Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(19)

Potter shakes his head and presses his lips closed as they enter the elevator.

When they step off on the seventh floor, Ava sees shadowy figures lurking outside Potter’s apartment door. Ava sees it’s a couple—a man with dark, curly hair wearing a gray flannel scarf wound artfully around his neck, and a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses. The woman has a long braid trailing down one shoulder, and she’s wearing an adorable short white boiled-wool belted coat over a houndstooth skirt and boots. They look too old and too sophisticated to be students. Are they colleagues, maybe?

And then Ava gets it.

PJ drops his phone onto the carpeted hallway and sprints toward the couple.

It’s Potter’s ex-wife, Trish, and Trish’s boyfriend, Harrison. Ava remembers Harrison’s name because Harrison is British and Ava thinks of George Harrison, the Beatle.

Ava stands up a little straighter and runs a tongue across her teeth. She bemoans her own outfit: jeans and a J.Crew turtleneck in forest green, topped by her ancient brown corduroy jacket. The jacket is her security blanket, and she intentionally wore it hoping it would serve as a shield or armor against any insults or injuries inflicted by PJ. But now that she is faced with Trish in her supercute belted coat and fabulous suede stiletto boots, she wishes she’d worn something chicer.

When Ava said that she doesn’t feel (much) insecurity, she should have added an asterisk that said *except where Trish York is concerned. What does Ava know about Trish? That she’s a brilliant Shakespearean scholar, that she is a full professor at Stanford, that she comes from an aristocratic family (she grew up in one of the houses on Rainbow Row in Charleston, a city that Potter thinks is the most charming in the world). Trish grew up sailing and that is how she met Potter; they were both crew members on boats during Antigua Sailing Week.

Ava studies Trish now. She’s pretty in a sneaky way. The glasses are meant to obscure her clear eyes and impeccable skin. But Ava has learned by now—hasn’t she?—that beauty is as beauty does. She has wasted too much of her life fretting over supposedly beautiful women like Kirsten Cabot and Roxanne Oliveria, neither of whom proved to be a threat.

Potter says, “What are you doing here, Trish?”

Harrison steps forward, offering a hand. “Good to see you, Potter.” He has a very posh accent. “Potter” comes out as “Pawtah.” “We heard there was a bit of trouble, so we left that new fellow Simpson lecturing on Trump as King Lear and came straightaway.”

“Trouble?” Potter says.

Trump as King Lear? Ava thinks. She suspects most Shakespeare scholars have run out of things to talk about now, four hundred years later.

“PJ texted me about a ‘bad touch,’” Trish says. Her voice too holds a tinge of British accent, which comes across as an affectation to Ava. She expected a Southern belle. “You took him to the museum? Did someone fondle him?”

PJ buries his face in his mother’s coat. He’s clinging to her like a life buoy.

“The bad touch was me,” Ava blurts out. She cannot believe this is happening. She cannot believe that PJ, a seven-year-old without any discernible social skills, has manipulated four adults this way. She tries a smile. “I’m Ava, by the way. Ava Quinn.”

“That’s right,” Harrison says, returning her smile in spades. “You’re the daughter of Margaret Quinn. I think she’s brilliant, by the way. But I hear she’s retiring?”

“Next month,” Ava says. She is grateful to Harrison for the kindness, but she doesn’t want to veer off topic. “Anyway, I did touch PJ’s arm. I was trying to encourage him to lift his eyes from the game. He was really preoccupied.”

“That blasted game,” Harrison says.

“He only plays it when he feels uncomfortable,” Trish says.

“That’s bollocks and you know it, darling,” Harrison says. “He’ll play it nonstop if you let him.”

“Are you trying to say he feels uncomfortable around me?” Potter says.

“It’s not surprising,” Trish says. “He barely knows you.”

“Because you won’t let him see me,” Potter says.

“You’re welcome to come to California whenever you’d like,” Trish says.

“Right,” Potter says. “Because I’m free to just fly to California every weekend.”

“Not every weekend,” Trish says. “We agreed on one weekend a month. That lasted… what? One month? Two? But I understand you have plenty of time to jet off to Anguilla.” She cuts a glance at Ava. “And Nantucket.”

“Traveling down this road again, I see,” Harrison says. He holds his arms open to PJ, who jumps into them like a spider monkey. “I’ll take this chap down to the lobby so he doesn’t have to endure the parental quarrel.” He winks at Ava. “Care to join me, Miss Quinn?”

Ava doesn’t have much of a choice. Clearly Potter and Trish need to settle things privately. Ava follows Harrison and PJ into the elevator.

“Why is she coming?” PJ asks Harrison.

“‘She’ is Ava, PJ,” Harrison says. “I know you’re enough of a gentleman to address a lady properly, and when we reach the lobby, you’ll let Ava step off the elevator first. That’s what gentlemen do.”