“Yeah.”
“Great! Mary Jane will be thrilled! We’ll go to Seaport Village.” It might be considered touristy by most San Diegans, but Juliet, Mary Jane and most especially Marcie loved walking through the shops and restaurants along the waterfront. “Bring your in-line skates. Mary Jane’s been practicing and I think she’s ready to go out with us.”
More than anything, Juliet was ready to spend some time with her sister.
“Okay,” Marcie said, her voice losing the weak thread of tears. “And how about I throw in a nice dress, too, and treat us all to a decadent dinner in Beverly Hills?”
“Throw in the dress. You don’t need to treat.”
“I know,” Marcie said, her voice soft. “But I want to, Jules. Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Being you.”
“Thanks for being you, too,” she said, the reply never growing old, no matter how many times it was repeated.
“Love you.”
“You, too.”
Juliet hung up the phone, a weight she hadn’t even known she was carrying lifted from her shoulders. A weekend with Marce and Mary Jane, playing, having a late-night glass of wine or two with her sister, was just what she needed.
And after once again discussing the possibility of a life change for Marcie, perhaps she’d have a chance to talk to her sister about Mary Jane. The child had been a model student since the spitting incident the previous month. But the episode had brought back a fear to Juliet’s heart that, this time, would not be so easily eradicated.
She thanked God for Mary Jane’s ability to see all kinds of truths, to be aware of truth in different lights. And she was worrying herself sick about whether her daughter could fit into a society that preferred conformity to originality.
Sliding down in bed, she punched the pillow, leaned back and watched the shadows and occasional bobbing light on the ocean. She knew exactly what Marcie would say. Mary Jane was well adjusted, more secure than any kid either of them had ever known—certainly more secure than either of them had been, in spite of the fact that they’d always had each other—and there was no mistaking that the kid was genuinely happy. Hell, perfect strangers would glance at Mary Jane on the street and smile.
Marcie was going to tell Juliet she was raising her daughter well.
Juliet closed her eyes and willed sleep to come. She had another long day in court to get through before Marcie arrived. She was probably just tired from so many days of sitting through the prosecution’s portion of the Terracotta case. Waiting for her turn had always been the hardest part of her job.
Yeah, that was it. She was just tired.
So why, then, was she finding it so impossible to get to sleep?
BLAKE LEFT NEW YORK as soon as the funeral ended. A small affair, hosted by the adoptive parents Amunet hadn’t seen in ten years prior to this last trip home, it lasted less than half an hour. Jamila gave the eulogy. There were a couple of songs. An Egyptian poem was read. And then it was over.
That quickly, a life that had been too vibrant for this world was gone. Forever. It was the third time in five years that he’d buried those closest to him. First his parents, after the car accident, and now Amunet.
He called Paul Schuster from the airport to let him know he’d be back in plenty of time to appear in court on Monday, then boarded his plane.
With only one glass of cheap whiskey to deaden the uneasiness in his heart, he sat back in the blue leather first-class seat and tried not to think about life, or death, or the past couple of days.
In spite of everything, it had been good to see Donkor and Jamila. It was such a shame their lives kept them so far apart from him, in spite of how much they missed each other.
The whiskey didn’t help much, nor did the movie they were showing on the six-hour flight. He’d already seen it. Twice. And there sure as hell wasn’t a lot to look at through the window. Not when you were flying above the clouds at thirty-two thousand feet.
He would have picked a brighter color than the royal blue Amunet’s parents had chosen for the inside of her casket. And dressed her in something long, white and flowing.
For the first time since he’d known him, Donkor had looked tired. Old.
The flight attendant came by and Blake asked for a bottle of water to make his whiskey last a little longer. He talked to her about the flight, and asked if she had to turn around and go right back to New York or if she’d be flying somewhere else first.
He didn’t hear her answer.
He went to the rest room.
And he remembered the last time he’d flown with his ex-wife. They’d been on the way to California to bury his parents.
That led him along a painful road of memories, mostly of his father. The dictator. The honorable husband and father. The honest businessman. He thought about Eaton James, and his father’s heart attack.
Finally, in desperation, head lying against the padded rest, he turned his thoughts to the upcoming trial. Testifying was something he could actually do.
And from there, with the hum of the airplane cocooning him in his own little world, he thought about Juliet McNeil and the night they’d met.
Though he’d never known her well, since they’d talked far more about their separate futures than any past experiences that would have defined them, he’d felt a particular affinity with her, borne of their one incredible night together. He’d been a very young twenty-three to her much more mature and focused twenty-five. She’d been preparing to sit for the bar exam, after winning enough scholarship money to put herself through the elite University of Virginia School of Law, and had made it very clear that she was not going to be swayed from her goals by entangling herself in a relationship that could only distract her. Having just completed his MBA, after earning a degree in architecture, Blake had been in the final stages of preparing for what was supposed to have been a year of world travel, a prerequisite his father had set for Blake’s employment with the family business.
For Blake, the journey had been much more. It had been a time to finally achieve the freedom that had consumed his thoughts for years. A time to get out from under his father’s expectations—and his own—that he live up to the old man. When he was growing up, he’d constantly had to prove his intelligence and worth. The trip had been a time to find out what he really wanted to do with his life…or slowly die without ever having been alive.
During his last weekend at home, he’d met Juliet at a bar on the beach.
“Would you like some wine with your steak?” Blake was a bit surprised by the disappointment that shot through him as the flight attendant he’d practically clung to for diversion earlier interrupted his reminiscing with a dinner that smelled delicious.
“Thanks.” He nodded, holding up his arms as she placed dishes, silverware and a full wineglass before him.
The steak was good. And the other passengers were more talkative as they all shared dinner in their own little world. That was just as well, he thought, listening to the woman on the other side of the aisle as she told him about the grandson she’d just left behind in New York.
There was no point in making anything significant out of an encounter that had happened nine years before. Because if he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that his memories of that night—the fabulous sex he and Juliet had shared, the conversation and laughter—were more a result of the amount of alcohol they’d consumed than anything else.
And Blake Ramsden was always honest with himself.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY’D