by Wendy Wax
“Would you like something to drink?” Bitsy asked.
“I’m fine,” Erin said. “But maybe a glass of water or juice for Susanna if you have it?” Erin’s eyes shimmered with tears that she somehow managed not to shed. As if she’d learned it was safer to keep them in. The little girl looked straight at Bitsy.
“Susanna’s a pretty name.”
“It’s from the song ‘Oh! Susanna,’” she said.
“I’ve always loved that song,” Bitsy replied. “My name’s Bitsy.”
“Like the itsy spider?” Susanna asked skeptically.
“Yes, just like that. Funny that we both have songs that go with our names, but of course mine has hand gestures, too.” Bitsy twisted her fingers in the way she’d learned when she was about Susanna’s age. The girl’s small smile felt like a major victory.
“Let me go see what’s in the refrigerator. I’ll be right back.”
On her way to the kitchen, Bitsy poked her head into June’s office and explained the situation. “I’m sorry. I know it’s after six, but I just couldn’t turn them away. They looked so . . .”
“No problem.” With her steady gaze, kind smile, and wash-and-wear red-gold hair, June Steding looked like a cross between June Cleaver and Margaret Thatcher, not at all the pit bull that Bitsy had originally been looking for. But the sole practitioner’s tenacity often allowed her to triumph over stronger, louder, more pedigreed firms. Her passion for protecting those who needed it most made her an extremely effective advocate.
Bitsy brought Susanna a juice box and a bag of Goldfish crackers, which were received as if they were a great gift. “How would you like to sit here and color while you have your snack?” Bitsy asked, presenting a coloring book and small box of crayons that were kept on hand for just these kinds of situations. “We’ll leave the office door open in case you need anything.”
Susanna nodded and was already opening the crayons as her mother mouthed a silent thank-you and followed Bitsy in to meet June Steding.
“Would you mind taking notes while Mrs. Clayton tells us why she’s here?” June asked Bitsy.
Bitsy pulled a bottled water out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Erin then took a seat and pulled out a notepad as the young mother opened the bottle and nodded her thanks.
“Mrs. Clayton?” June prompted.
“Please call me Erin.”
“All right, Erin,” June said gently. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”
Erin downed a long swig of water as if it were whiskey. “I don’t understand what happened. I mean, everything seemed fine. I . . . I thought we were happy. And then one day my husband got up and went to work and . . .” She swallowed as if the words had gotten stuck in her throat. “And he just never came home.”
Bitsy’s hand stilled. Except for the going to work part, this was exactly what had happened to her. She waited to see if Erin’s husband had left with all her money and a stripper that he had impregnated, like Bertie had.
“He emptied out our checking and savings accounts.”
Bitsy sighed as June pulled the details from Erin. Just outside the office Susanna munched the Goldfish. Bitsy was glad she couldn’t hear her mother’s words.
“Do you suspect foul play?” June asked gently.
Erin shook her head dully, and Bitsy remembered being asked this same question when Bertie first disappeared and how much she had wished she could say yes. How desperately she wanted to believe that Bertie had not chosen to leave her and steal from her. The tears Erin had been holding began to spill.
“I tried his cell phone, but it was disconnected. I tried his friends but nobody answered. Then I called his mother and she said . . .” The tears were coming faster now. June set a box of tissues in front of the crying woman. In this office tissues were a necessary and important budget item.
“She’d tried to talk him into coming back and doing the right thing. But he wouldn’t listen to her.” She pressed a balled-up tissue to her eyes. “He ran away. Like he was the only one it got to be too much for.”
In the waiting room, Susanna colored intently. Bitsy wished she had something that might drown out the horror of this too-familiar story.
“I’m two months behind on the rent. I don’t have childcare and I can’t . . . well, I can’t work because . . . I can’t leave them home alone.” There was something in Erin’s voice that indicated she’d considered this option and only recently let go of it.
