Inglath Cooper - John Riley's Girl

In the light of day, the panic resumed its day job as logic, and her own answer to the question was that a person could not expect to have everything. She had made work the emphasis in her life, and for the most part, it was a good life.

The phone buzzed. She stepped away from Michael’s attentive hands and picked up the receiver. “Yes, Daphne?”

“There’s a woman on line three who says she went to high school with you. A Lori Morgan Peters? Want me to take a message?”

Olivia blinked. Her lips parted, then pressed together. Lori?

“You still there?”

“Ah, yes. Thanks, Daphne. I’ll take it.” To Michael, she murmured, “Excuse me,” then circumnavigated the desk and sat down in her chair.

He hooked a thumb toward the doorway. “See you in the morning.”

She nodded, exhaling hard. Lori. It had been fifteen years since they’d graduated from high school, since Olivia had left the town where they’d both grown up, without ever saying goodbye. Sheer cowardice nearly made her buzz Daphne back and ask for that message. But an inner voice taunted. Come on, Olivia, be an adult. The past is a lot of miles behind you. She drew in a deep breath and pushed the blinking light on her phone. “Lori?”

“Olivia? I can’t believe I actually got through to you!”

The voice, laced with shock, sent her reeling back a decade and a half, to another place, another life. “Goodness. What a wonderful surprise. How are you?”

“Fine, fine.” Her one-time best friend laughed. “And I don’t have to ask how you are. Obviously, great!”

The assertion carried not an ounce of resentment. But then that was the Lori she remembered. Olivia pictured her as she’d been during their high-school years. Barely five feet tall. Sky-blue eyes. Freckles scattered across her nose. A petite-framed girl with an unerring belief in herself and the possibilities available in the world around her. “Things are pretty good,” she said.

“We keep up with you around here, you know. The town library even has a whole section devoted to your career.”

Olivia knew this, of course. The Lanford County Library had contacted her a number of times, asking if she would be willing to address some of the high-school students interested in journalism, but she had never accepted the invitation. Doing so would have meant going back to Summerville, and after that one last time, it had never again been a consideration.

Olivia gripped the receiver. “Where are you? What are you doing these days?”

“In Summerville. After college, I worked as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company. Then I met the love of my life, moved back and now have four children. Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home.”

Home. By all rights, Summerville wasn’t really home to her. She had no family there anymore. No ties. Other than memories, of course. But while a person could pack her bags and leave a place behind for good, the same could not be said of memories. Memory had tentacles. “Your family. They’re all okay, I hope?”

“I lost my dad a few years ago,” Lori said, her voice softening.

“Oh, Lori.” Olivia’s hand flew to her chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Olivia didn’t miss the catch in her old friend’s voice. She remembered spending nights at Lori’s house, a big white pre–Civil War farmhouse that had been in her family for generations. It had a fireplace in every bedroom, an amazing thing to Olivia who’d never imagined houses having such things. It was the kind of house that always smelled as though there were oatmeal cookies baking in the oven. And she remembered envying the closeness of that family. How they had all so obviously loved one another despite the typical arguments between brothers and sisters, which Lori’s round, cherry-cheeked mother had refereed with good humor. In many ways, it had seemed like heaven on earth to Olivia. So different from her own home.

“Mom’s fine, though,” Lori went on. “And Sally-Anne, you remember my youngest sister, she’s pregnant for the first time, big as a small elephant, and making us all pay for the fact that we said the family needed another grandchild.” An affectionate chuckle followed the assertion, setting off another unwelcome hollow echo inside Olivia.

“No, life’s pretty normal around here. Not too exciting the way your life must be. Interviewing celebrities every day. Sitting on the same couch as that gorgeous Derek Phillips.” She drew gorgeous out to three syllables. “I bet you can’t wait to get out of bed every morning. I know I wouldn’t be able to.”

The awe in Lori’s voice was something Olivia had grown used to hearing in the voices of strangers since she had become a public figure. But hearing it in her old friend’s voice felt off-key.

“So did you get the invitation?” Lori asked.

“Invitation?”

“To our high-school reunion.”

Surprise zinged through Olivia. Reunion. “No. I didn’t.”

“Oh, no,” Lori said, her voice devoid of its former buoyancy. “I was certain it would have gotten there by now. I was just calling to make sure. I sort of got lassoed into organizing the thing.”

Olivia glanced at the stack of mail in the center of her desk—three days worth. “It could be here. I have a bunch of mail I haven’t opened yet.”

“Well, anyway, it’s on the fifth of June. Is there any way you could come? It’d be so great to see you.”

“It would be wonderful to see you, too, but I don’t think I could possibly get away,” Olivia said quickly, not giving herself a chance to consider doing anything else. There had been times, through the years, when the yearning to go back to Summerville had throbbed like an old injury that makes itself known on rainy days. She had not indulged the throbbing, intense as it had become at times. Her old life in Summerville was over.

“I should have called you sooner,” Lori said, disappointment edging the words. “But actually, everyone else thought you’d be too busy to come. With your schedule and everything, I mean. I thought there might be a slight chance.”

Olivia felt somehow small and disloyal for proving Lori wrong and the rest of them right.

“I’m sorry,” she said, even as a little voice screamed in her ear: Don’t be a coward, Olivia! You could go! But logic asserted itself as well, and there was too much old pain there, too many memories better left in place.

“Oh.”

A dozen questions weighted the one-word response. Her friend from long ago would have asked them. Why did you leave? Why haven’t you ever come back? Olivia felt tangible distance between them now, and part of her rebelled. Lori had once been her best friend, and hearing her voice for the first time in so many years stirred up fresh regret for letting something so meaningful slip away.

“I’d really love to see you, Lori. Maybe you could come to D.C. and visit sometime?”

A pause and then, “Well, sure.”

The words sounded empty, and too polite. Not the kind of words you said to someone you’d once saved a seat for on the school bus every day, shared lockers with, written notes back and forth to during Mr. Primrose’s study hall. “Really, let’s plan a weekend sometime soon.”

“I might just take you up on it,” Lori said, her voice brightening a little.

“I hope you will.”

Silence gripped them then. How could awkwardness manage such a stranglehold on two people who had once been so close?

“Well, I know you must be busy, Olivia. It was good to talk to you. If you change your mind, here’s my number.” She reeled it off while Olivia scribbled it on the notepad in front of her, vowing to call and invite Lori for a visit just as soon as things slowed down a bit and ignoring the voice that said they never did. Or she never let them.