THE TRUTH ABOUT HARRY Page 11

  "Well, let me get a look at your colleague." Maureen grabbed the plate and silverware and headed to the dining room table. Lauren's parents' house was set up railroad-car style, with the living room, dining room and kitchen laid out from front to back. The doorways for each room were also set in exactly the same relative position, so in just the right spot, you could look from the living room all the way to the kitchen.

  "Maybe you could offer him a beer to get through the ordeal?" Lauren called out to Maureen's back. Sebastian chose that moment to angle his head around from the couch. He looked at her from beneath slanted brows.

  "Your friend seems more than capable of taking care of himself. Why don't you chop the cucumbers for the salad," Lauren's mother announced from the stove. "They're on the counter by the sink. And do a carrot while you're at it."

  Lauren walked over and pulled a paring knife out of a drawer. "He's just a visitor at the paper—someone I'm working with on a story." She laid a plastic cutting board on the counter.

  Her mother turned her way. "No, take the white one. The yellow one is for chicken. I learned in Good Housekeeping that I should have a separate board for chicken."

  Lauren did as she was told—one did not mess with the sacrosanct advice handed down from the mother of all women's magazines. She washed and rinsed the cucumbers, then began chopping them in the half-inch squares she knew her mother liked. "I know what I'm doing," she said when her mother came over and spied over her shoulder.

  "It's not the chopping that worries me." Her mother glanced furtively over her shoulder before turning back to Lauren. She continued in a rushed whisper. "I heard from Ricky Volpe's mother about the apartment."

  "Mo-om."

  "Shh. I don't want your father to hear. You know how this type of thing upsets him. I just want to say I'm very happy you've temporarily moved into the hotel room with your friend—he is the one you're staying with at the Rittenhouse, right? He seems very levelheaded."

  Lauren tightened her grip on the knife handle and mercilessly diced the next cucumber. "He's a colleague. It's not like I've moved in with him or anything."

  "Really, Lauren." Her mother walked back to the stove. She picked up some pot holders and grabbed the handles of a large pot. "You'd think we were living in the Dark Ages. Gloria Hinkson's daughter has been living for years with that nice man who moved from Carnasie, and Rita's son—you remember Rita? I used to play bridge with her on Wednesday nights." She tipped the pot over the sink and drained the boiling water from the potatoes. "Well, her son is sharing this townhouse in Laurel, Maryland, with an older woman whose divorce hasn't been finalized. From what I understand, the town-house is very nice, with brand new appliances in the kitchen and wall-to-wall carpeting in the bedrooms."

  Lauren felt the beginning of a headache build behind her temples. With the sound of Maureen's footsteps on the linoleum floor, she breathed a sigh of relief. "Is Sebastian still alive?"

  "He's perfectly fine. He and your father are talking about tomatoes," Maureen answered. She approached her pea-spattered son, who gave her a food-in-mouth smile. She wiped his mouth with the edge of his bib. "So, tell me, are you two sleeping together?"

  Lauren nearly sliced off the tips of several fingers and nodded meaningfully toward her mother's back. Alice Jeffries might look like she was concentrating on mashing the potatoes, but Lauren wasn't fooled.

  Maureen sidled over to her and wagged a dishtowel in Lauren's face. "I have one word for you—birth control."

  "That's two words." Lauren started to chop again.

  "No wonder I'm pregnant for the third time."

  Lauren's mother looked up from furiously mashing the potatoes. "That's enough chopping, Lauren. Add them to the salad over there. Then put the bowl on the table along with the salad dressing."

  As long as Lauren could remember, her mother made Thousand Island dressing from Hellmann's mayonnaise, ketchup and sweet pickle relish. The pink gelatinous goo held a special place in her heart. But then, Lauren had a big heart.

  "After that you can come back and get the mashed potatoes and peas and pearl onions. Maureen, ask Carl to come in and carry the pot roast." Alice held her up with her hand. "On the way to the living room, you can bring in the gravy and the rolls. And call in Tabitha when you come back," she called after Maureen.

  "Do I have to?" Maureen asked in a way that seemed to be only partly in jest.

