Going Topless by Megan McAndrew

Author:Megan McAndrew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER twenty-four

Richard is still gone by dinnertime, which is probably why it’s such a pleasant meal, at least initially. If Lucy is worried that her husband is always running off to get drunk, she doesn’t show it. She and Yves clearly bonded over that pile of fish heads, now rather more appetizingly transformed into a deep orange broth that she brings to the table in a porcelain tureen from the flea market. Yves follows behind her with a platter loaded with poached fish and potatoes and, extravagance of extravagances, two lobsters.

“Langoustes, actually,” Lucy corrects Jim. “An infinitely subtler crustacean….”

“Hey, whatever,” Jim says gamely.

“Shockingly expensive, but you only live once, right? And besides, it sounds like we might have something to celebrate.” She puts a couple pieces of fish into a bowl, covers them with a ladleful of soup, places a rouille -slathered crouton on top, and hands the composition to Odette, who graciously tells her how delicious it looks.

“What are we celebrating?” Jane asks. I realize suddenly that I haven’t seen her all day; in fact, if I were the paranoid type, I would say she was avoiding me. From the paint on her nose, though, it seems she was just off somewhere working.

“The extremely unlikely event that Ross left us anything besides debts,” I say. I explain about the girls finding the box. “Pretty crazy, huh?”

“Why is it crazy?” Jane surprises me by saying. “Why wouldn’t Ross have had a stash hidden away somewhere? It would be just like him try to hoodwink everyone one last time.”

“I’m not questioning that the account existed,” I say patiently. “I’m questioning whether there’s anything in it. I spent a month with a team of estate lawyers and accountants taking the empire apart, remember? I ended up paying for his funeral, in case you forgot.”

“I still think it’s worth looking into,” Jane says. “Maybe you overlooked something.”

I wish she would meet my eye; she’s acting really strange. “Of course we’ll look into it,” I reply, trying to mollify her. “I’m just saying, don’t get your hopes up.”

“What if it were true, though?” Lucy says wistfully, a forkful of lobster halfway to her lips, which are dabbed, I now notice, with the palest of pink glosses. “Just think: We could buy the hameau….”

“Right, with Jojo in it.” I tell them about running into the mayor down at the beach. “You know, sometimes I think he must take us for complete morons. What authority does he have to sell a whole village, anyway?”

“I think there’s a way he can declare it officially abandoned or something,” Lucy says.

“Right, after collecting fifty thousand affidavits and submitting a dossier to the prefectural authorities in Canonica, which would bring us sometime into the next century….”

“Hey, this is great stuff!” Jim says, slurping his soup.

“You must thank Yves,” Lucy says. “He did all the work.”

“Eet’s not true,” Yves says modestly, gazing at her with reverence. She certainly looks beautiful in the glow of the candles, her hair pulled back to reveal the perfect planes of her face.

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