Chapter 6

 

Daphne's resolve wasn't quite so firm as she sat in her rented LeBaron, trying to work up the nerve to get out from behind the wheel and go on into the party.

It looked like a fairly big party she thought, eyeing the cars that lined both sides of the steep street for half a block in either direction. And it appeared to be in full swing.

The McCorkle house was brightly lit, a beacon of welcome and gaiety in the thin, wispy fog that curled in from the bay. Light spilled through the fanciful stained-glass window above the door, casting oblongs of color across the wide brick steps and the multi-leveled redwood decking and potted shrubs that took the place of a front yard. Strategically placed spotlights highlighted the slanted roofs and sharp angles of the house, while a starkly modern street lamp cast its soft welcoming glow in a golden pool at the foot of the stairs. The muted throb of sixties rock music drifted out through the night air, punctuated now and again by sharp bursts of laughter, beckoning her to come join the fun.

And still Daphne sat in the car, her stomach fluttering worse than it did before a fashion show.

Oh, come on, she scolded herself. Just get out and go in. There's nothing to be afraid of. Be brave, she told herself, her fingers fussing with the red satin ribbon on Adam's birthday gift.

She had finally, after much thought, decided on a one-pound box of gourmet chocolate chunk cookies, soft and chewy and rich with Hawaiian macadamia nuts. They were homey without being homemade, extravagant without being expensive, impersonal without being uncaring, friendly without being intimate. And they said absolutely nothing about how she felt. Which was exactly what she wanted.

After all, she might have come to San Francisco with the idea of starting up an affair with her ex-husband as a way to finally get him out of her system for good, but there was no telling what he had in mind. Once could have been enough for him. In any case, Daphne wasn't about to announce her intentions for Adam and all of Sunny's other guests to see, by giving him the skimpy black silk briefs that had been her first inclination.

Although, she thought, grinning to herself, he would have looked absolutely magnificent in them.

A ghost of a smile still hovering on her lips, Daphne got out of the car and, mindful of the height of her heels, carefully made her way up the steep incline of the street and the even steeper angle of the stairs, to the front door. Taking one last deep breath, she pasted a wide smile on her face, and rang the doorbell.

"I'll get it! I'll get it!" A high-pitched, childish voice rang out above the music. "Let me get it."

"I'll get it," another, older voice said. The door was yanked open. "You go back upstairs before I blister your rear," Sunny threatened cheerfully, shooing the oldest of her three children back up the wide stairs to the second floor with a careless wave of her hand.

Daphne couldn't help but notice that the nail polish on that hand was a bright orange red; almost an exact match for the silky hostess pajamas Sunny wore, and a beautiful foil for her spiky, short-cropped auburn hair.

Sunny turned toward her newly arrived guest then, a smile splitting her face from ear to ear as she saw who it was. "Daphne!" she cried, swooping to enfold her in a Giorgio-scented hug. "You look great! Elegant as all get out, dammit," she exclaimed, standing back a little to take in Daphne's loosely belted ivory silk big shirt and form-fitting brown leather pants.

"I'm so glad you came," she said, moving in for another quick hug. "I knew you would. I told Brian—" She broke off and turned her head, raising her voice over the noise of the stereo coming from the living room. "Brian, come look who's here. It's Daphne."

Sunny's tall rangy husband, his placid gray-eyed calm the exact opposite of his wife's wacky exuberance, put his drink down on a glass side table and ambled over to greet her.

"Daphne, honey," he said warmly, and leaned down to kiss her cheek. "It's good to see you again. Where've you been keeping yourself?"

"New York, mostly," she said, her gaze darting past his shoulder to the crowded room beyond. Adam wasn't anywhere to be seen. She brought her gaze back to Brian's. "Hong Kong three or four times a year to hunt for fabrics and visit the factories. Dallas and L. A. during the markets. And San Francisco every month or so." She grinned up at him. "You're just never around when I drop by."

"That's because nobody ever tells me when you're dropping by," he grumbled good-naturedly, casting a teasing eye at his wife.

"That's because you're never home," his wife grumbled back. She reached out, taking Adam's birthday present from Daphne. "Here, put this on the table with the others," she ordered, giving it to Brian.

"Yes, ma'am," he said crisply, and bowed like a hotel bell captain before he turned away to do his wife's bidding.

Sunny ignored his teasing. "I'm going to take Daphne into the living room and reintroduce her to everyone," she stated, linking her arm through Daphne's as she steered her through the open archway into the room beyond. "You remember Gail Scott, don't you, Daphne?" she said, presenting the two women to each other.

