I popped bolt upright. “What are you talking about?”
My mom’s voice oozed with delight at getting to break the news. “My friend saw them out together at that stodgy old red sauce joint on Seventy-Fifth. All cuddled up together in a booth in the back. They both looked sick when my friend went over to say hello.”
My mom might have been terrible in a lot of ways, but she wasn’t a liar. At least not about things like this (her age was another story. She was the oldest-looking forty-year-old in the country, probably).
Which meant Vienna was the one who’d lied. Not explicitly—I wondered what she would say if I confronted her directly about it, though she’d have to text me back for that. But she hadn’t said anything about cozying up to Conrad Phlume during our whole time preparing this gala that was partially in his honor (but mostly mine). “Hmm,” I said noncommittally. Really, Vienna?Conrad Phlume? That’swho you have an affair with?
No. No way. Vienna had integrity. There was no way she’d knowingly help a man cheat on his wife.
Especially not if that man wasConrad Phlume.
“That poor woman,” Mom said smugly. “Getting cheated on like that again. Just like Denise Ryan.”
“It’s not her fault,” I said. “Either of their faults. Denise at least seems way happier without her ex.”
“She must be lacking something that would make him stay,” she said. “Look at my marriage. Your father and I have been faithful to each other for thirty years. Meanwhile, in his first marriage, he cheated and left her behind, all sad and alone, because I was an objectively better person and partner.”
“That’s not fair,” I told her.
“How dare you say I’m a bad wife?”
I sighed. “That’s not what I said.”
“I’m just saying it as I see it,” said my mom. “She lost, and I won.”
“Dear,” Dad said. “Is being married to me for thirty years actually winning?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. That was probably the funniest thing my father had ever said, at least intentionally. As far as I was concerned, my parents deserved each other. His first wife had won that marriage by getting out. Which probably sounded terrible, but it was true.
At least this time my parents weren’t suspects! What a relief!
“Roberta thought so,” my mom huffed. “Remember how hard she fought the divorce?”
“She wasn’t exactly fighting the divorce,” Dad said mildly. “She wanted the Nantucket house.”
“Iwanted the Nantucket house,” Mom spat.
“To be fair,” Dad said, “it had been in her family for generations.”
Okay, I had to get this back on track. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?”
“Honestly, Pomona,” Mom said. “Sometimes you can be so…”
Gabe squeezed my arm. I jumped a little. I’d almost forgotten he was there, but his presence reminded me that, hello, I did not have to take this. “I have to go,” I said, and pulled the phone away from my ear before my mom could neg me about how I couldn’t possibly have anything more interesting going on than talking to them.
It sounded cliché, but the moment my phone was down, it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I rolled them, relishing the sound of the crack. “The funny thing is that Mom would trash Denise Ryanbeforethe divorce too,” I told Gabe,and also Squeaky, who was purring so hard at my feet I was a little worried he might drill his way down through the floor and into the vacant apartment below us (the owner was holding out to sell for a better market, which was fine with me, because I didn’t have to feel guilty about doing a virtual solo tango class at ten p.m.). “Whenever she’d see her at a gala, Mom would talk smack about how she was new money and she’d had the nerve to marry into it, not inherit it or make it—actually, the term she used was a lot grosser—and how she’d never be anything more than a bartender from Pennsylvania.”
I hoped she’d steered clear of that talk around Jessica, who was marrying into our money by marrying my brother. Probably she hadn’t. God, I owed Jessica so many drinks.
Gabe said, “Not surprising coming from your mom.”
She hadn’t said much of anything about Gabe, at least around me—not because she hadn’t tried, because I would literally stand up and leave the room whenever she did—but I could only imagine she’d think way worse about him, since he was a man. No matter that Gabe insisted on paying me rent and utilities so that he wouldn’t feel like he was freeloading. No matter that, when we’d discussed the future, he said he was fine signing a prenup in regard to the family money.
I cleared my throat delicately. “By the way, did you see that spread inVogue Italia? The one about fall weddings in Tuscany?”
He cocked his head at me, smirking a little. “It would’ve been hard to miss, considering you opened the magazine right to the spread and left it on the kitchen counter in front of my coffee machine.”
If there was one thing you (and countless journalists) could say about me, it was not that I was subtle. “What did you think?”
