Whole Latte Life Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 Joanne DeMaio

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1466427507

  ISBN-13: 9781466427501

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61914-966-3

  LCCN: 2011918649

  CreateSpace, North Charleston, SC

  www.wholelattelife.com

  www.joannedemaio.com

  To my daughter, Mary

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Questions With Coffee:

  About The Author

  Chapter One

  Rachel checks her watch again, she can’t help it, she’s so hungry. Three hours of shopping does that every time and it’s all she can do to not down half her lunch. Sara Beth just stepped away to fix her hair, but the food’s getting cold now, so she lifts her fork and tastes her lunch, picking at sliced zucchini and carrot. The seasoning is sublime, but still, their habit is to sample it all, a piece of Sara’s braised lamb, the different veggies, the sauce. It makes a goulash of lunch, their silverware spearing the other’s plate, but it’s how they eat. And how they talk, around the food and the savoring, dodging the other’s fork.

  After another minute, she takes a sip of her white wine and casually glances around. Inside the Manhattan restaurant, tiny square tables, like dominoes one after the other, line the long window. Identical pale yellow linens drape precisely over each, heavy silverware anchors thick folded napkins and crystal goblets form a distinct sparkling line along the table row. Sara Beth should be back by now enjoying every bit of this.

  “Excuse me,” Rachel says, standing and moving past a patron on her way to the Ladies’ Room. She opens the door to the lounge, a rectangular room edged with tufted-velvet benches. Unframed mirrors hang over long marble countertops. There is a woman in her thirties blotting her lipstick on a tissue, talking to a friend or sister beside her. It is so them, that image. She watches for a second, then hurries past into the lavatory. Half of the stalls are occupied; two women stand at the sinks.

  “Sara Beth?” Rachel hikes up her handbag, fully expecting to hear Okay, okay. I’m coming as a door swings open, Sara Beth rushing to the sink, apologizing for taking so long, maybe admitting to a headache, worrying if the food was getting cold.

  Instead the room quiets, heads lift, hands still beneath the soap dispenser, eyes meet. “No Sara here,” a lone voice finally calls from a stall.

  Okay. So she begins knocking softly at each closed door, her head bowed and leaning close. “I’m sorry, Sara? Are you there?” Her tap at the doors is light, trying to be unobtrusive, as if that’s possible. “Sara?” she asks again and again, the answers disappointing. She pushes open each empty stall, pressing her hand at an angle against the door and standing back. Is she sick, unable to move? Is that why she seemed withdrawn before lunch, maybe a little sad? Everything okay, hon? Rachel had asked, and Sara Beth looked up from her menu. Of course, she’d said.

  After one more glance back at the stalls, she hurries out to the dining room. In the height of lunch hour, the room got so crowded, voices rising and falling now, making her look at different tables when she hears a woman exclaim, another gently laugh, voices of friendship so recognizable. Could Sara Beth have bumped into an acquaintance? Here? And gotten sidetracked?

  “Excuse me.” Their waiter approaches. “Is something the matter?”

  “Yes, actually. I’m waiting for my friend. It’s odd, but she seems to have disappeared.” She glances past his shoulder. “You took her order? The braised lamb sandwich?”

  “Yes, I remember. Can I get you anything while you wait? A coffee?” He pulls out Sara Beth’s chair and motions for Rachel to sit.

  “No.” She sinks into the seat. “I’m fine. Thank you.” As soon as the waiter turns away, she digs into her purse for her cell phone. Her fingers quickly press the number. Just as quickly, the call goes to voicemail. Sara Beth’s phone is off.

  Funny, the way a silly delay unnerves her. Where could she have gone? Sara’s shopping bags still sit beneath the table but she took her purse. “Where the heck are you?” Rachel says, twisting around in her chair and searching the restaurant. She picks up her wine and sets it right back down without sipping any. “Come on already.”

  To stop from imagining anything bad, she has this way of talking herself through things, things like this annoying waiting. They’ve missed each other somehow and will laugh about it in a few minutes. There was a vendor outside, Sara Beth might rationalize. I bought you a picture of the skyline, so you can sketch it and remember our birthday weekend. Rachel will sigh with relief, How sweet of you! It’s perfect for my collection. But I was so worried! And Sara Beth will tuck her hair back, smile that great big smile and brush it off as she lifts her sandwich. I was right outside. Oh this food is divine, she’ll say around a mouthful. Try some!

  When Rachel looks to the doorway, nothing seems like she had pictured. She grabs her phone and dials Sara Beth’s cell again, getting her voicemail.

  “Sara Beth?” Her whole body leans into the call, turning toward the window so she can search the sidewalk as she talks. “It’s me. Rach. This feels really dumb, but where the heck did you go? This isn’t funny.” A long second goes by. “Well. Call me at least and tell me you’re fine.”

  “Excuse me, please,” the maitre d’ says from behind her, making her stand, like this urgency is uncoiling. “Your friend. The lady with the scarf.”

  “Sara Beth. Yes! Is she okay?”

