The Weight of Love

Chapter 11

The clock ticked steadily toward six. Beneath the table, Lila's trembling fingers tightened around her phone. Above the table, she gripped her fork in her other hand, holding it poised over her untouched portion of Salisbury steak.

Robert was a meat and potatoes kind of man.

Her mother prattled on about something that had happened at book group the night before. Book group, also known as bi-monthly women getting drunk on red wine together. Miranda had enjoyed liberal use of the Ibuprofen bottle that day. Now Lila half-listened to her, detesting every word she said. Her mother was never going to have any class, no matter how long she lived. Her father might have made up the difference, but he was dead, leaving her with this.

Her eyes jerked across the table at Robert, who was wiping his plate clean of his second portion. How the man didn't weigh three hundred pounds she didn't know. Well, she did know. He smoked cigarettes, lots of them. Her mother, though vehemently against the habit, would not take the smell of cigarette smoke on his clothing and person as proof. She would continue to refuse to believe that her darling husband smoked until the day she found a cigarette butt lying discarded someone around the house or yard, and he would never let that happen.

Lila despised him. Beneath the table, her grip around her phone tightened.

"Lila, honey," her mother said. "At least eat your mashed potatoes. What would Dr. Malloy say? You've barely eaten anything today."

Lila was surprised her mother had noticed. She jabbed her fork into the pile of rapidly-congealing mashed potatoes on her plate and choked down one gluey mouthful.

"I'm not hungry," she said, pushing her plate toward the center of the table.

Her mother shook her head and glanced toward Robert, as if expecting some kind of response from him, but he only grunted and claimed what remained on Lila's plate as his own. She watched him shovel it down his gullet, growing colder and colder inside. The clock on the wall in the living room, just visible from her seat, ticked steadily on toward six fifteen. Where was Cameron? He had said he would come.

She had been terse with him that morning when he'd informed her that his flight was taking off. Maybe that was why he hadn't told her when he'd landed. Or maybe -- The thought flashed across her psyche for a split second: twisted metal much larger than a car. A whole plane.

But she already knew that his flight hadn't gone down, because she'd checked on the airline website. She'd watched it progress between New York City and Boston, had noted the moment it touched down. Somehow, seeing that made his absent text all the worse.

Against her better judgment, she'd also investigated Claire Belisle, sole heiress of the Belisle family fortune and business holdings. They were North American old money, émigrés from Canada. Her tenure at Harvard had overlapped with Cameron's. Everything he had told Lila added up.

Except for why he had left Claire, who seemed, ostensibly, like the perfect match for him. Lila had stared at that gorgeous white smile and into those cool blue eyes for hours, green with envy. She could never be Claire. She could never be remotely like Claire. She would always pale in comparison.

A man like Cameron would never want to date her. He would never call her his girlfriend. He could only want one thing. He would have his fun and be done with her.

Beneath the table, she dropped her phone between her knees and clenched her hand into a fist.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang out. Lila's mother frowned across the table at Robert, who frowned back at her. Then both of them looked at Lila.

"Would you like to get it?" her mother asked her, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "It seems like you're done, anyway. I suppose you'd like to be excused."