“Grace.” Louis jumped to his feet, and crossed the distance between them in two steps. He picked up her hand and peered down at her. “Gracie, you’re awake. Can you hear me?”
“Water,” Grace said creakily. This time the word actually came out, although she sounded like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz before Dorothy oiled him.
Louis beamed down at her, his eyes filling with tears. “Water? Did you say water? Oh, my God—that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said, and he picked up her hand and pressed it to his lips. She could feel the warmth of his tears on her skin.
“The doctor! I have to get the doctor,” Louis said. He picked up the call button strapped to the side of her hospital bed and began pushing it on and off, on and off, on and off.
“You’re only supposed to push it once,” Grace croaked. “And please get me some water.”
A nurse—young, freckled, and wearing mint green scrubs—came flying into the room at a full sprint, her plain oval face looking grim, as though she was expecting the worst. But then she stopped suddenly when she saw Louis smiling down at Grace.
“She’s awake,” the nurse said unnecessarily, and her face broke out in a broad smile.
“She’s awake,” Louis confirmed. “And already bossing me around.”
“Excellent! I’ll go get Dr. Patil.”
Dr. Patil turned out to be a middle-aged man with kind brown eyes and soft hands, and he stayed for a long time, asking Grace questions and checking her reflexes, while Louis stood nervously on the other side of the hospital bed, clutching Grace’s hand. Dr. Patil finally pronounced Grace’s prognosis to be “promising” and cautioned that they would need to run more tests before she could leave.
“Fine by me,” Grace said. She’d had some water and was getting her voice back, although she still sounded husky. “Lying in a bed, with everyone waiting on me hand and foot, and no diapers to change—throw in a few margaritas, and I’ll think I’m at Club Med.”
Dr. Patil laughed as he left the room, but when Louis turned back to Grace, he wasn’t smiling. Instead, his eyes were narrowed and his lips were thinned into a tight line.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“How can you joke about this?” he asked, his voice strained.
Louis looked thin, Grace thought, as though he hadn’t been eating well. She felt an odd mix of guilt and jealousy. She decided to try to coax him out of his anger.
“I’m serious. After five years of sleep deprivation, I could use a little vacation. In fact, are you sure I was even in a coma? Maybe I was just sleeping really, really hard,” Grace joked.
But Louis didn’t laugh. Instead, he crossed his arms and glared at her through bloodshot eyes. “Grace, it isn’t funny. You almost died. Do you not understand that? That tea you were drinking almost killed you,” Louis said.
Grace blanched. “God, don’t even say it,” she said, shivering a little.
“I’m going to say it, and you’re going to listen.” Grace had never heard Louis sound so stern. He crossed his arms and glowered down at her, just as he did at the girls when they were misbehaving. “You have to promise me, right here and now, that you won’t ever drink that poison again. And you have to promise me, no more crash diets.”
Grace, remembering her eleven-pound weight loss, hesitated.
No, she thought rebelliously. No. I’m not giving up being thin. No way.
“I asked my paralegal to do some research on that tea. Did you know that ten women in the U.S. alone have died while taking it?”
“Really? Why? Did they get dizzy and fall like I did?”
“No. The research indicates that the laxative effects of the tea caused an electrolyte imbalance, eventually causing heart failure,” Louis said.
Grace gave another shiver. Heart failure. “No, I didn’t know that,” she said in a small voice.
“Grace, listen to me.” Louis sat down on the edge of her bed and folded her hand into his. “I can’t do this without you. Any of it. I need you, the girls need you. They can’t grow up without a mother. For my sake, for their sake, you have to promise to stop,” Louis said. His voice cracked, and his eyes were welling with tears again as he looked at her. “I couldn’t stand to lose you,” he said simply.
Tears were now stinging at Grace’s eyes too. The thought of her family going on without her broke Grace’s heart. “Okay,” she finally said, nodding. “I promise I’ll stop.”
“Maybe you should talk to someone,” he said.
“Talk to someone? You mean a shrink?”
