by Edie Claire
Leigh stopped moving. She turned around. “Sweet sixteen party?”
Mason stared at her a moment, his eyes slowly widening. “Your mother never told you about that?”
Leigh frowned. She really did hate those particular words. “Evidently not.”
“Oh,” Mason said with embarrassment. “Never mind, then. Have a good weekend, kid. I’ll see you on—”
“Don’t even,” Leigh said heavily, taking a step closer. “You brought it up, now you’re spilling it! What happened at their sweet sixteen party?” She wasn’t sure why it mattered. But she was getting that bad feeling in her gut again.
“Nothing!” Mason lied. “I don’t even know why I thought of it. This event is just people walking through the house, right?”
“As opposed to what?”
“I just mean,” he asked, “there’s not a bunch of food being served at every stop, is there?”
The bad feeling grew worse. Leigh had enough of her own misgivings; she didn’t need to add Mason’s to the mix. “The hosting garden club usually does serve some light refreshments at each station, yes,” she answered. “Why?”
Mason relaxed a little. “Oh, well if it’s just Christmas cookies and such…”
“What happened on Mom and Aunt Lydie’s sixteenth birthday?” Leigh repeated.
Mason exhaled and rubbed his chin again. “Look, I didn’t mean to step into it. I just didn’t think, after all this time… Maybe Lydie had better give me a cheat sheet of what I’m allowed to talk about and what I’m not.”
“You mean there’s more?” Leigh practically exploded. She was still smarting over the lies the family had told Cara and her both about Mason, all under the guise of “protecting” the girls. “How many things is my mother still censoring from my impressionable middle-aged ears?”
“Now, calm down, kid,” Mason said evenly. “Your mother’s entitled to a little privacy. Surely there’s a thing or two in your own history you wouldn’t want me tattling to Ethan and Allison?”
Leigh went quiet.
Mason cracked a small grin of triumph. “I thought so. Look, don’t let anyone know I said anything, will you? The last thing I need right now is to give your mother another reason to hate me.”
Leigh bit her tongue. Literally. Mason was right. Besides, what possible bearing could such ancient history have on the current situation? Surely none. Still, she couldn’t quell her curiosity. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember Frances ever having hosted an actual full-blown, non-family adult party at the Koslow house. Of course, not everybody enjoyed doing that sort of thing, but it seemed like Frances should. She did love showing off her clean house. She was always inviting family and small groups of friends over for dinner, and she was constantly making casseroles for donation to the church freezer. But although she did have meetings at her house for all sorts of groups, she never hosted receptions or showers or large events with food, ostensibly because “that many people eating make too much of a mess.”
If Frances really had vowed once upon a time that she would never again “throw a big to-do,” then it appeared she had kept that promise for fifty some-odd years. And tomorrow, she was going to break it.
Leigh blew out a frustrated breath. “Fine,” she conceded to Mason. “I won’t ask my mother anything about her mysterious sweet sixteen.”
Mason thanked her, they exchanged another round of goodbyes, and Leigh headed for her car.
But I’m going to find out anyway, she added silently.
Chapter 4
Leigh steadied her gun and aimed carefully in the dim light. She squeezed the trigger, and an explosion sounded in her ears. She smirked with satisfaction.
She had shot her husband. Again.
Warren threw his hands up in the air with good-natured frustration, then whirled around and dashed off toward the recharging station.
“Good one, Mom!” Allison called out from the darkness below.
“Thanks!” Leigh shouted happily. She hadn’t realized her daughter was hiding there, crouching behind a low barrier in the foggy chaos of the laser tag arena. Allison would turn twelve the day after tomorrow, but she was small for her age, she was dressed in solid black, and she crept around so low to the ground and so stealthily that she was able to make herself virtually invisible. Which was excellent for the red team.
“Have you died yet?” Leigh shouted out over the din. Weird techno music blared over the speakers, punctuated by the occasional wail of a siren when someone hit a base target.