  “Apparently she had to leave, I’m afraid.”

  “Leave?”

  He reaches into his jacket pocket. “She left this for you.”

  Her eyes lock onto his. “What do you mean, leave?”

  He hands her the folded paper. “She stopped me on her way out and asked me to wait ten minutes to deliver this. She said you would understand.”

  “Understand?” Rachel’s fingers fumble with the note, dropping it on the floor as she opens it. “You mean, she left the restaurant ten minutes ago?” she asks as she bends over to pick it up.

  “A little longer than that.” He motions to the crowded lunch room. “I couldn’t get to you sooner.”

  She glances down at Sara Beth’s handwriting, scanning random phrases. But they don’t register; the whole thing doesn’t make sense. “Did you see which way she went? Did she say anything else?”

  The maitre d’ shakes his head and steps back. “I only took the message from her.”
/>   “Oh,” she says, and then nothing, because what can you say when your very best friend disappears without notice? A thousand thoughts, instead, swirl in your mind. Did you say something to hurt her? Is Sara angry? Sick? Is she meeting someone and coming right back? Or was it the ballet flats she saw a block over that she loved but passed on? The maitre d’ turns his hands up in apology. He doesn’t know more. “Well. Thank you,” Rachel says. “I appreciate it.” Her eyes drop to the note again as she slowly sits.

  But when he starts to walk away, she can’t help looking up. This is the man who last spoke to her friend. “Oh sir?” If she keeps him talking, it’ll keep Sara Beth closer. “Was she upset? Or crying?”

  “No.” He pauses and she can see he’s summoning her friend’s image. If she could only follow it, walking out the door, that image. “She seemed rushed though.”

  “And then she walked out? Just like that?”

  He gives a slight nod.

  “Well. Thank you, then. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Not at all,” he answers.

  So she sits at the table with the folded paper in hand. It’s like someone hit the Pause button, the way her fingers are bent, the paper so apparent, so neatly creased. The day stops with this news. Lunch, their whole birthday celebration thing stops, and she glances over her shoulder at the other tables. Should she wait here? Leave? What’s she supposed to do now?

  Just this morning they had coffee-to-go and split a bagel the way they always do, on country lanes searching for antique shops and at farmers’ markets hunting for thee best tomato plants and around the neighborhood and at the mall, today on a dawn-quiet Fifth Avenue, window-shopping at Saks. Just this morning. What happened?

  She opens the note again, but stops and looks out the window from where she sits, in Sara’s seat, which faces the doorway. The street is narrow and the tops of the buildings reach up beyond her view. From where she had been sitting, her back faced the door and she would not have seen Sara Beth leave. So was this all planned?

  Really, you can’t plan to disappear and not show it. The plan is too big. So then is this unplanned? Carefully reading the note again, there it is, that familiar handwriting, easy cursive that graced two decades of beautiful Christmas and birthday cards with love and sentiment and wishes for Much Happiness! and The Very Best! The note is short, written on a piece of the hotel stationery. Sara Beth collects stationery when she travels, folding pieces of paper from inns and Marriotts and now the refurbished Plaza into her purse. But this doesn’t jive, her strange message about life, and turning forty, not with the sweet messages of the past. Finding her way? She feels lost? Rachel’s eyes fly over the words. She has to do this, she says. She can’t go back home feeling this way.

  “What on earth,” Rachel says. “What way?”

  Please don’t tell Tom about this. I really need some time alone, Rachel, to sort things out. I am so sorry to do this now, on our fortieth birthdays. I know it means a lot to you and I promise you another celebration. But we go back a long time and you’re the only, only person who will understand and let me do this, let me walk away from it all for a little while. It all sounds crazy, gosh, I know I sound crazy, but please don’t worry. Please give me just these couple days alone to try to figure this out, to figure me out.

  Wait. Wait, Rachel’s thoughts cry out, as though Sara Beth can hear them. But they often do know the other’s thoughts. She stops reading and looks around the restaurant again. Time alone? Here? Outside the window, the city buildings crept a step nearer in the one minute since she last looked out. She can almost yell Red Light, the way everything presses in, in a matter of seconds. Red Light!

  It’s just that my life is a mess right now and I feel so lost. I need this one weekend alone to think, to fix things, to find room for me again, my dreams. When else could I ever—

  Rachel squints to read a line Sara Beth crossed out. Something about if she doesn’t do this. Well now. If she doesn’t do this, what? Will she come right back and resume the weekend? If she doesn’t do this, what exactly will happen? What kind of nonsense is this? Will she find herself standing on the George Washington Bridge, or buying a pair of designer boots to alleviate some midlife crisis? Instead, past the crossed out line, Sara Beth writes,

  Please try to understand. Like we’ve always done for each other. We’ll talk soon. Promise.—Love, Sara Beth

  “Okay, enough.” Rachel grabs her cell from the table and starts to dial again. “Shoot!” she whispers half way through, then disconnects and drops it in her bag. Worry has never felt so scary, not in all her livelong life. After several moments when she hopes beyond hope that Sara Beth changes her mind and comes rushing back, breathless, apologetic, What was I thinking? she’d ask, Rachel finally leaves enough money to cover the lunch tab, gathers the shopping bags and walks herself straight out into the city. After checking back at the hotel for Sara Beth, she flags down a mounted police officer a few blocks further.