“Or a therapist. Someone you can talk to about why you feel so bad about yourself. Why you have such a negative self-image that you would risk your health like this just to lose a few pounds.”
The tears began to spill out of Grace’s eyes and run hotly down her cheeks.
“But I needed to lose the weight,” she said. “I looked awful before. I was bloated, and pudgy, and…and—”
“Beautiful.” Louis’s voice was firm. “You had just given birth to our daughter, and you were beautiful.”
Louis leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her. Grace winced when his arm hit the IV needle taped to her arm, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she held him to her, gently stroking his hair, just the way she always did when one of their daughters was upset.
“Fill me in on all of the gossip,” Grace demanded. It was Tuesday, the first day the doctor had cleared her to have nonfamily visitors, and Grace had been crazed with boredom. She’d never felt so disconnected from her life.
Anna laughed. She kicked off her flats, and tucked her feet up underneath her on one of the ugly visitors’ chairs. “You’ve only been in here for three days,” she said. “It’s not like the Orange Cove social scene ever shifts that dramatically.”
Grace shook her head. “Come on. You’re going to have to do better than that. I want gossip.”
“Well, I don’t think this qualifies as gossip, considering she is one of our closest friends, but I assume you’ve heard that Juliet and Patrick are having trouble?” Anna said.
Grace’s expression turned grim. She nodded. “Yes, and I can’t believe it. Do you know what’s going on? Juliet was in here earlier, but she didn’t really tell me anything, other than that Patrick’s taken the twins down to his parents’ for a few days.”
“That’s all I know too. I’ve tried calling her, but she doesn’t answer her phone and she hasn’t called me back. How did she seem when you saw her earlier?”
“She was acting a little strangely.”
“How so?”
“Well, for one thing, she looked awful. She was wearing sweatpants, and her hair was all sticking up, like she hadn’t brushed it in days,” Grace said.
Anna’s brow wrinkled. “Sweatpants? So she wasn’t coming from the office?”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so. Louis told me that when he called in for his messages, his secretary said Juliet wasn’t at the office today or yesterday.”
“That’s not like her.”
“Tell me about it. And she was sort of manic, hyper even, like she’d been knocking back shots of espresso, and—get this—she was talking about doing some work around her house,” Grace said.
“Housework?” Anna’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Juliet doesn’t do housework.”
“I know. That’s why I thought it was weird. Apparently, she’s painting. She brought in a stack of paint chips with her when she visited me, so that I could help her pick out colors. In fact,” Grace paused and ducked her head, her cheeks flushing a rosy pink, “she said she wants to hire me to help her redecorate once I get back up to speed.”
“That’s a great idea!” Anna enthused.
Grace shrugged, as though it wasn’t any big deal, but her smile gave her away. “I told her that it’s the professional version of a pity fuck. But, hell, I’m not proud. I’ll take it.”
“Will you stop,” Anna said, although she laughed.<
br />
“I think I’ll get her to take some before-and-after pictures. It’s about time I started getting a portfolio together,” Grace mused. She stretched and looked disconsolately around her. “I know I’ve been joking about how I had to land myself in the hospital in order to get some sleep, but I have to say, I’m going to be glad when I can finally get out of this hellhole. I swear, there’s a vampire in here taking blood samples every other hour.” She lifted her arm to show Anna the needle pricks on it. “I look like a junkie covered in track marks.”
Anna looked sympathetic. “Do you know when you’re getting discharged?”
“No.” Grace sighed and kicked back the hospital sheets. “Every time I ask Dr. Patil, he just says, ‘We’ll see.’ But he’s already run every possible test there is to run on me, and other than having a nasty bump on my head, he hasn’t been able find anything wrong with me. Hopefully, they’ll let me out soon. So, come on, give me some more news. I can’t tell you how boring it’s been in here.”
“I really don’t have any—Oh! Wait, I do! I saw Mandy Rider yesterday, and…” Anna paused dramatically. “She’s pregnant again.”
