Newton Neighbors (New England Trilogy) (30 page)

The meal was everything she had hoped it would be. Rick seemed to be able to compartmentalize his problems. Her friend’s husband talked and laughed with the family like he didn’t have a care in the world. Michael, on the other hand, kept giving her furtive glances and beaming like the Cheshire cat. It was obvious he was walking on air. She was in shock. Another baby hadn’t occurred to her in nine years. They were so done on that front.

“Can I propose a toast?” Michael said after they had cleared away the dinner plates.

Everybody looked at him. “Here’s to my wonderful, growing family and my best friend. May we all be thankful for the last twelve months, and here’s to the next twelve.” He raised his glass high. Rick and Cathi did the same, and the girls lifted their glasses of soda to join in. “Let’s all meet here this time next year and give thanks again.”

Cathi’s heart skipped a beat. She didn’t want to be here in a year’s time.

“Actually.” She cut into his toast. “What if we were to meet somewhere else in twelve months’ time?” Michael looked confused. She knew he hadn’t expected to be heckled.
 

“Like Puerto Rico?” Stacy asked.

Cathi shot her a warning look. “Well, I have a bit of a surprise for you also.”

“It’s too early,” Michael said, clearly thinking she was going to talk about the baby, but nothing was further from her mind.

“No, darling, not that. It’s another surprise. The thing is, we’ve had an offer on our beautiful home. It came out of the blue, but there’s a family that, um, drove by the house and decided the location was perfect. I think the dad got a job somewhere around here. They approached me through an agent. She called me yesterday and made a very generous offer. Put it this way—it’s well over the estimate we got.” She said this last part to Michael and then continued. “You see, I was thinking if we took it”—she looked pleading at him—“that is to say, if we accepted their offer, we could buy a bigger house . . . which now seems like a great idea.”

“I like this house,” Katie, her ten-year-old, said.

Cathi ignored the child and locked eyes with her husband. It was a decision for the two of them, but he already knew how she felt. Cathi saw the confusion in his eyes, but then she recognized the same expression he wore when he was talking about the pregnancy.

“What a day for surprises.” His face broke into a smile. “Is this what you want, Cathi?”
 

“Oh yes, Michael, more than anything.” She thought she would burst with happiness. This was turning out perfect.

He nodded and raised his glass again. “Okay, then—to moving up and on.” He changed the toast. Cathi was beyond ecstatic. How fate helped her along today.
 

But then she spotted Rick studying his glass as he repeated the toast. “To moving up and on.”

It had a very different connotation for him. She knew he wasn’t in a good place, no matter how well he hid it. Oh well, she couldn’t think about that now. Cathi got up and went over to her husband’s chair. He stood and they kissed.
 

“Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for this.”

“No, thank you,” he said, and then he glanced down at her still-flat tummy and whispered so his daughters couldn’t hear him. “After all, we’re going to need more room.”

A brief jolt of panic hit her, but she suppressed it and kept her smile in place.

“Now,” she asked everybody, “who’s for homemade pumpkin pie?”

Chapter Twenty-One

A Family Affair

“That was your tastiest pumpkin pie ever.” Ely patted her stomach.

Jessie knew her friend was on her best behavior, and she could see why. The Ely she knew back in Newton was a wild child and a bit of a hell-raiser. At home she was a lot calmer. And with a father like Mr. Briskin, she had to be.
 

He was a giant of a man, both in stature and personality. Ely had introduced him as William Briskin, but he had immediately corrected his daughter and told Jessie to call him Bull because everybody did.

Bull, it seemed, ran the household with an iron fist. He was pure power, and it was no surprise Margaret, Ely’s mother, was a consummate Southern lady. She was soft-spoken, when she spoke at all—which wasn’t very much.
 

The Briskins had a full house for Thanksgiving, and what a big house it was, too. Jessie was accustomed to large families, but she had never been a guest in such an enormous home before. Everything about the house was super-sized, starting with the front door. It was about fourteen feet high, like a hotel. She wondered why anybody would need a door that tall. The front hall that they first walked into was huge, too—two stories high, with a massive marble fireplace and a big curving staircase. Jessie would have been very inhibited if she weren’t with her best friend, Ely, and the family—whom, she soon discovered, were all friendly, open people, too. The dining room was like the rest of the house. Even the dining table was enormous.
 

Ely never talked about the house. For her it was all about the horses, and for that, just next to the house was the ranch. Bull had rebuilt the house a decade earlier, doubling it in size as his business empire doubled. Everything about the Briskins was larger than life.

Ely’s aunt Mona was there with her husband John and their two teenage daughters, Becky and Kaitlin. They lived in Charleston, too. Margaret also had a single sister, Marybeth, who had come to stay. Jessie thought she was achingly shy and quiet. Then there was Ely’s older brother, John Jr. Jessie smiled.
 

Her roommate had told her countless times she should hook up with John Jr. Ely hadn’t been exaggerating, because he was a good-looking guy and full of fun. John was quite like a male version of Ely, just a little older. Jessie had asked how he came to be John Jr. when his father was in fact a William, but Ely explained it was because she had an Uncle John, so John Jr. just made sense. He was the same age as Jessie, but despite her roomie’s encouragement, Jessie knew there was no chemistry between them. How could anyone follow an act like Dan? Well, that act was over.

“What about it, Jessie?” Bull interrupted her daydream. She had been given the seat on his right side which she knew was an honor. Ely sat opposite her on Bull’s left hand.

