They both laughed. As a stay-at-home mom, sometimes Clara struck her as … well, underutilized was the word that came to mind, though Izzy knew that was ridiculous. What more important job was there than raising children? Especially children who would grow up with a mother who could quote Alice Walker? Moms didn’t get much respect when they dedicated themselves full-time to doing it well, but if anything went wrong—even twenty-five, fifty years later—they were always the first ones blamed. Sometimes by the kids themselves.
“I’m clearly reading the wrong blogs,” Izzy said. “Glass of wine?”
“Randi, Rhoda, and Natalie are all right behind me. We’re ambushing you. Better make it a bottle.”
On cue, the doorbell chimed, and Izzy chided her heart for lifting at the sound. Their neighbor and her children were unaccounted for. This was serious stuff, not a social occasion.
But it was so nice not to be alone.
Izzy swung open the door and Rhoda stepped in, looking, as she always did, like a walking advertisement for her boutique—earthily beautiful with her hair twisted back in elaborate braids and her shoulders wrapped in a willowy pashmina. Behind her, Randi appeared cloaked in a long patchwork pullover, a finger pressed to her lips as the opposite arm flexed around the handle of an infant car seat with baby Adele asleep inside.
“She dozed off on the way home—we don’t usually close up shop so late,” she said apologetically. “Police kind of threw us off schedule…”
“Do you want to put her upstairs? Or down here in a quiet corner?”
“Maybe just in the upstairs hallway, so I can hear if she cries?”
“No problem.” Izzy was about to reach for the handle, but Randi breezed past her and up the stairs, as if they were old friends and this wasn’t her first time setting foot inside.
“Is Natalie going to be able to leave Hallie?” Rhoda asked.
Clara nodded. “Her text said she’d be over once Hallie is asleep. I know Natalie’s cautious about parenting on her own, but twelve is that borderline age of almost being allowed to stay home alone anyway—”
“And then she can babysit,” Rhoda said. “It’s going to be glorious.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes the way it usually did, though, and Clara reached out to touch her arm softly.
“I take it you—”
A soft knock on the door cut her off, and Izzy moved to answer it as Randi padded down the stairs behind her. Natalie looked the way she always did: tired but tough, even as she smiled a greeting. “I can’t stay long,” she announced loudly. “I have a test tomorrow. I’m telling all of you this so you do not under any circumstances let me stay past my bedtime.”
“Noted,” Izzy said, standing aside to let her through. “I was just going to open some wine but I also have tea, coffee, decaf…”
“It’s a math test, not a blood test,” Natalie said, grinning. “One glass won’t hurt.”
The women burst out laughing. Izzy started toward the kitchen and motioned for them to follow.
“Okay.” Clara leaned her elbows on the island as Izzy busied herself retrieving glasses and a corkscrew. “Does anyone have the slightest idea what has gone on here? Did anyone see this coming?”
They all exchanged glances, shaking their heads.
“This whole thing is surreal,” Izzy said, clunking the glasses down on the counter and going to work on the cork. “I keep waiting for some update that she’s been located, that there’s a simple explanation.”
“The idea that we seem to have been the last people to see her is making me feel guilty,” Randi said. “Like we should know something. Or, you know, was it something we said?”
“Did anything strike you guys as off?” Clara asked. “I keep racking my brain.” She accepted the glass Izzy offered her and stared intently into the wine.
“We remember the whole night exactly the same,” Rhoda said, smiling affectionately at her wife. “Except for the foggy parts—which we fail to remember exactly the same.”
“Seriously,” Natalie said. “Who put alcohol in the wine?”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one,” Izzy said, handing over the last of the glasses. “It was kind of embarrassing talking to the detective.”
“I know you’re still getting to know us, but you might have gath ered we don’t get out much,” Rhoda told Izzy as the group returned to the living room. “I swear we’re not usually such lushes.”
“At least you have the kid excuse,” Izzy said, taking a breath to steel herself as she claimed her spot on the couch. Clara sank down next to her, and Natalie perched on the opposite end. Now seemed as good a time as any to clear the air. “Me, I apparently just wait for opportunities to spill my innermost secrets to my new neighbors.” She still cringed to think of it. Hi, what’s your name again? Have I mentioned I’m in love with my brother-in-law?
“No one thought anything of it,” Clara said, smiling sympathetically. “We’re Team Izzy.”
“If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s me,” Randi said. She slid onto the oversized armchair next to her wife. “I am way more of a lightweight than I realized. I’ve been trying to behave, nursing a newborn, and I guess—”
“No one is judging you either, Ran,” Rhoda said. “You were fun! You were neighborly! You even offered to lend Izzy our tools.”
Randi burrowed into her pullover as the women burst into laughter around her, and Izzy felt some of the tension in her shoulders subside. It had been one of the evening’s more memorable moments, when Izzy had worried aloud about being in over her head with the maintenance on her house and Randi had crowed, “Don’t worry, you have lesbian neighbors! We have all the tools a single woman could ever need! And I do mean all the tools!”
“Oh, God, I was really far gone,” Randi groaned, her tone turning serious again. “I mean, I slept straight through until morning. Adele must have cried. She must have gotten hungry. She’s not even three months old! And I didn’t even hear.”
“As I think I’ve mentioned once or twice or a thousand times, I didn’t hear her either,” Rhoda said. “Maybe she didn’t cry.”
“But it’s not up to you to hear her cry! You’re not the one who’s moonlighting as a cow!”
It was clear this discussion had been ongoing between the two since Sunday morning. Clara cleared her throat. “You know, when I was pregnant with Thomas, Benny and I had this take-charge older nurse as our childbirth class instructor. There was an entire session devoted to the never-shake-a-baby lecture, and I remember her talking about how if a baby won’t stop crying and you feel like you might lose your cool, you should just put the baby in the crib and go take a shower. ‘A baby never died from crying,’ she said.” She bent to pick up a pacifier that had fallen to the carpet and handed it back to Randi with a grin. “Yours does indeed seem to have survived.”
“Thanks,” Randi said softly, tucking Adele’s Binky into her pocket. “That’s the first thing that’s made me feel better.”
“Oh, sure. She says it and you feel better!” Rhoda rolled her eyes.
“Well,” Clara said, “if it makes anyone else feel any better, I don’t think I was that far gone Saturday. And I don’t remember anything significant. Just normal stuff. Kristin being Kristin.”
“She didn’t seem too broken up about the divorce,” Izzy said. “Maybe it was somehow easier to take off rather than deal with the bullshit?”
“Uprooting the kids seems kind of drastic, though,” Rhoda said, biting her lip.
“Not to sound gossipy,” Clara said, “but did the detective tell you they aren’t Paul’s?”
“They’re not? Whose are they?”
“He said she was married before. Her first husband died.”
The women stared at her in horror. “Gosh,” Randi said. “When the twins were babies?”
“I guess they had to have been … Aaron and Abby are four, and she and Paul have lived here a couple of years at least.” She shook her head. “I felt ridiculous. I’d been going on about how Kristin and I were getting to be good friends, and then obviously had no clue about, like, this major thing. So who knows what else we didn’t know.” She stuck a finger into the blinds and closed one eye. “Seen anything over there?”
“Not a thing,” Izzy said. “I was imagining Kristin’s minivan pulling in. And then her flipping out that Paul is in her house when he doesn’t even have a key anymore.”