The Bride Wore Size 12 (Heather Wells 5)

“But I loved him! Would you leave Cooper if gold-chain-wearing thugs were after him?”

“Of course not,” I say. “I would stay and help him fight.”

“Against men with guns?”

“Heather’s been to the range with me a few times this summer,” Cooper says mildly. He’s looking calmer. “She’s a pretty good shot.”

“Of paper targets,” I say modestly.

“What I find interesting, Janet,” Cooper says, “is that for someone so convinced she didn’t do anything so wrong, you were awfully careful to wait until the statute of limitations had run out before you returned to the United States . . . five years, with an additional five years while the prosecutor sought, unsuccessfully, to locate you for extradition. That sounds about right, doesn’t it, for a class-B felony—grand larceny in the first degree—for New York State?”

My mother chokes a little on the mouthful of wine she’s just swallowed. “Don’t . . . don’t be ridiculous. I told you, I came back to be with Heather during this important time in her life. And I don’t know why the money is still such an issue with her; she could always have earned more if she’d simply laid off the hot fudge sundaes and hadn’t been so insistent on singing all those silly songs she wrote herself—”

It’s Patty who interrupts, which is surprising since she’s normally the most easygoing of creatures, slow to take offense.

But that’s the thing about people like my friend Patty . . . and maybe me. When we do form a grudge, we hold it for years, and then like a kettle left to simmer on a back burner, before you know it, we’ve burned the house down.

“Frank is right,” Patty says, getting up from her chair. “We have to go now. Janet, where can we drop you? We brought our car. It’s parked out front. We’ll be happy to take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Go?” my mother echoes, looking as shocked as if someone swapped her pinot grigio for a merlot. “But I told you, I have nowhere to go—”

“You were resourceful enough to find your way from Buenos Aires to my door,” I say sweetly. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“Frank, honey,” Patty says, getting up, “why don’t you go put Indy in his car seat while Cooper puts Janet’s suitcases in the trunk. It’s a Range Rover,” she explains to my mother, “so there should be more than enough room for you and all your bags.”

“Great idea,” Cooper says before my mother can utter another word. He strides from the deck, Frank following him, still looking a little confused, his son slung over one shoulder.

Frank isn’t the only one who looks confused.

“But I thought I told you,” my mother is saying, “I couldn’t get a hotel reservation. I’m sure Heather and Cooper don’t mind if I stay here. They seem to have more than enough room, and I’m family. I don’t expect special treatment. They’ll hardly know I’m here.”

“That isn’t the—” I begin with irritation, but Patty cuts me off.

“Oh, I don’t think that would be a very good idea, Janet.” Patty steps toward my mother and leans down to take away her wineglass. “You know the old saying about in-laws: If you want a loving relationship with them, put them in a hotel when they come to visit.”

“But I just told you,” my mother cries, leaping to her feet. “I couldn’t find a hotel room.”

“Oh, Cooper will be able to take care of that,” Patty says, placing an arm around my mom’s shoulder. “He’s a private detective, you know. A lot of people in this town owe him favors. Don’t they, Heather?”

“A ton,” I say. “In fact, some of his clients are hotels. We’ll find you a room somewhere. I can’t promise you the St. Regis, of course, but it won’t necessarily be a youth hostel, either.”

My mother purses her lips. Patty’s been steering her gently toward the kitchen, and in its less than flattering light Mom’s face no longer looks quite as unlined as it did in the glow from the candles and party globes.

“No hotels,” she says in a hard voice that sounds more like the one I remember from my childhood and teen years than the pseudo-sophisticated one she’s using in front of my friends.

I raise my eyebrows. My mother doesn’t want to stay in a hotel? Mom always loved hotel living when we were on tour, the room service, the maid service, the bright lights in the lobby, the bar . . .

Especially the bar, since that’s where she could have her assignations with Ricardo.

Things have really changed if Mom’s turning down an offer to stay in a hotel.

“If I can’t stay with Heather, I’d rather stay with my ex-husband,” she says, with a sniff. “Alan invited me, but I would have preferred—well, never mind that now.”

Circumstances might have changed for Mom, but that doesn’t mean she has.

“Fine,” I say. “You go stay with Dad. He’ll be delighted to have you. See you later, Mom.”

Then I go to the screen door and hold it open for her so that she can go inside the house, into the kitchen, down the hall, and out the front door, down the stoop, across the sidewalk, and into Frank and Patty’s car, away from me, hopefully for another ten years or longer.

Before she goes, my mother looks at me with an expression I don’t recognize, because I’ve never seen it on her face before. Disappointment, maybe. It couldn’t possibly be guilt or remorse. My mother isn’t capable of feelings like those, or she’d never have done the terrible things she did to me in the first place.

“Good-bye, Heather,” Mom says, still wearing the odd expression.

And then she leaves.

10

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