Though it was nice to be home, again, returning to New York with a feeling that I hadn’t really accomplished anything didn’t put me in the best mood. Even Olivia’s baby cuddles weren’t enough to break me out of my funk. I returned to work with a caged animal under my ribs, an anger and disappointment clawing to get out.
“Good morning,” Mel said, rising from her desk to follow me into my office.
I tossed my coat across the sofa and sat at my desk to start up my computer. “What do I have today?”
She kept her gaze trained on the tablet in her hand, one finger sliding across the screen. “Not a lot. You’ve got Jason coming in to show you his September picks, and Deja wants to brainstorm our winter focus at two—”
“What happened to the meeting with the Yves St. Laurent guy?”
“Don’t worry about that. Deja has it handled,” Mel assured me.
That rage and unfairness that had tormented me since we’d returned built up in my throat in the form of a shout that I had to force down. “Excuse me?”
Mel looked up, puzzled. “She thought since you’d just be getting back today, you’d want an easy—”
“Because I can’t handle this job as well as she can. Right.” I opened a drawer and took out some paperclips, just to have a reason to angrily slam it again.
“I…don’t think that was the reason,” Mel said, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other.
Even though I knew she wasn’t the cause of all the things I felt at the moment, Deja had become the sole target of my anger. How dare she take over one of my meetings without asking, like I was so helpless that I needed training wheels or something to do my job?
“I don’t appreciate the two of you going behind my back to make changes like that,” I snapped at Mel, and got to my feet. I stomped out the door and made an immediate left into Deja’s office without knocking. Stephenie sat at Deja’s desk, glossy photos laid out in front of them. I must have looked like a sea witch or something, judging from their startled reactions.
Good. I hoped everyone would be afraid of me. Maybe then, I could get a little god damn respect around here.
Do you really deserve respect, though? I asked myself. You’re totally expendable, and you know it.
That only made me angrier, because I did know it. The magazine didn’t run itself, but it sure ran well enough without me.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, then, to Stephenie, I added, “Without an audience.”
She scrambled to collect her things and hurried out while Deja asked, “What’s going on, Sophie?”
“What’s going on?” I stepped aside so the extraneous parties could exit. Stephenie closed the door behind her with a last wary glance at me. “Well, for starters, I came in here prepared for a meeting I’m not going to.”
“Is this about the St. Laurent thing?” she asked, frowning in confusion. “I thought you would be happy that I—”
“That you what? That you don’t think I can do my job?”
“I never said that,” she insisted firmly. “Is that how you feel?”
Yes. “No. And you shouldn’t feel that way either.”
“I told you, I don’t,” she insisted firmly.
“Then, why did you swoop in and clear my schedule without asking me what I could handle or if I needed help?” I demanded.
She leaned her elbows on her desk and held her hands open. “Because I knew you were going through a rough time, and I also know that you’re kind of bad at asking for help.”
“You’re kind of bad at asking if you should give help!” I hated that the rest of the office could hear us, but I was too pissed to stop. “I am going through a rough time. But feeling useless and expendable here isn’t going to make that any better.”
“Then, stop being so fucking useless and expendable!” Deja exploded, slamming both hands on her desk.
I took a step back, staggering with shock.
“You take off whenever you want because you know I’m going to be here to run everything. Then, when you’re ready to play magazine editor, you show up and want everything your way. I’m sick of it! And I’m sick of you thinking everyone should feel bad for you when you don’t get exactly what you want. I get it. Your life is a fairytale, so it needs a villain, right? Guess what? It’s not going to be me!”
“I don’t think that about you at all!” I shouted back. “And my life isn’t a fairytale. It’s a life, just like anybody else’s.”
“If you think your life is really like anybody else’s, you’re delusional,” Deja seethed. “I have been running this place from day one, while you’ve been making out checks and patting yourself on the back. You’re off writing memoirs and taking weeks off at a time to live adventurously, and I’m supposed to share credit with you for how well this place is going? Then, I’m supposed to coddle you so you don’t feel like you’re less important than me?”
