The Touch of a Woman (26 page)

“You’re not so bad yourself. We clean up well for a couple of scruffy dykes, right?”

“Hey, speak for yourself.” Summer wasn’t quite so decked out, but her gray slacks and navy tunic were a far cry from what she wore to hang out. She recalled her words to Ellis. “If I could get away with it, I’d wear pajamas to work.”

“You and me both.” Sam looked over her shoulder at the bustling cafe. “I ordered you the chicken tacos like you said. You were right about this place being a madhouse at lunch.”

Within moments, their hustling waiter delivered two taco baskets and deposited the check face down on the table.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Summer said. “I feel like every time we see each other, there’s a million people around. We don’t get enough chance to talk, you and me.”

Besides the perpetual presence of Rita, there was also the fact that Queenie had a forceful personality that dwarfed those around her. Sam, on the other hand, was laid back and thoughtful. When she expressed an opinion, it was certain to be measured.

After her recognition of Queenie’s role in raising Sam’s boys, Summer had found herself wondering how they’d handled it. While she wanted to know how Queenie had managed her role as stepmom, it struck her that Sam was the one who’d have the most insight into what Ellis needed. Besides, Sam was more discreet and less likely to worry aloud about how any of this might impact Rita.

“I’ve got something on my mind…maybe you can help me sort it out.”

“Something to do with Rita?” Sam asked.

“Not this time, believe it or not…although everything I do seems to affect her in one way or another. She’d probably go ballistic over this.” If she wanted Sam’s honest advice, she’d have to be up front about why. “Before I spill my guts here, I need to ask you to keep this under your hat for a while. I don’t mind if you tell Queenie, but I don’t want all our friends knowing, especially Rita.”

Sam stopped eating and smiled wryly. “You must be seeing somebody.”

“Yes…no. I was, but we hit a wall. I met somebody and we got to be good friends. Then we slept together and it all went to hell.” That wasn’t a fair characterization. “Not that sleeping together screwed it up…it just makes it weird to be friends now.”

“Who is she?”

“Nobody you know. My neighbor.” She nearly laughed at the irony of describing Ellis merely as her neighbor. “She moved here last fall from San Francisco. She’s got three kids, but they’re all grown, college-age. They still come around a lot though.”

“Lucky her. I wish mine did.” Both of her boys had joined the military right out of high school. One was in North Carolina, the other in Germany. “I take it she’s straight…or at least she thought she was.”

“Yeah, but I never got the vibe that it bothered her. She’s a widow…forty-eight and a hardcore liberal. Plus one of her sons is gay, so she has zero problems with it.”

“You like her kids?”

“Yeah, they’re okay. But her daughter’s not too happy about her mom seeing another woman. That’s what set everything off.”

Sam began a steady nod, her face taking on a faraway expression. No doubt she was remembering her own issues with Queenie. “Been there, done that. You should have seen my boys when Queenie and I first started seeing each other. They were so jealous. I’d put them to bed and we’d start making out on the couch. Next thing you know, one of them had a bad dream or needed a drink of water…whatever they could do to get between us. Hell, I couldn’t sit down without one of them crawling into my lap.”

“But it wasn’t because she was a woman, was it? Your boys were little.”

“True, but that might not be your real issue either. Could be her daughter’s just freaking out because she’s jealous.”

She hadn’t considered the jealous angle. It made a lot more sense than getting upset over her mom seeing another woman. “That’s exactly why I wanted to pick your brain. I knew you’d get this.”

As Sam raised her taco to her lips, it collapsed, dumping half the ingredients back in her basket.

“Happens to me every time,” Summer said, handing her a plastic fork from a bin on their table. “But why would she care if her daughter’s jealous? She doesn’t even live there.”

“It doesn’t matter where they live. Moms are hardwired to put their kids first. If Queenie hadn’t accepted that, we wouldn’t have made it. It took her a couple of years to adapt, but she worked at it. What made her a great stepmom was learning to love my boys practically as much as I did. And once they got used to her being there and figured out they could depend on her, they started loving her back.”

