But then she glanced at Brooke, who was merely jotting another note into her red leather folder, and her panic abated. Brooke was asking for information, not sitting in judgment. At least Jill hoped so.
“I’ve hired a photographer, too,” she said, figuring that while Brooke had her red leather folder out, she should jot that down as well. “You have to get them under contract way in advance.”
“Okay.” Brooke snapped her pen shut with a decisive click as Jill steered into the inn’s parking lot. “Anything else?”
Jill sighed. Her biggest worry was her parents. What if they were still separated by next spring, when the affair was scheduled? What if they were divorced? What if they were so bitter and hostile they wouldn’t talk to each other?
She doubted Brooke and her little red notebook could solve that problem.
“It looks pretty,” Brooke said, gazing out at the charming structure, classic New England white clapboard with black shingles and a sloping slate roof.
“It’s even prettier in the spring, when all the flowers are in bloom,” Jill told her. Now the driveway and front walk were lined with the shriveled brown remnants of the chrysanthemums that had been blooming the last time she’d visited—which had been when Gloria had informed her of the price increase. “I didn’t want to go to one of those affair factories, with four bar mitzvahs going on at the same time.”
Brooke crinkled her pretty nose. “So you’ll be the only affair here on that night?”
“Other than whatever might be going on in the bedrooms upstairs,” Jill joked.
Brooke gave her an indulgent smile. “Let’s go slay the dragon,” she said calmly. She didn’t have to rev herself up with an adrenaline-producing pep talk. She was the sort of woman who could slay dragons without chipping a nail.
They emerged from the car, and Jill noticed, in the glow of the late autumn sun, that Brooke’s hair was darker. She’d sensed as much when Brooke had arrived at her house, but Brooke had been standing beneath the porch’s overhang then, and they’d left through the garage, and Jill hadn’t gotten a good look at her hair in natural light. Definitely darker, and shaped into layers and stray wisps. The cut was actually pretty similar to Melissa’s. Jill wondered whether Luc Brondo cut every woman’s hair the same way, or only Bendel women’s hair. If she drove down to New York, would he do her hair that way, too? No doubt it would look better than it did right now, gathered at the nape of her neck in a pale blue scrunchy.
The hairstyle looked gorgeous on Brooke. Naturally—everything about Brooke was gorgeous. But it didn’t really look like her.
“You’ve changed your hair,” Jill commented.
Brooke gave her an eye roll that rivaled Abbie’s. Jill hadn’t realized she’d said anything exasperating, but as soon as Brooke spoke she realized Brooke’s irritation wasn’t directed at her. “Doug hates it.”
“It looks good,” Jill lied. Well, no, that wasn’t a lie. It did look good. It just didn’t look right.
“What he hates about it is that Melissa’s boyfriend cut it. Her ex-boyfriend, I guess.”
Jill wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be surprised by this revelation. She decided not to bother pretending. She wasn’t a particularly good actress. “Melissa mentioned that Luc had done your hair. And that things weren’t working out between her and Luc.”
“I think Doug was jealous,” Brooke admitted.
“Of your hair?”
“Of my going to New York and having Luc do it. I can’t imagine what he’d be jealous about, though. I mean, Luc—he’s a hair stylist. Not to criticize your sister’s taste in men, but . . . a hair stylist? What would I ever want with a hair stylist? Other than to let him do my hair, of course.”
Jill was surprised that Brooke would reveal anything so personal about her relationship with Doug. She never talked about things like that. She was so reserved, so contained, so goddamn perfect. She didn’t have difficulties, with Doug or anyone else.
Except, apparently, she did. Jill slowed to a stop next to her car’s front bumper and stared at Brooke. Maybe she wasn’t so perfect, after all. Jill noticed a weariness in Brooke’s exquisite features, the first microscopically faint lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes and a hint of tension in her pink-glossed lips.
Maybe she was bored. Maybe she needed to be a party planner more than she knew.
“Doug isn’t a jealous-type person,” Jill argued. “He’s so . . .” She was going to say full of himself, but she chose a more positive phrase instead. “Self-assured. I can’t imagine he’d ever feel threatened by a hair stylist.” She hoped she didn’t sound as snobby as Brooke when she mentioned Luc’s profession.
