Immediate Family Read Free

didn’t have a spouse, or tennis elbow from whipping out snapshots of kids to show off.
    She felt like a crasher at her own college reunion.
    She deposited her empty champagne flute on a passing tray and helped herself to another mimosa, sinking down on the wrought-iron bench by the koi pond. Surveying the grounds, with its well-tended lawn and trees, where her former classmates milled about, chatting with each other and nibbling on canapés, she thought: Who are these people? Even the radicals who’d tilted at windmills alongside her at the Princetonian in their torn fatigues and Doc Marten boots had morphed into lawyers and bankers and hedge-fund managers, all married and with kids. Kids, who to hear them tell it, were the cutest, most gifted children on the planet.
    Where had she been all those years? Franny wondered. Okay, so she’d been pursuing her career. Albeit not one with a high six-figure salary—unless you were Mort Janklow or Binky Urban, being a literary agent was more about cachet than cash—though there was always the hope she’d discover the next J. K. Rowling. But where was the husband who she’d naively assumed, back when she was graduating, would be standing beside her today? The photos of children to fill up the empty plastic sleeves in her wallet?
    Was it some failure on her part?
    True, she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous like Emerson; but she wasn’t chopped liver, either. “Earthy” was the word most commonly used to describe her, with her profusion of curly dark hair and a body that, while not exactly Playboy centerfold material, manufacturers of under-wire bras and stretch jeans salivated over. Nor was she all that picky. A guy didn’t have to have movie star looks or be at the top of his profession. He didn’t even have to be Jewish—her mother, may she rest in peace, would be none the wiser. He just had to be smart and kind and good in bed…and to want kids as much as she did.
    Just then, she spotted a rangy figure jogging toward her across the emerald expanse of lawn, where it sloped up from the roadway toward the knoll on which the Hartleys’ residence—as in Pamela Hartley, née Bendix, who was hosting this event along with her husband—nestled amid the sheltering arms of venerable old elms. She’d have known it was Jay from half a mile away, with his loose-limbed grace and swoosh of wheat-colored hair that flopped over his forehead as he ran. He had on a pair of jeans worn to snow at the knees and his navy blazer that had to be at least ten years old. Which meant that without even trying, he fit right in with the old-money crowd, many of whom were similarly attired; at the same time, reminding her that she was over dressed, the only woman here in Prada heels.
    He spotted Franny and waved, breaking into a wide grin, oblivious to the female heads turning toward him—part of Jay’s charm was that he never seemed to notice the effect he had on women. “Sorry. You wouldn’t believe the traffic on the turnpike,” he apologized breathlessly when he’d caught up to her. She gave him a stern look, and he confessed, with a shrug. “Okay, I got a late start. Viv was feeling a little under the weather.” She’d needed him to pick up an herbal something or other at the health food store, he explained.
    Franny didn’t doubt it. Since she’d become pregnant, Vivienne had become obsessed with health. She consulted her nutritionist daily and was an authority on homeopathic remedies. If she had so much as a sniffle or a twinge, she was on the phone with her doctor. Jay hadn’t known a moment’s peace since the pink line had appeared on the EPT stick.
    “What she wants to know,” he went on, “is how I can be so calm about this baby.”
    Franny scooted over to make room for him on the bench, hooking an arm through his. “Easy,” she said, feeling a pinprick of envy, as she always did whenever the subject of his wife’s pregnancy came up. “It’s like when a building’s on fire,