I click “like” and scribble a note on a sticky pad to gather cannedgoods.
6
I FIRST DISCOVEREDMargot on Facebook shortly after moving back. Via Erin. Even though Erin is an earth mama through and through and doesn’t care much for the socialite scene, because of her volunteer work, she sometimes runs in the same high-society circles as Margot.
A few days before Christmas, Erin was tagged in a splashy post with twenty or so other women. A post about a Christmas party—specifically a “Mommy and Kiddos Dance”—benefiting the local children’s theater.
Almost instantly, my eyes found Margot in the lineup of all the women and kids in the group.
She was dressed in a black, one-shoulder evening gown with a slit up the leg so high it reached the top of her thigh. A diamond choker clasped her neck, and her dark hair was smoothed back, shiny as a new penny.
I found myself drawn to her, my eyes studying her sculpted thigh, her slender wrist. But more than anything, it was her expression that jolted me. Her fuck-me eyes, but also, while everyone else was flashing giddy grins, Margot’s mouth was pressed into that same smirk she wears in nearly all the otherphotos I’ve seen of her. That smirk of irreverence that lets me know she is different from all the others in the photograph.
I took a sip of the chardonnay I’d been nursing all evening and swiped through the comments. The first was Erin’s:
That was SO fun! Mattie had a blast!
Followed by a stream of others that echoed Erin’s sentiment:
Yasssss!
We should do this every year!
SO fun!
Then one from Margot:
Ladies, paleez. There wasn’t enough booze in the joint to make the night bearable.
I grinned. I noticed her comment had racked up the most likes—nearly forty—and that people were still hitting the “like” button while I was looking at it.
I dragged the cursor and hovered over her name, which in and of itself sounded beguiling: Margot Banks.
I clicked on it. But her profile was set to private. A locked door. The standard Facebook message glared at me beneath her profile pic:
To see what she shares with friends, send her a friend request.
But I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.
All I could gather from her profile were scant biographical details:
Age: Thirty-eight. Three years older than me.
Birthday: August 20.
Friends: 3,121.Jesus.
Her profile pic: Margot in oversize shades with the tease of a smile curling on her lips. Her arms wrapped around a dashing man. I clicked on the photo. The caption simply read: “Me and the hubs.” The person tagged in the photo was Jed Banks.
I knew of that name, not because I’d ever met Jed, but because the Bankses are Mapleton royalty. The local library, for one, bears their family name.
I clicked on it; his profile was public. But clearly untended, like those of most males his age. Just stale birthday wishes to him from last fall, none of which he ever replied to.
I scanned through a few of his photos. Dark, wavy hair, olive skin. Roman-god handsome. Every bit as much of a scorcher as Margot.
I headed back to Erin’s page, dug around, and found a handful more of mutually tagged posts with Margot.
One from last Easter at the Piney Woods Country Club. A ladies’ luncheon.
