worried Cindy.
Sometimes she’d look over at Duncan and her daughter as they were reading the morning paper at breakfast—Honey Nut Cheerios for him, Cinnamon Toast Crunch for her—and think they were almost too comfortable with each other, too settled. She marveled at Heather’s eager embrace of such a safe, middle-aged lifestyle, and wondered if being the child of divorce had played any part in it. “Why is she in such a hurry to tie herself down? She’s only nineteen. She’s in college. She should be out sleeping around,” Cindy had shocked her friends recently by confiding. “Well, when else is she going to do it?” she’d continued, painfully aware of her own reluctant celibacy.
Cindy could count on one hand the number of affairs she’d had since her divorce, two of those in the immediate aftermath of Tom’s abrupt decision to leave her for another woman, a woman he’d left for yet another otherwoman as soon as his divorce from Cindy became final. Seven years of other women, Cindy thought now, each woman younger and tartier than the last. A dozen at least. A baker’s dozen, she thought, feeling her jaw lock. And then along came little Fiona, the freshest tart of all. Hell, she was only eight years older than Julia. Not even a tart, for God’s sake. A cookie!
“Mom?” Heather was asking.
“Hmm?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Mrs. Carver?” Duncan reappeared at Heather’s side. The towel had been replaced by a pair of fashionably faded blue jeans. He slipped a navy T-shirt over his still-damp, utterly hairless chest. “Is something wrong? You have a very strange look on your face.”
“She’s thinking about my father,” Julia announced wearily.
“What? I am not.”
“Then why the rigor mortis smile?”
Cindy took a deep breath and tried to relax her mouth, feeling it wobble precariously from side to side. “I thought you were in such a hurry to get in the shower.”
“It’s only eight-thirty,” Julia said as Elvis began barking.
“Would someone like to go for a walk?” Duncan asked the dog, whose response was to run around in increasingly frantic circles and bark even louder. “Let’s go then, boy.” Duncan bounded down the stairs, Elvis racing ahead of him, as the phone in Cindy’s bedroom began to ring.
“If it’s Sean, I’m not here,” Julia told her mother.
“Why would Sean be calling on my line?”
“Because I won’t speak to him on mine.”
“Why won’t you speak to him?”
“Because I broke up with him, and he won’t take no for an answer. I’m not here,” Julia insisted as the phone continued to ring.
“What about you?” Cindy asked her younger daughter playfully. “Are you here?”
“Why would I want to speak to Sean?”
“Be back in twenty minutes,” Duncan called from the front door.
My best kid, Cindy thought, entering her room and reaching for the phone on the night table beside her bed.
“I’m not here,” Julia repeated from the doorway.
“Hello.”
“It’s me,” the voice announced as Cindy plopped down on the edge of her unmade bed, a headache slowly gnawing at the base of her neck.
“Is it Sean?” Julia whispered.
“It’s Leigh,” Cindy whispered back as Julia rolled disappointed eyes toward the window overlooking the backyard. Outside, the late-August sun created the illusion of peace and tranquility.
“Why are you whispering?” Cindy’s sister asked. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“I’m fine. How about you? You’re calling awfully early.”
“Early for you maybe. I’ve been up since six.”
It was Cindy’s turn to roll her eyes. Leigh had elevated sibling rivalry to a fine art. If Cindy had been up since seven o’clock, Leigh had been up since five; if Cindy had a sore throat, Leigh had a sore throat
and
a fever; if Cindy had a million things to do that day, Leigh had a million and
one
.
“This wedding is going to be the death of me,” Leigh said. “You have no idea what planning a