“I couldn’t imagine it, either,” Brooke said, starting up the walk and forcing Jill to follow, even though she’d rather have remained out in the parking lot until they’d finished their discussion. She and Brooke had never spoken like this before, as if they were confidantes.
But Brooke was ready to slay the Gloria dragon, and Jill took a couple of skipping steps to keep up with her. “It’s my parents,” she said as they reached the porch.
That brought Brooke to an abrupt halt. “Your parents?”
“Doug is feeling insecure because my parents have split.”
“He implied something about that.”
“We’re all feeling it,” Jill explained. “It’s like an earthquake. The ground has stopped trembling, but we’re still, I don’t know. Shaky. Waiting for the next tremor.”
“Hmm.” Brooke pondered Jill’s explanation. “Doug never said he felt shaky. Mostly he was worried about who would take care of the girls while we were in Nevis. Thank God you agreed. We’re very grateful.”
“It’s no problem, really.” Okay, that was a lie. But if Brooke could get Gloria to honor the original price she’d quoted for catering Abbie’s bat mitzvah, Jill would consider baby-sitting Madison and Mackenzie for a week a fair trade.
“I really don’t think when your mother moved out on your father she thought about the impact that would have on everyone.” Brooke sounded more than a little judgmental.
“I’m sure she didn’t.” That had been the point, of course. Jill’s mother had decided to stop worrying about the impact of her every act on the rest of the family.
“But to tell the truth, sometimes things work out for the best. The girls adore Abbie, and they love horsing around with Noah. It’ll be fun for them, even if you don’t spoil them as much as their grandparents do.” Brooke smiled, turned and opened the inn’s door.
Once they’d strolled through the understated lobby, past the stairway leading up, past the colonial-tavern style lounge, down the hallway and beyond the main dining room to the offices at the rear of the building, Brooke seemed to have eliminated all thoughts of Doug from her mind. She walked with the posture of a ballerina, her spine straight, her delicate chin raised to display her long, slender neck, her steps graceful but purposeful. Marching along behind her, Jill felt like a schlub, a pitiful bag lady Brooke had adopted out of charity.
“Jill, hi,” Gloria said, her tone unctuous as she waved them into her office. “What’s up?”
“I’m Brooke Bendel,” Brooke said, stepping forward and extending her hand. “I’m a party planner Jill has hired for Abbie’s bat mitzvah. Here’s my card.” She plucked a sterling silver card holder from a side pocket of her purse and produced a crisp cream-colored rectangle, which she presented to Gloria. “As I understand it, we’ve got some issues to resolve. May I?” She gestured toward one of the visitor’s chairs facing Gloria’s desk and sat without waiting for permission. Dumbfounded by Brooke’s poise, Jill dropped onto the other chair and resolved to keep her mouth shut.
It occurred to her that, for once in her life, she wouldn’t have to fix everything. Brooke, with her savoir faire and her beauty and her business cards, had stepped into the role of the fixer.
Jill felt as if she’d just dropped the boulder she’d been hauling around all her life.
Being the family fixer wasn’t a job she’d volunteered for. Some unnamed force of family dynamics had assigned it to her. Doug had been busy with the demands of being the golden boy, the Phi Beta Kappa pre-med, the superlative medical student, the businessman establishing his laser surgery eye clinic, the husband, the father, the success. Melissa had been equally busy being the baby, the brilliant ditz, the legal scholar who could reduce a thirty-page contract crammed with jargon into a single English sentence but spent forty minutes every morning dithering over what to wear. Jill’s mother phoned Jill constantly with crises big and small—or she used to, when she was home and had free time to make all those phone calls. Jill’s father depended on her to solve her mother’s crises.
But now . . . now she had a crisis with the inn’s unexpected hike in catering costs. A small crisis, to be sure. Given the wretched state of the world, a three-dollar-a-plate price increase fell safely within the trivial range on the crisis scale. Jill and Gordon could afford the higher price if they had to. It wasn’t as if she’d have to raid her non-existent France-trip fund to cover the added expense.
