Sweet Reunion (27 page)

“Oh, you'll get through it,” Karina said confidently,
“You only think you won't because you've only ever been shopping on your own
before, and no offense, but you're an amateur. Now you're shopping with me –
and I'm a shopping goddess and quick change artist extraordinaire. You're gonna
do fine.”  And with that she flashed a grin and piled on two more blouses.

Amanda sighed as she went back to perusing the
selection. “What am I ever going to do when you girls leave?” she sadly,
“You've only been here a few days, but already it feels like you've been here
forever. I'm gonna miss you so much when you go!”

Lauren, Sam, and Karina exchanged small smiles.

“What?” Amanda asked with a laugh, “What's the
secret?”

“Well,” Sam said happily, “here's the thing:  you're
not going to have to miss us!”

Amanda still looked puzzled.

Lauren clarified, “We've decided to stay. We each have
our reasons why moving home right now seems like a good idea...”

Amanda clapped her hands together in delight, “So
you're moving here? You all are? You're coming home?”

Karina snorted, “Well, it's not like we're all getting
a house together. This isn't a wacky sitcom. Hijinks will not ensue.”

Lauren gave Karina her trademark half-smile, “Don't be
so sure.”

Karina grinned, “Touch
é
.”

Sam continued the story, “We were talking last
night...”

Karina interjected, “While you were on your
life-changingly bad date with Go Free!”

“While you were on your date with Geoffrey,” Lauren
corrected.

“...and we all realized that we were at points in our
lives where we needed a reboot,” Sam finished smoothly, as if she had never
been interrupted.

“Yeah,” Karina continued, “I am seriously not happy
with the trajectory of my career. I have to do some serious soul-searching and
figure out what to do about that. Not only can I not do that on the road,
surrounded by all of my handlers, I don't really feel like I can do it in LA,
either. That city is not me. I've had fun there, and I have good friends there,
but now that I've been home, I understand that THIS is where I need to be if I
am going to try to make a return to an authentic self. This is the place the
made me, this is where I feel the most like me.”

“We're flying down to LA next week,” Lauren continued,
“I'm going to help her interview realtors to sell her house there. Then
Karina's coming home, and I'm continuing to New York to put my condo on the
market and straighten out some business there.”

“Wow, I feel like a loser,” Sam laughed, “I packed up
all my clothes before I came out here from my trainer's. I've always lived out
of a suitcase, basically. I guess for all intents and purposes, I already have
moved here.”

“Wait a minute, you actually live with your trainer?”
Karina inquired incredulously, “How did I not pick up on that? I mean, I know
you did when we were in high school. But I didn't realize it was still going
on!”

“Yeah, it's not the norm, but it's not completely
unheard of, either,” Sam explained, “When an athlete is far from home, they can
fall victim to loneliness and depression, which can interfere with their focus
and training. Living with a family feels more like a real home, and so it
ameliorates some of that risk. That's the official story...and, to be fair, I
do think that's a small part of it. The real story, though? Is that it lets
your coaches keep a close eye on you, 24 hours a day.”

“All the better to control you with, my dear,” cackled
Karina, doing a spot-on imitation of the Big Bad Wolf pretending to be Little
Red Riding Hood's grandmother.

“Oh, my, what big insights you have, Grandmother!”
returned Sam in an awed little-girl voice, coming right back at Karina in
character as Little Red Riding Hood.

Karina cracked up, “Oh, man! A few days around me, and
you are really becoming a true smart ass!” She wiped away pretend tears and
snuffled, “I'm so proud!”

“Well, you may have been joking around in the
delivery, but the truth of the statement can't be denied. I'm tired of living
their life. I'm 27 years old, and I've never lived on my own. I've never picked
out my own furniture, I've never gone to the grocery store. I've never chosen
what I wanted to watch on TV, for God's sake! I don't think I've ever even had
a hotel room to myself on the road. I was thinking back, and I'm pretty sure
I've always been roomed with another athlete.

