The Whole Thing Was a Shambles. Now You Happy?

Maddie

What was Christina shouting about? The texts came in bursts, sometimes three or four at a time; there would be silence, relatively speaking, and then another three or four, beginning and ending with a series of exclamation points. It reminded Maddie of the brief but intense rain showers that seemed to be a daily event in Florida.

!I THOUGHT SHE WAS MY FRIEND!

!HOW CAN YOU BE GONE? WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK? WE HAVE TO PLAN!

!THIS SUCKS!

Those had been the first, and they had popped like big, fat drops of rain, much like the actual rain on her phone's screen, as she had followed Nana and Poppa Martino into the house. They were regularly taking her grocery shopping, appalled by what their son thought was nutritious for a child: Frosted Flakes, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, microwave popcorn, Totino's Pizza Rolls, Hot Pockets, Kraft Mac and Cheese. While her grandparents unloaded groceries, Maddie had tried to calm Christina down, relying on the earnest reassurances that her mother used with her. However, typing responses like "Things have a way of working themselves out" and "Nothing is ever as bad as it seems" only agitated Christina the more; plus, Maddie admitted, they looked lame, and the only reason they hadn't sounded lame was because of the way her mother said them. She turned them into implicit guarantees, each cliché transformed by a silent "I promise." Maddie couldn't do that in a text, first of all because Christina was probably crazy enough to try to sue her if things didn't work out or turned out to be as bad as they seemed, and second, because sincerity was really hard to get across in a text, unless you used emojis or a bunch of extraneous punctuation marks, and she refused to do either. She wasn't a little kid who needed to use the equivalent of stickers. Third, it was hard to know what to text when you didn't know what was going on. Who was "she?" Hadn't they been planning all along? What "this" was sucking now?

Until she started getting the texts, she hadn't been all that keen on Orlando. Her dad thought she would love the theme parks – he did – but she didn't need Hogwarts or Star Wars turned into stomach-churning rides. Even though he had taken time off during the two weeks of her stay, there were still fundraising events for UCF that he had to attend, so she spent more than one evening being babysat by his latest girlfriend, Rhonda, or her grandparents. The best thing about visiting her dad had been anticipating the return home. When she got back, she would be helping Pete's Soccer Sprouts, which meant there would be a better than even chance that she would get to see J.P. There was something about being more than a thousand miles from home in what looked, smelled, and felt like a different country that lent itself to daydreams in which he prominently figured, impressed by how good she was with the Spouts and turned into a stammering, blushing mess at how tall and pretty she had become over the summer. When the texts started coming, J.P. began to fade in her mind, despite her scrabbling to hold onto him, replaced by the outraged face of Christina. That was what was waiting for her when she got back.

Over the next several days, Christina's barrages - !YOU'RE NOT HERE! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!, !THINGS ARE HORRIBLE!—were just as impatient and demanding, but interspersed among the accusations of indifference and the occasional insult (!HAS THE HEAT FRIED YOUR BRAIN!, !OUR LIVES ARE AT STAKE!) were pleading messages, decorated with hearts and puppy dog emojis, about Remy. !SHE'S THE BEST DOG EVER, CAN WE TIME SHARE HER! Maddie thought about sending a reply that asked !WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME ABOUT SHARING REMY IF OUR LIVES ARE AT STAKE?! but decided that logic would only send Christina into a greater frenzy. Despite the fact that Orlando was daily becoming more appealing compared to home, Maddie found the challenge of making sense of Christina's rants, well, challenging in a way that her other vacation activities weren't. She couldn't daydream about J.P. all day, and there were only so many tales about plucky young women surviving apocalypses that she could read. She loved her dad, she really did; the thrown-together-at-the-last-minute quality of his life, his setting a carton of orange juice and a box of Fruity Pebbles in front of her as he ran to make a meeting that he had forgotten to reschedule, was refreshing in its unBeringness, but it didn't make him the best conversationalist. If she wanted to talk about the impact of global warming on Florida's fragile ecosystems, she needed to find someone else.

Poppa Martino loved to talk, about sports, especially golf; the economy, which would be even better if the government quit giving hand-outs to "bums"; and the threat that the encroaching hordes of tourists, illegal immigrants, and "old farts from the North" posed to his otherwise blissful retirement. That Poppa himself was a recent Midwestern transplant he overlooked, declaring when he was pressed on the inherent contradiction in his railing against the old farts from the North that he was a born Floridian, if only in spirit for the first 65 years of his life. Maddie had a fairly good idea that he wouldn't share her concern about rising sea levels and the disappearance of the wetlands; in fact, Poppa would probably view turtles and manatees as yet more "bums" that the government believed it had to protect.

