Table for Seven

WILL THOUGHT THE EVENING was going well. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Leland was clearly thrilled to have been seated between Fran and Jaime, and was basking in their joint attention. Audrey and Coop were chatting quietly over their salads, and Will, having seen his friend in action before, could tell Coop was interested. It was harder to tell with Audrey. She’d always kept her emotions contained.

Mark showed up just as they were sitting down at the table, looking fresh from the shower, his hair still damp.

“Hey, man,” Mark said, shaking Will’s hand. “Sorry, I’m late.”

“No problem,” Will said. He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was already eight. The two glasses of red wine he’d consumed before dinner had made him pleasantly light-headed.

“Sorry, Fran,” Mark said, leaning down to kiss Fran’s cheek.

“I’m not the one you’re in trouble with,” Fran said, nodding to Jaime.

Will didn’t think Jaime seemed particularly angry. She looked serenely composed, her head tilted to one side as she listened to Leland recount a story of a criminal trial he’d presided over, where the defendant—who was defending himself—had attempted to file a motion entitled “Motion to Request that the Prosecutor Go F*ck Himself.”

“What did you say?” Jaime asked. Mark leaned over to kiss his wife’s cheek. She didn’t turn away, Will noticed, but she also didn’t seem overly enthusiastic to see him.

“I denied the motion on the grounds that what it requested was physically impossible,” Leland said, and everyone laughed.

“Mark, would you like some wine?” Fran asked, as he sat in the empty seat between her and Coop.

“Yes, please,” Mark said. Fran filled his wineglass, while Jaime passed him the salad and a basket of warm rolls infused with rosemary. “I just saw Iris at our house. She was reading Logan a story and acting out all of the characters with different voices. He was mesmerized.”

“She’s glad to have the work. She was saving up for a straightening iron, but I told her she should really put the money toward the new laptop she keeps insisting she needs. She’s coming around to the idea,” Fran said. “Actually, I’m proud of her. I think it’s a sign that she might really be maturing.”

“Laptop? Is that what she told you? And you believed her?” Mark said. He took a sip of the wine. “This is good. What is it?”

Will glanced up, meeting his wife’s eyes.

“What do you mean, is that what she told us?” Will asked.

“Mark,” Jaime said warningly.

“Wasn’t I supposed to say anything?” Mark asked.

“Okay, you two, spill,” Fran said.

Will knew that, like him, his wife was running through a mental list of all of the ways a teenage girl could get into trouble with too much spending money. Drugs. Tattoos. Body piercings.

Mark shrugged. “It’s not such a big deal. She just mentioned she bought some sunglasses today.”

Will relaxed. Sunglasses were infinitely preferable to body piercings. He glanced back at his wife, but she was still frowning.

“What kind of sunglasses?” Fran asked.

“No idea,” Mark said.

Fran looked to Jaime.

“Okay, they were pretty expensive,” Jaime admitted.

“How expensive?” Fran asked.

“She got them at Nordstrom. They’re Oliver Peoples,” Jaime said, as though this explained everything. Will assumed she was talking about a brand, but he’d never heard of it. One look at his wife, however, told him that she had. Her cheeks had suddenly flushed a dark red, and her eyes were narrowed.

“How much did she spend on them?” Fran asked.

Jaime hesitated. “I really think you should talk to Iris about this. I feel like I’m tattling on her.”

“Seriously, Jaime. How much did she spend?” Fran insisted, using her Sarge voice that Will knew all too well. Jaime might as well give in now, he thought. Resistance was futile.

Jaime looked down at her plate. “I think she said they were around four hundred,” she said.

“Four hundred what? Pesos?” Will asked, blinking with confusion. Sunglasses did not cost four hundred dollars. They cost twenty dollars at Target.

“What? Did you know she was planning on buying them?” Fran exclaimed.

Will was pretty sure that it wasn’t good dinner party etiquette to interrogate your guests about extravagant purchases your daughter bought with the babysitting money they had paid her.

“Hon, why don’t we deal with this later. It’s really something we should be discussing with Iris,” Will said gently.

Fran looked at him, and, after taking a deep breath and visibly unclenching, she nodded.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, Jaime. I didn’t mean to jump all over you like that,” Fran said.

“It’s okay,” Jaime said. “I’m already dreading Ava’s teen years, and she’s not quite two.”

“Be afraid. Be very afraid,” Fran said darkly. “Practically overnight, Iris has transformed from the sweetest, most helpful, most courteous girl you would ever meet into a demon from hell, complete with retractable horns and a forked tongue.”

“She’s always very polite with me, and she’s great with the kids,” Jaime said.

“So, she’s saving the bad attitude for when she’s home? I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse,” Fran said.

“It’s better. At least when she’s home, she spends most of her time locked in her room, and only emerges at mealtimes to snarl at us,” Will said.

Fran shook her head. “Four hundred dollars on sunglasses. I’m going to kill her. Then I’m going to make her take them back.”

“Do you have children?” Jaime asked Leland.

He nodded. “Two sons. One is an attorney with the Justice Department. He lives just outside of D.C. with his wife and seventeen-year-old fraternal twins. A boy and a girl,” Leland said proudly. “And my younger son is an architect in Ohio. He’s married, too, but no kids, although I think that’s just a matter of time.”

“I don’t think I could have handled twins,” Fran said. She shot Coop a look. “And don’t make the easy joke, Coop.”

“Why are you picking on me? Mark’s the one smirking,” Coop said. He looked at Audrey, raising one eyebrow. “And just for the record, I’ve never dated twins.”

“And on that note,” Fran said, standing, “I’ll get the main course.”