Jen sniffed. “You smell like airline coffee.”
“My seatmate spilled it over me on the plane. I’m going to shower.”
When she heard the water from the shower whoosh through the pipes, Jen sat up, scanned her phone for new texts.
The last one she’d received was Colin’s lie, from early this morning. His reply to Jen’s desperate What’s the meeting about, any idea?
IDK
She imagined Colin waiting at the doctor’s office, hunched in pain, debating how to reply to the madwoman, and finally concluding that his best bet was to go around her.
At what point had he seen the truth about them?
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“Amazing party!”
Everyone Annie had talked to in the past hour had said some version of this, and she hadn’t figured out how to respond.
Thank you didn’t feel right: she’d had nothing to do with the planning. But I had nothing to do with it had sounded defensive.
“Isn’t it?” Annie said now, and the new Cottonwood resident whose name Annie couldn’t remember smiled eagerly.
There was another dip of silence between them.
The food tent was crowded and steamy with body heat. People kept jostling past each other, and their voices blended in an angry aggressive hum that bounced off the canvas walls.
Annie’s head felt like it had been split open with the effort of the conversation with Laurel, with coming clean to Lena. She could barely think, let alone manage small talk.
But Lena had said it was all going to be fine, and Laurel was on the dance floor having what appeared to be the time of her life.
So. It was probably all going to be fine?
“Have you tried the ribs?” Annie said finally.
The last person Annie had talked to, or maybe the person before that, had been going on and on about the ribs and their tamarind glaze.
“Well no,” the woman said slowly, “because of the whole vegan thing that we just discussed.”
“Right.” Annie smacked her forehead. “Of course.”
No one else in her family seemed to have had trouble clicking into party mode.
Mike was parked by the bar, laughing with Wade Jensen. Hank was on the sushi line for the fourth time, and Laurel was on the dance floor, in the middle of a crush of her smiling and laughing and shrieking girlfriends.
Why did you think it was Bryce, Annie had asked.
You have a giant photo of him with the family pictures, Laurel had said. She’d found out through an old yearbook that he’d been a runner. She’d stalked Nan Neary at the Kingdom School, too, although she’d been too shy to approach.
Annie and Mike’s attempted explanations—that they had tried to give Laurel the best possible truth—were insufficient.
Laurel would never forgive them, their relationship had been permanently damaged, probably. Perhaps, though, based on the dancing and the shrieking, Annie could hope there hadn’t been too much damage to Laurel? Could a truly traumatized person act so happy?
But Laurel had been faking so much for months now, Annie realized with a shiver, and all alone.
First thing tomorrow, Annie was calling a therapist.
“I bet the ribs are great, though,” the new Cottonwood resident said helpfully. “All the food is amazing.”
“Me too,” Annie said quickly, and while she had meant she also bet the ribs were amazing, she’d ruined the poor woman’s generous attempt to salvage the conversation.
Through another awkward moment of silence, Annie labored to think of an appropriate question. Where was Janine?
This woman deserved Janine.
Second thing tomorrow, after the therapist call, Annie would ask Janine to track down this new resident, send along one of her welcome to the neighborhood emails with all the restaurants and hot spots.
Janine probably had one just for vegans.
Across the room, one of the Sandstone dads grabbed two mini lamb chops from a caterer’s tray. He caught Annie watching and raised one as if to say Cheers.
She turned to the new resident, was about to ask whether she’d met Janine, but the woman was gone. Annie stood alone in the center of the crowded tent, unsure where to go.
“Annie!”
It was Priya, fresh and summery in a blue floral maxidress, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. With the hand that wasn’t holding a drink, she grabbed Annie’s arm.
“This is insanity,” she said. “Follow me.”
Holding the drink aloft like a beacon, Priya led them through the tent to the Moroccan Fantasy lounge area where Deb Gallegos sat on a couch, an entire tray of appetizers on her lap. She waved cheerfully.