“Oh. Yeah, I think I’ve heard of them,” I mutter back, but I’m not even sure.
“Please let me know when you have it worked out.” Her tone is back to being polite with a touch of chilly. “Have a good day, Ms. Quinlin.”
The line goes dead, and I stare at the now blank screen. Oh my God, what is happening? Why is Adam doing this? I seriously need to talk to him, and since he clearly isn’t going to let me get past Minerva, I’m going to have to stop by the house. My house. Well, at least it will be when this is over. But I’m the one who moved out of it for now, because one of us had to go, and he was using the third floor of the house as his home office. It would have taken a long time to move his office, so I moved into my brother’s place for a month; then Adam and I agreed I could move into the Four Seasons. I thought it would just be for another month or so because we have a pre-nup and we’re both agreeing to end this, but I’ve been there for four months and he’s no closer to signing the papers.
At first, Adam was on business trips, because before he announced that it was best we end our marriage, he’d already started working on expanding his commercial real estate business into Los Angeles. I wasn’t in a rush at the beginning. I was still devastated and confused and holding out hope that this could somehow be mended. That he’d change his mind and at least try. Try for the life we’d thought we’d have. After all, the doctor hadn’t said I couldn’t have children. She said it wasn’t going to be easy. Apparently Adam only wanted easy children.
Still staring at my blank phone screen, I stumble toward the door and of course I walk straight into someone. Of course. Because today is going to be crappy in every possible way. Luckily, I manage to avoid getting chai latte on either of us; it barely spills over the lid and only dribbles onto my hand.
“I’m so sorry!” I say at the exact same time she does, and I look up to see a familiar face staring back, but I can’t place it.
She blinks azure eyes and then her whole face lights up. “Zoey? Zoey Quinlin? Oh my God!”
She’s hugging me before I realize what’s happening. I wrap the hand not covered in latte around her back and return the embrace. She pulls back, still holding my shoulders, and smiles. “Holy crap! It’s been over ten years! Oh my God.” She pauses and glances around before adding in a softer voice, “It’s Dixie. Dixie Braddock. You used to babysit me at my family’s summer cottage in Maine. You were friends with my brother, Jude.”
“Holy crap! Dixie Braddock?” I can’t believe it. The last time I saw her she was thirteen. Wheat hair; pink, suntanned skin; freckles across her nose and chronically scabbed-up knees from trying to keep up with her older sisters and brother, who were all daredevils on their bikes and skateboards and surfboards. Babysitting them—well, the girls, anyway—for the two years I lived in Maine was a highlight of my summers. And so was seeing their brother. Crap, I hadn’t thought of Jude Braddock in a while. I find myself smiling now that I am.
“You live in San Fran?” she questions as she takes my elbow and leads me over to the counter and hands me a napkin for my latte-soaked hand.
“Yeah. Stayed local after college,” I explain as I put down the latte and wipe my hand. “And you live here?”
She nods, her sleek blond bob moving like a curtain around her face. She looks close to the tiny thing I babysat but much more refined and beautiful now. I do the math: she’s only twenty-four, but she looks more put together than any twenty-four-year-old I’ve known.
“Yeah. I went to school for sports media, then interned with the San Francisco Thunder hockey team, and they hired me full-time this year.” Her eyes dart around, and her voice drops again. “Jude plays for them, so I use my mom’s last name, Wynn, so no one thinks he got me the job. He didn’t.”
“Jude is in San Francisco?” I don’t know why I felt the need to say that with such breathless shock. I knew he made the NHL, but I had thought he was playing in Milwaukee. That’s where he was last time I Googled him, which was three years ago, before I married Adam.
“Yeah. Got traded a couple years ago,” Dixie explains. “So how’s your family? Where’s your dad preaching now?”
“He’s retired. Mom and Dad are in Sacramento,” I explain. “My brother, Morgan, is a teacher here in San Francisco.”
“Morgan!” She laughs and her cheeks turn a little pink. “Sadie, Winnie and I had such a crush on your brother when we were little. Remember we used to keep begging you to invite him over when you were watching us?”
I nod and can’t help but smile back. Yeah, that memory hasn’t faded. The Braddock girls wanted my brother to come over, but I never invited him. Not because he was gay, which I already knew at that point, but because if Morgan was around, he would tease me about gawking at Jude, which I always did if he happened to come home before Mr. and Mrs. Braddock’s date night ended.
Dixie glances at her phone in her hand, and I realize we both must have been looking at our screens when we collided. She frowns. “I have to go. I have a meeting at the arena in twenty.” She puts a hand on my arm again. “But I would love to catch up with you, and I know Winnie and Sadie would too. They’re going to be in town this weekend. Would you be able to do brunch?”
“Yeah, I can do brunch,” I reply and am shocked at how excited I am at her suggestion. I haven’t really done much of anything social since the separation. I kind of lost touch with a lot of my friends after marrying Adam and adopted his circle of friends. And they all promptly orphaned me after the separation. I didn’t care much because I didn’t feel up to social interaction, but suddenly this seems like a pleasant distraction from my reality. The Braddock family was one of my favorite parts of my childhood.
“Amazing!” Dixie almost squeals. “How about tomorrow. Eleven?”
I nod. “Where?”
“You pick.”
“MKT?” I blurt out because it’s in my hotel and I’m too flustered to think of anything else. To be honest, I don’t even know what they serve for brunch.
“Great! Sadie loves that place, and she’s normally impossible to please.” She hugs me again. “See you tomorrow! Winnie and Sadie are going to be so excited!”
And then, before I can even lift my hand to wave, she’s back out the door. She never even got a coffee, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I’m more dumbfounded and confused than I was from the phone call with Minerva. The Braddocks are here. Well, at least Jude and Dixie are here. In San Francisco. Where I live. When the hell did that happen?
I look around the coffee shop to make sure there’s no one else from my past lurking around. A teacher, a neighbor, another sister of an old unconsummated love. Although Jude was my only unconsummated love, but he did have three sisters. Whom I willbe having brunch with tomorrow. Crazy!
I slip out of Peet’s and concentrate on the clicking of my heels as I make my way back over to my office. I finally take a sip of my jostled latte. It’s barely warm but the caffeine still manages to clear my head a little. Not enough that eagle-eye Marti doesn’t notice something is up.
“Everything okay?” she wants to know as she stands at her desk, gathering things she needs for her day and placing them in her bag. “You look more out of it than you did before the coffee.”
“I ran into someone I haven’t seen in a long time,” I murmur, and for some reason Jude’s seventeen-year-old face floats through my head, not Dixie’s from this morning. “The last time I saw her was in Maine eleven years ago, so it was surprising.”