Nonna was more of a doer. While she golfed with Poppa nearly every day, she would leave him in the course lounge to play cards with her girlfriends, to shop for bargains, to attend her "Senior Spirit" exercise class, to volunteer at a nursing home. ("Good karma for when your grandfather and I are stuck in wheelchairs with no one to visit us," she had told Maddie with the feigned stoicism of someone seeking sympathy. Of course Maddie had to hug her then and pledge, "I'll come down to see you, Nonna." How could she not?) Unlike Poppa, she would listen without interrupting or hijacking the conversation, but then she would also pat Maddie's hand and say, "You're so like your mother, worrying about what can't be changed" and brightly suggest that they make chocolate chip cookies.

There was Sophie, but Sophie's mom had enrolled her in an intensive instruction language class to learn Chinese, the universal business language of the future, Dr. Levinson claimed. Sophie had real homework; she didn't spend her time in class making necklaces out of nuts and dried berries. But it wasn't only homework that had slowed the frequency with which Sophie texted and emailed her, Sophie had made a new friend in class, Julia Cho. Sophie bubbled over with information about her in every message, how Julia's "crazy" Korean/Chinese/Portuguese/Dutch family welcomed her as one of their own, how Korean barbecue would be followed by Dutch letters for dessert, how Abigail Cho was the coolest mom ever, how she and Julia would argue about which of them would make the best Rey (if The Force Awakens were cast in middle school). Sophie went to a sort-of camp and got Julia as a friend; she went and got !WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW TO STOP THIS!. Even thoughts of J.P. weren't solace for the possibility that by the time Maddie returned to her boring old Bering life – which couldn't compare with the Cho allure - Christina, by default, would be her closest friend.

So Maddie treated Christina's texts like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Taken individually, they made no sense, but if you put them together, you could see a picture begin to form. It wasn't the one that Maddie was expecting; it was beginning to resemble Gigi, Christina's and Helena's friend. She remembered her from the pool party, a statuesque woman, Maddie's grandparents would have called her, striding, like a model on a runway, out to the pool where her mom was ineffectually refereeing. "Statuesque" had Maddie envisioning Gigi and her mom at a patio table, Gigi's arm lifted high, holding a torch. It hadn't happened like that of course. Her mom and Gigi had talked like any two normal women, not a woman and the Statue of Liberty, but the image made it hard for Maddie to take Gigi and her mother as an item very seriously, not when a flaming torch would always come between them. Were Gigi and her mom dating? Was that what Christina's ranting and raving was about?

Her mom could be dating Gigi and waiting to see if Gigi made it through the probationary period before telling her. Her mom joked (but not really) that the women she dated had to fill out a questionnaire, pass an exam, and complete Bering basic training before she would let them meet her daughter. Myka Bering was cautious by nature, and she wasn't one to rush an introduction to her family. Sometimes her mom would get the same gooey-eyed look Maddie would see in her baby pictures, and she would want to squirm away and hug her mom at the same time when Myka said things like "It's going to have to be a pretty special woman to meet my pretty special girl." Michelle had been the only one to make the cut so far, and while it was possible that Gigi might fail the exam or collapse during basic training, Christina's outrage seemed a pretty fair indicator that she might be the second woman to share meals and TV nights with Madeleine Jean Martino.

Maddie wasn't sure how she felt about it. On the one hand, Gigi meant there would be no return of Michelle, and that was what she wanted, right? That had been her reason for entering into this crazy pact with Christina. She hadn't really cared whether her mom and Helena would resume their old relationship; she had planned to worry about that later, once Michelle was gone. What did it matter if Gigi, and not Helena, was the one to shoo Michelle away? Granted, Christina was still stuck with Nate, but maybe they could hit on another idea for splitting him and Helena up, and if they couldn't, he wasn't that horrible, was he?

Maddie abstractedly poured more Cocoa Puffs into her bowl. Not too many more days of this and then she would be back to raisin bran and shredded wheat, although her mom relented enough to allow her to get frosted shredded wheat. Her dad sat across the breakfast bar from her with his own bowl of Cocoa Puffs. He was scrolling through sports scores on his phone as he ate. They were going to drive to the coast and spend the weekend at Rhonda's parents' beach house – her mom would have needed to have dated Rhonda for forever before she would do something like that. Her dad and Rhonda had been dating for three months, although her dad always said it as a question, expecting to be corrected. Rhonda would shrug and say, "Close enough." As her father bent his head over his cereal bowl, Maddie could see his bald spot. Impulsively she leaned over the breakfast bar and kissed his head. The mystery of how her parents had stayed together for as long as they had only deepened the older she grew.