Bitsy kept her head down and kept scribbling, taking down June’s suggestions, the referrals to city, county, and charitable programs, her explanations of what kinds of help each might provide.
“But can’t you just find him and make him come back?” Erin asked.
Bitsy’s heart ached at the question. She couldn’t bear to look at the young mother or the child bent over the coloring book in the waiting room as June told Erin what Bitsy already knew, that finding a deadbeat husband was one thing. Finding one with wages that could be garnished was another. And neither of those things was likely to happen before Erin and her daughters lost their home.
June spent way more time than the thirty free minutes Erin had come for. It was seven thirty when she ended the conversation.
“I’m so sorry for your trouble,” the attorney said, clasping Erin’s hand. “I promise to do everything I can to find your husband. I’ll also speak to your landlord.”
Bitsy knew the two hundred and fifty dollars in cash that was kept for emergencies had been transferred in the handshake.
“Thank you so much for your time and for offering to help.” Erin’s gratitude shone in her eyes as she released June’s hand.
“Thank you for the snack,” Susanna added. Her eyes were still far too old but there was no bitterness in them. She did not allude to or ask about her missing father. “I been thinking that my song needs hand gestures, too.”
Bitsy smiled. “Maybe you can show them to me next time.”
Bitsy stood beside June as the Claytons departed. As she watched them go, Bitsy began to relive her own abandonment. Felt that chasm of panic at losing everything.
And then, possibly for the first time, she chastised herself for making the comparison when she had a roof over her head and friends at her back, and Erin Clayton and her poor daughters did not.
* * *
• • •
“Shh . . .” Nikki held a finger to her lips as she opened the door and motioned Bitsy into the cottage. “Hold on a sec,” she said before turning and tiptoeing toward the nursery like a thief in the night. There she held her breath as she pulled the nursery door gently closed. As if waking and/or dealing with her daughters was something to be avoided at all costs. As if she, and not Luvie, had fed, bathed, and put them down to sleep in the first place.
“Tough day?” Bitsy asked.
“Not really,” Nikki said. Because despite all her protests about not needing or wanting help, she had been very careful not to come home this evening until she was sure Sofia and Gemma would be asleep. And while killing that kind of time when one did not have a job, a husband in town, or a home that needed cleaning or decorating took a good bit of energy, it simply didn’t qualify as “tough.” “But I don’t think that rules out drinking, do you?”
“Hell, no,” Bitsy said as Nikki opened a bottle of red, poured two generous glasses, then clinked her rim against Bitsy’s. “Salute!” She downed almost half of it.
“Salute.” Bitsy took a long sip.
It was only after she picked up the bottle and led Bitsy toward the sofa that she noticed the large cardboard box that now sat on the coffee table. “What’s that?”
“I brought a few of your things back from Palm Beach.”
“Things of mine?” Nikki asked, confused.
“Yours,” Bitsy said, motioning her to open it.
Nikki ran a fing
ernail under the tape and pulled open the lid. Reaching in, her hands pressed down on what felt like folded clothing wrapped in tissue paper. She leaned closer to open the top layer. The scent of Chanel No. 5 wafted upward as she pulled out a pair of paisley silk lounging pajamas.
“Oh, my God. Where did you get these?” Nikki held the flowing fuchsia pieces designed by Coco Chanel up to the light. “They were one of my first splurges.” In fact, she’d bought them the day she opened the West Coast office of Heart, Inc., the A-list dating and matchmaking service she’d created long before the Millionaire Matchmaker had copied, coarsened, then commercialized her concept.
“I bought them back when you were first selling off your vintage clothing,” Bitsy said.
Bitsy had been one of her only matchmaking clients who had not deserted her when it became known that Malcolm Dyer, whose Ponzi scheme decimated much of Palm Beach, was Nikki’s brother. For a decade and a half Bitsy’s marriage had appeared to be founded on love, not avarice.
