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Sorting through advertisements and prompts from Amazon to review any of the hundreds of products she’d ordered, she came to an unfamiliar address.
Flournsugarlily.
“Huh?”
It was an email sent the previous Friday. She needed to look at the computer more often.
But it didn’t take her long, reading through the first paragraph, to figure out who it was without even looking at the signature.
Dear Lisa, I feel like such a fool. Adam told me that Ryan is Alison’s brother.Brother. He’s also the father of her middle child. Duh. This revelation is responsible for the end of my relationship with Dan. Good old Dan, also the father of one of your many children. One of your children is Ryan’s child, too. Correct?
But then, out of nowhere, I remembered that you are Alison’s sister. And if Ryan is Alison’s brother, then what are the chances that he’s your brother, too? It takes me a while.
I’m trying not to judge you.
A wave, feeling like ice water, flowed over her. Looking up, she saw the water again, the lull of the waves crashing on the shore, a subtle lapping of the rippling waves, then nothing for a few seconds, then the crash of a breaker. The action repeated itself over and over again.
She’d hoped that the conversation regarding Alison and Ryan would diminish with the retreating waves, that Lily would find a new outlet for her frustration. But no. She was clearly obsessed now. The problem was what to do next. Lisa wanted to let Lily have the last word. No reply seemed to be the best course of action. Then she wondered if this was the source of her discontent, not poor Dan. Something in the stratosphere had warned her that trouble was in the making. And here it was.
She deleted it, then went to the trash and deleted it forever. She wanted no record of Lily’s ugly observation. She’d never tell anyone about it, either. Not Alison or Dan.
It was like a purge. Yawning, she closed the lid and placed the computer on the shelf. The bed awaited, that and her brother/husband. She went to their room and carefully opened the door, tiptoeing back to bed. Ryan had turned in bed and was facing her, his beautiful face bathed in the golden moonlight. Reaching under her T-shirt, she slipped her fingers in the waistband of her underpants and pulled them down over her hips. There was a tube of lubricating jelly in her nightstand drawer, and she carefully got that out, squirted some on her finger and stuck it up into her body.
Ryan stirred when she knelt on the bed, crawling over to him. Not wasting any time, she reached for him, familiar with where everything lay, and fondling him, he reacted right away. In that part of sleep right before waking, before he knew what was happening, she reached into his sweatpants and pulled out his erection, climbed on top, sliding over him like a silken glove. He moaned. She moved up slowly, her body sucking on him, enveloping him.
“Is this a dream?” he muttered, grabbing onto her waist.
“No dream,” she whispered. “I wanted you to know how much I love you.”
“This will do it,” he said, moving under her. “This will absolutely do it.”
***
Down a few houses, Sandra was in bed alone, her arm across her forehead, unconscious. In a room above her, Andy Roman sat with his back against the headboard of the bed in her guest room, his computer open, working. He’d slept like a rock from ten until one, and now he was wide awake. He’d make wise use of the time, too, the middle-of-the-night musings often the most productive of his day. The department he headed was making strides on prison reform for the county of New York, and he spent a good deal of his time delegating and overseeing the work of the prosecutors. The job was not nine to five, and over the years he’d been at it, he’d found a way to integrate the hours into his personal life.
But it wasn’t enough for his two ex-wives. That was a story he had yet to reveal, how he’d managed to put himself through college and law school, work for the Office of the Public Defender where he first met Jack Smith, then went on to private practice in criminal defense, and then ran for Manhattan district attorney and won the seat.
During those many years, he’d married twice and had three children. Laying his head back against the headboard, his lack of relationship with his children was one of the biggest regrets of his life. He had worked himself almost to death climbing the ladder to success at the expense of knowing his kids. They loved him, and he tried to interact with at least one of them every day. But during their youth, he rarely saw them. Trips to school for plays and parent-teacher conferences were nonexistent.
Then, just when he thought he might want a second chance at it, he met Ginger, who from the beginning was emphatic about not having children, so much so that she insisted on having a tubal ligation sterilization procedure. He put his desires out of his mind.
With Sandra, her little son was so friendly and nice, and she wanted more children.
The next day after getting less than four hours of sleep, he drove himself in to work. With Bluetooth in place, he sent her a voice message.Do you want children now or at some future date?
Her response, after a smiley face:Yikes! Before coffee, too.It can’t be too far in the future. My clock is ticking. How is that for an answer to make a guy run like the wind?
Smiling as he drove, he said out loud, “It makes me the happiest guy on earth.”
Sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and her phone and the computer, she grinned at his response. For deciding not to rush into anything, they were rushing. She waited until he got into the office to admonish him for texting while driving, not exactly au courant regarding Bluetooth and other hands-free state-of-the-art communication methods.
Brent came in and got on the couch to cuddle with her.
“Do you want breakfast now or wait until Nanny comes?” she asked, kissing the top of his head.
“I want you to make it. I want unicorn toast.” He laughed out loud. “Don’t tell Marcus I eat that stuff.”
Snickering, one morning when he was three, Sandra had conned Brent into eating by telling him that toast with peanut butter and banana was magic food that unicorns ate, and it stuck, a private joke between mother and son.
