Chapter 10 Penny
Chapter 10
Penny
The car pulls up to Vis Ta Vie, and Penny’s heart ticks in her chest.
Already she regrets following through on the stupid promise they made all those years ago. What was she thinking, coming back?
“We’re here,” the driver says.
“Can you give me a minute?” she asks. She needs more than a minute, but she’s already delayed her arrival long enough. She sat in the airport’s crowded bar with a tequila, deliberately stalling the reunion. They haven’t seen each other since their daughter Cody’s thirteenth birthday in January, and if she was going to be honest about anything, it was this: the thought of seeing Leo again has her jittery. The delay and alcohol were means of survival.
It hasn’t been that long, but Penny has already forgotten what it’s like to be Leo Shay’s wife. There was a time when her face adorned magazine covers, and she couldn’t step foot in a crowded airport without being trampled by a gang of paparazzi. But then a year ago, a trip to Palm Springs turned tragic, rocking their once solid marriage. They couldn’t recover. And it didn’t help when Leo returned to set, leaving her to wade through the grief alone. Left with no other choice, she fled Tinseltown for Coral Gables, Florida, the place where she and Leo had grown up, the place that shielded her from that other world, and could, perhaps, do it again. But she was wrong.
They’ve traveled to the inn many times before but never like this. Their storied marriage has turned into another clichéd Hollywood breakup, and returning is complicated. This is where they were married. And other than their three children, that afternoon was her most prized possession. Twenty-five years have passed, and though she couldn’t hold it in her hand, the memory was priceless. Which explained how horrible it felt when everything fell apart.
The engine hums, and the driver waits patiently. She resists delving into that long-ago history, but it’s hard. Leo. Leo and Penny. They were fifteen when they fell in love, paired together over a frog dissection in biology. Leo hung back as Penny assaulted the meaty creature with her gloved fingers, forgoing the tweezers and forceps. His fragility warmed her; her fearlessness impressed him. She was fascinated with the critter’s inner workings and sympathetic to its sacrifice for a tenth-grade science class. When she relayed this to Leo, tugging the heart from the frog’s chest, he shot back, “Your empathy’s astounding.”
Back then, neither of them had any idea how their own hearts would come into play, twisting their lives in a way that made Penny’s radical dissection seem tender.
“He’s dead,” Penny replied.
The brown-haired boy cocked his head. “How do you know he’s a he?”
She dug a finger inside the frog’s abdomen and waved Leo closer. She pointed at the testes, located by the kidneys. “Your proof.”
Penny gazed from the lifeless frog to Leo’s face. His tanned cheeks turned a bright pink, and that’s when she first noticed his eyes. One blue. Another brown. Heterochromia, he had called it.
She slaps her cheeks and draws a deep breath. Don’t go there.
“I’m ready,” she says, reaching for her purse. The young driver comes around to open her door. He grabs her suitcase from the trunk. She hands him a few bills, and he carries the bag to the front step, where she hears the group gathered in the kitchen. Renée expected guests to check in by four. Dinner at precisely six. Penny normally makes it a point to be prompt. Today’s delay was intentional, a brew of second thoughts. But now it’s time.