"Yes, of course, I remember Gail," Daphne replied warmly, reaching out to give the short, plump brunette a quick hug. It was enthusiastically returned. "How could I forget? Gail took me to my first women's lib meeting. Remember? At the Women's Center near the campus." She laughed a little at the memory. "God, those were the days, weren't they?" she said, and they were off, reminiscing about the "good old days."

Daphne wandered from group to group after that, reacquainting herself with the friends of her carefree, radical youth. The music throbbing from the stereo was from that era too, an eclectic mix of the Rolling Stones, Steppenwolf, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Dylan, the Righteous Brothers, Peter, Paul and Mary. All they lacked, Daphne thought, nostalgia tugging at her heartstrings, were the love beads and headbands, poster paints and bad coffee, and someone on a soapbox spewing the political rhetoric of the day at them.

"Oh, and do you remember that 'Save the Otters' march? The one Carl arranged. It rained all over us, remember? You couldn't read the signs because the paint was dripping all over the place and the police never even bothered to show up because..."

"...that time Sunny chained herself to the door of the student union building and then lost the keys to the handcuffs and the janitor had to saw them off her. I thought I'd die laughing."

"...his van had a psychedelic paint job, remember? With exploding stars or something."

"...when we went to the all-night candlelight vigil. I'll never forget how beautiful it was. Everybody was singing and swaying."

"...Daphne was marching down Market Street in the feminists' Sunrise Protest. Remember how she hit that cameraman on the head with her sign and ended up on the six o'clock news?"

Laughter, including Daphne's own, filled the air.

"Adam got so mad I thought he'd bust a gut," another voice said.

Yes, Adam, Daphne thought. Where was he?

Someone else had apparently already asked the same question.

"I called the hospital a few minutes ago," Brian told them. "They said he was still in surgery—"

There was a unanimous groan.

"So we're going to go ahead and eat without him—"

Good-natured cheers filled the air.

Brian gave them a long-suffering look. "And he can catch up when he gets here," he finished. "So..." He bowed slightly, one arm extended in the direction of the dining room. "Food's right this way."

"No one had better lay even one finger on that cake, though," Sunny warned. "We're not cutting it until Adam gets here."

Everyone trooped toward the laden dining room table, filling up their buffet plates with triangles of shrimp toast, steamed pearl balls, finger-sized egg rolls, five-spice chicken, sweet and sour pork, and fluffy boiled rice. Chinese food used to be Adam's absolute favorite, Daphne remembered, reaching for a plate. Apparently, it still was.

"It's all natural," Sunny told them proudly. "Not one additive or preservative. Not a sprinkle of MSG, either."

"I can't eat it without MSG," someone deadpanned.

"Haven't you ever heard of Chinese restaurant syndrome?" Sunny began, seeing the opportunity to hold forth on the danger of food additives in the American diet.

"At least a hundred times," teased Brian, stopping his wife before she could say another word. "Two hundred times," he exaggerated. "A thousand."

"Very funny," she said, pretending to throw a steamed pearl ball at him.

Daphne smiled at their loving byplay, filling her plate with a little bit of everything as she made her way around the table. Then, plate filled, she ambled out into the wide entry hall. Waggling the fingers of her free hand at the small redheaded child at the top of the stairs, she crossed into the living room and found herself a seat on the smooth stones of the fireplace hearth.

"So," she said a few minutes later when Sunny came in and sat down on the sofa across from her. "What have you been up to lately?"

Brian, passing by on his way to the other corner of the sofa, screwed up his face. "Don't ask," he warned.

Sunny ignored him. "Well," she began. "The kids and I are up to a mile a day."

"Just you and the kids?" Daphne slanted a teasing look at the gray-eyed man sitting at the other end of the sofa. "Not Brian, too?"

Brian shook his head. "It's a well-known medical fact that running causes shinsplints," he said in his doctor-knows-best voice.

"We don't run, we jog. Sort of," Sunny countered. "Mollie's too young to do much running."

Brian grinned. "And you're too old."

"Oh, you." She dismissed him with an eloquent lift of her shoulder as she turned back toward Daphne. "Actually, what I've really been up to is something much more important," she said, and then paused significantly, her eyes flickering briefly toward her husband before she continued. "Antivivisection."

Daphne looked at her over a forkful of sweet and sour pork. "Anti-what?"

"Antivivisection," Sunny repeated, a bit more loudly.

"Oh, God," Brian groaned comically. "If you're going to start on that again I'm leaving." He made as if to stand up.