“I never asked you to coddle me!”
“No, you didn’t ask! You expected.” She jabbed a finger in the air in my direction. “I have spent my entire professional life working behind the scenes for white women so they could seem competent. I’m not doing that for you, just because we’re friends. Just because you have money.”
“Why do you have to make it about the money?” I demanded. “I never asked for it.”
“Stop talking about everything in your life like it’s something that just happens to you! You’re a victim of everything! Even the good stuff. You’ve written two bestselling books and it’s like, ‘Oh, hi, I’m Sophie, I did this thing, and I won’t take a shred of credit for it because it just happened to me. Feel sorry for me.’ Grow up. Accept responsibility for your life!”
We stared at each other in stunned silence. Deja and I had never fought before. I didn’t know how to proceed, and she didn’t look real sure, either.
One of us had to say something. I supposed I should take her advice and stop being the victim. “You’re right.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I do make myself the victim,” I went on. “And I’m not doing right by you here. I’m stepping down, effective immediately—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t pull this passive-aggressive bullshit where you’re going to leave because I said something mean to you.”
“It’s not passive-aggressive bullshit. I promise.” Not that she had any reason to believe me. Because I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t have pulled exactly that passive-aggressive bullshit before now. But she was right. My life wasn’t like anyone else’s. At the moment, it was filled with so much bullshit that my mind was constantly going in seventeen directions at once. The difference between me and everyone else was that I had the means to step back from some of them. “I’m not trying to get you to beg me to stay. If I wanted to be here, I would be here. But I’m never here. So, clearly…”
“You don’t want to be here,” she finished for me. She put her head in her hands and blew out a long breath.
“It’s nothing personal,” I rushed to assure her. “But you’re right. I do want to run off and have adventures and write books. I’ve been trying so hard to have something other than what I have, without giving anything up. But I can’t be the Sophie I was when we started this place. She doesn’t fit me.”
“She didn’t fit you the day we met,” she said, looking up to meet my eyes with a sympathetic, but ultimately fed-up expression. “She probably didn’t fit you, before.”
“I’m not sure she did,” I admitted. “I probably didn’t notice it because I don’t ever want things to change. Sometimes, we want things we can’t have. No matter how much money we’ve got.”
“Or ambition,” she added. “I don’t think you realize how…well, insulting you can be about the opportunities you have.”
“Insulting?” How had I insulted anybody? “I really try hard to act like everyone—”
“Like everyone else,” she interrupted. “That’s the problem. You’re not like everyone else. Everyone else doesn’t have billions of dollars. And you’re super bad at pretending you don’t. You’ve got that rich-people removal from reality, where you think you can be on equal footing with everyone else. And you just can’t.”
Man, did I ever feel that in the pit of my heart. But she was right, again. “It’s hard. I’m not saying that to sound like a victim. But I never thought it would be so hard to adapt. Or that adapting would take this long.”
“You’re trying to walk with your feet in two worlds. It’s not working out,” she stated, far more gently than before. “That doesn’t mean you can’t still love the people you loved before. But it’s not fair to expect us to love the fake you that you put on to feel less guilty about the advantages you have. You have to let us accept you for who you are. You have to trust that we can do that.”
I looked down at my feet in my crystal-embellished Miu Miu flats that I’d bought without worrying a bit about my credit card debt or if I really needed them in the first place. I thumped my toes on the carpet of the office that I visited rarely because my entire life didn’t depend on the success or failure of this magazine. Then, I faced the woman who’d taken our idea and actually made something of it, when I probably never would have been able to. The woman who wanted to have a child and not be constantly worried that her coworker was dragging her and the business she depended on down.
“Deja…I want to give you something.” I took a deep breath. “I want you to have Mode.”
Her sharp laugh was cut off by her own realization. “You’re not joking.”
