“True, but you don’t need a lot of money to make your home beautiful. You need time to hit up some flea marketsand secondhand stores. And when you make things special every day, you wind up having a special life.” She swallowed the fry. “Anyway, not that I’ll be the next Martha. It’s just something fun to take my mind off my current situation.”
“You know, you might be onto something there. You could be Budget Martha.”
“Eww…”
“Snob,” Kylie said. “That’s obviously not how you’d position yourself, but that would be the idea. A special life on any budget.”
“Huh, that could actually work. I mean, if I wasn’t swamped with raising children and figuring my entire life out.”
“Would it have to be tomorrow? What if it happened a decade from now?”
“I’d be in my fifties.”
“Martha Stewart was fifty when she started her magazine.”
Sienna furrowed her brow. “No, seriously?”
“True story. Your life’s not winding down, Sienna. Not unless you let it.”
“I honestly can’t do anything big right now. The kids need me more than ever.”
“What about doing something big, but doing it slowly to fit it into your life?”
Excitement sparked inside Sienna’s like a match striking sandpaper. “Huh, maybe I could.”
“Think about it. You deserve to have something that is only yours. Something that will give you a sense of purpose outside of being a mother or a wife. You’re intelligent and you have a lot to offer the world besides your beauty.”
“Thank you,” Sienna said. “I need to hear that every once in a while.”
“Yes, you do, because your stupid husband certainly never said it.”
Sienna opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. Zane was stupid. If he wasn’t, he would have one less child.
“Speaking of stupid husbands,” Kylie said. “Have you given any thought to kicking him to the curb permanently?”
“There is very little else I think about,” Sienna said, taking a sip of her shake. “I’m leaning more towards ending it at the moment, but that seems to change day by day. Right now, I’m supremely pissed off at him because the PR team set up a big photo shoot and interviews with the band, Claudia, and her new offspring.”
“Oh, God, seriously?”
“Yes.PeopleandEntertainment Tonight. At least it would’ve been softball questions. No hard-hitting journalists that’ll fact check the story.”
“It’s all so gross,” Kylie answered.
“Agreed. But in a perverted way, I only have myself to blame.”
“Oh, come on, this isn’t what you had in mind when you came up with the plan.”
“Yeah, well, if I’d given it more than a couple of hours of thought on no sleep, I might have been able to see where it would go. But I rushed into it, like I did when I met him. I’m twenty years older but no wiser.”
“You’re being a little hard on yourself. Zane put you in an impossible situation. You came up with a solution while he was sitting around crying in his soup.”
“Unfortunately, my solution is forcing my stupid husband to spend time with his stupid lover and their stupid adorable baby.” She had a sip of milkshake, wishing it had an ounce of vodka in it. “He called me after it was over and said it was hard, but not because he hasfeelings for her. He can’t stand lying to the guys. And he said it was weird to see the baby. Like some warped déjà vu.”
“God, he made such a giant mess of your lives.”
“Yes, he did. But hopefully this will be the worst part. Eventually everyone will accept things the way they are. Someday I might even forget about it for a few weeks here and there.”
“I hate that you’re going through this. Let me rephrase that: This whole thing makes me hate Zane with the passion of a million suns.”
