 p.m.

The bitch just sat there like a queen, barely acknowledging his presence. Derek had the high beams on intentionally, and left them on, glaring straight at her. Take that.

He offered her a steady stream of opinion in terms so foul it would curl her ears if she could hear him. But she couldn’t, of course, which made him wonder why he bothered.

He stuffed his arms into the sleeves of his Gore-Tex jacket and shrugged the hood up over his head. He reached down and popped the hood of the truck. Without acknowledging Crystal or even glancing in her direction, he went to the back of the Chevy and got out the cables.

He felt her watching him and knew damned well what she was thinking. This was a power play. They both knew it. And by getting him to come back for her, she’d won the first round. But the fight wasn’t over. They both acknowledged that, too.

Propping open the hood, he felt the first cold trickles of rain pouring into his shoe. He looked down to see that the water was ankle deep.

“Fuck,” he said, wishing she could hear, because she hated that word so much. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He clipped the cable to the corresponding battery terminals, hoping like hell he got it right. Then he turned his attention to Crystal’s car. Correction, his car. The one she’d stolen from him, along with the house and everything else in the divorce settlement.

At least she was smart enough to pop the hood release without being told. He found the battery terminals caked with corrosion and had to chip the flakes off with his pocketknife. Then he connected the jumper cables and stepped out from under the hood. With a flick of his wrist, he signaled for her to try the ignition. It was raining so hard he couldn’t hear the engine engage.

She opened her door and shouted, “It’s not working.”

“Try it again.”

She shot him a look and turned the key. With the door open, he could see her do it. Nothing happened—no panel, no dome light, no nothing. Complete failure.

“Try again,” he yelled.

She shook her head. “Still not working.”

Out of patience, Derek motioned for her to move. She had to clamber over the console, and he was treated briefly to a flash of beauty queen leg. Even standing in a puddle in the midst of a storm, even knowing all the reasons he had divorced her, Derek felt a jolt of such irrational sexual hunger that he groaned aloud.

This of course was Crystal’s great power. This was why he’d stayed with her fifteen years instead of fifteen minutes. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.

And now she sat next to him, silent and ungrateful, smelling of designer perfume and…He glared at her questioningly. “Smoking, Crys?”

She offered him a skinny, flat package of cigarettes that had seen better days. “Join me?”

“Those things will kill you.”

“We all have to die of something.”

Derek shook his head in disgust while he confirmed what he’d known since he saw the condition of her battery. “It’s dead,” he said.

Rainwater dripped from his hooded jacket to the cloth upholstery.

She said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her tight-lipped, pale-faced, narrow-eyed expression said it all.

“Fuck,” he said, banging the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She used to wince when he talked that way. That was, actually, his primary reason for talking that way. Now that she had no reaction, he shut up. Then he took a deep, cleansing breath to clear his head, filling his lungs from the top down the way his breathing coach had taught him.

Yes, he had a freaking breathing coach. He had coaches and trainers for every possible angle, physical or mental. If he didn't watch out, one of these days he’d find himself with a coach for taking a piss.

The car was littered with carelessly strewn effluvia. A clump of sodden Kleenex told him she felt as lousy about the teacher conference as he did. A pair of earrings he didn’t recognize lay in the ashtray. Crystal had a way of littering herself throughout the car, stamping it with her presence. It was littered with memories, too. This had been a brand-new car the day they’d driven Charlie to school for the first day of kindergarten. She’d sobbed miserably while big brother Cameron looked on in disgust.

Then, realizing the nest was truly empty, they’d driven to Lovers Lane, a private cliffside parking spot off the coastal highway. It was a place Derek remembered from high school, an outcropping so lofty and sheer that an ordinary car felt like the cockpit of a spaceship. That day, with both their children in school for the first time, he’d made love to her in the back of the station wagon on the scratchy gray carpet littered with golf tees, scorecards, plastic Happy Meal toys and lost pennies. He could’ve taken her home that day, to their own bed, but at home, phone calls and work awaited him.

Back then, she’d wrapped her strong bare legs around him and sighed with satisfaction. Now she handed him her cell phone. “Call your auto club.”

He snatched it from her, got the number from his wallet and made the call. The rain came down harder. The dispatcher said the first available assistance would arrive in three to four hours. When Derek told Crystal this, she said, “I’m not waiting here.”

“Go inside the school and wait.”

“That’s ridiculous. Cameron needs to be picked up in an hour and a half. And then Charlie after that. She’s playing at her friend Lindsey’s house. I don’t know how long you told the sitter to keep Ashley.”

The baby wasn’t with her usual sitter, but Derek wasn’t about to disclose that until he had to. Crystal was pissed enough at him.

“Tell you what,” he said, “get Lily to give you a ride home. I’ll pick up the kids and bring them to your place.”

“No. I’m not imposing on Lily.”

“She’s your freaking best friend,” he said, yelling now. “She’ll bail you out, no problem.”

“Yes, she would, if I asked her to. But I won’t. Our children are not Lily’s responsibility.” She regarded him with those beautiful, cool blue eyes, and it was a look of such obstinacy that Derek felt himself conceding the battle without even saying a word.

Having a family had always seemed like a reasonable prospect to Derek. A wife and kids. What could be simpler or more pleasant?

Where Crystal was involved, nothing was simple and very little was pleasant. And who knew what a circus act it actually was to juggle three kids? The laundry, the phone calls, the homework, the carpools, the scheduling of sports and music lessons. Hell, you needed an air traffic controller to manage everything.

No wonder Charlie was in trouble. Someone had dropped the ball with her, and she was failing in school. A hard knot of guilt formed in Derek’s stomach. Charlie. His little chip shot.

He checked his watch. They still had an hour and a half to kill before it was time to pick up the kids. He drew on the hood of his jacket, shouldered opened the door and went back out into the roaring storm. He disconnected the cables, closed both engine hoods, then went around to Crystal’s door and yanked it open.

“Get in the truck,” he yelled.

“But why—”

“Get in the damned truck.” He turned away, got in the driver’s seat, put on his seat belt and watched her. Even in the teeth of the storm, she moved with the unhurried grace of a queen, opening her red umbrella and then stepping out of the car. She got into the truck, then folded the umbrella and slid it under the seat.

“Did you leave your keys in the car?” he asked.

“Of course. I’m not stupid, Derek.”

“No,” he said, putting the truck in reverse. “You’re not.” Things would be easier if she was.

He headed west on the river road, the wipers thumping rapidly across the windshield.

“Where are you going?”

“We’ve got an hour to talk,” he said, ignoring her question. “So talk.”

He could feel her glare as she clicked her seat belt in place. “Charlie’s in trouble. Fighting about it for an hour isn’t going to solve anything.”

He glanced over at her and saw no trace of sarcasm in her expression.

“Then let’s not fight.” He wondered if she heard the weariness in his voice. It was exhausting, trying to figure out what to do with a love gone wrong, especially when kids were involved.

With sullen reluctance, the rain let up and finally stopped altogether. Derek turned off the river road and drove up the ramp to the highway. Here at the coast road, the sun was trying to peek through the broody, black-bellied clouds over the churning sea.

The view was spectacular no matter how many times he saw it. He and Sean had grown up in Comfort, and on the weekends they liked to come out to the coast to hang out on the beach or play a round of golf at the seaside links course. As they grew older and went up to Portland for college, they continued to come out here. The highway department’s scenic vista pullout was the perfect place to bring girls for make-out sessions.