Kim for a change to find out what we talked about.
I ran my hand down my hair. It wasn’t the same haircut, though it was a variation on the same theme. A lob. Long enough for a ponytail but not so long that it took forever to dry. Simple and professional. I’d gotten bangs after getting out of the army. Big mistake. Now I settled for tucking my hair behind my ears and, if I was trying to be fancy, letting it drape across one eye. I was rarely fancy.
“Your hair is fine,” Mary said.
Fucking Jamie Luke.
“Why do you hate Brenda Russell?” Mary asked. “She didn’t cheat on you; Charlie and Sophie did.”
“It’s complicated.”
“To not offer condolences is incredibly rude, especially for you. Brenda Russell loved you.”
It was true. There was a time when Brenda Russell treated me like a daughter. I practically lived at their house each summer from the time I was ten years old. Brenda and Sophie got along better when I was around, and I’d acted many, many times as a buffer when we were young, and a go-between when Sophie and I were teens. I’d admired Brenda, with her beauty and poise and her generous heart. Doug had been a quiet man who worked all the time. He gave me distracted smiles and pats on the head, and always cheered the loudest at my tennis matches, seemingly as happy for my successes as he was for Sophie’s. I think he was making up for the fact that my father rarely came. It had been a shock when the Russells turned on me so thoroughly, and cut me out of their lives.
My stomach clenched at the memory, at the lingering—or was it imagined?—scent of Chanel No. 5. “Not at the end, she didn’t.”
“Hey, look down the line. Charlie’s here. No Sophie, though.”
I followed Mary’s gaze and still only saw a bunch of vaguely familiar strangers. “Where?”
“Last in line.”
“The bald guy?”
“Yep. Charlie’s still got those eyes, though.”
I felt those eyes on me as we went through the remainder of the mourners, willing it to be over, but dreading the final greeting. Charlie Wyatt shook Mary’s hand. “I saw Jeremy outside with the kids. They were pretty wired for a visitation.”
I tried to look as innocent as possible.
“I better go check on him,” Mary said. She looked as exhausted as I felt. My cheeks were sore from holding an appropriately sad smile, one that said it’s nice to see you but the circumstances. Putting people at ease was a strength of mine, but today’s performance had been taxing in unexpected ways.
“Emmadean, Dormer. Sorry for your loss,” Charlie said. He leaned in and hugged Emmadean.
“Charlie, thanks for coming,” Emmadean said.
Everyone moved away to give us privacy, and I was left alone with my first boyfriend, my first lover, the person I’d thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. He was familiar and foreign all at once. When he looked at me with those eyes and that smile, he still managed to make my stomach flutter, after all this time.
He inhaled, his gaze roaming over my face. “NoNo.”
I gritted my teeth at the nickname, but smiled and said, “Hi, Charlie.” My gaze landed on his shiny bald head. “What the hell happened to your hair?”
He laughed, the corners of his pale blue eyes crinkled and that damn dimple appeared on his left cheek. The Deadly Dimple, Sophie and I had called it. It still was. “How many times have you heard ‘You haven’t changed a bit’ tonight?” Charlie asked.
“With you, over a thousand.”
“Well, you haven’t.”
“I live a pure life.”
“Ha. I doubt that.” He put his hands in his suit pants pockets. The top button of his shirt was unbuttoned and his blue tie, which set off his eyes in a mesmerizing way, was loosened. I wondered if Sophie had picked it out. “How have you been?” he asked.
“Good. Fantastic. How about you?”
He shrugged and looked around. “I’m still in Lynchfield.”
“Wasn’t that the plan?”
A sheepish smile. “Yes.”
“I hear you’re right on track. Law practice, now running for State Senate?”
“Yep.” He nodded. “It wasn’t always easy.” He caught my eye and looked away.
“Anything worth having is never easy, is it?”
“I suppose not.”
The funeral director walked into the room on soft feet and with a polite, grieving smile. He met Emmadean and Dormer at my father’s casket and spoke in a low voice about whatever was next on the list of tasks for a grieving family.
I steeled myself to ask about