I felt tears springing to my eyes again and decided either I had some serious PMS or I had officially, once and for all, lost my mind. Diana smiled. “That must be nice,” she said. “To have all those memories with your mom.”
Yup. Memories. I had a lot of those. “And then she left me when I needed her the very most.” I laughed cruelly.
Diana cocked her head to the side. “Sister, you aremad.”
I was taken aback. “I’m notmad. The woman died, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t leave me on purpose.”
She looked skeptical. “Well… Look, anger is a natural reaction to death. I was mad at my mom for a long time.”
“So she died?” I asked.
Diana waved her hand, which I assumed was a yes. “But, Gray, you can’t move past being angry if you can’t admit that you are.”
“I’m not mad!” I protested. “That’s ridiculous.” Who did this woman think she was? I didn’t have to keep her around. “My mother was my best friend. Don’t ever say that to me again.”
Diana put her hands up in defense and walked out of the room.
My mind was reeling. What right did she have to put something that awful on me? But, well… was she right? Was Imad? I mean, my poor mother had died of cancer. Who would be mad at that? But when I felt that familiar burning near my throat, I realized that maybe that’s what I was. I was saying, “Oh my gosh, am I mad?” just as Trey breezed in.
“Why are we not dressed?” he demanded.
I suddenly felt very, very tired. I leaned my head all the way back until it touched the chair and I was looking at the ceiling. I didn’t want to tell Trey about my potentially insane reaction to my mom’s death, so instead I said, “Quinn.”
“What?!” Trey screeched. “I’m away from your e-mail for ten minutes. Maybe nine. How did that little bitch sneak in there?”
Trey calling Quinn a bitch made a flash of fury run through me. She was a bitch. A huge one. But onlyIgot to say that, blood being thicker than water and all that.
Before I could respond, Trey looked at the plate on my desk and said, “Well, good Lord, early heart disease isn’t the answer to your problems.”
“Hey!” Diana interjected, popping her head back in, startling me. “Those are the appetizers.”
“The what?”
He gave me that look I knew all too well, the one that said,Do I intervene here or let it go?I gave him a look back that said to let it go.
“Okay,” he said. “Get dressed, do your girls’ night thing. I’m taking Diana out to dinner to formally educate her on the Gray Howard brand.”
I stifled a laugh. Having someone to do your dirty work was the ultimate charm of a charmed life.
An hour later, my four best friends were drinking wine and lounging in a circle of low-slung beach chairs on the little stretch of sand that separated my grassy front yard from the expansive sound beyond. The sunset was my favorite deep pink, but no one was watching it. All eyes were on me. I supposed that in the midst of a divorce and Ritz crackers, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. They hadn’t seen me since the summer before, so now was their chance to gauge how far off the deep end I had fallen.
“Do you absolutely hate Brooke?” Mary Ellen was asking, well into her first bottle of champagne. “I mean, I hated Sarah so much after Eddie left me for her.” Mary Ellen was a petite, pretty Florida transplant who literally wore only Lilly Pulitzer. She said the clothes fit her body and the prints fit her personality, so who could blame her?
“OfcourseI hate her,” I said. “And I hate being that woman. I want to be the ‘it was our marriage and he is the one to blame’ woman, but I can’t do it. I hate them almost equally. In fact, I might hate her even more, which is kind of unjustified.”
MyI’m fine. It’s fine. Life moves onpersona didn’t apply to my best friends. I think that goes without saying.
Megan nearly spit out her wine. “She stole your husband, Gray. What do you mean,unjustified?”
“You can’t ‘steal’ someone’s husband, really. Can you?” countered Addie. Everyone glared at her. She wasthe onein the group. You know, the one who likes to play devil’s advocate. You love her, but sometimes you just want to say:SHUT. UP.
Marcy picked up a jalapeño popper and, holding it up meaningfully, said, “Love bug, you need some serious sessions. I’m going to refer you to a colleague.”
“I don’t need sessions,” I said, laughing. “Diana and I had a bit of miscommunication about the appetizer situation.” I looked pointedly at Marcy, who looked like an absolute goddess in a flowy maxi dress cut almost to her belly button. She had the exact right willowy figure to pull it off. “I thoughtyouwere helping to steer her in the right direction.”
“Ohhhhh,” she said. “I see how you could have thought that. But, no. We were talking about her crazy ex-boyfriends.”
Megan sighed, “Oh, thank God.” An extraordinarily tall brunette, she had shocked us all by debuting her new hairstyle, the wavy curls that used to fall all the way down her back now chopped off close to her head. I honestly had not recognized her, but the look suited her. She added, “Don’t get me wrong. Pigs in a blanket are delicious and it’s great to get to eat them in public. It’s just not really typical of you.” She hiccupped, already on her third glass of wine. “I haven’t had carbs in, like, a decade.”
