awesome and terrible, with burning eyes and a forked tongue.
Linda screams again.
CHAPTER 1
“What a dream I had last night,” she tells Megan. “I woke up in the morning and my sheets were drenched.”
Linda reaches for a towel to wrap around herself as they step into the sauna. The heat momentarily troubles her, taking her back to the dream.
“I dreamed I was burning to death. It was hideous. Worst dream I’ve ever had in my life.”
“I told you to go slow on those margaritas at the party,” Megan chides. “Birthday or not, sweetie, you ought to know your limit.”
“I only had two,” Linda tells her. She leans back against the cedar wall, letting the dry heat fill her lungs. “I would never drink too much in front of Geoff. I need to prove I’m a fit mother, after all.”
“Were you surprised when he gave you the ring?” Megan grabs her hand. “Let me see it again. What a rock!”
“You bet I was surprised,” Linda says, the diamond sparkling on her ring finger. “What a birthday present, huh? I can’t believe how lucky I am!”
Little Linda Leigh. That’s what everyone’s always called her, and not only because she’s short. Linda has had one of those lives that just lends itself to the term “little.” Nothing very glamorous ever happens to her. Born on a farm in the Midwest, moving to Boston for college, she’d graduated and found a routine job at an insurance company. Until Geoff, she’s never dated anyone spectacular. All the other guys in her life had been average joes, working the same kind of nondescript jobs she has. They haven’t been unattractive, but neither have they really been handsome—which Linda figured was the best she could get, since, after all, she’s hardly Jennifer Aniston herself. Her hair is mousy brown, her face is small, she gets too many freckles if she stays out in the sun too long. Her figure is okay but nothing great, which is why she’s here at the gym, toning her thighs, sweating off those extra pounds. Ever since meeting Geoff she’s been trying to remake herself into something more worthy of him, because Geoff—well, Geoff could be a movie star.
And he practically is, striding across the Coats-worth College campus with all those students following him around. Dr. Geoffrey Manwaring, tall and broad shouldered, with his cleft chin and iron jaw, is the darling of his department, an eminent scholar of ancient history. It seems incongruous in some ways: Geoff is only thirty-seven, yet he’s a leading authority on vanished civilizations and forgotten religions. Linda always smiles when she hears him speak at symposiums, going on about the pharaohs of Egypt or the hanging gardens of Babylon, because he looks so young, younger even than his years, with only a slight frosting of gray at his temples lending him an air of distinguished seniority.
And now he’s asked her to marry him. As soon as his divorce is final, they’ll be wed in his hometown of Sunderland, in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, in a white chapel where all his ancestors have been married, dating back to the seventeenth century. It is a dream come true for Linda. Everything is perfect.
Everything except—
“What’s the kid gonna say?”
Linda withdraws her hand from Megan’s grip. “Oh, I dread telling him. Geoff thinks we ought to do it together. I suppose he’s right. Josh is going to have to get used to me sooner or later.”
“I don’t get it, Linda,” Megan says. “You are a likable girl. You are sweet. You are kind. You have practically gotten down on your knees to beg the brat to like you. You have bought him gifts, you have taken him to the circus, you have done everything you can. You have been wonderful to him!”
“But I’m not his mother.” The heat is getting a bit too intense in the sauna for Linda. She stands, making sure her towel is tucked securely around her. “I’m going to shower, Megan. Can I give you a lift home?”
“No, sweetie, Randy’s meeting me. You going out to Sunderland with Geoff this weekend?”
Linda nods. “Yeah. We thought we’d tell Josh when we’re out in the country. He’s always in a better mood out there.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
She heads out of the sauna and hangs her towel on a hook. She steps into the shower stall, adjusting the water. Her nightmare still troubles her. If she believed in the symbolism of dreams, she’d say it has less to do with too many margaritas than her constant anxiety about Josh. The one glitch in her happiness is that Geoff’s eight-year-old son despises her.
His eight-year-old son—for whom the sun rises and sets! Geoff completely adores the boy, and the feeling is mutual. They’re forever wrestling on the floor or tossing balls in the park, or laughing at this joke or that comedian, or making goo-goo eyes at each other through the rearview mirror in the car. Josh is Geoff’s “best buddy,” and the boy looks at his dad with stars in his eyes.
Except when he sits next to Linda, and then it’s daggers.
Oh, Josh is polite to her if his father is around—but behind Geoff’s back, the boy will stick his tongue out or call her names like “shrimpy” or “munchkin.” He knows she won’t say a word because a scolding from Geoff would only further drive a wedge between Linda and the boy.
“You’ll see,” Josh has told her on more than one occasion. “My mother is going to come back, and my father will forget all about you.”
It’s terribly sad. Josh’s mother left them nearly four years ago. The boy’s memory of her is dim but beatific. He doesn’t remember the scenes Geoff has described for Linda: Gabrielle throwing tantrums, mood-swinging from ice princess to manic monster, threatening to kill Geoff with a kitchen knife. Once he’d come home from class to find her in bed with the paperboy, a sixteen-year-old kid with acne, and it took a great deal of negotiation to keep the boy’s parents from bringing a charge of statutory rape against Gabrielle. Josh doesn’t know about any of that. He just remembers his mother as a beautiful angel, which Linda supposes is a good thing. But that means he’ll forever see Linda as a she-devil intent on taking his mother’s place.
She towels herself dry and gets dressed. She’s meeting Geoff for dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown with two of his colleagues. She’s met them before: Jim and Lucy Oleson, nice enough people, but both are professors and very smart, and around them Linda’s always felt a little self-conscious. They use words like “paradigm” and “egregious” and “deconstructing.” They write books and give lectures on theory for a living. Linda enters claims for auto accidents, and punches a time clock at the end of her workday.
Gabrielle was brilliant, she thinks, looking at herself in the mirror as she applies her lipstick. She would have become a great scholar and author herself. She was a student of Geoff’s when he first came to the college, and he thought she was the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. Absolutely brilliant. She knew as much about ancient Babylon as he did. Sometimes more.
And she was beautiful. Linda has seen the photographs. The ones of her wedding to Geoff are burned into her brain. Blonde and ethereal, Gabrielle was statuesque, elegant, and assured in her white satin wedding dress. Who knew what demons lurked behind that stunning façade?
Josh looks like her, Linda thinks as she hurries out of the gym to her car. More like her than Geoff,
