“I did. You’d made the house lovely with your thrifted magic!”
“He didn’t give me a dime to spend. Do you know that? Not a penny on anything that wasn’t cold cuts or white bread.” She shuddered like that was a distant memory. Maybe it was when you were sitting in the sunroom annex of The Armstrong Dining Room.
When Belinda’s boss and friend, Banks Armstrong, walked into the room, the connection between Joetta and Banks was immediate.
Belinda almost felt like a fifth wheel at the table, and she’d been there first.
Belinda saw Joetta move her hands that were sitting on her lap. When she offered her right hand to greet Banks, Joetta noticed the left one, on the napkin, was free of jewelry.
Joetta had slipped her wedding ring off.
Joetta’s million-dollar smile belied the dime store life she’d just been kicked out of.
And Banks was in love. He had waited all this time for Joetta. Belinda didn’t know how she felt about realizing that.
What was happening here?
Belinda watched in awe and took her baby sister’s lead. Joetta wanted to be her old self for a moment.Was that so wrong?Belinda decided it was not.
“The club looks amazing! I love the improvements you’ve made.”
“I’ve got a lot of help. Your sister here, top of the list of people who know how to treat guests.”
“Ha, well, Walter Shwartz retired. That was a big improvement.” Belinda was going to elaborate on how Walter, the old manager, had made life a living hell for everyone at the Armstrong. Still, she might as well have been on a different planet. Banks Armstrong was locked on Joetta like a tractor beam.
“You look beautiful. Life has been treating you well?”
Here it was. What was Joetta going to tell Banks about her life, and how it all had been treating her?
“I’m wonderful. Life’s been a whirlwind. I can’t believe I’ve been away so long! Traveling and adventure, you know.”
Belinda watched as her sister became a different person. She wasn’t the downtrodden housewife with no self-esteem and not enough coupons to buy groceries. Or the contrite alcoholic who’d just lost it all.
She was Joetta Bennett of the Florida Bennetts. Beloved and most beautiful daughter, heir, and apparently world traveler.
Banks Armstrong didn’t care which version of Joetta he was talking to; he was clearly smitten by whatever yarn she decided to spin.
And spin, she did. Over the next few days, Banks called. Banks stopped by. Banks seemed to believe whatever Joetta told him.
Belinda was worried anew about what this all meant.
Almost two weeks went by.
Bruce continued to refuse her calls. But their parents opened their doors to the prodigal daughter. It was tense. Awkward. And also a relief. Joetta was home, and it appeared she had no additional baggage to explain.
The lie that she told Banks, she told to them. She had no children with her, so there must be no children. Belinda was a bystander as this fiction in their family solidified into fact.
Nothing bad happened if you didn’t talk about it.
Joetta swung from happiness and almost glee when Banks would send a car or flowers or call on the phone, to despair.
One moment, she was leading Banks around on a string, and the next, she was hanging by a thread with Bruce. Belinda worried that her sister’s sober life, her desire to put things right, was precarious.
Joetta cried to Belinda after every call.
“I just want to see my girls. Why won’t he let me see my girls?”
It was hard to understand. Joetta was desperate to see her daughters but also equally as desperate to make a good impression on Banks. It’s as if the two worlds were completely separate, and she was two different people in them.
