Read Online Lake News by Barbara Delinsky - Free Book Online Page A

to say, in his normally good-natured way, that there was no need, that the Cardinal’s team would resolve the matter, that it was already nearly done.
    Instead, he sounded distant. “I can’t advise you on that. Our concern is protecting the Church. We’re trying our best to do that. But it might be better if you didn’t call here again until everything is straightened out.”
    Lily felt as though she’d been slapped—as though she had sinned and in so doing had single-handedly caused a deep embarrassment for the Church.
    Stunned, she said, “I see. Uh. Thank you.” Quietly, she hung up the phone.
    Things went downhill from there. After suffering through one more private lesson, she packed up her briefcase and headed home. She had no sooner breathed a sigh of relief that the front steps of the school were clear than she hit the sidewalk and, seemingly from nowhere, a woman with a microphone appeared.
    â€œMs. Blake, would you comment on the Post story?” Lily shook her head and hurried on, but the reporter kept pace. “The archdiocese has issued an official denial. Doesn’t that contradict your quotes in the Post?”
    â€œThe Post lies,” Lily muttered, keeping her arms around her briefcase, her head bowed, her eyes on the cobblestone underfoot.
    A male voice said, “Paul Rizzo, Cityside . You were seen leaving the Cardinal’s residence late Sunday night. Why were you there?”
    He was a balding man whose baby-smooth skin suggested that the hair loss was premature. His eyes were unblinking. His chin jutted forward. He reminded Lily of the hook stuck in the mouth of the very first trout she had ever caught for herself at the lake. Then and now, she was repulsed.
    I was hired to play the piano, she wanted to tell him, but her tongue was tight, and she knew she would never get the words out. So she lowered her head and kept her feet moving fast.
    â€œWhen did you break up with Governor Dean?”
    â€œWas the Cardinal aware of your relationship with the governor?”
    â€œHow do you explain the late-night phone calls?”
    â€œIs it true that you were in the Cardinal’s arms at the Essex Club last night?”
    When Lily looked up to say an angry “No,” a cameraman snapped her picture. Ducking her head again, she hurried on, but the questions got worse.
    â€œWhere did you do it?”
    â€œWhat kind of sex?”
    â€œHas the Church tried to buy your silence?”
    â€œWhat does your family think of this?”
    Lily shuddered to think what her family thought. She shuddered to think that they even knew, period.
    But they did. She learned it soon after she reached home and listened to the messages on her machine. There, sandwiched between calls from what, to her horror, seemed to be every major newspaper and television station in the country, was the voice of her sister Poppy.
    â€œWhat’s going on, Lily? The calls are coming in hot and heavy, even more after the noon news. I’ve been deflecting as many as I can, but Mom is furious! Phone me, will you?”
    The noon news? Lily’s stomach turned over. But, of course, television would pick up the story. Isn’t that what the man in the outer lobby this morning had been about?
    So maybe it had been naïve of her to think that the story would be contained—but did the media have to call her mother? Lily’s relationship with Maida Blake was precarious enough. This wouldn’t help.
    Needing to hear a friendly voice, she sank into the chair by the phone and punched in Poppy’s number. Poppy was barely two years her junior, and the sweetest, most upbeat person Lily knew, despite circumstances that might have caused her to be anything but. Poppy Blake was a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair since a snowmobile accident nearly a dozen years before. If anyone had a right to self-pity, she did, but she refused to waste energy on it. As soon after