“Of course not!” Allison returned indignantly.
An explosion sounded in Leigh’s ears again. But this time, it came with an unpleasant deflating sound. Dammit.
“Recharge!” an obnoxious voice taunted in her headset. She looked over to see her son laughing at her from behind an enemy barrier not eight feet away. Gone were the days when Leigh had to pretend to let Ethan beat her at anything. The boy had begun a massive growth spurt over the fall and now looked her straight in the eye, which was beyond disconcerting.
“Allison,” she cried in frustration. “Kill your brother!”
“Okay,” her daughter called back cheerfully.
Leigh scurried back through the maze of walls and barricades that defined the red team’s territory until she reached her designated recharging station. Her heart was pumping wildly, which she knew was ironic. She’d never played with toy guns as a child, had never even handled a real gun as an adult, and had never had the slightest desire to do either. But there was definitely something cathartic about running around in a dark room with blinking strobes and shooting laser beams at little lights that glowed over your enemies’ ears, particularly when those enemies were friends and family.
Go figure.
She had to recharge her gun quickly. It was pure random chance that she and Warren had been on opposite teams both games they’d played so far, but his team had pounded hers the first time, and she was not going down again. His personal player stats were better than hers, too, and that could not be tolerated. Warren was a wonderful husband and father, he was brilliant with finance, he was one of those rare men who only got better looking as they aged, and she loved him dearly. But no way in hell was he beating her at laser tag.
Self-possessed as Warren J. Harmon III might look now, Leigh knew that underneath that mantle of sophisticated maturity lay a too-tall gawky misfit who had been the only other freshman at Pitt who could make her sorry butt look good in Tennis 101. Although he loved laser tag with a passion — the flashing lights and geeky techno environment were like a drug to his sci-fi obsessed soul — the sad fact was that Warren was no more athletic than she was, which put him roughly two levels above a tomato. How the two of them had combined their genes to produce a strapping son like Ethan, who had natural talent at any sport he played but was too easy-going to be seriously competitive at any of them, was an enduring mystery.
Leigh should be the better player. Warren lacked the dexterity to aim a gun or weave amongst the barriers, and his tall form and broad shoulders were impossible to hide. The green lights on his headset were always sticking up somewhere, making him a pathetically easy target. Leigh was much more difficult to strike, partly because she was smaller and partly because she knew a thing or two about covert operations, for reasons she didn’t care to think about in the middle of a kids’ birthday party.
Leigh stuck her gun under the light on the recharging post. One of Ethan’s friends arrived just after her, carrying with him the distinctive aroma of twelve-year-old boys everywhere: the pungent combination of foot and body odor. He was sweating so much his glasses kept slipping down his nose, but he was smiling from ear to ear. “I got the base!” he bragged.
“Good job!” Leigh praised, forgetting the boy’s name. She’d known most of Ethan’s friends for years, but this fall in middle school he’d picked up several new ones. She felt a pang of sadness whenever she remembered that this was the first party of Ethan’s that his cousin
Mathias hadn’t attended, but she tried not to dwell on it. Matt was two and a half years older, after all. He was a high school freshman while these boys were all in the sixth grade. Socially, that made a huge difference.
She supposed she should be glad that Ethan tolerated his sister and parents playing along. Most boys wouldn’t, but it worked out well enough, since Warren was in his glory and all the boys enjoyed making mincemeat of the parental units. They paid little attention to Ethan’s quiet, bookish sister, much to their regret when they got back their scorecards. Hey! Who is number 13? They shot me 8 times!
Allison never said a word.
Leigh heard the happy zipping sound that meant her gun was reloaded, and she headed back out to the battlefield. Only a few minutes remained, and the red team was behind again. She slunk around the barriers until she reached her favored spot, a mound-shaped shield from behind which she could shoot at Warren when he perched at his favorite spot.
An explosion sounded in her ears again.
Dammit!
