Fifteen minutes later, as per Skye’s request, I pushed open the front door of the Roof Rat and braved the gauntlet of raised eyebrows and stalled conversations. But I didn’t have time to deal with all the inquiring minds. Flynn had walked me to the car and sent me off with a promise that we would discuss That Which Needed Discussing tonight. We were going to ditch the inpatients as soon as I got back.
The bar had a big crowd for a Monday night; apparently half the town had shown up in the hopes that Skye or I would be staging a scandalous sequel to our Main Street matinee.
Someone even turned off the jukebox when I made my entrance. Very Old West.
The men put down their glasses of Pig’s Eye and pushed back their John Deere caps. The women started fiddling with their jewelry and pretended to be looking at each other while they eyeballed at me.
At first, I couldn’t account for the gawking. It wasn’t like I was a key player in this little drama. I was merely sister to the star. But just as I was about to chalk it up to desperate small-town gossip-mongering and proceed with Skye’s errand, I felt a puff of warm air on my back as the front door closed again.
And the evening wind brought with it a whiff of Earl Grey.
He wouldn’t. Ian would not have the gall to show up at my sister’s bar while she was in the hospital, sharing a room with his other girlfriend. I mean, the man had a Ph.D., right? He was indiscreet, not idiotic.
But then I remembered Portia saying he’d been at a conference in Minneapolis all day. If he hadn’t gone home to his wife before coming here, maybe he hadn’t heard about Skye and Sally.
The crowd had settled into a hungry silence. The Roof Rat had become Lindbrook’s Coliseum, and I was the gladiator du jour.
“I’d recognize that hair anywhere. Fair Faith, are you all alone tonight?” I’d only heard him use that tone of voice with Skye.
I whirled around, one hand on my hip. “What?”
“Well, I don’t see Skye or Flynn about. We’ll have to entertain ourselves somehow.” He chuckled and clamped a dark wood pipe between his lips. Alistair Cooke on the prowl.
Was he…was he flirting with me?
I gaped at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“Join me for a cup of tea.” He patted the seat beside him and wrapped a hand around my wrist. His skin felt dry and soft, like wax paper.
I jerked away. “Listen, you…you Twins fan, you. Would you like to know why Skye and Flynn aren’t here? They aren’t here because they’re holed up with Sally Hutchins. At the Raylor Memorial Clinic. And would you like to know what they’re discussing?”
His eyebrows skyrocketed and he pushed his chair back. “I can’t imagine—”
“You are such a slut!” I said. A collective gasp from the crowd.
He recaptured my wrist and forced a laugh. “My dear—”
“How dare you treat my sister that way?”
His gaze bounced around the bar as he realized we were currently center ring at the circus.
“Back off, Faith.” Lars, who was stationed behind the bar, had finally registered an identifiable facial expression. He looked furious.
“I will not back off! My baby sister is all mangled in the hospital, and I’m taking it out of his hide!”
“I mean, back off so I can get at him.” Lars started out from behind the bar, rolling up the sleeves of his denim shirt.
Ian fled into the night. He left his pipe, still smoldering, on the tabletop.
In a blur of blond, Lars reached the door before it closed behind Ian. He moved with a shocking amount of speed for one so monolithic.
I hesitated by the cash register, unsure if I should complete my assigned errand and rush back to Skye, or stay put and try to maintain order in the bar, or hurry out to see the beating to end all beatings.
Some decisions get made for you.
“Get him!” shrieked a tiny brunette, toppling her barstool as she raced out the front door.
“Yeah! Fight!” Her date waved his fist in the air like a communist peasant with a mullet and a farmer’s tan.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” The bloodthirsty mob stampeded toward the parking lot, delighted with the latest turn of events. It might be too early for hunting or ice-fishing, but it was always fist-fighting season in Lindbrook.
Ever committed to customer satisfaction, I followed the crowd into the swampy night, where Lars was gaining on Ian in the parking lot.
As the bar patrons and a fresh swarm of mosquitoes gathered under the streetlights, Lars reached out and caught the back hem of Ian’s tweedy gray blazer.
“Oooh,” said the crowd.
Ian whipped around, his arms pinwheeling.
We all leaned forward into the rank smell of gasoline and garbage, waiting for the fists to start flying.
Ian tried to struggle out of the jacket, but Lars reeled him in by his tailcoats.
“Aaah,” said the crowd.
Lars’s mouth formed a perfect O as Ian sank his teeth into Lars’s hand.