“Anyway, I'm sick of it. I want my own apartment, I
want my own life. It's scary, but I figure that the best place to do something
that's really scary and that I might need a lot of support for is in a place
that I feel safe, with the people who love me the most!”

“Well, that is definitely us!”  Amanda cried as she
gave her friend a supportive hug. Then she turned to Lauren, “What about you,
Laur? I thought things were going so great, in your fancy real estate business
in Manhattan?”

“Yes, well,” Lauren intoned with a grimace, “Things
can turn from great to awful pretty quickly when your affair with the boss goes
south.”

Amanda gasped, “Lauren! You didn't!”

“Oh, she did!” Karina exclaimed with mischievous glee,
“Our buttoned-up, straight-laced Lauren has a wild child side! She's got a
little bad girl in her!”

Lauren blushed, “It wasn't as torrid as all that. In
fact, it probably is a mischaracterization to even refer to it as an 'affair.' 
It was a relationship. It was a year long, mature relationship between two
consenting adults. We lived together, for God's sake! Really, the fact of him
being my boss never even entered into it while we were together. We were just
two people in a relationship.

“But then, I broke it off. We were happy, but there
were things missing. I looked 50 years into the future, and I knew that my life
wasn't with him, you know? And so I figured, best to go our separate ways
before putting in even more time and effort, and becoming even more
inextricably entwined in each others' lives.

“Well, suffice it to say, he did not see things the
same way that I did. He's a powerful man. He's used to getting his way.
Normally, he snaps his fingers, and he has twenty people rushing around to do
his bidding. Money and power tend to insulate you from people that will flat
out tell you no.

“Not to mention that, being handsome and wealthy, he
was not used to women breaking things off with him. It was an entirely new
experience, one that he was ill-prepared to handle.

“At first, he merely contented himself with wheedling,
pressuring, and begging me to come back. All of those manipulations had worked
with other women in the past when he had wanted something, he had no reason to
believe that they wouldn't work with me. But when they didn't, he got mean. He
threatened me.”

“Did he put his hands on you?” Karina asked, steel in
her voice.

“No, no, nothing like that. He would consider that
beneath him. But he did make life extremely difficult for me, professionally.
And when I tried to move to another firm, any other firm, I found that he had
blackballed me. If I wanted to work in real estate anywhere in Manhattan, I was
going to have to work for him, and he was making that impossible.”

Amanda was outraged, “What you're describing is sexual
harassment!” she exclaimed, “You could sue his ass!”

Lauren nodded, “Oh, I know, I know. It's textbook. And
the truth is, I did think about suing him, not for myself so much as to keep
him from doing the same thing to other women. But the harsh reality is that it's
so difficult to prove, and you get tied up in court for years.

“When I think about going back to New York and trying
to battle it out with him, that prospect is almost overwhelmingly exhausting.
When I think about starting over here in Hope Falls, it's like I can breathe
again. I'm sure Gloria Steinem would be very disappointed in me. But I just
don't have it in me to be the poster girl for fighting sexual harassment.”

Amanda consoled her, “Lauren, it's not your job to
fight every woman's fight. He is trying to control you, trying to keep you in
New York, and trying to keep you connected to him and in his life. If you feel
duty bound to bring a court case against him, that actually accomplishes all of
his goals for him - you've done something you didn't want to do because he has
controlled your actions, you've stayed in New York against your will, and
you're connected to him and in his life. I think you need to do what's right
for you.”

Lauren smiled, “I agree. Plus, I realized that, in a
year of living with him, I found out where a few of the bodies are buried. He
is a big fan of, shall we say, creative accounting. I have quite a few files
that I think are going to be of interest to the IRS. Just because he isn't
going to be tied up in court with me doesn't mean he isn't going to be tied up
in court.”

“That's my girl!” Karina crowed, “Lauren, I swear. I'm
glad you're on my side in life. You would be scary to have as an enemy.”

“Exactly,” Lauren smiled, pleased with the assessment,
“Now, ladies, let's get Amanda into these clothes. We still have the hair and
nail salon after this, not to mention makeup – we have a very busy day ahead of
us still!”

