by Wendy Wax
Laughing, Candace glanced over Tessa Green’s shoulder and spotted Brooke and Hap Mackenzie. The redhead looked lovely, but uncomfortable, in the only black gown in a sea of pastels. It was also a tad too revealing, with a plunging neckline that revealed creamy white breasts. It was too bad, Candace thought. With Brooke’s thick auburn hair and her elegant figure, the right sort of dress would have made all the difference.
The men’s conversation continued. Reassured by Dan’s easy participation, she tuned them out. Listening to the ladies with half an ear, she smiled at the appropriate pauses in conversation and subtly scanned the room.
In a distant corner, she spotted Rob Sheridan, the louse, with the sparkly Tiffany on his arm. Tiffany looked even less comfortable than Brooke, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Amanda Sheridan had spent most of her adult life focused on her husband and family and she’d been supplanted by an empty head of blonde hair and a perky set of breasts. Candace shook her head, resenting the girl on Amanda’s behalf. Women of a certain age needed to stick together. She made a mental note to check in with Amanda tomorrow. Maybe she’d like to do lunch or go out for a drink.
Realizing the conversation flowing around her had come to a halt, Candace pulled her attention back to Tessa and Sandra.
“I’m sorry,” Candace apologized. “What did you say?”
Tessa nodded to a group of women to their left. “Isn’t that your mother?”
Slowly, so as not to call attention to herself, Candace turned her head and followed Tessa’s gaze. She loved her mother and knew that in her own way she meant well, but tonight the words “isn’t that your mother” filled her with the same sort of dread she might have felt if someone had said, “isn’t that Typhoid Mary?”
“Yes,” she said, “it is, isn’t it?” Which was very surprising since her mother was supposed to be in Florida right now.
As subtly as she could, she slipped her arm back through Dan’s and squeezed gently. “I, um, wondered if you could come with me for a minute?” she asked quietly as he turned to her. To the group, she offered a smile and said, “Will you excuse us? There’s someone on the other side of the room I want Dan to meet.”
They extracted themselves and without comment she propelled them to the right, away from her mother. Though she wanted to, she was very careful not to actually cut and run. Instead she walked sedately—OK she might have been tiptoeing—while she tried to figure out how to slip out without being noticed. And how to explain to Dan why she suddenly wanted to leave.
“What’s the matter?” Dan looked down at her, his eyes telegraphing his concern. “You’re trembling.”
She was contemplating feigning a headache when she heard her mother’s voice behind her.
“Candace?”
Candace froze, bringing Dan to a stop with her. She let go of his arm and barely resisted the urge to shout, “Save yourself! Run, get away as fast as you can.” Slowly she turned. Dan turned with her.
Hannah Bloom was short by anyone’s standards, but she was mighty. Possessing incalculable quantities of will and determination, she was a force of nature. In hurricane terms, Hannah Bloom was a category five.
“Mother!” Candace didn’t have to feign her surprise. “I thought you were out of town.” Which was why, of course, she’d felt safe bringing Dan to this function.
“Ida asked me to stay to help with Myra Mench’s daughter’s bridal shower, so I decided not to go. You look like a bonbon in that dress.” She said it with none of the affection that had filled Dan’s voice.
“Yes, I was telling her that earlier. It’s fabulous, isn’t it?” Dan wrapped an arm around Candace’s bare shoulder, clearly offering his support. “I’m tempted to start calling her Candy.”
“Don’t.” Candace and her mother uttered the word in unison. Her mother’s tone was adamant, Candace’s automatic. At the age of three, when she was preparing to enter preschool, “Don’t call me Candy” was the phrase her mother had taught her to share with her classmates.
Candace would have explained that to Dan now, but all of her mother’s formidable attention was focused on him. Candace’s goal now was to minimize casualties and get out alive.
“And who is this?” Her mother asked Candace the question, though her gaze remained on Dan.
“This is Dan Donovan, my date for the evening.” Candace felt Dan flinch as she relegated him to the level of paid escort. But she knew her mother too well to think that Dan Donovan was going to pass muster. The tall, dark, good-looking part might fly; the not-so-ambitious and definitely-not-Jewish part would not.
“Oh?” Hannah Bloom’s tone was icily polite. Candace knew what was coming. As her mother liked to say, all she wanted was what she thought was best for her only daughter; the words “what she thought best” being the operative ones.
Candace knew what sort of men her mother deemed best for her; she knew because she’d married—and divorced—three of them. Dan Donovan wasn’t one of those kind of men.
She straightened her shoulders and battened down her mental hatches, wondering just how old she’d have to be before she stopped trying to win her mother’s approval. Then she threw Dan an apologetic look as Hannah Bloom, with the surgical precision of a trial attorney, commenced the third degree.
“So, Daniel,” she said in a deceptively friendly voice. “You don’t mind if I call you Daniel, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Where are your people from?”
Dan smiled and Candace thought she saw a twinkle steal into his eyes, which told her he had no idea who he was dealing with. “Originally, County Cork. Ireland, ma’am. More recently, to be sure, we’re from Boston.”
