LITMIR.BIZ

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I said. “I wanted to be a ‘stay at home mother,’ I wanted to be a block watch captain, room mother, chairman of the annual Christmas cookie exchange. I wanted to drive a minivan to soccer games and sew Halloween costumes. I wanted everything that Roger had promised me when I’d married him, damn it. And I didn’t see why Gordy should have to suffer having his life uprooted just because his parents had fallen out of love. Besides, I’d always planned to go back to school and eventually support myself. I mean, I had no intention of living off a man who didn’t love me for the rest of my life.”

      “I’m not sure I share your ethics on that one,” Moira murmured as she refilled our glasses from the shaker she’d brought with her from the kitchen.

      “The most important thing to me was to know that Gordy would be taken care of until after college.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I guess that’s how I screwed up. I thought I was going to be taken care of for four more years, too.” I leaned forward again and buried my face in my hands. “Don’t you see? I thought I had four more years to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

      Moira set her glass down on the table, then gathered me to her ample, unfettered bosom. “You poor thing,” she murmured as she rocked me in a way that my own mother certainly never had. I closed my eyes and settled in. Of course, Bernice wouldn’t have been nearly as comfortable to be held against, either. My mother had good bones and never put anything into her mouth that could lead to hiding them. When she was upset, she lost herself in sit-ups or yoga, not double helpings of dessert.

      My eyes popped open. OMG! My mother! How was I ever going to face my mother with this?

      Comforting as they were, Moira’s arms weren’t going to cut it. I pushed away from her and grabbed my glass off the coffee table, downing the second martini, which wasn’t nearly as cold or delicious as the first, in one huge gulp. I burped then wailed, “How the hell am I going to tell Bernice?”

      “I think we need more booze,” Moira said.

      She’d met my mother.

      Moira was back in the kitchen, shaking up the last of a bottle of Stoli, when Stan came home. I sat up straighter and tried to look less like a tearful lush, then I remembered that Stanley Rice, who at six foot three and about one hundred forty pounds looked like Ichabod Crane in Ralph Lauren, wasn’t known for a keen sense of observation when it came to anything other than business and his model railroads in the basement. He barely glanced at me.

      “Hello, Lauren,” he murmured absently while he sorted through the stack of mail he’d brought in with him.

      “Hi, Stanley,” I said, trying not to slur my words. Not that he’d notice that, either.

      Moira came into the living room with the shaker and another glass. She poured Stan a martini. “Here you go, snookums. Something to fortify you.”

      Stan looked blankly at the glass Moira had thrust into his hand. He took a sip and a small smile played around the corners of his thin mouth. “Ah,” he breathed.

      “That’s a good boy,” Moira said. “Now you go downstairs and play with your trains until dinner is ready.”

      Stan shuffled off like an obedient mental patient. I still hadn’t figured out how someone as vibrant as Moira had ended up married to the barely breathing Stanley Rice.

      “I should go,” I said as I tried to stand up.

      “Don’t be silly.” Moira refilled our glasses. “You’re staying for dinner.”

      I looked around the room. “What dinner?”

      She raised a perfectly arched brow. “You have heard of delivery, haven’t you?”

      She fished a cell phone out of her kimono pocket and ordered a pizza.

      With a tummy full of pepperoni pizza to help soak up the vodka, I wove my way back home under darkness, hoping that the ladies on Seagull Lane were all too busy either scrapbooking or exfoliating to see the shameful condition I was in.

      At nine o’clock the next morning, I shot up from a dead sleep into a sitting position. Someone is in the house, was my first thought, followed closely by Something must have crawled inside my mouth and died last night. My third thought was spent wishing I could unscrew my head and set it aside for the day because the pounding going on inside of it was driving me crazy.

      And then I heard the noises from downstairs again.

      I threw back the covers on my four-poster bed, then crept to the top of the stairs.

      A woman was standing at the foot of them, shaking the newel post.

      “Excuse me,” I said. “What are you doing in my house?”

      The woman looked up at me. “Oh, hello, there. I guess you didn’t hear the bell.”

      “I guess I didn’t,” I muttered.

      She held up a set of keys. “So I just let myself in. I’m Sondra Hawk. We spoke on the phone.”

      I’d been right. She did know how to accessorize.

      Shiny black boots, shiny black purse, shiny black belt, shiny black hair cut as severely as the black and white houndstooth check suit she was wearing. The jewelry all looked like real gold. And there was just enough of it to announce that Sondra Hawk was both successful and tasteful.

      Suddenly, I was keenly aware of what I must look like. Not to mention smell like. According to my T-shirt, I’d had chocolate, and something red. Most likely something Italian because I was pretty sure it was garlic fermenting in my mouth.

      Damn it. Sondra the Hawk was probably wondering how someone like Roger Campbell could have ever been married to someone like me. A thought, unwelcome as a swarm of wasps at an ice cream social, entered my mind. I wondered if they’d had sex, yet—Ms. Coordinated of 2006 and Roger “I have all my shirts custom made” Campbell. If they hadn’t, I figured they’d eventually get around to it. And on sheets with a minimum 600 thread count. I thought longingly of the yellow sprigged sheets currently on my bed wishing I were still snuggled between them even though I was pretty sure that no one had ever bothered to count their threads.

      But there was no running away from the woman with the leather notebook that matched her bag. Anyway, was I woman or wimp? I decided to hold my head high, despite the map of indulgence on my T-shirt. I started down the stairs. “May I ask what you’re doing here, Ms. Hawk?”

      “I’m here to inspect and get to know the property, Mrs. Campbell. We at Priority Properties pride—”

      “Yes, I know. You pride yourself in getting to know a house before you list it.”

      She gave me a frosty smile. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll just make myself at home and take a look around.”

      “And if you don’t mind, I’ll accompany you.”

      “Certainly,” she said. “Of course, some people find it too emotional an experience—”

      She let her voice trail off as she shook the newel post again then jotted something down in her notebook.

      “No entrance hall,” she murmured as she jotted some more.

      There had once been a tiny entrance hall and an enclosed staircase. The one big change Roger and I had made in the early years was to tear down the wall so that the narrow staircase was now open to the living room. Which meant that there was really no entrance hall, but I’d always thought it was worth it because it had opened up the living room so much.

      “Small, isn’t it?” Sondra commented as she moved to the center of the room and inspected the ceiling. “This should really be replastered,” she said. “And I would strongly suggest changing your window treatments.”

      I’d made the simple tieback muslin curtains that hung in the front windows myself. I’d always thought them charming. Sondra’s tone had reduced them to rags. I didn’t

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