  “That’s a difficult situation,” he tells her.

  “I know. That’s why I need your help,” Rachel says, stepping back when the chestnut horse shifts its stance beneath him, nodding hard against the reins. She squints, but can’t see past the black sunglasses, the helmet, the dark uniform. Right now, more than anything, what she needs is a cop, and this officer is the only one in sight.

  “What you should probably do is call your friend’s family, or go home to your husband. She’ll show up in a day or two.” He glances down Fifth Avenue before pulling on the reins and turning his horse back to work. “With that note, I wouldn’t worry too much.” His booted foot digs in a heel, moving the animal into traffic.

  There is a boutique where the cop had been standing, a small shop with pastel clutches in the window, pink and yellow and blue, and summery wrap dresses. Cars are lined up three deep on the Avenue; clear sunlight glances off steel and windows. The people, the shops, the streets connecting them all through Manhattan, it’s a carousel whirling around Rachel, the city spinning and rising, standers and jumpers, all cabbage roses and flying manes and twinkling lights and contorted whinnies and she wonders how these things happen. Twice now in the past hour she’s been left behind from a situation spinning around her. Gosh darn it, right when she desperately needs help, this cop brushes her off like lint from a sweater.

  “Wait a minute!” Rachel calls out, squeezing through a group of students on a class trip. “I wasn’t done.” She’s half jogging along the curb near the horse, keeping pace with it. Oh, the officer’s lengthy sidelong look doesn’t escape her as she shoulders herself through Manhattan. “I am not leaving New York without Sara Beth,” she yells over the noise of a passing bus, shielding the sun from her eyes.

  Stopping alongside the curb, the police officer turns back. He already told her that since there is no indication of abduction, the NYPD can’t do anything. This is still the land of the free. Free to come and go, to hide and seek.

  “Can’t you make an exception?” Rachel asks. “Because something’s really wrong.” Her hand still shades her eyes, and she can’t read his behind those sunglasses. “I checked back at the hotel, the restaurant. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “You might want to stop at the Precinct to file a Missing Person Report.”

  “A report.” It begins to feel like all this, this insistence to authority, this nerve, like it’s all been summoned for nothing. Like she’d taken a deep breath but never dove in. Sara Beth could be three states away by the time a report is filed. A stream of cars moves by and she steps closer to the curb, daring to reach up and grip the horse’s leather bridle, not letting them slip away again until she is finished. The soft warmth of the horse presses against her fingers.

  “Listen. She’s my best friend. And only an hour ago, I was sitting in a perfectly charming restaurant when the maitre d’ handed me a note. We came to the city for our fortieth birthdays. A girls’ weekend out, you know? Sara Beth left the table to use the Ladies’ Room and neve
r came back.” Rachel’s free hand feels around deep in her shoulder bag and pulls out the folded square of paper. “It’s all in her note. Something about her life not being right, and before she goes back to it, she has to find some answers. Here, of all places.”

  She looks over her shoulder back toward the restaurant, still clutching the bridle. It’s easy to not recognize someone out of context, out of their normal place beside you thumbing through boho tunics on the rack, standing behind you at Dean & Deluca, jogging through the park. Is Sara Beth close by?

  “I’m sorry I can’t do more,” he tells her again.

  “Well, where’s the Station for this Precinct? Maybe I’ll file that Report.”

  “The 18th Precinct? Over on West 54th.”

  Rachel starts to walk away, leaving the officer and his horse watching. He sits with the reins folded in his crossed hands, NYPD insignia and a shining badge pinned to his leather jacket.

  If she wasn’t so darn busy fighting back tears, she’d have turned to ask him if they needed a recent photograph, to see the beautiful auburn hair Sara always fusses with, tucking it behind an ear whenever she gets nervous, or self-conscious. Or if it would be better for Sara’s husband to file the report. He’s a lawyer after all, and has lived with her for all these years, sat with her in her kitchen, slept with her, landscaped their yard, helped with the new baby, checked her car oil, and held her close when her mother unexpectedly died. Or if the Missing Persons Bureau would ask personal questions about risk factors, like the sadness Rachel hears when Sara sometimes answers her phone, or the fatigue she sees in her eyes. Or questions about any crisis Sara Beth might’ve had before disappearing. Something that might have pushed her over the edge, forced this weekend escape from all that filled her life. Three children, soccer, high school, dance lessons, playgroups, library fund raisers, a colonial home, grocery shopping, cooking meals, dentist appointments. Those wonderful antiques gathering dust in the garage, novels unread, a collection of vintage leather journals she hasn’t used in ages, probably long tucked away in the back of a drawer now. Dreams waiting to awaken.