Of course Beau had told Tim all this before. Tim had been back four years now, came home to find his closest friend mired in a mess of a marriage with a selfish and manipulative woman.
“But I’ll be forever grateful to Pamela for giving me a chance with those boys,” Beau said. “They’re good boys. When it’s the three of us, when we go camping or fishing or hiking, we have a good time. One who thinks too much and one who lets everything go.”
“Don’t get yourself in a complicated situation with a beautiful woman who’s trying to leave her husband,” Tim said.
“Don’t sin?” Beau asked.
“That’s probably asking a bit much,” Tim said with a laugh. “It’s just that there’s an intensity about Lauren...”
“Well, what would you expect? She’s obviously pretty worried about what’s coming. She asked me how I told the boys. She has to tell her daughters.”
“I know you want to help her,” Tim said. “I’d just like you to remember, Pamela needed support when you met her. She’d just come out of a bad relationship and found you to help her pick up the pieces.”
“Hey, I don’t know this woman, okay? But she doesn’t seem like a Pamela! Manure on the plants, Father.”
“All right. Don’t get testy.”
“I’m not,” Beau said, digging a shovelful of fertilizer out of the split bag.
But he was. He was annoyed because Tim could be absolutely right. When he met beautiful, sexy Pamela, he didn’t see a selfish, impatient, hard-to-please woman with a short attention span. Oh no—he saw a vulnerable and sweet young woman saddled with two hard-to-manage little boys, a woman so grateful to have a good, steady man in her life, a man interested in the parent-teacher conferences. It was a couple of years before he met the other Pamela. Oh, he’d seen hints of her here and there, but they were so fleeting he convinced himself that everyone has their bad days.
Lauren, at first glance, seemed like a good woman with a strong moral compass. She couldn’t meet him even just to have someone to talk to if it could become a distraction, a complication. She wanted to be sure her daughters were informed in the best way of what was coming. She didn’t trash the husband she was leaving, yet it was clear in her eyes and what little she said, she was in a bad situation. When he asked if he hit her, she rubbed her upper arms and said, “No.” She was beautiful. Sweet and sensitive.
And in two years they could be at each other’s throats. She could be railing at him about how dull he was, how uninteresting, how inattentive. He didn’t dance. He had quiet friends. He didn’t want to party. She could be explaining how her life had become unfulfilling, how her needs were not being met...
...how her sex life needed to be recharged.
“There were red flags with Pamela,” Tim said. “You told me all about them, how obvious they were, how you convinced yourself you were overreacting because most of the time things were good. And besides, no one’s perfect. You admit you have failings. In fact, you’re a little too eager to admit your—”
Beau stopped shoveling and stared at his friend. “Stop reading my mind.”
“Sorry,” Tim said. “I wasn’t sure I was.”
“You do it all the time and it pisses me off.”
“I said I was sorry. So, we can count on you for basketball Thursday night?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Father?” a female voice said from the walk. “I’m sorry to interrupt you. I was just wondering...”
“Angela! How wonderful to see you! What brings you to my neighborhood?”
“A fool’s errand, I think. It’s still so early in the spring, but my shelves are bare of the fresh stuff and my clientele could use some greens. It was just a gamble, that you might have some lettuce that came in early.”
“Beau, meet my friend Angela,” Tim said. “She operates a food bank in Oakland. It’s where a lot of our fresh stuff from the garden ends up.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Beau said. He couldn’t help but notice how Tim’s eyes lit up. He also noticed how beautiful the Latina woman was, black hair in a single braid down her back. Beau guessed she was about thirty. Her eyes danced as she was focused more on Tim than Beau. She wore tight jeans with rips in the knees, hoodie tied around her waist. She was lovely. And Tim’s entire mood changed.
“We don’t have anything yet but I’m friendly with the produce manager at the big Safeway. One of my parishioners. Let’s go see if he’s clearing out produce. I bet we’ll get something, no matter what his stock looks like. Let’s go in your car, then you can drop me back here.”
“I knew you’d help if you could,” she said, smiling so beautifully.
“Let’s go then,” he said. He took her elbow to guide her, walked her away from the garden. He leaned down to talk with her and they laughed together.
Tim never looked back at Beau.
“Interesting,” Beau said. Then he proceeded to spread fertilizer.
The Delaney family home was in a posh, gated neighborhood in Mill Valley. Guests had to be cleared by the guard at the gate to enter. It was much more house than Lauren wanted or needed, especially with the girls being gone, but Brad found it and contracted the purchase without her involvement six years ago. It was an eight-thousand-square-foot showplace. She had been stunned but helpless. What was she to say? We don’t need all this since I’m not planning to be married to you that much longer? She had two choices—she could sign the purchase agreement and at least be a co-owner of the massive property. Or she could refuse and he’d just buy it himself.
“Be sure to put your things away,” he instructed before their guests arrived. “I don’t want people thinking we have separate bedrooms.”
“Even though we do,” she muttered.
“You sometimes sleep in the guest room down the hall because of your hot flashes,” he said, creating her lie for her.
“No one is going to be wandering around the bedrooms,” she said. “And I don’t have hot flashes.”
He touched her cheek. He laughed. “Any second now, Lauren. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Feeling a little ancient and emotional with her baby a college graduate on her way to law school, she lashed out. “What do you suppose they’d all think if they knew the truth?”
“Just what I think,” he said easily. “You’re a half lunatic who imagines ridiculous things all the time.”
She gritted her teeth and remained silent, picturing that quaint Victorian in Alameda, how quiet and sweet it was. The girls had gone out to pick up a few last-minute items for the party and would be walking in the house any second. Guests would start to arrive in an hour. The caterers were busy; their van was parked in the garage so they had a clear path from the van to the party site, the kitchen, butler’s pantry, dining room and patio. They were expecting about 100 people. Obviously she couldn’t get into an argument with him now. Actually she couldn’t get into an argument with him ever. Disagreeing with Brad was disastrous.
The last straw should have been when he had given her chlamydia. He denied it, insisted it wasn’t him and his argument was so unflinching and convincing even she began to wonder where she might’ve gotten it.