I set down my fork and took a sip of wine, as if considering how much I wanted to tell him. “That could either be a long answer or a short one.”
He tilted his head and said, “Why don’t you start with the short one?”
I fed him the line about my mother, about how she’d always wanted to come home. “I’d just ended my marriage. It was becoming clear for various reasons that it wouldn’t be a good idea to stay in the same town as my ex-husband, and Reading seemed as good a place as any to start over.”
“Now the long version.”
A server took my nearly empty salad plate away and replaced it with a bowl of tomato bisque soup. I picked up my spoon, thinking. Finally, I said, “The long version is that my ex-husband wasn’t very happy with the financial terms of our divorce. He felt I owed him more than what he got. And so, instead of living out this next phase of my life with him constantly accusing me of taking what was rightfully his, I decided to start over somewhere else.” I smiled and tasted my soup. “I guess the long version is also pretty short.”
Phillip had been eating while I talked, but now he turned to me and said, “Sometimes, when a relationship ends, it’s best for all involved if one party moves somewhere else.”
“Tell me about yourself,” I said. “Have you lived here long?”
“My whole life. I went to college at Penn, then moved back home. Got married, started my business, had kids.” He looked down at his nearly empty bowl of soup and said, “I, too, am going through a fairly contentious divorce.”
I placed my hand on his arm, just a light touch, for just a moment, and said, “I’m so sorry.”
From across the table, Renata caught the gesture and raised her eyebrows.
“It was long overdue,” he said. “But she’s having a hard time with it and making things difficult.”
I pumped the brakes. “Let’s change the subject to something a little happier,” I suggested. “What do you do for fun around here?”
Phillip pushed his bowl aside and said, “The usual. Dinners with friends, poker games with the guys, fishing trips, golf at the club.”
“I dated a golfer in college,” I told him. “I used to be pretty good.”
Actually, it was a golf pro in Boise, and at the end of that relationship I had $43,000 and the large diamond earrings I now wore in my ears, but that was just a detail.
Phillip turned to me, intrigued. “We should play a round.”
“I’d love that,” I said.
The soup course was finished, and we started in on our salmon and asparagus, lightly seasoned with garlic butter and lemon.
“Renata won’t shut up about that deal you got her on those armchairs,” Phillip said.
“I fear that she’s creating a bit of an unrealistic myth. I have some high-end clients who occasionally change their minds. Now I’m getting calls from everyone she knows.”
He took a bite of asparagus and said, “That’s a good thing, right?”
I sighed and pushed some of the food around on my plate. “I’m grateful, but I was hoping to take a little time off.”
“Tell me more about this business of yours.”
“I started the decorating side of it when I was twenty-five, right out of design school, with just a few clients, and built it up over time. There are some pockets of real estate in New Jersey that would rival Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, and people who are willing to pay a premium for a foyer rug or high-end table lamps.” I took a sip of wine. “The life coaching evolved out of that. I had a few B-list celebrity clients in the city and realized they needed more than just a redecorated townhouse. They needed a total life overhaul. Get out of the bars, stop sleeping around, go to yoga a couple times a week, and do a cleanse, you know?” He nodded. “The thing about famous people is that they pay so much attention to the exterior of their lives, the interior can fall apart due to lack of attention. So I got certified as a life coach and marketed myself as a life designer.” I shrugged. “It grew from there, rather quickly. At its height, I was pulling in over a million dollars in profit per year.”