Nikki reached back into the box and found a vintage Emilio Pucci jumpsuit. A pale blue linen Givenchy suit lay beneath it. “I thought the dress I married Joe in was the only thing you’d saved.”
Bitsy smiled. “I bought quite a few of your things. I meant to give them all back to you when the time was right.” Her smile faltered. “When everything fell apart, I forgot all about them. Eleanor Wyndham, the neighbor friend I visited over New Year’s, had bought them at auction to return to me. She thought they were mine.” Bitsy topped off their glasses.
“They are yours, you know. You’re free to sell or keep them.” Nikki reached back into the box and pulled out a Prada sundress with spaghetti straps and a flounce around the bottom. “I seriously doubt I could fit into this dress.” She glanced down at her still-bulky stomach and the breasts that had apparently not gotten the message that they no longer needed to provide nourishment.
“You will,” Bitsy said. “But I wouldn’t mind borrowing something now and again.”
A cry rose from the nursery. Nikki froze, waiting for an answering cry from twin number two. She didn’t start breathing again until there’d been a full minute of silence.
“Are you all right?” Bitsy asked, her eyes on Nikki’s face.
“Of course.” She was the luckiest woman alive, what with a husband who loved her, more help than she needed, and two beautiful, healthy babies. “Couldn’t be better.” Whatever would she have to complain about? “How about you?”
Bitsy didn’t answer immediately.
“Did something happen?” Nikki sat up.
“Well, I did have a bit of a wake-up call today,” Bitsy said. “It finally hit me that witnessing other people’s misery can be harder than living your own.”
Nikki lifted her glass to her lips and waited for Bitsy to go on, glad to have something other than her own unwarranted sense of misery to contemplate.
“A lot of the women who come through June Steding’s office are completely alone with no means of support at all. Plus, they have children they need to take care of. And debts that need to be paid. They’re completely underwater and don’t have anyone else to turn to.” Bitsy lifted her glass again. “I never thought I’d feel lucky to be poor. Well, actually, I never thought I’d be poor at all. But it’s becoming pretty clear that things could be worse.” Her smile was crooked. “I find myself wondering if Maddie would accept that as my one good thing.”
Nikki shook her head. “Unlikely. But since we’re not watching a sunset and I don’t think either of us are planning to call and ask her . . .” Nikki raised her glass. “Here’s to knowing that things can always be worse.” They drank. “And to not being the most pitiful people we know.”
“You, my friend, are not in a pitiful position.” Bitsy looked around the small living room/dining room/kitchen. Baby paraphernalia was piled in one corner. “A somewhat cramped position, maybe, but not pitiful.”
A knock sounded on the door. Nikki got up to open it.
Avery stood on the welcome mat with a large pizza box in her hands. “Anybody hungry?”
“I am! Come on in.” She stepped back so Avery could enter.
“Pizza!” Bitsy, whose former life had included a personal chef and a staff to wait on her, looked as excited as Nikki, though that might have had more to do with the change in topic than the arrival of dinner. “What kind is it?”
“Given that Avery did the ordering I’m guessing it’s topped with cheese, cheese, and . . .” Nikki sniffed theatrically. ”Cheese.”
“Very funny.” Avery set the pizza box on the dinette table and opened the lid. “There’s no such thing as a pizza with too much cheese on it. But I did get half with mushroom and pepperoni. You know, for the picky people in the group.”
“Perfect!” Bitsy grinned and moved to the table while Nikki pulled paper plates and napkins out of the cupboard then found and opened a second bottle of wine.
There was a brief silence as they chewed appreciatively.
“When’s Joe due back?” Bitsy asked as she dabbed politely at the corners of her mouth.
“He’s not sure,” Nikki replied, not understanding why each day he was gone seemed longer than the last. Small and packed as the cottage was, it often felt empty without him. Despite Bitsy’s earlier ban on the word, at the moment she was pitifully grateful not to be alone.