“I’m not.” I shrugged helplessly. “You agreed—this life doesn’t fit me. And I’m not doing anything here but being in the way. I don’t need this place, anymore. So, why don’t I just hand full control over to you?”
“Because what happens if I decide to sell this place in a year, make mad profit, and you missed out, and it spoils our friendship?” she asked.
“It won’t,” I promised. “I’m not stupid. We’re going to involve lawyers and make sure neither of us gets burned. But Mode is yours. Sell it if you want to. Just not to Elwood and Stern.”
She laughed. “No, I don’t think they’re going to be very interested, anyway.”
We smiled at each other in silence for a moment, until she looked away and said, “I’m sorry for being so tough on you.”
I waved my hand. “Nah. I needed to hear that stuff.”
“I could have been nicer. I swear to god, pregnancy brain is real.”
“It so is. When Holli’s friend Alexis was pregnant, she totally forgot about getting fu—” Wait, what?
Deja’s eyes widened. “Uh.”
“You’re not…” I gestured at her midsection.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “Yes.”
“Yes, you’re pregnant?” I clarified.
Still shaking her head, she said, “I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Holli was going to tell you.”
“You didn’t mean to. You have preg—” My throat dried shut. I cleared it. “Pregnancy brain.”
Oh, my god. My best friend’s wife was pregnant? Their whole lives would change. Everything would change. God, we hardly saw each other as it was. Holli wouldn’t be able to just run over to my mom’s hot tub whenever she wanted.
“Sophie, are you okay? Because you look really pale.” Deja asked with a concerned frown.
“I’m fine,” I squeaked. “I’m just going to go call Holli.”
I hurried back to my office before Deja could demand I keep my knowledge secret. Snatching up my phone, I tapped her contact and fell back on the sofa.
She answered, “Get back to work, bitch.”
“What are you doing, right now?” I asked. I wasn’t sure “I know your wife is pregnant” was the kind of thing you blurted out over the phone.
Well, between Holli and I, it might have been a thing to blurt out over the phone. But I wasn’t taking chances.
“I’m really busy. I went to the dentist today, and I’m wiped out.” She groaned.
“What did you have done at the dentist?” I couldn’t remember her mentioning having anything serious coming up.
“Oh, just a cleaning,” she said. “It’s all that green I smoked after, what what!”
Yup, that sounded about right.
“Get your worthless stoner ass up and meet me at—” I would have normally told her to meet me at our old standby diner, DiNicio’s. But I wasn’t trying to live in the past, anymore. “You know what, meet me at my house. Bring your suit, we’ll crash Mom’s hot tub.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work today?” she asked.
I would tell her that part later. “Just get ready, I’m sending a car.”
So. I didn’t work at Mode, anymore. I had yet another fashion magazine office I needed to clean out. And a whole bunch of employees just beyond the door who’d listened to my shouting match with Deja. But for the first time in a long time, I felt like I knew exactly what I was getting into.
****
I could have waited in the city and shared the ride with Holli, but I wanted to be able to talk to Neil first. I found him in his study, “not working”.
He glanced at me briefly when I entered. “Rough two hours at the office, dear?”
“Yeah, about that.” I went to one of the red leather wing chairs by the windows. I didn’t even know why we had them. It wasn’t like Neil entertained company in this room. “We need to talk. Where’s Olivia?”
“Mariposa just took her for her nap.” Neil looked up from the screen for just a second. “One moment.”
Waiting for him to finish what he was “not working” on was like waiting for the principal to read your teacher’s report right in front of you. Which was silly of me; Neil was my husband, not an authority figure. He wasn’t going to scold me, and he couldn’t punish me. The worst thing he could be was disappointed. Or miffed that I hadn’t consulted him. I hated those possibilities, but sometimes, they were unavoidable in relationships. This wasn’t something we wouldn’t be able to get over, but I didn’t look forward to a strongly negative reaction or a possible argument.
He clicked the trackpad and swiveled his chair to face me. “Sorry. Something came up at North Star, and I had to email Geir.”