  Then Alice Jeffries turned to little Teddy and performed that ritual relished by grandmothers round the world—she scrunched her nose up behind his ear and breathed in fully. "My beautiful baby boy, you come with your Grammy." And she bent down to slide him out of the high chair before turning to glare at Lauren. "Well, are you just going to stand there?"

  Lauren put the cucumbers in the bowl, grabbed the dressing and followed her mother into the dining room.

  "Alice," Lauren's father said to his wife when she entered the room with her grandson in her arms, "did you know that Sebastian has a farm in central Pennsylvania?"

  "No, I didn't know that, George." Lauren's mother bounced baby Teddy up and down on her hip. "You're a farmer then, too?"

  Sebastian joined the group standing around the table. He'd shed his jacket and tie, and his French cuffs were haphazardly rolled up to his elbows. "I own a farm but I don't get there nearly as often as I'd like," he replied.

  Lauren lowered the salad bowl onto one of the flower-shaped woven trivets that her mother had used since the dawn of time. "When you said you had a place in the country, I just assumed it was a cozy weekend retreat, and that owning a tractor was some kind of manly affection—something to go with a plaid shirt and fly-fishing gear. I mean, I never pictured you actually farming!"

  Alice thrust Teddy into Sebastian's arms. "Why don't you hold the baby while I get the high chair?"

  Sebastian stiffly gripped him by the stomach and bottom. He looked about as comfortable as if he were cradling a large quantity of plastic explosive. "Why not let me get the high chair?" he volunteered.

  "Lauren, you shouldn't question Sebastian that way," Lauren's father chided. "You can tell by talking to him that he's a hands-on person, that he works his farm when he has the chance. Of course, like most people who run their own businesses, he uses help where he needs it. Look at me. I may be at the cleaners every day, but I still have hired many people—loyal people."

  "Pop, loyalty is not the first quality I'd use to describe some of the people you've hired," Lauren interjected. "I seem to recall their weird doings provided steady fodder for my childhood diaries."

  "Loyalty ranks above any personal quirks some of them may have displayed," her father said with the assurance of someone who'd had many years of Jesuit schooling. "Family and friends—what else is more important in life?" George Jeffries held his arms out for his grandson. "Here, let me take the little fellow. He can be a handful if you're not used to him." On cue, baby Teddy started bending both knees like a bullfrog ready to catapult himself across the room.

  Lauren decided she'd had enough of trying to figure out why she agreed with her father about the importance of family and friends when they disagreed about so much else. Instead she directed Sebastian to a chair and grilled him. "So how come the rest of my family knows more about you than I do?"

  "Somehow I didn't think biographical information was what you had in mind last night," he replied in a low voice.

  "Lauren, where're the potatoes and the vegetables?" Alice Jeffries asked, bringing in the high chair.

  Which gave Lauren a good excuse to escape before everyone could see she was blushing.

  "Tabitha, wash your hands," Maureen ordered, and turned as Lauren entered the kitchen. "Look, Carl, your sister's blushing."

  "I am not." Lauren grabbed the bowls of vegetables. "Ouch. Hot, hot." She quickly set them down and grabbed some pot holders.

  Carl hefted the platter of meat. He moved past Lauren. "You are flushed, Lauren. Are you sick or something?"

  Maureen scooted aside
for her daughter to rush to the table. "I'd blush too if I had that 'something.'"

  Lauren pursed her lips and tried to look superior. Not an easy task when she had her hands thrust into oversize oven mitts in the shape of pigs, but she tried nonetheless.

  She pushed her way to the dining room table, where the family had left her an empty seat next to Sebastian—subtlety was never a Jeffries family trait—and set the vegetables on the remaining trivets.

  "Finally," her mother huffed. "Now we can give Sebastian some fine home cooking."

  "Mom, Sebastian is Italian. I'm sure he's used to home cooking," Lauren protested as she pulled out her chair. Sebastian stood and helped her push it closer to the table, an act eagerly noticed under her mother's eagle eye.

  "Actually, growing up I lived more on microwave hot dogs and frozen dinners," he answered.

