Pretty Guilty Women

by Gina LaManna

  Kate was still reeling from the shock of her newly developed theory about Sydney and was slower to process Lulu’s presence than normal. She’d been headed back to her room to begin her hangover prevention routine after her stop at the front desk to get Sydney pillows. Kate learned during the early days in her “big girl” job that even elegant happy hours led to very un-elegant mornings after if she didn’t take control of the situation in advance.

  Even in her dreariest of drunken nights, Kate took pride in her careful ritual: aspirin, face cream, half a gallon of water, herbal tea, and a hair mask. Call her obsessive, but while everyone at the office was showing up to work with bleary eyes and headaches after the Christmas party, Kate flounced in looking fresh as a daisy. It was particularly helpful to have such a firm routine on nights like this, when her mind was occupied by thoughts of second identities and resort rooms paid for in cash.

  Lulu exhaled slowly. “I’m out to clear my head for a bit.”

  Kate flicked an impatient look at her watch. If she didn’t get started soon, she’d be a mess tomorrow, and Kate did not want to be a mess the first time she ran into Max after their breakup. Not to try and win him back, but to flaunt what he was missing.

  “Oh, Lulu,” Kate said, instead of the terse excuse she’d prepared to use before slipping off to her own room. She made an effort to add sympathy into her words this time despite (ticktock) her routine being pushed back again. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  The woman looked older than before, almost elderly. Lulu dressed with elegant flashiness—brilliant rings, dazzling earrings, a stunning necklace—but now, she just looked tired. The makeup on her face had worn thin, and her shoulders drooped forward. She didn’t seem to care.

  “We can grab a glass of wine, perhaps?” Kate suggested, fighting the urge to look at her watch again. They’d already spent hours at the bar. What more could be said at this hour? “It might help to talk things over.”

  Kate’s offer had come courtesy of the relationship books she’d read in hopes of better understanding the rest of the population. She wanted to associate with others on a normal, sympathetic level, but it just didn’t come naturally to her. (Did people truly feel that many emotions all the time?) Sometimes, Kate had to manufacture sympathy for others. A sort of fake-it-till-you-make-it mentality.

  The older woman looked up hopefully, but after a moment, she shook her head. A surge of guilt flooded through Kate. Surely her aspirin and beauty scrubs could wait half an hour to provide support to a…friend? Kate wasn’t sure what constituted friendship, but it had sure felt like all five women had developed or redeveloped some sort of bond in the bar earlier in the evening.

  “No, I don’t want to take up your time,” Lulu said. “It’s late, and this isn’t your problem. I’m going to read in the lobby for a bit and then head up to bed.”

  “Fine, but if you change your mind, I’m on the ninth floor, room 913. Knock if you want to have a drink on my balcony and talk—I’ll be up for another hour at least.”

  “I appreciate that,” Lulu said. “But I’ll be fine. Have a good night, Kate.”

  “You too.” And with that, Kate stepped into the elevator and punched the button twice before Lulu had time to wave goodbye.

  As the elevator shot upward, Kate pondered her recent run-in with Lulu. In a way, Kate could see similarities between herself and the older woman, and she was startled to realize the very notion frightened her. Lulu was wonderful—it really was nothing to do with her personality. She was classy and wealthy, exquisite, a woman to be admired, without a doubt.

  But what woman honestly wanted to turn seventy alone? Lulu hadn’t said it outright, but she was obviously troubled by something this evening, and based on their earlier conversation, Kate could only imagine it had to do with her husband. If Pierce left her, Lulu would have no husband, no children, probably few family members to speak of. And while grace and charm and hefty inheritances had likely carried Lulu far in life, what did it matter now?

  Kate reflected on her own life, on what had actually changed over the fifteen years since she’d last seen her college friends. Not Kate, that was for sure. Aside from an expanding taste for the luxurious and upgraded living quarters, wasn’t Kate exactly where she’d been at twenty-five? Single, childless…alone.

