Never Tell a Lie

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Chapter One

Saturday, November 1

Rain or shine, that's what Ivy Rose had put in the yard-sale ad. What they'd gotten was a metallic gray sky and gusty winds. But the typical, contrary New England fall weather hadn't discouraged this crowd.

David moved aside the sawhorse that blocked the driveway, and buyers surged in. It seemed to Ivy that their Victorian ark tolerated the invasion the way a great white whale might float to the surface and permit birds to pick parasites off its back.

For three years Ivy had been oblivious to the dusty piles of junk left behind by elderly Paul Vlaskovic, the previous owner, a cadaverous fellow whom David referred to as Vlad. The clutter that filled their attic and basement might as well have existed in a parallel universe. Then, as sudden as a spring thunderstorm, the urge to expel what wasn't theirs had risen up in her until she could no longer stand it. Out! David had had the good grace, or maybe it was his instinct for self-preservation, not to blame it on hormones.

Ivy felt the baby's firm kick—no more moth-wing flutter. Hello there, Sprout. She rested her palms on her belly, for the moment solid as a rock. With just three weeks to go until she either gave birth or exploded, Ivy was supposed to be havingcontractions. Braxton Hicks. False labor. The revving of an engine, not quite juiced up enough to turn over.

She and David had reached the obsessing-about-a-name stage, and she wondered how many other soon-to-be parents had tossed around the name Braxton.

Viable, viable, viable. The word whispered itself over and over in her head. She'd married at twenty-four, and then it had taken five years to conceive. Three times she'd miscarried—the last time at twenty weeks, just when she'd thought it was safe to stop holding her breath.

David came up alongside her and put his arm around where she'd once had a waist. A fully pregnant belly was pretty astonishing, right up there with a prizewinning Hubbard squash.

"Hey, Stretch"—the nickname had taken on an entirely new connotation in these final months—"looks like we have ignition. Quite a crowd," he said. She shivered with pleasure as he pushed her hair to one side and nuzzled her neck.

Ivy loved the way David gave off the aroma of rich, loamy soil, the way his thatch of auburn hair seemed to go in twelve directions at once, and most of all the way his smile took over his face and crinkled his eyes. The broken nose he'd gotten playing college football, after surviving unscathed for two years as quarterback in high school, gave his sweet face character.

She was more what people called "interesting-looking"—dark soulful eyes, too long in the nose, and a mouth that was a bit too generous to be considered pretty. Most days she paid little attention to her looks. She rolled out of bed, brushed her teeth, ran a comb through long, thick, chestnut-colored hair, and got on with it.

"They think that because we have this great old house, we have great old stuff," Ivy said.

David twiddled an invisible cigar and Groucho Marxed his eyebrows at a pair of black telephones with rotary dials. "Little do they know . . ."

Ivy waved at a fellow yard-sale junkie, Ralph of the battered black Ford pickup, who was crouched over a box of electrical fixtures. Beside him, amid the tumult, stood Corinne Bindel, their elderly next-door neighbor, her bouffant too platinum and puffy to be real. Her arms were folded across the front of her brown tweed coat. The pained expression on her face said she couldn't imagine why anyone would pay a nickel for any of this junk.

"What do you say?" David asked. "After the dust settles, we set up some of the baby things?"

"Not yet," Ivy said. She rubbed the cobalt blue stone set in the hand-shaped silver good-luck charm that hung from a chain around her neck. The talisman had once been her grandmother's. She knew that it was silly superstition, but she wanted all of the baby things tucked away in the spare room until the baby arrived and had had each of her fingers and toes counted and kissed.

"Excuse me?" said a woman who peered at Ivy from under the brim of a Red Sox cap. She held a lime green Depression glass swan-shaped dish that had been in a box of wax fruit that mice had gotten to.

"You can have that for fifteen," Ivy said. "Not a chip or crack on it."

"Ivy?" The woman with cinnamon curls, streaked silvery blond, had a mildly startled look. "Don't remember me, do you?"

"I . . ." Ivy hesitated. There was something familiar about this woman who wore a cotton maternity top, patterned in blue cornflowers and yellow black-eyed Susans. Her hand, the nails polished pink and perfectly sculpted, rested on her own belly. Like Ivy, she was voluminously pregnant.

"Mindy White," the woman said. "Melinda back then."

Melinda White—the name conjured the memory of a chubby girl from elementary school. Frizzy brown hair, glasses, and a pasty complexion. It was hard to believe that this was the same person.

"Of course I remember you. Wow, don't you look great! And congratulations. Your first?" Ivy asked.

Melinda nodded and took a step closer. She smiled. Her once-crooked teeth were now straight and perfect. "Isn't this your first, too?"

Ivy avoided her probing look.

"I'm due Thanksgiving," Melinda said. "How 'bout you?"

"December," Ivy said. In fact, she was expecting a Thanksgiving baby, too. But Ivy had told everyone, even her best friend, Jody, that her due date was two weeks later. As the end approached, it would be enough to deal with just her and David agonizing over when she was going to go into labor and whether something would go wrong this time.

Melinda tilted her head and considered Ivy. "Happy marriage. Baby due any minute. You guys are so lucky. I mean, what more could you ask for?"

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Excerpted from Never Tell a Lie LP by Hallie Ephron Copyright © 2009 by Hallie Ephron. Excerpted by permission.
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