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“I love that market,” I told her. I’d walked the aisles earlier that day, noting the high prices and organic, non-GMO labels. “They have the best produce.”
Renata’s voice softened. “He’s a really great guy, but he’s going through a tough divorce.” She looked back at me, a gleam in her eye. “Maybe you should meet him.”
I shook my head. “I’m not ready for anything like that,” I told her. “It’s too soon.”
Renata waved away my words. “Who says anything has to happen right now? Just meet him.”
“Let me at least get a drink first.”
Renata directed me toward the bar, where a uniformed bartender was serving various types of wine and beer. “I’m going to play around with the seating arrangements,” she told me.
With a glass of white wine in hand, I hugged the perimeter of the room, taking small sips. Approaches needed to be flawless, striking just the right note. I went through the steps in my mind again and tried to imagine Celia among these people. Laughing at inside jokes, making plans to meet for lunch or for a tennis game at the club. I wondered what she was doing tonight while all her old friends gathered to celebrate an overpriced pair of chairs and a couch. How many of them had checked in on her, or thought about what Phillip was doing to her? Did any of them think it was unfair? Did they worry about her, or had she fallen off their radar, only set to power and influence?
“Dinner is served,” Renata called from the other side of the room. “Please find your seats.” She looked at me from across the room and gave me a tiny wink.
***
The table felt both formal and intimate, with centerpieces of flowers that looked as if they’d been cut from her garden and arranged in low crystal vases. Next to me, Phillip took his seat and shook out his napkin, placing it in his lap. “Renata tells me you’re a decorator and a life coach?” he said, holding out his hand. “That’s a combination I haven’t heard before. Phillip Montgomery.”
“Melody Wilde,” I said, shaking it.
We each picked up our forks and began to eat our salads as conversations around us ebbed and flowed, bouncing from one topic to the next. Finally, he asked, “So, Melody, what brings you to town?”
I set down my fork and took a sip of wine, as if considering how much I wanted to tell him. “That could either be a long answer or a short one.”
He tilted his head and said, “Why don’t you start with the short one?”
I fed him the line about my mother, about how she’d always wanted to come home. “I’d just ended my marriage. It was becoming clear for various reasons that it wouldn’t be a good idea to stay in the same town as my ex-husband, and Reading seemed as good a place as any to start over.”
“Now the long version.”
A server took my nearly empty salad plate away and replaced it with a bowl of tomato bisque soup. I picked up my spoon, thinking. Finally, I said, “The long version is that my ex-husband wasn’t very happy with the financial terms of our divorce. He felt I owed him more than what he got. And so, instead of living out this next phase of my life with him constantly accusing me of taking what was rightfully his, I decided to start over somewhere else.” I smiled and tasted my soup. “I guess the long version is also pretty short.”
Phillip had been eating while I talked, but now he turned to me and said, “Sometimes, when a relationship ends, it’s best for all involved if one party moves somewhere else.”
“Tell me about yourself,” I said. “Have you lived here long?”
“My whole life. I went to college at Penn, then moved back home. Got married, started my business, had kids.” He looked down at his nearly empty bowl of soup and said, “I, too, am going through a fairly contentious divorce.”
I placed my hand on his arm, just a light touch, for just a moment, and said, “I’m so sorry.”
From across the table, Renata caught the gesture and raised her eyebrows.
“It was long overdue,” he said. “But she’s having a hard time with it and making things difficult.”
I pumped the brakes. “Let’s change the subject to something a little happier,” I suggested. “What do you do for fun around here?”
Phillip pushed his bowl aside and said, “The usual. Dinners with friends, poker games with the guys, fishing trips, golf at the club.”
“I dated a golfer in college,” I told him. “I used to be pretty good.”
Actually, it was a golf pro in Boise, and at the end of that relationship I had $43,000 and the large diamond earrings I now wore in my ears, but that was just a detail.
Phillip turned to me, intrigued. “We should play a round.”
“I’d love that,” I said.
The soup course was finished, and we started in on our salmon and asparagus, lightly seasoned with garlic butter and lemon.
