“Damn, woman!” Margot sings.
Tina runs over and high-fives me, and Jill flashes a bright smile.
“It’s not as hard as it seems,” Callie snickers. “Shotgun blasts a wide area so it’s not like a pistol or anything, requiring precision.”
I pass the gun to Margot and rub my shoulder.
“Did it hurt that time, too?”
I nod.
“We’ll have to toughen you up, sissy girl.”
The last dregs of sunlight leak through the pines, so everyone starts packing the four-wheelers. A speedboat whines across the lake, sending waves crashing against the shore. I climb on the back of Jill’s four-wheeler again, and even though we’ve been sweating for the past hour, her ribbon-smooth hair still smells cleanly of shampoo.
12
THE KITCHEN ISbright—all lustrous marble countertops and chalk-white cabinets with glass-front doors. Light ricochets off every surface as if everything had been freshly wiped down moments ago. Other than the sitting room at the entryway and the flock of bedrooms in the far wing, the lake house is basically one great room with a wall of windows running along the back overlooking the lake. A path of lights lines the pier to the boathouse, and the moon, nearly full, has floated above the water, smearing white light over the lake.
Callie, Jill, Tina, and I are gathered on a bank of sofas while Margot is in the kitchen shaking a martini shaker filled with vodka and ice. She lifts five chilled glasses from the freezer and drizzles the bottom of each with vermouth.
“Here, ladies! Filthy. Just like we like ’em.”
We toast and sip. The glasses are cloudy with olive juice, and tiny shards of ice float on the surface.
Margot then slides two trays out of the vast fridge and sets them on the bar. Cherry tomatoes speared with skewers and stacked against discs of mozzarella and fresh basil. The other tray has an assortment of meats—blackened chickenbits, pink curls of roast beef, smoked salmon—and cheeses with a spray of crackers.
We all descend on the food. I take a bite and a cherry tomato bursts in my mouth.
“This is delicious!” I say.
“Thanks, but I didn’t make it,” Margot says as she drags a cracker through a log of goat cheese. “Anita, my housekeeper, gets all the credit.”
“Anita doeseverything,” Jill says between tiny bites of salmon.
“It’s true, I’m guilty,” Margot says. “I haven’t touched a pot or pan in years. But she’s getting older now, so we have a cleaning service. So, she doesn’t doeverything.”
“She raises your kids,” Jill says, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Does not!”
“I’m kidding!”
“Jilly’s just jealous because she doesn’t have an Anita.”
I’m puzzled because I’ve seen Jill’s house on Facebook—a gray stone mansion—and her husband is a heart surgeon. Surely, she can afford a housekeeper.
As if she can read my mind, Margot says, “She’s too much of a control freak. Has to clean everything her way. Constantly down on her knees scrubbing the floors and walls. I honestly think she gets off on it.”
A jangled laugh escapes from Callie. “I’m sorry, Jill, but it’s true.”
As I look at Callie now, her face flushed from the vodka, her blond streaks like frosting, she’s more attractive than when I first saw her. There’s something feral and rough about her that’s hidden beneath her blank, cow-brown eyes.
“Well, I don’t have a maid, either, but then again, I don’t have kids. It’s just me and Bill—what’s there to clean?” Tina says, her voice already wavy with drink, her pink lipstick stamped on her glass.
“I don’t have kids, either, but I damn sure have a maid,” Callie says.
“You have astaff, dear,” Margot says, giving her a sharp elbow.
