Table for five (36 page)

“Because you’ve never wanted to know the truth,” Lily blurted out, surprising all three of them with her candor.

“Why on earth would you think that?” her mother asked.

“You want to think I’m fine, and Violet’s fine, that everything is peachy and always has been in this family.”

Her parents exchanged a mystified look. “That’s not so,” her father said, and her mother added, “We’ve always dealt realistically with whatever problems come our way.”

“Then why did we never deal with Evan?” Lily asked. There. She’d said it. She’d dared to mention the elephant in the corner of the room, the one they all knew was there but no one talked about. This time, she wasn’t going to let them change the subject.

“There’s no ‘dealing’ to be done,” her mother said. “You never get over a loss like that.”

“And you let it ruin your marriage and make a mess of your kids,” Lily pointed out.

“I can’t imagine why you’d think that,” her father said.

“We’ve been married thirty-five years, and you and your sister are doing fine.”

Lily pressed her sweaty palms on the table, as though to brace herself. “I can’t speak for you and Mom and I can’t speak for Vi. But I’m not fine. I’m not. I can’t even tell the man I love that I love him.”

“How is this our fault?” Her father took a handkerchief from his pocket and polished his glasses.

“It’s not, but I’ve always felt responsible for Evan’s death.” Lily heard herself whisper the words, yet she couldn’t believe her own ears. “Why do you suppose that is?”

The room became a vacuum of shocked silence. Her father started to speak, but her mother reached across the table and touched his hand to stop him. “Terence, let me tell her. She’s right, you know. We were never happy after Evan died. We just…were. But Lily, I never blamed you. How can you think that? I blamed myself. You, I could forgive. Myself, never. And there’s no one meaner than a mother who can’t forgive herself.” As she spoke, she kept hold of her husband’s hand. Then Lily, with tears in her eyes, put her own over both of theirs.

“L
ily? I’m afraid I’m going to forget my mom.” Charlie stood in her underwear, holding the peignoir she had slept in every night since the accident. With a tragic expression on her face, she lifted the garment, and Lily could see that it was unraveling at the seams, the lace insets full of gaping holes.

Lily took it from her and set it aside, then sat down on the bed and gathered Charlie into her lap.

“Me, too,” said Ashley, clambering aboard.

Lily breathed in their scent and felt their warm bodies relax against hers. How did I live so long without this? she wondered. How will I go on without it? She took a deep breath and pushed aside the thought. Whatever her differences with Sean, they would not change her devotion to Crystal’s children. She had arrived this morning to find that he and Cameron had already left for the tournament. Mrs. Foster was watching the girls.

Charlie rubbed the worn, satiny fabric between her thumb and first finger. “It’s all coming apart, and when it falls apart, I’ll forget her.”

Lily took a Barbie hand mirror from the nightstand. “Sweetie, that’s impossible. Look here. What do you see?”

“My face.”

“And whose face does it remind you of?”

“It’s just my face.”

“And your mother’s face.” Lily was startled that she saw it, too, an echo of her best friend in Charlie. “You have her eyes and her smile, and every day you’ll grow more like her. Most of all, you have her in your heart. All the love she and your dad gave you is there, and it’s only going to grow. It’s yours to keep forever and ever.”

Ashley babbled something and grasped the mirror with both hands.

Charlie slumped against Lily. “I’d rather have my mom. And my dad.”

“I know, honey. We all would.” Lily rested her chin on her head.

Charlie stood up and, with a curiously adult solemnity, folded the nightgown carefully and put it in a bottom drawer. Her movements had the gravity of ritual, and she shut the drawer with a decisive push. “Maybe I’ll sleep in something else,” she said. “Uncle Sean gave me an
American Chopper
T-shirt.”

“I have a great idea,” Lily said. “How about I take you to the golf tournament.”

“Uncle Sean said we have to stay with Mrs. Foster.”

After last night, he’d assumed Lily wouldn’t show up to watch him play. Which only meant he still didn’t know her. Sure, she’d sent him packing and he’d willingly walked away, but the visit from her parents had convinced her that love was worth any fight.

“Finish getting dressed,” she told Charlie. “I’ll tell Mrs. Foster she can go home for the day.”

Playing the game was different without Lily and the girls watching. Sean noticed that the moment he hit his first drive, though he tried not to let their absence affect his performance. The fact was, they were everything to him—his audience, his purpose. Knowing they were watching, he was able to see each shot as clear and clean as the morning sky.

Without them, it was just a game. One he happened to be good at, but still just a way to spend the day and see how things turned out.

Cameron studied his lie in the fairway. It was a perfectly good lie, just inside the crook of a dog leg, giving him a decent shot at the green. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sean said. “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

“
Duh.
I just watched you hit.”