"But antivivisection is important," Sunny stressed, reaching out to hold him where he was.

"Of course it's important," Brian agreed, sinking back into the sofa. "Animal research has saved thousands of lives."

"That's not what I mean and you know it, Brian Andrew McCorkle."

"Now you're really in trouble," Daphne said, grinning at him over a piece of shrimp toast. She still didn't know exactly what they were talking about—antivivisection being a word she was unfamiliar with—but she was enjoying the fireworks.

"Well, just what did you mean—" he paused, grinning at the group who had gathered round to watch the show "—Elizabeth."

No one, not even her parents, had called Sunny that for more years than anyone could remember. Elizabeth was Sunny's real name, but she had changed it to Sunshine during her high school, flower child days. It had been shortened to Sunny by her classmates and, suiting her far better than the more staid Elizabeth did, it had stuck.

"That was a low blow," she announced with icy dignity, but her eyes were twinkling. "Unworthy of even you."

"You started it," he pointed out. "I was merely trying to defend myself."

"Children, children," Daphne interrupted, laughing. "Before this discussion disintegrates into a full-fledged brawl, do you think one of you might explain to me what you're arguing about?"

"Antivivisection," Sunny said, as if that explained everything.

"Yes, I know but—now don't think I'm a complete idiot—but what exactly is antivivisection?"

"Antivivisection," said a voice from behind the sofa, "is the opposition of some people to the use of live animals for medical research because they believe that it causes unnecessary pain to the animal."

Daphne's eyes, as well as everyone else's, lifted toward the speaker. She saw a tall slim woman of, perhaps, twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. Her heavy, straight blond hair was cut shoulder length and held back from her face with a comb on either side. Something about her intensely blue eyes and the way she held her head was vaguely familiar, but Daphne couldn't quite place her. She was much too young to be part of the old gang and too old to be the daughter of one of them, either. Still, Daphne had the nagging feeling that she knew her.

"But it does cause pain," Sunny said, her voice passionate with outrage. "Great pain."

"Yes, I suppose it does." The young woman spoke in a cool and detached manner. "But not unnecessary pain. How else are we going to find a cure for all the hundreds of diseases that man is heir to?"

"I don't know. But butchering innocent animals isn't the way."

"Really, Mrs. McCorkel," the young woman said dryly, her expression faintly disdainful. "No one 'butchers' innocent animals. Every care is taken to see that the animal doesn't suffer any more than absolutely necessary."

"But the animals still suffer horribly." She shuddered. "They give them cancer and other awful, crippling, painful diseases. They do things to their brains and their hearts. They—"

"Sunny," Brian said kindly, putting a hand on his wife's arm. "I don't think a birthday party is the place to discuss this sort of thing. Leave it be."

"But—"

"Leave it be," he repeated softly.

Sunny looked down at her lap for a moment, and Daphne saw her shoulders lift in a sigh. Then she raised her head, and there was a smile on her face. "Brian's right. This is no place for that kind of discussion." She jumped up from the sofa, "If everybody's finished eating, let's push back the furniture and dance." She picked up her plate from the coffee table with one hand and reached across for Daphne's with the other. "I'll just take a few of these things out to the kitchen first. You all start moving the furniture." She turned swiftly, disappearing through the open archway, into the dining room and beyond.

Daphne rose from her spot on the hearth as some of the others began to do as Sunny had suggested, and approached the young woman who had defended the practice of vivisection so coolly. "I know this is going to sound like a line from an old movie," she began, smiling, "but don't I know you?"

"You used to," the younger woman said. She paused, a cool unfriendly smile turning up her perfect pink lips. "I'm Marcia Forrest."

Daphne stared at her blankly for a moment.

"Adam's sister," she elaborated.

"Oh, my God, of course. Marcia. No wonder you looked so familiar." And are so unfriendly, Daphne thought. Adam's baby sister had never liked Adam's wife. "The last time I saw you, you were what? Twelve? Thirteen?"

"Thirteen," Marcia acknowledged, making no effort to help the conversation along.

"So, what are you up to these days?"

"I'm in my second year of medical school at UC San Francisco."

Adam's alma mater, Daphne thought. "Oh, you're planning to be a doctor, then."

"A surgeon," Marcia corrected.

"Making plastic surgery your specialty, too?" Plastic surgery, with an emphasis on severe burn cases, was Adam's specialty.

"No," Marcia said shortly. "I intend to specialize in cardiovascular surgery. Surgery on the heart," she added, as if Daphne might not know what it was.

"How admirable. Adam must be very proud of you," Daphne said sincerely.

