Heat Wave (23 page)

Talia halted just inside the front door,
regrouping, wondering if she should bolt. She hadn’t seen Cory in
fifteen years, by design. He lived less than two hundred fifty
miles away, in New York City, and Wendy saw him on a regular basis.
Talia hadn’t wanted to see him, though, and she’d managed to avoid
him quite successfully. Until now.

They spotted her. Her chance to escape was
gone. The single glimmer of hope she found in this situation was
that Cory looked as surprised as she felt. He sprang to his feet,
and for a moment she wondered if he wanted to escape, too, to
sprint right past her, fling the door open, and race across the
parking lot and out of sight as fast as his long legs could carry
him.

As surprised as he looked,
he also looked damned good—lean and buff and all those things that
had drawn her to him like a heat-seeking missile when they’d been
Wendy and Anthony’s age. His hair was shorter, still jet black but
neatly trimmed. The last time she’d seen him, it had been a shaggy
mess. He’d still been in his half-hippie, half-
I-don’t-give-a-shit
phase. Now,
dressed in snug jeans and a clean black T-shirt that hinted at his
lanky physique, he was ridiculously handsome.

She, on the other hand, was wearing mommy
jeans, a Red Sox T-shirt and sneakers, and her hair was still
slightly damp from the shower she’d taken before coming here.
Punjab Palace didn’t have a dress code. Her attire was perfectly
acceptable for a Sunday evening dinner at the restaurant. It wasn’t
acceptable for a reunion with Cory, however.

But then, a reunion with Cory wasn’t
acceptable.

Wendy beamed at her. Anthony sat sheepishly
across the table from Wendy, his smile tentative. He must have
noticed Talia’s tension as she crossed slowly to their table with
all the enthusiasm of a dead man walking.

Eating dinner with Cory
wasn’t a death sentence; the table, with its vase of fake flowers,
silverware, glasses of water, and a heaping basket of
naan
, was not the
electric chair. But really—she’d thought she would be having dinner
with her daughter and Anthony. Not with her ex-husband.

Wendy rose and gave Talia a crushing hug as
Talia trudged the final few steps to the table. “Surprise!” she
whispered. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I mind,” Talia whispered back through
gritted teeth. But she returned Wendy’s hug. How could she not? She
loved her daughter. She’d been so happy when Wendy had invited her
to join her and Anthony for dinner tonight.

It had all been a set-up, of
course. Wendy hadn’t wanted to have dinner with her mother. She’d
wanted to have dinner with her
parents.

Her parents, whose only
communication during the past fifteen years had been logistical:
how to transport Wendy from Brogan’s Point, Massachusetts to Cory’s
home in Brooklyn Heights, whether she was old enough to take the
train by herself, whether she should make the trip when she was
recovering from strep throat, whether they should pressure her into
continuing her violin lessons when she wanted to quit. Cory had won
that argument. “She hates the violin,” he’d said. “Why force her?”
Talia had made a plea for discipline and cited a study she’d read
claiming that kids who played musical instruments performed better
in school. “You want to make her play? Then
you
pay for her lessons,” Cory had
said, and that had pretty much decided things. Talia hadn’t had
much money then.

She was in better financial shape now. By no
stretch of the imagination was she rich, but thanks to her
grandmother, the house was hers, and her business was holding its
own. She would be able to contribute toward that staggering tuition
bill from Tufts.

Cory was doing a lot better than she was
financially, and he’d agreed to pay the larger share of Wendy’s
college expenses. Talia never would have predicted it, but he’d
managed to parlay a degree from an art school into a successful
career. He hadn’t missed a child-support payment since he’d moved
to New York, and he covered lots of incidentals. Not violin lessons
his daughter didn’t want, but a few frills along with the
essentials.

“Hi, Ms. Malone,” Anthony said, shooting an
anxious glance at Wendy, and then at Cory. That he wasn’t family
allowed him enough objectivity to realize that Wendy’s “surprise”
was not going over well. His only agenda was to make Wendy happy,
and he could probably guess that she wouldn’t be happy if her
parents started snarling and snapping at each other. So he’d be the
peacekeeping force at this meal, charming and pleasant, papering
over any awkward silences or bitter rumblings.