Candace turned slowly to consider Dan Donovan who, if she wasn’t mistaken, now had a distinctly Irish lilt in his voice.
“How interesting,” the Grand Inquisitor said. “And what do you do, here in Atlanta?”
“I’m an accountant.”
Hannah brightened a little at that. “Oh. Are you with one of the large firms?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dan replied. “’Twould be a fine thing of course. But I’m a sole practitioner. It allows me my freedom, don’t you know.”
Candace had a bad feeling the next words out of his mouth were going to be “faith and begorra.”
She nudged Dan gently, but his attention was focused on her mother. He didn’t look the least bit worried. Or apologetic.
“Dan is very involved in charitable works, Mother,” Candace felt compelled to point out. “And he coaches his son’s Little League baseball team, the Mudhens.”
“How nice that you have the time for that.” Her mother’s tone made it clear that she believed only the underemployed would have time for that sort of thing. “How many children do you have?” Here the assumption was that someone named Donovan would have a truckload.
“Just the one,” Dan said easily, the smile and the lilt firmly in place, “which was a sore disappointment to me sainted mother. I was one of seven.” He winked. “I’d love to have more, meself. And I don’t think it’s ever too late.”
Candace told herself Dan hadn’t really said “me sainted mother” or “meself,” except of course he had.
She shot her mother an appraising glance, but saw no sign that she realized how thoroughly she was being had. Candace knew for a fact that it was time to beat a retreat, but it was beginning to occur to her that they weren’t necessarily going to be leaving with their tails between their legs as she had expected.
“I always think it’s a shame for the only child.” Dan was still on the subject of children, a subject Candace had given up on a long time ago. “They have no one to squabble with. No character-building issues over hand-me-downs or lack of personal space. And just think of all that parental attention and adoration aimed solely at them. Imagine what that can do to a child.”
Hannah Bloom flinched. It was a small movement, not much more than a blink, really, but Candace saw it. The unimaginab
le had happened. A mild-mannered, unassuming accountant had thrown himself in the path of an oncoming train and somehow managed to alter its course.
“Well then,” Candace said much too brightly, “I’m so glad you two had the chance to get acquainted.” With Dan’s arm still around her shoulder, she leaned forward and gave her mother a peck on the cheek. “There’s someone else we need to say hello to and then we really have to be going. I have a, um, headache. And I think we should go lie down for a while.”
Her mother gasped.
“I mean, I’m going to go lie down. At home. By me…myself. Dan is just going to drive me there.” She finally clamped her mouth shut to halt the babbling.
Dan just smiled his good-bye and followed along without comment. But his blue eyes twinkled merrily.
chapter 6
H ave a seat,” Anne Justiss said as she ushered Amanda into her office the next morning. “Would you like some coffee? A Danish?”
Goosebumps shot up Amanda’s spine as she took in the attorney’s tone of voice and the look of concern on her face. The offering of food felt especially inauspicious.
“No thanks.” She braced herself, much as her children had done the night before, barely able to wait for the attorney to walk around the desk and take her seat.
“What’s wrong?” Amanda asked, not really wanting to know, wishing for about the thousandth time since her life had spun out of control that she could turn back the clock. This time she’d settle for right before she’d walked into this office. Right before her alarm had gone off this morning might be even safer.
“It turns out that your husband’s financial balls are much smaller than we expected them to be.” This time there was no accompanying smile or hint of laughter. “In fact, they appear to be nonexistent.”
Amanda’s stomach dropped somewhere around her knees. The one thing she’d been counting on was the cleansing effect of taking her husband to the cleaners, of leaving him up a creek without a financial paddle.
“Actually, he seems to have been living beyond his means for some time.”
Amanda was trying, but she simply could not get her brain around this. “Beyond his means? But he has a huge salary from the law firm and he’s made all kinds of investments over the years.”
The attorney’s eyes telegraphed her regret. “Oh, he’s made investments all right—all of them ill advised. Each one of them has weakened his position even further.”
“Are you sure?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I put the best forensic accountant we have on it because something felt off.”
She studied Amanda as if trying to determine whether she needed to call the paramedics. “And I’m afraid it gets worse.”
As if anything could be worse than Rob’s lack of money at this particular point in time; money she’d been counting on to smooth the transition for the kids.
“He’s apparently been dipping into client trust accounts to cover his personal losses.”
Amanda stared at Anne Justiss hoping against hope that she’d misunderstood her. “But he’s an attorney. That’s illegal!”
“It most certainly is. And it happens far more often than most people realize.” Anne Justiss looked down at the file in front of her then back up at Amanda, her gaze unwavering. “We do have some leverage. Depending on how we handle this information, your husband could be disbarred or end up in jail. But, of course, with either of those scenarios his earning potential is cut off for good. That’s not in your, or the children’s, best interests.”
Stunned, Amanda tried to take it in. She’d promised the children they’d keep the house. But that was when she’d assumed the house was just one of many assets available to divide. And as angry as she was with Rob, did she really want to send Meghan and Wyatt’s father to prison? Tying him in the basement and torturing him, yes, letting him languish in a real prison with hardened criminals, no.
