When in Doubt, Add Butter

by Beth Harbison

  Willa nodded. “That makes sense. So she wanted to catch him in the act, preferably on film, so she could skewer him in court.”

  “But she didn’t get anything incriminating on him, because he hasn’t tried anything since.”

  “Which means you have job security as long as she’s trying to nail you and her husband.”

  I had to laugh. “Except for the fact that she’s blacklisting me at the club and who knows where else.”

  “From a sociological standpoint, it’s really pretty interesting.”

  “Maybe, but from a practical standpoint, I’m panicked.” Instinctively my hand went to my stomach.

  She noticed. “Are you sick?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Pregnant.”

  She gave a low whistle. “Wow. How far along?”

  “A couple of months. I’m not even sure. I have my first doctor’s appointment next week.”

  “Do you have money saved?”

  “I hate that question.”

  She nodded, understanding. “I used to as well. If you need help—”

  “Oh, thanks. No, I’ll be okay.” My voice didn’t hold the conviction I wished it did. But how could it? I wasn’t convinced at all. “I just need more work, that’s all. If you hear of anyone looking, let me know. Especially for events.”

  “Absolutely. But Gemma?”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean it,” she said.

  And even though I would never, ever take her up on it—I would never put a friend in a position to feel like our relationship was anything other than 50–50 equitable—her offer was so heartfelt that it almost made me burst into tears.

  She said, “Not just now or never, but if you find yourself in a bind and need a loan, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”

  Chapter 22

  I had to confront Angela.

  Didn’t I?

  I went to the Van Houghten house two hours earlier than usual with the idea that I could get all the cooking done and be ready to talk to her without distraction when she got home. That way I could leave afterwards, rather than having the potentially awkward problem of a tense conversation followed by an even more tense silence while I cooked her dinner.

  But there was no question that it had to be done.

  If she was blacklisting me with potential clients in the relatively small D.C. social scene, I had to stop her if at all possible.

  So why wasn’t I more relieved when I pulled up to the house and saw her car out front?

  Better still, Peter’s wasn’t there. We could, theoretically, have this out without added complications.

  I walked in with my bags from Whole Foods and called out, “Hello?”

  No answer.

  Good. That gave me a little time to investigate.

  I went into the kitchen and looked around. There had to be a camera in here somewhere. That would prove my theory was correct. Or at least it would go some way toward proving my theory was correct. There was no way she would expect her husband to have a dalliance in her son’s room or in the playroom—that he had made a pass at me in Stephen’s room was just a strange coincidence—so if she really wanted to catch him at it, she’d have to put the camera where she thought he’d make his move.

  And if she thought he’d make it on me, that would be the kitchen.

  The kitchen was so sparse and clean that there weren’t very many hiding places. The drawers were smooth and solid, as well as the cabinets, and the countertops had nothing on them at all until I opened my bag of tricks and started cooking.

  That left décor.

  If she expected me to be by the counter where I usually worked, that meant the west wall was probably the best place to get a good view. I went over to three framed black-and-white family photos on the wall, and found the small camera strategically placed so the lens was in the iris of Angela’s own eye.

  It was a nice touch.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I whirled around to find Angela standing there, scrutinizing me, her hands on her hips.

  I’ve never been fast on my feet when it comes to lying. Especially when there wasn’t even a semi-reasonable lie to come up with, as in this case.

  “I have a question for you,” I countered.

  Interestingly, that seemed to take her off guard. “Do you?”

  I made an effort not to sound combative. I’d seen enough horror movies where incensing the bad guy only led to worse things. If Angela was my Bad Guy, I had to play this as smart as possible.

  “I’ve learned from several sources that you are recommending people replace me as their events caterer at the club,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong and even. “Why is that?”

  She raised her chin. “I can’t control who people choose to cater their parties.”

  “But you can influence them.”

  “Why would I?”

  Now, if I had been 100 percent sure that she had seen the nanny cam video of Peter making a pass at me, I might have called her on the carpet right there, but I was aware that there was still a small chance that my theory was wrong—kitchen cam notwithstanding—and telling her about Peter would have just incensed her and made her fire me on the spot.

  And I didn’t want that.

  Did I?

  Well, actually, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t love working for her, that was for sure—particularly now that I knew she was trying to harm my career elsewhere—but I had the baby to think about now, so I just couldn’t risk it without some sort of net to fall on, if at all possible.

  So all I said to her was, “I don’t know! But I want to. Do you have a problem with what I’ve been cooking for you?”

  The front door opened. She looked startled for a moment until Stephen came running in.

  As soon as he saw his mother, he stopped running.

  “Hello, Stephen,” she said.

  “Hi.” His voice was quiet, as if he’d been told too many times to hush up.

  I hated to see that.

  Kim, the nanny, came in behind him, and like Stephen, she slowed her gait when she saw Angela.

  “I thought you … weren’t going to be here this afternoon—?” she said to Angela, looking confused.

  “Did you?”

  “Well, you said…”

  “Run upstairs and put your indoor clothes on,” Angela said to Stephen.

