“Do you have a cocktail dress in there?” Evangeline nodded at the suitcase. “For the party?”
“The invitation said to bring one, and you called twice to remind me, so, yes, I have a dress. A new one, actually. I wish you’d tell us what we’re celebrating,” Laurel said.
Evangeline’s face shone with mischief. “All in due time,” she said.
Footsteps sounded from the hall, and Geneva and Dawn burst in, full of hugs and greeting and conversation. Laurel smiled and laughed and was glad she’d come.
Ice tinkled as Laurel downed the last swallow of bourbon, breaking her free from the memory. She was glad. She didn’t want to think about the rest of that weekend. It had started with such promise and ended in tragedy, suspicion, and a police investigation. Horrible. She crunched on a piece of ice and wondered if the others had received invitations, too. Were they coming? Geneva Frost was the only one she talked to, and not often. She and Ellie exchanged occasional emails and had said they’d do lunch now that she and Scott were stationed an hour down the road in Colorado Springs, but that hadn’t happened. She’d last seen Dawn three or four years ago when she and her pre-Kyra girlfriend spent a night in Denver on their way to Yellowstone. It had been fun to catch up, but it hadn’t sparked more regular interaction.
Laurel tipped the remainder of her ice-diluted bourbon into the sink. Her gaze fell on the invitation, lying atop The Boys in the Boat, and she picked it up. She made as if to tear it in half, but stopped. With a sigh, she returned to the kitchen and stuck it to the refrigerator with an octopus magnet she’d gotten at the Baltimore Aquarium. The orange square stood out among the casual snapshots of friends and family, a graduation announcement, and a baby shower invitation. After a moment, she moved the octopus and invitation to the fridge’s side, where she wouldn’t have to look at it in the morning.
Three
Ellie got the boys sorted out and walked into the bedroom, where Scott lay on the bed simultaneously responding to emails on his tablet and watching a news program on the television. She gritted her teeth. Couldn’t he just once jump in and referee the boys instead of leaving it to her to be the bad guy all the frickin’ time? The bedside lamp shone on his bald spot. Other than that sign of aging, he looked much as he had when they met in college. His military-short blond hair showed little gray, and his bare chest and shoulders were tanned and muscular against the pale yellow sheets. She felt a tingle in her groin but ignored it. The sex was still hot, but she wasn’t in the mood.
He didn’t acknowledge her presence and, after a moment, she crossed to the bathroom and got ready for bed, removing her makeup and applying a retinoid cream and the deluxe moisturizer she’d splurged on two weeks ago, careful not to tug on the skin around her eyes. She was only thirty-eight, but when people heard she had kids in college, they were going to assume she was older, and she needed all the ammunition she had to counteract those assumptions. She’d never been a beauty queen like Geneva, and she didn’t have Evangeline’s elusive “certain sort of something,” but she’d always been pretty in a sporty, girl-next-door way. The blond streaks in her hair might owe more to L’Oreal than the sun these days, but her body was still tight thanks to the swimming. She hadn’t given it up, not even when she lost the scholarship or was pregnant with the boys.
Slipping into the extra-large Y T-shirt she used as a nightgown, she came to the bed, turning off the TV on her way past. The pundits spewing doom and gloom gave her nightmares.
“I was watching that,” Scott said. A line appeared between his brows, half hidden by the silver rims of his glasses.
“You know I didn’t even want a TV in the bedroom.” The same old argument. Now he would say, It’s part of my job …
“It’s part of my job to stay on top of international news,” he said, going for the remote. “North Korea launched another missile today.”
She snatched the remote away and set it out of his reach on her bedside table. “It’s part of my job to be alert and well-rested so I can be chauffeur, cook, mediator, maid, and social coordinator.”
He sighed heavily, in the way that implied she was being childish or self-aggrandizing, and went back to his emails. Flumping on her side and supporting herself on one elbow, she faced him.
“I got an invitation to the girls’ weekend,” she said, “and I want to go.”
“So go,” he said absently, fingers clicking on the keyboard. “I keep telling you, you should have more fun.” He scrolled up on his computer. “Is this Susan’s idea? Are you going to one of the ski resorts? That’ll be fun. Hot tubs.”
“North Carolina.”
It took him a moment. Then his head jerked up. “What?”
“Cygne Castle.” She thrust her chin out a hair.
“Ellie.”
“What?” Her look challenged him to spell out his objections.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Says who?”
His brows knit together. “Come on. You can’t tell me you think it’s a good idea. Not after what happened.”
“Those women are my friends.”
“Were your friends.”
“Are.”
“Besides Laurel, when’s the last time you talked to one of them?”
“I keep up with Dawn.”
“Facebook doesn’t count. Let’s analyze your ‘relationships’ with them. Take Dawn—”
She scootched upwards into a sitting position and crossed her arms over her chest. “Let’s not. I am not one of your lieutenants, and I don’t need ‘mentoring.’ If I want to meet up with my friends for a girls’ weekend, I will. We’ll have a few laughs, catch up, talk about the old days—it’ll be fine.”
“Fine.” He bit the word out. “But don’t expect me to pick up the pieces when it all goes to hell.”