Leigh moved farther behind the shield. She had no idea who had fired at her. But she was down to two lives again already. Where was Warren?
“Don’t kick me, Mom,” Allison grumbled.
“Oh, sorry!” Leigh apologized to the darkness.
“You need to shoot at Ethan,” Allison instructed. “He can hit the base. Dad can’t.”
“Roger that,” Leigh agreed. She moved carefully out from behind her hiding place, only to immediately hear another explosion.
She remembered not to swear this time.
“Don’t go that way, Mom!” Allison said with frustration. “Jonathan’s just going to keep shooting you! Go the other way, and duck down! I’m going to try for the green base again.”
Leigh had no idea where Jonathan was hiding. If only she were canine, she mused to herself. Then she could sniff out every one of them! She slunk away in the direction Allison instructed and tried harder to keep her own headset hidden behind the barriers. She could see Ethan moving around in the fog ahead of her. He was going to attack the red base again, and they really couldn’t afford that. She slipped after him, moving quickly from hiding place to hiding place, twisting her neck around whenever she was out in the open to make the lights on her headset a more difficult target. She was going to win this thing.
She heard a siren in the distance and looked up at the scoreboard. Yes! Allison had scored against the green base. The reds were ahead again! She watched as Ethan approached the red base and prepared to shoot. Their time was almost up. Less than ten seconds left in the game now. Leigh raised her gun and waited for Ethan to step out, but just as her son made his move, Warren stepped boldly right out in the open.
The nerve! Leigh swung her gun over and aimed a fierce volley of shots at the man she loved. Ripples of explosions blasted through her headset, and she smirked with triumph to watch as the lights over his ears blinked repeatedly, indicating she had finished him off. Unfortunately, she heard something else at the same time. She heard the siren sound, which along with the giant flashing red light on the nearby ceiling meant that the red base had been hit.
The buzzer sounded to end the game, and the room lightened. Ethan shouted out a “woot” and gave his dad a high five, and Leigh looked up at the scoreboard with apprehension. Ethan had hit the base. The red team had lost. Again.
Oh, well. At least the birthday boy was having a good time. “Good shot, Ethan!” she praised. Then she turned tail and trudged back around the maze to the exit, where she was forced to face her daughter’s glower. “You shot at Dad again, didn’t you?” Allison accused with a pout.
“No comment,” Leigh answered.
The teams exited to the equipment room and took off their gear, then the boys all piled back into the lobby to await their scorecards. A sweaty and exhilarated Warren met Leigh by the giant claw machine and threw an arm around her. “You just can’t resist me, can you?” he smirked.
Leigh’s eyes narrowed. “You did that on purpose.”
He laughed out loud. “Call it taking one for the team.”
Allison stood before them, her arms crossed over her chest. “It’s my birthday too, you know,” she reminded.
Warren straightened a bit and smiled at his daughter. “You raise a good point. My condolences on the loss. But I’m sure you were the red team MVP as usual, Allie.”
The girl seemed mollified. She smiled with satisfaction. “I hope so.”
Leigh felt a twinge of unease watching her daughter hanging with the parents as the boys tumbled around the arcade shouting like maniacs. In the past the twins’ parties had involved their cousins and friends of both genders. But this year Ethan had only wanted boys from his grade, and Allison hadn’t wanted a party at all. She claimed that the girls she would invite were in different “friend groups,” that they didn’t all get along with each other, and that it “wasn’t worth the drama.” Leigh knew that such changes were inevitable as the kids grew up, but that didn’t mean she was ready for them. It had been entirely too convenient, for all these years, for her children and Cara’s to be a self-sufficient social unit.
Warren started a bit, then pulled his phone from his breast pocket and looked at the screen. His eyebrows tented. “It’s your mother,” he said to Leigh. “Any ideas?”
“Help with the house tour, I’m sure,” she answered, her happy mood deflating further.
