I tell him I was thinking about him, especially about the other night. He laughs. That’s nice, he says. I think about that a lot, too.
“Where are you?” he asks. “We could catch up if you like.”
“Baby, I want to, but I can’t. I have to be somewhere. I’m sorry. I miss you.” I cringe. Was that too much? Too soon? But then he says he misses me, and there’s a smile in his voice.
“I have a favor to ask,” I blurt.
“Okay, what is it?”
“It’s a silly thing, but bear with me, okay?”
“Sure, hit me with it.”
“Do you have a press pass? Like if you wanted to get into a charity function, invite-only, lots of money, could you do it?”
“It doesn’t work like that, you get your credentials on a case-by-case basis, but yeah, I have a couple of passes. I can usually get in wherever I need to.”
“Do you think you could get a pass for the Children’s Garden Ball?” I ask quickly.
“The Children’s Garden Ball? That’s on tonight.”
“I know.”
“Jeez, babe, I don’t know, it might be too late. Why? You want to go?”
“No, not me, but could you try? Please?” I sound all wrong, so I give a little chuckle, then I say, “My friend and I have this running bet. We try to get the worst possible photo of each other, and at the end of the month, our friends vote on who really is the worst. It’s a social media thing, celebrities are doing it, too. Anyway, she won last month. And you should see the photo she took of me!” I laugh. “On second thought, you shouldn’t. Too embarrassing. And now I just found out she’s going to the Garden Ball tonight, and getting a picture of her there doing something silly, like picking her nose or whatever, would be perfect. It would be a hoot.”
This has to be the longest shot since man decided to fly to the moon. I sound like a teenager telling her boyfriend about games I play with my girlfriends. Or it’s worse than that. I sound like this is the most important thing in my life: getting an embarrassing photo of my friend so I can win the monthly bet.
“Those tickets are super expensive,” he says. “Who’s your friend?”
“Hannah Carter, you know her?”
“No, should I?”
“No, not at all. But you could get in, right? As a photographer with your pass, could you follow her around? Try and get the worst possible photo? You’d have to do it undercover, like James Bond.”
He laughs. “I don’t know, Claire. I’ve got a night off, I’m here with the guys… I don’t even know what she looks like.”
“I’ll text you a photo—” But Mia begins to cry. She has dropped her stuffed tiger onto the floor. I pick it up and brush it off, hand it back to her, and talk to her softly until she’s happy again.
“Who’s this?” Dominic asks.
I sigh. “It’s my friend’s baby. That’s why I can’t come and see you tonight.”
“You’re the babysitter?”
“Just doing a favor for my friend, so she can go to work. She’s just lost her husband and I’m helping get her back on her feet.”
I feel bad lying, which is an odd feeling. But now Dominic wants to know all about Mia. How old she is, and what she’s like. Turns out that Dominic has a niece; she’s almost a year old now. His sister is on her own, too. The father left.
“That’s tough,” I say.
“Sure is. And I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s husband. That’s much worse. You should get your other friend to help out, the one who can afford a ticket to the Garden Ball.”
“It’s funny you should say that,” I say. “Because while my friend never asked her to help, they do know each other. And my other friend, the one going to the Garden Ball, she’s got a lot of money but she doesn’t like to part with it much, I noticed.”
“Maybe you should get new friends,” he says.
“Maybe I should.”
In the end, he makes no promises, but he lets me text a photo of Hannah. I send him one from her Instagram profile, a selfie from her honeymoon in Paris.
Chapter Twenty
When Hannah comes downstairs the next morning, she looks terrible, like she’s aged ten years overnight. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy from crying. She’s got a jacket on and she’s putting Mia in the stroller.
“You okay?” I ask.
“No, not really. Can you help me out here?”
She’s trying to shove a beanie on Mia’s little head, but Mia is fighting her off. I step in and take it from her. I pretend not to notice that her hands are shaking. I gently pull the beanie down low over Mia’s ears and tuck the blanket around her.
