track suits. We’re at her new place, the cramped apartment above The Tearoom, the shop my mother owns less than a block from Smiley’s, in the heart of our small town.
Emma and I have houses on what’s left of our dad’s old dairy farm a few miles outside of town. Mom sold off most of the property after he died, dividing among the three of us what land was left and some of the money she made. The rest she used to buy this building and a condo. Pam has a house with Keith near mine and Emma’s. It’s a gorgeous modern contemporary with granite and slate and smooth white walls. Nothing like this place, with its exposed brick and dark wood.
I wonder again how she’ll be happy here without Keith. She says she’s leaving him because she was never happy with him. This is another rare thing Rob would have agreed with her on; he used to say Pam didn’t know how to be happy.
But she does know how to shop. My fingers sink into the velour as I take the pale yellow suit from Emma. “Thanks. I’ll get dressed and be right out.”
She looks at me as if she wants to stay, maybe help me dress as though I’m a small, clumsy child. But she’s raised three of her own and two of somebody else’s; she knows when to help and when to step back and let someone go. Although she’ll stop them from making dangerous decisions, she always says that kids have to make their own mistakes to grow. She leaves and shuts the door for me.
Yellow isn’t a color I usually wear, but at the moment I can’t be picky. Outside the bathroom, my sisters have lowered their voices to whispers. I can’t hear their words, only their hushed murmuring. It takes me back to when we were younger, Emma and Pam sharing all their scandalous secrets and leaving me out.
At thirty-eight, I’m six years younger than Emma, nine younger than Pam. Back then those years had made a difference, had made me the baby, but age hasn’t mattered for a long time. With Rob gone, I’m not anyone’s baby anymore.
In case there are other guests, I raid Pam’s medicine cabinet for powder and mascara so I look passably decent. Then I rescue my underwear from the frosted suit, hurrying to dress. I fling open the door, cutting my sisters off midwhisper as they hunch over the tiny table in Pam’s kitchen. It’s only the two of them, no one else.
“I hope you haven’t canceled the party,” I say to Pam, bracing myself to face her. I expect that same tight expression of disapproval she wore over Rob’s funeral attire. Instead she’s wide-eyed with concern, the way Emma looked in Smiley’s when she helped me up.
I don’t like that any more than the pitying glances I get from people since Rob died. “The poor widow.” If they only knew how many zeroes Keith had to work with.
Pam shakes her head, then runs her fingers through her new short bob. “No. This is it. Just us.”
No other friends? But then the three of us are so close, we are as much or more friends than sisters.
I smile at her, hoping to reassure her. Then I gesture toward the stained butcher-block counter where the Lambrusco sits. “Nobody’s opened the wine?”
Three short strides bring me to the counter, where, grateful for screw caps, I open the bottle. Pam’s wineglasses are on the counter, too, a bright red bow atop them; obviously they are Emma’s gift to her. I don’t worry about washing them before I pour burgundy liquid into three. I reach over, setting a glass in front of each of my sisters on the small, cottage-blue table. Wine sloshes close to each rim as the table teeters.
Pam looks from me to the glass clutched in my hand and back, her blue eyes full of questions. Unlike Emma, who exercises tact she’s had to learn when dealing with exes, hers and his, Pam asks, “What? Looking to drown your sorrows?”
“Hell no, I’m celebrating.” I lift the glass and offer a toast to myself instead of drinking to her new life. “I kicked Kitty’s ass.”
“Massacred is more like it,” Emma mutters, just loud enough that I catch it and am reminded of the little girl shopping with her mother.
A twinge of guilt steals some of my triumph. I hope I haven’t scarred her for life. But then if this incident keeps her away from the little killer cakes, I don’t feel bad at all. In fact I feel powerful. Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels all rolled into one small package.
I can feel my smile against the rim of the glass as I take a sip. The warm, sweet wine joins the laughter bubbling inside me. “Yeah, massacred,” I gloat.
“I can’t believe you—” Pam chokes out, for maybe the first time in her forty-seven years at a loss for words.
The mayor of our town is a bachelor, so as the bank manager’s wife, Pam has been the first lady of Stanville for as many years as Keith’s held his position. She’s used to maintaining a certain level of decorum, of class, and commanding respect because of that.
That’s probably why she and Rob had always clashed. Rob never cared what people thought of him. No, that’s not true. He wanted people to think he was fun, and enjoy being around him. He just hadn’t cared whether or not they’d respected him.
I wonder how much respect Pam is going to get for leaving her husband and moving into the tiny apartment above The Tearoom. But that’s her problem.
Right now she’s worried about mine, floundering to find words to no doubt offer her infinite opinions. I’m loving this more and more.
“Yes?” I tease, knowing that somewhere Rob is giving me a thumbs-up.
“You really…”
I catch Emma’s gaze, and she starts giggling now. “Oh, yeah, she really,” she adds to the bizarre conversation, one that would cause anyone eavesdropping to think we’d had more than a sip of wine.
“But Holly, how could—”
“She snapped,” Emma says, confirming my suspicion that she had watched the whole thing.
“I snapped,” I agree wholeheartedly.
Pam finally finds her voice and an opinion. “I think you better go back to that grief counselor.”
But this is the first time in six months I feel like I don’t need counseling. Everyone else might have thought I was doing better, but I didn’t. I felt as if I was in a haze, barely able to function.
Until now. I snapped, all right—everything back into place.
The setting sun is painting the lawn gold when I pull into the driveway. I press the button for the garage door, and as it’s opening I ease the Tahoe close to the stall on my side of the garage, except now both sides are mine.
Since I loaned Rob’s ridiculous orange Beetle to Emma’s college-commuting daughter, the garage is empty when I’m not home. Except for tonight. Tonight boxes randomly dot the cement floor. I press on the brakes to keep the Tahoe from crushing them. What’s happening now?
Has Keith snapped like I did tonight? Instead of letting Pam take her sweet time moving her things out, has he flung them into boxes and parked them in my garage while he’s changing the locks on the house?
She’s my sister, and I love her. But I feel nearly as much satisfaction in that as I had in crushing the Kitty Cupcake display.
Rob had often said that Keith needed