“I get that, but I’m not talking about packing lunches and tucking them in at night. Her daughter’s a freshman in college. She doesn’t even live at home anymore.”

“She’s still Mama’s baby girl. You’re going to have to forge a relationship with her if you want one with her mom.”

Summer nibbled on a tortilla chip, imagining what a friendship with Allison would look like. “I think we’d get along just fine once she got past the whole ‘my mom’s acting like a lesbian’ part. The real issue is I can’t get her mom to see that. She’s ready to drop everything at the first sign of trouble.” Admittedly, that was an oversimplification, but she couldn’t go into Allison’s emotional struggles without divulging the family’s story.

“There’s the rub then. Sounds like you might not be dealing with the kid at all. Could be Mom’s not as open-minded about this as you think. If she was comfortable in her own skin, she wouldn’t let her daughter push her around like that.”

Of course. It was a point she hadn’t considered. Ellis wasn’t merely giving in to placate Allison. She was using Allison as a rationale to cover her own doubts. What’s more, those doubts could be about anything, not just her sexuality.

“Damn.” This changed everything. “I hadn’t thought about it but you might be right. This might not be about her daughter at all. If that’s how she feels, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Sure there is. Talk to her. Find out what her issues are.”

Summer came to an aching realization. “Sam, I can’t pressure her into going where she doesn’t want to go. If it’s not her, it’s not her.”

The decent thing to do was to back off completely from a sexual or romantic interest. From the moment Summer had learned about the shooting, she’d known Ellis needed a friend who would listen and back her up. Instead of doing that, she’d walked out without even trying to save their friendship.

Now all she had was a pile of regrets. She couldn’t pretend not to know the sweetness of her kiss, nor the loveliness of touching her. But she could try to push those memories to a cherished place…and be the friend Ellis needed.

* * *

Lunch with Roxanne had drained all of her emotional energy. From anxious to elated to deflated in the time it took to eat a one-course meal. One thing was certain—she didn’t have it in her to drive north on I-280 back into the City. There were other ways to get around the Bay, and one of them took her through Palo Alto.

At four in the afternoon, the day was already wearing on her physically. Not only had she left home at six a.m., she’d stayed at her office past nine the night before to bank some of the hours she expected to miss.

She’d spare an hour or so for Jonathan though. His apartment was only minutes off the freeway on Sand Hill Road. She hadn’t visited in almost a year, not since delivering the boxed contents of his old bedroom in her SUV. It was more than a little ironic that his share of a student apartment next to Stanford University was as much as her rent in River Woods. She wasn’t sure how he’d manage next year without her financial help, but he was confident he’d find a way.

Nearly every space in the complex was taken, and two were occupied by Volkswagen sedans—one silver, one metallic gray. She couldn’t recall which was his. After squeezing her SUV into a space marked
Compact,
she managed to slither out without bumping the car next to hers.

The apartments were laid out in townhouse fashion with the living area on the first floor and three tiny bedrooms upstairs. It took two buzzes to bring someone downstairs to the door.

“Hi.” The young man who answered had short, neat hair like Jonathan’s, but he dressed more like Jeremy, in jeans with a heavy metal band T-shirt.

“Hello, I’m Jonathan Rowanbury’s mom. He wouldn’t happen to be home, would he?” She probably should have called, but in the back of her mind, she’d been afraid he’d discourage her from coming.

“Uh…” He frowned and glanced nervously over his shoulder up the stairs. “Jon doesn’t live here anymore.”

Stunned, she stepped back to make sure she had the right building.

“Hey, Hurston! When did Rowanbury move out?”

A buff, shirtless teenager bounded down the stairs. “Sometime last summer. Whenever Pope moved in.”

Surely Jonathan had told her that and somehow she hadn’t processed it. Last summer had been the most hectic time of her life…packing up the house, finding a job and a new place to live, getting Allison ready to go off to college.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he moved?”

“Somewhere down in the South Bay,” said the boy called Hurston. “I know he was taking some classes at San Jose State so he could get his grades back up. They told him he could reapply after a year.”

Ellis braced herself against the door frame as a wave of nausea threatened to bring up her lunch.