“Can you come with me?” Hannah asks quickly, putting her large sunglasses on. “I’ll pay extra,” she whispers. Then she blushes. “Sorry, what a thing to say. I make it sound like I’ll pay extra if you’ll be my friend?” She laughs wryly. “I sure could use one.”
I could say no, I have things to do, I’m incredibly busy. But I need to finish what I started. I need to make sure she stays away from Eryn.
“Sure, I’ll come with you. Where are we going?” I ask, as if there’s nothing wrong with her, as if she’s not a complete mess. She squeezes my hand.
“You know that stupid mothers’ group? No, maybe you don’t. I can’t remember if I mentioned it. Anyway, I’m meeting with them now, if I can ever get out of the fucking house—sorry—over in the park. I’m already late.”
“Okay, can I ask—why do you want me to come with you?”
“Because I need moral support. I know, don’t say it. I’m a loser. Anyone who needs moral support to go to a mothers’ group up the street is a loser. I just want to check them out. If it’s weird, I’ll leave. We can walk around the park instead.” She laughs almost maniacally.
“Hannah?”
“Yes, Louise?”
“Maybe you should stay home.”
She quickly wipes her cheeks with both hands. “It’s not an option, unfortunately.” And the way she glances behind her makes me think it has to do with Harvey even though he’s gone to work already. I suspect he wants her to go.
I nod. “Okay. I’ll get my jacket.”
* * *
We barely speak on the way, other than me asking again if she’s all right, and her shaking her head. Her eyes are darting everywhere, and I wonder if she’s looking for Diane.
We walk to the gates of the Billy Johnson Playground. “Harvey is pushing me to join this group,” she says, just as I suspected. “These people, they’re Eryn’s friends…” She doesn’t say Eryn’s name as much as she spits it out. She wipes her cheek again with the back of her hand. “Fucking Eryn,” she mutters.
“What happened?” I ask.
But then we see them in the distance—a group of women in full workout gear, strollers in their midst, the three-wheel type people jog with. Some women are stretching their legs, others are doing squats.
“Shit,” Hannah mutters, and I don’t think it’s just because she’s dressed in jeans and a loose top. These women look fabulous. These women, with their perfect physiques and their pretty smiles, they look happy, they look like they belong. I bet most of them have jobs, too, important jobs. Like Serena. Partners in law firms or business owners or financial managers. It occurs to me that Hannah really does feel insecure in this world, and it’s not just an act.
She guides me by the elbow, dragging me along as we take a sharp left. “I need to sit down,” she says.
“Okay.” We sit on the first bench we spot, overlooking the lake.
“Before I begin, if you see anyone with a camera pointed at us, let me know, please, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Eryn called this morning,” she blurts.
Mia stirs, and I rock the stroller gently. “And?”
“There’s a photo of me circulating on Instagram.”
I stop moving. “Okay, how bad is it?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. At first I
thought, not that bad. But the way Harvey reacted, you’d think I’d gotten completely blind drunk, taken my clothes off, and set the place on fire.”
I frown. “But you didn’t?”
“God, no. It’s a photo of me smoking a cigarette.”
“I don’t understand.”
She takes a shaky breath. “Last night at the gala, after dinner, Eryn and I went back outside. She asked me for a cigarette, and yes, before you ask, she knows I started smoking again. But Harvey doesn’t know. I mean he does now, obviously.” She snorts. “We found a quiet corner. Somebody took a photo and put it on social media.”
“And that’s it?”
“Hello? Mrs. Harvey Carter, smoking behind the bike shed at the annual ball for children’s cancer?”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, shit.” She presses her hand hard between her eyes.
“How did Eryn take it? Being in the photo?”
“That’s the thing, she’s not in the photo. It’s just me. She got cropped out. And before you ask, we don’t know who took it. But I have a very good idea.” She gives a wry laugh.