Today marked the beginning of Wendy’s senior
week. Six days from now, she’d be a high school graduate. When Cory
had said he wanted to travel to Brogan’s Point for his daughter’s
commencement, Talia couldn’t possibly object. She’d assumed he
would come to town Thursday—the night before the ceremony—watch
Wendy collect her diploma on Friday, and then return to Brooklyn.
Talia had figured they could manage to interact civilly for a day
or two. They’d be so focused on Wendy, so awash in pride, they
wouldn’t have the time or energy to fight.

But he’d come a week before graduation day.
Wendy must have known—in fact, she must have planned the dates of
his visit with him—and she hadn’t bothered to mention this
important fact to Talia. Instead, she’d told her father to have
dinner with her Sunday evening, and then told her mother to have
dinner with her. And here they both were.

“Hello, Tally,” Cory said, surprising her by
using the nickname he’d used for her back when they’d been
teenagers.

His eyes were still dark and soulful. She
tried not to stare directly at them. “Hi, Cory,” she said,
determined to match him in courtesy. Before he could say anything
else, she smiled at Anthony, currently her favorite person at the
table. “How are you doing, Anthony? Getting psyched for the big
day?”

“Well, it’s a big week,” he
said as they all sat, females on one side of the table and males on
the other, the water glasses and the fragrant basket of
naan
creating an
ineffective barrier between the sexes. “Parties, barbecues, a
harbor cruise, a day at an amusement park. Graduation’s gonna seem
anticlimactic.”

“I doubt that,” Talia said, managing a weak
smile. She could get through this meal if she only had to talk to
Anthony.

That wouldn’t be possible, though. She felt
Cory’s gaze on her. Mustering her courage, she turned to face him.
“Are you spending the whole week here?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “New Yorkers always
flee the city in the summer—the Hamptons, the Catskills, the
Litchfield hills. Brogan’s Point seemed like a great getaway.”

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Ocean Bluff Inn. You know the place?”

She nodded. “It’s very nice.” Could this
conversation possibly be any more stilted?

A waiter approached their
table with menus. Anthony saw this as his cue to attack the
naan
. He pulled a circle
of the warm, puffy Indian bread from the basket and devoured it in
a few quick bites. In the months since he and Wendy had started
dating, he’d spent enough time at Talia’s house for her to have
grown accustomed to how much he could eat. Adolescent boys required
constant refueling. He was a good kid, but his sweet little high
school romance with Wendy had had a major impact on Talia’s grocery
bills.

For the next few minutes, Talia occupied
herself with the menu. Holding it up in front of her face, she was
able to block her view of the man seated across from her, with his
bottomless brown eyes, his strong nose and chin, and his lips
shaping a quirky grin. How she’d loved that grin. How she’d loved
his mouth…

But that was a long time and a lot of
mistakes ago. They were older now, and—she’d like to think—wiser.
Whatever mistakes they’d made, whatever crazy, brainless things
they’d done, they had somehow managed to produce a magnificent
daughter. Wendy might be an underhanded sneak, but she was still
magnificent.

All the items on the menu looked delicious.
Unfortunately, Talia’s appetite had vanished the instant she’d seen
Cory. So had her ability to make a decision. How could she possibly
choose among masala, curry, and tandoori when all she could think
about was the fact that the man she’d once loved with all her
heart—the man who’d torn that heart out of her and stomped it into
a pulp—was sitting just a few feet away?

“Get the chicken tikki masala,” Wendy
advised her. “You always love that.”

Talia nodded. Whatever. She’d take a few
bites and give the rest to Anthony, who would happily inhale her
meal once he was done inhaling his own.

They gave the waiter their orders. Cory
requested an Indian beer and eyed Talia, raising his eyebrows in a
question. No, she would not join him in an alcoholic beverage. She
needed to keep her wits about her in Cory’s presence. Just
imagining the sleek physique beneath that black T-shirt was enough
to intoxicate a weak woman.

Fortunately, Talia wasn’t weak.

”So,” she said, surprised by how calm she
sounded, “how are things in New York?”

“Good,” he replied.

Well, that was terse. Maybe he was a lot
more rattled than he was letting on. The thought gratified her.