“Oh, yawn. I wanted juicy gossip,” Grace complained. But then she reconsidered. “Still, you just know the Wonder Twins aren’t going to cope well with a new sibling. They may even stop composing symphonies and start scribbling on the walls with crayons like normal kids. It’ll be fun to watch.”
“You’re evil.”
“I know. Have you seen Chloe? She came by this morning too.”
Anna shook her head. “I haven’t seen her since Sunday. Why, what’s going on?”
“You didn’t hear? Jesus, I’ve been in a coma, and I still have better gossip than you. Apparently, Chloe’s locked James out of the house. Is it just me, or does it seem like everyone’s marriages are suddenly imploding all over the place?”
“What, Chloe and James?” Anna asked, looking shocked. “But they seemed so sweet together.”
“Except for the part where he spent her labor and delivery passed out in the bathroom,” Grace said wryly.
“Except for that,” Anna conceded. “What happened?”
“Something about how James left the baby with a stranger while he went golfing, although I think it’s more than that. General assholery. Chloe had the locks changed on the house, and he’s been living outside.”
“What, in his car?”
“At first. But then one of their neighbors took pity on him and lent him their RV. So now he’s living in that, parked in the driveway,” Grace said. She grinned at the image.
“Is that why they have that camper in front of their town house? I noticed it on my way in to work this morning,” Anna exclaimed.
“That would be it. The Trailer of Shame.”
“Well, you have to give James credit. At least he’s not going away.”
“I didn’t know Chloe had it in her to stick to her guns. I’m actually proud of her,” Grace said.
“Like you’d ever lock Louis out of the house,” Anna scoffed.
“If he left our baby with a stranger, I damned well would,” Grace said. She rattled the ice cubes in her plastic water mug and then sipped at the straw while she eyed Anna thoughtfully. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you and the wine-store guy, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?”
“Tough talk from a woman who’s hooked up to an IV.”
“Oh, come on—please?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Anna said, and promptly belied her words by flushing bright pink.
“Uh-huh. So you slept with him, hmmm?” Grace grinned.
But Anna didn’t return her smile. She just bit her lip and looked down at her hands. “Yes, but I wish I hadn’t.”
“Oh, no. It was that bad? Like, bad-breath-and-no-foreplay bad?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. It was just bad timing for us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The whole dating-with-kids thing—it’s too complicated. More complicated than you’d think.” Anna shrugged. “I just can’t do it right now.”
“Oh, no. You’re not really going back to that whole I’m-not-going-to-date-while-Charlie-is-young thing, are you?”
“Well…yes. Pretty much.”
“Anna—” Grace shook her head, but Anna jumped in before Grace could start her lecture.
“This isn’t just paranoia. Really. I don’t know if Juliet or Chloe told you, but while I was with Noah, while we were…well, together, Charlie was over at Brad’s house, and Brad wasn’t watching him closely enough. Charlie ended up wandering out of the house. Alone. In the dark. Right near the beach. We’re lucky as hell that he didn’t go toward the water and—” But Anna couldn’t bring this thought to its terrible conclusion. She just shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.
“Juliet mentioned something about it, but I didn’t realize that Charlie was out alone at night. I thought he just went out the door for a minute.”
“Try four hours. The police came. It was awful.”
Grace gasped. “Oh, my God! Did you kill Brad?”
“I wish it were that easy,” Anna said grimly. “I think a nicely planned murder would be easier to pull off than getting his visitation revoked.”
“You’re trying to keep Brad from seeing Charlie?” Grace asked, trying not to sound as shocked as she felt. She could understand Anna’s anger, but surely this was going too far.
“I’m going to sue for full custody and to have Brad’s visitation scaled back. And I want his visits supervised.”
“Anna…”
“What?”
“I know Brad screwed up, and I know you’re angry—Christ, I’d be furious if I were you—but maybe you should think this through before you do anything drastic. You know it’s important for Charlie to have a relationship with his father.”