“Cheater!” The petite brunette put both hands on her hips. “Biting’s no fair!”
The mob grumbled threateningly as it closed in on Ian. Since the path back to the bar was clogged with a sea of onlookers, he high-tailed it toward the back alley, his Brooks Brothers loafers clicking on the asphalt.
A yellow Volvo screeched into the alley, cutting off his last route of escape. He froze in the glare of headlights as Portia Hammond slammed out of the car.
I rubbed my eyes against the blinding headlights and by the time my vision adjusted, Portia was chasing her husband back toward the bar, pelting him with hardcover books. Even in high heels and a dainty silk scarf, she had quite the pitching arm.
“Aha!” She unleashed a torrent of Orlando, Mansfield Park, and Great Expectations. “I thought I’d find you here! Slouching around the pub with a two-bit floozy!”
We all froze except Ian, who dropped to his knees and curled into a ball under the onslaught of literature. “I can explain!”
She snatched a fresh supply of missiles from the car. We all flinched as she let loose with a massive copy of War and Peace, which narrowly missed his head.
For a woman who had assured me that her husband’s infidelity was no big deal, she certainly seemed to be riled up.
“How dare you humiliate me like this? It’s one thing to lie, but to flaunt it so publicly…” She wiped a strand of brown hair back from her forehead, dived back into the Volvo, and emerged with a book the size of Albania.
“What is that?” asked the brunette in a hushed tone of awe.
I squinted at the boxy tome as Portia advanced on her husband. “Dear God. I think it’s the Riverside Shakespeare.”
“The what?”
“The Riverside edition of the complete works of Shakespeare,” I repeated.
The crowd erupted into horrified whispers:
“That thing must be a million pages!”
“And it’s hardcover! Look at the corners!”
“I’m too young to see a cold-blooded murder.”
But it was too late to miss the massacre. Portia grabbed Ian by the ear and yanked him into a standing position.
“Please,” he quailed. “Not the Riverside! Anything but that!”
She stepped back, got a running start and whomped him right in the stomach.
“Woah.” Even Lars winced as Ian doubled over.
The rubberneckers had been reduced to a collection of blinking eyes and hands clapped over mouths.
“And there’s more where that came from.” Portia seemed pleased with her handiwork. “Now get in the car, and be quick about it, you mangy cur. We’ll finish this when we get home.”
Ian staggered toward the Volvo, threw himself inside, and doubled over in his seat as his wife slammed the driver’s door and peeled away.
“Show’s over.” I tried to herd everyone back into the bar. “Nothing left to see here.”
“Want me to go after them?” Lars offered. He picked up Ian’s pipe in a huge callused fist. “If you watch the bar, I can meet him back at his house and return this properly.”
I shook my head reluctantly. “I can’t. I’m here on a mission from Skye, and she wants me back at the clinic ASAP.”
At the mention of Skye, his expression melted into the Viking version of dewy eyes. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s feeling a lot better, and I think she and Sally are actually bonding. She says thanks for the daisies.” While she hadn’t actually uttered those words, I felt sure she had meant to thank him.
“Does she need anything?”
“That’s why I’m here. She and Sally have evidently decided to throw themselves into the business, and she wants to go over last week’s receipts.” I grinned at his look of bewilderment. “I, too, was stunned. But you never know with Skye.”
“Yeah.” He smiled, totally besotted.
“It doesn’t pay to ask too many questions. And she’s all worked up as usual, so I’m just going to grab them and get back to her.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “She’ll be back home tomorrow, right? Does she need anything else?”
Maybe my sister wasn’t so bad at choosing suitors, after all.
“Honestly, your working here tonight is by far the best thing anyone could do for her,” I said. “You’re saving our collective asses. Thank you so much.”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
“No, really. Thank you.” I wanted to apologize for judging him, for taking away what he loved and giving it to a social disease with an advanced degree, but he didn’t know I’d told Skye to dump him and now didn’t seem like the best time to bring it up.
So I just grabbed the receipts from the back room, hopped in the car, and headed back to Flynn.
The Home Shopping Network had moved on to iolite and tanzanite rings by the time I returned to the clinic. Submerged in darkness, Sally and Skye slouched into their pillows, glued to the screen with the glazed expressions of recent cult converts. Moonlight filtered through the curtains and mingled with the bluish glow from the television.
“Here you go. A little something for the walking wounded.” I tossed the rubber-banded pack of receipts on Skye’s bed and looked around for Flynn.
She sprang into action. “Great! Now we have his credit card number!”
