The Replacement Wife (29 page)

ON THURSDAY OF
that week, Edward was putting the finishing touches on a speech he was to give at Johns Hopkins the following Monday, the last chore before heading home, when Angie phoned. He broke into a grin at the sound of her voice. “Well, if it ain’t Minnesota Fats,” he teased.

Angie gave a wicked laugh at the reminder of how she’d beaten him at pool. But as embarrassing as his performance had been, he couldn’t recall when he’d last had so much fun. Hanging out with Angie and her pals, Miguel and Julio, shooting pool and knocking back beers, he’d felt like he was back in college. When he told her as much, she said, “I’m glad you enjoyed getting your butt kicked, but I didn’t call to gloat.”

Ignoring the open document on his laptop, he leaned back into his chair, suddenly in no hurry to get home. “Oh? What’s up?”

“Your umbrella. You left it behind last night. Lucky for you, I’m good at rescuing strays.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t even notice it was missing. But, hey, thanks.”

“
De nada.
Least I could do after wiping the floor with you.”

He gave a mock groan. “I thought you weren’t going to gloat.”

“Well, maybe a little. Serves you right for bragging about what a hot-shot you were in college.”

“I never said I was a hot-shot, just that I’d won my share of beer bets. Keep in mind, it’s been a while since then.”

“Ha! Likely excuse. Why don’t you just admit it? You got beat by a girl, fair and square.”

“Okay, but I plan to even the score next time.” He’d already challenged her to a rematch.

“You’re on, buddy. And don’t even think about wimping out on me.”

“How could I, with you holding my umbrella hostage?”

“Speaking of which, I hope you have a spare one,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll be walking home in the rain, if today’s forecast is accurate.”

“In that case, you leave me no choice—I’ll have to come get it,” he said, only half in jest. “If you’re not doing anything, we could catch a bite to eat afterward.” Why not? Camille had taken the kids to Brooklyn to visit Holly, so he had the evening free.

“Believe me,” Angie said, “I’d love nothing more, but I’m up to my eyeballs.” She sounded genuinely regretful. “I have a bar mitzvah on Saturday and a wedding on Sunday, so I’m totally slammed.”

He felt unreasonably disappointed but was careful to conceal it. “It wouldn’t be the same wedding Camille and I are going to, by any chance?” It stood to reason, since the bride and groom were clients of Camille’s.

“Greenwich?”

“Bingo,” he said.

They exchanged a laugh. Then she said, “I could bring it to you on Sunday, if you like. The umbrella,” she added when he didn’t reply. But if he was hesitating, it was only because of the dilemma it presented. Camille would want to know what Angie was doing with his umbrella, and what would he say?
I’ve been secretly meeting with her, but don’t worry, we’re just friends.
It would drive a wedge between him and Camille, just when he’d begun to feel hopeful, for the first time in months, with this new drug that could be a game changer. What he wanted more than anything was for them to get back to being the loving couple they’d once been.

“No, don’t bother,” he told Angie. “I can get it another time.”

There was a pregnant pause at the other end. He hadn’t told Angie he was keeping their friendship a secret, though she must have guessed from the way he had demurred whenever she’d suggested Camille join them. Now he mentally kicked himself for possibly sending the wrong message. Though if Angie wondered why he was keeping her under wraps, she didn’t comment on it. She only replied, “Sure, but if you get caught in a downpour, I can’t be held responsible.”

“Believe me,” he said, “that’s the least of my worries.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“S
weet. Check it out.”

Angie looked up from spooning pickled salmon onto endive leaves to find Tamika standing in the kitchen doorway, at the Dershaws’ Greenwich estate, peering into the hallway beyond. She hurried over in time to see the bride descend the staircase, resplendent in ivory silk and a cloud of tulle. The bride’s father, a tall, silver-haired man in a bespoke suit, beamed up at her from below, then leaned in to murmur something in her ear, when she reached him, that made her smile. Then they made their way arm-in-arm to the French doors that opened onto the terrace and that provided a partial view of the two hundred guests seated in rows of folding chairs on the lawn below. Beyond, Angie could see the tent, which would soon be crammed with people needing to be fed, luffing in the mild breeze that was blowing. The strains of Pachelbel’s Canon in D drifted from the garden, where a string quartet played.

