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“Dinner was a triumph, Luce. Thank you so much.”
“It was all Lydia’s doing. Anyway, dinner schminner,” said Lucy, setting rose-printed coffee cups carefully onto bone-china saucers. “Talk to me. What’s it like? I mean what’s it really like?”
“The job? It’s exciting.” Alexia smiled but there was a wariness in her eyes. She was holding something back.
“But?”
“No buts. It’s a great honor to have been appointed. And a huge challenge, of course.”
“Honey,” said Lucy kindly, “you’re not on Fox News now. You don’t need to give me the party line. Heck, I can’t even vote in Merry Olde England, so you may as well tell me the truth.”
Alexia smiled. “That’s true, I suppose. Well, the job’s terrific. But it’s been stressful. I’ve had one or two unpleasant incidents.”
“Which in English means . . . ?”
“Threats. There was a phone call, a few weeks before I got out here.” Alexia told her about the sinister, distorted voice and the fanatical, fire-and-brimstone cursing. “Something about shedding my blood in the dust. I don’t know.”
“My God,” Lucy gasped. “How terrifying.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But it bothered me that this wacko had my home number.”
“I’ll bet it did,” Lucy said quietly. “Does Teddy know?”
“He knows about that phone call.”
Lucy knew her friend well enough to read between the lines.
“But there’s more. Something that you haven’t told him.”
The understatement made Alexia smile. “There’s so much I haven’t told him, Luce! Believe me, you have no idea. There are things that, if he knew, he’d leave me in an instant.”
“Teddy? Leave you? Never!”
“He would.”
Alexia sank down into the rocking chair in the corner. Here, in this familiar kitchen with her closest friend, so far from London and Westminster and everything that had happened, she felt an overwhelming urge to unburden herself. To have someone, one other person on this earth, know the whole truth about her past. Who she was—who she had been—and what she’d done. To have someone forgive her.
Could Lucy Meyer be that person?
Putting down the coffee cups, Lucy moved to her friend’s side.
“Alexia, you’re shaking, honey. What on earth’s the matter? Whatever it is, you can tell me. It can’t be that bad.”
Can’t it?
“Someone tried to contact me a few weeks ago. Someone from my past.”
“What sort of someone? A boyfriend, you mean?”
“Of sorts, I guess.” Alexia put her head in her hands. “I want to tell you. I do. But I don’t know where to start. There are things you don’t know about me. Things nobody knows. Terrible things.”
Lucy Meyer took this in. She understood instinctively that she shouldn’t push, that she should let Alexia share her secrets in her own time.
“But this man from your past . . . he knew?”
“Yes. He came to see me. He’d been in prison and he has a history of mental problems.”
“My God, Alexia. You have to tell Teddy. This man sounds downright dangerous.”
