“I’m so tired, Maisey,” she whispers. “So fucking tired.”
I loop an arm through hers. “If you ever need to drop the pup off for doggy day care, I have this giant fenced-in part of my yard and enough cow patties left over that it won’t matter if there’s a pile of dog poo in the midst of it.”
“Do you know what I want?” she says.
“A week-long spa trip where you come home to a housekeeper and a chef?”
She laughs, but it’s strained. “I want to ride a horse. Just for, like, fifteen minutes. Until my thighs get chapped and I remember why I gave it up. But book club the other day? When Libby was talking about learning how to refinish her cabinets to freshen everything up once her twins leave for college? And Opal saying she’d always wanted to learn to play the flute? And Regina saying she could soak all day in the bathtub doing logic puzzles, because she’s a freak but we love her?”
“Mm-hmm,” I say.
“I want to ride a freaking horse.”
“I’ll call Kory next door to me. I’mpositivehe’d let you ride a horse.”
“But then I’d owe him a favor.”
“One, I doubt it. And two, he can cash it in with me.”
“I wish—” She stops herself, shaking her head.
“You wish?” I prompt.
Her nose wrinkles, and then she makes a face that I’m starting to recognize after hours and hours working with her on PTA things and soccer-team things and book club.
Discussion closed.
“I hate playing this team,” she says, sealing that we’re moving on. “It was Coach Jackson’s high school before he came back here a few years ago.”
“Isn’t your oldest a freshman?” I reply.
Far easier to deflect than to discuss Flint.
“Yes, but my niece graduated last year after four years of soccer, and my kidslovedto watch her.” She wrinkles her nose. “Just look at them. Half of them are making eyes at him, and the other half look like they want to murder him.”
I peer across the soccer field to the area where the parents for the other team are standing.
And I think I can see what she’s talking about. “Why?” I ask before I can help myself.
I want to know.
God help me, I want to know. And I hope it’s bad so that he can go permanently on thebad guylist in my head, and then I can forget that he kisses like he invented kissing, and that his body feels like it was made to mold against mine, and that he spent an entire day cleaning out my uncle’s sex-toy collection before my daughter could find it.
And shedidfind the root cellar.
Yesterday, in fact.
ThankGodshe came running to tell me. When I was her age, running to tell my mom I’d found the perfect spot for a secret clubhouse wouldnothave crossed my mind.
Charlotte takes an audible sip of her coffee, then sighs happily. “He left after a bad breakup with the PTA president.”
“What?”
“Mm-hmm. He noticed her son was falling asleep all the time in class, so he did what he does: reached out, tried to solve it, found out the mom had just quietly signed divorce papers, did that thing where he tells her he only screws around, but then found out ... things ... about her ex, got worried, but did that thing he does where he says he’s not getting involved, even though he clearly was, and things got ugly.”
I gape at her.
“The husband was into some illegal things,” she whispers. “I know nothing. Nothing at all.”
