meal was excellent and served by a caterer, so Elizabeth didn’t have to leave the table. The mousse was followed by a lemon sorbet, a salad and then by duck a` l’orange and vegetables.
After the salad plates were cleared, the doors to the kitchen opened and the caterer and his assistant rolled in a flaming chocolate bombe covered in meringue and whipped cream. The flames came not from brandy that had been set on fire, but from a little garden of birthday candles on top.
Ben started singing “Happy Birthday” and everyone else joined in except Elizabeth, who sat at the head of the table laughing and clapping her hands.
A birthday party? Ben had landed her at a birthday party without bothering to tell her that’s what it was? Annabelle felt her face turn purple with chagrin. What would she do if the dessert was followed by the opening of presents? She hadn’t brought a single thing. She gave Ben a look that would curdle milk, but he only grinned back as though he hadn’t a clue why she was upset.
“Oh, what fun! It won’t explode, will it?” Elizabeth stood, sucked in a deep breath and blew out all the candles while everyone laughed and applauded. “Whew! Thank the Lord you didn’t put the whole number of my age on top. We’d have set the house on fire.”
Annabelle noticed that when Elizabeth sat down Phil Mainwaring covered her hand with his, and they smiled at each other.
“Speech!” shouted Gene what’s-his-name, who had drunk, and was still drinking, quantities of the excellent red wine. Annabelle thought he was more than a little tight. From the dark look his wife threw him, she wasn’t the only person who thought so.
“No speeches. I am merely glad to be a year older and surrounded by friends and family.” She grinned at Ben. “The only thing that would make things perfect is for Ben to make me a grandmother before I am in my dotage.”
“Hear, hear!” Mainwaring raised his glass.
At that moment a clock somewhere chimed a single note for the quarter hour, and Professor Gene knocked over his full wineglass on the white lace tablecloth.
“Gene, you idiot!” his wife snapped.
Annabelle watched the dark red river flow across the table straight toward her.
The room seemed to go dark. The wine became thick, bright blood reaching out to stain her hands.
If it reached her she’d drown.
Vaguely she registered activity—the caterer rushing in from the kitchen, noise, people trying to apologize and act calm and smooth out the awkward social situation. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blood that rolled toward her like a sea.
“No!” She stood so fast her chair toppled onto the floor. She backed away with her hands in front of her to stop that terrible tide. She had to get away from it, had to run, had to hide where it couldn’t reach her, couldn’t drown her.
She had no memory of reaching the backyard or flying across it. Her sandaled feet clattering on the stairway to her apartment brought her to her senses.
Annabelle opened the door and nearly fell into the living room.
She pulled off her sandals with hands that were still shaking, then kicked the shoes all the way into the corner. Suddenly she felt terribly cold.
That’s when she heard the thud of footsteps up the stairs and Ben’s voice calling her. “Annabelle!” Then louder, “Damnation, Annabelle, answer me!” He shoved the door open so hard it bounced off the wall with a thwack that made her jump.
She stood, hunched, her back to him.
He took her by her arms and turned her to face him. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What was that all about? Are you all right?”
“I warned you, Ben, I really did.” Her belly began to flutter as she fought to keep from crying. “I’m so sorry.” She gazed up into his face. “Don’t look at me like that. I really am sorry.”
In an instant he looked merely stunned and confused. “It’s okay. Come on back.”
“No!” She wrenched away from him and hugged her body as though she was shivering.
She glanced up to see Ben’s face over her shoulder as he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. She had a terrible desire to giggle. She’d seen him with that kind of look in high school, when the football team was down twenty points and it was up to Ben Jackson to save the day.
“Annabelle,” he said in a tone he must use to redress recalcitrant witnesses. “You’ve seen plenty of drunks before, and everybody spills the occasional glass of wine. It’s no big deal. Gene is devastated. He keeps staring around and asking what he said to upset you.”
“Oh, poor Gene. It’s not his fault.”
He held out his hand. “Please come back with me and tell him that. You’d relieve his mind.”
“No! I couldn’t.”
“Listen,” he said reasonably, as though he were trying to persuade a frightened puppy out from under a chair, “these people are my friends. They want to be your friends. Come back, and I promise you nobody will make an issue of it. Say you got a cramp in your leg, or the salmon mousse disagreed with you. They’ll be all over you with sympathy.”
“But it wasn’t that, Ben.”
“Then what was it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said in a very small voice. “Nobody would.”
“Try me.”
She shook her head.
“For Pete’s sake, Annabelle.”
That was too much. “I have just embarrassed the heck out of myself in front of a bunch of people I barely know, plus my employer, and I’m not going to go back and make another fool of myself.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off and stepped close to him. “And another thing. Didn’t it occur to you to mention to me in passing that this was a birthday party for your mother?”
“Huh?”
“Well, didn’t it?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal. Not like we were giving presents. It’s just another Thursday.”
“It is not. It is a birthday party, and there I am singing ‘Happy Birthday’ with a stupid grin on my face and trying to act as though I knew all along, and then that drunken buffoon spilled all that red wine, and…” At the memory of the wine on the lace tablecloth, her eyes closed, and she swayed.
“Annabelle?” She felt Ben’s hands pulling her against his chest, his strong arms encircling her, holding her close against him. “Belle?”
She could feel the dry heaves as she gulped convulsively. No tears. There were never any tears, just this gulping and hiccuping while her throat and eyes burned. Other people cried. What was so wrong with her that she couldn’t? Was that another
