LITMIR.BIZ

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probably cost more than a mortgage payment, and she and Garth are having a hard enough time making those lately.

      Fee spent much of the last hour on her cell phone with clients, in as blatant disregard of the mandatory hands-free headset tossed carelessly on the backseat as she is the posted speed limit.

      At least she didn’t smoke.

      Well, not after the first cigarette she was already puffing on when she pulled into the Saddlers’ driveway.

      Brynn asked her not to smoke in the car.

      “I can roll down the window.”

      “It still bothers me. I get nauseous, and you don’t want me to vomit all over your car, do you?”

      Obviously, Fiona did not.

      Glenview Springhouse is a sprawling, white clapboard house. Judging by the rambling architectural style, Brynn concludes it’s probably been added on to repeatedly over the years. The restaurant entrance is off to one side, in a wing that consists mainly of a glassed-in atrium.

      Here we go, Brynn thinks, still clenching her cell phone in a hand that remains white-knuckled even now that her speed-demon friend has stopped the car.

      She can’t help but wonder what she’s doing here.

      She should be home in Cedar Crest, eating peanut butter sandwiches—no crusts—with the boys, and nagging Garth about fixing the plastic towel bar in the bathroom that dropped off the tile wall again this morning.

      That’s her life, not this…this…

      This nightmare.

      “Do you think they’re here?” she asks as Fiona pulls into an empty spot and turns off the engine.

      “Tildy definitely is.” Fee indicates a gleaming red Ferrari 612 Scaglietti parked nearby.

      “That’s her car? How do you know?” Brynn asks uneasily, remembering Fiona claimed earlier that she hasn’t seen Matilda in years, either.

      Claimed?

      So you think she was lying about that?

      Why would she?

      Her thoughts awhirl with paranoia and suspicion, Brynn can’t seem to look her friend in the eye.

      No matter. Fee is too busy looking herself in the eye, focused again on the visor mirror as she says matter-of-factly, “I don’t know it’s Tildy’s for sure. But that’s a quarter-of-a-million-dollar car, and I’m willing to bet it’s hers. It’s her style.”

      Brynn, noting that she herself failed to discern said quarter-of-a-million-dollar car from the red Hyundai parked next to it, is mired in a familiar sense of being well out of her league.

      When she first met the infinitely astute Fiona, Brynn marveled that a girl who grew up in a blue-collar Cedar Crest household could possibly be so worldly.

      Brynn has long since accepted that it’s no accident. Driven by ambition long before she was voted Most Likely to Succeed at Saint Vincent’s High, Fee shed her local roots like a worn housecoat.

      She’d have gone away to college if her parents could have afforded it; instead, she used local connections and worked her way through Stonebridge. By the time she was asked to pledge Zeta Delta Kappa, no one outside her closest circle of friends even realized she was a townie.

      She seemed to have everything, even back then: brains, ambition, friends, a great wardrobe—and one of the hottest boyfriends around.

      Four years older than Fee when she began her freshman year, Pat was a law student at Stonebridge by day and a bartender by night. Plenty of girls were drawn to his affable personality and striking good looks. Black Irish, Fiona used to say, with his shock of dark hair and sooty lashes that fringed coal-colored eyes.

      Pat was from New York—Brooklyn. He was going to be a big-shot lawyer. Fiona often spoke of how they would move to Manhattan, where she would work for some top PR firm.

      But Pat never made it to the Bar, thanks in large part to the bar: the Rat, where he worked.

      It was obvious that Pat preferred doling out drinks and socializing to studying law. Obvious, that is, to all but single-minded Fiona, so in love with Pat that she saw only what she wanted to see.

      Brynn supposes their relationship boiled down to plain-old chemistry: a wild, mutual attraction that struck at first sight, lingered for a few years, and wore off soon after the wedding.

      They had been married a few months when Pat flunked out of law school.

      Stunned, Fiona turned up on Brynn’s doorstep late that blustery night, saying she had left him.

      “I don’t belong with some loser dropout. I deserve a lot better than that.”

      The next morning she woke up, ran straight to the bathroom to vomit, and miserably asked Brynn to run over to CVS to pick up a pregnancy test.

      Ashley was born eight months later.

      To appease his wife—and support her and his new daughter—Pat landed a job with a couple of sleazy divorce attorneys up in Pittsfield, working as a paralegal. He continued to tend bar at the Rat at night and on weekends, but spent every spare moment with Ashley.

      He still does. He’s a devoted daddy—even Fiona will give him that.

      Pat longed for a second child.

      Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations was born the September Ashley entered preschool, and there was no looking back. Fee might not be working in a fancy, high-profile New York PR firm, but she was running a thriving business. One that unfortunately propelled her spiraling marriage right into the ground.

      Brynn often wonders whether her friend ever has regrets—and whether she occasionally she envies the Saddlers’ stable lives.

      Probably not.

      Now, watching her friend check her teeth for lipstick, then snap the visor mirror back into place, she asks, “What do you think they’re going to say about all of this?”

      They, of course, are the two sorority sisters presumably waiting inside.

      “Only one way to find out. Come on.”

      Reluctantly, Brynn climbs out of the car and follows Fiona on wobbly legs.

      It’s too late in the season for summer vacationers and too early for foliage spectators, yet the inn’s large dining room is fairly crowded this first weekend after Labor Day. The round tables, draped in rich amber linen and centered with flickering candles and fresh autumn-hued flowers, are occupied mainly by couples and retirees.

      Matilda Harrington is the lone occupant of a round table for four. She had asked the hostess to move her twice before deciding this was as private a location as possible, in a relatively secluded corner beside a tall, lace-curtained window.

      Tildy sips her chilled white wine and takes in the Colonial ambience: the low-beamed ceiling, white-painted woodwork, gleaming, dark hardwood floors. Windows on three walls open onto profuse perennial gardens in brilliant, late-summer bloom and, beyond, a verdant woodland backdrop sure to be ablaze with color in another couple of weeks.

      Glenview Springhouse would be the perfect place to spend a romantic birthday weekend, considering that she can’t appear in public with the man in her life. Not as a couple, anyway.

      Just last night, she made the mistake of saying, “I’m so sick of sneaking around that I’m starting to think I don’t care who finds out.”

      His eyes darkened so swiftly at that remark that she wished she could take it back. He grew quiet and left soon afterward, saying he had to get home.

      He always has to get home.

      What Tildy wouldn’t give to spend just one night—the entire night—in his arms.

      I deserve that, she concludes. And this would be the

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