Lost by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online Page B

call your father for me?”
    “Why?”
    “Find out if Julia’s having dinner over there.”
    “Why don’t you call?”
    “I don’t want to,” Cindy admitted.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’m asking you to call.”
    Heather groaned. “What kind of answer is that?”
    “Heather, please.…”
    “I’ll call when the show is over.”
    “When is that?”
    “Another fifteen minutes.”
    “We connected on an intellectual level,”
the bimbo was telling the camera.
    “Then you’ll call your dad?”
    “Julia’s fine, you know. She told you she wasn’t coming to the fitting. I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”
    “I’m not worried.” Then, “You don’t think she could have gotten lost, do you?”
    “Lost?” Heather demanded in her aunt’s voice.
    The last time Julia disappeared, Cindy remembered, she was thirteen years old. Cindy was still reeling from her father’s sudden death from a heart attack two months earlier, Tom was away on a “business trip” with his latest paramour, and Heather was singing a solo with her school choir that night. Julia was supposed to be home in time to accompany her mother to the concert, but by seven o’clock, she still wasn’t back. Cindy spentthe next hour calling all Julia’s friends, checking with neighbors, driving up and down the rain-soaked streets. She’d tried reaching Tom in Montreal, but he wasn’t at his hotel. Finally, at nine o’clock, distraught and unsure what to do next, she’d driven to the school to pick up Heather, only to find a defiant Julia comforting her sister. “I told you I’d meet you in the auditorium,” Julia chastised her mother. “Don’t you listen?”
    Had Julia told her of her plans this morning? Cindy wondered now, throwing her clothes on the bed and walking into the bathroom. Was this mix-up all her fault? Had she not been listening?
    “Look at me,” she moaned. “I look awful.”
    “You don’t look awful,” Heather called from the bedroom.
    “I’m short.”
    “Five six isn’t short.”
    “My hair’s a mess.” Cindy pulled at her loose brown curls.
    “Your hair is not a mess.” Heather appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
    “Wrong?”
    “Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be whining about her appearance and you the one reassuring me with quaint, motherly platitudes?”
    Cindy smiled. Heather was right. When had their roles suddenly reversed?
    “You’re probably just nervous about your date.”
    “It’s not a date,” Cindy corrected. “And I’m not nervous.” She turned on the tap, began rigorously scrubbing her face.
    “Shouldn’t use soap,” her daughter advised, stillingher mother’s hand and reaching into the medicine cabinet for a jar of moisturizing cleanser. “I mean, you buy all this stuff. Why don’t you use it?”
    “It’s too much work. I can’t be bothered.”
    “Try this,” Heather instructed. “Then this.” She pulled an assortment of bottles off the shelf of the crowded cabinet and spread them across the cherrywood counter. “Then I’ll do your makeup. And speaking of makeup, what’s with Auntie Leigh and the Tammy Faye Baker eyes?”
    “I’m hoping it’s a phase.”
    “Let’s hope it’s over by the wedding.”
    The phone rang.
    “It’s about time.” Cindy marched back into her bedroom, grabbed for the phone. “Hello,” she said eagerly, waiting for Julia’s voice.
    “Cindy, it’s Leigh,” her sister announced, as if she knew they’d been speaking about her. “I just want to apologize again for what I said earlier—about you spending all your time at the movies, and not knowing how to take care of a husband.”
    “Oh,” Cindy said flatly. “That.”
    “I was out of line.”
    “Yeah,” Cindy agreed. “You were.”
    “Anyway, I’m sorry.”
    “Apology accepted.”
    “It’s just this wedding. And Mom, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    “The pressure is nonstop. Sometimes I get a little