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Joel spun the lie seamlessly. He had practiced it all week and knew that Rachel would buy just about anything that came out of his mouth, so long as it sounded plausible. Rachel was a trust-first-verify-later kind of person. Adam, on the other hand, was nothing of the sort.

"So let me get this straight. You've been seeing this girl since April but didn't tell anyone? You didn't tell your parents? You didn't tell your friends? You didn't tell me? I can't believe you didn't tell me. Does Jana know about this?"

"She does now. We split up, officially, on Sunday."

Rachel flipped her raven hair over her shoulders and took a sip of wine. She stared at Joel with the kind of scolding eyes he had seen all his life.

"She's pretty shattered, you know," Rachel said, referring to her one-time roommate. "She didn't see any of this coming. She really thought you were going to at least make an effort to keep things going. The next time you break someone's heart, Joel, be sure to talk to me first. There
is
a right way to do it."

Joel frowned and nodded.

"I know."

He stared out the window, which now offered a view of the city's downtown core, and pondered a more substantive reply to Rachel's observation but decided to remain silent. She was right. He had not handled the breakup with much sensitivity. He had simply told Jana that he had found someone else and insisted that they would both be better off dating others. Jana, not surprisingly, begged to differ.

"So tell me more about our mystery girl," Rachel said. "Does she go to school? Does she have a job? She didn't answer me when I asked her earlier."

Joel looked at Rachel and then at Adam. Each returned his stare with raised eyebrows. Joel knew that both had curious minds, but he also knew that only Adam's would have to be fed with something more than generalities and evasive references.

He had known Adam Levy since the seventh grade. They had graduated from the same high school and college, shared an apartment, and palled around on a daily basis for the better part of the past ten years. They knew everything there was to know about each other, at least until now.

Joel knew that it wouldn't be long before Adam demanded answers about the platinum blonde he had seemingly produced out of thin air. Fortunately, he had a few to give. He considered offering one or two when he saw the focus of attention approach in a rush.

"There you are. I was about to organize a search party," Joel said.

He got out of his seat and allowed Grace to pass.

"I couldn't find any paper towels to dry my hands."

Rachel laughed.

"Didn't you see the hand dryer?"

"What's a hand dryer?"

Rachel offered a puzzled expression.

"It's that box on the wall that dries your hands."

"Oh. Perhaps I'll use it the next time," Grace said cheerily. "Have you ordered?"

"Not yet," Joel said. "We were waiting for you."

Joel offered Grace a menu and looked across the table, where Adam and Rachel shot him pointed glances. He smiled at both and tried to change the subject.

"You guys order what you want. It's my treat."

"Anything?" Rachel asked.

"Anything."

"Great. I'm getting salmon."

"What about you?" Joel asked Adam.

"I'm thinking about the New York strip."

Joel smiled as he remembered Memorial Day, the last time Adam had ordered a steak. He had bravely and naively tackled a 24-ounce porterhouse at a diner in Helena, Montana, and nearly busted a gut putting it down. It had been the first highlight of a day that had later included a detour to an abandoned mine, the discovery of a glowing room, and a trip through time to 1941.

"Get what you want. I mean it. I'm a working man now."

"Congratulations on your new job, Joel," Rachel said. "When do you start?"

"I start training on Monday, but I won't get to do any field work for at least a few weeks."

Joel was eager to get into the field. That is why he had studied geology. He loved rocks. He loved the dirt under his feet. He loved everything about the composition of the planet he called home and looked forward to making a living doing what he loved under the watchful eye of the U.S. Geological Survey.

"How about you guys?" Joel asked his fellow graduates. "Any interviews lined up?"

"I'm still sending out resumes," Adam said.

"Rachel?"

"I start a part-time job in two weeks at an agency in Bellevue. It's not much, but it's still public relations. I have my foot in the door and that's all that matters."

"What about you, Grace?" Adam asked. "Moneybags here hasn't told us much. What are you doing this summer?"

