Shadow Creek by Joy Fielding Page A

amassing enviable collections of everything from antique tin toys to Depression-era glass dishes. Her house in Westchester was filled to bursting with once-popular china dolls, old cameras, and ancient, cast-iron piggy banks. She also collectedhusbands, having been married and divorced three times and widowed once. Ever since her last “and best” husband had succumbed to cancer three years earlier, Melissa had sworn to wear nothing but black.
    “You only wear black anyway,” James had pointed out.
    Curiously, for a woman who’d never had any children of her own, Melissa was surprisingly maternal, another quality that had no doubt attracted Val, who still ached for the protective embrace of her mother’s arms, for the healing kiss that made everything “all better.”
    James, on the other hand, was the proverbial Peter Pan, the little boy who never grew up. He favored creamy pastels and had never been married. “Even if I weren’t gay, I wouldn’t get married,” he’d insisted many times over the years. James was the same height as Valerie and the same weight as Melissa, or so he claimed. He lived on coffee, fruit, and raw fish. His hair was a shock of carrot-orange spikes, although admittedly there weren’t as many spikes as there used to be. A former dancer who’d been a staple in Broadway musicals ever since he turned eighteen, he’d retired when he broke his ankle at the age of thirty-five. For the last several years, he’d been working for Melissa, scouting for great vintage brooches, bracelets, and necklaces at various antique and collectible shows up and down the east coast.
    Val had met Melissa when she and Evan used her travel agency to book a trip to the Grand Canyon about a dozen years earlier. She’d met James through Melissa, who’d grown up on the same street as James and used to babysit him when he was a child. Val credited the two of them with getting her through the last year with her sanity largely intact.
    “What’s wrong?” James asked as soon as he saw Val’s face.
    “Nothing.”
    “Let me guess,” Melissa said, already walking toward the living room. “Evan’s running a bit late. Oh, my God,” she said, stopping in the doorway, staring at the young woman sitting in the middle of the purple velvet couch. “Tell me that’s not who I think it is.” Her jeweled fingers quickly covered her coral-colored lips.
    “Is that ‘the Slut’?” James whispered, resting his chin on Val’s shoulder in order to muffle the sound of his words.
    “Don’t call her that,” Brianne said, approaching the trio from behind and pushing past them into the living room.
    Val was relieved, both for her daughter’s sudden appearance and the fact she was wearing clothes.
    “Hi, Jen,” Brianne said, joining the young woman on the sofa.
    Jennifer’s relief was so palpable, she looked as if she might burst into tears. “Your dad’s running a little late.”
    “So I gather. Love your shoes.”
    “Thank you. Those jeans are fabulous.”
    Val found her jaw tightening at the easy camaraderie that existed between her daughter and her husband’s fiancée. We used to have that, she thought, feeling Brianne slip even farther from her reach. “These are my friends, Melissa and James,” she said, forcing the words from her mouth. “This is Jennifer, Evan’s …”
    “We know,” James said. “Those are fabulous shoes. Louboutins?”
    “Yes,” Jennifer said. “I’m impressed.”
    “James is a shoe freak.” Brianne laughed. “You’re such a cliché,” she told him, managing to make the barb sound endearing.
    “Right back at you,” James said.
    The phone rang.
    “That’s probably my mother,” Val said, quickly excusing herself from the room.
    “Mom says you have tickets for
Wicked
tomorrow night,” she heard Brianne say on her way to the kitchen. “Haven’t you already seen it, like, thirteen times?”
    “Eighteen,” James was saying as Val picked up the phone. “I’m going for