Carefully, trying not to wake Alyssa who was sleeping in her lap, Lauren leaned over and hugged her best friend.
‘No tears today,’ she reminded her, but could nevertheless feel the hard lump in her own throat.
Rachel nodded and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. It was black with smudged mascara.
‘All right, fine, distract me. Tell us how the story continues,’ Rachel asked.
‘Oh lord, it’s been such a long time! I’m not sure I can get all the pieces of memory to fit together,’ Lauren admitted and furrowed her brow in concentration. She was trying to keep her composure, for the night was still young. She did not want the mood to turn sour. ‘You guys were all there. Help me. What’s the next bit of the story?’
‘Well, that’s easy,’ Tim said, coming to her aid with a big grin. ‘You were smitten with me.’
Lauren smiled. Under the blue night sky, in the soft, romantic light of the bonfire, it was easy for her to agree with him.
‘Yeah, I had a crush on you – I had fallen for you big time,’ she admitted, and amidst her brother Ben’s cheers Tim pulled Lauren backward and leaned in. Giggling like a schoolgirl, she gave in to her husband’s passionate kiss.
Suddenly, the night no longer felt cold. And for a moment she even forgot about the throbbing pain behind her temples. She was filled with a feeling of warmth and happiness, and it made her heart speed up. A feeling too rarely felt these past few months.
‘Oh, yes, the party! I remember it well. Mia honey, your mother used to throw lots of wild parties down here by the lake,’ Peter Latham explained to his thirteen-year-old granddaughter with a twinkle in his eye.
‘For real?’ Mia prodded without hesitation. Lauren could almost see her mind calculating whether this piece of information could somehow be of use to her.
‘Well, they weren’t that wild!’ Lauren objected, but her dad only smiled into his silvery beard.
‘All right, so maybe the parties weren’t that wild,’ he conceded, amused. ‘Otherwise I would never have allowed you to invite your whole tribe all the time.’ He let his eyes wander from face to face by the fire. Everyone knew that he considered his daughter’s friends to be part of the family.
‘Do you remember what you used to tell us back in the day?’ Rachel turned to Peter. Her black hair had an almost blue sheen in the moonlight, and with her raspy voice she sounded like a fortune teller. She waved at Mason and offered him a grateful smile when he walked over.
‘Truer words were never spoken, Peter. We should have taken them to heart much sooner,’ Rachel remembered and reached for her beloved’s hand.
The Party
The sun was already low, and veils of clouds formed a brilliant purple in the sky. The surface of Lake Champlain danced, reflecting the colors, and the ducks near the shore looked as if they were dipping their heads into liquid gold.
There was a light breeze blowing across the lake and making the burning torches that reached all the way up to the spacious porch in front of the house flicker. Lauren shivered and rubbed her arms. The thin satin of her sapphire-green shirt did not keep her warm, and she was glad that she had chosen to wear a pair of jeans instead of a short skirt. It was late September already, but the summery breeze that they’d had these last few days could easily make you forget that fact.
‘Go get yourself a jacket,’ Lauren’s mother Celeste suggested, wiping one of the garden chairs clean with a wet cloth.
‘It’s all right, Mom. Once the party’s started I’m sure I’ll warm up.’ Lauren hadn’t dressed like this just for fun – she wanted to impress Tim. After all, she’d plucked up the courage to invite him. But despite all of her efforts to look pretty, next to Rachel she still felt like a wilting flower. Rachel was wearing a dark-red cat-suit with black knee-high boots, and looked absolutely stunning. She was, after all, trying to attract a fancy dentist!
Lauren’s dad Peter stepped outside through the big folding doors and handed Lauren and Rachel a martini each.
‘Here’s to you, girls! May all your wishes come true!’ He raised his glass and pilfered the olive from his daughter’s drink.
Lauren smirked, because she never liked the olives.
‘Thanks, Dad. But if all our wishes are coming true this year, then what the heck are we going to do with the rest of our boring lives?’
‘You’ll see – I’m sure you can come up with a few more wishes for the next year. Once you get to my ripe old age . . . you’ll have so many wishes piled up that you know for a fact you won’t have time for them all. So, girls, start early if you want your dreams to come true.’
Rachel nodded.
‘Wise words, Peter. And from the corner of my eye I can see the man who might just give me sweet dreams in the future.’ She raised her hand and walked toward Mason, who was approaching from the gravel path leading around the house.
‘And what about you, honey? What will make you happy this year?’ Peter asked, putting his arm around her shoulders. Lauren leaned her head against her father’s strong chest like she used to, and hugged him back. Peter didn’t look fifty, even if he had piled on a few pounds thanks to his many years of working in an office. His gray hair still showed a few coppery strands, and his laugh was as fresh and bright as always. Only the tiny wrinkles around his eyes had become deeper over the past few years, but that only made him all the more likeable. His carrot-colored hair, his struggles with his weight, plus a love for all things sweet was something Lauren had inherited from him, while her delicate features came from her mom.
Lauren wondered how her dad would react if she started seeing one of his lawyers. Trying to get a feel for his stance, she asked: ‘Do you know Tim Parker? He’s . . .’
‘A brilliant lawyer. I keep asking myself if he isn’t wasting his talent up here in Vermont. I think he’d be a suitable candidate for the New York office. On the other hand, I would bypass several of his older and more experienced colleagues if I were to transfer him. Which I don’t really want to do. Why do you ask? Do you know him?’
Lauren emptied her martini glass and strolled with her dad through the yard and down to the water. She didn’t like the idea of Tim getting transferred to New York. Not now that she was falling for him.
‘I invited him here tonight. He seems nice.’
Peter looked at her for a while, as if trying to read her mind. He was probably thinking about how best to protect her, but after a brief pause he nodded.
‘If you say so, honey, I’m sure you’re right.’ He buried his hands deep in the pockets of his suit pants. Only the argyle sweater vest he was wearing over his shirt hinted at the fact that it was the weekend. The rest of his outfit tonight would be perfectly suitable for a court hearing.
‘You’ve always known what was best for you.’
They strolled alongside the banks of the lake. The first leaves were already dipped in fall colors, glowing brilliantly in the warm evening light, and Lauren could not imagine a more beautiful place than this, her home. Her family’s estate included not only the main house, which they all lived in, but also a smaller lake house, which she always hoped to one day decorate and make her own. Now that she was letting her eyes wander over the whitewashed, wood panelled outer walls and the large latticed windows, she could easily imagine moving in right away. But first she would need to finish art school and figure out how she was going to make a living after college. Whatever she ended up doing, she hoped it wouldn’t tear her away from her family.
‘We