I don’t join her in laughter when she bursts into a string of delighted guffaws.

“Your face,” she says. “Oh, my God, Jewelann. Girl, I might be a bitch, but I’m not that much of a bitch. I would never tell anyone about that night. Okay? Are we good?”

We are nothing close to good, but I nod. “Of course we are.”

She lifts her hand in a wave. Christian has come out of the carriage house. He stands and stares for a second or so.

“Christian!” Beth calls, waving. “Hi!”

He looks and raises a hand in Beth’s direction. “Hey, there.”

“Come on over!” Beth says.

I’m never going to like Beth.

“Another time,” he calls out in reply.

I hadn’t realized how certain I was that he was going to insist on joining us until the tension in my shoulders eases. I watch until he goes inside the carriage house. Beth is pouring more wine into her glass. Lisa is puffing on the vape pen. She doesn’t offer it to me this time, but my glass has been filled even higher.

“I’ll tell you what, though, just between the three of us.” Wine sloshes over Beth’s fingers, holding that irreplaceable, hundred dollar crystal wine glass so loosely I’m afraid she’ll drop and break it. “If you don’t want him, Jewelann, I will happily take him.”

“Beth,” Lisa says reprovingly.

“I definitely don’t want him,” I tell them both.

But I’m lying.

CHAPTER
22

“I WANT TO TALK to you about my son.” My voice is steady. Nonconfrontational. Firm.

Christian leans in the carriage house doorway, arms crossed over his chest. “I figured you would. Where’d your day drunk booze buddies go?”

“Are you going to let me in?”

He steps aside with a smile and a wave of his hand. “And here I thought you didn’t trust yourself around me alone.”

I wait until he moves far enough for me to get past him without touching him. It’s not that I don’t trust myself, or even that I don’t trust him. I just remember, that’s all. How it used to be.

Inside the living area, I stop short. My teeth shut tight on a gasp. My fists clench until I put one over my heart. It doesn’t stop the pounding there.

Everything is gone.

The brown floral couch with the wooden arms and legs, omnipresent in every single house I ever entered in the eighties. The matching wagon-wheel coffee table. The pineapple pendant lamps.

“You asshole.” I think I say this aloud, but it must only be in my head, because Christian doesn’t react.

“Looks much better, huh?” He takes a slow spin, arms out. “Next up is new flooring. There’s still something going on with the plumbing, by the way. Ken and I had a nice little talk about it when he came over.”

He sounds like he’s taunting me, trying to get me to ask what else he and my husband discussed, or at least see if I knew about that nighttime rendezvous. I can’t focus on that right now. My stuff is gone, and my heart thumps hard, and my throat closes in a panic.