Honoria Grosbourne said, "Charlotte, you've done such a wonderful job organizing this reception for Bunny. We have given the old girl a proper send-off."
The older woman draped her arm over Charlotte's shoulder and led her off to a corner of the room. "Don't get me wrong. I considered Bunny a good friend. I knew her for over forty years and I considered her a good friend. I can't even begin to imagine how many hours the two of us spent serving on various boards. But, oh, she could be a mean one."
"And you have gift for staggering understatement," Charlotte thought. Instead she just nodded her agreement.
"I can't begin to tell you, Charlotte, how much pleasure it gave me to see you take on Bunny and beat her at her own game. Very few people got the best of Bunny MacDougal. Not everyone she crossed paths with faired so well. I couldn't help but notice you and Trey having a good long talk. Is he going to be okay?"
Charlotte knew that she would always be fond of Trey. Charlotte thought of the hateful woman who had so dominated him. Trey was sad now, but without Bunny's constant interference, his life would be so much better. Charlotte said, "Trey will be more than fine."
Carrie's closet in the new apartment she shared with Big was cavernous. It was easily her favorite feature of the place. This evening, she was down on her hands and knees in that closet, clad only in her nightgown, looking though boxes of miscellaneous junk that she had moved from her old apartment. She was a woman on a mission. She had to find Berger's phone number.
"So there you are. I thought I was going to have to send out a search party." Big's voice startled Carrie.
She had been trying to reach Berger for over a week. He had moved, and she didn't know his new address. His phone number was unlisted. She had to find that small scrap of paper on which he had written it down his cell phone number for her. She knew she still had it somewhere. Maybe trapped between the pages of the black Kate Spade organizer where she kept phone numbers and email addresses. Maybe it was in the box that held the contents of her desk. She didn't know.
When Carrie explained her mission to Big, he smiled and said, "What are you going to do, hunt him down, pin him down on the ground and not let him up until he apologizes? Carrie, he doesn't want to see you. Look, if Hot Dog had any cajones, he would have come to you in person like a man. He's a loser."
Carrie had heard Samantha and Miranda say the same thing over the last week. Carrie had not paid much attention to them. After all, they were her unconditionally–supportive friends. That's what they would have to say. Somehow, coming from a man, it sounded different.
A couple of days later, Charlotte received a visit from a representative of the MacDougal Charitable Trust. Trey had suggested her as the interim supervisor of the Trust. The job was temporary, the man explained, just six months or a year until a permanent supervisor could be found.
Charlotte turned down the job immediately. She was busy enough with the charity work she was already doing, not to mention raising a daughter and being the wife that Harry deserved. And, truthfully, an even deeper reason was that she her divorce from Trey was the unhappiest time in her life and Bunny had made the experience just as awful as she could. She didn't want to be dragged back into any affiliation with the MacDougals. She had a new life now. She has been more happy over the last year than she ever knew was possible.
And besides, she told herself, that very day Harry was going to get in touch with an adoption attorney referred to him by a colleague. Hopefully, they were going to have a new baby in the house soon.