Lake News by Barbara Delinsky Page B

contingency.”
    â€œThank you,” she said again and, as soon as he withdrew his foot, closed the door.
    Lily went to the window to see if the lawyer would stop and talk to the press on his way out, but one of the horde spotted her first, and suddenly faces and cameras were all looking up. Jolted, she stepped quickly back and stood frozen in the middle of the floor, gazing blindly out across Commonwealth Avenue—until she realized, with horror, that a telephoto lens in a window of one of the buildings there could see her anywhere in her apartment.
    She quickly closed the blinds in the living room, ran, and did the same in the bedroom. That left her in a small dark apartment, with no job, no freedom, no prospects for a speedy return of either, much less her good name. She sat in the armchair, but still she couldn’t concentrate to read. She moved to the piano and let her fingers roam the keys, but they picked out depressing tunes. So she put Beethoven on the CD player—somber perhaps, but appropriate—and she walked from bedroom to living room to bedroom and back, not knowing what to do with herself. She finally ended up at the phone.
    Lifting the receiver, she started to press in her mother’s number, hung up, and tucked her arms to her chest so that she wouldn’t try again—and it wasn’t about money. She didn’t want money, didn’t want to sue, because the process Maxwell Funder described was heinous. Three years of media speculation, of stories twisting the facts of her life—three years of feeling used and exposed. She couldn’t survive that.
    No. She wouldn’t have called Maida for money. She would have liked to call for the comfort of it. Maida was her mother. Lily was feeling the need to bury her head somewhere warm and sympathetic until the storm passed. She was feeling the need for shelter, certainly for a compassionate ear.
    But Maida wouldn’t give either. So Lily called Sara Markowitz instead. Sara was a friend from Juilliard who taught at the New England Conservatory. They met for lunch every few weeks. Sara’s had been one of the messages left on the answering machine.
    She felt instant relief when Sara picked up the phone,all the more so that despite the bad press, Sara was avid in support. “I’ve been so worried. What is this mishegaas? False charges—a total twisting of the truth—it’s way out of control. They’re even calling me, would you believe, asking intimate questions, not taking no for an answer, pushing and pushing. What’s with Terry Sullivan? Where does reporter stop and gossipmonger begin? And Justin Barr? He’s worse! Neither one has a clue about what it means to be a mensch. Did you know either of them before this began?”
    â€œJustin Barr, absolutely not.”
    â€œGood. He’s a hypocritical idiot. He was too ugly to make it on TV with his fat face and beady eyes, so he turned to radio. He just loves to hear himself talk—the Champion of Home and Hearth—but what’s with Sullivan?”
    â€œHe’d been after me to do an interview about my work. I kept refusing him, so maybe he’s annoyed.” It hit her then. “He didn’t want to know about my work. It must have been about the Cardinal all along.” Feeling doubly used, she dragged in a breath. “My life is falling apart, I don’t know why, and I’m stuck in this apartment with nowhere to go.”
    â€œMeet me at Biba—uh, no.”
    Lily knew why Sara caught herself. Biba was one of the restaurants the papers had mentioned as an example of Lily living high off the hog. She and Sara often had salads there, which made it a fun, low-cost treat. But not fun anymore. Not fun ever again.
    Wisely, Sara said, “Stephanie’s in thirty minutes?”
    Stephanie’s was a restaurant on Newbury Street. Lily didn’tknow anyone there. It sounded like heaven. “Thirty