Broken Pieces: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

life.
    “Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head.
    Jessica pursed her lips and studied me, apparently seeing right through me, a skill she’d perfected back in first grade.
    She leaned across the counter and spoke softly. “Be careful what you don’t wish for.”

    Not quite ready to see Albert again after I left the café, I set out for the place I’d loved my entire life.
    Situated beside the asphalt walking trail that ran along the Delaware, parallel to Front Street, the massive boulder perched above the river like a sentinel charged with keeping an eye on the Pennsylvania side of the river.
    Lookout Rock, the river, and the trail sat just across the street from the opera house.
    My heels sank into the soft ground leading from the path to the rock, and thunder rumbled in the distance as I set my portfolio against the boulder’s base.
    Ironically, the person who’d first brought me to the rock was the very person I’d come here to avoid.
    Albert Jones.
    As soon as I’d been old enough to climb the massive object, he’d introduced me to the spot, and all my life I’d come here to reflect, to plan, to celebrate.
    Even now, as the river rushed past and the breeze picked up, rustling the dense summer foliage, part of me wondered what it might be like to hear Albert ask how my presentation had gone.
    How might it feel to tell him how visibly impressed Byron had seemed by my proposal to upcycle reclaimed wood from the Paris Mill, even though he kept his verbal responses stiff and noncommittal?
    I squeezed my eyes shut. My father had never asked about my work. Not once. Instead, our annual dinner conversations had consisted of little more than a rundown of his latest awards or upcoming show schedule.
    Perhaps we were safer sticking to the superficial.
    Before each Christmas visit, I reinforced my emotional walls. Last night’s pop-in, however, had put a serious crack in my defense.
    My cell phone chirped an incoming call, and I glanced at the screen. Surprise whispered through me; Marguerite hated talking on the phone.
    “Hey,” I said. “Everything all right?”
    “I was going to ask you the same thing. Are you out celebrating? My sources tell me you dazzled the committee.”
    It wasn’t just her words that soothed my nerves. It was her voice—the voice that had been my sounding board, rock, and counsel for as long as I could remember.
    My grandmother had been so shattered by my mother’s death she’d seemed unable to shoulder my grief in addition to her own.
    Marguerite, however, had kept the promise she’d made to her best friend—to be there for me.
    Even now.
    I sighed. “Too soon to celebrate.”
    “You’re not sitting on that big, damp rock contemplating life, are you?” she asked.
    I looked around me, momentarily considering a twist on the truth, but opting for a straight answer instead. “It’s not damp, and I’ll be home soon.”
    “Storm’s coming,” she said. “Don’t sit by that river too long.”
    Even at age thirty, I found the maternal tone of her voice insanely comforting.
    “Plus,” she added, “you have company.”
    I sat up straight. “He’s still there?”
    “Yes, he is, along with a young man in a zippy white sports car.”
    I did my best to slide off the rock gracefully, then gathered up my portfolio.
    “I’m on my way.”
    It was bad enough that Albert was still at the house. I sure as hell wasn’t going to encourage him to have company.

CHAPTER FOUR
    A sleek white Tesla with New York plates sat in front of my house when I arrived back home.
    Even though the car stuck out like a sore thumb along tree-lined Third Street, part of me wondered if the anger I felt was irrational. An even bigger part of me knew I was fully validated in being pissed. After all, I’d given Albert one night. I hadn’t said, “Stay awhile. Have some friends over.”
    Marguerite, who hadn’t missed a thing in her almost sixty years, sat on her front porch, sipping a glass of iced