"Yes, I believe he is," Marcia said, just a bit too smugly.

"Well, it was nice talking to you again but if you'll excuse me—" Daphne gestured in the direction of the dining room "I—think I'll just go see if Sunny needs any help." She hurried off to the kitchen.

"Marcia Forrest certainly has a charming bedside manner, doesn't she?" Daphne said a few minutes later, as she stood at the sink, helping Sunny scrape plates before loading them into the dishwasher.

"The original Miss Iceberg," the redhead agreed dryly. She looked up from what she was doing for a moment, a wicked smile on her face. "I take it she still worships the ground you walk on?"

Daphne flicked a wet hand in Sunny's direction. "Very funny," she said, and then sighed. "That girl has never liked me. Not from day one, when she was hardly more than ten years old. I wonder why?"

"Because Adam did—and still does—like you, that's why."

"Jealousy, you mean?" Daphne said, ignoring the bit about Adam still liking her.

"Well, of course. What else would you expect? Adam is her adored big brother and halfway to sainthood as far as she's concerned. He was the first one in the family to go to college and make something of himself." Sunny babbled on, rinsing the dishes that Daphne had scraped before sticking them into the dishwasher. "He's helping put her through med school, did you know that? Which, of course, makes him even more godlike in her eyes."

Daphne nodded. "He always wanted to help his family." She paused for a moment, remembering. "It always made him so... so angry with himself that he couldn't afford to help his younger brothers with their educations."

Sunny shrugged. "They did all right without his help."

"And what did they end up doing? The other two boys?"

Sunny smiled. "They're hardly boys anymore," she reminded Daphne. "John does something scientific involving the coral reefs around Hawaii. And David is an accountant. Lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife and two kids."

"And Gracie and Art? How are they?" Daphne asked, referring to Adam's parents. "As I remember, they weren't all that crazy about me, either." Her eyebrows quirked upward. "I'm sure they thought I was going to lead their future doctor away from the straight and narrow."

"They're fine, too, as far as I know," Sunny told her, pouring dishwashing detergent into the proper receptacle. "Still living in the old neighborhood, even though Adam was all prepared to buy them a big new house. They'd didn't want to leave their friends, apparently. But they did accept a trip to Hawaii last summer as an anniversary present."

"That must have made Adam happy."

"Tickled him pink," Sunny agreed. She shut the door to the dishwasher and pushed the On button with the knuckle of her index finger. Turning around, she crossed her arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter.

"Do you know," she said reflectively, "that this is the first—the very first—time I've even heard you willingly mention Adam's name since the divorce."

"Is it?"

"Yes," Sunny said softly. "Why is that, I wonder?"

"Because," Daphne replied firmly, "this will be the first time I've seen him since the divorce, that's why. Well, not counting the, uh, Children's charity thing, that is. Since he's back in the Bay Area now I'll probably run into him once in a while. Here, if no place else and, well—" she shrugged "—it's only sensible to try to be civil to each other."

"Hmm," was all Sunny would say. Then, she cocked her head slightly, listening. "I guess you'd better prepare to be civil. I think I hear Adam's voice in the front hall."

Daphne followed her friend out of the kitchen, hanging back as Sunny hurried up to greet her latest guest, watching as Adam bent his head to kiss Sunny's proffered cheek. He looked a little tired, she thought, but, then, who wouldn't after standing through hours of surgery? The hint of fatigue around his eyes and mouth in no way detracted from his golden good looks, and even without the tuxedo he was devastating. The polish he had acquired was not just a surface thing, she realized, drinking in the sight of him in his tan chinos and navy cable knit sweater. He had an indefinable something about him that went bone deep. It drew her eyes like a magnet.

He laughed at something that Sunny said, his eyes crinkling up at the corners, and extended his hand toward Brian. The two men exchanged a warm handshake and quick quip that made Adam laugh again, and then he moved away from the door to greet Marcia with a brief, brotherly hug.

"I take it you knew about this little surprise," he said with mock severity.

Marcia nodded, obviously well pleased with herself. "Of course. How else do you think I could make sure that Ginny would get you here, come hell or high water?"

"So, Ginny was in on this, too, hmm?" He glanced back over his shoulder. "Well, come here and take your medicine, woman." He reached a long arm out behind him, circling the shoulders of a small, dark-haired woman, and hauled her up to stand at his side. As he turned back to his sister, still smiling at the surprise they pulled on him, he caught sight of Daphne standing in the open archway.

