Club Storyville by Riley Lashea Page A

forgotten she was there at all. “I’ll make sure he comes in as soon as he gets here,” I told her.
    “He’d better,” Nan replied.
    “Are you having dinner with us?” The question, tossed over my shoulder, came out of nowhere, and I didn’t know what I was doing asking it. No one had mentioned Ariel’s presence, not even Scott, and I didn’t have the authority to offer such an invitation without going through a tribunal. In a moment of impulse, I had simply seized power, as if I was the master of the house and my word could be made law.
    When Ariel said nothing, I knew she thought I wasn’t talking to her, that I was simply reaffirming Nan’s place at the dinner table. “Ariel?” I turned back, and the ruthless sunlight turned her near golden. “Are you having dinner with us?”
    “No,” she shook her head. “This is your family.”
    “Scott is bringing a friend,” I felt stung by her answer. “I’m sure Mama won’t mind.”
    Well aware of how Mama felt about her, and about her presence in our home, Ariel could only laugh, and I knew, if I asked a hundred different ways, she would say no a hundred different times.
    “Of course, she’s coming to dinner,” Nan came to my aid, and it wasn’t so much her words that were jolting, but the strength with which she declared them. “She’s had to leave her own life to stay at the bedside of an old lady for months. The least we can do is give her a good meal.”
    Though my word had attempted to masquerade as it only moments before, even Ariel recognized Nan’s word truly was the law of the house, so she did her best to look delighted as she turned from the window. “Well then, I guess I am coming.”
    “Good,” I said, a thrill going through me when I knew I should have been worried. “I’ll let Mama know.”
    Turning a bright smile on Nan as I turned to go, for getting the answer I wanted out of Ariel, even if it shouldn’t have been the answer I wanted, I was certain I heard Ariel’s troubled sigh clear across the room.
    A ll afternoon spent in the kitchen with Mama, my ears were perked for the sound of Scott’s arrival. The instant I heard the familiar crackle of gravel that always brought Daddy home from work, I rushed from mixing up the coleslaw into the evening sun, which glinted off the hood of an unknown car as it came to a stop in the drive.
    Whipping Scott from the passenger’s seat before he could get his feet beneath him, I latched on with all my might, so glad to have him home, that he hadn’t abandoned me, even if it felt like he was about to abandon me to go fight Nazis, with no guarantee which he would come back, a hero or a corpse.
    “Did you miss me?” Scott sounded nothing but amused by my enthusiastic greeting.
    “You know I did,” I clung more tightly to him.
    “I’ve only been gone three months,” he returned, and it was hard to believe.
    In those months, so much had happened. I had changed so much. When he left, I thought it was Scott who would be different when he came back, but I was the one who wasn’t the same person.
    “Three too many,” I mumbled into his Army shirt, knowing I’d given myself away when Scott pushed me back.
    “You okay, Lizzie?” he questioned, his concerned eyes scanning mine, and I knew if there was any person I could trust not to let them send me to the asylum, anyone who would understand what it was I felt for Ariel, it was Scott, who had his own crush on her, but the shutting of the driver’s door reminded me we weren’t alone.
    Glancing up as the sandy-haired man a few years older, and few inches taller, than Scott came around the front of the car, I tried to find my composure, to be a proper lady in the stranger’s presence.
    “Lizzie, this is my friend Jackson,” Scott introduced us.
    “Hello there,” Jackson held his hand out to me.
    “Hello.” I quickly shook it, and slipped my hand free again.
    “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Jackson smiled broadly, and I