“Because you knew I had a lot of money to go after. I’m sorry, Ms. Evans. You took a gamble, and it didn’t work out this time. But I’m not covering for this stupidity.”
It was unclear whether he meant her own stupidity or Rebekah’s.
Gulliver briefly tested the water in the baby pool, deemed it unsuitable, and was now running back toward Hailey, with hordes of excited children in pursuit. She had to get off the phone before their shouts got loud enough for Rainier to hear.
“You’ll hear from our counsel, then. We’re going to get our money, and that’s all there is to it. HaveanicedayMisterRainier.”
As she hung up, the pool manager was approaching, in his Shoreby polo shirt and logoed blazer. They’d called in the big guns. He reached her just as Gulliver cocked his leg over Betsy Wakefield’s espadrille.
“Ewww,” screeched Arabella. “Gross, Mommy look! He’s doing a wee wee in your shoe!”
“He’s always doing that,” said Mabel casually as the pool manager dove to snatch the sandal out from underneath Gulliver. “Peeing in shoes is like his most favoritest thing in the world.”
* * *
Hailey’s mother’s foot was not broken, just badly sprained. She’d therefore ignored the medical advice to keep the weight off it, and she hobbled out into her driveway to help Hailey unload the girls. In her hands she dangled a pair of jelly plastic shoes identical to Mabel’s, but smaller. Gigi was ecstatic (her size had been previously unavailable), and Hailey sighed. She didn’t have the heart to tell Pamela Byers that the shoes were the ugliest things she’d ever seen and that the buckle on Mabel’s was already broken; her mother had been as excited about them as her granddaughters. And Pammy Byers was just warming up.
She led Hailey immediately to a pair of twisted metal chickens by the front steps. They were new since Hailey had come by the week before, though had her mother not pointed them out she might not have noticed them among the other wildlife: flamingos and porcupines and foxes and deer, in stone and wire and wicker. The chickens were especially hideous though, up close. They looked sinister somehow.
“Wow.”
“You like them? They’re yours. Marc’s has a deal going on the farm animals.”
“Oh no, you keep them. They’re in the perfect spot right there.”
“Mine are in the back, I got these for you. Ten bucks a pair, can you believe that?” Hailey lived in fear of the bargain treasures her mother would force on her; Pammy’s biweekly trips to Marc’s discount superstore yielded anything from giant boxes of goldfish crackers to a fly swatter in the shape of a freight train. Still, Pammy had already planned next week’s excursion with Mabel to buy her granddaughter hersecondround of school supplies, and Hailey knew that Grammie, as the girls called her, would hop there on one foot—backward—if she had to. Pammy did anything and everything for Hailey and her girls, and for Mack too, so Hailey had never breathed an honest word about the junk Pam bought her, and displayed it faithfully. She suspected Pammy’s lawn ornaments in particular had a very specific purpose: though she’d never said it out loud, Hailey knew that her mother found the new house, and indeed Bratenahl itself, stuffy and soulless. Which was ironic, because it was Pammy who had first sparked her daughter’s ambition to live there.
When Hailey was still a very little girl, they’d gone to Bratenahl to hit up an estate sale. (It certainly wasn’t called a garage sale in Bratenahl.) Hailey had little memory of the house they went to, but the specter of the giant estates with their yards running right down into Lake Erie was like nothing she’d ever seen before.
“I’m gonna have one of those when I grow up,” Hailey had told her parents, her nose pressed against the rear window of her dad’s Cutlass Supreme.
“You can clean it then,” Pammy said. “Just think of all those bathrooms.”
The moment had stuck in Hailey’s brain forever. Her obsession with the neighborhood had endured, and the very first phone call she made from her brand-new house in the new Magpie Court subdivision of Bratenahl, Ohio, was to Molly Maids. The $200 they charged for a biweekly visit was worth every penny.
Hailey set up the sprinkler in her parents’ small front yard for the girls to run through. Pammy poured out purple Kool-Aid (also from Marc’s and served in plastic cups so old they had to be shedding BPA by the bucketful) and then finally sat down to put her foot up.
“Dad fishing?”
Pammy nodded. “You said Mack had some meeting? Sorry we couldn’t help this morning, Dad was already gone and I—”
“It was fine.” Hailey had only been a little bit distracted, had only failed in her attempt to save her firm from bankruptcy. No big deal.
“And what’s this I hear about Mack going to see his mom?”
“When did he tell you that?” He’d only told Hailey last night.
“When he called to ask me to handle school on Tuesday. You’ll have to tell me how the drop-off works, but I should be fine to drive by then—”
“He’s such a—” Hailey stopped herself; her mother hated to hear a bad word uttered about Mack, it was infuriating. “I can’t believe he’s going to miss Mabel’s first day. I can’t take any more time off, and he should—”
“I wouldn’t sweat it, honey. I don’t remember anything about your first day of school, and I doubt you do either. It’s only your generation that insists on all these ridiculous milestones. Anyway, you’ll both be able to come to the six-week anniversary of her starting kindergarten ceremony. That won’t be too far away.”
Hailey laughed in spite of herself. Maybe the Kool-Aid had vodka in it. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Is his mom worse? Poor Mack.”
“No, she’s the same. It’s more like an admin thing.”