  I looked at him—he was wearing the same uniform of khaki pants and a T-shirt that he usually wore—and wondered what on earth indoor clothes could even mean. But this was Angela I was speculating about, so there was no telling.

  “I’ll get him cleaned up,” Kim said.

  “No!” Angela barked the word, startling both Kim and me. “No, you’ll stay here. I need to talk to you. Both of you.”

  We stood in silence, like guilty children, listening as Stephen’s footsteps disappeared up the stairs and into the muffled distance of the hallway and his bedroom.

  “Is something wrong?” Kim asked, biting her lower lip and darting her eyes from me to Angela and back again.

  “Very interesting question,” Angela said. “And perhaps it depends on how you define right and wrong.”

  Clearly, we were being led into a lecture of some sort, but she wasn’t doing it very smoothly. It struck me that she seemed to have something on her mind but no planned way to articulate it.

  In the end, she simply threw it right at us.

  “Which one of you is sleeping with my husband?” Angela demanded. Then, to me, “Is it you?”

  “No! Why would you—?”

  “I saw that he kissed you! It was on the security video.”

  Kim gasped.

  Oh, great, now everyone was going to think I was this home-wrecker. “What you saw,” I said in as controlled a voice as I could muster, “was, yes, your husband had a few drinks and then made an advance on me.”

  “Oh my God,” Kim muttered.

  Stupid little suck-up, trying to keep her job by agreeing a
bout how awful I was.

  I wanted to slap her.

  Hormones, of course. My temper was very short, given the wrong set of circumstances. And this was definitely the wrong set of circumstances.

  “But,” I said pointedly, “if you watched the whole exchange, you know that he didn’t get anywhere with it. I rebuffed him, he apologized, and that was all there was to it.”

  I could feel Kim’s judgmental energy pulsing at me from three feet away. And there was no question but that the same was coming from Angela, but then again, there was always negative energy coming from Angela.

  “That is not all there was to it,” Angela countered.

  I tried to remember if there was anything else after that, any moment that might have been caught on the video and misinterpreted by someone with a vested interest in what happened next.

  “Several times when I have come home at night, the sheets have been made up incorrectly on my bed.”

  It was perfect. Exactly the sort of detail she would notice.

  “That doesn’t prove anything about us!” I said. “Maybe he came home and had a midday nap or something. Did you ask him?”

  “Of course I asked him! He said he was never home! He’s a liar. That’s how I know it’s one of you!”

  “Angela, this is just crazy. Honestly.” I shot a look at Kim, hoping she could read my sincerity, but she couldn’t, because her head was down.

  But even so, I could see that her face was red.

  Clearly, at that moment, Angela saw it, too.

  No wonder Kim had been so shocked at Angela’s accusations toward me! She thought she was Peter’s one and only.

  “Well, that answers that,” she said. “I should have known that was your cheap makeup smudged on the pillowcase and not Gemma’s. Or at least”—she looked me up and down—“not just Gemma’s.”

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, or what the truth is, but I have not had any physical contact with your husband, and frankly, I resent the accusation.”

  “Good.” She raised her chin, but I could tell her confidence was faltering. “Then you may leave.”

  I paused, wondering if she meant she was firing me and wondering if I should be quitting, but she caught that fatal hesitation and swooped in for the kill herself.

  “And I mean for good. You signed a confidentiality agreement when you started work here. I expect you understand that all of this”—she gestured—“all of it falls under that agreement.”

  “Of course,” I said crisply, collecting my things. Including the food, by the way, which was a huge pain in the ass. It was very hard to gather it all together again, quickly and neatly enough to make a tidy escape with my dignity.

  But I did it.

  As I left, it occurred to me that what Vlad Oleksei had predicted about me being on film was actually 100 percent correct. If I’d been a little less skeptical, I might have seen it.

  What else had he said? Now I wished I had a tape of it. Or the kind of memory that would let me recall it word for word. Wasn’t there something about the man I was with now? Could that have meant Paul? Or was I just getting carried away now, hoping the good stuff was true since one bad thing seemed to be?

  It was easy to see how people got hooked on psychics. If you could really believe—wholeheartedly believe—that everything was going to work out, what a relief that would be.

  No regular therapist could give you that much peace of mind, that fast!

  Peter was getting out of his car just as I reached the end of the sidewalk.

  Which was odd, as he wasn’t usually home this early.

  But wait—maybe it really wasn’t odd, now that I knew what I did about him and Kim. They probably had a tryst planned. That explained her surprise at running into Angela and me in the kitchen.

  And it explained the jaunt in his step as he passed me, giving me a quick wave and nod.

  For just a moment, I thought about warning him what was inside waiting for him. But if I did, then I would be involving myself in something I wanted—no, I needed—to distance myself from as much as possible.

  It wasn’t my problem.

  None of the Van Houghten drama was my problem anymore.

  But even in its death throes, it had managed to create a whole host of new trouble for me.

