The Ivy House - By Drea Stein Page 0,20
laughter drifting through the house. This time, there had been no Savannah. In fact, everything about the dream had been modern, very present day. It had felt right.
Phoebe looked at herself in the mirror. She felt much better now and she sent a silent shout of thanks to Lynn and her medicine. Time to decide what to wear. She tried to open the windows to see what the temperature was, but the paint was so thick that they were effectively sealed shut. She tried applying some force, but that only made her head hurt, so she flopped down in the little wing chair that looked out over the docks and picked up her phone.
She checked the weather first. Another perfect spring day here on the East Coast. Jean capris, she decided, and her pink-and-white-striped Oxford shirt. A pair of canvas sneakers. She still had some cleaning to do at the house, so she’d pull her hair back in a ponytail. And she had a nice lightweight fleece in case it was cooler up there.
That decided, she glanced through her emails. She’d set an alert to go off whenever her name or Savannah’s came up on the Internet. The phone had been buzzing all morning, as more papers picked up on the sad state of Savannah’s financial affairs. Her phone buzzed with texts and calls, none of which she answered. They were from friends and colleagues asking if she was OK. It would have been nice, except she could sense the avid curiosity. They were all wondering what it felt like to be poor.
Her phone rang at that moment. She almost didn’t answer it, but the temptation was too much, and she glanced down to see who it was.
“Dean,” she said, feeling a smile form on her face. Dean was one of her closest friends, the kind of guy who was always there for her. They had met in college when Phoebe had signed on to design the sets for the theater department’s production of “Anything Goes.” Dean had been in the chorus and they’d formed an instant bond, poking fun at the self-important lead, sharing the same taste for bad action movies, and a love of ice-cream shakes.
After college, Dean had realized he couldn’t handle the amount of rejection and poverty it took to be an actor, so he had started working at a talent agency. His good looks coupled with a killer business sense had him quickly rising up the ranks. He’d been responsible for a lot of Phoebe’s more interesting and lucrative gigs, whether they were set designs or movie posters, and since he was CallieSue’s agent, it was he who had suggested they work together on CallieSue’s own line of country chic placemats, tablecloths, and other things.
Too bad CallieSue couldn’t see the chic through the forest of tackiness she lived in. But even though CallieSue was Dean’s biggest client, he had fought hard for Phoebe, so hard that Phoebe had to quit before Dean could ruin his own career trying to help hers.
“Phoebs, I saw the article, are you OK?” His voice radiated concern even over the phone. It was early on the West Coast, but she knew Dean rarely slept more than a few hours a night. He was seemingly married to his job, always dealing with clients, crises, and other issues. Phoebe knew he was angling for a big promotion.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Phoebe tried to brush his concern off. He’d been a great friend for her the past few months as Savannah’s decline became apparent, checking in on her, sending over takeout, sending flowers, and even his own housekeeper when Phoebe needed help sorting through Savannah’s stuff. Still, she had come all this way so that the news from Los Angeles wouldn’t bother her, so that she could have time to think, to be herself.
“So are you really out there, in the middle of nowhere? Sure I can’t convince you to come back to the Los Angeles? Tinseltown misses you.”
Phoebe tensed. After Savannah’s death, Dean had told her that he would find a way for her to get her job back, that he could smooth things over with CallieSue, but she had resisted, asking for more time to sort things out. He hadn’t thrown a fit, but it seemed like they had come dangerously close to having a moment, to him telling her how he “really felt” that she had panicked and started talking about her need for a strawberry shake. Emotional honesty averted,