I smiled at Ling Stewart as I handed a slice of pizza to a kid who had the biggest set of braces I had ever seen. Or maybe it was merely that he was small. Junior high kids were odd. Some of the girls looked like twenty-two-year-old bombshells, but the boys in the same class often resembled babies with their round faces. Or perhaps puberty hadn’t yet hit, based on how this kid looked.
“Something wrong, Cricket?” Ling asked, passing the same boy a bottled water, side-eyeing me with concern. I guess I hadn’t really said much since we’d started passing out rewards to all the honor students. Sometimes I wished we could give the pizza to the kids who didn’t do so hot on the nine weeks’ report cards. Some of them had bigger fish to fry . . . and didn’t have a mama who would write the paper for them.
“I’m fine,” I replied.
“You seem tired.”
“No. I’m fine.” I wondered if my undereye cream had failed me. Damn it. The Facebook advertisement had promised me I would look ten years younger and never again have unsightly smudges beneath my baby blues. I had ordered the product one of the foggy evenings when I had been sitting on the couch nursing my third glass of chardonnay. I also now owned the world’s softest hoodie, some deodorant that you could use everywhere on your body, and a 3D puzzle of the Tower of London. Seemed grief and wine made me trigger happy. Scott made a smart-aleck comment about the Amazon boxes on the porch and how I must be on my period when I bit his head off for saying something about my shopping spree.
As if the man would even know when my period was.
“Hmm.” Ling lifted a thin shoulder before shooting a quelling look toward her son, who was messing around with his friends, being a little irreverent for an academic scholar.
Yeah, so I had been wearing nothing but my pajamas for a week. My initial anger and determination had fizzled into something crushing that I had no control over. Luckily, Ruby and Jade—as valuable as their names—were capable of running the store through the week. Ruby seemed to understand that I needed space, though every time I spoke with her, I could sense she wanted to say more, wanted to tell me to snap out of it. Still, she’d given me breathing room on this whole cheating debacle. But that morning I had scraped myself off the couch, showered, and put on a bra so I could come to the middle school and hand out pizza to honor students. This was their reward for doing everything right. And my reward for doing everything right was a divorce staring me in the face.
Yippee.
“Cricket?” Ling queried when I went radio silent for too long.
“Seriously. I’m fine.” Ling and I had never been super close friends, but we drifted toward each other at every PTA event. Her son had started preschool with Julia Kate, and they’d tracked at the same magnet schools, sometimes in the same class, other times not. But we liked each other and had done mama wine events or charity shopping gigs together. She knew me well enough to know that I was upset. So I needed a fib. “I’m just dealing with my mother. You know how Marguerite is.”
“She’s a piece of work.”
See? Everyone knew that about my mama.
“Yeah. She’s on me about what I’m wearing to Gritz and Glitz and about sending Julia Kate to Camp Winnetonka for six weeks this summer. I’m just not willing to have my child gone for so long.”
“I understand,” Ling said, swiping a towel over the table. “Darren wanted Mitchell to go to chess camp and programming camp back-to-back. That child can’t handle being away from home for three weeks. Of course, Mitch would kill me for saying so to a friend’s mom. But he gets super homesick. And Gritz and Glitz? I’m so not going this year. I can’t stand toddling around in high heels chatting with people I don’t like. You’re a better woman than I am.”
Yeah, not so much. I didn’t like sipping bad liquor and talking about who slept with whom, either, especially since I knew I was now one of the poor clueless women. But Scott went to every charity and social event he could, hobnobbing with potential customers and drumming up business for Caddo Bank, and I had always been his partner, dressing tastefully, smiling charmingly, and doing my best to win him clients. I said the right things, sucked up to people who could make our 401(k) bigger, and played the stupid game. Scott and I were a team. Emphasis on were.
Because our dynamic duo had been split the moment I heard “cherry lube” come out of his mouth. No doubt about that.
Now I just had to figure out how to finish it. And that concept was so overwhelming that I shut down every time I thought about attorneys, divorce, and Julia Kate in therapy blaming her parents for her drug addiction or failed relationships.
I knew my life was changing, but I couldn’t embrace it.
I wanted a do-over. On exactly what, I wasn’t sure. But I didn’t want to be where I was now.
“I’m on the silent-auction planning committee, so I sort of have to go.” I conceded this with a beleaguered sigh. So she would know that’s what was bugging me. And not the fact that my whole world was upside-down.
“Guess you do.” Ling wrinkled her nose before casting another glance toward her only child.
“So, Ling, I need some advice. My grandmother gave me a classic car—a Spider Veloce—and I took it out last week to run the engine. Short story is I hit one of our infamous potholes and now I need a new tire. And a rim thingy. So do you know who works on older foreign cars?”
Ling stared out into the distance, her dark eyes unblinking. Like a prophet about to lay something down. “Take it to Roscoe’s Garage over on Seventieth. They’re the best. Tell them that Ling Stewart sent you.”
Ling’s husband owned the local BMW dealership, and the woman prided herself on knowing who to use for anything having to do with vehicles. In fact, Ling knew people who did all sorts of things—monograms, upholstery, and the best Botox for the cheapest price. The woman was a font of information times ten, which meant she would also know who might help me with my other problem.
“Cool. Oh, and, um, so while I’m getting recommendations, I have a friend—no one you know—who’s looking for a private investigator for some things that happened with her elderly parents. She wants someone discreet but someone who is very good at his or her job. Any clue? I mean, she asked me, and I really have no idea about that sort of thing.”
“A private investigator?”
Hearing Ling say that out loud sounded so tawdry. “Well, yeah, I guess. She doesn’t know if there’s something going on and doesn’t want to make waves in the extended family . . . at least not until she’s sure whatever’s happening is criminal.”
Ling handed bottles to the two kids who ran up, hands out. A chorus of thank-yous erupted before she turned to me. I folded the empty pizza box closed and set it under the table, hoping that she didn’t see through my lie. My scenario sounded legit. But maybe Ling knew about Scott. I hoped she didn’t. It would be disappointing if she did and hadn’t told me.
“I can ask Darren. He might know. Sometimes they have to repo cars and use private eyes.” Ling tilted her head and eyeballed me.
I tried not to squirm. “That would be awesome.”