Page 88 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

“Why wouldn’t he be okay?” I asked. Without waiting for an answer, I spoke again. “And what kind of puerile fool parks a car directly in front of the house they’re staking? Haven’t you ever done this before?”

Maisey had the audacity to laugh as she started up the van and crept it a few houses ahead to avoid suspicion. It was all well and good forherto get caught sitting outside the house of my greatest adversary, but what was I supposed to do if he stepped outside and caught me? Admit to vulgar curiosity? Abouthim?

“What happened between the two of you?” Maisey asked as we sat hunched in our seats, watching as Nigel shuffled across his living room to water a few plants that looked just as incongruous as the palm tree out front. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Of course I mind you asking. It’s none of your business. What kind of question is that?”

Instead of taking offense or even cowering, as the Maisey of last month would have done, she shrugged. “I thought it was worth a try. Greg once told me that he’d rather I come out and ask him about his past instead of trying to poke around in his business and find out that way. I figured you might feel the same, seeing as how you’re related and all.”

“Greg said that?”

Rather than answer me, Maisey pulled open her glove box and pulled out a pair of binoculars. “He looks kind of lonely in there, don’t you think?” She pressed the binoculars to her eyes. “All by himself in that big, ugly house. I bet it has one of those toilets that talk to you. I’ve always wanted to try one of those. It’s like having a friend hold your hand while you pee.”

“Maisey!” If my cane hadn’t been stowed in the back, I’d have used it to rap on her knuckles. “I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work. I don’t care how Nigel feels or who holds his hand while he uses the facilities. What do you mean about Greg? You asked him about what he’s doing here? And he told you?”

“Yep. From something he said at the time, I get the feeling he’d tell you, too, if only you’d muster up the nerve to ask.” She gave an excited leap in her seat. “Aha! Look! He’s pulling out a book… Isn’t that sweet? It’sAnne of Green Gables. He must be getting ready for our book club.”

“Give me those.” I pulled the binoculars out of her hand. Sure enough, a blurred image of Nigel turning the pages of the book filled the lenses. “Ha! He looks even older and more tired when he’s not trying to impress me. I guess he never got around to hiding that portrait of his in the attic.”

“What portrait?” Maisey asked with predictable ignorance. With less predictability and more of the intuition I was starting to realize was no sham, she added, “Oh. You’re making a literary reference again, aren’t you? You know who would probably appreciate those more than me…”

I dropped the binoculars and pointed at her. “Don’t start. I already gave those nurses the blood money you demanded of me.”

“I’m just saying he looks like he wouldn’t mind the company.”

Unable to resist, I peeked through the binoculars again. Nigel sat in the same attitude as before, the book open on his lap, but he wasn’t turning the pages. He wasn’t doing much of anything except staring off into the distance as his shoulders gave light, heaving shakes.

I dropped the binoculars and shoved them back in the glove box before Maisey could ask for another peek. “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s go.”

“Wait. Don’t you want to at least say hello first—”

“I mean it,” I said as I stared straight ahead. “I want to go home now. I’m tired.”

Using my so-called fragility as an excuse was a juvenile trick, but I didn’t regret it as Maisey started up the van and pulled back onto the road without argument. There was no way in Hades I waseverknocking on Nigel’s door, and the last thing I wanted was to drink instant coffee while we chatted about the past, but I wasn’t a total monster.

I could at least give him the privacy he needed to sit in his living room and cry.

30

I had no idea how I got roped into the dinner.

Even in my glittering, ebullient youth, I’d never been much of a hand at dinner parties. There were always too many people invited, as if an empty seat at the table was a sign of personal failure. Or worse, weakness. Every host and hostess I’d ever known went above and beyond to avoid that calamity, which meant they threw together all the wrong people—a cacophony of bad opinions and worse personalities, all of them jumbled together to stave off that horror of all horrors: a conversational lull.

“Francine, I’d like you to meet my dear friend Arthur McLachlan.” Sloane hooked her elbow through mine and practically dragged me across a hideous geometric rug that looked like my worst Cubist nightmare. “He used to be a professor at North Idaho College and is now a part of the book club I was telling you about. Arthur, this is my future mother-in-law.”

The woman offered me her hand as though extending a dead fish. “You’re awfully old.”

“You’re no spring chicken yourself.” I took her dead fish and shook it. “But I wasn’t going to mention it.”

My lapse of good manners was worth the choke of Sloane’s stifled laughter. Good God, was I really going to be subjected to two hours and a pot roast of this? They’d better have me sitting next to Sloane at the very least.

The Francine woman’s nostrils tightened into two pinpricks. “I only meant that you seem a little advanced in years to be hanging around with a bunch of twentysomethings.”

“Mateo is in his thirties,” Sloane said. “And Maisey’s forty-four, but she has an old soul, so it’s really closer to seventy-four.”

A snort escaped me. “Maisey’s soul is no older than a flatworm.”

Sloane shook her head, as unwilling to submit to me in this as she was in everything. “No way. You don’t gain her kind of insight into people without some kind of mystical force at play.”