Read Online By Book or by Crook by Eva Gates - Free Book Online

of it.
    Ricky and I continued on our preset path. He studied for his law degree and worked on the
Harvard Law Review
. He articled at a firm belonging to a friend of the family and then joined Lewiston, Richardson. We continued to attend country-club parties and family weddings together. We even took Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises with our mothers. (In a nod to some modernity, Ricky and I were allowed to share a suite.) In Boston we maintained our own apartments, although we would occasionally spend the night together in one or the other’s place.
    As the years ground on, I found Ricky increasingly boring, and I am sure he found me much the same. My mother was getting worried that nothing was happening, and began dragging me to wedding and baby showers and the nuptials of friends of friends of friends. Meanwhile, my brothers married, and their wives began throwing me pitying glances when they thought I wasn’t looking.
    Friends, and some enemies, began to whisper that they had seen Ricky in the company of one woman or another. Conversations in restaurants and coffee shops abruptly ended when I returned from the restroom. Worse, I was losing enthusiasm for life. I still enjoyed my job, but found I had little time, between the rounds of weddings and family obligations, to bury myself in a nineteenth-century classic or a modern mystery.
    Then the big day came. Ricky asked me out to dinner. Nothing unusual in that. We went to one of the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in Boston. Nothing unusual in that, either. Ricky liked to spend money, and he liked to be seen spending it. We had a pleasant dinner, and then Ricky orderedchampagne without asking if I wanted it. Which I didn’t. The champagne and two crystal flutes arrived on a silver platter. A small box, wrapped in silver paper with a big blue bow, sat beside it on the tray. The tuxedo-clad waiter was grinning so hard, he wasn’t much more than a row of white teeth.
    My heart sank into my stomach. And there it sat. Beside the salad of baby greens, the sole, and the asparagus.
    The waiter poured the champagne and departed, still grinning.
    And then, to my horror, and the amusement of the staff and other diners, Ricky picked up the silver box and dropped to one knee in front of my chair. He opened the box.
    A row of diamonds, each one carat or more, glittered on a background of blue velvet. And to me, at that moment, the diamonds looked like stars dragged out of the sky, captured and imprisoned.
    “Lucille,” Ricky began.
    “No,” I said.
    Ricky usually didn’t hear me when I spoke. Tonight was no exception. “Will you do me the great honor of being my wife?”
    I pushed my chair back. Somehow I got to my feet, although my legs didn’t seem to want to hold me up. “No.”
    “I’ve loved you since . . . What?”
    “No. Ricky. I’m sorry, but I am not going to marry you. I’m . . . I’m leaving Harvard. I’m leaving Boston. I have to— I . . . Good-bye.”
    I ran out of the restaurant, past openmouthedwaitstaff and wide-eyed diners. I spotted a woman from the club, one of my mother’s friends, her eyes sparkling with pure delight. I had no doubt what would be this week’s topic of conversation across the tennis net.
    My iPhone began ringing before I so much as made it back to my apartment. Mom. I didn’t answer.
    The next morning, I went into my boss’s office and handed in my resignation. She was, she said, sorry to see me go. Although not entirely surprised.
    Ricky had texted me once, the day after the incident. Something about understanding, time to think, being there when I came home.
    I suspect, reading between the lines, as well as the obvious fact that he didn’t bother to come in pursuit of me, Ricky was more relieved than anything else. I never paid much attention to the gossip at my mother’s clubs or her afternoon bridge parties, but it was hard not to know that the Lewiston family was having trouble maintaining the life to which