Carla Neggers - Secrets of the Lost Summer

She pretended not to hear Marilyn behind her. The light changed, and she crossed the street at her normal pace, not wanting to look as if she were upset or fleeing from anything.

Marilyn caught up with her on the opposite corner. She hadn’t grabbed her coat and already looked cold. “I thought that was you.” She reached out a hand but didn’t quite touch Olivia. “Are you okay? You ran out so fast—”

“I got a text message from a client,” Olivia said quickly, hating to lie, suspecting she sounded phony. “It’s nice to see you. I have to run, though.” She faked a smile. “Just as well with this weather. Enjoy your lunch.”

“It’s with Roger Bailey, Liv. I should have told you but I didn’t know what to say.”

“He called you?”

Marilyn lowered her hand, and her eyes, their vivid blue enhanced by contact lenses, shifted back toward the restaurant, then focused again on Olivia. “We agreed to have lunch. This was the only place I could think of on short notice.”

It was an evasive answer. Olivia forced herself to nod. “Tell Roger I said hi.”

“I’ll do that. It’s good to see you, Liv. Everything’s going so well for me right now that I just haven’t had time—”

“I understand. I’m glad you’re doing well, Marilyn. I have to go.”

“Call me anytime.”

Olivia didn’t respond as she continued down the street. After half a block, she glanced back, but Marilyn was already out of view, in the restaurant that she knew was Olivia’s personal favorite. Had Marilyn chosen it, risking that her friend might walk in, or just figuring she wouldn’t?

Why had Marilyn chosen the restaurant and not Roger?

Did it even matter?

Olivia shoved her hands into her pockets, wishing now she’d worn gloves. She could see sleet collecting on the sidewalk and car windshields. She turned stiffly off Newbury toward Commonwealth Avenue.

Think about spring wildflowers. Trillium and lady’s slippers, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild geraniums....

She lost her footing in a slick spot, dispelling any image of wildflowers trying to take form. She and Marilyn had developed a pattern in their friendship of focusing on Marilyn—her work, her problems, her accomplishments. Olivia hadn’t felt any great need to talk about herself or break out champagne over her own accomplishments, but it was more than that. She saw that now, if too late.

Intellectually, she knew that her own situation had nothing to do with the turnaround in Marilyn’s career. Every career, Olivia told herself, went through downturns and she would get through whatever was coming at her. She rarely discussed her career with Marilyn. She tended to be more private, and Marilyn was busy, caught up in her newfound success and focused on herself and her own career. She had said repeatedly that she couldn’t allow distractions. It was easy to think she had pulled back from their friendship once Olivia was no longer of use, but Olivia doubted it was that simple.

Until just now. Seeing Marilyn with Roger Bailey had Olivia reeling. Had Marilyn actually targeted a friend’s major client?

The wind eased as Olivia came to Commonwealth, one of her favorite streets in Boston. She waited for the light, then crossed the wide avenue in front of a line of stopped cars, their headlights glowing in the gray, their windshield wipers grinding steadily against the unrelenting rain and sleet. Only the buds on Commonwealth’s dozens of magnolias suggested that spring had, indeed, arrived and was just having a setback.

Olivia smiled to herself. “I can identify.”

She had seldom taken time to celebrate when she was Boston’s hot designer. Now she couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever have another reason to break out the champagne.

Well, she thought, she would just have to make up a reason—like getting parsley, rosemary and dill to grow in pots in her city window. Wasn’t that reason enough to open a bottle of bubbly?

The attempt at boosting her mood failed. She’d just walked into a restaurant and caught her biggest client blowing her off to have lunch with another designer—who happened to be one of her closest friends.

Not happened to be. Marilyn knew about Roger because of her friendship with Olivia.

Marilyn knew that what she was doing was unethical.

If Roger Bailey was in her orbit, who was next?

Olivia couldn’t deny the reality of her situation. It wouldn’t take many more Roger Baileys for her career to spiral into an outright tailspin.

She reminded herself that how she felt about today was for her to decide. Roger was making a business decision. The meaning she gave it was her choice. She was a professional, right? A positive person, right?

A dog walker, a graduate student who lived in her building, breezed past her with five tongue-wagging dogs of various sizes and breeds. He smiled in greeting but didn’t pause as he and the dogs barreled toward Commonwealth, all of them looking unperturbed by the weather.

Olivia laughed as she watched them retreat.

Nothing like a quintet of happy dogs to lift the spirits. Her family had always had golden retrievers back in Knights Bridge.

Her father had warned her about Marilyn when he’d met her on one of his rare visits to Boston. “She’s using you, Liv,” he’d said, cutting right to the chase.

That was Randy Frost. He denied he was cynical, instead insisting he had a realistic view of human nature. Olivia hadn’t listened. She was the one who knew Marilyn. Marilyn was driven and ambitious, but those weren’t offenses in their world.

When Olivia reached her apartment, she shed her coat and scarf and left them in a heap by the door and walked in her stocking feet to her galley kitchen. She had pulled wool socks on over her black tights, but no one else could see them. She had wanted her lunch with Roger Bailey to go well. She had worked on fresh concepts and was ready to listen, get his thoughts on what he was looking for.

Instead, their lunch hadn’t happened at all.

No, she amended. It had happened with Marilyn.

Olivia opened her refrigerator. She didn’t have a bottle of champagne chilling, or anything she wanted to eat, either.

She wasn’t hungry, anyway, she thought, shutting the refrigerator again. Her herbs looked cold on the windowsill. She raked one hand through her hair, damp from the sleet and rain. How could she go back to work and tell Jacqui Ackerman what had just happened?

She heard her iPhone ding and went back to the door and unearthed her handbag. She pulled her iPhone out of the outer pocket and glanced at the screen, hoping for a minor distraction—the latest from J.Crew or L.L.Bean—but, her day being what it was, she saw it was an email from Peter Martin, a digital marketing specialist she had dated last summer. He’d taken a job in Seattle in September, and that was that. He and Olivia had never been that serious, but the thought of relocating to the West Coast had seemed as out of the realm of possibility as her signing up to be an astronaut.

She couldn’t help but read his email.

Can you send me Marilyn’s phone number and email? I have a client I’d like her to talk to.

Olivia started to respond, then realized she was out of her mind and deleted the email. Feeling faintly as if she’d done something wrong, she shoved the phone back in her bag. She dreaded going back to her office. She’d have to tell Jacqui what was going on. Olivia reached into the closet for a dry scarf. Last fall, when she and Marilyn were still regularly laughing and bitching over wine and takeout, plotting Marilyn’s career revival, had her friend been envious, tapping Olivia for her contacts, expertise, insights and energy but secretly hating her for her success? Had Marilyn always planned to dump her as a friend once her own career took off?