Though Neil’s brother was running their Icelandic media company and Neil was technically retired, they all still consulted each other on the running of things. “You know, for some who’s retired—”
“Yes, yes, all right,” he shushed me. “What brings you home in the middle of the day?”
“So, super weird thing.” I got to my feet and paced in front of the window. “I don’t have a job, anymore.”
“Oh?” Neil’s eyebrows rose. “As in…”
“As in I’m no longer co-editor-in-chief of Mode magazine. And after I meet with my lawyers, I won’t own it as a partnership with Deja.” I bit my thumbnail. “I’m giving it to her.”
“Giving it?” he repeated, as though I’d just spoken a foreign language. “She’s not buying you out?”
“How is she going to buy me out when I bought everything to begin with?” I stopped pacing and faced him. “I’m going to maintain some financial interest here. I’m not just throwing the money away. If Mode continues on its upward trend, it might not stay independent for long. Obviously, if a larger publication bought it, I would stand to make some pretty good money, unless I walked away entirely.”
Neil’s expression of pride made me feel sixty feet tall.
I went on, “But I’ve come to a conclusion. With Deja’s very loud, shouty help.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m not the person I used to be, before you and I got together.” I hoped I didn’t hurt his feelings saying so, but there was no other way to describe the changes I’d been ignoring. “You know how weird I’ve been about the money thing and reconciling what I came from with what I’ve got, now. And it was because I was trying to be Sophie the independent, struggling Millennial trying to get ahead, when I don’t really need to get ahead. I wasn’t running a magazine because I really wanted to. I was doing it because I felt like if I didn’t have a job or I wasn’t doing something to earn money, then I was a gold-digging jerk. But as it turns out, the thing that was making me a jerk was me not being grateful for what I have and acting like I’m in the same position as everyone around me.”
Neil nodded. “Rejecting the advantages that our money gives you was your way of apologizing for being rich.”
“Exactly.” I guess I shouldn’t have doubted that he would get it. “And it just made me look like an asshole.”
I went to his chair and plopped myself across his lap without asking, looping one arm around his neck. “You’re retired. Olivia isn’t in school, yet. We can do basically anything we want to, right now. We can run off to Venice, and I can finally see that apartment you want to sell. We can…climb a mountain or something.”
“Do you own even one pair of closed-toed shoes?” he observed dryly.
I ignored him. “It was just an idea. And, yes, of course, I own closed-toed shoes. You’ve seen them.”
“I did notice that you seemed to resent the time you missed with El-Mudad while he was here.” Neil brushed my hair behind my ear. “And you were terribly wistful about the idea of running off to the south of France with him.”
“Well, yeah,” I walked my fingers across Neil’s chest. “I love him. I want us all to be together. And as long as I’m half-heartedly chained to the magazine, that can’t happen. And it’s definitely not fair to Holli and Deja, especially now that they have a baby on the way.”
“Oh?” Neil sat up straighter, holding me by the waist so I wouldn’t topple from his lap. “When did this happen?”
“Deja accidentally spilled the beans to me. Holli doesn’t know that. I’m waiting for her to get here. She’s going to be disappointed that she didn’t get to tell me, herself.” I winced. “I guess I should have let her tell you.”
“She can tell your mother,” Neil said. “I assume you’ll be going down there to drink and smoke marijuana cigarettes.”
“Yes, Reefer Madness, that is exactly what we do,” I admitted. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”
“I have far better things to be angry about than whether an adult who does not struggle with addiction has a few beers and a joint while hot tubbing with her friends.” He laughed. “If you ever seem to have a problem or try to enable mine, I’ll say something. I’m not going to relapse because you have a two-dollar wine cooler at your mother’s house.”
“Hey, be nice.” I pushed against his chest then nuzzled my cheek against it. “Can I ask you a question?”
“No,” he whispered against my temple.
I giggled. “I’m going to, anyway. Do you think I’m a flakey kind of person?”