“I can’t lose the house,” Amanda said. “I promised the kids it would be ours.”
“I’m going to get you the house, Amanda,” Anne Justiss said. “That I promise. The payments are low and you’ve got a good bit of equity in it. If you sell it and scale back, you should be able to buy some time to get on your feet.”
Amanda shook her head slowly. “But, I told the kids they wouldn’t have to move.”
“Unfortunately, they’re going to have to get used to a lot of things they shouldn’t have to. Your husband has a lot to answer for.”
But Amanda was the one who’d have to face Meghan and Wyatt; she was the one who would be held accountable. Somehow she’d have to find a way to keep her promise to them. Anything less was completely unacceptable.
Anne Justiss’s smile was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I’d hoped to do so much better for you. We need to give some serious thought about how to proceed. Your husband’s firm isn’t going to want this made public, so he may not end up disbarred. Still whatever happens, he’s not going to be of any financial help for a long time to come, if ever.”
She closed the file on her desk and stood to shake hands. “I have a meeting scheduled for Monday morning with his attorney. We’ll see who’s still standing after this little bomb gets dropped.”
Once again, Amanda drove home from Anne Justiss’s office in a fog. One minute she was stumbling toward the law office’s parking garage. The next she was pulling into her own.
When the kids got home, she put on her mother smile and heartiest good humor and ferried them to where they had to go, grateful that they were both sleeping over at friends. She might have been a drama major but at the moment acting normal was a real stretch.
When she got home again, she picked up the telephone and punched in Rob’s number. She needed to know how this had happened, needed to have some sense of perspective on how their lives had gotten so flushed down the toilet.
“Rob Sheridan’s office.” His secretary answered on the third ring.
It was a challenge to keep her voice steady. “Is he there, Cindy?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Sheridan,” the secretary said. “He’s out of town for the day taking a deposition. He’s due back early this evening.”
Hanging up, Amanda punched in her parents’ cell phone number but hung up before the call went through. For months she’d failed to offer so much as a hint that there was a problem. How could she call now and admit to total defeat?
She stared at the phone searching her brain for the right person to call, but the hard cold truth was there was no one. She knew lots of women through her volunteer commitments and the kids’ activities but she’d been so wrapped up in her family and her responsibilities that she hadn’t pushed very far beyond the surface with anyone; had never gone the extra mile necessary to establish and maintain that kind of closeness. She had had pleasant social relationships with many women, but there wasn’t a single one she felt she could share all of this with now.
She was still clutching the phone when it rang.
“Hello?”
“Amanda? Is that you?” Candace’s voice was firm and smooth with none of the wobbliness Amanda felt in hers.
“Yes. How are you, Candace?”
“Fine. I just called to check in and say hi. Dan and I were at the Children’s Hospital fund-raiser last night, and I saw some of your favorite people there.”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
“Amanda? Are you OK?”
That simple question from an almost stranger opened the floodgates. “I’m fine.” Amanda choked on the word. A sob escaped despite her attempts to hold it back. “Everything’s…good.” Except, of course, for her life in general and her future in particular.
“I’m coming over.”
“That’s not necessary.” She suspected her protest would have sounded more convincing if it hadn’t come between sobs.
“Don’t argue. We can be there in fifteen minutes. Brooke Mackenzie is already on the way here. We ran into each other at the fund-raiser and Hap’s out of town. Do you mind if I
bring her?”
At the moment Amanda didn’t care if Candace brought the man in the moon. It was human contact and she would take it right now any way she could get it. “OK.” She sniffed. “Thanks.”
“And if you’re not dressed get some clothes on. You sound like you need a drink—maybe lots of drinks. We’ll take you out. The last place you need to be right now is sitting at home.”
Brooke and Candace led Amanda out of the car and into Chili’s. As they were shown to their table, Brooke couldn’t help noticing that they were the only women over the age of twenty who were there without children or men. The suburbs were not designed for single women of any age. It took a strong woman to operate alone within its borders.
As far as Brooke could see, Candace managed by holding herself apart from it all; she might be dating the coach of a Little League team, but she wasn’t concerned about communing with the moms. Nor was she scrambling for position like a lot of the women were. How grand it must be to feel so sure of oneself, so not in need of others’ approval.
Amanda was different. She was a baseball mom/suburban hausfrau down to her toes and she didn’t appear to have any desire to be anything else. Her husband’s desertion had obliterated the world as she knew it.
Brooke thought about how different their lives had been from hers and how shocked they would be if she told them exactly where she’d come from and how hard she’d worked to create the woman she presented to the world.
Except, of course, that she’d never even told her husband and suspected she never would.
As soon as they were seated, Candace called the waiter over. He appeared to be about twelve. “What are we drinking?”
“Nothing for me,” Brooke said. “I’ll be the designated driver.” She saw Amanda’s face fall. “But Amanda deserves to take the edge off, and I doubt she wants to do it alone.”
Candace turned to Amanda. “I’m thinking margaritas. Are you with me?”
Amanda simply nodded.
“A pitcher of margaritas,” Candace told the server. “Anybody interested in food?”