“I think I needed to come home.”
He nodded, swallowed, thinking of why and how she’d left, how he’d failed to protect her. He could still see one of those damn hearts, this one under his windshield wiper, fluttering in the breeze. The crowd had thinned out. Jencey’s girls were chasing Lance’s kids around the pool, and no one was stopping them. He could see Lance waiting for her, off to the side, shuffling his feet as he tried to be polite. Everett still had to gather their things, make the multiple trips to the car, go home to his wife and son. “I’m glad you did,” he said.
She reached out, grabbed his hand, and squeezed it lightly before letting go. “Me, too,” she said. She gave him a little wave and was gone. To his credit, he did not watch her go.
JENCEY
She watched Everett leave. He gave her a weak smile as he passed by, then trudged out of the pool and toward the parking lot. Lance cleared his throat, and she turned to face him. “Is there a story there?” he asked, pointing at Everett’s retreating back.
She raised her eyebrows. “You could say that.” She worked to make her voice playful and light. This was flirting, as best she could recall.
He shook his head. “Something tells me you’re a woman of many stories.”
She nodded and gave him a sage look. “You could say that, too.”
He glanced down at her wedding ring but said nothing. She had to take it off, and soon. She’d told herself that the moment the final papers came from her attorney, that would be her signal that it was time. It was really and truly over.
“I better get them to bed,” she said, indicating the girls, who’d left the pool area and were swinging in the adjoining playground with Lance’s kids. She heard their giggles ringing out in the night air. Other than the lifeguards and a few teenagers, they were the only people left.
Lance ran his hands through his hair, and when he did, she took in the muscles flexing in his arms, the obvious strength there. She found herself wanting to feel those arms around her, and wondered if that was just a normal reaction for someone who hadn’t had physical contact with a man in months, or if she was actually attracted to this one.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I should do the same with mine.” He reached for the bag that was sitting on the chair near them and hoisted it onto his shoulders. “Thanks for hanging out today. It was fun.”
She nodded. It had been fun. They’d talked and laughed and teased each other. He couldn’t believe she’d never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail and tried to express the many, apparently hilarious one-liners from the movie. But hearing him attempt a British accent was what really made her laugh. They’d socialized with the neighbors, met some new folks, eaten potluck with her parents. He’d talked for a long while with her dad. Her mother, to her credit, had not asked any questions, though Jencey suspected she was dying to. Their kids had played together most of the day, sinking into the chairs beside them as the fireworks began. They’d made a little unit, him with his kids and her with hers, yet all together, looking up at the night sky, their chins tilted at the same angle. She’d watched the colors explode and expand across the blackness, unable to keep herself from recalling the last time she’d seen fireworks.
Last Fourth of July she’d been with Arch and had no idea of what was coming. They’d gone out of town without the girls, leaving them behind with a college-age sitter she used from time to time. She and Arch and their friends had eaten gourmet small plates and drunk champagne on a yacht anchored in the Charles River as fireworks exploded over Boston. They’d gone to hear the Boston Pops and taken a historical tour of the city where much of America began.
It had been a quintessential Fourth celebration, and Arch had delighted in showing her all that money could buy. She had, as he’d so kindly pointed out to her from behind bars, reveled in it all. Gushing to her girlfriends about the experience after it was over had been almost as much fun as doing it. She and her friends had each tried to outdo one another with how they’d spent the holiday in a never-ending game of one-upmanship that, in hindsight, kept her breathless and anxious a lot of the time. But she’d been too immersed in the game to even know she was playing it.
It was only sitting there, relaxed and at ease, flanked by her girls, wearing an old T-shirt with grape Popsicle dripped down the front, that she could see her former life for what it was. Exhausting. Soul sucking. As empty as her former home now was. She hadn’t really missed any of the women she once called friends, hadn’t heard from even one of them after Arch was exposed and arrested. They avoided her as though she’d caught a plague. She supposed she had—the plague of poverty. And yet, sitting there by the pool with normal people observing a normal Fourth of July, she didn’t feel poor at all. She felt fairly rich.
“So,” Lance said as they walked together to their cars, the kids lagging behind, complaining that they had to leave. “Think you might want to come over sometime and watch The Holy Grail?” Continuing to kid around about being named Lancelot, he’d joked that the knights in that movie were more like the kind of knights he would be. Jencey let him joke, but she sensed that his self-deprecating humor was an attempt to deflect all the compliments and kudos he’d been receiving from neighbors who’d heard about him saving Cutter. She’d felt proud to be beside him, but not proud like she used to be beside Arch. She was proud of who Lance was, not what he had.
Now he raised his eyebrows at her. She tried to process just what he was asking with his invitation. Sure, they’d flirted and spent the day together. Now he wanted to see her again. But was this a date? Or was he just being neighborly?
“I mean, you really shouldn’t go much longer without seeing it.” He kept his voice nonchalant, which didn’t exactly help her figure things out. He pressed the latch on his trunk and stowed the bulging bag of pool paraphernalia, then slammed the liftgate shut and turned back to her.
She nodded. “I’m not sure how I’ve survived this long without it.”
“Well, then, we need to get it scheduled as soon as possible,” he said. She knew he hadn’t dated since his wife’s departure. She’d come upon that information courtesy of Zell, who seemed to be matchmaking. Jencey had laughed Zell’s insinuation off, assuring Zell that the last thing Jencey needed was a relationship. What she needed was a plan for getting on with life. But in the meantime, she told herself for the hundredth time, he was good company, another grown-up to pass the time with.
“OK, so when would be good for you?” she asked.
“Well, today’s Wednesday—it is Wednesday, right? I never know what day it is since summer started. So . . . maybe Friday? Bring the girls and we’ll put them in front of a movie in our playroom while we watch our movie? Order some pizzas?” He was doing a good job of looking spur-of-the-moment about it, but she had a suspicion he’d worked out the details of this invitation before extending it.
She pretended to think about her plans, though of course she had none, unless she counted her nightly jaunts to the hideaway in the woods, a habit she should probably break. “Sounds great,” she said. “What time?”
“Six thirty?”
“We’ll be there,” she said. “And thanks. For saving me a seat today.”
He smiled. “No problem.” He held out his arms for a hug and raised his eyebrows in question.
It was only a hug. What harm was there in it? She walked into the same strong arms that had pulled that boy from the bottom of the pool, letting them encircle her for a brief moment, pulling her into an embrace she hadn’t known she needed until she stepped inside it.
BRYTE