The Drowning Girls. Paula Treick DeBoard

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      I was surprised how much convincing it had taken to get Liz on board, when I’d jumped in feetfirst.

      “Are we raiding an orphanage or something?” she had asked, counting the upstairs bedrooms.

      “We could make one into a home gym,” I said.

      “There’s a gym in the clubhouse. Plus golf, tennis...”

      “Okay, a sewing room, a music room. Whatever you want.”

      Liz laughed. “Just what every girl in the 1800s wants,” she’d murmured, but this didn’t deter me.

      It was a chance at the good life. So what if we didn’t need so many bedrooms, if the job requirement was to kiss a few asses here and there?

      So when Kelsey Jorgensen came into my office unannounced, when she plopped into my chair and pouted, I only said, “You’ve come to the right place, then. What can I do for you?”

      She yawned in response, stretching her limbs like a cat sunning itself on the pavement. I tried not to look directly at her body, focusing instead on the tips of her fingers, the pink wink of her toes. I heard it already then, that little warning bell in the back of my mind, but I pushed it to the side.

      “What you can do,” she said, dragging out the syllables, “is keep me from being so bored.”

      * * *

      Most days, she wandered through the clubhouse with her limbs on display in tiny dresses that fluttered in the air-conditioning, or halter tops and shorts that ended at her crotch. “I just wanted to say hello,” she would say, lingering in my doorway. “So, hello, Mr. McGinnis.” In her mouth a simple greeting sounded full of suggestion.

      At first, for all of five minutes, it was entertaining. I figured it was the charm she turned on every man, equally—neighbors and groundskeepers, the college kid who maintained the play area, even, yes, the thirty-seven-year-old community relations specialist. That first day I figured, where’s the harm? This was how most of the women at The Palms acted around me, and playing along seemed to be required by the job. Deanna Sievert couldn’t talk without flirting, and Janet Neimeyer couldn’t keep her hands off me—there was always a collar to be straightened or an invisible crumb to be picked from my chin.

      But I loved Liz, and I wasn’t looking.

      Sure, it was flattering. It made me feel young again, like the Phil I’d been in my twenties, after my parents died and my brother, Zeke, and I pooled their assets and moved to Corfu, where we opened a bar that catered to college kids on holiday and gap years. There had always been a girl—a German tourist, or Swedish or Czech—who didn’t leave at closing time, who hinted that she needed a place to stay before her boat left the next morning. When I shook her awake, she would snuggle closer and say she could catch the next one, the next time. But I’d come to California, in part, to leave that Phil behind. I’d had too many fuzzy mornings when I cleared the condensation in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I wanted more out of life than a rented room, a bank account that emptied month to month, women who moved out, moved on.

      When I met Liz, I knew she was the real deal—funny and sexy and so damned smart, someone who had met life on its terms. For the first time, I was the one in pursuit; she had too much riding on her life to hang around waiting for my call. She’d been the one who was hesitant to commit, who introduced me, for months, as a “friend.” She hinted that a relationship wasn’t possible until Danielle went off to college—at that point, nine years away. When I’d proposed to her at the lighthouse on a lonely stretch of Highway 1, it had been like preparing for a debate—laying out my reasons, providing evidence, anticipating the rebuttal. We’re a good team, we’ll have a great life together, and I cannot wait for you one more minute.

      Sometimes, when we fought, I cursed myself for the empty years, the ones before Liz and Danielle. If only our paths had crossed sooner, we would have figured it out by now. We would have built up more trust in each other. We’d know each other’s little quirks, which buttons were the wrong ones to push. I was jealous of the older, long-married couples, who’d committed early and could spend a full life together, like the Browerses. When it came to Liz, I wanted more time, not less.

      So I wasn’t looking for Kelsey Jorgensen, not at all.

      She claimed boredom, a symptom of the same problem everyone had at The Palms. There were too many options and too few challenges. I knew I was exciting simply because I was someone different. So I laughed it off at first. I didn’t take it seriously. I smiled back at her. I played along.

      She stopped by my office on the day of the Mesbahs’ party, and I asked if I would be seeing her that night.

      She smiled. “Would you like that?”

      I swallowed. It had been a fine line we’d been walking, but it was gone now. She’d practically pole-vaulted over it. “I’m looking forward to meeting your parents,” I answered, and she’d fixed me with those steely eyes. It was the right answer, but the wrong one, too.

      Although Parker-Lane encouraged an open-door policy, I began closing mine, trying to avoid her. She opened it anyway, poking her head around the corner, followed by a bare shoulder, a thigh.

      I feigned busyness when she arrived, replying to emails that weren’t at all urgent, taking imaginary phone calls. “I’m sorry, Kelsey. This is very important,” I would say, but she was persistent. She called my bluff, waiting patiently through one-sided conversations until I turned my attention to her. And while she waited, she coiled and uncoiled a long strand of blond hair around a finger, smiling.

      It was too late to go back to that first day, but I wished I could. I would have told her I was busy, asked her to leave. I would have put her in her place as nothing more than a silly, spoiled fifteen-year-old girl. It wasn’t funny or flattering anymore; it wasn’t the sort of thing I could laugh about after a few beers. She was young and lovely, but mostly young.

      Still, I tried. “Isn’t there something else you want to do today, Kelsey? Play tennis, maybe?”

      She shrugged.

      “It’s just that I have work to do,” I told her.

      She raised an eyebrow. “You’re a community relations specialist, and I’m part of the community. So by definition, isn’t it your job to have relations with me?”

      I found it was best not to be in my office at all—to have long lunches with Liz in the clubhouse, to chat with Rich Sievert at the bar, to try out the putting green with the Zhang boys or check on the progress of the homes in Phase 3. Still, hardly a day went by without her crossing my field of vision, blindsiding me with a wave, a wink.

      And then one afternoon she was in my backyard, on my diving board, adjusting her bikini. She couldn’t have known I was there, watching her through the kitchen window with Liz standing next to me. And yet it was almost choreographed—the languid walk, the stretching, the perfect swan dive, the bathing suit top that slipped off, revealing her firm breast. I closed my eyes, swallowing hard. My palms went clammy, my heart hammered in my chest. Upstairs, I stripped off my shirt and sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what the hell I was going to do.

       JUNE 19, 2015 5:43 P.M.

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