Warren looked back at her with a puzzled expression, then turned to move to a less noisy location. “Hello, Frances!” he answered with enthusiasm, as if he’d been waiting for his mother-in-law’s call all day. The man was a born schmoozer.
Leigh watched through the glass as he spoke on the phone in the entryway for a few minutes. Then he came back in, found Ethan, and motioned for the boy to join him. After Ethan spoke on the phone, he returned to the party and gestured for Allison to go out.
Leigh joined Warren in the entryway as he handed the phone to their daughter.
“What’s up?” Leigh asked. “What does she want, exactly?”
“Height,” he answered.
“Excuse me?”
Warren laughed. “Apparently, the Floribundas’ enthusiasm for decorating does not extend to climbing up ladders. They need some taller and preferably younger people to help out tomorrow morning.”
“Oh,” Leigh replied dully. She had expected to be summoned herself, but she hadn’t thought about Warren and the children becoming involved. The idea unnerved her.
“Here, Mom,” Allison said. “Grandma wants to talk to you.”
Leigh took the phone from her daughter’s hand, and Allison rushed back into the lobby where the boys were receiving their scorecards.
“Leigh, dear,” Frances began, sounding as if she were checking items off a list. “Thanks so much for helping out. What time can you be here tomorrow? Warren says he’ll bring the children between eight and eight-thirty, but it would be positively marvelous if you could make it here by seven.”
Leigh’s shoulders sagged. “Seven AM?”
Frances made no response to that.
“Fine,” Leigh capitulated. She would like to think she could sneak out once the tour started at two, but she knew that wouldn’t happen. Whatever time she arrived at her mother’s house tomorrow, she would not be returning until it was all said and done.
All said and done. Why was her gut starting to ache again? “Are you sure you need the kids there?” she asked.
“For heaven’s sake,” Frances said irritably, “we need all the help we can get! We’ve only got four husbands among us, and your father is working, as always. Anna Marie’s husband can’t help; he has too much trouble getting around. Virginia’s husband Harry is right as rain, but he’s always been a horse’s rear; he makes more trouble than he’s worth. Olympia’s husband Melvin is a lovely man — he’s a proctologist, you know — but the poor dear is only five foot two, and we’ve got lights to string!”
Leigh raised no further objection. Frances r
ang off, clearly in a hurry to reach the next person on her list, and Leigh handed the phone back to Warren.
“What’s that look for?” he asked.
“What look?”
He shook his head at her. “Don’t give me that. Something’s bothering you about this house tour. What is it? Sounds to me like it’s your mother’s dream come true.”
Leigh sighed. “It is. Maybe that’s what worries me.”
They returned to the lobby, and Allison ran over and handed them their scorecards. “Two-time MVP!” she said proudly.
They congratulated her in unison. Although Allison was smart as a whip and good at many things, competitive sports were not among them. Her peculiar abilities at laser tag made the game a rare treat for her, or else she would more than likely have spent another Friday night at home in front of her computer.
Leigh and Warren bent their heads and studied their own statistics. Then they looked over to study each other’s.
“Yes!” Leigh cried triumphantly, pumping a fist.
Warren rolled his eyes. “So competitive!”
“You gloated after the first game!” Leigh shot back.
“I did not,” Warren protested.
They turned to Allison as if to settle to the dispute. “I’m out of here,” the girl announced, moving off.
“Well, what do you say?” Warren suggested cheerfully, gesturing to the boys, who had begun to scatter across the arcade. “Shall we go for a third round or just let them roam?”
Leigh looked at her watch. “Better do another round. Pickup isn’t for a half hour, and if we cut them loose, they’ll want more tokens.”
“They used all their tokens already?” Warren asked in disbelief.
“Are you kidding? A bunch of sixth-grade boys in a room with machines that light up and make loud noises? They spent the wad in five minutes.”
“We’ll do another round,” Warren agreed. He leaned in close and threw her a smile of challenge. “You and me. Best of three?”