She could have been at Joe’s Miami house. Their Miami house. Which was far more spacious and closer to Mermaid Point. But she couldn’t follow Maddie around like some frightened child. At least the Sunshine was home base to Maddie and Kyra. They’d be back. Not to mention, Avery and Bitsy and the Franklins were here. And, of course, there was Luvie . . .
“How’s the tiny house coming?” Bitsy asked.
“Good,” Avery replied around a mouthful of cheese. “Everything’s been ordered and I’ve got a three-man crew. The space is too small for a lot of bodies. It’s going to be a quick build. I think we can have the shell complete by the end of the day tomorrow and start framing on Thursday.”
“That’s good,” Nikki offered.
“Yes, very good,” Bitsy added. “I’m pretty sure if Maddie were here it would count.”
They paused almost reverentially at the mention of Maddie. Who had always been their center.
“Has anyone heard from her or Kyra?” Avery asked.
“They haven’t even been gone three full days . . .” Nikki said, though it felt a helluva lot longer.
“Right.” Avery lowered her head and reached for a second slice of pizza. “I guess it just feels longer. Because they left first thing Sunday morning.”
“It does feel longer.” Bitsy dabbed her mouth then reached for another piece. “And quieter.”
Nikki managed not to add anything that might sound, well, pitiful. She had the girls. And Joe would be back soon.
“Yeah,” Avery said almost wistfully. “I wonder what they’re doing right now.”
“Well, I certainly hope Maddie is enjoying carnal knowledge of William Hightower,” Bitsy said with a wicked smile. “And that Kyra is busy getting to know Derek Hanson and Christian Sommersby. They were both in Daniel’s last film and they are completely and totally hot.”
They finished the second bottle and, whether it was the company or the alcohol, Nikki’s mood had begun to lift.
“Nik?”
“Hmmm?” She looked up to see Bitsy looking at her expectantly.
“I was wondering if you might be able to take a few of my shifts at the Sunshine?” Bitsy asked. She helped out as needed in the hotel office and manning the small gift shop that had been added to the lobby. “June’s trial date got moved up and she asked me to work more hours.”
“Um, sure,” Nikki said. “I’d be glad to help out.” She stood and began to clear the table. She did not add how nice it would be to have something to do other than killing tim
e and feeling guilty for allowing someone else to mother her children. Doing something productive would go a long way to making her feel less pathetic.
Twelve
Avery took the Gandy Bridge to Tampa the next evening then followed Gandy Boulevard to Bayshore, where she could catch glimpses of Tampa Bay through the keyholes in the concrete balustrade. It wasn’t the fastest route to the Hardins’ but was, in her mind, the most scenic. At the moment, she wasn’t looking for fast. She was in no hurry to find out whether Chase would be there for the dinner his father, Jeff, had invited her to, and had no idea whether he’d be happy to see her if he was.
When she arrived the garage door was closed, so she had no idea whether Chase’s truck was inside. She sat in her car for a few moments, waffling, but she’d accepted Jeff’s invitation and she was here. She was a grown-up. It was time to act like one.
She parked and walked slowly up the driveway to ring the bell. It was Chase who opened the door. The surprise that washed across his face made it clear he was not expecting her. “I’m guessing you’re not here selling magazine subscriptions.”
“Jeff invited me for dinner.”
“Oh.” He stepped aside to let her in. “That explains the sneaky smile on his face, the casserole in the oven, and the chocolate fudge cake he had me bring home from Alessi’s.”
“Sorry.” She attempted a casual shrug, but the accompanying smile felt wobbly. So did her knees. “I . . . he . . .” She cleared her throat. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Come on in.”
Her heart was actually thundering in her chest and she was having a hard time catching her breath. So what if she’d forgotten how blue his eyes were? The way a smile could light up his whole face. This was Chase. The man who would only accept all or nothing.
“Is that our guest?” Jeff’s voice reached her from the kitchen. “Bring her on in, boy. Where are your manners?”