I look into Claire’s blue eyes that were once filled with cheer over the discussion of love, wide and growing over the entire Parisian revelation. Now they’re a mixture of confused and compelled. Maybe even a bit hungry in spite of the plethora of junk food we’ve indulged in.
“Jeez, Sophie,” she says with a laugh as she reaches for the pack of Twizzlers after long deliberation. She takes a sharp bite off the end of one. “You know how to drill a metaphor down,” one more large bite, “and get a girl’s appetite up.”
I can’t help but smile as she chomps down eagerly, her eyes beginning to sparkle with excitement.
“If love were a cupcake recipe it’d be so much easier,” I drone on.
“But it’s not. And where’d the fun be in it if it were?”
“Yeah, well.” I suppose she has a point.
“I know everything’ll turn out just right for you, Sophie,” she says in such a matter-of-fact tone that I can’t help but believe her. “Everything just will. It might not happen when or how you envision it.” She licks her lips as she chews. “It may take longer than you like, may sneak up on you.” She hurriedly fluffs her fingers in my side, tickling me and causing me to recoil and laugh. “But eventually,” she smacks, “eventually, you won’t be solo-Sophie.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to make my tone sound calm and serious, but my mind is distracted by the tickling…the tickling…
My mind wanders back to the night that seemed to initiate the resurfacing of old memories long repressed, secrets not shared until now. I never thought I’d share such secrets, but now that I have it feels really good. But it also feels strange. It’s like a weight’s been lifted from my shoulders—getting to confide in Claire felt right, felt good.
At the same time, however, a new kind of weight’s been added. It’s the weight that comes with acknowledging something difficult, with acknowledging something slightly disturbing as something real and having had happened. The revelation acts as a reminder that your past is a part of you, and maybe it’s even more a part of you than you realized.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“And my business is just growing so fast,” Jackie says in lofty tones. “It’s almost to where I just can’t keep up!” She flutters her lashes in typical Jackie-drama way. “I bet I’ll have to get an assistant or something!”
“That soon?” Lara says with a face that says, “Don’t bullshit me.”
“Well…” Jackie brushes the shoulders of her melon-colored DVF blazer. “Okay, maybe not soon. But some day.” She looks around Robin’s front room at all of us girls.
“I have three current projects, ladies,” she shares with pride. “The phone is ringing off the hook. And I’m already booked for two projects for the new year! Can you believe this?”
“It’s all those fliers,” I tease, toying mindlessly with a Raggedy-Anne doll that belongs to Rose. “You’ve turned my café into a library, Jack.”
“And I so thank you for that.”
“Now that you’ve got some clients and have done the flier-and-card advertising reach,” Lara says, “how about focusing on getting the website up and running? Taking stock of your photos, your portfolio, and advertising that way? You’ll be an easier sell to potential clients with a broader portfolio.”
“Andrew said first thing in the new year it should be rolled out,” Jackie says. “I still need a few more photos from different jobs, but with these new clients I’ll totally get that.”
“Good for you,” Emily says as she turns around her thumb one of her many rings. “Send a few photos my way before I leave town and I can Photoshop them for you.”
“Like fake them?” Jackie scratches at her wrist, checking the time on her expensive designer piece.
“No, goofy. Like lighten them up, crop if necessary, make sure your contrast and colors are right.”
“Oh, yeah! Definitely.” Jackie glances at her watch again. “Hey, girls, should I call for the car?”
In celebration of our giant reunion with Claire and Emily in town, the girls and I’ve decided to go out dancing. Jackie’s offered to have us chauffeured in a fancy stretch limo, compliments of her ever-generous (and ever-wealthy) husband, Andrew. But seeing how we’re all still deep in chit-chat and enjoying ourselves at the “pre-party” at Robin’s home, why not wait a while longer?
“Maybe in an hour?” I suggest, trying to read the faces of the other girls. “We’re having so much fun.”
“Totally,” Claire says in a guttural way. “We have so much more gossip to share!”
