“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” Olivia said.
“You’re an actress so you can pretend, but everything I feel shows on my face. Truthfully, I don’t think we should leave these grounds. Someone will see you and tell that you’re here. And for all I know, my so-called family has put me on CNN. Catch the crazy woman. I’ll be turned in for a reward.”
Olivia looked around the place with its high walls. What had seemed like a sanctuary suddenly felt like a prison. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to be nice to Ray’s poor wife. This may be her last time of peace before her life falls apart. Think how you felt when you heard about Kent and Carmen.”
“Murderous.” Olivia gave her a sharp look. “But not to myself.”
“I know. Okay. Deep breath. Calm nerves. Let’s smile and be as nice as we can be, but let’s not even hint that anything is wrong. That poor, poor woman.”
“Agreed,” Elise said and they started back to the summerhouse.
Chapter Six
Kathy had never felt so excluded in her life. All morning she’d done her best to befriend the women Ray had told her were truly wonderful. “They’re very funny,” Ray said. “And we talked for hours. I told them some very private things. Those women got more out of me than Dr. Hightower ever did.”
Kathy hadn’t commented on that because he’d kept his visits to Jeanne Hightower so secret that she’d come to resent the woman. What was he talking to her about? Kathy had her hopes, but she wouldn’t be sure until he told her.
But these women! What about them had made Ray say they were so easy to talk to? She could hardly get more than ten words out of them. She’d tried to get them to leave the house and go into Summer Hill with her, but she hadn’t succeeded.
She couldn’t help but wonder if the problem was her weight. Both of them were so skinny that at any moment Kathy expected them to “suggest”—in that superior tone skinnies had perfected—that if she ate “healthy” she would, you know, lose weight. They probably thought she ate doughnuts four times a day.
This would, of course, be followed by their suggestion that she exercise, as though she sat around all day eating bonbons. Skinnies always believed they knew the answer to every weight problem. Eat less; move more. In their minds, it was oh so simple.
All this would be said while the skinnies were eating and eating, then eating some more.
And their idea of exercise was three leg lifts and a brisk walk to their car. Kathy’s favorite suggestion was that she park her car far from the store and walk. Her reply was a deadpan “Should I give up my daily three-mile jog to do this?”
Kathy had three personal trainers, one for boxing (guaranteed to make a person lose weight, ha!), one for HIIT—high intensity interval training—that had her pushing a steel sled full of forty-five-pound plates, and one for yoga (Kathy could bend over and slap her hands on the floor).
As for food, she gained on Weight Watchers, barely maintained on twelve hundred calories a day, and never lost no matter how much she moved, lifted, or stretched. Or how little she ate. Whenever a skinny followed Kathy around for a day, she’d sit down and say, “I have to have something to eat or I’m going to pass out.” Kathy was then supposed to feel sympathy for her thirty-six-inch butt.
But these women barely spoke. When they did, it was impersonal. Politely, kindly, Olivia told her the history of the estate. Elise told about River House, where Olivia was to live with her new husband, and how there was a pretty little island in front of it.
Kathy didn’t miss the fact that during this last bit the two of them were twitching with some shared secret about the island. They did not share it with her.
Olivia chatted about gardening and church, and told of a play the town had put on last summer. Elise said that in the last year she had become very interested in gardening. In fact, she’d spent hours each day just watching the plants.
Again, there were the little smiles of secrets shared. And again, Kathy was excluded. Right now the skinnies were sitting in the living room, each with a book, and silent.
Suddenly, the thought came to her that maybe the problem could be with whatever Ray had told them.
That idea nearly made her heart stop. Had he told them—please no!—about their nonexistent sex life? How women everywhere came on to him? Kathy had seen and heard a thousand versions of What’s a gorgeous guy like you doing with a fatty like her?
What could her reply be to that endless question? My father owns the company where Ray works? Perfect. That would make it clear that a hunk like Ray wasn’t passionate about a chunk like her.
What could Ray have told them? It had been odd that he’d said he was going to Virginia by himself. He liked people around him. After Ray left, his secretary, Rita, called and told her about the situation at work, and Kathy knew he had to go to Australia.
When she finally got him on the phone last night—he didn’t answer her emails, and her first two calls went to voice mail—he’d raved about the women so much that Kathy wanted to meet them. It was her idea to go to Virginia and stay for a while.
Oddly, Ray had suddenly started discouraging her visit. He’d said the house was “too small to move around in” and he disliked the grounds with an empty mansion and a wall around it. But she’d very much wanted a vacation, and he’d made the women sound fascinating.
She should have known it was too perfect to be real. Maybe these women were like so many others and had fallen for Ray. Maybe young Elise was after him. Was that why they were looking down their noses at his less-than-svelte wife?
By lunchtime, Kathy had decided to repack her bags and leave. She was used to women falling for her husband, but this was ridiculous!
“Is anyone hungry?” Olivia asked. “I am.” She was standing in the doorway, and unless Kathy missed her guess, there was pity on her face.
Kathy had had it! “Shall we order in three supersize pizzas? A slice for each of you and I’ll eat the rest of them? And let’s not forget the huge bottle of regular Coke and those cinnamon bars.” Skinny Elise was standing next to Olivia. “Better than delivery, I’ll go get them so you two won’t have to be seen with me.” She went to the stairs.
“What’s wrong?” Elise asked. “What did we do?”
It was Olivia who realized that they had unintentionally been too reserved with Kathy.
They’d not meant to, but they had excluded her. Olivia spoke loudly. “My stepson and his wife have camped out in my house at the far end of the estate. They’re planning to hit me up for money, so I don’t want them to know I’m back in town. And the police are probably after Elise, so she can’t be seen outside the grounds. That’s why we didn’t want to go into town with you.”
Kathy halted at the doorway but kept her back to them.
Olivia continued. “We were too embarrassed to tell you so we kept quiet. I apologize.”
“Me too!” Elise said. “I wanted to go shopping with you, but I’m afraid that if I use a credit card, my dad will send men after me and I’ll be put back in a loony bin.”
Kathy turned to face them.
“And if I go out,” Olivia said, “someone in town will tell my daughter-in-law, then she’ll be over here nagging me to death. And crying. I know I’ll eventually have to face up to it, but...” She shrugged.
Kathy was trying to understand what they were telling her. “You two are also patients of Dr. Hightower?”
“I am,” Elise said. “She broke me out of the mental institution where my husband, Kent, and my father had put me.”
“Jeanne got her out by hiding her in the trunk of her car,” Olivia said. “There may be legal repercussions. I’m not one of her patients but I think she arranged for me to be here.”
“Do you?” Elise asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“It’s just a theory I have and if I ever meet the woman I plan to find out.”
“She’s—” Elise began, but Kathy cut her off.