The Last Time I Saw Paris Read Free Page A

she had been the last to marry and when she did, she had surprised them. Vannie had married her college English professor, a small, discreet balding man who wore tweed jackets and glasses and who, she said, loved her for her intellect rather than her body. The Girlfriends said they hoped she meant
as well as
her body, but the truth was, beautiful Vannie was the demure one, the lady, in pearls and a cashmere sweater, pleated skirt and loafers. Vannie had been a radiant bride as she walked down the aisle with her three best friends trailing her in perfumed wafts of crackling taffeta and tuberoses. It had turned out to be a solid marriage, though, sadly, Vannie had been unable to have children. Instead, she and her husband had adopted two Vietnamese babies, who were now approaching college age and on whom they doted. She still looked like Grace Kelly.
    Delia was dark-haired and olive-skinned with flashing brown eyes and an Italian temperament inherited from her Sicilian mother. “I’m the only foreigner in Masonville, California,” she had complained as a girl, but she was always laughing. Nothing kept Delia down, not even the breast cancer scare that, two years earlier, had left her bald and wounded and in terrible pain, sustained only by the strength and compassion of her friends and her large extended family. Delia was in remission now, with no signs of the “big monster,” as she called it mockingly. But with her new short hair, she was living like a new woman, savoring every moment.
    Lara had been the shy one, the introvert. The one who felt things too deeply, the collector of stray kittens and damaged birds. The others said Lara had so many wounds to her heart when she was a teenager, it was a wonder she didn’t expire right there and then.
    â€œLove” was something Lara was always searching for, and with her soft, pretty looks—smudgy amber eyes under winging Audrey Hepburn brows, flowing Pre-Raphaelite dark, curly hair—and shy manner, she’d had boys in love with her all the time. But Lara had always loved the one she could not have, the one who loved another. Until, at age twenty, she had met and married Bill Lewis.
    Now, she stared around at her dearest friends. She hadn’t meant to tell, but somehow, she just blurted it out. “I think Bill is having an affair.”
    Three pairs of eyes rounded in horror.
    â€œOh
. . .
my
. . .
God,”
Susie whispered.
    â€œIt can’t be true.” Delia shook her head in disbelief.
    â€œNot
Bill,”
Vannie said firmly.
    â€œIt’s Melissa Kenney,” Lara said. “The new pediatrician at St. Mark’s.”
    Delia had met her. Her own husband was an orthopedic surgeon at the same hospital. Melissa Kenney was blond and cute. Not only that, somehow, Melissa’s lipstick was always in place at the end of a long day and her white doctor’s coat fitted her like a glove and never seemed to crease. “What makes you think it’s true, Lar? Has someone said something?”
    Lara lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “How does any woman know? All those long unexplained hours away, those late-night ‘emergencies.’ Bill’s restlessness, always pacing the bedroom floor glancing at his watch, staring out the window as though he couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. Looking at me and not even
seeing
me anymore …”
    â€œHoney, all guys get like that at times.” Vannie patted Lara’s hand reassuringly. “After all, you’ve been married for twenty-five years. Practically since you were kids.”
    â€œBesides, Bill didn’t forget your birthday,” Delia added. “And that’s the
first
thing guys having affairs forget.”
    Lara touched the necklace, remembering how Bill had handed it to her as a sort of afterthought. It felt cold under her fingers. “Perhaps it’s a farewell gift,” she said doubtfully, “like