“What do you want?” I asked through the closed door.
“I just really need a place to sleep,” the woman said. “Can I come in?”
There was something oddly familiar about her voice, but I couldn’t place it.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any extra room,” I said. It was all I could think of. “Have you tried the missions?”
“Please, Mary Beth. Let me at least talk to you.”
It startled me that she’d called me by name. “Who is it?” I called out. “Who are you?”
The woman started to cry. “Mary Beth, it’s me, Lindy. Lindy Lou.”
Lindy Lou? Lindy Lou Trent, from high school? Was it possible?
I opened the door a crack but didn’t take off the chain. “Stand over here where I can see you,” I said.
She did, and I had to admit there was a slight resemblance, maybe in the nose and eyes, but that’s where it ended. Lindy Louise Trent had been my best friend in high school—and at the same time my arch-rival. Lindy had the looks, the money, the personality, and all the boys. While I slaved away on the school paper, she became the most popular cheerleader, the homecoming queen, and the one who got the homecoming king—someone I’d had eyes for but was too shy to go after. Lindy just had to toss her long blond hair, stick out her chest, and boys would follow her anywhere.
“Is that really you?” I asked now, though I could see with every passing moment that it was indeed her. I just couldn’t believe the change that had taken place. Several inches of the roots of her hair were dark, and the blond that was still left was dry and frizzled. Her eyes were wide and staring.
My look must have spoken volumes.
“Please let me come in and sit down, Mary Beth. I’ll tell you everything, but I really just need to sit down.”
She started to sway back and forth alarmingly. I opened the door the rest of the way and reached for her. Putting an arm around her waist, I drew her into the living room and helped her to sit on the couch. She was light as a feather, and shaking so much I had to hold on tight for fear of dropping her.
“Oh, God, that feels so good,” she said, groaning. “Just to sit. You can’t know, Mary Beth. I’ve been walking for miles.”
She wore low-heeled, pointed-toe shoes from a good designer, but when she slipped them off I could see that she wore no stockings, and two of her toes were bleeding.
“For God’s sake, Lindy, let me clean that up for you,” I said. I went to the kitchen and spoke to her from across the breakfast bar as I ran water to get it warm. “Where did you walk from?”
“Downtown L.A.,” she said, her voice shaking. “I mean, I started out there, but then I got a ride to Hollywood. I walked down Sunset Boulevard till I got to the ocean, and then I turned on Pacific Coast Highway and came here.”
I added soap to the bowl of warm water, and a soft dishcloth. “I don’t understand. How did you know where I live?”
“I read a piece about you in the Sunday Los Angeles Times. They said you lived in Malibu, and then I ran into someone who knew you. He gave me your address.”
Warning bells went off. Lindy shows up after all these years—fifteen, to be exact, since high school—and tells me that someone who knows me gave her my address? Who would do that?
For that matter, what were the odds of her “running into someone” who even knew my address? I protect my personal information from almost everyone, as I don’t want agitated authors showing up at my door in the middle of the night. That had happened frequently when I had my office in front of the little adobe house in Hollywood. I didn’t want it to happen here.
“Who was this person?” I asked.
Lindy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I met him at a bar in Hollywood and we got to talking. I told him I’d been wanting to get in touch with you, especially after I read that piece in the paper. Just to tell you how happy I am for your success, you know.”
I’ll bet, I thought suspiciously. Lindy had obviously met with bad times. How much was she here to hit me up for?
I knelt down and began to wash her feet with the soapy water, then dried them carefully. “Leave the shoes off,” I said. “I’ll get a Band-Aid, and I’ve got a pair of socks and some tennies you can have.”
“Thank you, Mary Beth.” Lindy looked around and added with an edge in her voice, “You’re doing very well now, aren’t you?”
I looked up at her and she flushed. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. It’s just that everything’s turned around for both of us. You were poor and now you’re not. I was…well, I guess you heard that I married Roger Van Court.”
I looked back at her feet and then stood, taking the bowl back to the kitchen. “Yes, I think I must have heard that,” I said vaguely. “It’s been a while. Ten years or so, right? Since you were married?”
“Since right after college,” she said, nodding. “I can’t believe I was that stupid.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Roger Van Court. In fact, my pulse was racing and my hands had begun to shake at the sound of his name. I took a Band-Aid out of a drawer and tried to bring my focus back to Lindy and her plight.
“What’s happened, Lindy Lou?” I asked softly. I applied the Band-Aid, then sat beside her on the couch, my legs crossed in tailor-fashion. It was the way we used to sit when we were teenagers, chatting till all hours of the night. A familiar scene—yet not familiar at all. Now that I could see Lindy more closely, I realized that though we were the same age, thirty-three, she looked closer to fifty. Her face was lined, and I could see now the gray in her dark roots.
My heart broke a little. In high school, Lindy’s long blond hair had always looked sexy and a bit out of control, as if she’d just stepped out of a beauty salon into a warm spring breeze. With her high cheekbones and perfectly proportioned body, she could have been a high-fashion model. I’m sure she would have been hugely successful.
Instead, she’d married Roger Van Court.
There was a time when I might have jealously wished Lindy would end up down and out, but that was only because I never believed, in my wildest dreams, that she would. Though I hadn’t seen her in many years, in my mind she had always been the same Lindy Lou—vivacious, laughing, flirting easily yet harmlessly with the boys—someone I longed to be like but never was.
Suddenly, a part of me evaporated as the real Lindy Lou sat beside me. I had wanted to be like her, but even Lindy wasn’t Lindy anymore. A strange thought flew through my mind. Where did that leave me?
Lindy covered her eyes and began to sob. “Roger threw me out,” she said between loud hiccupping sounds. “Three weeks ago. He changed…he changed the locks…and I couldn’t get back in. To get my things, you know? He closed my bank accounts, too, Mary Beth, and cut off all my credit cards. I didn’t have a thing, and I couldn’t bear to tell any of our friends or ask to borrow money. We live in Pacific Heights now, and people there can be so damn hoitytoity.”
I almost smiled at her use of the old-fashioned phrase. Instead, I just shook my head and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Well, it’s one of the priciest areas in San Francisco, and none of our neighbors would understand in a million years. They’d have it all over town that I was out on the street.”
“Lindy, I don’t get it. What on earth possessed Roger? I thought the two of you must be happy.”
Which wasn’t at all the truth, but I couldn’t bring