The Neighbor's Secret(63)

“Definitely Haley.”

“But it was strange. Sierra usually has a compulsion to tell me things, so I’m a little proud of her—maybe she’s finally learned to keep a secret—but I’m also dying to know. What qualities would make a teenager untouchable? I really hope it’s not something class-based. Are we raising elitist snobs or—”

“What are we whispering about?” Janine popped her head over the easel.

“Laurel’s party,” Deb said.

“Oh yes,” Janine sighed. “Poor Katie has a bit of the green-eyed grouchies. How’s the planning going? Anything I can do to help?”

Janine’s forlorn look indicated that perhaps Katie wasn’t the jealous one after all.

“Lena’s a powerhouse,” Annie marveled. “She’s got it more than covered.”

All three of them looked ahead to Lena, who gracefully dabbed at her canvas.

“The party is way bigger than Laurel,” Annie said. “It’s not even about her anymore. Tell Katie that it’s really for everyone at this point.”




MAY

To: “The Best Book Club in the World”

From: [email protected]

Ladies … drumroll please!… it’s (SOB) our Final Book Club Meeting of the Year!!!!

The book: IPHIGENIA, based on the Greek Myth of the daughter of Agamemnon, sacrificed by her own Father so that he could start the Trojan War, avenged by her Mother, who was then murdered by Iphigenia’s siblings—her own children. (And I thought Christmas at my in-law’s was awkward!)

The place: Priya’s house at 7:30.

The food: It is our much-anticipated MULTI-CULTI NIGHT, when we celebrate the Melting Pot, oops I mean SALAD BOWL, that is Cottonwood Estates! Bring your appetite and sense of adventure and of course: a dish from your heritage!

LET’S CELEBRATE OUR DIFFERENCES, LADIES, AND OUR UNITY!

Thank you everyone for making this the BEST. YEAR. EVER!!! Words cannot express how much I treasure this incredible community of ours! I better stop—I’m starting to tear up right here at the computer! Mwah, mwah!





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN



There were only two days left until the party.

“Final countdown,” Annie chirped as she handed Lena the caftan she’d just tried on. The arms and shoulders had fit her perfectly, just like Lena had pictured when she had bought it.

“Not a surprise that it needs to be hemmed,” Annie said with a nervous giggle as Lena looped the thread onto her sewing machine. “Everything needs to be hemmed on me!”

She paced back and forth along the perimeter of Lena’s crafting room. Lena wanted to send her on a made-up errand, clear the room of her jittery energy.

“I’ll have Laurel try her dress on too when she gets home from Abe’s, where she is again,” Annie said.

Lena looked up. There had been a sharp note in Annie’s voice. “Is everything still okay?”

“Great.” Annie was still pacing. “She’s talking to us again. I don’t know why I feel so … bottled up this week. Do you think it’s the party?”

Lena pressed the sewing machine’s pedal. “Maybe.”

“Why are you so calm?”

“Hilde the party planner,” Lena said. “She’s a dynamo. You’ll see when you meet her.”

Lena remembered how she used to wake up with a jolt the morning of a party with a weird stage fright, task lists multiplying in her head.

You seem more plugged in, Melanie had said a few weeks ago. I think it’s because you’ve given yourself permission to live.

Melanie was almost right. Lena had given herself permission to forget.

All of these years, Lena had confused grief and guilt, but the grief was not Lena’s, it never had been, and the guilt was self-generated. It could be ditched by the side of the road, it turned out, to become smaller and smaller in the rearview, until it was practically indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape.

Annie had stopped her pacing to stand uncomfortably close to Lena’s shoulder. The way she peered at the hemming process made it impossible for Lena to concentrate.

Lena pointed to the stitch in the caftan. “I don’t think the thread matches.”

Annie sucked in her lips noisily. The smack reverberated in Lena’s ear. “Looks fine to me.”

“If you don’t mind,” Lena said, “could you grab some extra thread from the closet? Top of the stairs, third door on the right, middle shelf, in a wicker basket.”

Annie repeated the instructions, flashed a thumbs-up, left the room.

“Take your time,” Lena called after her. “Just grab all the pinks.”

Relieved, she returned to the hemming.

Upon closer examination, Lena saw the thread color was a little off. She leaned over the dress, carefully ripped out the stitches.



* * *



“I’m leaning toward going to that academic conference I told you about,” Jen said. “The one in June.”

She and Paul were in the car, driving home from an impromptu date night at a downtown sushi spot. Through the windshield, the moon was large and full, and the sky around it an electric blue.

“You should go,” Paul said.