I mold my face into something that I hope resembles sympathy. Tanya’s niece needs new lungs. Doctors say she won’t survive the next year without them.
“Anyway, you know how you told me once Baxter went back to school this fall you were thinking about getting back into decorating?”
She pauses just long enough for me to nod. I don’t remember telling her as much but it’s something I could have said after a glass or two of wine.
“Well, that got me to thinking, what if you offered up some free room makeovers for the silent auction? We could take some before and after pictures at my house, or if you have a girlfriend who could use some pointers, her place. Doesn’t matter where, as long as the pictures are good because you know the people who come to these things. They spend stupid amounts of money on their homes, and I thought maybe this way, we could raise money and drum you up some business. A win-win, don’t you think?”
This. This right here is why despite all her faults, I harbor a soft spot for Tanya Lloyd. On the one hand, she lets herself into my house to ask me a question she could have easily posed by phone. It annoys the hell out of Cam, and any other day, it would annoy the hell out of me, too.
But anybody else would have marched over to ask me to donate something from Cam. A cooler filled with Lasky steaks, a dinner for twelve in the Lasky private room, a Lasky gift card.
But Tanya didn’t ask for any of that. She didn’t even hint at it. I mentioned once in passing that I missed playing with fabrics and textures and patterns, that finding the exact perfect color combination was once upon a time as satisfying to me as an orgasm. My sister would have called me shallow, my friends would have forgotten that conversation ever happened, but not Tanya. Tanya filed that little tidbit away and pulled it out not to use to her advantage—okay, maybe a little to her advantage—but also to mine.
Cam is wrong about Tanya. She can keep the key.
She grabs on to the arm I have wrapped around Baxter. “Well? What do you think?”
I think I don’t want her to leave. I think I need to figure out a way to signal for help. And if she picks up on the clues I’m about to slide into this conversation, I think I will love her forever.
“Sounds great, sign me up. Oh, and hey, did you ever ask your brother about next weekend?”
Tanya doesn’t have a brother, just three sisters who live on the outskirts of town, walking distance from where they stuck their mother in a memory care facility. That’s what she calls it, often and on repeat every time the two talk, that for the life of her she can’t understand why anybody would “stick” her in such an awful place. Tanya carries a lot of guilt for being miles away, but the point is, she has no brother.
She frowns. “My brother…”
“Yeah, he was going to come over and help Cam move the concrete table to the other side of the backyard, remember?”
“I see.” She’s puzzled, I can tell, but not quick enough to make the connection that something might be wrong. Not yet. She needs more.
I widen my eyes, flit them in the direction of the man with the gun. “Do you?”
“No, Jade. I don’t.”
I shake my head, a quick and subtle back-and-forth, were it not for the man watching from five feet away.
Don’t say it. For the love of God, keep your big mouth closed.
But Tanya Lloyd, neighborhood busybody and unsuspecting philanthropist, says the quiet part out loud: “Hon, what is going on? Because I know you know I don’t have a brother. Is everything okay?”
J A D E
5:39 p.m.
I stare at Tanya, and I don’t know how to stop this train. My little blunder with her fictional brother just now could have gotten her killed. It could still, if she doesn’t let it go.
I think about what I will do if the man comes after Tanya, how I can protect any of us with Baxter hanging from my hip. I feel the body-warmed metal of the screwdriver against the skin of my arm, painfully conscious that I’ve now got three people to worry about, three innocent bystanders to protect instead of just my two children. I need to come up with a way to reframe this battle and move it to a safer place—somewhere without the risk of collateral damage.
“Sorry, Tanya. I must be confused. I’ve just got so much on my mind, I guess I forgot.”
Tanya doesn’t seem the least bit offended. “No worries, sugar—for a minute there I was worried you were dipping into the afternoon sherry. Speaking of, did you hear? Suzanne Foster down the block just checked herself into rehab. Though I suppose nobody who’s ever been to one of her book clubs would be the least bit surprised. That woman’s liver must be big as Brazil.”