She did.
“Being a billionaire’s wife agrees with you,” I told her, dragging her back into the shadows.
“Ooh!” she exclaimed. “If you take Walter up on his offer, you could be a billionaire’s wife too!”
I made a face as we snuck alongside the side of my childhood home to the backyard. “He’s your father-in-law,” I reminded Kate. “Wouldn’t that be weird? Wouldn’t his kids, including your husband, think it’s weird if their father was dating someone their age?”
“Honestly, Walter has done so many crackpot things and dated so many shitty women, they would probably welcome someone who wasn’t a gold digger.”
“But that’s what people would see me as,” I argued. “The Holbrooks are old Connecticut money. Wait, what am I saying? There’s no way I’m even considering dating him. All the stress is getting to me.”
“Once we steal the car,” Kate promised, “we’ll go to that place with the deep-fried, cheesy mashed potato balls you were telling me about. They have alcohol, too, right?”
“Yeah,” I said with a grunt as I struggled with the lock on the shed.
When I was in high school, I had saved and scrimped for a car of my own. After working after school and during summers, all I had been able to afford was a beige station wagon from the seventies with the fake wood paneling and the vinyl seats that smelled like plastic. I had hated driving the car. It was built like a tank, got about five miles to the gallon, and couldn’t go over forty-five miles an hour. But I needed wheels.
The lock finally squawked open, and I pulled back the doors to the storage shed.
Kate screamed bloody murder, which made me scream too.
“Something touched the back of my neck,” she said, batting at her hair.
“It’s a leaf,” I said, breathing hard. I did not want a bug to crawl on me.
“I need like three cocktails and a shower after this,” Kate said as she gingerly helped me clear off the car.
“This sucks,” I complained. “All of this sucks.”
“I can’t believe Hunter brought up your car at the debate.”
“It was Karen,” I said. “I bet she talked him into it.”
“She’s the one who should be ashamed,” Kate said as we finally moved enough stuff out of the way to open the trunk of the car and clamber in through the back hatch.
“Honestly, has she been waiting for the last five years for her chance at Hunter? It’s pathetic, really. We should pity her.”
I screamed, and Kate screamed and ran. I jerked and banged my head.
“Is it a spider?” she asked from outside the shed.
“I don’t know, but I felt something.”
“Five cocktails,” Kate promised me as I stuffed myself behind the wheel of the car. “Five cocktails, and we’re ordering cheesy fries and those chips that are smothered in chipotle sauce and bacon.”
I said a little prayer to the car gods. The key was in the glove compartment where I had left it right before moving to Manhattan with all my hopes and dreams of an awesome job, a droolworthy apartment, and a rich boyfriend who would buy me huge bouquets of flowers I could bury my face in.
“How far we have fallen,” I said then cranked the key. Nothing happened. “Why can’t I have a win?” I wailed.
“Just put it in neutral,” Kate told me. “I texted Allie. She said if we stash it somewhere, she’ll come look at it tomorrow.”
I jerked the gear stick, put it in neutral, then helped Kate pull the car out of the storage container with some nylon rope I’d found.
“Girl power!” Kate exclaimed, high-fiving me as we tugged the car out. “Could Karen and her skinny martini ass pull an entire station wagon out of a shed? I think not.”
We leaned against the porch, sucking in air.
“Where are we going to put it?” I asked after we were able to breathe normally.