Immediately I wish I hadn’t suggested we gossip a bit longer. I hadn’t exactly made Claire promise or pinkie-swear to keep secret those divulged-to-only-Claire-secrets about Chad and Paris. But as comes with the territory of sisterhood, she should know better than to bluntly share what I’ve kept so close to the chest for so long. But now I’m not so sure…
I swallow hard, sending up a silent prayer that Claire’s enthusiasm over “so much more gossip to share!” has nothing to do with you-know-what.
“Something exciting you’re sitting on?” Emily asks with a crooked grin as she looks to Claire expectantly.
“With me?” Claire looks caught off guard.
“Or Conner,” Robin says as she strokes the nearly bald head of Phillip, who’s lying sound asleep stretched across her lap.
“Omigod,” Jackie blurts out as she removes her blazer, revealing a very low-cut, black, satin blouse. “You’re moving back to Seattle?!”
“I wish.” Claire’s tone is somber. “But no.”
“So what is it?” Robin presses. She slips a tiny sock onto one of Phillip’s bare feet.
“Nothing with me,” Claire replies, assisting Robin with the sock.
Oh no, I think. Claire, please don’t. You know better than to—
“Robin,” Claire says, eyeing her. “You want to? Unless everyone already knows…”
“Knows?” Lara says. “Knows what?”
“I haven’t shared with anyone else yet,” Robin says to Claire. She stands up, heaving slightly as she readjusts Phillip in her arms.
“Shared what?” Jackie blurts.
“It just happened like the day before yesterday.” Robin gently lays Phillip down in his mobile cradle.
“You’ve got to share,” Claire says cheerfully. She hands Robin one of the many crocheted blankets she’s made for the baby. “It’s such great news!”
Claire looks to all of us. “She just told me yesterday, when we were at lunch together.”
Robin resumes her seat, with a breathy sigh, and begins to clean her glasses with the hem of her flouncy white cotton shirt. It’s a shirt I know all too well, one that she got at Anne Taylor LOFT soon after she got her pre-maternity figure back after Rose was born. That shopping trip was the first one, post-baby, that Robin, Claire, and I made together in celebration of achieving her fitness goals. Though that was more than two years ago, it seems like yesterday.
“It probably isn’t much of a surprise,” Robin prefaces her revelation, “but it is a real relief.”
“What? What?” Jackie’s clearly on tenterhooks, one French-tip acrylic in between her teeth.
“Brandon’s agreed to an adoption,” Robin announces. She looks relieved, in both a deflated and elevated way. “Bobby and I sent over the paperwork; now Brandon needs to sign. One painful task down, another one to go.”
“That’s fantastic!” Lara gushes. “Congratulations, Robin! Omigod, I can’t believe you didn’t call instantly with that news!”
“It’s been…kind of surreal,” Robin says in a small voice as she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s not finalized, but it is one more step.”
“So what does that mean now?” I ask curiously.
“It means,” she says, taking a quick peek over at Phillip. “It means Brandon’s serious about agreeing to adoption. And now all I have to do is wait—sit and wait—for him to fill the paperwork out. When he does, then we meet in court
, turn everything in, Bobby enters into the agreement—consent, make it legitimate, you know? Then,” she tosses her hands up and sighs, “that should be it.” She brushes her hands together as if dusting them off. “Goodbye, Brandon. Forever.”
“Wow,” I rasp.
“You think he’ll actually pull through?” Emily queries. “Not to be the fly in the ointment,” she quickly adds.
“That’s the part where I’m chewing my nails down to the base,” Robin says through a tired half-laugh. “I don’t know. He’s said he’d commit before, but then he bailed.”
“With meeting Rose,” I say, laconic.
Robin nods. “We’ll see. For now we just sit and wait. Hope and pray.”
“It’ll all work out,” Claire says, ever the optimist, and I feel a smile tug at the corner of my mouth at her reaction. Though her cheerfulness is infectious, I sure wish it came naturally to me. Always seeking control and panicking if things don’t turn out as planned…it’s quite exhausting.
