“What are you going to have?” Lydia asked, perusing the menu. “Probably something healthy, I bet. I still can’t get over that wholesome selection of groceries you brought home the other day.”
Rosemary wished her neighbor hadn’t brought up the contents of her shopping bags. It reminded her how annoyed she had been at the woman’s nosiness. She pushed away the moment of irritation and reminded herself why she was having lunch with Lydia in the first place: because she was a neighbor, and her act of assistance that day had been generous, and Rosemary had not made any new friends since she had moved to Castle Crossings nearly a year and a half ago.
Rosemary’s first attempt to return the gesture had come yesterday morning, when she’d brought Lydia a jar of jelly beans, which she had mentioned as her favorite vice. Now they were having their first real outing together, a lunch at Rustic Tavern. It was a gorgeous day, so they had agreed on a quiet table on the restaurant’s garden patio.
“I’m not nearly as virtuous as my groceries would suggest,” Rosemary said, closing her menu. “And to prove it, I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger with french fries.”
“Oh, that sounds delicious. I’m doing it, too. And a salad to start, just so we can say we ate a vegetable?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
They had finished their salads and ordered refills on their glasses of cabernet when Rosemary asked Lydia how she had ended up living in their shared neighborhood.
“Don was the one who wanted the extra security,” she explained. “It seemed weird to me, since the kids were out of the house by then. But we take the grandkids one weekend a month, and you see all these horrible stories about kids snatched when the adults aren’t watching. Oh, Rosemary, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Rosemary shook her head. “No, please, go on.”
“Anyway, Don said it would be safer for the kids in a gated community. Like he says, he can’t crack heads like he used to.”
Rosemary was silent, wondering if she’d misheard, but Lydia obviously saw the confusion register on her face.
“Right, no reason why that would make any sense to you. Don—that’s my husband—his background is in security management. The hands-on variety. He ran body service, as they call it, for all kinds of professional athletes and musicians. That’s how we met.”
“You had a secret life as a professional athlete?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. My kids tell me all the time, I’m a horrible storyteller. I’m not linear, is what they say. Drip, drip, drip with the information, according to them. No, I met Don in 1968 when we were still young’ns. Well, he was a young’n: only twenty years old, working security on Jimmy O’Hare’s first world tour.” Rosemary vaguely recalled the name as that of a southern rock singer from around that era. “I was twenty-five but lied and told everyone I was twenty-one. Musicians back then didn’t like us much older than that.”
“So you were a—backup singer or something?”
“Oh, gosh no. I can’t carry a note to save my life. We had a karaoke contest at the home association party a few years ago, and my friends threatened to evict me from Castle Crossings if I ever sang in front of them again. Trust me, you don’t want to hear me sing. No, I lied about my age because I was a road companion. A groupie is the more common vernacular.”
Rosemary nearly spit out her wine across the table. Never judge a book by its cover, especially when the book is a person, was the lesson.
The ice—and Rosemary’s expectations—fully broken, their conversation fell into an easy rhythm. They had lived very different lives but found unpredictable parallels between Lydia’s life on the road and young Rosemary’s own adventure of leaving Wisconsin for California.
“And how did you decide to move across the street?” Lydia asked. “You didn’t want to stay in your old house?”
Rosemary found herself picking at her french fries.
“I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong again?”
“No, of course not. It’s just—well, the answer is complicated. I raised Susan in that house. I mourned her there. I lived more years in that house with Jack than anywhere or with anyone else. But when he passed, the place was just too big for me to live in alone. It was hard to walk away from all those memories, but it was time.”
“Oh, Rosemary. I didn’t mean to bring up something so upsetting.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
Lydia reached over and patted her wrist. The moment was interrupted by the buzz of Rosemary’s phone against the table.
“Sorry,” she said, inspecting the screen. “I need to take this.”
“Rosemary,” the voice on the phone said, “it’s Laurie Moran. I have good news.”
Rosemary was muttering the requisite acknowledgments—“Yes, I see, uh-huh”—but was having a hard time ignoring Lydia’s expectant looks.
When she finally hung up, Lydia said, “Whatever that was about, you seemed very happy about it.”
“Yes, you could say that. That was a television producer in New York. The show Under Suspicion has picked my daughter’s case for their next feature. The producer can’t make any promises, but I have to pray that something new comes out of this. It’s been twenty years.”
“I can’t imagine.”
Rosemary realized that it was the first time she had spoken about Susan to anyone who hadn’t known her or been investigating her death. She had officially made a new friend.