Sally started to cackle like she was brewing up some eye of newt. “Ian just became a huge fan of tanzanite jewelry.”
I had unwittingly become an accomplice to a felony.
“Well…Godspeed, girls. Give me a call from jail.” I turned to my sister, who had assumed secretarial duties for the looting and plundering of Ian’s credit line. “Where’s Flynn?”
“I dunno. He left.”
I blinked. “He left? When?”
“Like twenty minutes ago.” She salivated over the incredibly low price of $499.99. “He seemed kind of mad, actually, and he left. I think you’re in trouble.”
“Why would he be mad?”
“I dunno.”
I sat down. “Okay. Skye. I need you to stop and talk to me for a minute. What exactly happened? Did you two have a fight?”
“Of course not.” She finally tore herself away from the TV. One look at my face, and she started to apply herself to answering the questions at hand. “I thought you two had a fight, because…Let’s see. He went to get us some Skittles from the machine, and then he called the Roof Rat to make sure you and Lars didn’t need any help, but no one answered, and then I asked him to check my messages to see if Ian had called. Which he had, with some lame story about a conference in Minneapolis. He’s probably reading a sonnet to some skank right now. I mean, how dumb does he think—”
I cut her off. “Hold on. Back to Flynn for a second. What happened then?”
“Then nothing. That’s all I know.” Her forehead wrinkled up. “Are you okay?”
I tried to find a loophole before succumbing to despair. “Did he say when he’d be back?”
“No. Oh, but he did say to tell you that he couldn’t meet up with you tonight.”
“Does he want me to call him?” Grasping at straws never hurt anybody.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He seemed really mad.”
“About what?” I exploded, pounding the mattress.
“I don’t know! He just started muttering about how he’s an idiot and how he’d had it with you.” She regarded me with a blend of concern and reproach. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing!” I racked my brains.
“Well.” She picked up her pen and gave me a disapproving look. “I’ve hardly ever seen Flynn get mad, and he certainly doesn’t just storm out over nothing. So you’d better fix whatever you did.”
What could be worse than throwing up all over him and then stealing away to the airport in the dead of night? I went over our last conversation with a fine-tooth comb, but I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong. We made an agreement! We were going to fish or cut bait! Good lovin’, we hardly knew ye!
I had to call him right now and get to the bottom of this.
But before I made it to the door, a tall, willowy woman stalked into the room. She wore a crisp linen pantsuit and a facial expression that suggested she had just gotten a whiff of the stables behind the polo field.
This looked like the kind of woman who would dial up the I.N.S. the moment her newly immigrated housemaid spilled a drop of ’97 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve on the white carpet in her den. The kind of woman who might have more than a passing acquaintance with vicious sorority hazing and The Rules.
“Well, Celeste, I hope you’re proud of yourself.” She dug a pack of Virginia Slims out of her handbag, glanced at the NO SMOKING signs, and threw it back in. “The news is all over town, your father is spitting nails, and I have to face everyone at the country club supper on Friday.” She drummed her fingers over her pants pocket and waited. Skye and I cowered on the bed.
Sally didn’t look away from the TV. “Hello, Mother.”
“Don’t you ‘hello, Mother’ me. Do you know what people are saying about you and Ian Hammond? Your father is the mayor of this town. How could you do this to us?”
“This is my roommate, Skye, and her sister Faith,” Sally said before she turned the TV volume up. “My wrist is broken, thanks for asking.”
Mrs. Hutchins stopped fuming long enough to grace us with a brittle smile. Her face looked strained, but it was hard to tell if this was due to stress or the tightness with which she’d yanked her white-blond hair back into a chignon. “Please forgive me. I’m Julia Hutchins. My daughter has ruined the family name in less than a day, so I’m a bit upset. You two look familiar…were you some of Celeste’s little friends in high school?”
“Your name is Celeste?” Skye asked Sally, deftly changing the subject.
Sally opened her mouth, but Julia cut her off. “Yes. I named her Celeste because it’s a beautiful name and it has lots of nice, straight lines. It would look fabulous in print, under a TV anchorwoman, for instance. But her father insists on that trailer-trash nickname, and she goes along with it just to annoy me.”
Sally rolled her eyes. “Mother, who ever heard of an anchorwoman named Celeste Hutchins?”
“Well, your name wouldn’t be Hutchins if you had married that nice Ben Coleridge, now would it? Celeste Coleridge is a perfect name for an anchorwoman.” Julia turned to us. “I told her over and over to marry that nice boy from that nice family, but no. She insists on tramping around with ancient married men and disgracing me in front of all my friends. You see what I have to live with?”