“And I landed where I need to be.”

“Because you’re good and so is your luck, but you’d better start playing your game.”

Sean stared at him as they walked together toward the ball. “You sound just like your father.”

Cameron grinned a little and straightened his shoulders. “Yeah?” When they reached the ball, he dug in his pocket and took out the Indian head penny, Sean’s old good-luck charm. “I was thinking you might need this. Just in case.”

Sean nodded and accepted the token. Lord knew, Cameron wanted him to succeed, so he would try to forget his troubles with Lily. He felt terrible about the way they’d left things. Maybe he shouldn’t have lashed out at her. It was fear, not anger, that had driven him—fear of losing Ashley. If he wasn’t her blood relative, he had no claim on her at all.

That made Greg Duncan even harder to forget. They were
cordial and professional, but their conversation the night before ratcheted up the tension between them.

After leaving Lily’s house, Sean had driven around for a long time, thinking about what she’d said.
You can’t fix this with a lie or another deception.
Fighting every instinct, he’d gone to Greg Duncan’s and the two of them had a long and difficult talk.

This morning, Sean had told Cameron about the deal he’d worked out with Duncan. That was what kept him going through the game today, Sean realized—the look on Cameron’s face when the weight of knowing about Ashley passed into someone else’s hands.

“All that’s left is to finish the tournament, then,” Cameron had said.

When Sean looked at Cameron now, he could see how much his nephew had matured over the summer. No longer a raging boy, he still carried a burden of grief that would always be a part of him, but now he bore it as a man.

“What?” Cameron asked.

“What do you mean, what?”

“You’re looking at me funny. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Sean. Then he lowered his voice and told the truth. “I’m proud of you.”

Cameron’s reaction made Sean wonder why he hadn’t said so sooner. “Yeah, same here,” said his nephew.

Though Sean held the lead, Duncan had won the previous hole, giving him honors to hit first at number eighteen. It was a challenging, four-hundred-yard par four and the pressure was on Duncan, who needed an eagle—a nearly impossible two under par—to win.

Duncan’s drive flew three hundred twenty yards and landed dead center in the fairway.

For the first time during this tournament, Sean’s stomach
knotted. This was a bad time for an attack of nerves. He squinted at the hole, measuring it, remembering all the ways he’d played it successfully in the past. He wished Lily and the girls were here. Hell, he wished Derek was here. Derek was the champion, not Sean. It was stupid to pretend he could fill his brother’s shoes.

He knew he was in trouble the minute the grooved iron face made contact with the ball. Within a heartbeat, he saw the shot go bad, a deadly snap hook that flew out of bounds and landed in the rough.

“An instant two-stroke penalty,” the commentator murmured in a stage whisper.

Duncan pressed his advantage, his next shot sending the ball just inches from the cup. The spectators buzzed and shifted in a wave, their emotions vacillating from one player to the other.

In the rough, Sean addressed the ball. Cameron didn’t say a word, but Sean could feel the tension emanating from him. Sean was seized by doubts. What in God’s name was he doing, and who the hell did he think he was? Derek Holloway?

He lowered the club to the coarse grass next to the ball. He saw the rough grass bend, and the ball moved—slightly, imperceptibly—and nudged the tip of the iron. It was a tiny touch, like a fleeting kiss. But a touch nonetheless.

It was over, then. The rules were clear. He had to call a penalty on himself.

No one saw. Not even Cameron had noticed. If Sean said nothing, if he hit out of the rough and got back in the game, no one would be the wiser.

His hand began its determined assent to signal the marshals.

“Uncle Sean,” whispered Cameron,
“please.”

Sean realized then that the boy had seen the ball move, too. That was always the case in golf, as in life, it seemed. No error
went undetected. If this was Derek’s call, he’d keep it to himself, because Derek always did what he had to do in order to win. But that was Derek’s game, Sean reflected. Not his. He looked his nephew straight in the eye and raised his hand. Cameron looked as though he wanted to cry, but at the same time, a grudging admiration shone on his face.

The spectators erupted when he called the penalty on himself. Even Duncan looked stunned. Sean felt weirdly calm now. He stood to lose the tournament by one stroke.

Then he saw something in the gallery—a flash of white with giant colored polka dots. He stood stock-still and then laughed aloud. “Better late than never, girls,” he said, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him. Their jackets and hats stood out in the crowd. “Better late than never.”

Cameron was grinning, too. “I knew they’d come.”

“Sure you did,” said Sean. “Now, step aside. I need to get this onto the green.”

To his credit, Cameron didn’t look dubious in the least. Sean felt a new surge of energy. Just knowing Lily had come, even after their bitter words the previous night, filled him with confidence. He stepped up to the ball again.