Her mom wouldn't have had a grueling performance test in place when she met Sam Martino; like Maddie herself, the thought of it wouldn't even have entered her mind, not then. As Sam looked up from his Puffs to give Maddie a disarming grin, she realized that while he would never pass such a test today, some 13 years ago, her mom might have waived the obstacle course and the endurance run had they existed. For a dad, and an old one at that, he was pretty cute. Helena's smile was different, teasing rather than cheery, but Maddie suspected that it too would have made up for some smart-alecky answers on the (nonexistent) questionnaire. Recalling Helena's smile and how she had nonchalantly taken a seat on an artwork in the sculpture garden, Maddie unexpectedly felt a pang at the realization that this might be the end for the silly plan that she and Christina had concocted. She wouldn't likely have a chance to know Helena any better than she knew her now, and that made her sad in a way she hadn't anticipated. Helena had, no, not pep – which was even more of an old person's word – she had spirit; she had spirit and daring. Compared to a Bering, Helena was a rule-bender, and maybe that was what a certain Bering needed. Her mom didn't need someone who passed her test, she needed someone who would throw it away instead. Helena didn't go around breaking rules all the time, though; she could be nice, too. She had talked with her and Sophie at the pool party, about the book they were reading together and books in general, and when the conversation turned to the Supreme Court, which, to Maddie's mind, was a natural direction for any conversation to take, Helena had said she admired RBG's sardonic wit. She had even made Sophie giggle, a tiny, tiny bit. Would Gigi be able to do all that?

"I'm going to finish packing my bag," Maddie told her father. She had packed it last night, but he wouldn't know that.

"Good idea, we'll need to get on the road soon." Her dad lifted his cereal bowl and started drinking the chocolate milk. "Don't forget to bring sunscreen."

Like she hadn't been in Florida for the past ten days. "On my list, Dad."

In her bedroom, she stared at her phone. She had been spending the past few days trying to get Christina calmed down. Did she really want her to get wound up again? Sighing, she started typing a text in the primitive code they had devised toward the end of camp to frustrate their mothers' surveillance, which wouldn't frustrate Remy, but Christina hadn't been interested in memorizing anything more complex. She had made a face at Maddie's elaborate substitution for the alphabet and complained that it was too much on top of having to memorize the edible plants she could eat if she got lost in the woods. You think your "friend" is seeing M2. M1 was Helena, of course.

She wasn't expecting Christina to respond right away, but minutes later a response flashed on the screen. !WHAT DO YOU THINK I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU. AND SHE'S NOT MY FRIEND ANYMORE! OUR 'RECIPE' ISN'T WORKING!

For you, maybe. Maddie banished the uncharitable, and slightly gloating, thought from her mind. She wasn't giving up on Helena, even if her mom was. We'll need to change the ingredients. Christina had though it would be too alarming to their mothers if they referred to "plans." Maddie curled her lip in disgust; like "recipe" was any better, now she and Christina just sounded stupid. Again she worked to clear her mind, typing a second message. We'll talk when I get back.

Five seconds later, there it was. !FINALLY!

Myka

As she took out the sensible skirt and sensible blouse she would be wearing to work, she saw the dress she would be wearing to Nate Robinson's charity gala on Saturday in its plastic sheath at the far end of the closet. It was not sensible. It was a one-shoulder midi dress with a noticeable, yet. . . relatively . . . modest, slit up the thigh. Tracy had gone into raptures when the slyly smiling sales associate had beckoned them into an alcove of the women's formal wear area that would never be clearance-priced. Myka had closed her eyes in recognition that the dresses she would be seeing would be at least twice what she had been budgeting to pay, but she hadn't protested. The dark blue dress with the single, thin shoulder strap hadn't been the most expensive dress of the ones she had been shown, but it hadn't been the cheapest either. It had set her back at least four or five trips to Home Depot and put her DIY projects additional weeks behind schedule, but the dress had transformed what Myka viewed as her innately gawky, knobby frame, with its long bones and prominent joints, into something dramatic and imposing. She didn't have Gigi's raw sex appeal or Helena's striking coloring with its suggestion of wickedness barely held in check, but she looked –

"Good?" Tracy had echoed disbelievingly, observing her sister in the mirror. "Myka, you look more than good, believe me. You have no idea how stunning you are right now, and that's with your hair looking like it's been growing wild in a vacant lot." She had exchanged glances with the sales associate, who nodded in agreement. "Fixed up, with that dress on, you're going to knock Gigi out of the park." As Myka blushed, Tracy stepped in closer, disapproval beginning to win out over smug – and unsubstantiated – confidence in her sister's ability to mesmerize. "Please tell me she's the one you want to impress."

Of course she had been thinking of Gigi. Who else would she be thinking of and who else would she be imagining sliding that single, thin strap off her shoulder? Not that that would be happening because they were still going slow, especially since Maddie had returned from Florida, but it was okay to fantasize about it happening in the near to mid-term – the dress certainly lent itself to those fantasies – and it wasn't as if she were imagining Helena sliding the strap off, eyes sliding up to meet hers, negligently seeking assent . . . . Myka yanked out the skirt and blouse and slammed the closet door shut. She was running late and she didn't have time to think about dresses or women who might be interested in slipping her dress off her.