“Not if his father is too busy screwing some bimbo to watch him,” Anna said stubbornly. She crossed her arms in front of her. “Did Juliet tell you that part? That the reason Brad didn’t notice our two-year-old son got out of bed and let himself out the front door—the unlocked front door—is that he was upstairs getting it on with his new girlfriend? One night. He couldn’t even take one night off to spend some quality time with his son. I mean, who does that? Who lets his own child get away from him like that?”
Grace wondered if Anna would have been so angry if Brad had been distracted by a football game rather than a woman, but upon seeing the mutinous expression on her friend’s face, she refrained from sharing this insight with her.
Instead, Grace said, “Well, I did.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Molly got away from me.”
“What? When?”
“It was just after Hannah was born. Hannah had colic and was up screaming all night, and both Louis and I were dragging around like zombies right out of Night of the Living Dead.”
“I remember that. It went on for months.”
“The longest three months of my life,” Grace agreed. She plunked her water cup down on the over-the-bed table. “I’ve never been so tired. Anyway, one morning, after a particularly bad night where I hadn’t slept at all, I’d finally just gotten Hannah to fall asleep in her swing and I collapsed on the sofa. Molly was a toddler, and she was sitting at the coffee table, coloring, so I let myself close my eyes. I remember thinking, I’ll just rest for one minute—and the next thing I knew, the doorbell was ringing. It was Sandy Howard, who lives two houses down from me, bringing Molly home. While the baby and I slept, Molly had let herself out of the house and was halfway down the block when Sandy spotted her.”
“Oh, no! Grace! You never told me that!”
“I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.”
“You must have been beside yourself,” Anna said sympathetically.
Grace nodded and shuddered. “I was a mess. I felt like a complete failure as a mother. For weeks after, I had nightmares abou
t what might have happened to Molls if Sandy hadn’t seen her. She could have been hit by a car, or grabbed by some creep, or fallen into someone’s pool…”
Anna was quiet for a minute. “I know where you’re going with this. But my situation is different. Brad didn’t lose track of Charlie because he’d been up all night for months on end with a screaming baby.”
“No. He screwed up, and I’m sure he feels awful about it. But sometimes that’s what it takes. You have a close call like that and it wakes you up. That night Louis put security chains on every door in the house. And we haven’t lost one of the kids since,” Grace said, now smiling wanly. She rapped on the over-the-bed table. “Knock on wood. Or plastic. Whatever this is. Just promise me you’ll think this through before you do anything drastic, okay?”
Anna didn’t say anything for a minute, but finally she nodded and said, “Okay.”
“And remember, if you do decide to date, Charlie will be fine. Kids are adaptable.”
But Anna just shook her head and pressed her lips together in a tight line. Grace decided to change the subject.
“Back to Mandy Rider. Please tell me she looked bloated when you saw her,” Grace said, settling back against her reclined hospital bed.
Grace was finally discharged on Thursday afternoon, and she was thrilled to get home.
“Mama’s home,” she called out, dramatically throwing the front door open. Louis was following behind her, her overnight bag slung over his shoulder, being overly solicitous. He kept trying to hold on to her elbow and guide her into the house, as though she were a doddering old woman, until she finally swatted him away and said with exasperation, “Louis, let go of me! I can walk on my own.”
“Just tell me if you’re feeling dizzy again, okay?” Louis said, his face knit with concern.
“Mommy! Mommy’s home! She’s here!” Hannah and Molly came rocketing down the stairs and hurled themselves at their mother, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“Girls! Be careful with your mommy, she’s still not feeling well,” Louis said sternly.
But Grace ignored him. She swooped down and pulled both of the girls to her, breathing in their deliciously familiar smells, a combination of strawberry shampoo, girly sweat, and lavender-scented talc. They hadn’t been allowed to come see her at the hospital—which was probably just as well, Grace thought, since it might have scared them to see her so incapacitated—and she’d missed them to pieces. Five long days. It was the longest she’d ever gone without seeing her girls.
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