Joel looked at Grace and gently squeezed her hand under the table. He sent a signal that it was finally OK for her to tell her story, her new story – a compelling blend of truth and fiction that had been created and finely tuned over the past week.

"I'm still looking for work," Grace said. "Right now I'm taking care of a relative who lives in the university district. She's been kind enough to offer me room and board until I find a job."

"What do you want to do?" Rachel asked.

"I'd like to eventually get into teaching, or perhaps work in a public library. I may take some classes at the university this fall."

"What did you do in Oregon? Did you grow up there?" Rachel asked. "Your accent sounds vaguely foreign, like Australian or South African or something."

"It's more like something. I've lived most of my life overseas. My parents were missionaries. My mother was English. Some of it rubbed off."

"When you say were and was . . . do you mean to say that they are no longer living?"

"They were killed by a drunk driver a few years ago. When they died, I went to Portland to live with an elderly friend and her husband. They more or less raised me until I could live on my own."

Rachel covered her open mouth with an open hand.

"That is awful. I am so sorry."

"Thank you. It was difficult at first, but I found a way to manage."

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No. It's just me."

Rachel shook her head.

"Do you have any friends in Seattle?"

"I have Joel."

Rachel gazed empathetically at Joel Smith's new Number One. She set her menu to the side, reached across the table, and grabbed Grace's hand.

"Well, you have more than Joel now. You have another friend right here. If you ever want to get out and have some girl time, just let me know. I'll show you around this town."

Grace smiled.

"Thank you. That means a lot."

Rachel withdrew her hand, grabbed her wine glass, and raised it high.

"To new friends."

"To new friends," Grace said.

The women clinked their glasses.

Rachel took a sip and gave her new friend a warm smile. The female bonding was complete. She then turned toward Moneybags and gave him a frosty glance.

"What?" Joel asked. "What did I do?"

"You've done nothing yet – and it had better stay that way."

Adam grinned.

"You'd better hold on to this one, Joel Smith, and you'd better treat her right," Rachel said.

She glared at Joel.

"Or you'll have me to deal with."

CHAPTER 23: GRACE

Thursday, August 10, 2000

Grace glared at the ugly plant and wished it a violent death. She had stabbed it at least three times with a Cape Cod weeding tool but had failed on each occasion to pull it free from a vegetable garden owned and sometimes operated by Francis and Cynthia Smith.

Cindy laughed as she approached the hired help.

"I take it you didn't garden much as a girl."

"I didn't garden much, period."

Cindy gave her helper a curious smile.

"That's odd. I thought all children played in gardens. How did you spend your youth?"

Grace gave Joel's mother a surly look.

"I attended Bible school," she snapped.

Cindy laughed again.

"Oh, dear," she said. "And I thought Joel had it rough."

The older woman grabbed the garden instrument and quickly removed a weed that had pushed its way between two rows of peas. She tackled a second intruder and then a third.

"It's really easy when you get the hang of it."

Grace looked at Cindy Smith with awe and affection. She saw not only a kind and giving mother who had raised the man she loved but an older incarnation of the college friend she had left behind. She saw both Joel and Ginny in this remarkable woman.

"I think I'll stick to harvesting," Grace said. "It doesn't require any special skill."

Cindy smiled.

"OK. You do that. You finish the peas while I pick through the zucchinis."

Grace returned to her peas but didn't harvest more than a few before she stopped. She wiped dirt from her jeans and glanced again at her gardening instructor.

"Mrs. Smith, can I ask you a question?"

Cindy threw a weed in a nearby bucket and turned toward Grace.

"Of course you can," she said. "You can ask me anything you want, so long as you call me Cindy. Only the paperboy calls me Mrs. Smith."

"OK," Grace said. She took a deep breath. "What was Joel like as a boy?"

Cindy placed her weeding tool on the ground and motioned to Grace to come her way.

