I weigh up whether telling her or withholding what I know will get rid of her quickest.
“Umm, yeah. I think so. Maybe. He and Jennifer were going to grab some lunch. If you hurry, maybe you can catch them up.”
The carpet practically catches fire she’s out of there so fast, twisting her hand at an uncomfortable angle to avoid breaking a long, hot pink nail as she jabs repeatedly on the down button for the lift.
I gather up the paper from the floor, bin it, slam all the doors shut and press ‘copy’. The sooner I get this done, the sooner I can get home. I need to tell Bella about this development.
“Are you kidding me? What are the odds?” Bella hands me a large glass of red wine and curls on the other end of the couch facing me.
“I know. Of all the gin joints in all the towns …” We’ve been Old Hollywood tragics since we discovered black-and-white movies in seventh grade English, and it doesn’t get much more tragic thanCasablanca.
“In all the world, he had to walk into yours. And you just acted like you’d never met?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. It was a reflex reaction,” I mumble through the BBQ chicken pizza I’m stuffing into my mouth. I’m starving since I missed lunch in my rush to get the copying finished and get out of the office before Solo Man, I mean Professor Carter, returned.
“And you’re positive it was him?”
“Oh, yeah. You don’t forget a face like that. Also, there was his body wash.”
Bella nods sagely. “Yeah. You can’t fool the olfactory senses.”
“Exactly.”
“Am I the only one who finds this a little bit funny?”
I raise my eyebrows in question. Nothing about this is funny.
“The fact that his name is Carter? Talk about name is destiny.”
It’s a mark of how freaked out about the whole situation I am that I haven’t even registered that Ethan’s surname is Carter. I was making jokes about it only a week ago.
“Do you think he’s related totheHoward Carter?” Bella continues.
“I have no idea. Right now, his family tree is the least of my worries.” If he was related to Tutankhamun himself, I wouldn’t care.
“Hey, leave a slice or two for me, would you?” Bella grabs a piece of pizza before I hoover up the lot. “So what are you going to do?”
“I guess I’ll have to try and find a time to talk to him about it. Sometime when nobody is around. Because if this gets out, we’d both be screwed. And not in the good way.”
“I don’t see why.”
“You know why.” I top off our glasses with the last of the wine.
“What I know is that at some point, you have to stop letting what your parents did determine your life choices.”
“No. I really don’t. I wish I could, but there’s always someone there to remind me.”
Bella starts humming the old Dionne Warwick song. I appreciate her attempt at lightening the mood, but I’m not ready. Too soon. I give her the evil eye.
“Who the hell cares what happened nearly thirty years ago?” she counters.
“You know what long memories people have for scandal.Oooh, there goes Sadie Montgomery. You know her mother broke up her father’s first marriage. While she was his student. Gasp. Giggle.” I flap my hands around in an imitation of Riley relaying what she considers juicy gossip.
“Hmm. Sins of the mother. And father.”
“Yep. I don’t need to do anything to encourage people to join those dots. Even if they don’t remember, who wants to be that cliché? The professor and his student. Jesus. It’s in such bad taste.”
“Aaah. If only your deep-seated need for paternal approval hadn’t led you to work in the same field …” Bella swirls her wine, shaking her head. She loves to scratch at the poorly healed wound left by my father’s absence. She tells me it’s like the debridement of a burn. Her theory is that, eventually, she’ll hit new, healthy tissue. No luck so far.
