Judith Bowen - Zoey Phillips

As she recalled the situation, Ryan had suggested in their last year of high school that he and Zoey pretend to be an item so he could make another girl jealous, the class beauty, Adele Martinez. Zoey already secretly adored him so she’d jumped at the chance. Surely any girl of that age would be forgiven for believing that events might turn out differently. She certainly had. In her preferred version, Ryan concluded that, of course, Adele wasn’t the one for him; Zoey Phillips was.

Or, Joey Phillips, as she’d been then. Joey was short for Josephetta Antonia. There were six Phillips girls and every one of them had a feminized male name: Thomasina, Frederica, Roberta, Frances, Josephetta and the baby, Stephanie. Harvey Phillips had clearly wanted a boy, but after six girls, he’d given up.

Stephanie was the only one who got off relatively easy, Zoey thought.

Joey, another boy’s name, was bad enough. Everyone knew exactly what it was short for, the weird Josephetta, which was the name teachers read out for roll call and the name typed out in full on her report card. She’d dumped Joey her first year away from home, part of the calculated distance she wanted to put between who she was now and who she’d been then, at least in the eyes of Stoney Creek. Zoey was glamorous. Mysterious. Different. And so was the second-youngest Phillips girl, Zoey had decided. She’d tried Chloe for a while, but no one could spell or pronounce it, so she’d tossed it for Zoey.

Stoney Creek was the closest she’d come to having a hometown. It was the longest the Phillipses had stayed in one place, first in the run-down house across the tracks and later, as Harvey Phillips’s fortunes improved, in the white-painted clapboard house with the lilac hedge and the big maple trees at the top of the hill. They moved a lot. Zoey remembered leaving one elementary school after only two months—finish school on Friday, gone by Monday. Her father was an inventor and a dreamer, always searching for the perfect place to live, always losing or quitting his job. Luckily, her mother was a nurse and could get work nearly everywhere they went.

There was no money for education but Zoey had made up her mind she was going to college. She put herself through with summer jobs and the money she made with Call-a-Girl Company, which she and Charlotte and Lydia ran year-round, even during the academic year. Charlotte, from an upper-crust Rosedale family, had the contacts and no shortage of good ideas. Lydia, a dreamy girl with a lot of imagination and a soft heart, was an excellent cook and organizer and had taken charge of most of the catering they’d landed. Her goal was to earn enough to travel to Australia. Zoey, who claimed no particular domestic or culinary skills, pitched in wherever help was needed, dealing with the advertising and promotion for their little company as well.

After graduation, Zoey had managed to turn her English major into a successful editing and book packaging career, first in Toronto, then in New York for a couple of years and now back in Toronto. Her time was her own and she made good money now that she worked exclusively with bestselling mystery writer Jamie Chinchilla, whipping the author’s convoluted manuscripts into shape before Chinchilla’s publisher saw them.

As a single, independent woman, she now moved when she wanted to—not when there were too many bills to pay and the most attractive option, according to Harvey Phillips’s modus operandi, was simply to leave town.

Zoey Phillips had—in her estimation—arrived. She’d worked hard to get where she was today. Perhaps it was time to return to Stoney Creek for a visit. She’d changed—had the town?

“THAT’S HIM—over there!”

“Where?” Zoey rolled her eyes and made a little face. Obviously, Elizabeth didn’t expect her to turn right around and stare.

Her friend leaned across the table and wagged her spoon meaningfully in a direction that was behind Zoey and slightly to her left.

“There! By the window. He’s having dinner with his aunt and his brother and—” Elizabeth craned her neck delicately “—and his niece. And maybe someone else, I can’t tell.” It was just past six, but the Gold Dust Café, the restaurant on the main floor of the Fullerton Valley Hotel was packed, mostly with families. People dined early in Stoney Creek, British Columbia. Zoey had been dragged along by her schoolfriend, Elizabeth Nugent, formerly Jonkers, when she could have been ensconced in the privacy and quiet of her room upstairs, starting work on the manuscript she’d brought with her to edit. She had to admit, though, that dinner with the Nugents, a precursor to making an appearance later in the evening at the volunteer firefighters’ dance, had been pleasant so far.

Ryan Donnelly. Zoey held her breath, suddenly seventeen all over again—be still my trembling heart. Was that really him? She artfully dropped her paper napkin, which skittered a surprising distance, and reached to pick it up from the carpet, sliding her eyes to the left as she did. Disappointment washed through her. Rats! That wasn’t him—that was the man she’d seen in the shoemaker’s shop this morning. The man who’d picked up a bridle that was being fixed.

“Who’s that, hon?” Arthur Nugent asked his wife, eyes on the lettuce leaf he’d turned over on his salad plate.

“Ryan Donnelly. Zoey’s high-school heartthrob. Oh, Arthur! Don’t you remember them going out together, back when Ryan was trying to make Adele Martinez jealous? Zoey’s still half in love with him.” Elizabeth giggled. “She told me last night. Isn’t that romantic?”

“Lizzie!” Zoey shushed her friend. “Don’t be silly. I just wondered if he was still in town, that’s all—”

“What’s wo-mantic, Mommy?” five-year-old Tessa asked innocently. Zoey wished Elizabeth had kept her big mouth shut. She loved her dearly, but Elizabeth was an inveterate fixer—anybody’s relationship problems were fodder. Of course, Zoey had no relationship problems, but she had confessed to Elizabeth when she’d arrived in Stoney Creek the day before that she’d love to run into her old high-school crush. The boy who’d seen her as an enthusiastic partner-in-crime, a fellow road warrior, when she would’ve preferred he see her as the love interest.

“Never mind, honey,” Elizabeth soothed her youngest, then inexplicably reversed herself. “Well, guess what? Auntie Zoey likes Lissy’s uncle, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Tessa covered her mouth and grinned. “Are they in love and getting married, like Barnaby’s mom and dad?”

“Not yet!” Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled and Zoey would have elbowed her if she’d been closer. “You eat your salad now, Tess. Yum-yum. It’s full of vitamins and minerals that little girls need to grow up strong and pretty and smart like Zoey who’s come to visit us all the way from Toronto! Isn’t that wonderful, girls? I still can’t believe it!”

Zoey smiled. Sometimes Elizabeth made her feel like she was another member of the Nugent brood, in need of constant management and encouragement.

“But Daddy isn’t eating his,” Becky observed calmly. At six, nearly seven, she was eons more sophisticated than her sister. “I think there’s something in it. Maybe something bad.” She glanced at her sister. “Maybe a worm.”

Tessa dropped her fork with a clatter and gave her mother a pained look, mouth open. “Aaaah…”

Elizabeth’s attention lit on her husband. “Arthur, what are you doing? That’s only radicchio and you’re not setting any kind of example for the girls, playing with your food like that.”

Arthur, a partner in the Nugent family insurance business, was a large, quiet, thoughtful man. Zoey remembered him vaguely from high school. He’d been a year or two ahead of Zoey and Elizabeth and their gang. As she recalled, he’d been large and thoughtful then, too, with untamable stand-up hair. His hair, thinning a little on top, was nicely combed now.