  "Your mother didn't cook?" Lauren's mother appeared truly dismayed. As someone who measured her love by the amount of butter she put in food, she was truly dismayed, Lauren knew. It was a good thing her family didn't suffer from high cholesterol.

  "My parents divorced not long after we moved to Alabama, and I lived with my father."

  "George, give Sebastian an extra helping of pot roast. And make sure you have some mashed potatoes." Alice pressed the bowl into Sebastian's hands in an effort to make up for years of faulty eating.

  "So you mentioned earlier that you were in art investigation. How does it work exactly?" Carl asked. He passed the baby his teaspoon and let him bang it on the high chair.

  Sebastian took his share of potatoes and passed the bowl to Lauren, who was debating whether she should have some or not if she was going to fit into the pair of jeans that she had planned to wear tomorrow. "I work for an organization that tracks down artwork, whether it was misappropriated during World War II or stolen more recently. We also work a lot with museums to assure legitimate provenance for pieces that they've acquired over the years," he explained.

  "Now that's the kind of thing you should write about—fancy things like art. Think of the high-class people you'd meet," her mother chimed in.

  Lauren thought about Slick Frankie. So much for high-class. "I meet all sorts of interesting people on my beat, too." What the hell, she took a dollop of potatoes.

  Her mother waved her hand. "Not that I know much about art, mind you. My family was more into wallpaper." It was true. The current paisley print on the walls of the dining room was a truly misguided cross between William Morris and Peter Max. The living room boasted an equally dubious choice of gigantic cabbage roses. You didn't want to see the bathroom. Lauren's mother was a serial wallpaperer—every few years, every flat, vertical surface in the house was redone.

  "You know, if you really want to investigate art around here, Lauren should show you Petrucchio's. It's got the whole bay of Naples painted on one wall. Amazing," Maureen said. She motioned to Tabitha to eat her vegetables.

  Lauren put down her fork. "I don't think Sebastian needs to see Countess Street

  ."

  Sebastian took a roll from Maureen's outstretched arm. "Petrucchio's?"

  "It's the local luncheonette," Maureen explained.

  "Where I wined and dined my lovely wife-to-be during our courtship," Carl added, picking up the spoon that baby Teddy had dropped on the floor for the tenth time.

  "More like stuffed me with cheesesteaks," Maureen corrected good-naturedly. "Boy, was I easy."

  Sebastian looked at Lauren sideways. "Maybe I should take you to Petrucchio's?"

  Lauren's headache just kicked up a notch.

  Her mother beamed. "Art. Isn't it wonderful! And to think it brought you to our neighborhood. Now have some more meat, Sebastian."

  * * *

  9

  « ^ »

  By the time they'd finished dinner, the button on Lauren's pants was digging into her waist so much she thought she might be in the process of acquiring a second belly button. Then there was her headache. It had marched across the width of her forehead and now seemed lodged on either side of her jaw.

  Sebastian, on the other hand, appeared to perk up as the meal went on. Or maybe it was just the sugar rush from two pieces of pineapple upside-down cake.

  Now, as she watched him hold Tabitha on his lap while he revved the Mercedes' engine, she began to feel a certain sense of relief that the evening would soon end.

  "He's a good fellow. Sensible," her father said, standing next to her on the sidewalk outside the house.

  Lauren shifted the foil-wrapped dessert leftovers to the other hand. "What's that supposed to mean, Pop?" As if she couldn't guess.

  "Now don't get all riled up. I know you think I'm going to lecture you about getting married, and I'm not saying I don't want to see you with a husband and family, mind you. But despite what you may think, your mother and I are very proud of you, of all you've accomplished with your career. Did you know she keeps clippings of all the articles you've ever written?"

  Lauren nearly squished the pineapple upside-down cake. Nearly. "You're kidding me? That must take up a ridiculous amount of space."

  Her father chuckled. "Why do you think we had to give you all those boxes with your old stuff to take to your new apartment? There was no space in your old room anymore to keep the things."

  Lauren sniffed. "And here I thought Mom was just getting ready for a new wallpapering project before she started on my place."