  The next decade promised to be drearier, if anything. At twenty-five, she’d been searching for success. Now, Kate had it—and more. She’d made partner already, and while she could collect more money, more clients, more fame (or infamy—was there really such a thing as a famous lawyer?), it was all incremental. For the first time, the thought felt exhausting to Kate. She’d been chasing money for ages. She’d caught it, bottled it, had it.

  While Sydney (or whoever she was) longed for money to make her problems go away, Kate longed for problems money could fix. More money, more problems—so the saying went. In a way, Sydney’s issues are so simple, Kate thought as the elevator dinged on the ninth floor. She stepped out and strode to her room, let herself in, and collapsed on the bed.

  Sydney’s problems were real, concrete. Not enough money? Find a job. Not enough food? Buy more. Yes, of course Kate realized things weren’t that simple, but in a way, they were. They were primal needs that needed to be fulfilled with a clear path leading toward improvement.

  But spreadsheets and answers had no place in Kate’s inability to get pregnant. Doctors had no answers. They had all the tests and no answers. All the shots, all the medicines, and no solutions. They could transfer embryos into her body and force her to ovulate until she turned blue in the face, and yet, no amount of money could fix the broken pieces of Kate. Though she dreamed about it. Boy, did she dream. What she’d give for an easy, simple solution. She could see the advertisement now: Is your uterus giving you problems? Fix it with three easy payments of $999.99!

  “Dammit, uterus!” Kate said to her stomach. “Why are you so fucking inhospitable?”

  The outburst brought Kate back to reality. She dug in her bag for the recently purchased aspirin and Fiji water and sat on the bed. She popped a pill and guzzled water, barely feeling the weight of the medicine on her tongue.

  The light of her computer blinked blue from the desk, and she figured she might as well give a quick scan of her emails—she’d told a few coworkers she’d log in and check things, but she’d gotten carried away at the bar and had ignored everything else.

  She snapped her laptop open, but instead of clicking into the Outlook folder that would bring up standard drudgery from her colleagues, she found herself typing a newly familiar name. The letters spelling out Sydney Banks shone back from the Google bar on Kate’s computer as her finger hovered over the Enter key.

  Finally, she pressed it and sat back, waiting for the results to load. Or maybe nothing would show, Kate admitted to herself. If Sydney had given them all a fake name, there wouldn’t be anything to find.

  It took mere milliseconds for Google to return results, and it turned out, there were multiple women named Sydney Banks, along with one (very handsome) man down in Australia. It was quick work to sort through the first few listings that were decidedly not the woman Kate had met claiming to have the same name. However, when Kate clicked on the Images tab, the results were more surprising.

  Indeed, there she was—Sydney Banks—smiling back from the blue-tinted screen. Admittedly, there weren’t many photos of her, but there were enough. While Kate had her image splashed across newspaper articles and her law firm’s website, she knew others preferred their privacy, and Sydney appeared to be one of them.

  Kate clicked on the top link associated with Sydney’s profile and was brought to a Facebook page. The settings were set to friends only, so while Kate couldn’t see much, it was clearly Sydney’s profile. A few more minutes of digging turned up an article about Sydney’s high school cheerleading days and a short essay about her afternoon volunteering a
t a homeless shelter, and Kate was convinced Sydney Banks was exactly who she said she was.

  So why had she paid in cash and used a fake name to register at the resort? The only solution was the one Kate had already come to, that Sydney was on the run—from somewhere, or someone. Kate suspected it had something to do with Lydia’s father. Sydney had been vague about the details of her separation, and the rest of the women had been too polite to press. But could it extend further into dangerous territory than any of them had suspected?

  Still mulling over the recent developments, Kate closed the Google browser and scanned through a few emails from her assistants and partners, letting the dull monotony of work take over. Kate went through the motions of responding to urgent emails and scanning the ones that weren’t before thoughts of the evening returned, and Kate’s click finger became itchy all over again.