With a trembling hand, she fishes around her bag and pulls out her cell. “Look.” She shoves the screen under my nose.
I’ve already seen it, obviously, since I’m the one who put it up. I didn’t even know Dominic had been to the gala until he texted the photo of Hannah and Eryn smoking. He sent it with a text: I hope you win your bet. Go get some new friends.
I wasn’t expecting him to send anything. It was such a stupid lie, a last-minute desperate attempt to rope him in, just so I can make Hannah look bad. What are the odds that he’d get a photo? And I didn’t think he’d really believe it. My friend and I have this bet…
When he texted it to me at eleven p.m. last night, my first thought was, I must introduce Dominic to April because honestly, those two are the most gullible people I know and they are made for each other. Then I thought, wait, I like this guy. Sorry, April. Still, I’m going to have to teach them both about trust and common sense.
He sent another one, too, of Hannah laughing at an odd angle that made her face look like a demented rabbit. Cute, funny. Not what I was after, though. Not ugly enough or embarrassing enough. But the smoking one? Honestly, I was astonished that those women would even do such a thing at that event.
I cropped Eryn out of the shot, not because I wanted to protect her from the fallout, but because I wanted Hannah to suspect her of being in on it. I created a brand-new fake Instagram account, then put a bunch of hashtags and tagged all the right people, including Eryn. Within minutes the post had twenty-five likes, and half an hour later it had over thirty comments. Looking at it now, it has over four hundred likes and is the top post on the hashtag feed #childrensgardenball.
I turn to stare at Hannah. She’s biting her fingernails and shaking like a drug addict. “You can barely see your face,” I say. “No one would know it’s you.” I point to the photo where she’s bent down, the cigarette in her mouth, leaning into the lighter that Eryn is holding. The only part of Eryn you can see is her hand. Hannah is squinting, and the flame is throwing shadows on her face. She looks… I don’t know, nasty. Vicious.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she hisses. “They’ve got my name all over it!”
I go back to the screen and read through the hashtags, which obviously I know by heart.
#mrshannahcarter #justsayno #theregoestheneighborhood #hypocritemuch #hellomrscarter #wheredidhefindher #mrsharveycarter #hannahwilsonrememberher #toomuchmoney #whocaresaboutthekids #gobackwhereyoucamefrom #nqocd
“That one I had to look up,” she says, tapping on the screen. “Turns out ‘nqocd’ stands for Not Quite Our Class, Darling. Nice, isn’t it? Then there’s the caption.” She taps the screen with her finger, and it makes the image zoom right in. Then she tries to zoom it out with two fingers, but she’s making it worse, so that now the screen is filled with her big puckered lips around a giant cigarette.
I take the phone away from her and zoom it back out. Then I pretend to squint at the caption.
You can’t put a bitch in a dress and call it a decent person
“Ouch,” I say. Then I read the various comments below. Who is this?
WTF???
Can someone tell this moron smoking gives you cancer?
Did she even give any money to the cause?
What an idiot
Stupid bitch
“I think it’s Diane,” Hannah says.
I nod, tapping around the screen. “Okay, so the poster is some stupid username and it’s their one and only post. She must have created it last night.” I keep staring at it like I’m deep in concentration. “But how the hell did she do it? Surely she wasn’t at the fundraiser. Didn’t you say the tickets were a thousand dollars each? Can Diane afford that sort of money?”
She shakes her head. “I doubt it. And, no, of course I didn’t see her. I would have come straight home if I had.”
“Did you see anyone who could have taken the shot?”
“We were only a hundred feet from the marquee. We weren’t even hiding exactly, just trying to be discreet. We walked away toward a darker corner and sat down on the first bench we came across, along the path and under a tree. I don’t remember anyone else nearby. There were photographers, as there would be at that sort of glittery event. But they were nowhere near us. I just don’t know.