“Sorry, what did you say?” She smiled at her host, annoyed with herself for wasting time dreaming about bloody Dan Walker.

“Ely here says you’re practically a genius. Photographic memory? Is that true?”

“She’s just saying that to make me sound good, Mr. . . . um . . . Bull.”

Bull laughed and raised his glass of red wine to salute Jessie. “Her mom and I are just happy she ended up with such a nice girl like you as a roommate. I figure you’re a steady influence on my little girl.”

Ely rolled her eyes. “Daddy, I’m not a geeky teenager anymore.” She looked down the table at sixteen-year-old Kaitlin. “Sorry, Kaitlin, no offense.”

Kaitlin shrugged in a show of sublime teenage indifference.
 

“But you’re going back to London when you finish the school year at Wiswall in June? Is that right, Jessie?” Margaret was the one speaking, in a tone that was softer than the rest of the family.
 

Jessie nodded at her hostess. “Yes, but I hope Ely will come to visit me there.”

“Hey, maybe she can go to college there next,” John Jr. said and laughed. Jessie noted both parents scowled. They didn’t approve of Ely’s irregular academic path.

“That’s rich coming from you.” Ely took a sip of water. “You didn’t even finish freshman year.”

Her brother raised his hands in defeat. “Hey, I had a vocation. What can I say?”

Jessie knew all about John’s wild past. Ely had explained that the father and son clashed too much, so her brother had taken off to California as soon as he had finished high school. He’d surfed for a few years and then set up a surf shop. Rumor had it that his shop was doing well. John was starting to make a go of it, but it was still a sore point in the Briskin family. Ely shouldn’t have brought it up.
 

“Becky is a senior next year. Would you recommend Wiswall for liberal arts for my little girl?” Mona asked Jessie.

“Certainly. It’s a great campus.”

“If you don’t like parties, boys, or any kind of life.” Ely rolled her eyes.

Bull took his daughter’s hand. “You don’t like it up north, baby?”

“No, Daddy, I don’t. And don’t ask me what I’d do if J wasn’t there.” She glanced across the table to her roommate. “She’s kept me sane.” Ely gave her dad the best big round eyes Jessie had ever seen. “Can I transfer down south next year when Jessie’s gone?”

“What about Josh?” Margaret asked.

“You want to change colleges again?” John Jr. said. “How many is that? Six? Seven?”

“I was in London once.” Marybeth spoke just above a whisper. If Jessie hadn’t been sitting right beside her, she wouldn’t have heard.
 

“Were you? Where did you visit?” Jessie asked Margaret’s sister.
 

“I have a business idea!” Ely suddenly commanded the entire table’s attention again.

Jessie looked over at her roomie. “Maybe now isn’t the time?” she said, but Bull thought otherwise.

“Hell, we love new business ideas in this house, Jessie. It’s the lifeblood of America.” He looked at his little girl. “Shoot.”

“This one’s good, Daddy. I can feel it in my bones, and it’s even in the shampoo line.”

Jessie shook her head. She didn’t know Ely’s family that well, but she was pretty sure that Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t the time to go “down under.”

“I think the shampoo industry’s pretty full,” Margaret said with a look of concern on her face.

“I don’t think so, and it would appeal to both men and women—definite adult market.”

Jessie squirmed, but Ely kept going.

“It’s a totally new product—revolutionary.” She was getting more animated.

“Them’s fighting words.” Uncle John smiled at his niece. “I’m intrigued.”

“Ely, maybe later? After the meal?” Jessie asked.

“Nonsense. In this house, business is a family affair. All the best business plans come up at the dinner table. Isaac Newton, Alexander Graham Bell—they all made their inventions at the family table,” Bull said.

“The last supper,” Jessie mumbled, which made Bull guffaw and Marybeth titter.

“If it’s bad, we’ll be the first to tell her,” he said.

Ely’s smile broadened. “And if you like it, you’ll back me and let me quit college?”
 

“Just show us your business plan,” Margaret said.

Ely was up and out of the dining room in a flash. She returned with two little bottles of shampoo Jessie hadn’t seen before. The labels were obviously homemade, but it gave the general idea, the first being pink and the second blue—his and hers. She stood up, the same way she had when she performed for Jessie and Josh a few weeks earlier.

Jessie couldn’t watch, so she closed her eyes and listened.

“Straight hair, curly hair, dry hair
 . . .
”

First, Jessie heard Marybeth gasp. Then she heard Uncle John snigger. To her left, there was a total silence from normally loud Bull.
 

Jessie risked looking up as Ely continued on with conviction.

“This ain’t no different just ’cause it’s there.”

Becky, the seventeen-year-old cousin, was holding her nose to keep from laughing. Mona, Becky’s mother, was gawking, and John Jr. was wearing a broad smile. He liked it! Did he get where she was going with this?

“For those delicate curls.” Ely finished up with a flourish. Jessie noticed Ely seemed more fluent with the little song since the last time she had heard it. Maybe her roomie had been practicing in secret.

John Jr. applauded. “Go, sis. What a whacked-out idea. It’s so crazy, I think it might work,” he said with enthusiasm. “I’ll stock it in my shop.”

Jessie glanced at Ely’s mother—the emotional barometer of the family. She was staring toward her husband, so Jessie’s eyes went that way, too. Everybody was looking to Bull for his reaction.
 

The room went quiet. If he got mad, Thanksgiving would be ruined. He was studying his empty pie plate, like he was deciding which way to go with this. For the first time since Jessie had met him, his face was totally without expression.