“I’ll go find him and say hello.”
“Good, and I’ll look for you later. Daphne’s already here, by the way, and she’s very eager to meet you.”
“Thank you,” I say, giving an inner sigh of relief. Daphne is the other reason I talked myself into coming—and I’d be kicking myself if she hadn’t shown up for some reason.
“And Jamie,” I ask, lowering my voice, “is he here yet?”
“Yes,” Ava says, keeping her own voice close to a whisper. “The last time I saw him, he was with a group in the solarium.”
My breath hitches a little as I picture him only a few yards away from where I’m standing. Though he and I have spoken on the phone,it’s been more than four months since I’ve laid eyes on him, and it was a tense encounter to say the least.
“You okay about this?” she asks.
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks.”
“Good,” she says with an empathetic nod. “And just so you’re aware, there’s a woman with him.”
“Yup, he told me he was bringing someone. That’s okay, too.”
The doorbell rings and Ava gives my arm a comforting squeeze before turning to greet her next guests. I inhale deeply, then make my way through the parlor to the study. Candles are burning everywhere, creating the amber glow I so associate with this house at nighttime. Though I’ve always found that glow enchanting, there’s an odd, melancholy cast this evening. At least to me.
The pewter-gray, bookshelf-lined study is even more crowded with guests than the parlor. Knowing I’ll have a glass of wine with dinner, I ask the bartender for a sparkling water. As I fish out the lemon slice he’s dropped in the drink, I let my eye roam the room discreetly. From what Ava had told me, the crowd tonight is a mix of local friends and people from the book world, some of whom have driven out from the city for the occasion, and others who live in the area either full-time or on weekends.
I didn’t see Vic when I first entered the room, but I spot him now against the far wall of bookshelves, talking intently to a bespectacled fortyish man with a closely cropped beard and mustache, who I’m pretty sure is his agent, Dan. Probably best not to interrupt right this second. Unlike most of his male guests, Vic has opted for jeans along with a white linen shirt. He’s a rule breaker of sorts, something Ava seems to find beguiling. In so many ways, they are an improbable pair—him a sixtysomething, sometimes edgy, somewhat pretentious,twice-divorced author/lecturer/retired professor, and her a warm, inclusive, even-tempered former head of HR for a midsize media company, who’d never married before.
And there’s also the fact that Vic is white, and Ava is Black. But after meeting five and a half years ago at another dinner party, they discovered that, despite how different their backgrounds are, they have a chemistry most people would kill for.
With a start I notice that Jamie’s best friend, Sam, is in the room, but there’s no sign of Jamie yet. Perhaps he’s still in the solarium. I take another long, deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. How’s it going to feel, I wonder for the hundredth time this week, to run into the man I almost married in June—and to see him with another woman, no less?
When the invitation for the party appeared in my inbox, I knew Jamie must have been invited, too. He’d been renting a small weekend cottage in the area for years—it’s where he’d spent summers with his parents as a kid—and he and Vic, despite their age gap, had eventually become tennis buddies. Then I entered Jamie’s life a couple of years ago and started spending weekends here, too. It was pure luck that Vic’s wife happened to be a good friend of mine, and it meant that I could spend more time with Ava, something that had been tough to do since she retired early to take up residence with Vic here in the countryside, leaving New York behind.
Though I hated having to send my regrets for the party, I decided it was best, but when I called Ava to RSVP, she explained Jamie had a business trip scheduled for the week of the party—he runs a small money management company specializing in socially responsible investing—and wouldn’t be coming. “Then count me in,” I’d told her, delighted. Days later she emailed to say that Jamie’s business trip had been canceled and he was coming after all. She would understand if I changed my mind.
But by then, I was invested in coming, in the chance to be back, if only for a little while, in that magical world that Ava had created with Vic. Besides, she’d since promised to introduce me to a literary agent friend who was spending the summer in the area and would be attending the party. I’d confided in Ava that I’d been hammering out a proposal for a nonfiction book based on my work as a career coach, and she thought this agent might be interested in it.
And since there was a good chance I’d eventually run into Jamie in New York anyway, I convinced myself it would be smart to rip off the Band-Aid sooner rather than later.
“Kiki.”
I spin around and find myself face-to-face with Tori Larsson, the wife of Jamie’s first cousin Liam, and not someone I’d expected to encounter. She’s wearing an attractive beige shift, but the only makeup on her face is a brownish-pink lipstick, and her long, wheat-colored hair is tucked simply behind her ears. Tori, who like her husband is close to fifty, isn’t one to fuss with her appearance.
“Tori, hello, this—”
“I know, you’re probably surprised to see me here,” she interrupts and then, a few beats later, smiles wanly. Tori’s always had what I think of as adelayedsmile, as if it takes her brain a few seconds to remind her face to do it. “Ava joined the library board, and since I’ve been helping her out with the fundraiser, we’ve gotten to know each other a little.”
“How nice that you two have the chance to work together,” I tell Tori sincerely. “By the way, thanks again for your email. It meant a lot to me.”
She’d sent me a note after Jamie and I broke up, saying she was sorry to hear the news and wishing me well. It was more than what most people had done—and more than I’d expected from Tori. Though we’ve always gotten on well enough, she’s generally pretty reserved and plays her cards close to the vest.
“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t an easy time for you,” she says. “Are you doing okay?”
“Pretty well. I’ve been busy with work, so that helps.”
“It doesn’t slow down for you during the summer?”
“The corporate training assignments do because people are on vacation, but not the private coaching. By midyear people start to worry that they’re not where they’d hoped to be, and they want to hit the ground running in the fall.”
“Why aren’t they where they’d hoped to be?” she asks, her dark eyes narrowed.
