“Speaking of,” Lauren said, “I’ve been meaning to tell y’all about the new man that I’m dating.”
“Oh my goodness, who?” Sally asked.
Lauren smiled, and I could sense just a hint of that maliciousness in her getting ready to escape. My stomach gripped like I’d had too much Metamucil just about the time she said, “Kyle Jenkins.”
All eyes turned instantly to Sally, as Kyle Jenkins had been the man we thought she would marry. She had dated him for five years and then, one night, after he had asked Dan’s permission to marry her, he dumped her with no explanation whatsoever. He tried to get her back, but she had already met Doug. Sally had decided that, while brilliant, good-looking and destined for the kind of fortune that girls dream of, all she really wanted in a partner was someone who would be kind, steady and would never hurt her like that again.
I braced myself for the reaction of my other girls, and it didn’t surprise me one bit when Louise said, “Don’t you sort of feel like he’s using you? Like you’re the Sally replacement?”
Sally shook her head and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. I think it’s great.”
But you didn’t have to be trained in reading body language to realize she didn’t think it was so great.
“He is so wonderful,” Lauren said, as though none of her sisters had even spoken. “He’s smart and charming and so, so funny.”
“He’s a great dancer too,” Sally added.
“Lauren, that’s so weird,” Jean chimed in. “He’s never even gotten married. You have to know that he’s been in love with Sally his entire life.”
She waved her hand. “I think that’s absurd. When we saw each other at the club over the summer, we really hit it off.” She smiled. “It’s so difficult to find a man who can really take care of you these days.”
It was the tiniest jab at her sister, a reminder that Sally’s stay-at-home husband had rarely held down a job for more than a few months over the course of their marriage. But, as a stay-at-home wife, I thought they diminished Doug’s role in the family way too easily. He was a good man, and they were happy. Who could ask for more than that?
I always defended Lauren when the other girls ganged up against her, but, this time, there was little to defend. She had made her choice, they had formed their opinion, and that was all there was to it. It had to have bothered Sally that her sister was dating the man I always suspected was the love of her life. But she was as cool and calm as I’d ever seen her, and, if it bothered her, she didn’t let on.
“Okay, then,” Lauren said, glancing at the diamond Tiffany watch she had inherited when her former mother-in-law died. “Kyle and I are meeting for dinner in Chapel Hill tonight, so I better go home and get beautiful.”
Jean rolled her eyes at Martha, Lauren kissed her daddy and me, and, just like that, she was out the door and on the elevator. It was as if she wanted to make sure we were talking about her when she was gone.
“She is such a bitch!” Jean said, as soon as Lauren had closed the door.
“Jean,” I scolded, trying not to smile. “Don’t say that word and especially not about your own sister.”
Louise nodded her head, taking a sip of the kombucha mess that she was rarely without. She was always trying to get Dan and me todrink it to improve our immunity and gut flora. But I liked my gut flora the way it was, thank you very much. “Momma, I don’t know how you can defend her all the time. She is such a hideous person. How did you raise her and all of us in the same family?”
“Now, girls...”
I looked over at Sally. She hadn’t said a word, but she was whiter than Ernest used to be in his swim trunks on the first day of summer. For someone who had held it together so beautifully while Lauren was in the room, her countenance immediately shifted when her sister walked away. “I can’t believe that he would actually do this to me,” Sally whispered.
“He?”Martha asked. “What about your wicked witch of a sister?”
And I didn’t need to hear any more to know that, sometimes, no matter how good a girl seems, all of us, from top to bottom, need to use our little lies every now and then.
Annabelle
In Your Head
If you do something you love, you never work a day in your life, according to Lovey. One of the great things about my new job was that, while it put a check in that “employed” box, it was about the furthest thing from work I could imagine. My days were jam-packed with fun activities that, even when they were dreadfully annoying, like that day with Mrs. Taylor, were much more exciting than pushing paper around a desk and intermittently checking Facebook, making sure I didn’t need to hide any more offensive messages from my husband.
Plus, if I wanted to flit over to Greensboro, the midpoint between Raleigh and Salisbury, for lunch with Mom and Sally, Rob didn’t care one bit. Although my hours indicated otherwise, I was still technically part-time, after all.
I was practically salivating over the black-eyed-pea cakes that I knew I would order, smiling thinking of how much fun it was going to be to laugh with my family—especially since Ben’s newfound“real” job had him working so much. It was definitely a switch after being together nearly nonstop for a year.
The minute I saw Sally, though, I felt the day take an unexpected U-turn. I slid into the oversized, mercifully tall booth, sized just right to hide Sally’s pained face. My mind wandered to the first natural place: Lovey and D-daddy. But, when my mom’s face came into view, where she looked at me from beside her sister, I felt the tension dissolve a little. I knew her well enough to know that her expression was out of feeling her sister’s pain, not her own.
Sally pinned on a fake smile and said, “Well, hi, Annie.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. What’s going on?”
