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That Last Weekend © 2017 by Laura DiSilverio.
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First e-book edition © 2017
E-book ISBN: 9780738753102
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978-0-7387-5253-2
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For my Thomas.
I won’t say you complete me, because that line’s been used, and it’s kind of cheesy now, but you definitely make me a better person and give me great joy. Thank you for a quarter century of love, and a life that is more and better because we stride/stumble/crawl/dance through it together.
One
Congratulations hailed down on Laurel Muir, who thanked her supporters and wished herself elsewhere. Anywhere else. The dentist’s chair. The top of Pikes Peak. I-25 during rush hour. Anywhere but her parents’ Cherry Hills mansion, which seethed with a healthy collection of Denver’s movers and shakers, all of whom shook her hand or hugged her before spilling onto the lawn, a swathe of emerald perfection on a late summer day.
“Congratulations, Your Honor.” The jowly partner of a competing law firm planted a damp, gin-scented kiss on her cheek. “Remember your friends when you ascend to the bench,” he said with a wink.
“Mmm,” Laurel murmured noncommittally. “Thanks for coming, Don.” He was out of earshot by the time she finished speaking, high-tailing it out to the lawn and accosting a waiter to score his third or fourth martini of the day.
She wished she could do likewise, but contented herself with another club soda and lime handed over by an attentive server. She never drank at professional functions. Running the cold glass over her heated forehead, she took a sip and gazed around. The white tent on the lawn, the champagne, the crowd … it all reminded her too much of her and George’s wedding reception held here under what might have been the same tent fifteen years ago.
“Darling, I am so proud of you.”
George stood there, as if her thinking about the wedding had conjured him, expensive Italian jacket making the most of his broad shoulders, dark brown hair tamed with a dab of gel, skin tanned from a weekend on the links, charm oozing from every exfoliated and moisturized pore.
“You don’t get to be proud of me,” Laurel said after looking around to make sure no one was within earshot. “And I’m not your darling.” She realized he was holding her hand and pulled it away. “The divorce decree specifically spelled out that I was no longer your darling, sweetheart, honey-pie, or snookums—didn’t you read it?”
His smile shrank a fraction, but his voice was even. “Laurel, I’m trying to congratulate you on your achievement. Being named a judge is a great honor. You’ve worked hard for it. Congratulations.”
There was a time when his apparent sincerity and the brown eyes smiling into hers, as if she were the center of his universe, would have won her over. That time was long gone. “Thank you. Drinks are on the lawn. You know the way.” She turned away to greet the elderly couple making their way across the flagstone patio using matching walkers. “Mr. and Mrs. Ellery, I haven’t seen you since Easter. Thank you for coming.”
A headache niggled at her temples. How long until she could decently sneak away?
An hour later, Laurel’s headache had blossomed into a troop of baboons banging around inside her skull. Making polite conversation with her well-wishers was taking more effort than usual. Granted two minutes alone by a quirk of party gravity that drew the guests into orbits away from her, she plucked the lime from her tall glass and bit into it, relishing the sting on her tongue. This party is hard because I’m not sure I want to be a judge. The thought, as tartly bitter as the lime, jolted her. Club soda sloshed the bodice of her coral sheath. Dabbing at the damp spot, she let herself absorb the truth she’d been trying to squelch ever since her meeting with the governor last week. In the last year, she’d become more and more convinced that she wanted to have a baby, and single motherhood and a judgeship were an uncomfortable match-up. I might as well be donning a nun’s habit, she thought as she contemplated putting on her judge’s robes.
Was it ironic or moronic that now that she had achieved what she’d worked for all her life, she wasn’t sure she wanted it anymore? No—that wasn’t accurate. She still wanted to be a judge. She just wasn’t sure she wanted it more than she wanted a baby. Moronic, definitely. She couldn’t change course now just because her biological clock was tick-tocking louder than a bomb in a Jason Bourne movie, and because she was feeling … unfulfilled. No, that was too strong. Restless. She was feeling restless. A gaggle of laughing coworkers came toward her and she smiled a welcome, putting the dilemma aside to think about later.
It was after eight o’clock and dusk had fallen before she escaped and headed to her LoDo condo. In the elevator ascending from the
garage, she removed her pumps and pressed L. Scrunching her toes under, she sighed with relief as the elevator rose. The lobby was a distinctive space with marble floors, a rectangular water feature that burbled pleasantly, and floor-to-ceiling glass walls that displayed a mountain view worth pulling out the checkbook for. The mailboxes were tucked into an alcove out of sight of potential buyers. Padding barefoot across the lobby, she stopped to chat with the doorman/security guard, who stood behind his counter.
“How’s it going, Miss Muir?”
