“What is it, Dad?” Lily asked.
“I’m taking your mother to Paris to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. If she’ll agree, that is.”
Alicia’s eyes popped wide and her pulse quickened. “Eliot, are you serious? You’re not just teasing me?”
“No, baby. I’m dead serious. I know how upset you were that the meeting had been scheduled on our special day. So, if I can’t get out of going to Europe, we might as well turn a boring old business trip into a romantic getaway.”
She hadn’t accompanied him on a business trip in eons. Tillerson Brenner had multiple European offices: Paris, Brussels, London, and Frankfurt. Because the firm represented large, multi-national companies, strategic meetings between U.S.-based attorneys and their international counterparts were not unusual.
“Yes, of course I’m game. April in Paris. What a wonderful surprise.”
He winked seductively at her, and then turning to his youngest daughter, he said, “So what do you think, Lily? Does this trip get your stamp of approval?”
Lily snickered, but Alicia saw that her daughter’s lips had curled into a half-smile.
“I’ll be in meetings during the first couple of days. You can go shopping, visit the museums and sightsee,” he said to Alicia. “The rest of the time, we’ll have to ourselves. There may be one business dinner I’ll have to attend, but—”
His phone vibrated, halting the conversation. He picked it up and looked at the screen. A panicked expression flittered across his face; then it was gone in a flash, as if it never happened at all. It was fleeting, the span of a breath, but Alicia had caught it. Something about this call had distressed him. He squared his shoulders, then casually placed the phone face down on the table.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked.
“It’s work. I’ll deal with it later.” His voice sounded anxious, a sharper tone that edged up a notch in volume.
After dinner, Eliot helped her clear the table and load the dishwasher while the girls took off for their rooms: Lily to text her friends and talk to Jeff for hours, and Marston to her novel-in-progress.
Turning to Alicia, Eliot said, “Now, what would you like to do for the rest of the evening, Mrs. Gray? I’m all yours.”
“What? You’ve no work tonight? Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” she teased. However, the phone call from earlier lingered in her mind. If it was just work, why did he hide the screen? Why did he panic?
“Never mind that,” he said, drawing her back to the moment. “I’ve got more important things to attend to.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately, leaving no question what he had in mind.
CHAPTER 3
The next day, Alicia backed out of the garage onto the picturesque, tree-lined street. She barely noticed the brilliant morning sunshine—neighbors walking their dogs or those on their daily run.
She had tossed and turned all night, hardly sleeping. All kinds of crazy scenarios about the mysterious phone call during dinner had flooded her brain. She’d mentioned it, casually, to Eliot as they were getting ready for bed last night.
He’d brushed it off with a, “There you go again, blowing things out of proportion, baby. It was nothing. Just work.”
But she’d seen how the call had rattled him over dinner. Was it really about work, or was it something else?
She forced her brain to shift gears to concentrate on the road as she drove through their neighborhood on her way to the city. They’d moved to the affluent town of Weston, Massachusetts, when Eliot made partner four years ago. With luxurious homes boasting thousands of square feet of living space, Olympic-sized swimming pools, tennis courts, and lush manicured lawns, the suburb west of Boston was home to successful CEOs, lawyers, hedge-fund managers, and anyone who could afford the median home price of a million plus.
The relocation had been at Eliot’s insistence. When he and Alicia were still only dating, she’d refused to let him visit her, ashamed of her tiny, run-down apartment in a rough Boston neighborhood. Right after the wedding, she’d moved into his upscale condo in Brighton, in the northwest corner of the city. She had spent many afternoons patronizing the coffee shops or taking leisurely walks in the surrounding parks. Just before Marston was born, however, they’d moved to the town of Westboro where Alicia would have been content to live and raise their family.
But it wasn’t enough for Eliot. He wanted his family to have a dream home, surrounded by beauty and serenity, the antithesis of her old neighborhood. So as soon as his first partner paycheck came in, he’d bought them a six-thousand-square-foot home that included three floors for living and entertaining, with top-of-the-line everything and wired for smart technology. She was proud of the house she had meticulously decorated and turned into a warm, welcoming home, despite its size.
After battling morning traffic, Alicia pulled into the parking lot of Howell House. She volunteered three times a week at the free clinic that provided obstetric and gynecologic care to young women from underprivileged backgrounds. It was set up by Dr. Jack Witherspoon, a successful and well-respected gynecologist who also ran a private practice in Needham.
The clinic in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston was a lifeline for her, an escape from her guilt about the affluent lifestyle she lived with her family and the idea she didn’t deserve it, when so many who had grown up like her were suffering. She knew the women who walked through those doors every day, many of them with conditions that had steadily deteriorated. Who had time to worry about Pelvic Inflammatory Disease or endometriosis when there were more important matters at stake, like access to food and shelter?
But her volunteer work wasn’t the only reason she needed to be at Howell House this morning. She wanted to ask Jack about the possibility of