"Come over here. Let's sit on the bench. I don't want to have this conversation sitting on my knees."

The two women got up from the ground and sat on a wrought-iron-and-pine bench that abutted a five-foot cedar fence. The fence encircled a large landscaped lot and an even more impressive redbrick Georgian mansion in Seattle's Madison Park neighborhood.

"That's much better," Cindy said.

She removed a pair of gardening gloves and settled into one end of the large and surprisingly comfortable seat. A bright sun broke through the clouds, providing welcome warmth on what had been an unusually cool summer morning.

"You want to know what Joel was like as a boy? Well, I'll tell you. He was hell on wheels, that's what. He was a handful from the day he was born."

Grace smiled.

"I suspected as much."

"Don't get me wrong. He was a good boy, but he never played by the rules."

"He got into trouble?"

"He
looked
for trouble."

"Can you share some stories?"

"Oh, I can share plenty."

Grace beamed.

"I'm listening."

"Let's see," Cindy said. She sighed and looked away for a moment, as if trying to recall the greatest of Joel Smith's Greatest Hits. "I remember that his grade-school years were fun."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, in the fifth grade, for example, Joel went through a phase where he thought cats and dogs should have the right to roam free, like animals in national parks. This was after he saw
The Adventures of Milo and Otis
. So one day after school, when most people were still at work, he went around the neighborhood and opened the gates to dozens of yards. He must have liberated fifty dogs."

Grace brought a hand to her mouth and stifled a laugh.

"Then there was his stab at collective bargaining. When he was fourteen, he organized a strike against a teacher who had given him too much homework. It was so bad at one point that the principal had to intervene."

Cindy stretched her legs and extended her arm along the top of the bench.

"He also gave officials a fit at Westlake. When he was a junior, he insisted on taking three girls – all cheerleaders from another high school – to homecoming. Students could not bring dates from other schools unless they had first obtained permission. It was a rule that had been in place since at least the 1960s, when I went there. But Joel just ignored it and made a big stink when the dance chaperones stopped him at the door. He argued that bringing more than one date to a dance was as morally just as having more than one wife. He even cited Scripture."

Grace tried to keep it together as she reeled with laughter. She could picture each and every episode. They were totally in keeping with the Joel Smith she knew.

Cindy put a hand on Grace's shoulder.

"As I said, he's been a handful. But he's a good boy. He has a good heart," she said, "and I know for a fact that he loves you very much. I've never seen him like he is now."

Grace nodded. She knew what Cindy said was true, but she didn't mind hearing it – just as she didn't mind hearing the terrible tales from Joel's past. They were all a part of a man who was now center stage in her life. Grace smiled to herself. She and Joel had even attended the same high school, nearly sixty years apart. How amazing was that?

"I know. He's changed a lot even in the short time I've known him. He's much more serious and thoughtful," Grace said. "I think that's a good thing."

Cindy smiled at Grace for a moment, looked away, and then returned to her with a more reflective expression. She too apparently had something on her mind.

"Now that I've filled you in about my terror of a son," she said, "perhaps you can return the favor and tell me about someone who has always been a mystery to me."

"Who's that?"

"My mother."

Grace lowered her eyes. She should have seen this coming. She knew from conversations with Joel that Virginia Gillette Jorgenson had been fiercely protective about her past. Ginny had apparently shared little about her college days, even with the people she had loved the most.

"What would you like to know?"

"I'd like to know everything. What was she like? Was she popular? Did she do well in school? Did she have many boyfriends? Did you two get along? What was Tom Carter like?"

Grace sighed.

"You ask a lot of questions. I hope I can answer them all."

"Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."

"Ginny was my best friend, Mrs. Smith . . . Cindy. She was my roommate and my mentor. She was the sister I never had. I trusted her implicitly. One of the hardest things about leaving the past was leaving her. I still miss her."

Cindy looked away as moisture formed in her eyes.