  Opening a new tab, Kate’s fingers again hovered over the keys. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for yet. All Kate knew was she didn’t want the next twenty years to look the same as the last ones. She couldn’t bear if she ended up alone and childless. Like Lulu, in a way, Kate thought sadly. Poor Lulu.

  Kate had never let herself Google the word adoption before. It had always felt like failure. Kate wasn’t pleased to admit it, but she’d always thought of adoption much like she’d thought of donating money to charity: It was an excellent, wonderful thing. A truly magical way to connect parents wanting a child and a baby in need of a stable home. Kate loved it! Supported it. She went to an adoption event at least once a year in a jaw-dropping gown with an open checkbook.

  But she’d never considered it for herself. Kate was used to getting her way, to having things work as they were supposed to. She’d never considered that she herself might be a lemon, and there was no manual to repair her.

  Kate found her fingers pounding furiously at the keyboard as she dared to start thinking realistically about her future.

  Adoption.

  Surrogate.

  Exhaling a deep breath, Kate felt an almost giddy sense of adventure. Maybe this was how things were meant to go. Maybe she was meant to take the road alone. A single mother, much like Sydney—except with money. And not on the run. And child care, and organic food, and… Okay, she wasn’t like Sydney at all, except for the fact that they would both be going the road alone.

  It wasn’t as if Kate was greedy either. She knew the risks; she was thirty-eight and not getting any younger. She wasn’t asking for triplets or a family of five like Ginger, just one tiny human for herself. Someone to hold and clothe and feed and love.

  With a surge of adrenaline, Kate filled out a form on one of the websites requesting more information and a consultation. The little pop-up box informed her she’d receive a call during the next business day.

  Kate wiped her hands (which had somehow begun to sweat) on the bedspread before standing. She was already picturing the meeting with the adoption agency: “Yes, I’ll take one handsome man for the father, please! Intelligent—definitely intelligent. Maybe a professor? An astronaut? And the mother, how about a doctor?”

  Yes, Kate thought with a smile. She didn’t need Max at all.

  Kate knew she was getting a little ahead of herself. She trembled with anticipation, which was ridiculous. She’d done no more than Google a website. But it was as if a path had opened before her, and if there was one thing Kate appreciated, it was a specific route and straightforward steps to solve her problems.

  She was still buzzing with adrenaline as she moved to the bathroom and began her hangover routine. Letting the warmth of the rain shower wash over her, Kate’s thoughts seesawed between surrogates and adoption and her ever-growing list of to-dos that’d begin once she returned to the city.

  It was halfway through her routine that Kate noticed the beginnings of a queasy stomach, which she promptly ignored. A bad idea, seeing as she barely managed to step out of the shower before she reached the toilet, stuck her head over it, and relieved her stomach of its contents.

  If only she’d started her hangover routine sooner.

  Eighteen

  Lulu woke slowly.

  Sunlight sprayed across the spacious, almost-penthouse resort room. Blue skies spanned for miles in the distance, stretching across the tops of palm trees and cacti and other desert-dwelling species. Lulu fluffed her pillow, sighing with the bliss of luxury comforts, of resort rooms created specifically to relax their guests and help them unwind from the bustle and stress of the real world.

  Reaching a hand out beside her, she felt for Pierce’s arm to signal she was awake; he’d be up already, reading the paper and waiting patiently for his wife to join the waking world.

  Her arm touched nothing except bedsheets. Crisp, starched sheets and an additional fluffy, hypoallergenic pillow. And her husband’s head wasn’t on it. Flying into a sitting position, Lulu sucked in a deep breath as reality slowly descended on her like a heavy blanket around her shoulders.

  Lulu glanced around the room she shared with Pierce, fighting a hint of disorientation. Usually, her husband waited beside her until she woke. Had he left the room? Gone on to breakfast without her?

  Her eyes pricked with tears as the shower clicked on in the bathroom. She was ashamed at the relief that flooded her body to realize Pierce was still here. Even if he wouldn’t be for long.

