He smiled, a kind of secretive chess player’s smile, and picked up his wine. “I make it a policy never to discuss business until dessert.”
Inclining her head in acquiescence, Norah settled in to play the game of calculated Get To Know You.
“So, if I remember from our last conversation, you have a daughter?”
“Mmm. Tess. She’s twenty-four and an absolute ball-buster. You remind me of her a bit.”
“I’m sure my parents would be perfectly horrified to hear me described that way. They worked so hard to make sure I was polite and politically correct. I, on the other hand, take that as a compliment.”
Gerald’s lips curved as he sipped his Cabernet. “Joe always did worry too much about that crap.”
That set Norah back in her chair. “You know my father?” Did she owe this miraculous job opportunity to her dad pulling strings?
“Knew. We were at Ole Miss together. But he was a senior when I was a freshman, so we weren’t exactly buddy-buddy. I remember him more from some of the campus organizations we were both in. I doubt he remembers me.”
“So you did undergrad at Ole Miss.”
“A couple years. I transferred out to University of Washington and finished there.”
“That’s a big jump.”
“I needed a change.”
“Because of her? The girl you loved from Wishful?” The words were out before she could think better of it. She held up a hand in apology. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business. Forget I asked.”
Gerald shot her an assessing look. “It’s a fair question since I mentioned her to you in the first place. Yes, I transferred because of her.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind my asking.”
He swirled the wine in his glass. “I haven’t talked about this in years.”
Norah noted he said talked, not thought.
“I’m from Memphis originally. Went down to Ole Miss, and sophomore year I met a girl, as you do. Except the girl was already married to her high school sweetheart.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“I chalked it up to bad luck or crap timing that we should be great friends and that’s all. But I was happy to have that instead of nothing, so I kept spending time with her. Nothing happened. We were just friends. At least I assumed that’s all that was on her side.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t. Her husband had joined a fraternity, gotten really into that scene, which wasn’t any more compatible with marriage back then than it is now. She was growing up and he was…acting like a typical unmarried freshman pledge. One night, he got hideously drunk at a party and wouldn’t give her the keys. So she called me to come get her.
“It was really late, and we didn’t think it would look right if I dropped her off b
ack at their apartment. So we just…drove around for hours, talking. We’d always been able to talk to each other, but this was different. More personal. Hopes, dreams, confessions kind of stuff. She admitted she was unhappy in her marriage. And she…said she wished she’d waited for me.”
Norah noted the ripple under the calm surface. “That’s a lot to put on a friend.”
The arrival of their food interrupted the story, and she found herself wishing the waiter away so Gerald would continue.
Once they were alone again, she leaned forward. “So what happened?”
“I don’t think she meant to say it. We were in that kind of dazed, drunk place you get when you’ve been up all night. But she said it, and she was just looking at me with these big hazel eyes, and I just—well, I’m not a saint. I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”
Gerald fell into the thick silence of memory. His Adam’s apple bobbed, his hands tightening on his fork. Eventually, he shook himself. “Anyway, long story short, she decided to leave him. Divorce wasn’t quite as common back then, but it wasn’t unheard of. And she was going to do it. For me. We waited until summer so she’d be able to file the paperwork and get out, have a few months for the dust to settle. I wanted to meet her at the fountain, but she didn’t know how long it might take, and since Wishful’s a small town, she didn’t want anybody to put two and two together. So we were supposed to meet at the Hoka. It was kind of our place.”
“What on earth is the Hoka?”