Downstairs, feeling more like herself than an over-the-hill Cinderella, she poured herself a cup of coffee from the coffee maker that her daughter had so thoughtfully turned on for her. She also found the two halves of an English muffin in the toaster waiting to be toasted and a tub of butter (healthier than vegetable oil spreads, really) nearby. As her muffin toasted, she sipped her coffee and suspiciously eyed Maddie, who was already dressed and finishing her bowl of organic Cheerios (Happy Os, with half the sugar and sodium and twice the fiber), spoon accurately and unwaveringly transporting itself between cereal and mouth as she read on her Kindle. "Thanks for helping me out."

"Sure." Maddie kept reading.

School started next week, but Myka couldn't sense any pent-up excitement or impatience for Monday to arrive any sooner. In fact, Maddie seemed almost listless as she automatically thumbed the Kindle to go to the next page. She had been unusually quiet since coming back from Florida over a week ago. Even the prospect of helping out the Soccer Sprouts wasn't animating her. It had been a long time since Myka had been on the verge of turning 12 and entering middle school; she mainly remembered it as a period marked by her growing three inches and getting braces. But driving home one evening and seeing J.P. Lattimer popping wheelies with his friends in the cul-de-sac off which he, his older sister, and his mother lived, suddenly Myka understood her daughter's enthusiasm for helping Pete with the team. There had been no J.P. with his shaggy hair (carefully barbered just so) and his father's goofy-cocky smile for her; there had been no such clarity for her, then, in her attractions, but she remembered how the world in general had had sharp elbows and big feet, every encounter with a group of giggling girls, virtually arm-in arm in their solidarity, and every laughing exchange of jokes or gossip between them the same as a nasty dig in her ribs or a heel grinding into her toes. Life was a Douglas Sirk movie when you were that age, a lot of crying dressed up in Technicolor and overripe orchestral music.

"When's your grandmother coming to get you?"

Maddie glanced at her phone, which had become a constant companion of late. Myka uneasily wondered if she shouldn't be more uneasy about it. "About 15 minutes." Maddie watched her slather butter on a muffin half and eat it over the kitchen sink. Not very elegant but it prevented her from showing up at the office with a grease stain on her skirt. "You don't have to stick around and wait for her to show up. I'm not going to accidentally burn down the house or anything like that."

And there was that, too, an unaccustomed edge to Maddie's replies, as though she had become the adult and her mother a tiresome child. It hadn't reached the obnoxious level yet, but it was climbing. Maybe this was the beginning of her descent into hell, Myka thought, a six-year agony of being on the wrong, clueless, old-fashioned end of everything. Her mother had offered to take Maddie shopping for school clothes and supplies, and Myka had gratefully accepted the reprieve from Maddie's anxieties that every pair of jeans made her hips look wide and, conversely, that every top made her chest look like a boy's. "I trust you to turn off the coffee maker," Myka said blandly, reaching behind her to turn it off preemptively. She did trust her daughter, but she was first and foremost a mother.

"You were talking to someone late last night," Maddie said abruptly, still continuing to read her Kindle. "I got up to go to the bathroom, and I heard you. You were laughing a lot. Was it Michelle?"

The question, it had almost sounded . . . disingenuous, which wasn't an adjective Myka was looking forward to using with any frequency when it came to Maddie's behavior. Did she know . . . how could she know . . .had she and Tracy been texting? Not that she and Michelle hadn't laughed together, but Myka had to admit, with an increasing sense of embarrassment, that there was a flirtatiousness to her conversations with Gigi that there hadn't been with Michelle. She felt girlish in a way she couldn't remember feeling before, which was strange since Gigi was, well, Gigi. Gigi should be the one giggling and putting her hand to her cheeks to feel the heat in them, not sensible-skirt-and-blouse-wearing Myka Bering. If Maddie already suspected something, maybe she should just tell her. Maybe she didn't have to work quite so hard to field test her girlfriends; maybe Gigi had sufficiently proven herself and maybe Maddie was sufficiently old enough, that she could relax . . . just a little.

"No, it wasn't Michelle." Myka took a breath, hoping she wasn't inhaling her coffee at the same time. "I am seeing someone, but it's not Michelle. Gigi's a friend of Helena's."

"I saw you two talking at the pool party. Do I get to meet her?" Finally Maddie lifted her head up from the Kindle, her eyes, unimpeachably blue and clear, drilling into her mother's.

It was one of those moments when Maddie inarguably, irrevocably was her own person, not a mixture of her and Sam, but someone completely differently, completely other. It wasn't hard to see ahead to the end of the next six years of agony, when Maddie would leave for college, and even if she returned to live with her mother for the rest of her life (which Myka profoundly hoped would not be the case), she wouldn't ever fully return. There would always be some part of her that Myka couldn't –and wouldn't – lay claim to. Smiling, albeit sadly, into the coffee she had so nearly aspirated, Myka said, "Friday afternoon, I'm having lunch with your aunt and then I'm going to a salon that Gigi recommended to have my hair cut and styled. Gigi said she might drop by if she had the time – you're welcome to come along, if you want."