Wendy bailed them out by
announcing. “Janelle Tomaso’s having a pool party tonight. She
texted us while we were driving here. She texted
me
. Anthony was driving,”
Wendy added, so her parents would know she wasn’t using her cell
phone when she was behind the wheel.

“Wouldn’t you rather be there than here?”
Talia asked. She herself would prefer to be at some teenage pool
party instead of this table.

“We’ll go after dinner. We can loop past the
house so I can pick up a suit and some towels. And yes, I know it’s
a school night.”

“Like that matters this week,” Anthony said
with a grin.

“We still have to go to school,” Wendy
reminded him, evidently trying to earn a few desperately needed
points with her mother. “They’re going to be taking
attendance.”

“What do they do with you this week besides
take attendance?” Cory asked.

“Well, the class trips,” Wendy said.

“And the senior barbecue.”

“No classes? No finals?” When Wendy and
Anthony shook their heads, their smiles blissful, Cory eyed Talia.
“That’s not how I remember our last week in high school.”

Talia’s memory of that final week was so
wretched, she couldn’t recall whether classwork had been a part of
it. She’d been nauseous and frightened. Her hope of attending
college had lain in splinters like shattered crystal at her feet.
And Cory, stoic and dutiful, had told her he’d marry her. He hadn’t
proposed, hadn’t gone down on one knee, hadn’t asked if she wanted
a ring. “Okay, so no abortion,” he’d said with a resigned sigh. “I
guess we should get married or something, right?”

Maybe she should have chosen “or
something.”

But that was then. Eighteen years had
passed. Her wonderful daughter had not made the mistakes Talia had
made, and she would get to go to college.

Whatever mistakes Talia had made, one she
hadn’t made was to be like her own mother. And as reluctant as she
might be to admit it, Cory was a good father. Wendy genuinely
seemed to love the time she spent with him. She often called or
Skyped him while she was in Brogan’s Point, and she managed to
travel down to Brooklyn to see him at least once a month. Last year
he’d found her a summer job as a gofer at his company, and she’d
lived with him for all of July and August. It had been a good test
run for Talia, a chance for her to experience a taste of
empty-nest. Wendy had teased her that those two months offered her
a chance to go wild, to date dozens of men and host orgies at the
house. Talia had only laughed. She might have been a little
reckless in her teens, but not anymore.

The waiter arrived with platters of masala,
crisp, golden samosas, bright red tandoori chicken and lamb curry.
The mix of spicy aromas jolted Talia like smelling salts, awakening
her to the present—to the two babbling teenagers, giddy over their
impending liberation from public school and their volcanic love for
each other, and to the quiet, dark-eyed man seated directly across
from her. His expression was stoical, giving nothing away.

Occasionally, Wendy seemed to acknowledge
the tension stretching between her parents. How could she not
acknowledge it? It was as palpable as a rubber band, pulled so taut
it could snap at any minute. “I want to learn how to drive a stick
shift,” she told Cory, “so I’ll be able to drive your car—if you’ll
let me. He’s got this cute little Miata,” she added for Talia’s
sake. Of course Talia would have no idea what kind of car Cory
drove. “It’s a good car in the city, because it’s small. So it’s
easy to park. At least, it’s easy if you know how to shift gears.
I’ve got to learn how to do that. You know how to drive a stick,
don’t you, Anthony?”

Bless the girl for babbling. It was the
least she could do. She was responsible for the awkwardness; she’d
instigated this stupid surprise, springing her mother and father on
each other.

Lucky Cory, driving a two-seat sports coupe.
Perfect for cruising around Brooklyn with a girlfriend in the
passenger seat, top down, hair flying in the wind. Or cruising
around Brooklyn with Wendy, who clearly found her father’s car a
lot cooler than her mother’s extremely practical eight-year-old
minivan.

After a while, the babbling stopped. Wendy
rose to her feet, Anthony’s signal to stand as well. “Well, we’ve
got to run,” she announced. “Janelle said to come at seven, and we
still have to stop back at the house first. I’ll see you guys
later.” She dashed a quick kiss on Talia’s cheek, then circled the
table to kiss the crown of Cory’s head as he started to push his
chair away from the table.