Fireside

“It’s a lovely bag,” her mother commented, glancing over.

Kim flashed on the wolf-fur guy in the airport, handing it to her. How had he known it was a Judith Leiber? Was he gay? Judging by the way he’d hit on her, no. “Lloyd gave it to me for Christmas,” she told her mother.

“I bet you could sell it on eBay.” Her mother turned up the car’s heater.

Kim savored the hot air blasting from the vents. “Anyway, sorry I didn’t call first. I wasn’t really thinking clearly.”

“And now? Regrets?” her mother asked gently.

“No. Not yet, anyway. So here I am.”

“For good?”

“For the time being.” Kim knew she was in a state of shock. She had suffered a trauma. She’d been the victim of a very public attack. For all she knew, her breakup could be playing on YouTube right this moment.

People did recover from things like this. She’d lived in L.A. long enough to see people suffer career meltdowns, only to rise again. These things happened. People got over them. She would get over this. But she just couldn’t imagine how.

“This move is permanent, Mom,” she heard herself say, and realized the decision had been made somewhere in the sky over the midwest. Maybe she hadn’t even been fully conscious of making it but now spoken aloud, it sounded like the only good decision she’d made in a long time. “The firm will let me go first thing Monday morning.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been the best publicist on the West Coast, and I’m sure everyone at your firm knows that.”

“Mom. It’s Lloyd Johnson. Of the Lakers. Biggest client who ever walked through the doors of the Will Ketcham Group. It’s their business to give him everything he demands. If he wanted the walls of the office painted plaid, it would be done the next day. Firing me is no bigger deal than changing bottled-water vendors.”

“Wouldn’t they opt to keep you on, just not working with Lloyd?”

“Not a chance. If their most important client wants me gone—and believe me, he does—then I’m gone. I’m a good publicist, but I’m not irreplaceable. Not in their eyes, anyway.” Or Lloyd’s.

“Well. In that case, it’s their loss. They’ve done themselves out of an enormously talented publicist.”

Kim attempted a smile. “Thanks, Mom. I wish everyone in my life was as loyal as you.”

“What about all your things?” her mother asked.

“My stuff’s in storage, remember? I told you about that.” Just before Christmas, she had given up her apartment. “Lloyd and I were staying at the Heritage Arms in Century City while he house hunted. The plan was to move in together. I thought everything would be wonderful. Am I terminally stupid?”

“No. Just a romantic at heart.”

Was she? Romantic? Kim pondered the suggestion. She’d always considered herself a savvy businesswoman. Yet there was some truth in her mother’s statement. Because not quite hidden beneath Kim’s facade was a heart that believed in foolish things, like falling in love and staying that way forever, trusting the secrets of your soul to your best friend and lover. Like planning a future based on faith alone rather than expecting promises and guarantees.

So much for her romantic heart.

“Mom,” she said, “I am so done with athletes.”

“Sweetheart, you’ll never be done with athletes. They’re your passion.”

“Ha,” said Kimberly. “They’re not all alike. But it’s been so long since I’ve had a client who wasn’t a complete ass—er, jerk—”

“You can say asshole, dear.”

For the first time since last night’s debacle, Kim felt the stirrings of a smile. “Mom.”

“Sometimes there’s simply no polite way to put it.”

Kim studied her French manicure. “When I first started out, I loved it. I worked with boys who needed me. Lately all I’ve been doing is concocting lies and spin to cover up for clients who can’t behave. I’ve started to hate what I do. I persuade the media and fans that being good at a sport is a free pass for bad behavior. It wasn’t what I signed up for, and I’m tired of it.”

“Oh, now that’s unfortunate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her mother didn’t answer as she turned onto the street where she lived. King Street was a wide, stately boulevard divided by swaths of tall maple and chestnut trees. Well over a hundred years old, the grand homes had been built by railroad barons, bankers and shipping magnates of a bygone era. Each house was a masterpiece of gilded-age splendor, surrounded by fences of wrought iron or stone. Nowadays, some of them belonged to people who were obsessed with preserving them. Others had fallen into disrepair, and a few—like Fairfield House—had been in the same family for generations.

Penelope navigated down a long, fence-lined lane and steered the car into the driveway, causing the back end to fishtail around the curve.

Kim regarded the house, one of the largest and best-known historic properties in town, with her mouth agape. “Mom?”

“I’ve made some changes around the place,” her mother said.

“I can see that.” It was not the stately house-at-the-end-of-the-lane she remembered from her girlhood.

“Isn’t it wonderful, dear? We finished painting it at the end of summer. I meant to send you pictures, but I haven’t quite figured out how to send them in email.

What do you think?”

There were no words. The actual structure had not changed. The vast grounds, though currently blanketed in record amounts of snow, did not appear much different, either, except that some of the larger shrubberies appeared to have been sculpted into topiary shapes.

The house itself was a different story. The Fairfield House Kim remembered, the one where her grandparents had lived, had been an understated white with neat black trim. Now it was painted with colors not found in nature. With colors not found anywhere except maybe on Barbie’s dream house, or in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Kim blinked, but the image didn’t go away. She couldn’t take her eyes off the garishly painted house. The house, with its rotunda, turrets and gables, stood out like a wedding cake frosted in DayGlo colors. The carriage house and garden gazebo also wore shades of lavender and fuchsia, stark against the white snow.

Maybe it was an undercoat. Sometimes the primer coat came in weird colors, didn’t it? “Sorry, Mom, did you say you’d finished painting it?”

“Yes, finally. It took the Hornets all summer.” Her mother parked under the elaborate porte cochère that arched above the driveway at the side entrance. The gleaming coral trim was offset by lime sherbet, with sky blue on the domed roof of the arch.

“The Hornets painted the house,” Kim echoed.

“Indeed, they did. The players are always in need of work, after all. And a fine job they did, too.”

The Hornets were Avalon’s very own baseball team, a professional club affiliated with the Can-Am League. The entire community had embraced the team when it had arrived a few years before, transforming the sleepy lakeside hamlet into a legitimate baseball town. The fact that the league operated on a tight budget meant that local boosters were vital. Families offered jobs, room and board, and sometimes even moral support to the players.

“Mom, isn’t there some neighborhood covenant against bright colors?”

“Certainly not,” Penelope said. “Or if there is, no one’s ever told me about it.”

Kim entered the house. The dizzying kaleidoscope of colors was not limited to the outside. The walls of the entryway, and the curved stairway sweeping up through the center of the house, were all as crayon bright as the outside.

Her mother hung her coat in the hall closet. “The colors are a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“A bit.”