He took too long to answer, then said, “I don’t think flakey is a permanent state. I think you needed to find yourself, and you put off looking for longer than you should have.”
“Okay, so now I’m looking. What do I find?” That was the part I wasn’t so sure about in all of this. If I wasn’t fashion journalist Sophie, and writer Sophie felt like a fraud, who the hell was I? “We joke about it a lot, but what if I’m just a trophy wife?”
“If you were just a trophy wife, I would only love you for your tight ass and perfect breasts.” Neil bounced his knee a little, and the latter of my two good qualities jiggled a little above the neckline of my dress. He smiled at me in nothing short of adoration. “But I love everything about you. If you decided to buy a boat and sail around the world tomorrow, I would still love you as much as if you decided to stay in your pajamas all day.”
“Good, because I might actually do that tomorrow.” Self-care was going to be crucial during this weird transition period.
“As long as you don’t make it a habit. Not that your mother would let you.” Neil put on his best imitation of my mother’s Michigan accent, which was actually pretty good. “‘Are you still wearing those sweatpants? You have billions of dollars. You can’t afford real pants?’”
I snickered. “You’re terrible. But I love you.”
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I jumped up. “I bet that’s Holli. She can’t have been that far behind me.” I leaned forward to give him a kiss.
He accepted it, but then said, “No, no, I’ll come with you.”
Holli’s text read, I’m coming in, so I hope you’re naked. No sooner than we headed down the hall and toward the foyer, I heard Holli call, “Is anybody home? If nobody’s home, I’m taking stuff!”
“Hello, Holli,” Neil called, amused, as we entered the living room.
Holli came down the few steps from the foyer. “Hey, Sugar Daddy. Can I steal your wife for the evening?”
“Oh, please, take her. I beg of you,” he teased, and dodged my playful elbow to his side. “I hear congratulations are in order?”
This time, the elbow to the side was real, and he wasn’t as good at avoiding it. But I didn’t hit him too hard. “Excuse me, I was going to break it to her gently.”
“Deja told you.” Holli made a loud, prolonged noise of frustration. “I knew she would do that.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” I promised. “It was pregnan—”
“Pregnancy brain,” Holli finished for me. “So weird. So, so weird.”
“I’m sorry you weren’t the first to tell me,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her upper arm. “And I’m sorry I told Neil, too. But I didn’t tell Mom.”
“Then, we should go down there, right away,” Holli suggested. “I texted her on the way over, just to make sure she and the boy toy weren’t—” She finished her statement with the classic index-finger-through-ring-of-the-other-index-finger-and-thumb motion.
“Gross, shut up.” I turned to Neil. “Give me a kiss. And make something that high people want to eat.”
Holli and I changed into our suits and left for Mom’s house. We walked, rather than drove, and we weren’t far from the house before Holli said, “So. Does Neil know that you gave away your magazine today?”
It shouldn’t have surprised me that Deja would have already told her. If our situations were reversed with Holli and Deja’s, I wouldn’t have waited for Deja to leave the building before I called Neil. It was nice that the top was ripped off the whole can of sardines already.
“Yes,” I answered with a definite nod. “And he fully supports me.”
“I don’t,” Holli said, a hard set to her jaw. “This magazine was your dream. I don’t see why you and Deja can’t—”
“It wasn’t my dream.” There was no reason to let her go on thinking that it was or silently judging her wife over this. “It was an idea. The dream came from Deja from the ground up.”
“She said she really let you have it,” Holli said quietly.
“She did.” There was no sugar coating that. “But I deserved it. You know I did.”
Holli sighed. “Yeah. I do. She probably didn’t say anything I haven’t been wanting to say to you for a while. But you’re my friend. I don’t like other people doing my job.”
“At least, this way, there aren’t any hard feelings between you and me.”
We walked a few steps in silence before Holli asked, “But are there hard feelings between you and Deja?”