“We can hope it’ll all work out,” Lara says. “We can’t know for sure, though.”
“Hope,” Emily says strongly. “That’s what we’re doing. Karma will run its course, Robin.” She flashes Robin a warm, encouraging, and hopeful smile. “He’s gotten off unscathed before with crap, but not this time. It’s your turn now, girlfriend.”
“Definitely,” Jackie says.
“And,” Lara says as she runs a finger through the long chain of her silver pendant necklace, “if he doesn’t sign the papers—for whatever reason—then—”
“He will,” Claire insists.
“If he doesn’t, that doesn’t mean Bobby is any less of a father to Rose.”
“Absolutely.” Robin nods exuberantly.
“But it’ll sure make things a hell of a lot easier to put Brandon away for good, right?” I say, stating the obvious.
Robin holds a hand out to me. “More than ever.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to bring my lucky Maori talisman with me wherever I go!” Emily enthuses. “Not that you need any extra luck or well-wishes, because Claire’s right, he will so sign those papers. But,” she shrugs, “you never know. A little extra luck never hurt anyone.”
“That is fantastic and big news, Robin,” Lara says.
“It sure is,” Jackie says, “but the way you were all excited and secretive about it, Claire, I thought you were going to announce you were preggers or something.”
A sudden look of despondency glazes over Claire’s face, and her eyes turn down. She begins to pull at a loose thread of her shimmery, bronze blouse.
“You and Conner talked more about that?” Lara asks in a sweet tone. “Or you guys are probably still settling down in the new house, huh? New city?” She nods, a guise of thinking this the most sensible reason, but really trying to backpedal or smooth the obviously touchy topic over.
“In time,” I say, borrowing some of that Claire cheer.
I know the topic of having children is a particularly painful one for Claire. I honestly think she’s been trying to put the baby cart before the horse, wanting to rush into picking out paint swatches for the nursery almost the instant she received her marriage certificate. She’d been so eager to rush forward, the girls and I are well-practiced in telling Claire to be patient, that her time will come eventually. But going on a year and a half after her wedding, Claire’s interest in growing the Whitley family seems perfectly understandable.
I sniff to myself at the irony as the girls’ chatter is lost on me, and I begin to fall into distraction. Claire tells me to be patient and that love will come around at some point; do I believe her? I want to. The mirrored patience advice I give Claire, though…does she believe it? Is it believable? Will her time come to become a mother? Probably. Most likely. Will her waiting period for a baby, and mine for true love, feel like eternity? Will it hurt having to wait so long? I don’t need a single second to answer that question.
But I comfort Claire anyway, saying, with a rub of her back, “I bet Conner will be much more receptive to the idea once the year finishes.”
“That’s in just two weeks,” Claire replies emptily, eyes trained on the thread she’s now got wound into a tight ball. “And why the new year?”
“You know,” I say with pep, “a lot of big changes or important decisions at the office are made before the new year. Maybe Conner wants to make sure everything’s still comfortable, in order…”
“Sophie’s right,” Lara jumps in. “Conner just wants to make sure his career is steady.” Her voice rings of confidence. “He wants to make sure your position at the hospital is still what you want to do and going well.”
Claire nods eagerly as Lara continues, saying, “I’m sure when he feels he’s got a secure position, is doing well, and you’re set in Spokane, you’ll totally be knocked up.”
“Yeah!” Jackie says with a laugh. “I can picture it now. Watch out, world! Claire Whitley’s going to have a baby! Twins!”
Jackie begins to get ridiculously excited about such a prospect. This coming from the girl who shivers at the thought of becoming a mother—the girl who has actually asked her gynecologist on three separate occasions to perform, what Jackie calls, a wombotomy. “You know,” she said when she first ranted to us how useless her gynecologist was, “a lobotomy, but for the womb? I say just take the damn thing; I’ll never need it!”