He went stock-still for a moment, his eyes on hers as the quick color came and went in his face, but Daphne wasn't looking at him. She was looking, instead, at the woman who stood so securely in the circle of his arm. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed and her full smiling lips were colored a soft becoming red. Her navy sheath dress was more classic than fashionable, and it covered a body that was slim-hipped, small-breasted, and long-legged. She was, Daphne thought despairingly, quite lovely.

And Adam had his arm around her.

Daphne felt all her plans go down the drain as surely as if someone had suddenly pulled a plug on them. It just hadn't occurred to her that Adam—her Adam—might have another woman. Not after the night in her hotel room.

Her eyes lifted to his face then, a half-accusing expression in their golden-brown depths as she stared at him. Adam stared back, seemingly as unable as she to look away. His blue eyes were full of wariness, she thought, as if he were afraid she might tell the whole room, and the woman by his side, what had happened between them the night of the charity dance.

Well, don't worry, she telegraphed silently, her pride stung. I want to keep it a secret as much as you do.

The exchange of glances lasted only a second or two, the duration of a heartbeat only, but everyone in the room seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for what would happen next.

And what happened next was that Daphne smiled, a lovely, warm, utterly false smile, and crossed the room to stand in front of her ex-husband. "Happy birthday, Adam," she said evenly, extending her right hand as she spoke.

He took her hand, his fingers clamping down on hers. "Thank you," he said, his voice just as even and apparently unemotional as hers.

And, then, their hands dropped back to their sides and they stood there like two people who had never been more than casual friends. Everyone seemed to let their breath out as the hoped-for explosion fizzled out, and they all started talking at once, wandering back in the direction of the living room or the dining room or down the hall to the bathroom. Even Sunny went, covertly dragged away by Brian.

"Aren't you going to introduce Ginny to Daphne?" Marcia prompted when Adam made no move to do so.

"What?" He shook his head slightly as if coming out of a trance and met his sister's eyes. "Oh, sure. Sure." He glanced from Daphne to the woman at his side. "Ginny Phelps meet Daphne Granger," he said stiffly, adding no more information than that.

The two women nodded at each other, exchanging cool smiles, neither of them sure of the status of the other in Adam's life.

Marcia was quick to fill in the gaps. "Ginny is a nurse. The best OR nurse he's ever worked with, Adam says." She looked up at her brother. "Isn't that right, Adam?"

"Yes." He gave Ginny's shoulders a halfhearted little squeeze and dropped his arm. "The best," he added, running one hand through the hair that fell across his forehead.

"They've been a team practically since the day Adam started at Children's." She shot a quick look at Daphne to see if the message was getting across. It was. "Adam hates to have to work with anyone but Ginny," she continued. "And—"

"Marcia, please," Ginny interrupted, laughing a little self-consciously. "You're making me blush."

"Sorry," Marcia said, but she didn't look sorry. She looked like the cat that had just cornered the market on canaries.

"Well, it's been lovely to meet you, Ginny," Daphne said then. "And so nice to see you again, Adam. And you too, Marcia," she added insincerely. "But, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find Sunny and say my goodbyes."

"You're not leaving already?" It was Marcia, not Adam, who made the required protest. Her tone was victorious.

"'Fraid so. I've been here longer than I'd planned already. I told Sunny I'd try to stop by for just a few minutes and—" her shoulders lifted in a little shrug "—well, you know how it is. We got to talking over the good old days and the time just slipped away. I've got an early meeting at I. Magnin tomorrow," she lied. "And I need to go over my presentation one more time." She glanced toward the living room as she spoke, her expression silently informing her hostess that she was about to leave.

Sunny came hurrying out to stop her. "You're not leaving already?" she said, meaning it far more than Marcia had. She glanced up at Adam. "Not when the guest of honor just got here."

"'Fraid so," she said again. "But it can't be helped. Now, Sunny," she continued when her friend would have made another protest, "I've already stayed much longer than I'd planned. I really have to be going."

"Well." Sunny's voice was little-girl sulky. "If you have to." She sighed theatrically. "Where's your purse?"

Daphne touched the back pocket of her leather pants. It held a car key, a credit card, and a twenty-dollar bill. "Right here."

"How 'bout your coat? Did you come in with a coat?"

"I didn't wear one. No." She stopped Sunny as she raised her hand to summon Brian. "Don't bother Brian, he's busy. Just say goodbye for me, okay? And tell him I'll see him next time I'm in town."

The two women exchanged a quick, warm hug. "Drive carefully," Sunny admonished.

"I will." She raised her eyes to Adam's one last time. "Happy birthday," she said and hurried out into the foggy night without waiting for his reply.