Maddie moved her head from side to side, as if weighing her options. "Let me think about it."

When Myka got to the office, she didn't dive into her work exactly, but three back-to-back meetings and a memo she needed to write for President Kosan's review, which he would probably only skim on a flight to yet another conference, this time in New York, provided a refuge from the troubling disruptions to her morning routine. Her mornings didn't usually start out with her staring at an expensive, sexy dress – one that she would be wearing, no less – and fantasizing about an equally sexy woman trying to take it off her. Nor had she ever had to ask herself – that she could remember – which sexy woman it was. Then, trying to shake off the weirdness of it all, she had planned to eat her usual coffee-and-English-muffin breakfast on her way out the door when she had let a couple of acerbic remarks from her daughter pin her to the floor in befuddlement. Here in her office, however, she could reset. She was in command . . . and she had already excavated her emergency package of Twizzlers.

She hadn't opened them yet, so the day wasn't completely lost. In fact she forgot the Twizzlers and lunch as she worked to clear her desk for the rare Friday she was taking as a vacation day. Irene was well aware of the fact that she was going as Gigi's date to Nate's charity "gala" and heartily approved of the opportunities it would provide her, and the university by extension, to network with the city's most important business leaders, not to mention the CEOs of certain undisputedly well-known corporations, who, as Nate's friends, might be expected to attend as well. She suspected that if she hadn't mentioned to Irene that she would be taking Friday off that Irene would have suggested it; she hadn't missed the arched eyebrow as Irene took in the riot of her hair one especially windy morning. Sometime between her reading of proposals for co-ventures between the university's engineering program and various architectural and construction firms and her confirming her calendar for next week with her assistant, Myka devoured a sandwich and answered a call from her mother, who wanted confirmation that the necklines of Maddie's top should be decorous, "befitting a young lady," Jeannie Bering said in a tone clearly meant for her granddaughter. Wanting to remind her mother that she was 66, not 96, and simultaneously groaning at the thought that her daughter also was acting decades older than she was, Myka wearily concurred that "all clothing should be age- and school-appropriate." When her phone rang again, she was ready to demand that her mother put Maddie on the line.

"Should I call at another time?" Gigi asked, amused.

"You promise that you're not my daughter, whom I'm ready to strangle, by the way?"

"I am . . .," Gigi paused, then said with a lightness that didn't disguise a note of uncertainty, "I'm your girlfriend, if you didn't know."

It was too soon. Dinners and make-out sessions spread out over the course of a few weeks, and since Maddie had been back, their time together had been further reduced to a hurried lunch and a handful of calls. How could that be elevated to the level of a relationship? But it didn't feel presumptuous, Gigi saying "I'm your girlfriend," it felt right. It suddenly righted a day that had gotten off on the wrong foot with her from the moment she had opened her closet door. Who was the universe to ask her if she knew what woman she wanted to see her in her new dress? She wouldn't have bought it for Helena. Helena was 20 years ago, Helena was with Nate, Helena wasn't the woman she was destined to be with. Maybe Gigi wasn't either, but she didn't know for certain, and she planned to enjoy the process of finding out. Myka wondered how loud her grin sounded. Did a grin have sound? The size of the one on her face deserved a trumpet call at least. "Glad we have that settled." Would telling Gigi that she might meet Maddie tomorrow be good or bad timing right now? "Um, just so you know, Maddie may be with Tracy and me tomorrow, so if you're thinking of dropping by the salon . . . I'm giving you fair warning."

"I'm not completely without skills in dealing with tweens. Helena has trusted me to take care of Christina on occasion."

"It's the quiet, obedient ones you have to watch out for, you know."

"Are we still talking about Maddie?"

Myka laughed, a nervous hiccup turning it into something dismayingly giggle-like just at the moment that Irene appeared in her doorway. "I have to go," she murmured, "maybe you can call me later tonight, or I can call you?"

"Ah," Gigi said, her voice low, knowing, and disturbingly sexy at 2:30 in the afternoon, "you've been busted. I should be home by 11:00, another PR, excuse me, fundraising event for Larry tonight."

"Talk to you later," Myka said, with a briskness that utterly failed to disguise the fact that she was talking to her girlfriend, yes, girlfriend, during work hours. Irene was beckoning her into the hallway, and Myka could only hope that the promptness with which she was complying was answering for her lack of professionalism.