It was all so perfect. Like a fairy tale.

Angie’s dreamy smile gave way to a frown of annoyance. She’d been at countless weddings. Why get dewy-eyed over this one? She knew the reason: one who stood six-feet-four inches tall, with curly dark hair and eyes the deep amber of double-malt Scotch. She’d spotted him earlier when he arrived, with his wife. She’d been in the kitchen slicing a baguette for crostini when she happened to glance out the window just as a black Town Car was pulling into the circular drive. Seconds later, Edward emerged from the back, so handsome and elegant, in his formal suit, it took her breath away. Literally—she forgot to breathe. She watched him turn to help Camille out of the backseat—Camille, wan and lovely in a pale yellow dress made up of layers of chiffon that floated around her like wilted petals—and then the two of them disappeared from view, escorted by one of the attendants down the stone path that led to the grounds in back.

Now she and Tamika slipped down the hallway to peek out the French doors. The procession of bridesmaids had already taken place, and now the bride and her father were making their way at a stately pace down the rose-petal-strewn runner that stretched to the altar, where the groom and minister stood under a bower entwined with baby roses, flanked by the bridesmaids and groomsmen. The guests were all smiling, some dabbing at their eyes, though no smiles were brighter than those the bride and groom wore as they were joined at last.

Angie recalled the meet-and-greet at which Georgia and Mike had met. The entire time, they’d had eyes only for each other. Whenever she spotted them, they were deep in conversation, oblivious to those around them. She recalled joking to Cleo at the time, “Another one bites the dust.”

Now the joke, apparently, was on her. She could no longer feel superior to others—her sisters in particular—for avoiding the mistakes they’d made. Not when she yearned for . . . something. Something more than what she had. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly; she only knew that meeting Edward had changed her perspective. She understood now why a smart, independent woman like Georgia Dershaw would pitch herself headlong onto the shoals of married life. Georgia was in love—the kind of love that renders you incapable of sound judgment or caution.

Tamika nudged her and pointed out a familiar face, seated in back: a tall exclamation point of a man amid a sea of commas. Edward. Angie’s heart started to race, and she felt the slow burn in her belly—two parts desire and one part frustration—that she’d felt watching from afar when he and Camille had arrived. But it was useless to indulge in wishful thinking, she told herself. Even if he’d had designs on her, which he clearly didn’t (he treated her the same way her brother-in-law, Big Nick, did—like the kid sister he never had) there was no getting around the fact that he was married. To a woman she liked and admired.

One thing puzzled her, though. The other day, when she’d called to let him know she had his umbrella, he’d said something that confirmed what she’d suspected for some time: He hadn’t told his wife about her. The question was, why? It couldn’t be because Camille was the possessive type. She even had his next wife picked out, for God’s sake! (Something Angie had difficulty understanding—she’d been brought up by a mother who’d be issuing dire warnings from her deathbed, threatening to come back to haunt her husband should he so much as look at another woman before she was cold in her grave.) So what was it, then? Maybe he was just a man who held his cards close to his vest. Which made her wonder:
What isn’t he telling
me? Not that she had a right to know every detail of his personal life—they’d only known each other a short while, though it seemed longer. But still.

She thought of the pretty schoolteacher. What was up with
that?
As far Angie knew, he was only going along with it to humor Camille, but when Angie had asked about Elise he’d acted weird, like he’d barely noticed her the entire time she’d stayed with them, which made no sense at all unless he was hiding something, or perhaps lying to himself. Angie’s mind swam with questions, her emotions in a similar tumult.
Get a grip,
she ordered herself.
You’re not being paid to stand here mooning.
With that, she turned and headed back to the kitchen.

EDWARD, AS HE
watched the bride and groom exchange vows, found himself thinking back on his own wedding day. His and Camille’s had been a far more modest affair, with just close friends and relatives in attendance. They’d been cash-strapped, still paying off his student loans, and Camille too obstinate to accept more than a modest contribution from her father, so the ceremony and reception had taken place at a garden center in Westchester owned by the parents of Camille’s college roommate Melissa. Camille wore her mother’s wedding gown, altered to fit her slimmer figure, and he the one good suit he owned, purchased for his college graduation. He was so nervous, he’d fumbled and nearly dropped the ring attempting to slip it on her finger. In contrast, Camille was as relaxed as if she’d been preparing for that day since the moment they’d met. It was a trait he admired in her: that she always seemed to know how any given story would turn out. It was why she was so successful in her career. But did she know what she was doing this time, in deciding his fate? Did she have any idea what she’d wrought?

