Janice Carter - Summer Of Joanna

“There is something,” he said, glancing quickly away when he’d caught her attention.

She watched him clench and unclench his hands around the steering wheel. Finally he murmured, “The thing is, Joanna and I hadn’t really been living as, well, as man and wife—if you get my drift—for several months. And as hard as I try, I can’t pinpoint a reason for it. She was incredibly involved with her work, but that was nothing new. I had my own business to run, too. I think it all started when I decided to run for Congress. She was supportive, of course, but part of her seemed negative about the whole thing.” He shrugged, helpless. “Maybe the thought of all the limelight—”

“Joanna loved the limelight!” Kate blurted. “At least, I’m sure she did. She often sent me press clippings of herself.”

Kate could see her house reflected in his sunglasses. She wished she could see his eyes, to read what he was feeling.

“That she did,” he agreed. “But on her terms. She knew how to manipulate the media, as many celebrities do. Inside, she was an intensely private person.”

It wasn’t the picture of Joanna that Kate had in her memory, but she could see how it fit with other facts. There’d only been a single card every year, even though Joanna had spent most of the nineteen years in the same city as Kate. And the few references to a personal life in those cards had been mainly a repetition of what Kate had already gathered from the media. The week with Joanna at Camp Limberlost had revealed more about the woman than the following two decades. The impact of that realization struck Kate with physical pain. Because now it was all too late. Tears edged her eyes and she averted her face. She wiped the corners of her eyes with her index finger.

“Kate?”

When she turned his way, it was her own drawn face she was seeing now in his sunglasses.

“Give me a call about the property as soon as possible. Don’t leave it too late. Summer’s prime showing season for lake properties. And, uh, whatever you decide, I hope we can see each other again. Soon.”

There was no mistaking the suggestion. Kate was speechless. The man had just buried his wife. Her friend.

As if sensing his indiscretion, he quickly added, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Simply that I knew very few of Joanna’s colleagues, but I do know that you must have been very special to her. Otherwise she wouldn’t have included you in her will.” He paused and lowered his voice. “It would be nice to get together again and just talk. Do you know what I mean?”

Kate nodded. “Yes, of course Mr….uh, Lance. And I will call you or Mr. Collier as soon as possible. Thanks again for lunch and the ride home.” She slid out the door, closed it and waited by the curb as he drove off. When the red car zipped around the corner of her street, she turned toward her house. Matt Sinclair was leaning against the brick planter box at the foot of the steps.

HE’D BEEN FEEDING a parking meter a few yards away when Lance Marchant’s car screeched to a halt in front of Kate’s place. So he waited at the meter, watching the two of them chatting until Kate got out. Matt knew the surge in his blood pressure was from a long antipathy for Marchant, but the cozy sight rankled even more. When the red Porsche sped off, he strolled over to greet Kate.

She was in the same dress she’d worn to Joanna’s funeral, and her face looked just as red as it had that day, too. The heat or the thrill of Marchant’s company? He’d pegged her for an unassuming schoolteacher. Now he wasn’t so sure. Her chin-length hair fanned up and away from her face, whipped into a froth of knots by the car ride. As she marched toward him, he saw that, although the expression in her pinched face was most definitely schoolteacherish, her manner was no longer unassuming. For a moment he had a frightening flashback to his prep-school days, standing before his headmaster.

“You’ve been following me!” Her voice peaked in anger.

Matt forced back a smile. “Actually, I was here before you. Likewise for this morning at the elevator.” He waited a beat. “Maybe it’s the other way around.”

The lame attempt at humor failed. She hadn’t registered a single word, but came right up to him to repeat her accusation. So close that he sniffed the residue of wine and garlic on her breath. The sudden image of her and Marchant laughing over lunch chilled him.

He raised his palms in a surrendering motion. “Whoa! Doesn’t the word coincidence mean anything to you?”

“Coincidence was the meeting this morning. This is no coincidence. How did you get my address?”

“Phone book?” he countered.

She narrowed her eyes but calmed down, taking a step backward. “What is it you want, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Make it Matt, please. Could we go somewhere for a cold drink and a talk?”

“I’ve been eating and drinking for more than an hour, and frankly, I don’t see how I could possibly have anything to say to you.”

She started to move past him but he placed his hand on her arm. Looking down at the hand and then up at his face, Kate said, “You have an unpleasant habit of doing that and I’d like you to remove your hand this instant.”

Matt’s hand flew off her arm as if she’d taken a ruler to it. He tried again. “Look, after seeing you this morning I realized there were a lot of questions you must have about Joanna and, well, the things I said about her the other day.”

“Go on,” she said.

The stare made him think she must be a good teacher. Probably never had to raise her voice. Just fix those eyes—what color were they, anyway?—on an unruly kid and order would prevail.

“There’s a coffee place around the corner. Why don’t we go there? Not for long. I’ll leave whenever you tell me.”

She frowned as she considered the invitation, then nodded curtly and began walking toward the corner. He had to lope to keep up with her, in spite of the difference in their heights and leg length. She only came up to his shoulder but had no trouble keeping enough distance between them to make him feel like a pup on a leash.

The blast of frigid air as they stepped into the coffee house was nothing to the cool appraisal she gave him as he ordered iced cappuccino for them both. Her face could have been chiseled from Siena marble, he thought. Not a hint of emotion.

She got right to the point. “You wanted to tell me something about Joanna.”

He tipped an invisible hat to her. She was good. Making it look like the wanting and telling were both on his side when he could see, even under that neutral expression, that she wanted—no, needed—to hear whatever he had to say. He thought for a moment, knowing how important it was to choose his words carefully.

“My father and Joanna got married when I was seventeen, as I think I told you the other day. My mother had died just six months earlier.” He paused to stare down at the table for a long moment before raising his face back to her. “I was in Europe at some fancy boarding school my parents decided I needed at that point in my life.”

The waitress arrived with their cold drinks. When she moved away, he went on. “I got a telephone call about their marriage just the day before,” he explained. “They were in Las Vegas. It was all a last-minute thing. That’s what my father claimed, anyway.”

The bitterness in his voice just slipped out. He swallowed some of the frosty cappuccino, reminding himself to relax. It was a long time ago.

“To make a long story short, they got married and were on the verge of divorcing two years later when my father died of a heart attack. The last time I saw Joanna was at Dad’s funeral. I was nineteen and hardly knew her. We exchanged a few words and that was it.”