“You all right, ma’am?”

A silent nod was all she could manage. She returned to sit in her car, where the magnitude of Jonathan’s betrayal caused her to burst into tears. He’d been lying to her since last summer, maybe longer—following his father’s deceptive ways to perfection. There was no dean’s list, no pending graduation nor imminent reply to his law school application.

Jonathan, the strong one. The one whose resolve and focus had seemingly gotten him through the tragedy on an even keel. It was all a lie—he’d taken it harder than anyone.

* * *

Summer sprang to answer an insistent knock at the door and stopped herself. It was a mere seven hours ago that she’d told Sam she’d been seeing someone. If Sam had broken her word not to say anything, there was a good chance this was Rita.

When the knocking became pounding, she reluctantly gave in, remembering how Rita had behaved the night the police were called. She swung the door open to find not Rita but Ellis, her hands in the pockets of her blazer and a look of utter dejection on her face.

“Come in. Is everything okay?” It was clear she was upset, and Summer instinctively held out her arms.

Ellis fell into them, and in only moments, dissolved into sobs. “Just hold me for a minute…please.” It was twice that long before her tears finally subsided, leaving her face red and swollen. “Jonathan’s been lying to me. Just like Bruce. All this time telling me how great he was doing at Stanford. I found out this afternoon he got kicked out last summer.”

It was a horrible thing for him to do in the wake of his father’s deceit, yet Summer felt nothing but compassion for the poor boy. Bruce Rowanbury was responsible for this, just as he’d rendered Allison emotionally incapable of handling changes in her mother’s life. After more than a year, Ellis was still picking up the pieces, and likely would until her children faced down their grief.

Devastated and with nowhere to turn, Ellis needed her to step up and be a friend. Listen and take her side.

No matter how much Summer hurt from being pushed aside, she couldn’t deny the love she felt. If friendship was all Ellis wanted, she’d be the best friend she could be. No innuendo, no references to their intimacy, no pressuring for more.

She guided Ellis to the couch and sat close. For once, she resisted her natural inclination to caress her hands.

Jon’s story was eerie for how closely it tracked with his father’s duplicity. Surely he knew what a terrifying impact it would have on his mother if she found out—and that she’d torment herself with visions of him spiraling out of control and turning to violence.

“What is it that makes the people I love feel like they can’t talk to me? Am I that difficult to deal with? I know I can be stubborn sometimes, but I’m not a monster.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Ellis.” It was easy to imagine Bruce too had been a proud and arrogant man, expecting more of himself than he could deliver, and incapable of admitting his failure. “Jonathan’s used to being at the top. I could hear it in his voice. Now he’s probably embarrassed. He was trying to fix this before anyone found out.”

Sitting together so close felt achingly familiar, and it was all she could do not to draw Ellis back into her arms. This was no time to risk rejection.

“Just like his father,” Ellis went on. “What did they think would happen if they told me? Did they think I’d stop loving them? That I’d ridicule them?”

“If anything’s to blame, it’s probably testosterone. Or blame it on society for making rules about how
real
men are supposed to act. Jonathan’s school problems happened because he couldn’t cope with what his father did. But lying to you about where he was? That’s on him.”

Ellis looked as though she might start crying again.

“This will work out.” She wiped Ellis’ cheek with her thumb, all the while wishing she could kiss the tears away. “You just need to talk to him. Let him know you found out. Tell him it’s all okay, that you’re there for him.”

“I tried to call him but he won’t answer.”

“He can’t hide forever. Talking to you could be just what he needs to release the pressure valve.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She squeezed Summer’s hand. “My life is so full of drama. Are you sure you even want a friend like me?”

Summer had almost convinced herself she could accept being only friends, but hearing Ellis use the actual words was downright depressing. It was almost as though they’d never even been lovers.

“I want a friend
exactly
like you.” She smiled bravely. “One of these days, I’ll be the one needing a shoulder to cry on. And I’ll turn to you because you’re the strongest woman I know.”

Ellis gave her a dubious look. “I don’t know where you get this stuff. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s strong.”