Ellie flashed on Evangeline’s body, splayed and bloody. Pick up the pieces … “What a vicious thing to say.”
Scott flushed under his runner’s tan. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Choosing not to believe him and giving him a look that said so, Ellie swiveled toward her nightstand. Tears leaked. She didn’t want to be mean to Scott, to push a wedge between them, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself. He made it harder when he treated her like one of his subordinates, trying to lead her to decisions he’d decided were the correct ones by guiding her thought processes. She hated that.
She put in the earplugs that would block the sounds the boys made when they came up in a couple of hours, turned off the lamp on her bedside table, and donned the facemask that cut the glare from Scott’s frickin’ electronic devices. Plumping her pillow, she presented her back to Scott and closed her eyes. After a moment, she pushed the mask up, scrabbled for the remote, and silently passed it to Scott. He took it and turned the TV on, setting the volume at a low level. His hand rested on her hip. She pulled the mask down again, hoping she wasn’t about to make the second-biggest mistake of her life.
“I think you should go. I could come with you,” Kyra said four days after the invitation came. “I can find someone to run the studio for a couple of days. I’d like to meet your college friends. Geneva’s the only one I’ve met, and I liked her a lot. When she came for the psychology association conference down on the River Walk, remember? We ate dinner at Mi Ti’s.”
They sat in their sunny kitchen nook, preparing for the day. The sun blasted in, even this early, and a mockingbird sang his plagiarized song from a low tree branch. Kyra had a bowl of muesli in front of her and was slicing strawberries onto it. Dawn poured a diet protein shake into a glass, hoping it would look more appetizing that way. No such luck.
No. Dawn was shocked by her negative reaction to Kyra’s suggestion. “No. I mean, you don’t know the others, we have so much history, you wouldn’t know what we’re talking about, the in-jokes, the references to teachers or other friends from college
. You’d be bored.” That was so weak. Kyra was never bored. She could strike up a conversation with anyone, lose herself in a book, or spend half an hour watching a bumblebee buzz around a lily and be fascinated the whole time.
Kyra popped the last strawberry into her mouth and said thickly, “I thought you said Angela—or was it Deanna?—one of your sisters, anyway, went to one of the weekends.”
“That was the year we graduated.” The memory of that particular weekend made Dawn shake and the glass rattle against her teeth. She set it down and licked off the creamy moustache. “Up till then, there’d be extras now and then, friends or significant others. Ellie brought Scott one weekend, I remember, and I took Angela. It was awkward.” Understatement of the year. Awkward didn’t begin to describe the humiliation and confusion when Evangeline kissed her in full view of Angela, laid a real lip-lock on her and caressed her breast, making it crystal clear to her younger sister that their relationship had elements their strict Catholic family would not approve of. When Dawn, crying, laid into Evangeline for outing her to her family, Evangeline put an arm around her shoulders and said that her relationship with her family should be based on honesty, and that they would all be closer now. Not so much. Two months later, Evangeline’s experiment with lesbianism was over and she left Dawn for the grad student TA of her biology class.
“Honey, they can’t stop you from bringing anyone you want,” Kyra said into Dawn’s silence.
Dawn could tell her feelings were hurt. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come,” she said, rising and wrapping her arms around her lover from behind, hugging her over the chair. “I do,” she lied. She didn’t want Kyra to come not because she didn’t love her, but because she didn’t want to associate Kyra in her mind and memories with the girls’ weekends, with what had happened at the last one, which was bound to color the upcoming one. Wishing she could say it all in a way Kyra would understand and not be pissed about, she said, “Having other people there changes the dynamic, and—”
“Maybe that would be a good thing.”
“It might,” Dawn agreed.
Kyra finished her cereal, kissed Dawn’s forearm that hung across her collar bone, and stood up. “Why now?” she asked, taking her bowl to the sink and rinsing it.
“I don’t know.” Dawn had wondered that herself. The invitation hadn’t specified. She downed the rest of her diet shake, wishing it were scrambled eggs with a side of blueberry pancakes. “Maybe it’s the ten-year thing, like a reunion.”
“Hmm.” Kyra pursed her lips. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.” She put her hands on her slim hips and met Dawn’s gaze squarely. “The police never figured out what happened, did they?”
“It was an accident,” Dawn insisted. “They called it an accident. Evangeline was tipsy, the balcony railings were low … ”
Concern darkened Kyra’s blue eyes. “On second thought, I don’t think you should go. What if it wasn’t an accident? Then one of those women pushed her.”
“That’s ridiculous. If it wasn’t an accident, it was someone else, a staff member, someone trying to rob the place … ” That sounded as ridiculous now as it did ten years ago when she suggested it to the police. She could still feel the sting of the deputy’s sarcasm: “What thief would be looking for jewels or electronics on a balcony the size of home plate with no hiding place, not even a potted plant?”
Their tabby cat, Mr. Bojangles, snaked between Dawn’s ankles and she bent to pat him. He purred his approval and butted his head into her palm. Even though she didn’t want to go back, she also didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t go, she realized. Besides, she cared about these women. Nothing bad would happen this time. That would be like lightning striking the same place, or the same person winning the lottery twice in a row.