No matter how she tried, she couldn’t get him to call her Laurel. “Fine,” she said automatically, and asked how his daughter’s soccer tournament had gone. Puffing his cheeks with pride, he gave her a blow-by-blow account of the girl’s three goals in one game. When his phone rang, she lifted a hand in farewell and headed toward the mail alcove. Mail, bath, bed. She peered into her box. It was crammed full, as she’d suspected it might be since she hadn’t had time to empty it all week.
She punched in her combo. The contents sprang at her when she opened the small door. She caught a Discover magazine, but circulars and envelopes cascaded to the floor.
“Damn,” she muttered, stooping. She collected the bills in one hand and scooped the flyers and other junk into a pile to dump in the trash can in the corner. As she shifted the final piece, a Talbots catalog, it revealed another envelope.
Laurel stilled, staring at the envelope as if it harbored anthrax. It was orange—no, tangerine. Evangeline, possibly the least superstitious person alive, had always said tangerine was her lucky color. It was invitation-sized, with “The Honorable Laurel Muir” and her address inscribed in beautiful calligraphy, thick, dark strokes that stood out against the tangerine color like a tiger’s stripes. She hadn’t received one of these in ten years, not since the last weekend went so horribly, tragically awry. She considered bundling it with the grocery circulars and dumping it, unopened, in the trash.
Instead, she reached for it, hesitated, and picked it up with her thumb and forefinger. It was heavier than she remembered, the stock a thick vellum from a high-end stationer. She inserted a manicured nail under the flap, but stopped. No, better to open this upstairs, in private. Trashing the junk mail, she crossed the lobby again.
“Not bad news, I hope, Miss Muir?” Dean called.
So much for her poker face. She got on the elevator and turned to face him. “Unexpected,” she said, as the doors shut.
Dawn Infanti struggled with the dress’s zipper and gave up. The human shoulder wasn’t made to twist like that. “Ky, can you zip me, please?” She half-squatted beside Kyra’s side of the bed and presented her back.
“I’d rather unzip you,” Kyra said, but she tugged the zipper up.
“Thanks.” Dawn turned and gave Kyra a peck on the lips.
“Why so fancy today?” Kyra propped herself on one elbow, the sheet slipping to reveal her small breasts. Short purple hair stuck out at all angles. On some forty-year-old women purple hair would have looked clownish or sad, but not on Kyra. It suited her perfectly.
“Important meeting, new client,” Dawn said. She found the gladiator sandals and tied the crisscross laces, and then twisted her unruly hair into a knot and skewered it with an enameled chopstick. She paused in front of the fogged bathroom mirror. There. Professional but artsy.
“Are you going to be late again tonight?”
Dawn pretended to look for her keys so she wouldn’t have to meet Kyra’s eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know yet. Probably.” Guilt niggled at her, but she couldn’t make herself tell Kyra the truth. Maybe if it turned out the way she hoped. If not, well, she didn’t need a replay of the commiserations and sympathy.
“Tell Vera to jump off a bridge if she tries to make you stay late again. It’s not like the economy will collapse if your illustration of an amoeba gets finished tomorrow instead of today.”
“A virus, actually. A new thogotovirus called the Bourbon virus.”
A sardonic grin slanted across Kyra’s face. “Of course. Your portrait of the world-famous thuggo virus.” She flung the sheet aside and slid out of bed, gloriously naked. “I gotta pee.”
Dawn stood, smoothing the tight skirt over her thighs. Had she gained a couple of pounds?
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Kyra called from the bathroom. “Your mom called yesterday.”
“Did she leave a message?” Of course not.
“Of course not.” The toilet flushing drowned out part of Kyra’s next words: “ … won’t talk to me.”
Dawn supposed she’d have to call her mother back. Her New York friends talked about Jewish mothers ladling out the guilt, but they had nothing on Catholic mothers, especially not Italian Catholic mothers. Teresa Infanti had liked Kyra just fine until the day she stopped believing the fiction she’d created for herself that Dawn and Kyra were only roommates. For the past two years, she’d refused to say a word to her daughter’s lover or acknowledge her presence at family gatherings.
Dawn caught sight of the time. “I’m out the door, sweets. See you tonight. I’ll try to be earlier. Really.”
Her sandals slapped the hardwood floor as she hurried through the narrow hall to the living room. Sunlight blared through the louvers of the shutters she and Kyra had hung two weekends ago, striping the creamy plaster walls. Pausing only to slide her leather portfolio from behind the entertainment center where she’d secreted it, she stepped out of the house into the muggy furnace blast of a mid-summer San Antonio day. Her step was buoyant. Today was the day. She felt it.
Dawn parked her silver Honda Civic at the curb shortly after six o’clock that evening and slumped in the seat. How many times could an artist hear the words, “No, not for us, not the right vibe, doesn’t resonate with me, abstracts don’t sell, I could take pastels of the Alamo or the Riverwalk on commission if you want to give it a try,” before she gave up? Just gave up. Quit painting. Accepted that she didn’t have what it took, that her father had had her best interests in mind when he told her to study accounting. That Evangeline had been right. Damn it! She struck the steering wheel with the heel of her palm, bruising it. She sucked on the sore spot.
