CHAPTER FIVE

      “SO, TELL ME AGAIN WHO we’re picking the food up for?” Matt Brown asked as he opened the drinks case at Hoagie Palace. It was a Thursday evening, and the Grantham take-out institution was packed with high school and college students, and Matt, a local kid home for summer vacation after his freshman year at Yale, fit the profile. The smell of hot sauce, fried saturated fat and hormonal imbalance hung in the air.

       “My half sister Mimi and a friend of hers from college,” Press Lodge explained as he held out money to the cashier. “She’s this woman named Lilah Evans—the head of a nonprofit in Africa or something.” As he waited for his change, he spoke to Angie, the woman behind the counter who owned the popular food spot with her husband, Sal. “Hey, Angie, I gotta satisfy the hoagie fix for the returning alums in the family. Otherwise they get ornery.”

       “That’s what we count on,” Angie said with a laugh and passed the coins and bills to Press. “But if anyone gets ornery with you, hon, you send ’em to me. You’re like family.” Angie beamed over her shoulder at a wall of photographs. Press followed her gaze. Front and center was one from Press’s graduation from his prep school in Connecticut.

       He’d invited Angie and Sal, never expecting they’d make the trip. Not only had they come, Sal had handed him an envelope on the side. “If you ever need anything, you know who to call,” Sal had offered with a swift handshake. “We’re proud of you.” Then he’d taken the picture of Angie with her arm around Press, a proud smile on her face, a dopey one on his. In the corner of the photo, slightly out of focus, stood his mother, glancing down at the Rolex on her wrist, probably checking how much time she had before her tennis match. His father—surprise, surprise—was nowhere in sight.

       Press blew a kiss to Angie and led the way through the organized throng, asserting himself with one of his wide shoulders. His father had been disappointed that he hadn’t gone out for football at Grantham—he’d been heavily recruited. Just another disappointment in a long line, Press figured. Anyway, practices interfered with his job as a research assistant in his advisor’s lab, and he wasn’t about to give that up.

       He waited outside of the store for Matt. The two of them had worked together at Apple Farm Country Club last summer, Matt manning the cash register in the pro shop and Press as a teaching pro for kids. Sometimes when they got in early and before the kids’ Swedish and French au pairs swarmed around Press, they’d go to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. Matt was hopeless, but Press was a natural, hitting three hundred yards every time. It didn’t matter much because the point was really just to talk—about school, music, their parents, life. A bond had formed, and the two kept up on Facebook during the school year when Matt started Yale and Press finished up his junior year at Grantham.

       Press watched as Matt stumbled out the front step and onto the sidewalk. He had tried to open his can of Arnold Palmer iced tea and walk at the same time. “Focus, Matt Brown, focus. How many times do I have to tell you,” he ribbed his friend.

       Matt managed to stop next to him without tripping. “I know. I’m pathetic. But before I forget. I gotta ask you. Did you say Lilah Evans?”

      “I THINK YOU LI-IKE HIM,” Mimi taunted Lilah.

       “Oh, please. This isn’t junior high school. And I’m too old to have crushes,” Lilah replied. She let her eyes wander around the kitchen, anywhere but on Mimi. How often did someone use two dishwashers? she wondered.

       “I don’t know what you’re so defensive about. What’s the big deal about being forced to stay close to a man who is drop-dead gorgeous—and as we now have personal proof of—gentle and gifted and loves children?”

       “You don’t understand.”

       “What don’t I understand?” Mimi grabbed for the gin bottle again. “Don’t tell me you still have a thing for Stephen?” She poured two fingers and didn’t bother with the tonic water.

       “No, of course not. Not anymore.” Lilah eased herself onto a stool. The night was growing longer by the minute. “You know, I looked him up on Google when I decided to come back.”

       “As anyone rightly would.” Mimi took a swallow.

       “Seems he’s a partner in a big law firm in Cleveland. They even had a picture up on the website—he’s gotten fat. Which is kind of ironic when you consider how he always used to be on me about my weight.”

       “And he’s married with two children and a third on the way.”

       “You’re kidding? How did you find out?” She realized she experienced a glimmer of jealousy—but not for Stephen. Her breakup, which was once so heart-wrenching, now only held a faint “what if?” No, the pang she felt was for the idea of children. Lilah rested her chin on her hand.

       “Excuse me. I’m a reporter. I’m supposed to get that kind of information.”

       “Well, did you also find out that he’s not coming to Reunions?”

       “That I don’t know. It seems you have your own sources. Speaking of sources—” She glanced down at her watch. “Where is that little brother of mine? I’m beginning to think he didn’t turn out so well after all.” Then she looked back at Lilah. “Hey, no pooping out yet. The night is still young—especially because we still haven’t cleared up this matter.”

       “What matter?” Lilah stifled a yawn.

       “About Justin? You and Justin? C’mon. Let’s wait outside by the pool. We’ll spot Press sooner that way.”

       Lilah took the remnants of her second drink and dutifully followed Mimi. “There is no me and Justin.” Lilah settled into one of the deck chairs around the pool. Tiled dolphins cavorted as in some Roman mosaic. For all she knew, it was a Roman mosaic. She squinted and peered more closely. No, it couldn’t be, could it? “You know, maybe I shouldn’t have had this second drink.”

       Mimi settled into the chaise next to her. She flicked off her sandals and ran her bare feet up and down the cedar slats. “Don’t tell me there’s no you and Justin. I mean, in the face of overwhelming positive attributes, can’t you let go for at least a long weekend? No one is expecting you to find true love, after all. But even you, especially you, you little saint, deserve to fall off your pedestal every once in a while.”

       “You don’t understand,” Lilah protested. “Every time I look at Justin I’m reminded not only what a total creep Stephen was, but I also unfortunately remember how incredibly self-centered I was, too.”

       “Self-centered? That’s the last thing I’d describe you as, Ms. I Don’t Have A Dime To My Name, but go ahead and please take the shirt off my back. Hey, maybe you can use that line on Justin?”

       Lilah placed her drink on the side table between them. “Feel free to laugh.”

       “Who said I was laughing?”

       “Listen, admit in retrospect that Stephen was a creep. But even though he called off the engagement, I really didn’t give him any alternative. Up until then, I had always gone along with his plans. He always seemed so goal-oriented, so focused on our future.”

       “His future, with you in tow,” Mimi cracked. “The future corporate attorney with the good little academic wife standing steadfastly at his side.”

       “Excuse me. It was my idea to go to graduate school at NYU while he was in law school