  Her father rested a hand on her arm. "I know about the break-in." He held her still when she started to say something. "I heard about it from Bruno Cremelli, who plays handball with Ricky Volpe's father. Now listen, I'm not going to tell your mother. You know how this type of thing would upset her. But what I meant about Sebastian—him being sensible and all—will you take his advice in this matter? About if and when it's safe to move back in?"

  For some absolutely ridiculous reason, Lauren felt tears well up in her eyes. Rather than lose it in front of her father—something that hadn't happened since the swim coach in high school told her that she was bumped from the relay team—she concentrated on Tabitha and the wonders of a well-tuned V6 engine.

  "All right, time to wrap up the start of the Daytona 500 here," she called out when she felt more in control. "I promised Phoebe we'd be there an hour ago." Okay, so she'd exaggerated. "As it is, it's going to take us at least twenty minutes to drive to Boathouse Row." Vesper Boat Club was one of several rowing clubs located among the quaint boat-houses that lined the Schuylkill River.

  Sebastian turned off the engine and passed an awestruck Tabitha to her grandfather. He got out of the car. "Far be it for me to disappoint a lovely lady such as Phoebe."

  "You've met Lauren's friend, Phoebe, I take it?" Lauren's father asked. "A real Main Line glamour gal, like Grace Kelly, only more so," he said, referring to the late local golden girl who'd gone on to become Princess Grace of Monaco.

  "She's definitely what we in the South would call a belle of the ball, though myself, I tend to prefer them shorter and more low-key." Sebastian gazed momentarily at Lauren before turning back to her father. "George, it's been a pleasure meeting you." He took his hand out of his pocket and offered a handshake. "Please thank Alice for the wonderful supper. You've got a delightful family."

  George returned the handshake. "Anytime. And if you need your suits cleaned and pressed while you're in town, be sure to bring them by the store. We'll take good care of them, for free."

  Lauren was in shock. Never had she heard her father speak those two words—"for free"—before. It was definitely time to leave, even if it meant bodily prying the adoring Tabitha away from Sebastian's right leg.

  The relief that washed over her when they finally got in the car, and when her family went back in the house, was palpable.

  Sebastian waited for her to put on her seat belt. "I thought that went rather well, don't you think?" He paused. "Lauren, are you hyperventilating, or are you just trying to express how much you yearn for my body?"

  She held
up her hands and panted loudly. "I'll be better in a minute. I just need to recover from our up-close-and-personal encounter with my family."

  He chuckled. "I see what you mean. My calf is still going into spasms where Tabitha gripped it. The kid should be a weight lifter."

  "She adores you, you know." They all do, she said silently.

  He waited a moment before he spoke. "What's really wrong, Lauren?" Sebastian asked softly. He shifted to face her straight on.

  "Nothing." Everything, she thought. She was starting to realize that the rest of her family wasn't alone in their feelings. Which was absurd, absolutely ridiculous—and undeniably true. Now he seemed genuinely concerned, but she couldn't forget the anger he had shown when he'd thought she was deceiving him. She entwined her fingers together on her lap and worried a cuticle with a thumbnail.

  Sebastian rested a hand on hers. "Did Phoebe really invite you to go out tonight?"

  Lauren wondered if he felt the rays of heat pass between his hand to hers. "Yes. Actually she extended the invitation to both of us. It's a soiree to raise money for the preservation of colonial herbal gardens or something else equally historical and Philadelphia society-like." She braved a glance at his face.

  "Maybe we can skip the soiree?" He let go of her hand and guided his fingertips to the back of her neck, gently massaging it.

  One thing for sure—all his earlier hostility seemed a distant memory. "You think?" She closed her eyes. "Oh, that feels sooo good. Promise me you'll tell me if I start to drool."

  Instead he lowered his head and brushed her lips—in desperate need of Chap Stick, she immediately realized and then just as soon forgot—with his. The contact was as light as clichéd gossamer wings, but as penetrating as a hydraulic drill. Lauren felt her insides dissolve and bubble up—and it had nothing to do with an overdose of gravy and mashed potatoes.