But Brooke was handling everything. Maybe Jill and Gordon wouldn’t have to cover the added expense, because Brooke would fix this crisis for them.
“The plate surcharge you sprang on Jill is unconscionable,” Brooke said, her voice as smooth and sweet as molasses. “To negotiate one price and then change it after the contract has been signed . . .”
“It says in the contract—” Gloria’s voice made Jill think not of molasses but of vinegar.
“And I’m sure the Better Business Bureau and the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs would love to hear about those tiny-print clauses in your contract, which are designed for no other reason than to confuse clients and increase your profits. As a party planner, I’m in a position to send more business your way. I’m also in a position to steer all my clients to more ethical venues, and to pass along what I know about your business practices to my professional colleagues.” Brooke’s voice drifted off, but she kept smiling, her gaze locked with Gloria’s.
Despite her smile, Brooke’s expression was icy. Yet it acted on Gloria like heat, causing her to melt into a puddle of acquiescence. “Well, I suppose in this instance we can accommodate your client,” she said. “I ordinarily wouldn’t do that, given what fuel costs these days, but—”
“Great,” Brooke cut her off, refusing her the chance to retract her offer. “Now this price includes a dessert but not the cake. The Sacklers don’t need a dessert in addition to the cake. The cake is the dessert. We’d like to make that substitution.”
“Most people prefer to have the cake made elsewhere.”
“But you can make a cake, right?”
“Of course. I explained that to Mrs. Sackler.” Gloria flashed an anxious glance in Jill’s direction. She used to be just Jill, but now she was Mrs. Sackler, thanks to Brooke. “For an additional fee, our chef can prepare a customized cake.”
“We’ll skip the additional fee because we’re skipping the non-cake dessert. What was that standard dessert? Ice cream? Rice pudding?”
“Ice cream,” Gloria confirmed weakly.
“Who needs ice cream when there’s cake? And ice cream is so messy. So we’ll cut the ice cream and replace it with the cake. Abbie—the bat mitzvah girl—hasn’t decided on a theme yet, but once she does, we’ll get back to you with the cake’s specs. Was there anything else?” Brooke asked Jill.
Jill snapped out of her daze with a shake of her head. She hadn’t even thought about the cost of the cake. She was stunned that Brooke had. “The DJ?” she mumbled, wondering just how many miracles Brooke could pull off.
“Right.” Brooke steered her smile back to Gloria. “The DJ will play for the entire party. As long as there are no noise complaints—and there won’t be, we’ll do volume checks to make sure—there’s no reason for him to have to shut down before the party is scheduled to end.”
“We have guests staying in the upstairs rooms,” Gloria pointed out.
“And the DJ will respect those guests. I assume your reception room’s soundproofing is up to code?”
“Everything here is up to code,” Gloria huffed.
“Then there won’t be a problem. I think that’s it,” Brooke said, rising from her chair. Jill scrambled to her feet as well, eager to flee the office before Gloria realized how many concessions she’d made.
Brooke appeared to be in no hurry to leave, however. She shook Gloria’s hand again, the model of affability, and reminded Gloria that she’d be in touch soon with a specific cake order. “It’ll probably be chocolate,” she alerted Gloria. “Abbie loves chocolate, and it’s her bat mitzvah. But we need to confirm that with her.”
“Of course. Whatever she wants,” Gloria said. “We want her to be happy.”
“And we want Mrs. Sackler to be happy, too, since she and her husband are the ones paying the bill. So nice to meet you, Gloria.” With that, Brooke swept out of the office, the prima ballerina jeté-ing off the stage.
Jill would have liked to shout “Brava!” and toss rose petals at her, but she simply trailed her down the hall and out of the building, not daring to look back to see whether Gloria was furious or just flummoxed. Neither she nor Brooke spoke until they were in the car.
“Wow,” Jill said, jamming the key into the ignition and then twisting in her seat to face Brooke. “You’re good.”
“I am,” Brooke agreed, not a boast but a simple statement of fact.