One could see why Sally might develop a bit of a chip on her shoulder, living with this woman.
“I spoke with your doctor on the phone, and she said you’re going to be fine, but your father insisted I skip bridge night and come see you, so here I am. I brought you something to read.” Julia produced a pile of magazines from her voluminous leather tote. She pointed to a blurb on the cover of Glamour. “There’s an article in here on how to attract worthwhile men.”
Then she narrowed her eyes at my sister, who looked even more sweet and vulnerable than usual with her golden curls and blue arm sling.
“Here, Celeste. I brought your makeup bag, too. You never know when you might meet an eligible doctor. Not that you’d want him, unless he had a wife and a rap sheet as long as my arm. And turn the light on when you’re reading. Don’t you know how terrible that is for your eyes?”
I escaped out the door while Skye stared in abject horror at the dark side of the Avon Lady.
I communed with the dial tone for a minute, listening to the thin gray hum. Then I got down to business.
The phone rang and rang. Four times. Five. He didn’t have an answering machine at home. Vintage Flynn.
Six times.
“Hello?”
His voice surprised me. I startled under the glaring fluorescent lights in the hallway, then leaned against the wall. “Flynn. Oh, thank God.”
“Didn’t Skye tell you not to call me?” His tone was flat and final.
“No. But she said you stormed out and said that I shouldn’t go over there, which—”
“She’s right.”
This bounced around in my head for a moment.
“But, um, why—”
“Look.” There ensued a long pause on his end. “I don’t want to make this into a huge deal.”
“Too late.” I twisted the phone cord around my index finger until the tip went purple and numb. “I have no clue what’s going on here. I thought we’d agreed to talk about things. Didn’t we?”
“We did.”
“And you kissed me. Not two hours ago.”
“I did.” He ended this statement on a rising inflection, clearly censoring the rest of what he had to say.
“Then what is going on?” I waited for an answer I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.
“I just can’t do this anymore. The whole thing is a game to you. The hot and cold, cat and mouse, advance and retreat thing. You don’t take it seriously, and I do.”
I practically hyperventilated at this. “How can you say that? I do take it seriously.”
“Come on, Faith.” This was clearly a dismissal, his final word on the matter, but his tone was still a caress. “You don’t need me. You never will. I know you want to go back to California.”
I watched the seconds tick by on the black clock on the white wall.
“See? You can’t even deny it,” he said.
“You’re right—I can’t deny it. And why shouldn’t I leave when you won’t give me a single reason to stay?” I struggled to keep the frustration out of my voice. “This is insane. You won’t forgive or forget. Nothing I do is ever enough. But you expect me to give up my whole life for the remote possibility that this relationship will ever happen. And how can you accuse me of being unreliable? You were fine two hours ago and now—”
“I heard the message from your editor when I checked Skye’s phone messages for her,” he said. “I know you’re going back to L.A.”
“Oh.” Where to begin with this? “Well, that doesn’t mean—”
“Were you even going to tell me before you left?”
“Yes,” I said, stung. “I mean, no. I mean, I don’t even know what I’m going to do about that…”
“I have to go.”
There it was again: his Last Word tone. I lost my head and played my trump card in a desperate bid to keep him on the line.
“Wait. Flynn, please. I love you. I—Let’s get married.” It was out before I could stop it.
For a long minute, I didn’t hear anything except our breathing overlapping through a sea of wires and metal.
“What?”
Swallowing back rising waves of panic and dread, I sagged against the wall. But I was willing to do whatever I had to in order to keep him on the line. Even something that felt utterly wrong, that jarred the deepest parts of my soul.
Now I knew exactly how he had felt ten years ago.
“I want to get married.” I forced this out in hot puffs of air.
“No, you don’t.” He laughed dryly. “You just want to eat your cake and have it too.”
“I do. I do want to…to get married.” I tried desperately to convince myself that this was the truth, but my body betrayed me. My palms were soaking wet, my hands were shaking, and my head felt light and woozy.
“Don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to yourself. You need things that you can’t find here.” There was a long, agonizing pause. “Please don’t call me again.” He put the receiver down gently. I was left with the snick of disconnection, a brief silence, and the dial tone.
I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
In the name of self-preservation, I drained the cold, charged fear inside me until things were officially under control. Then I redialed his number. (Being “officially under control” seemed to involve having no pride whatsoever.)
This time he didn’t pick up.