The Bride Wore Size 12 (Heather Wells 5)

“Ricardo?” My mother’s gaze skitters away, as if my former manager—with whom she fled the U.S., along with all the money in our joint account—might be hiding somewhere in the shadows of our backyard. “Oh, he’s back in Buenos Aires, I suppose. He and I had a bit of a falling-out.”

Things are suddenly becoming clearer.

“You mean he dumped you,” I say. “And took what was left of my money with him?”

“Oh, Heather,” Mom says again, this time in an irritated tone, her gaze skittering back toward me. “Why do you always assume the worst in people?”

“Gee, Mom, I don’t know. Look at the role models I had in my life.”

My mother shakes her head, her auburn bob shimmering under the party globes. “You know better than to talk that way, especially at the dining table. I didn’t raise you to be such a poor hostess. The least you could do is offer me a glass of wine. It’s been a long flight, and I’m really quite thirsty.”

“You just got off the plane?” I cry in astonishment. “From Argentina?”

“Her bags are in the foyer,” Cooper points out. “All ten of them. Louis Vuitton.”

Now I know why he let her in. My mother has never traveled light. Even Cooper—who knows better than anyone how much I despise Janet Wells—wouldn’t leave a middle-aged woman fresh off the plane from Argentina standing on his stoop with ten Louis Vuitton bags, especially at night, a block from Washington Square Park, where the late-night drug-dealing trade is brisk (if for the most part nonviolent).

“I didn’t realize New York City had gotten so popular as a fall tourist destination,” my mom says, giving Patty a dazzling smile for handing her a glass full of wine—Patty’s own, but from which Patty hadn’t sipped, being pregnant. She says she only “likes looking at it.”

“But there are literally no hotel rooms available right now. Even the Washington Square Hotel, which I don’t remember as being particularly luxurious from the days when you and I used to stay there, Heather, is booked solid. And it’s three hundred dollars a night!”

“Those hotels aren’t filled with tourists,” I say to her acidly. “They’re filled with concerned parents here to drop their kids off at New York College, the place where I work and go to school now on tuition remission because you stole all my savings—”

“Oh, honey,” my mother says, looking vaguely amused as she sets down her wineglass to lay a hand on mine. “You aren’t still mad about that, are you? Because you have to know it isn’t healthy to hold on to old grudges. Those kinds of feelings will eat away at you over time and cause you to have a stroke or heart attack if you don’t let them go. I’m not saying I was the perfect mother. Sure, I might have done some things I’m not proud of. But I was under a heck of a lot of pressure, raising you all by myself while your father was in jail for not keeping track of our taxes. I did the best I could under pretty lousy conditions, let me tell you. And keep in mind you loved it out there on that stage. You took to performing like a fish takes to water.”

I glare at her. “And you and Ricardo took all the money I earned for it like a couple of sharks.”

“But you’re doing all right now, aren’t you?” she asks. “You have a beautiful home, and lovely friends, and this marvelous man here who loves you and wants to marry you. That’s so much more than many people have. You should really learn to count your blessings, Heather.”

She flips my hand over and holds it toward the flame of the nearest citronella candle, causing the sapphire at the center of the cluster of diamonds in the engagement ring Cooper gave me to glow with the same blue intensity as his eyes.

“Ho-ho!” my mother cries. “That’s quite a rock. I guess you’re doing very well indeed. So what are you complaining about? It’s only money, Heather. You’re starting your new married life, so why not use this opportunity to forget the past and let bygones be bygones? Don’t you think that’s healthier than holding on to old grudges?”

I’m so stunned, I can’t summon a reply—at least not out loud. Plenty flash through my head. Only money? You think this is only about the money? I want to ask her.

What about everything else she took from me? Because when she took that money—my money, money I could have used to go to college, or help pay for my own kids’ college, if I ever have any—she also took my future, and my career, and my pride, and in very short order after that, my boyfriend, Jordan, my home, my life, and, yes, my hope. My hope that there was justice and fairness in the world. My own mother took that from me.

And yes, everything’s turned out fine—better than fine—but not thanks to her. Because there’s one thing she took from me that I will never get back, and that’s a mother I could trust, one who loved me. Janet Wells certainly didn’t. Because she didn’t merely steal from me: she abandoned me. Dad left because he had to. She left because she wanted to.

How can she not see the difference?

But I can’t say any of those things to her. I can’t even seem to move. I’m frozen stiff, as cold and unmoving as poor Jasmine Albright, whose body I sat with all afternoon.

Cooper, on the other hand, moves very quickly, pushing away from the deck railing as if he’s about to lunge at her. Frank steps into his path, still holding his son, saying urgently, “Don’t, man. It’s not worth it.”

My mother is blinking bewilderedly at all of us.

“What?” she asks. “What did I say? Oh, good heavens. You can’t still be upset about the money. That was so long ago! And it wasn’t only Heather’s money. I was Heather’s agent, and Ricardo was her manager. We earned that money—”

“Ten percent,” I say, finally finding my voice. “That was your cut. Ten percent, not all of it.”

“Oh, honestly, Heather,” Mom says, taking a sip of her wine. “I’m not saying what I did was right, because of course it wasn’t. I made poor choices. But you were still a child. Ricardo and I were adults, with adult issues. You know Ricardo had a gambling problem. There were criminals—real criminals, with guns, wearing very thick gold chains—after him. What was I supposed to do, let him die?”

“No, but you didn’t have to go with him.”