“Why?”
“Because even if you don’t see it yet, I know we have unfinished business. And I want to help, Jack. I do.”
“I don’t need help. But thank you and good luck in the future and all that crap.”
“You’re angry. I don’t blame you. Be that as it may, I’m here for the duration. Besides, it’ll give me a chance to be closer to my sister.”
Right. Frankie Boudreau, the youngest of the four Boudreau sisters, was in her final year at Cornell, getting her veterinary degree, which Jack knew quite well, since he still had the occasional dinner with his former sister-in-law.
“Well, don’t let me keep you,” he said. “Have a good night.”
“That’s fine. I...I just need to call a cab. I haven’t rented a car just yet.”
He closed his eyes briefly. Manningsport didn’t have cab service in the winter. She’d have to wait a half hour, maybe more, for one to get here from Penn Yan. “I’ll drive you. Where are you staying?”
“The Black Swan. Oh, Jack, thank you. You’re such a gentleman.”
Her suitcases were by the front door. Four in all, enough for her to stay for months. He grabbed them and went back to the truck. Hadley followed, shivering delicately. He held the door for her, the politeness ingrained.
“Thanks.” She gave him a soft smile as she climbed into the passenger seat.
Jack had a feeling his life had just gotten considerably more complicated.
“WHAT THE HELL are those?” Emmaline looked in horror at the...the...the things in Shelayne’s hands.
“Trust me,” Shelayne said. “They’re gross, but they work.”
The Bitter Betrayeds had taken her clothes shopping, because, yes, she was going to the Wedding of the Damned. Every time she thought of it, she was tempted to channel Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, but she was going.
It would be worse to stay away. Kevin would think that she still wasn’t over him. Naomi would gloat.
The thing was, way back when Emmaline and Kevin had first become friends, so had their parents, both sets so relieved their kids had found someone. When Em’s parents had divorced ten years ago (yet remained in the same house, how was that for Dysfunction with a capital D?), the Bateses and the Neals would have dinner every third Saturday of the month. They went to Alaska together and, a few years later, to Paris.
So Emmaline’s parents would be going to the wedding, as well as Angela. And if Em didn’t go, there was a strong chance that both psychologist parents would analyze her motives in front of anyone who asked, saying that Em hadn’t mustered the emotional fortitude to undertake this painful journey and find closure. Mom had already called three times this week to share her thoughts, and that would break the strongest resolve.
Allison Whitaker, unofficial leader of the Bitter Betrayeds, had leaped on the chance to avoid discussing another book no one had read and arranged an en masse shopping trip to the mall.
The Bitter Betrayed Book Club wasn’t really about reading. As the name implied, you had to have been dumped. Allison, a Southern transplant and pediatrician, had divorced her husband after he became consumed with a passion for collecting antique cookie jars “and didn’t even have the decency to turn gay, the way that hot Jeremy Lyon did.” Shelayne Schanta, the head nurse at the E.R., had been thrown over for her own aunt. Jeanette O’Rourke’s husband had impregnated a much younger woman some years back. Grace Knapton, who ran the community theater group and directed the school play, had been tricked into giving five grand to a Pakistani man she’d met online who professed to be in love with her, never to hear from him again. Granted, Grace wasn’t really bitter—she laughed about the experience more than anything. But she was gifted in the art of cocktails (her Peach Sunrises were the stuff of legend) as well as cheese puffs, so they let her join.
Clearly, going to the wedding of the man who’d made Emmaline’s membership possible was going to be discussed.
“You know what I think you should do,” Allison drawled in her glorious Louisiana accent as she fondled a black lace bra. “Put some high-test laxatives in their drinks. I can prescribe you a little something on that front, darlin’. Or, even better, cut up a jalapeño right before the reception, see, and then rub it all over your hands—” she pantomimed this action “—and then touch their eyes. Hellfire and damnation, y’all!”
“How is she gonna touch their eyes?” Shelayne asked. “But actually, Em, if you could do what Allison said, then grab his junk, that would be fantastic. We had a case in the E.R. for that last year. It was hilarious. Well, to us nurses, anyway.”
“Yeah. So tempting,” Em said, unable to tear her eyes off the package in Shelayne’s hands. “But I probably won’t.”
“Try those on, Emmaline,” Jeanette said. “I might get a pair myself.”
“Isn’t it bad enough that I had to buy a bathing suit?” Em asked.
“Mandatory water sports.” Grace clucked. “Who ever heard of such a thing at a wedding?”
“Exactly,” Emmaline said.
“Shush, child,” Allison said. “We showed you mercy by letting you get a one-piece. Now get in there and show us your boobies.”
“This is so humiliating,” Emmaline said. But she obeyed, slinking into the dressing room with her bathing suit in one hand, and the...things...in the other.
Emmaline yanked her MPD sweatshirt over her head and took off her jeans. Put on the bathing suit, which was one of those “look ten pounds lighter” types, praise Jesus. But when she’d tried it on the first time, the Bitter Betrayeds had deemed her boobage to be unremarkable. All the squeezing and squishing from the miraculous fabric apparently minimized her bust as well as her stomach.
Enter Ta-Ta Ta-Dahs.
The Ta-Ta Ta-Dahs looked like raw chicken fillets. Their purpose: to boost the girls. The breasts. Yeah.
Em opened the package and grimaced. They felt like raw chicken, too. Em sighed, then hefted her left breast and stuck the thing underneath. Flinched. It was cold. Silicone, the package said. Maybe Em would just buy regular chicken breasts. It would cost less than these. She slid the right one in and looked.
Well, well. They worked. Ta-dah indeed.
She went out to show the group.
“Hello!” Allison said. “We have liftoff, people.”
“How do they feel, Emmaline?” Grace asked.
“Disgusting. I’m changing back into my clothes now. You people have had your fun.”
A little while later, seated around a table at the Olive Garden and sucking down Peach Sunrises that weren’t nearly as good as Grace’s, Em took
