His Uptown Girl. Gail Sattler

would think the timing was coincidental.

      George started in surprise at seeing him in the lobby at that hour of the day, without the phone ringing. “Goodnight, Bob,” she said on her way to the door. “See you tomorrow.”

      “Wait,” he said, and she stopped.

      “Before you go, I wanted to ask you something. I haven’t been able to go as often as I used to, but every Monday night my church has a Bible study. It’s at the home of one of the deacon couples, and it’s really informal. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me tonight.”

      She blinked a few times, then glanced toward the door. “Sorry, I can’t,” she mumbled, then kept walking. She opened the door, stepped outside, then just before the door closed, she said, “I’m going out with Tyler.”

      Georgette stepped back to look at herself in the mirror.

      The housekeeper had helped to style her hair into perfect order.

      It was stiff and felt artificial.

      Her makeup was flawless, her shadow just the right color to accent her eyes. Her nail polish matched her lipstick. The artifice brought back a memory of posing for promotional photographs meant to encourage people to help the starving children of the world. It had raised only marginal funding, but it brought phenomenal publicity for her father. The experience was a good reminder of how shallow people could be.

      Just like at that session, her outfit was the height of fashion, and emphasized her figure to perfection while binding it uncomfortably.

      Her shoes were darling, and the perfect accent to her legs. They also pinched her toes, and she didn’t know if she could stand more than twenty minutes in them. If she took them off under the table to wiggle her toes, she knew she would never get them back on.

      Georgette looked perfect.

      She felt like a fake.

      “Georgie-Pie, honey, you look magnificent!”

      Georgette inhaled deeply, pasted on a smile that was as phony as the rest of her appearance, and turned to face her father, who was standing in her bedroom doorway. “Thank you, Daddy. Tyler should be here in a few minutes, and I want to be ready.”

      “Always a stickler for punctuality.” He grinned and playfully wagged one finger in the air at her. “It wouldn’t hurt to be fashionably late.”

      “We have reservations for dinner.” Besides, Georgette considered being fashionably late incredibly rude and self-centered. It was only one of many ways to draw attention to oneself. She hated that, too. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a few more minutes to finish getting ready.” She didn’t bother to watch him leave.

      It was at times like this she thought of her mother, and wondered if the endless social charade was one of the things that had driven her mother away. Georgette had been very young when her mother had left. Her father had told her it was because her mother didn’t want to be part of their family anymore. It had hurt terribly at the time, and still did. As an adult, though, Georgette could see how her father’s tyranny made her family dysfunctional. She could only guess at the difficulty of being married to him. She often thought about how bad it must have been to make her mother run away and abandon her two children.

      On the way to the closet, Georgette’s step faltered. She had one picture of her mother left that her father hadn’t found and destroyed. She kept it hidden in the lining of her purse, and whenever she switched purses, she made sure the picture went with her. It would never do to have her father find it now. She turned in time to see her father close the door behind him.

      When the door was closed, Georgette dumped the contents of her purse haphazardly onto the bed, but she carefully removed the laminated and carefully preserved picture from where she’d hidden it in the seam of the lining.

      She paused to sit on the bed to study the picture, and to remember.

      As an adult, the resemblance between her and her mother was strong. They had the same light-blond hair color, the same blue eyes, and, sadly, the same lack of height. The picture had been taken only days before her mother had left. Georgette had been ten years old, and the two of them had been together, laughing and making rabbit ears behind each other’s heads with their fingers.

      Josephine had taken the picture in the afternoon, while her father was at work. He never would have permitted such nonsense if he’d been there. Georgette had sneaked the picture out of the package and taken it to school to show a friend. When she’d arrived back home, not only was her mother gone, but so was everything her mother owned, and every reminder of her. It was a clean sweep. All she had left of her mother was one candid photograph and a small gold cross on a delicate gold chain that she never took off, not even at night.

      “Georgie-Pie, honey. He’s here!”

      She gently tucked the photograph into its new secret hiding spot in the new purse lining, then rammed everything else in as quickly as she could. “I’ll be right there!” she called, taking one last look at herself in the mirror. She stuck out her tongue at her reflection, stiffened and walked slowly, in a dignified manner, out of the bedroom, and down the stairs.

      Tyler smiled, but he didn’t leave her father’s side. “You look lovely, Georgette.”

      “Thank you, Tyler,” she said gracefully. She batted her eyelashes coyly, positive that Tyler wouldn’t catch her sarcasm.

      Bob would have caught it if she did such a thing to him. In fact, Bob would have laughed.

      She should have been with Bob right now. She’d been thrilled that he’d invited her to a Bible study meeting. But instead, she was with Tyler because she couldn’t take the chance he would tell her father he’d seen her. She needed to talk to Tyler immediately.

      Tyler held the car door open for her and whisked her away to an intimate and very expensive restaurant.

      She was almost surprised he hadn’t taken her somewhere splashy, somewhere people they knew would see them, but she guessed Tyler wanted the privacy rather than the notoriety, at least for the moment.

      They made polite chitchat until their meals came and the waiter made the obligatory last visit to make sure everything was satisfactory before leaving them alone.

      Georgette had been dreading the moment they would be assured of privacy.

      “So, tell me, Georgette, what in the world were you doing at that place?”

      “I think it should be obvious. I work there. What were you doing there?” She still didn’t know if she’d ever overcome the shock of seeing someone she knew on that side of town.

      “I told you what I was doing there. I was on my way downtown when I heard a noise. I must have just run over something, because the noise didn’t happen again.”

      Georgette poked at her salmon with her fork. “I suppose,” she said. It was possible, but unlikely. Bob And Bart’s was nowhere near the route between Tyler’s home and his office downtown. The only way Tyler, or anyone, for that matter, would have run into her was if they already knew she was there, because it wasn’t the type of neighborhood any of her acquaintances would normally ever go to.

      She cleared her throat. “I meant, what were you doing there in the first place? It’s kind of out of your way, isn’t it?”

      Tyler flashed her his most charming smile—a smile clearly meant to distract her from their conversation. “It might be a little out of my way, but I felt like taking an indirect route that day.”

      Indirect, nothing. His little side trip doubled his commute.

      Unless he had been following her…

      “Was there any particular reason you felt like going out of your way? Did you see my car when I was on the way to work or anything?”

      “Yes, actually, I did see your car. That’s why I stopped in. When I walked in the door, I was certainly surprised