Dorothy clicked her ruby red-slippers, sending her home, to the people she cared about.
But Liv was already there.
* * *
Later, after Sam and Dottie had left and Ben was asleep in bed, Liv was stacking the dishwasher when she heard movement in the front office.
Savannah was at her desk, working. Damp blond hair fell around her face like a curtain.
Liv yawned. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Tying up some loose ends from the Livingstone-Choi affair,” Savannah replied, vague.
“God, that was a lovely wedding.” Liv leaned back against the doorframe, hands in her dressing gown pockets. “The pictures are gorgeous.”
Savannah’s head snapped up. “The pictures are in?”
A minute later, Liv was clicking through the selects. She paused on the first kiss. A dynamic, fantastic shot. Multicolored confetti flying against a cerulean sky. The front row of family on their feet and cheering. Both women locked into a romantic, passionate embrace. Liv smiled. “That’s a framer.”
Something splashed on the keyboard. Liv whipped her gaze to the ceiling. “Jesus, was that a leak?”
Savannah sniffed. “Liv,” she said, in an oddly strained voice. “I have something to tell you.”
Leaks were expensive. And even though the business was back up and running, Liv had definitely not budgeted for a new roof. “Hmm?”
“I’m… I mean, I think I am… a little… or maybe a lot… gay.”
“Oh. Cool. Yeah, think I was starting to get that vibe.”
Savannah had never been wowed by any of the grooms. And overly wowed by the brides.
“I did the whole college lesbian thing for a minute,” Liv added. “Didn’t pan out.” She squinted at the ceiling. “You haven’t noticed any water in here, have you? It hasn’t rained in a while, and I might’ve missed—”
Savannah burst into loud, hysterical tears.
Oh. Not a leak.
Liv made peppermint tea. She’d never had to slip into the role of counselor and confidante with Savannah. Six months ago this would’ve disgusted her. Now, their knees were touching as they sat side by side on the pale pink sofa. Savannah unleashed: never meeting the right guy, always having very close female friendships, Feel Good and her parents and Honey and Honey’s ultimatum.
“I like her. A lot. But I don’t think I’m ready to be someone’s girlfriend, and that’s what she wants. What she deserves.”
“In a relationship, timing is everything,” Liv said. “Maybe the timing just isn’t right. It’s not easy, doing what we do,” she added. “Working every day with other people’s dreams, making them real. Finding love yourself and sustaining it long-term, when there’s absolutely no script—that’s hard.”
Savannah’s face was wet. “Be honest. Do you think I’m… That this is all… kind of… strange?”
“Strange?”
Savannah’s gaze dropped to her tea. The words were a whisper. “Wrong.”
The wave of desperate, maternal love took Liv by surprise. She lifted Savannah’s chin up so she could speak to her directly. “There is nothing weird or wrong about who you’re attracted to, or who you love. Heterosexuality is just more common. It’s not more normal.”
Savannah smiled sadly. “I don’t know if my parents would agree with that.”
“Exactly. You don’t know. After you tell them—if you choose to tell them—you’ll find out.” Liv put her tea aside to focus on Savannah. “But remember this: telling people things that they might not expect to hear, but that are true about you, is a way for them to deepen their relationship with you. To know you, and love you, even more. And speaking as a mom”—Liv’s throat thickened—“that’s honestly the best gift my son could ever give me. To let me in like that, and allow me to love him even more fully.”
She found herself reaching out to hug Savannah. For a long moment, Liv held her as she cried softly.
Liv could never have imagined that the overly made-up young woman handing her a copy of Eliot’s will outside the brownstone would end up here, in her arms, weeping about being a little, or a lot, gay. And for Liv to really, really care about that.
PART FOUR IN LOVE IN NEW YORK CITY
72
The week before Halloween, the wizards at Google finally sent Liv Eliot’s email password. Benny123.
For five long days, Liv avoided it all. The Pandora’s box it might open felt like someone had put her spine on ice. And so Liv made Savannah do it.
“Just look through the last few months or so,” she instructed her. “See if there’s anything I should know about.”
Savannah hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s something I’m comfortable doing, Liv.”
A punch of dread tightened Liv’s throat. “Well, I can’t. So I need you…” She fluttered her fingers at the laptop.
Savannah entered the password. She scrolled and tapped for a few minutes, moving methodically through pages of junk mail. Then she frowned.
“What?” Liv was hovering, unable to stay away.
It was their attorney, emailing Eliot the updated will. Two weeks prior to his death. It was the last line of his otherwise formal email that’d caught Savannah’s attention. I am sorry to hear of the reason for the requested change and truly wish you all the best.
Liv read it, and read it again. “Did he mean, like, our marriage?”
Savannah pressed her teeth into her lower lip, thinking. “What other reason might there be?”
Something strange and frightening edged into Liv’s mind.
She searched Eliot’s in-box for their doctor’s name.
Three appointment confirmations. Three appointments she definitely did not remember Eliot attending: she had to bug him to get a checkup. Nothing more from the doctor’s office in his email. No further clues.
Liv sat back in her chair. Her fingers were numb.
She’d never gotten a copy of Eliot’s autopsy.
It had to be requested from the medical examiner’s office, and at the time, it seemed pointless. It was a garden-variety heart attack—what else was there to know?
I am sorry to hear of the reason for the requested change.
Liv watched herself with calm detachment as she followed the steps to officially request Eliot’s postmortem exam. Days later, she was alone in the front office when she received an email with an attached PDF. It was a cloudy Friday afternoon. Savannah was doing some returns. Ben was at school. The house was very quiet.
Too nervous to sit, she paced the front office, willing the courage to click the PDF open.
The patient was a forty-nine-year-old Caucasian male…
Liv inhaled a jagged breath and looked away. It took her a few minutes to ground herself and return to the report. She skimmed the cold prose, fast, too fast.
heart showed asymmetric as well as concentric hypertrophy
blood vessels were fixed in 10% formalin
hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
patient was high risk for sudden cardiac death
Liv sank, legless, into the pale pink sofa.