She straightened. “I’m going to go,” she said.
Kyra gave her the raised brows that usually meant, Don’t you want to rethink the stupid thing you just said?
“It’ll be good to reconnect.” Dawn shivered. Mr. Bojangles’ tail had brushed her leg. That’s all it was.
Laurel decided that the best thing about being a judge would be not bumping into her ex-husband every day at the office. Both partners at Muir, Delacruz, and Jackson, they had offices on the same floor (although George had a corner office since he’d been a partner far longer), attended many of the same meetings, and had side-by-side parking slots in the garage. When she’d first found out about his secretaries and cocktail waitresses, it had taken every ounce of willpower not to “accidentally” ding the door of his Aston Martin Vanquish every morning when she parked. Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” had been her anthem that summer, but she’d never worked up the guts to buy a Louisville Slugger.
Now, she looked at him over the top of the box stacked high with plaques and mementoes and precariously crowned with two potted violets. It was the last one.
“I’m going to miss you, Laurel,” he said, hitching his hip onto her empty desk. His voice was low and intimate, with just the right touch of regret. “It won’t be the same around here.”
“Same meetings, same coffee, same clients—I don’t think it’ll be unrecognizable.” She hefted the box in her arms, burying her chin in one violet to hold it steady.
“Let me get that for you.” He came around the desk and his hand grazed her breast as he tried to take the box. His minty breath told her he’d gargled in his private bathroom, generally a prelude to an amorous encounter, or a post-encounter precaution. He might want to kiss her goodbye. Fat chance. Their goodbye kiss had happened five years after they married, although neither of them had known at the time it was their last kiss. Strange, that, how “lasts” could happen without any fanfare or notice; they could be over and done with before you noticed their significance.
“I’ve got it, thanks,” she said, stepping back.
He cocked his head and didn’t fight her for it. Sliding his hands into his pockets, he leaned his shoulders against the now-bare wall. “What are you going to do with yourself before you get sworn in?”
“Relax. Finish The Boys on the Boat. Maybe take a trip.”
“Really? Where? Alone?”
She knew he took a strange pride in the fact that she hadn’t remarried, hadn’t even had a serious relationship since they divorced. She suspected he thought she was pining for him, or that she couldn’t find a man who measured up. Truth was, she was too damn busy, and it was too exhausting trying to work the hours she worked and date, too. And don’t even get her started on how hard it was to find men who didn’t live with their mothers, support two ex-wives and assorted offspring, or worship at the Broncos altar to the exclusion of all other activities from August through the Super Bowl.
“With friends,” she said, putting the box down. It was getting heavy. “In fact, I’m going to Cygne.” She hadn’t made up her mind until that moment.
“That castle where you used to go with your college friends? Why?”
Good question. She crossed to the window and looked down on busy Auraria Parkway, twiddling the blinds wand. “We had some special times together at the castle. It’s a shame, in a way, that we let the tragedy end our weekends. Those women were—are—important to me. They were part of my life when I went from sheltered high schooler to college woman—”
“You wild thing, you.”
“—to lawyer.” She turned and gave him a look. He knew how sedate most of her college experience had been; her father had kept him posted. “I wouldn’t be the same me now if I hadn’t known them. Collectively, they know things about me that no one else does. Like Jackson and I share memories of our growing-up years that won’t exist anymore if either of us gets hit by a bus. Does that make any sense?” Why was she explaining this to him? Because, even though he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, he had a surprising capacity for empathy; it’s what had drawn her to him in the first p
lace. And because she was a little bit melancholy about leaving the firm, the place she’d worked for almost fifteen years—twenty, if you counted her time as a summer intern. Lots of memories here, too.
“Of course it does,” he said. “Like me and Mark”—his best friend—“or like soldiers and the guys they shared a foxhole with. Even people you might otherwise not like much can be special to you because you experienced something transformational together.”
That was it exactly, damn him. “I don’t think the military does foxholes anymore, but, yes.”
“I’ll stipulate that your relationship with those women was important, but maybe you should leave it be. Friendships run their course.”
“Like marriages?” She regretted the words immediately and held up an apologetic hand.
He let her comment pass. “I drove out to bring you home after the last get-together,” he said, narrowing his eyes and observing her closely. “You were a basket case. I don’t think you ate or slept for a week. Remember?”
Was he kidding? “One of my friends pushed another one off a fifth-floor balcony. I was a suspect. Of course I remember.” She also remembered a giggly soprano voice in the background when she called to tell him what had happened and begged him to come to North Carolina.
“If you believe that, then why go?”
“Because I believe that. Because it’s time to figure out who it was so the rest of us can be friends again. Or not, as we choose. It feels like the choice was taken from us, though, and I, for one, want to have the happy memories of our times together back, untainted by suspicion. Did Dawn do it? She was closer to Evangeline than all of us. Did Ellie? Did Geneva lose it because of the coke? They probably all wonder if I did it.” She paused. “That was your cue to say, ‘No one could possibly think you did it.’”
That Last Weekend Page 3
