Finding Isadora Read Free Page A

some admirable qualities, but, from what Richard said, he’d been a rotten father.
    My parents were both radical activists like Gabe DeLuca, but they’d always been loving parents. I was so lucky, compared to my fiancé. I hoped he and his dad would reconcile one day. I hated to see Richard carrying around all that bitterness and resentment.
    We ’d reached the front of the bar line-up. Richard was lost in a world of his own, so I nudged him. “What do you want to drink?”
    “ Oh, sorry.” He reflected a moment as I ordered a glass of white wine, then said, “Scotch on the rocks.”
    “ A power drink?” I teased. Normally he drank wine, or occasionally beer.
    “ Caught me. Got to fit in with the movers and shakers.” We collected our drinks and moved out of the main traffic flow. “God, I hate events like this.”
    “ That makes two of us.” I tucked my arm through his.
    He squeezed my hand. “Thanks for coming, Iz. I feel more confident, knowing you’re here.”
    I winked. “You’re definitely going to owe me.”
    He laughed, then his eyes narrowed as he focused on someone behind me. “There’s Matt Lexington, the CFO of NewReality Corporation. I should say hello. Want to come and be introduced?”
    Want? What I wanted was to go back to the clinic and check on Pussywillow. Second best was surviving the evening without making any major blunders. “Do you need me to?”
    He shook his head. “It’s dinner where I’m counting on you. I don’t want to sit at one of those big tables without a date.”
    “ Then I think I’ll make a quick call to the clinic.”
    Glancing around, he said, “Dinner’s at seven. How about I meet you in the silent auction room just before that?”
    “ Perfect.” I could browse in there without having to chat with strangers. “Want me to bid on anything?”
    “ No. Let’s save the money for our down payment.”
    When we got married, we intended to buy a house. I would live in a real house, mortgage and all, not a rental unit. It would be the first permanent home in my life, and my heart went mushy just thinking about it. “Absolutely,” I agreed. “Okay, sweetheart, you go schmooze.” I gave his arm a parting squeeze.
    In search of a quiet spot, I worked my way through the crowd and into the hallway by the elevators, then pulled my cell phone from my purse and dialed the clinic.
    Martin said Pussywillow had woken enough to drink some water. While we were talking, an elderly couple emerged from an elevator, arguing loudly over who’d be the designated driver.
    “ Ouch,” Martin said. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
    “ I’m at the Hotel Van with Richard. It’s a fundraiser.”
    “ La-di-da. Though it doesn’t sound like a friendly one.”
    I glanced after the unhappy couple. Their clothes and jewelry were likely worth enough to feed an African village for a year. “Be nice,” I said, as much to myself as to Martin. “It’s for the Multicultural Center, a cause I know you support.”
    “ They saved my life.” His voice was soft and deadly serious.
    A substance-abusing dropout from a small reserve in Manitoba, Martin had drifted west and ended up, as so many troubled kids did, in the Downtown Eastside. He’d paid for his drug habit by turning tricks, but had the good luck not to contract HIV.
    His life changed course the night he stumbled into the Multicultural Center and talked to a counselor. Now, at the age of twenty-one, he was drug free and had not only earned his high school equivalency but taken a veterinary assistant program at college. He ’d been accepted into university for the fall, and planned to become a vet himself.
    “ You saved your own life,” I told him. “But I agree, the Center’s an invaluable resource.”
    “ Hope they raise lots of money.”
    “ Me too. The attendees certainly look wealthy enough.”
    “ Any, uh, multicultural folks?” he asked dryly.
    “ A handful.”
    “ In tuxedos?”
    “ Uh-huh. And