"Let's drop by Leena's office, shall we? She has some suggestions for those proposals by the school of engineering." Irene had arched her eyebrow, and Myka's hand automatically went to her hair. As they walked down the hall, Irene looking impeccable as usual in a tan skirt suit with a persimmon-colored shell, which was both sensible and classy (You'll get there, Myka counseled herself, you'll get there), she said so casually that Myka was almost, almost fooled, "You haven't said much about the friend who's taking you to the bash. How does she know Nate Robinson?"

With another nervous hiccup that made her sound not at all giggly and more like she was seeking Irene's approval, Myka said, "I met her through Helena actually, at her daughter's pool party." Then, because Irene was going to have to find out anyway, she added, "Giselle, Gigi, I mean, works for the mayor. She does his PR, sets up his public events, acts as his spokesperson. You've probably seen her a million times on the news."

"I see." Irene's reaction wasn't one of surprise or, worse, astonishment, like Tracy's. As always, it was virtually impossible to tell from Irene's face what she was thinking. She didn't seem to find it impossible that someone who boosted the wattage of the most mundane of Mayor Jenkins's proposals (expanding the staff of the parks department or reducing the water supply to the city's famed downtown fountain) would be interested in dating her. "Did Helena play matchmaker?

It wasn't the kind of follow-up question Myka was expecting. As she looked at Irene in puzzlement, Irene murmured, with the barest hint of a smile, "I thought not."

The meeting with Leena should have been brief. What she was recommending for inclusion in the co-venture agreements that the university was preparing to sign wasn't controversial: internships and the opportunity for eligible engineering students to work on the projects that the companies were sponsoring, awards for students in the program whose work was innovative and problem-solving. "And the chance to poach our best and brightest at an early stage," Leena said wryly. "Students aren't any less immune than my five-year-old son to something that's big and shiny and sets the grown-ups to clapping. A $20 trophy could deliver these companies employees for life." She turned her hands palms-up in a supplicating gesture. "Just looking for ways to raise the profile of our programs."

Myka blinked, trying to rid herself of the memory of another supplication, one far less ironically made, Pete Lattimer's hopeful, Labrador Retriever gaze as he asked her to intercede on his behalf with Leena. "Why don't you send some draft language to me, and I'll include it my comments on the proposals." Glancing at the framed pictures of Cam on Leena's desk, she forced herself to ask, "Speaking of your son, is he happy that the Sprouts are back to practice?"

"Overjoyed. He sleeps with his soccer ball at night instead of his stuffed tiger, and he wants to play for Chelsea, or maybe it's Arsenal, when he's older. He can barely pronounce some of the team names, so I'm not sure which is which. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know either."

The meeting could have ended then. Leena had accomplished her purpose, and Myka had tried to do justice to the memory of Pete of eating stale, fake Fig Newtons and all but pleading with her to persuade Leena that he was date-worthy material by giving Leena an opening to say something, anything, about Cam's coach. She was about to excuse herself to return to her office when Leena said, "He adores Coach Pete. Your daughter used to be on the Sprouts when she was Cam's age, right? I've seen her at the practices helping out. And it's not just Maddie and Cam, every kid on the team loves him. What's his gift?" Her tone was more curious than skeptical.

Not everyone adored Pete. There was his ex-wife Amanda, but even she was known to display a begrudging fondness for him. More than once she had shown up at a practice to harry Pete's assistant coaches (i.e. his kids) home, only to end up staying and helping him to set out the post-practice snacks. "It didn't come easy for him, confidence and finding the positives. He wants to make it easier for the kids. It's hard to argue with his goal, and it's pretty hard not to love Pete." She wasn't giving anything away about him that she shouldn't. Especially when he was working with children, his joking and teasing had a gentleness that showed he understood just how fragile the belief in the goodness of others, in one's own goodness, could be. Inside every goofy guy, he would tell her, there's a sad guy.

Then he would say, laughing almost manically, and inside him, there's another awesomely goofy guy.

"If you don't make it up that hill," Leena began in a sing-song.

"You won't get the sweet slide down," Myka joined in. "You go to enough Sprouts games, and you'll never get that saying of his out of your head."

There were worse notes on which to end a meeting, and Myka, walking back to her office with Irene, thought the day was turning out to be much, much better than the morning had promised. She had found out she had a girlfriend, a very hot girlfriend, and she had followed through for Pete. That was a lot of goodness right there.

Irene stopped her just as she was about to stride into the room and take command of her desk and its stacks of folders. "Are you trying to fix Leena up with Coach Pete?"

Damn, Irene was unreadable. Myka wasn't sure whether she ought to feel chastised. "I just wanted to reassure her that the kids love Pete for all the right reasons – not just because he can be a big kid himself." She had tried to say it breezily, but she was pretty sure she hadn't been successful. She wasn't a breezy, offhand kind of person; she was the kind of person who was invested in what she had to say. She wanted Leena to approve of Pete because, regardless of whether she would ever want to date him, he was a good man.