  Shifting out of bed, Lulu wrapped herself in a fluffy, white robe, one with the resort’s emblem embroidered onto it. She found an elegant little coffee arrangement waiting for her on a room service tray. One of the two cups had already been used, the last dregs of deep brown staining Pierce’s cup.

  Lulu helped herself to the other, selected one of those brown sugar cubes—the fancy kind in misshapen blobs with raw sugar imported from some Caribbean island—and dropped it into the delicate cup of black coffee. Steam spiraled upward as Lulu topped off her beverage with a dash of cream from an exquisite little milk jug, then picked up the minuscule rose-gold spoon to stir in the fixings.

  Carefully raising her dainty cup, so thin it might crack from the breeze, Lulu made her way to the patio and let herself outside, easing onto one of the comfortable loungers adorned with a fresh towel.

  As she leaned back, she felt the sun play hide-and-seek with the clouds on her face, and for once, she didn’t worry about SPF or wrinkles or cancer. She closed her eyes and soaked it in and tried not to think at all.

  But Lulu had never been very good at meditation, and as her eyes flicked open, she caught a glimpse of herself in the window’s reflection. This morning, she was without makeup, without jewelry, without creams and lotions to help mask her age. Leaning closer to the glass pane, Lulu raised a hand to touch her cheek.

  It was odd how the wrinkles outside didn’t match the youth she felt inside. Some days, Lulu felt as giddy as a young girl. Then she’d catch a glimpse in the mirror and remember that actually, she was of the age to be a grandmother. It was a mismatch, and to Lulu, it seemed her inner self had never caught up with her aging body.

  Lulu had never been particularly concerned by the number dictating her age. Her whole life, she’d had youth and beauty and charm on her side. Plus, she’d always chosen to marry older men. Not only did they tend to be more well off financially, but she enjoyed being the youngest in a pair.

  However, Lulu was at the point in her life where men older than her were starting to die. But that wasn’t the point. Lulu didn’t want to look for someone else. She didn’t want to search for love again, to go through the whole rigmarole of swapping life stories, meeting families, dreaming about future togetherness. She’d lost the will and the drive for it, quite possibly because she’d thought that portion of her life was over for good.

  Love had never been so exhausting.

  The ring of a phone startled Lulu from her reverie. She shuffled inside from the balcony and returned her coffee cup to the tray with a clink. S
he reached for the room phone and came to a halt when she realized the sound wasn’t coming from the landline.

  The ringtone was unfamiliar. Lulu glanced at her phone, but the screen hadn’t lit with the sign of an incoming call. It wasn’t the familiar chime of Pierce’s ring, though Lulu glanced at his charger in the wall, which was empty. A prickle crept up the back of Lulu’s neck as she spun around, listening for the direction of the sound.

  Her feet pulled her toward Pierce’s suitcase. She bent, unzipped it, and thumbed cautiously through his clothes. The sound was near, so near she was sure it was coming from his bag. Lulu cursed as she shuffled through her husband’s familiar slacks and shirts, flipped through his pajamas and activewear, and poked through his socks. She pulled out his work phone, which she’d seen late last night, but the screen on it was empty and there were no missed calls.

  The mysterious jingle continued to ring. It wasn’t until Lulu discovered a tiny little zipper along the interior of his suitcase, hidden behind the bulk of Pierce’s things, that she felt the vibration. With shaking fingers, Lulu tugged the pocket open and stuck her hand in, securing the slim mobile device and pulling it toward her, hesitant to look at the name.

  In place of a full contact name was simply the letter S. Lulu’s blood ran cold as everything clicked into place. Late night meetings, little black books with appointments designated by a single letter, notes referencing meetings Lulu hadn’t been aware of… It was her.

  Sensing the call was hovering on the verge of voicemail, Lulu reacted on impulse. Clicking the answer button, she held the phone to her ear and waited.

  “Is that you, Pierce?” a female voice asked. “You were supposed to call me last night. I thought you said you’d be reachable, even though you’d be gone this week. Hello? Pierce?”

  “Who is this?” Lulu asked, a strange gargle sounding in her throat. “And what do you want with my husband?”