Page 36 of The Fadeaway

He looks at Ruby again and shakes his head; he is clearly trying to refocus, to come back to the present, to place her. He looks out the window again.

Ruby pats his arm. She waits.

Patty

“I’ve never been a fan of this song,” Patty said with a laugh, looking up at Lyle as he offered her a glass of Prosecco. “It’s just so…” She searched for the word to describe her feelings about “Abracadabra,” but as she was thinking, Burt Ingram stepped up to them and clinked his glass against Patty’s without warning.

“Cheers, Pat,” he said, winking at her. Patty was not a fan of Burt’s, and while he was one of the partners at her firm, he was also one of her least favorite people.

“Patty,” she corrected him, pulling her Prosecco closer to her body as if he might have tainted it by touching his glass to hers.

“Hey, Ingram,” Lyle said, shooting Burt a warning look. “Had a few drinks, have you?”

Burt shook his hips in a ridiculous approximation of a much younger man on a dance floor. He shot Patty a look that was most likely meant to be a come-hither glance, but instead just looked lame and desperate.

“Just a few,” Burt said, chugging his beer from the tall glass in his hand. His cheeks and ears were bright red from the sun, and his wife stood about twenty yards away, watching this whole exchange with a distasteful frown. “But I’m getting warmed up.You staying here for the weekend, Pat?” he asked her, lifting his chin in Patty’s direction as he bit his lip. Patty shuddered.

“I am,” she said, sipping her Prosecco and looking around to see if perhaps Mrs. Ingram might be making her way over to collect her semi-drunk husband.

“Who is staying with your kid?” Burt asked crassly.

Patty could feel the hair on the back of her neck and on both arms stand up. She bristled at the implication that she was a motherbeforeshe was a lawyer enjoying a weekend with her firm at a vineyard just like everyone else. Of course shewasa mother first and foremost; no part of her would have denied that, but it annoyed her to no end when someone insinuated that she needed to find a babysitter in order to do her job the way a man in an equal position would have. The fact that her daughter was fourteen and not four never entered into the discussion—it was always the suggestion that she was leaving her child alone and fleeing that responsibility that bothered her. Did men get asked this same question? Who was staying withBurt’skids?

“My parents have flown down from Seattle to spend a week or two with us, and Ruby is thrilled to have them here. They’re taking her to Disneyland this weekend.”

“So you’re single and ready to mingle?” Burt took a step in her direction and popped a hip like he might bump her with it.

Patty groaned.

“We were actually about to head out on a mini-tour of the vineyard,” Lyle said, offering Patty his elbow, which she took gratefully. “Catch up with you at dinner, Burt?” He said it as a question, but Patty could tell that it was not. She let Lyle lead her away from Burt before she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank god,” Patty said, letting go of Lyle’s arm. He was a full-fledged partner at the firm, but Lyle Westover had grown to be one of her closest friends—both at work, and in life. It was hard to explain and Patty was loathe to do so; any time someonejokingly called Lyle her “work husband” or suggested anything that even smacked of impropriety Patty shut them down firmly. But for her, she did not need to define her dedication to Lyle, nor did she need him to define how he felt about her.

“Let’s check out the grapes,” Lyle said casually, leading the way as he held his wine glass in hand, sipping the rich burgundy liquid as they meandered. “We don’t need to ask for a tour if you don’t want to.”

“It’s actually quite interesting,” Patty said mildly. “I’d love to listen to someone explain how they turn grapes on the vine into something as heavenly as Prosecco.”

Lyle flagged down the man who had offered to give them a tour earlier and they asked him a few questions, listening as he described the growing process, the way they harvested the grapes, and the methods they used to bottle some of the most delicious wines Patty had ever tasted.

At the end of their half hour chat with the vintner, Patty pulled a camera from her purse. “Would you mind taking a picture of us?” she asked the man.

He smiled at them, wiped his hands on the front of his denim overalls, and took the camera. “I’d be happy to,” he said, snapping a few photos of Patty as she smiled up at Lyle. In turn, he looked at her and made jokes. Their laughter came easy with one another, as did their camaraderie.

Patty took the camera back from the vintner and slipped it into her purse again. “Thank you. And thank you for your time—this was fun to learn about.”

Patty and Lyle wandered on, discussing a case they were both working on (“We’ll bill them by the hour for talking about their case on our weekend away,” he said), and chatting about their children amiably. Zoey and Theodore were both young at that point—six and eight, respectively—and Patty always had storiesto tell about what life was like with a daughter who was just starting high school.

“I’m sure I’ll have a million questions for you when the kids get to be that age,” Lyle said, taking the last swallow of his wine and holding his empty glass up in the golden evening sunlight. “You’ll have conquered the teenage years by then.”

“Mmm,” Patty said, smiling noncommittally. Lyle’s wife, Susan, was at home that weekend with Zoey and Theodore, and while Patty had met her several times, the two women weren’t terribly close. There was something untrusting about Susan that always put Patty on the defensive, though Patty knew she posed no threat whatsoever to Susan’s marriage, and she believed in her heart that deep down, Susan knew this too.

In fact, Patty and Lyle had gotten as close as they were by sharing some of their deepest secrets—the kinds of things that only good friends can share. It had started one evening as she took a client out for drinks at the Bel Age Hotel and had run into Lyle there. He was sitting in a dark corner of the bar at a velvet banquette booth, one arm around a much younger man. They were sharing a bottle of champagne, and Lyle’s tie was loosened and hanging around his neck. His full mustache twitched in recognition as he and Patty made eye contact. Lyle had tipped his head and indicated that they should meet out in the hallway.

Standing next to the bank of pay phones that night, Patty listened with mild curiosity as Lyle explained his situation: married to Susan, college sweetheart. Years of infertility followed in quick succession by two children they adored. He’d always known he’d liked men, but it was unacceptable when he came of age—his parents would have disowned him. No college money, no family, no idea what to do. He knew it was wrong to go behind Susan’s back, but they had long ago stopped being intimate, and to his knowledge, all she cared about at that pointwas a comfortable home, money to fund the kids’ sports and ski trips, and a solid future. She had her hobbies, he had his.

Patty had nodded and listened, as any good lawyer knew how to do. There was no point in arguing or cross-examining; Lyle wasn’t her husband, after all, and he was being completely up front with her. At one point, his eyes filled with tears and he begged Patty to forgive him. She knew as she set a calm hand on his shoulder that it was not she he was begging for forgiveness, but everyone in his life: his parents, his children, his wife, his friends, his coworkers.

And because Patty had a heart for such things (after all, her own sister had been wildly in love with her best friend Ellen at one point years before), she whispered the words Lyle wanted to hear: “It’s okay, Lyle. It’s alright to be who you are. No one needs to forgive you for that.” What she couldn’t speak to was his duplicity towards his wife and children, but that was not her business. From that point forward, whatwasher business was being Lyle’s friend. No person in Patty’s life would go unloved because of such a silly and arbitrary thing as who they loved. No way.

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