  Chapter 23

  The next few days passed slowly and were filled with fears and trepidation about the future. What had begun as a niggling worry had become a full-out emergency.

  How could I be here again?

  Seriously, how?

  It wasn’t just the pregnancy part. I had come to terms with that. I mean, I wasn’t proud of getting into this spot twice in my life, but the first time I was just a kid and the second time … Well, you know already. Granted, I didn’t know Paul—or at least I didn’t know I knew him at the time—but the unexpected and complete failure of birth control was different from the failure to take personal responsibility.

  Now was the time I needed to take responsibility.

  I had lost more than half my income over the past few weeks. I was not very different from the teenager I’d been once, as far as prospects for taking care of my child went. How could I keep this child after letting the last one go when, essentially, nothing had changed?

  I had to figure it out. Because there was no question as to whether I would keep the baby this time—no question at all. I was keeping him or her, no matter what.

  The problem was that, even though there was no question, still there was no easy answer.

  Only hard ones.

  Only increasingly hard ones.

  Including—and this was a big one—finding a way to talk to Paul about this.

  And a time to do that.

  I had learned enough about people in my lifetime to trust my instincts about them. And I just couldn’t see Paul opting for indignant accusations about traps and tricks. Not only was he logical enough to remember that I was the one to take the extra step of trying to protect us that night, but even if I hadn’t, even if he thought I’d been careless, he would have known that he was equally responsible and he would react accordingly.

  In short, he was no Cal. I was sure of it.

  And that was the problem—he was so not Cal that I knew he would take responsibility for the pregnancy, and I didn’t want that. He was obviously excited about his new job. Evidently, it was a great opportunity, the kind of thing people work years toward.

  There was no way I was going to blow that for him.

  * * *

  The phone rang at 2 A.M. on Tuesday morning. I’d half expected it the whole time, but still I was disoriented and alarmed when it came.

  “Hello?” The receiver was upside down, just like on a bad sitcom. I fixed it. “Hello?”

  “… water broke sometime in the last three hours, we’re not sure when because she was asleep,” came the frantic voice of Dell. “How soon can you get there? God, I’ve called you like four times!”

  I was already up, shoving on the sweats I’d been wearing before bed. I wouldn’t remember the chocolate brownie ice cream stains on them until later. “I’m a heavy sleeper. Okay, I’m leaving now,” I said, moving the phone from one ear to the other while I pulled on a cardigan sweater, one arm at a time. “Ten minutes. Get her into the car, and I’ll be there when you’re ready to leave.”

  And here we were. The moment when Penny’s baby was going to be born and all of this would, inevitably, become more real to me. I knew it was coming, I’d been waiting for it—in many ways like a kid waiting for Christmas—and yet somehow, the reality of Penny’s baby coming now just made the inevitability of mine that much more clear and obvious.

  I grabbed some old Uggs from a pile of shoes as I passed the front door and grabbed my keys and purse from the foyer table. Times like this it was a good thing to have a tiny apartment—everything was within reach. I ran down the stairs, vaguely noting the fact that the stairwell smelled like urine again, and out into
the parking lot. I’d forgotten a bunch of guys had been out there drinking green bottles of beer earlier, and that I’d heard at least two smashing bottles, but the memory came back to me sharply as I stepped, hard, onto a shard.

  “Shit!” I yelled, because I’m a firm believer that prompt and loud exclamations help alleviate pain in this kind of situation.

  I hopped the last couple of yards to my car and threw the door open, leaping in. If there was ever a time for multitasking, this was it, and I started the ignition with my right hand and pulled the glass out of my foot with my left. Ahh. Done. Success.

  I threw the car in gear and jerked out of the parking lot. It was about three miles to Penny’s house, and at this hour all the lights should be blinking yellow. A quick glance at the clock on my dash showed 2:16. Good. That meant it was 2:06—don’t ask me why keeping it ten minutes fast always fooled me, it did—so I should be there just about when I said I would.

  When I got to the intersection of Fernwood Lane and Democracy Boulevard, the light that should have been blinking was solid red. Impatiently, I pressed my foot to the brake (alerting me to the fact that there was still glass in my foot and that I’d just pushed it deeper) and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  The numbers on the digital clock advanced—2:18, 2:19 … When it hit 2:20, I lost hope that the light was going to change. It had to be broken. Since no one else was on the road, I advanced slowly through the intersection, feeling a strange glee when I made it to the other side and no emergency lights flickered to life in the bushes or behind a bunch of trees.

  By 2:22—2:12, real time—I was pulling up in front of Penny’s house and she was yelling at Dell to “Stop acting like I’m made of eggshells!”

  “At the moment, you might as well be,” I said, smiling at her full, round belly for the last time. “Now, get in the car and go to the hospital. Charlotte will be fine with me.”

  “I know you have to work in the morning, and I think my neighbor, Sheila, can take over for you, but I didn’t want to call her right now. But if she can’t do it, I can call LeeLee, whose daughter plays with Charlotte sometimes after school. I can’t remember their last name at the moment, but—”