"Mmm . . . I think she was already drawing that conclusion." Irene gave her a rare consoling pat on the arm, as if she were advising her not to feel embarrassed for being so transparent . . . or, equally as possible, misguided. "Besides, love doesn't work that way. You can't nudge it one way or the other, you can't lead it. It goes where it goes." She fixed her with a look whose knowingness Myka was determined to ignore. "My father compared love to a dandelion. It floats on air, lands where it will, and once it takes root, it's nearly impossible to get rid of."

"That's not very romantic."

"It's not supposed to be. My father was a very practical man. Yet he and my mother were happily married for more than 50 years." After another consoling pat, Irene left her standing in the doorway.

Helena

There were other rooms to which she could have escaped Nate's event planner and her staff other than their bedroom, but the bedroom held her walk-in closet, itself the size of many families' living rooms, and the event-related crisis which she had to solve was located in it. She was unhappy with her dress. Not the "I don't like my outfit" unhappiness that she could temporarily assuage by changing out her shoes or adding a scarf or a favorite piece of jewelry and then, after donating the offending clothes, resolving never to make such an ill-advised choice again. It was the rare but ungovernable "I absolutely cannot wear this" unhappiness. She had had no misgivings when she bought the dress. She had had no second thoughts about it, any thoughts about it, but now as she looked at it, she wanted to rip it to shreds, preferably with a pair of shears, but she would use her teeth if she had to. It fit her, even flattered her, making her legs seem longer than they were, slimming her waist. It was the kind of cocktail dress that a woman might wear to a patio party, sturdy enough to hold up to minor sweating and spills but stylish enough to rise above them. It was the kind of dress that Nate wanted her to wear to an event that he self-indulgently styled as a small-town country club supper. A small-town country club supper for which the guests, if not the hosts, dressed in finery suitable for an inaugural ball and which was costing thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in preparation.

It was all the preparation, though she was responsible, thankfully, for little of it, that had resulted in her seeing it, Gigi's RSVP. The event planner had wanted to meet with her to go over the guest list. Knowing who among the self-important were planning to attend was the least of it. Knowing which constellation of guests would threaten a supernova and which wouldn't was critical. For example, a director on the board of Nate's company and the CEO of a medical equipment firm in which Nate was a significant investor needed to be kept on opposites sides of a room at all times; a golf outing that had ended in threats of violence 20 years ago could still fuel outbursts. It was also essential to remind Nate that he couldn't be seen to be too chummy with the likely Republican candidate for governor, not with Larry Jenkins attending the party as well.

As the event planner thumbed through the RSVPs (despite the party's faux homey trappings, Nate had insisted on mailing invitations, stiff, professionally printed, multi-envelope affairs), Helena saw one she wasn't expecting. Gigi had been invited for years (it didn't do to cold shoulder the mayor's supposed paramour), but she had told Helena when they were dating that she inevitably threw them away. "I always go with Larry. He returns the RSVP." But the event planner had already flipped past the mayor's RSVP, which had the option "attending with guest" checked. Gigi had broken with tradition – and her history of confirming rumors that she was sleeping with the mayor by doing nothing to refute them – and returned her RSVP, also with "attending with guest" checked.

It was obvious to Helena, if not to the event planner, who her guest was. While it was always possible that Gigi was bringing someone else, a VIP donor for Larry's all-but-declared gubernatorial run or even her mother, such possibilities seemed unlikely. Enticing businessmen with deep pockets was best finessed in a setting that heightened Gigi's appeal, a private dining room with romantically dim lighting, not a party at which Larry's rivals would also be guests and the highlight would be a polka band. As for Gigi's mother being her date, it would require a significant inducement, typically cash, as Helena understood that particular mother-daughter relationship, to get Alice Nelson-Schneider-Hoekstra-Bjornberg-Anderson (the "Fourier" was Gigi's invention as was the "Giselle," Helena suspected) to fly from Phoenix for the weekend. No, Gigi's plus one was Myka.

The event planner had been 20 RSVPs ahead of her by then and there were expenses that needed her approval as well as confirmations of when the polka band should start and stop playing, when Nate expected to make his customary announcements and obligatory expressions of gratitude, when the event planning staff should discreetly begin signaling that it was time for the guests to leave. Helena had had no time to brood about what Myka's appearing on Gigi's arm might mean. Not that she had been inclined to brood. It was nothing to her whom Myka dated. Granted, she had initially felt some concern after the pool party because she was well acquainted with Gigi's relationship history, or lack thereof, but Myka wasn't a 21-year-old virgin fresh from her father's used bookstore and if she chose to invite heartbreak and disillusionment by becoming involved with a woman who treated sex solely as a competitive sport, it was her choice. As Helena turned Gigi's RSVP face down and put it at the bottom of the pile while the event planner's attention was elsewhere, she had concluded that she was too busy and too indifferent to spend any more time on Gigi and Myka. She didn't care, although she would admit to a little disappointment. Gigi was wonderful in her way, but she wasn't the type of woman Helena would have predicted Myka to be interested in. Not that she needed, or wanted, to know about Myka's love life because it was none of her concern and really, she couldn't be less -

"Mom!" Christina was wildly waving her hand in front of Helena's face. "This is, like, the third time I've asked. Is it okay if Maddie stays over Saturday night?"