It was a miracle shot, one of those that would be replayed and talked about for years to come. His stroke launched the ball up out of the rough, over the water hazard and onto the high lip of the green before rolling down the slope…and into the cup.

Excitement roared through the crowd. Sean and Cameron headed to the green, veering toward the ropes to pass by Lily and the girls.

Lily kept her eyes on Sean. “You could still win,” she said. “He hasn’t hit in yet.”

He looked at Cameron and then at his girls, felt their love lifting him up, and he wondered if life offered anything bet
ter than this. Somehow, he doubted it. “Doesn’t matter,” he told her, speaking over the noise of the crowd. “I’ve already won.”

Over the summer, Lily had learned to like the taste of champagne nearly as much as she’d liked toasting the end of a tournament with Sean Maguire. She had learned that in golf, victories were few and fleeting, and there was no shame in finishing second. Today, though, she murmured “No, thank you” to the waiters in the clubhouse as she wove her way through the crowd, looking for him. At the post-tournament rush of press questions, he’d hurried through his responses to incredulous sports reporters, who simply could not understand why he’d given away a major tournament to a complete unknown.

“I didn’t give him a thing,” Sean assured everyone crowding around him. “He fought hard and got exactly what he deserves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen…”

Lily watched him abandon her. She had swallowed her pride to come here, but maybe that wasn’t enough for him. With an effort, she kept a gracious smile on her face and greeted people in the reception room. There were her parents and Violet, uncertainly circling the caterer’s table.

Her mother touched her shoulder. It wasn’t quite a hug, but close. After the things she’d said last night, Lily understood her better. She glanced over her shoulder, but Sean had left the room. “Come and say hi to Crystal’s kids,” she added. Cameron had both his sisters with him, one holding each hand. Sometimes their adoration embarrassed their brother, but today he looked perfectly content. Lily could see the reason—Becky Pilchuk, who had undoubtedly watched his every move in the tournament. She looked wonderful, fit and blond from a summer of working outside. There was a sweetness in the way she and Cameron treated each other, though Lily rec
ognized Becky’s caution. It made her want to yell at the girl:
Don’t hold back. You’re only cheating yourself. Quit worrying about what might happen and go for it.

She spotted Greg Duncan talking on a cell phone in the parking lot and hurried to his side. “Excuse me,” she murmured, edging through the foyer of the clubhouse. She didn’t know what she was going to say to him. He’d had an affair with her best friend, had unknowingly fathered a child with Crystal and still managed to date a variety of women—including Lily. “Greg,” she called out.

He wore a victor’s smile when he put the phone away, but his expression changed when he saw her. “Hey, Lily.”

“Congratulations on your win.” Now what? she wondered.

“Thanks,” he said. “Listen, Lily, I—”

“Mr. Duncan,” someone called, rushing over with a microphone. “Tell us how you feel about your win. What’s next for you?” A number of others flocked around him.

Lily stepped back, knowing better than to try to compete with aggressive reporters. Yet a hundred questions burned inside her, questions that were nothing like those from the sports reporters. Did you and Crystal love each other? Did you make her happy?

When he replied, Greg seemed to be addressing her. “Looks like I’m leaving Comfort,” he said.

Lily caught her breath.
Leaving?

“…Corliss agreed to represent me, and I’ll be competing in Q School through the fall and winter. If everything goes all right, you’ll see me ranked in the PGA next year.”

She fell back and let him bask in the attention.
Leaving.
More questions crowded into her mind. How can you be leaving now? What about the child you made? Does that matter at all to you? Now she knew for certain that Greg Duncan had to be told the truth.

When she turned to head back to the clubhouse, she nearly ran right into Cameron. “Where are the girls?” she asked him, not even attempting to hide her worry.

“With Becky,” he said. “They’re fine.”

“And your uncle?”

Cameron gestured behind him. In the distance, workers were breaking down the bleachers and ropes, loading them into trucks. A lone figure, silhouetted against the sunset, stood at the edge of the last fairway.

As she stood there, torn by indecision, Cameron said, “Coach Duncan knows. My uncle told him last night.”

She caught her breath, struggled to find her voice. Disbelief and then elation stole the words from her for a moment. So he had done it after all. Despite what they’d said last night—or perhaps because of it—Sean had told Greg the truth, and Greg had still elected to leave. She didn’t know why Sean’s wisdom about human nature always seemed to surprise her, but it did.

She took Cameron’s hand, needing to touch him when she finally spoke. “Are you all right?”

With a curiously adult dignity, he gently removed his hand from hers. “So long as Ashley’s with us, we’ll all be fine.”