“Doug was right. You should be a party planner. You were born to do this.”
“No.” Brooke folded her hands neatly in her lap. “I was born to be an object of worship.” She smiled, but Jill didn’t think she was joking.
“Well, I’m ready to convert to the Cult of Brooke. You’ve made a believer out of me.” Jill started the car, backed out of the spot and steered toward the street.
She owed her object of worship. She could stop at a florist and purchase a bouquet for Brooke, but with Brooke seated right beside her, that would be kind of tacky. She could bring Brooke back to her house and pop open a bottle of champagne in her honor, except she didn’t have any champagne. Diet Coke, yes, but that particular bubbly drink wasn’t festive enough.
She glanced at the dashboard clock. Eleven-thirty. “Can I take you to lunch?” she asked. Lunch at her house would be limited to peanut butter or tuna fish sandwiches and Granny Smith apples. Her refrigerator lacked the ingredients for anything classy, like Salad Niçoise or cold cucumber soup or yogurt and fresh berries. Brooke definitely deserved something classy.
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s have lunch.”
Jill so rarely went out for lunch, she had to think for a moment about what restaurants in town served the midday meal. The Old Rockford Inn did, but they couldn’t very well go there. If they did, Gloria might find them drinking a toast over having finessed her, and to avenge her wounded pride she’d sabotage Abbie’s bat mitzvah. Jill couldn’t risk it.
She drove to the small shopping center that housed the bakery where she bought her father’s rugelach. A few doors down was a gourmet café. At least Jill believed it was gourmet, since it was called “The Gourmet Café.” She’d never eaten there before, but walking past it on her way to the bakery, she’d occasionally recognized the mother of one of Abbie’s or Noah’s soccer teammates seated with friends at a round, linen-covered table inside, eating what looked like Salad Niçoise or cold cucumber soup or yogurt and fresh berries. It seemed like the sort of place women who wore two-carat diamond rings with their blue jeans and Earth Day T-shirts would eat.
Brooke would fit right in. And they’d have to serve Jill, because she was treating.
The restaurant smelled of warm bread and sage, and classical guitar music whispered from hidden speakers. Because the kind of classy women who went out for lunch at places like this usually arrived later, Jill and Brooke were seated immediately at one of the many empty tables. “This is nice,” Brooke sai
d.
“I’ve never eaten here, so I can’t vouch for the food,” Jill warned. “But it’s probably better than what we’ll be eating at Abbie’s bat mitzvah.”
Brooke chuckled. “Affair food is what it is,” she said as she opened the menu. “Oh, good. They’ve got wine.”
Somehow, Jill ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio to accompany their salads—Brooke wound up with a Cobb salad, Jill a Caesar with grilled chicken because the Niçoise just looked too involved. Somehow, the level of wine in the bottle kept dropping; somehow their glasses kept emptying. By the time Brooke lowered her fork and declared herself stuffed, which Jill wasn’t sure she believed given that most of the hard-boiled egg, bacon and romaine remained uneaten on her plate, while Jill had managed to leave behind only a few viscous drops of dressing on hers, an hour and a half had passed and Jill heard herself say, “I’ve been thinking about renting office space.”
“For your catalogue business?” Brooke asked.
Jill was touched that Brooke spoke about Jill’s work as if it were a real job. She nodded, took a sip of wine and felt the warm flush of its alcohol content infuse her. “I work in the kitchen and nobody takes me seriously,” she said. “The kids come and go. Gordon comes and goes. I may as well be cooking dinner for all anyone respects what I do.”
“I don’t cook dinner,” Brooke remarked.
Jill laughed. She would enjoy cooking dinner a lot more if she had a kitchen like Brooke’s, with all that space and those gorgeous high-end appliances. Brooke’s kitchen was so huge, Jill could wall off a chunk of it and turn it into an office for herself, and no one would even miss the square footage.
“I’ve thought about setting up shop in the unfinished part of the basement, but . . .”
“Spiders,” Brooke guessed, wrinkling her nose.
“Exactly.”
“So rent an office,” Brooke said.
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