“Thanks, girls,” Claire says with a small smile. “I’m okay, really. I know my time’s not too far off. Conner and I have talked about it.”
“That’s great!” Emily says.
“Yeah.” Claire glances over at Phillip, asleep in his mobile cradle. “And,” she shrugs and lightly touches his foot, “whenever I’m feeling the baby blues and getting down, I just wander into the NICU or the maternity ward at work and remind myself that my time’s not too far off.” She whips her head around towards us. “The maternity ward’s a great distraction! I can get my temporary baby fix there.”
“Or anytime here,” Robin says. She fans her face for emphasized exhaustion. “I love my kids, but you can take them whenever you want.”
“Oh, you mommas,” Jackie says as she smacks out a cigarette from her pack of Parliaments. “So when are we going to hit up that dance floor?”
“That’s right,” Robin says, standing up. “I’m going to make sure the hubs hasn’t fallen asleep yet.”
She picks up Phillip, who doesn’t wake, much less stir, as she places his head gently on her shoulder. “Let me put this little one to bed, and then we are hitting that club and dancing.” She looks over her free shoulder and whispers, “Getting our boogie on!”
“She did not just say ‘boogie,’ did she?” Jackie asks, a neon-green lighter in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “Damn, motherhood’s hit her hard.”
“We can’t all be so lucky to be married to someone twice our age to make us feel perpetually infantile,” Lara teases, plucking the cigarette from Jackie’s fingers. She perfunctorily tells her she really should knock off the nasty habit of smoking.
Jackie snatches the cancer stick back, sticks her tongue out, and says, “Andrew may look like he’s a fifty-something, but in bed he’s anything but old and slow.”
Emily grabs the pack of cigarettes from Jackie’s bag and takes two for herself, slipping one behind a heavily-bejeweled ear for later. “Another night of talking about quick lays, steamy romps, and ‘you tell me the craziest place you’ve done it, and I’ll tell you’ stories.” She stands up and moves to the front door. “I’ll get my nicotine fix first, thank you.”
Jackie bounds from her seat and follows Emily to the front door.
“We’re all playing catch-up, but you’ve been kind of quiet, Sophie,” Lara says after a brief bout of silence.
I purse my lips to the side and look to Claire, but she’s fingering the plush, blue and yellow baby rattle from Phillip’s cradle.
“You get your oven fixed?” Lara asks.
The highlight of “what’s new
in Sophie’s life,” I think a twinge glumly.
“After Christmas,” I say, briefing her on how the part had finally come in and everything should be in working order after the holidays. Chad and Conner had done their best, but to no obvious avail.
“It’s not that big a loss, though,” I explain to Lara as Robin returns, baby-free. “Oliver, you know the guy I used to work with?”
“Katie’s Kitchen,” Robin pipes in. “Cake-decorating guy.”
“And all-around fab baker,” I say. “He’s going to help out a bit with my orders tomorrow and for a couple days when he has some spare time, before I go home to Santa Barbara for Christmas.”
“And he’ll start working for you…” Claire sings, momentarily looking up from the amusing baby toy in a suspicious kind of way.
“Never know,” I say with a growing grin. “If the end-of-year numbers are as positive as I think they are, then…full-time help at the café? God! That would be just about the best Christmas present I could ask for!”
“And what about this Dean guy?” Lara asks. “When’s your next date with him? How’s that going?” She gives me a mock-seductive look, toying with her necklace.
Claire’s eyes meet mine for a fleeting moment, and they seem to say, “Yes, how will that go?”
I glance at my watch, smack my lips, and say, “You know what? I think it’s time Jackie called up that limo.”
I pull myself out of my suddenly uncomfortable seat and cross the room to the front door, distractedly smoothing at the back of my houndstooth shift dress.
“Girls,” I say to the two smoking buddies sitting on the front step. “Think we’re ready to go dancing.”
When Girlfriends Find Love Page 22