I shook my head. “No. Not really. I’m kind of grateful to her. I could have just kept going on the way I was, feeling inadequate for not putting in the work, but not wanting to put in the work because it was making me unhappy.”
“That sucks. I had no idea that’s how you felt. I just thought you needed to be on Adderall.” Holli was on that, herself, and had a bad habit of running around diagnosing everyone else. Her face lit up. “Oh, my gosh, I haven’t made a single Wilford Brimley joke, yet, today!”
Rolling my eyes, I laughed. “Let me get you your trophy. You know, you should really be worried about me. I’ve got some horrible disease.”
“Have you made your doctor appointment, yet?” she asked in what could have been a recording of my mom or Neil asking the same damn question.
“Yes, mother. I go in next week.” It felt like facing an execution. “I’m not going to be able to have any fun after all of this. It’s going to be nothing but rabbit food.”
“But you can afford the really good rabbit food,” Holli reminded me. She threw her hands out as though she were conducting an orchestra. “All the most gourmet lettuces from the most exotic gardens in the world!”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You smoked in the car on the way here, didn’t you?”
“A little,” she admitted sheepishly.
Mom already had the hot tub bubbling when we arrived, bypassing the front door to march around the side of the house and squeeze through the exquisitely manicured hedges.
“Ow, my hair!” I shrieked as it caught on a branch.
“Why don’t you just come through the house?” Mom demanded, exasperated.
“Because she never knows if she’s going to see you and your man accidentally boning again,” Holli quipped.
“Honey, the boning is never accidental,” Mom said, wiggling her eyebrows.
I made an exaggerated gagging noise.
“So, what’s the hubbub, bubs?” Mom asked as Holli and I stripped down to our swimsuits. “Why the sudden visit?”
“Because Holli has news,” I said, nodding toward her.
Holli bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m gonna be a mommy!”
“No!” Mom’s hands flew to her cheeks. “When?”
“April fourth, if the math is right,” Holli said, practically glowing with happiness.
“So, are you…” Mom asked, gesturing to Holli’s flat stomach.
She shook her head. “No. Deja is doing the heavy lifting. I just supplied the egg.”
“How nice,” Mom said, a little uncertainly, like she was afraid she would say the wrong thing. “It’s nice that you both get to…”
“To be involved in the conception and birth, like parents usually are?” I prodded.
“Yeah. That,” Mom said, a little uncertainly. She was always worried she would offend Holli inadvertently.
“So, what are you hoping for? Boy or girl?” I asked as we put our toes into the water.
“This is the part where I’m supposed to say I just want it to be healthy, right?” Holli asked.
I gave her a look. “I’m being serious.”
“Okay, seriously?” She gnawed her bottom lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want it to be. A girl? Sure, I know a lot about girls. Way more than I know about boys, since I’ve never been one. But since I am a woman, I know what it’s like to be one. And I’m not sure I want my kid to have to deal with that.”
“Fair,” I agreed, sliding into the scalding water with a little hiss at the temperature.
“On the other hand, if I have a boy, I have to teach him not to be the kind of person who treats women the way men generally treat women. How do I do that? And what if it doesn’t take?” Holli asked, a note of panic creeping into her tone.
Luckily, Mom was there to step in and, well, mom. “You’re a good person, Holli. Your kid is going to be a good person because no matter what it is, it will have been raised by parents who care about other people.”
“And you’re not going to know what it is, right away, anyhow,” I pointed out.
“That’s true,” Holli agreed, sinking down beside me. “And that’s why we’re going to let the kid take the lead. We’re going to try to raise it gender-neutral.”
“Gender-neutral?” Mom asked, popping the top off a Smirnoff Ice and stepping in. “How does that work?”
Holli shrugged. “We don’t really know, yet. I guess we’ll know when we start. But we’re not going to do the all pink fancy bows or blue and baseball bats. We’ll probably do a little of both, or none of either.”
“And no gender reveal party?” I asked hopefully. I hated the idea of those. I hated the idea of strangers celebrating somebody’s genitals.