Edward’s gaze strayed to Elise, standing with the other bridesmaids, all dressed in identical lilac-colored gowns. He took in her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes, her light-brown hair that fell in loose, shiny waves around her shoulders, in contrast to the elaborate coifs of the other women. She’d make an even lovelier bride—almost as lovely as Camille on their wedding day. At the thought, he felt a lump form in his throat and the scene before him dissolved in the wash of tears that momentarily blurred his vision. He blinked hard and reached for his wife’s hand.

I MUST BE
losing it,
Angie thought. Maybe her mom’s theory, that prolonged spinsterhood (coupled with sexual deprivation in her case) led to early dementia, wasn’t so wacky after all. She couldn’t keep her mind on her tasks. She inadvertently scraped the parsley tops into the trash instead of the stems and shredded several sheets of the phyllo dough she was using to wrap the cubes of beef for her mini–beef Wellingtons. At one point, as she was chopping chives, the knife slipped, nearly taking off the tip of her index finger. “Shit!” she swore, and then caught herself before she could utter a string of even more colorful curse words.

Tamika looked up at her. “You okay, Miss D?” She’d been a last-minute replacement for one of the waitstaff, Brianna, who’d called in sick. She was the most reliable of Angie’s students, and Angie knew she could use the money—she was saving for college. So far, she’d proven useful, doing whatever was needed without complaint, even the grunt work like taking out the trash, and with only a few minor screwups. She wasn’t quite ready for front of the house, but in her “uniform”—the plain white shirt and black slacks Angie had told her to wear—with her hair pulled back in a neat chignon and her only jewelry the diamond stud in her nose, she looked the part.

“I’m fine,” Angie replied in a forcibly upbeat tone.

“Mmm-hmm. Just like when me and Daarel is fightin’ and I ain’t gettin’ none. Girl, I saw the way you was lookin’ at the doc.” Tamika lapsed into ghetto speak, as if Angie was just another girl in the hood—which she supposed was a compliment, though right now she was too annoyed to see it as such.

These kids, thought Angie. They thought of nothing but sex. But it had been the same when she was that age, she reminded herself. Hairstyles and fashions were the only things that changed. She hadn’t been as promiscuous as some of the girls in her class at Immaculate Conception (where there had been nothing immaculate about the conceptions that had taken place), but there had been boys, boys with whom she’d fallen in and out of love—or like—with the ease of a swimmer changing strokes. It wasn’t until she was living on her own that the pickings grew thin. And now she was reduced to having a sixteen-year-old comment on her sex life—or lack thereof.

She cast Tamika a stern look. “The only thing you need to focus on is doing your job. That is, if you plan on keeping this one after today.”

Tamika’s face lit up. “For real?”

“Yes, though it’d only be part-time, on weekends. I wouldn’t want it to interfere with your studies.”

Tamika beamed at her and said in her National Merit Scholarship voice, “I won’t disappoint you, Miss D.”

Soon the appetizers were ready to go out. In addition to the ginger-pickled salmon on endive leaves and mini–beef Wellingtons, there were pot stickers stuffed with sautéed Napa cabbage and bits of pancetta, crostini topped with deviled crab and asparagus pesto, and grilled swordfish on skewers with Asian dipping sauce. While Stylianos passed around flutes of champagne to the guests now crowded into the tent, Pat and Cleo circulated with trays. Meanwhile, Angie remained behind the scenes, where she could supervise Tamika and where she wouldn’t risk running into Edward and Camille, which could prove awkward.

It wasn’t until the guests had sat down to eat that she put in an appearance—she was short-staffed, so it was all hands on deck—but even then, she was careful to avoid the table at which Edward and Camille sat, which she’d assigned to Cleo. When she finally caught his eye at one point, she only smiled, not stopping to chat. A smile that communicated
Your secret is safe with me.
Though it seemed strange to be keeping their relationship a secret, when it was perfectly innocent. When she glanced over at him again, he was chatting with the woman on his right—one of the bridesmaids, a pretty brunette who appeared to be hanging on his every word.