“I just had a massive fight with Harvey about exactly that. I said to him, I’m not punching anyone or raving like a lunatic. I’m smoking a cigarette, for Christ’s sake. I told him he was more upset about the fucking post than about the fact that his wife has a stalker. Then he started yelling, ‘A stalker? Oh, that’s right! I forgot! It’s Diane who took the photo! Did she put the fucking cigarette in your mouth, too?’”
She winces, rubs a spot along her arm.
I nod sagely, an expression of concern on my face, but really, inside, I’m having a party. This fight with Harvey is just an added bonus.
“So how did Eryn know about this?” I ask.
“She’s tagged in it.”
“Diane tagged her?”
“Yes!” She waits a beat, then says, “You don’t think it’s Diane?”
“Put it this way. If it really was Diane, would she have cropped Eryn out of the shot? And would Diane even know how to do that? Did she know you were going?” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe someone saw you two smoking and took a photo, uploaded it. The end.”
“Are you even concentrating here? Because as you yourself pointed out, this is a brand-new account, created for this one post. This isn’t some lucky potshot at me. This is a deliberate attempt to humiliate me, all this shit about Mrs. Harvey Carter. Not quite our class, darling. What the fuck? And if it isn’t Diane, then who? I can’t think of anyone.”
She closes her eyes but doesn’t speak. I keep going. “It does seem like some kind of setup, don’t you think? Let’s look at this for a moment. Eryn knows you’re going. She knows Harvey isn’t, since she took his ticket. She’s the first person to tell you about it. And of course, she’s not in the photo. Very convenient.” We sit in silence for a moment, then I try again. “Why are you so certain this is Diane?”
She closes her eyes briefly. “I want to tell you something. I haven’t told anyone since I’ve moved here. But I have to know I can trust you.”
I’m impressed that Hannah can say things like that with a straight face.
“Of course,” I say.
“There’s a tag on that post. Hannah Wilson, remember her. That’s what it says. That’s my maiden name.”
“Okay.”
“Oh God, this is so complicated. You see, I never told Harvey about this, I don’t know why, I just didn’t! And then it was too late. And his mother hates me, so that sure doesn’t help. I told you I was pregnant before we were married; well, she thinks I did that on purpose to ensnare her son.”
“Hannah, I have no idea what you’re talking a
bout here. Start at the beginning. Hannah Wilson. Your maiden name.”
I’ve been gently rocking Mia, and I get up to make sure she’s still in the shade. Behind me Hannah slides across the bench to where I was sitting.
“I’ll do it,” she says. She takes hold of the handle and starts to rock the stroller. I want to tell her she’s doing it too fast, I want to ask her to be more gentle, but I don’t. There’s no way I’m going to interrupt her now. I just walk to the other side of the bench, sit down and adjust my sunglasses.
Let’s hear your version of events, Hannah Wilson. I’m all ears.
Chapter Twenty-One
“When I’m asked how I came to be a florist,” she begins, “I usually say that it was a simple, accidental and fortunate path.”
I have to stop my eyes from rolling around inside my head. I don’t think I could handle another lecture on tulips right now.
“High school diploma at eighteen,” she continues, “then straight to an apprenticeship, after which I found a job in a shop in Toronto. But you see—and no one knows this about me, not even Harvey—I desperately wanted to be an artist. I used to draw all the time. I thought I could study at art school. My parents own a small farm and they assumed I’d work with them after I graduated. I managed to convince them to let me have the summer off first. I wanted to travel, see a bit of the world, and most of all, I wanted to see the famous works of art. But to do that I needed a job, and the only job I’d ever had, other than on the farm, was babysitting after school. My mother had a nephew who had married a New Yorker. She mentioned to her I was looking for a job, babysitting, somewhere abroad. I don’t know how they did it exactly, but next thing I knew I was offered a job as a nanny for the month of August with a family in Manhattan. They needed help looking after their nine-year-old son and would provide a place to live as well as a small wage.”
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