“That is a big, big nope on that one,” Holli confirmed. “But there will be a baby shower. And I expect it to be a blowout.”
Since I was on the receiving end of Holli’s pointed finger, I kind of figured I was the person she held responsible for that. “I’ll draw up a budget.”
“Sophie’s got big news, too,” Holli said, and at my mom’s wide eyes, she added, “Not the same kind.”
“Not the same kind at all,” I emphasized. “I’m quitting the magazine.”
“Oh?” Mom asked, looking between the two of us in shock. “How will that work with Deja being pregnant?”
“I guess that’s another thing we’ll figure out when we get there,” Holli said easily, though I did wonder how she truly felt about the extra workload suddenly thrust upon her pregnant spouse.
Of course, the workload wasn’t really extra since I hadn’t been pulling my weight in the first place.
“I’m giving Deja the magazine. Kind of.” There was no need to go into all of the business side of it with Mom, when I didn’t quite understand all of it, myself. “The lawyers will work it out, but at the end of the day, I walk away jobless by choice, and Deja and Holli own a very successful fashion magazine.”
“Lawyers,” Mom said with such derision that I was surprised she didn’t cross herself and spit. “They’re not going to cause problems between you guys, are they?”
“I hope not. Since I’m not paying them to cause problems.” One thing I’d learned in my leap to the one percent was that lawyers weren’t the evil bad people that pop culture liked to depict.
“I don’t suppose I can count the magazine as your baby gift?” I asked, only to be denied by Holli’s pointed glance.
“Don’t forget the wedding shower,” Mom reminded me. “Just because we haven’t set a date doesn’t mean you have no reason to give me presents.”
“Oh, my god, did my sudden confrontation of my financial reality come with a tattoo that says ‘ATM’ across my forehead?” I snapped my fingers as I reached toward the cardboard six-pack of bottles.
Mom leaned over and grabbed one then handed it to me. “I don’t know about all that, but I did say that I hoped my kid would be richer than I was, so I could live out my golden years in peace.”
“You’re in your forties, Blanche Deveraux,” I reminded her.
“But you won’t be forever,” Holli said. “You better start making those wedding plans.”
“I know, I know.” Mom sighed. “I promise we will. But I haven’t been in a relationship for so long, it’s nice to just savor this one.” She paused at the sight of me taking a drink. “Like you better savor that. Because you’re not having more than one.”
“Uh!” I protested in as petulant a voice as possible.
“You’re diabetic, Sophie Ann. You have to start taking care of yourself,” Mom scolded.
“I am! I’m going to the doctor—”
“Before you go to the doctor, you can start.”
The problem with having a mother who used to work in a hospital was her insistence on butting into my medical life.
“Speaking of doctors,” Holli said, smoothly segueing to a topic that wouldn’t cause a huge mother-daughter blowout, “how’s the thing with your sister going?”
“Slowly.” Slower than I would have liked, but I was fast learning that what I liked and what reality was wouldn’t always reconcile just because I had money. “They’re talking about a donor chain, now. Someone donates to someone, they get someone to donate to someone else, pay it forward, that whole thing. I’ve got a full-page ad running in the Times and in the Detroit Free Press. And in basically any Elwood and Stern publication going to print this month. Neil hired a publicist, so we’re really hoping people will contact the donor registry.”
“I hope they get flooded with kidneys!” Holly exclaimed, then made a face. “Not literally. Can you imagine how wet and gooey—”
“Gross!” I shrieked.
Mom raised her voice to be heard over the mini-splash fight that ensued. “I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing for her.”
I wiped water away from my eyes. “I think it’s what anyone would do. If they could. I think we would all move the moon for our families.”
“That’s the truth,” Holli agreed.
“Well, let’s hope no further moon-moving is required of any of us for a while,” Mom said, raising her bottle as if in a toast. While nobody was close enough to clink, we all made the made the noise.