Reorienting herself, Helena struggled to assimilate a succession of disturbing realizations. First, her daughter had invaded her sanctum of sanctums without her being aware of it. Christina wasn't inherently destructive, but the squashed toe of a Jimmy Choo peeping out from under her foot spoke to why her proximity to expensive objects had to be actively managed. Second, and closely related to the first unwelcome realization, was that despite the arrangements that had been made to have Christina stay at a schoolfriend's Saturday night, which, at the time, had had Christina's enthusiastic approval and which, in fact, she had suggested, her daughter had suddenly changed her mind. If she could be depended upon to stay in her room watching videos or in her art room painting, it would be one thing, but Christina was just as likely to launch water balloons from the staircase, just to see the guests scatter like mice. Third, she wanted Maddie to stay with her, and though Maddie, unlike some of Christina's other friends, reduced the odds of mayhem, Maddie was Myka's daughter, which led to the fourth and most unwelcome realization, which was that Helena understood she wasn't unhappy with her dress – she would be unhappy with any of her dresses right now – she was unhappy that Gigi's plus one was Myka. It turned out that she did care – very much.

"Does she have her mother's permission?" Helena turned her head, the combination of seeing the Jimmy Choo flattened under Christina's impervious foot and the small-town country club cocktail dress she was to wear made her nauseous. She couldn't abide it, any of it, the party, the dress -.

"She'll be okay with it, if you're okay with it," Christina said confidently.

Don't be too sure about that, Helena silently warned her. She and Myka seemed farther apart now than they had been the awkward afternoon when they faced each other across 20 years of silence. "You wanted to spend the night at Emma's, remember? You can't change your mind on a whim, Christina. Have you thought about how she might feel?" It might be late – and futile – to caution her daughter about acting thoughtlessly, but she had no desire to drop Maddie off at Myka's Sunday morning and see Gigi's car parked in the scabrous driveway. She was scoring a mark under the "good mother" column while simultaneously ensuring she minimized her level of discomfort . . . misery. As soon as that word popped into her mind, Helena immediately banished it.

"I already talked to her. She got an invitation to go to the water park from one of the Jennifers, so she's good with everything. Besides, I told her we could have a sleepover here soon and have a movie night in the theater room and use Nate's popcorn machine." Christina frowned down at the floor; she lifted her foot and sent the Jimmy Choo spinning to the opposite wall.

Her daughter, destroyer and wheeler-dealer wrapped into one small package. "Very soon, sooner than your movie night, we're going to have a discussion about how you treat shoes that cost almost as much as your school tuition." Helena smiled thinly. "Even sooner than that, we're going to have a discussion about rules of behavior, yours, during the party. In the meantime, however, you can tell Maddie that she's welcome to stay over Saturday night as long as her mother agrees."

Christina threw herself at her mother in what might have been a hug, or a tackle. "Mom, you're the . . . " was muffled against her chest, and Helena, feeling rather than hearing the last word, decided that, as with most situations involving Christina, ambiguity was a plus rather than a minus.

Still, the closet was less sanctum-like and more humdrum, everyday closet-like once Christina whirled out of the room to call Maddie. Scanning the racks for something other than the cocktail dress, which held all the appeal of a hairshirt or a whalebone corset, Helena saw a dress she would have instinctively ruled out a mere week ago. It was very expensive, very formal, not small-town country club at all; it was a crimson-colored evening gown, mermaid style with a train, which she had worn to a Halloween party last year with Nate. She had been a vampire, and he had been a reluctant Van Helsing. She had been stunning, she admitted with no attempt at false modesty, whereas Nate had never stopped griping about the cut of the suit, its material, the pocket watch he kept forgetting to tuck into his vest pocket, and the walking stick she had insisted he carry. No one would have mistaken him for a nineteenth century gentleman, but the other guests would have agreed that he was ready to plant a stake in her.

They had spent an atrocious amount of money on the costumes, especially her dress, but Nate had wanted to formalize a business arrangement with a skittish investor, and the investor was hosting the party. There hadn't been a man in the room whose eyes hadn't followed her, except Nate's. His hungry gaze had been fixed instead on the investor. He wouldn't be happy to see her in this dress Saturday night. It was too flashy, too provocative, and damn hard to dance a polka in. Yet she wasn't going to spend the night hanging on his arm and making small talk with his friends and acquaintances. She intended to draw blood.