The building heat forced her out of the car. It might technically be evening, but the sun hadn’t heard the news. It was still set to “broil.” She eyed the plebeian Civic with disgruntlement. She’d rather drive a Miata like Kyra or, better yet, a Mustang, but scientific illustrators didn’t make that kind of money. And artists who couldn’t find a gallery to display their work made zippo. She tamped down the spurt of envy. The Civic was more practical for transporting her paintings anyway. She chewed her lip, reluctant to bring her portfolio in and generate questions from Kyra, but it was way too hot to leave her paintings out here. She should just take a flash drive with digital images of her work to the galleries, but there was something enticing about an actual painting, the faint odor of oil paint, the way the light glossed the smooth expanses and danced over the choppier textures she created with a palette knife. She hefted the portfolio and locked the car. With any luck, Kyra would be busy cooking dinner and she could slide it behind the entertainment center again, or under the bed.
No such luck. Kyra was sitting in the living room when Dawn pushed the door open with her foot. Her melon-colored yoga wear contrasted powerfully with her hair. She looked relaxed and carefree after a day at her studio, and for a split second Dawn hated her. Kyra’s success as a yoga and meditation center owner—no, her fulfillment—burned like lemon juice on a paper cut. It wasn’t fair. Then Kyra glanced up from the pile of mail she was sorting, and smiled, and the caustic emotion evaporated as quickly as it had come.
Kyra started to say, “Hey, you’re home earlier than I—” but her gaze snagged on the portfolio. “Oh. I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t know you were—”
Her immediate sympathy grated on Dawn. “Why do you assume I didn’t get invited to show my paintings? Why the immediate assumption that I got rejected again?”
Kyra straightened, and irritation wiped the concern from her face. “Because when you come home with a face like someone ran over your pet spaniel, then I assume no one offered you thousands for the opportunity to display your work.”
She rose and came to Dawn, trying to enfold her in a hug, but Dawn shrugged her off and bent to unlace the stupid effing sandals which had rubbed raw spots on her little toes.
“Honey—” Kyra broke off and raked her fingers through her short hair as Dawn kicked the sandals viciously across the room. One slid under the couch and the other bounced off the baseboard. “Honey, you said you were done with this. You said you were satisfied with your job, that you were going to think about teaching classes at that new studio downtown. You said that the two of us being together was enough to make you happy, that you didn’t need—”
“I said, I said.” Dawn leaned the portfolio against the wall where it would be a reminder of her failure all evening. Like she needed reminding. Some of the frustration leaked out of her, leaving her limp and defeated. She let Kyra hug her, and took a morsel of comfort from the van
illa skin scent of Kyra’s neck. “I said a lot of things,” she said quietly. Her gaze fell on the pile of mail. The corner of an envelope caught her eye. Her breath hitched. It couldn’t be. She pulled away from Kyra. “What’s that?”
Kyra turned to see what she was looking at. “That orange envelope?”
“Tangerine.”
“Orange, tangerine, or papaya, it’s for you. Looks like a wedding invitation—fancy calligraphy.”
“It’s not a wedding.” Ten years evaporated in an instant. Dawn knew exactly what the invitation was for and her blood ran cold. She’d always thought that phrase was the colorful invention of horror writers, but it felt like someone had pumped liquid nitrogen into her veins, raising goose bumps on her arms. Her thumb and forefinger massaged her right earlobe.
Kyra gave her a strange look. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“It might be better if I don’t.”
Ellie Ordahl idled at a four-way stop, hoping one of the other cars would go out of turn so she could lean on her horn and have an outlet for her frustration. If the blue Kia that had pulled up a nanosecond after she did started to accelerate, she could surge into the intersection, blaring her horn to remind the Kia’s driver that in a civilized world, we take turns. The Kia’s driver politely waved Ellie ahead and she stomped on the gas too hard, making the van lurch into the intersection. She waved and smiled her thanks while hating him for denying her the dual pleasures of being pissed off and feeling self-righteous.
Her son Shane, the older twin by six minutes, leaned forward from the shotgun seat to switch the radio from the country-western station she preferred to the alternative rock noise he liked. “Turn it down,” she said at the same time Aidan said “Turn it up” from the back seat.
She used the controls on her steering wheel to turn off the radio. After a “Hey, I like that song,” Shane slumped in his seat and concentrated on texting, thumbs tapping quicker than a woodpecker drilling for grubs. Probably texting Hailey, his girlfriend of six months. At least that was one good thing, the only good thing, about him leaving for the University of Alabama—it would put some distance between him and Hailey, a perfectly nice girl, but a needy one. Ellie recognized the type. She’d been Hailey, once upon a time. Needy led to poor life choices and she didn’t want Shane’s future compromised the way hers had been.
That Last Weekend Page 1