Chapter 25

Justin wandered uncomfortably from room to room in his
childhood home, touching furniture, trying to make it feel real to him. As of
right now, it really all just felt like a dream.

Of course, although the shape and layout of the rooms
were the same, everything else was completely different. When Justin was a kid,
these rooms had consisted of bare walls and mismatched secondhand furniture.
Now there was new, solid looking and attractive furniture. There were shelving
units, with books – and Justin even recognized some of his old sports trophies.
Noah's school pictures hung on the walls, and Justin was shocked to see framed
newspaper articles about himself hung alongside them, articles about various
high school athletic and academic achievements. In a small town like Hope
Falls, it wasn't difficult to get your name or picture in the paper. He never
would have dreamed that his father had hung onto those mementos, however.

He drifted into the kitchen, which he had to admit,
smelled fantastic to his grumbling stomach. The aroma of grilling meat mingled
with a rich molasses scent that Justin couldn't quite place.

Noah bopped over to him, looking tiny and elfin in an
adult size apron that came all the way down to his feet. “You can't look!”  he
exclaimed, “You can't see what it is before time! It's a surprise!”

Justin laughed. He couldn't help but be enchanted by the
kid, “OK, I promise, I won't look. It smells delicious, whatever it is.”

“It's franks and beans!” Noah yelled out, unable to
keep the secret any longer, “It's your favorite! We made your favorite!”

Rick smiled awkwardly, “It's an updated, adult take on
franks and beans, using kielbasa and Italian sausage, and a recipe for baked
beans I got from the Food Network. I thought you might like it.”

Justin looked at his father without expression. “Who
told you that was my favorite? Where did you get that idea?”

“I remember you used to eat it all the time,” Rick
said, floundering, “Almost every day...”

“It was what I could make myself,” Justin replied
flatly.

“Oh,” was all Rick replied, looking defeated. He
turned and continued to push the pieces of sausage around the large, flat
sauté
pan.

“We're having franks and beans, we're having franks
and beans,” Noah sing-songed as he stood on a stool and stirred the pot of
beans on the stove, oblivious to the tension between the two adults.

Justin took a deep breath and attempted to get his
attitude in check. He had accepted this dinner invitation from Noah, a decision
he might regret now, but he had agreed to come here and he needed to make the
best of it. Of course, he reflected, smiling, it's not like I could ever say no
to that kid. He turns those big, pleading eyes on me and I'm mush!

So now that he was here, he needed to keep the peace
with Rick. As terrible a job as Rick had done with Justin when he was growing
up, he seemed to be doing a pretty decent job with Noah. The house seemed nice,
Noah seemed happy and well cared for. Most of all, Rick was sober, as far as
Justin could tell. Noah seemed to adore his father as much as he clearly adored
Justin. The last thing he needed was to see the two most important grownups in
his life, the two men he looked up to as models of adulthood, sniping at each
other. That would be confusing and upsetting, and Justin refused to be the
cause of any pain or upset for his newly-discovered and much-adored little
brother.

“Let me set the table,” he said, as he opened a
cabinet and pulled out three bowls. Rick flashed him a grateful smile and
Justin refused to meet his eyes. Just because he wasn't going to start an
argument in front of Noah didn't mean that he had to be buddy-buddy with Rick,
either. He would just keep him at a safe distance, so that they could maintain
an uneasy truce.

As the meal progressed, that turned out to be much
easier than Justin would have predicted that it would be. Noah seemed happy to
fill all of the silence with cheerful chattering, and Justin was equally as
happy to listen to him. He heard all about Justin's class at school, his
friends, his football team, the games he liked to play, and the plots – in
their entirety – of all his favorite movies.

Justin was amazed time and time again throughout
dinner that the minutiae of his brother's life, which would have been
mind-numbingly boring to him were it coming from the mouth of a child that
Justin had no relationship with, was endlessly fascinating to him because it
was coming from Noah.

Justin wanted to know it all, learn everything about
his little brother. He wanted to know what his days were like, who he spent
time with, the way his mind worked, what he found funny and what made him sad.
Justin was all in.