They both paused, as if to consider and then dismiss this thought without calling attention to its absurdity.
“I just kept thinking how we both used to be Weiss wives together,” Isabel said. “When Bill Welsh left, I really thought that was it for me and Suzanne. I didn’t think she could possibly aggravate me as much, when she was just another mom at school, as she had at Weiss. But I was naive.”
“Well,” Mina murmured.
“I used to try to be kinder. I’d try not to let her see what I thought of her. But then she’d start to talk about how smart he was, that Neanderthal son of hers, or she’d talk about some woman who wasn’t there, whose husband hadn’t been invited to the retreat that year, and how he was probably sleeping with his secretary. And I could just never be nice, not for more than ten minutes.”
Mina nodded, but didn’t speak.
“It always made me so furious, listening to her, just, savaging everyone else’s marriages,” Isabel said, softly.
“I know,” Mina said. “I know just what you mean.”
She waited in silence, waited for a cue from Isabel.
“I couldn’t be nice,” Isabel repeated.
Mina saw that it was her job to move them on from this part of the conversation.
“That isn’t what’s going on. Suzanne is far too afraid to hold on to any grudges, I promise you. I’m sure she was just worried that, if she didn’t come say hello, you’d feel snubbed.”
Isabel laughed.
“Is that where we’ve ended up?” she said. “I’m going to be worried about a snub from Suzanne Welsh?”
“Well,” Mina said, helpless.
“She asked me if we’ve heard from Kiki McGinniss,” Isabel said. “She asked if anyone knows how she and Jim are doing.”
Mina waited for more, but it seemed Isabel might actually want the question.
“Have he and Bob been in touch?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said. “I couldn’t say this to her, obviously, but how would I know? Jim hasn’t been on the phone any of the times when I’ve answered. It’s always been guys one level below. They must have spoken, since the summer. They must have still been talking after Jim had to step down. But I don’t know.” Her voice had gone suddenly taut with ill-disguised panic.
“It’s not her business,” Mina said feebly. Commenting on the status of Bob’s détente with his former best friend, the man who’d left the firm in disgrace last June, didn’t seem like something she’d be able to do without a misstep.
“Exactly,” Isabel said. “Oh, God, also. Madison says she’s going on a date with Chip Abbott?”
Her voice trailed up at the end of the sentence, like a teenager. Mina laughed and traded stories about Lacey Abbott—they agreed she seemed like a gem—and didn’t ask any more questions. Suddenly, then, they had stopped talking about Suzanne Welsh. Maybe this was how it would be; Mina wouldn’t be shut out entirely. Their friendship existing in brief bursts, like the fractured sunlight that spilled into Mina’s library in the late afternoons, winking through the branches of her trees.
Just before they hung up, Mina remembered something.
“Wait,” she said. “Suzanne Welsh, do you remember how she told you, that time—God, it must have been years ago—”
“Yes,” Isabel said, picking it up seamlessly. “How he gives her a bonus, at Christmastime? Do you know I mentioned that, right afterward, to Madison? I told her that in the elevator on our way up to the room. I thought it would make her feel better. Suzanne, waiting on the edge of her seat all December, waiting to see how much money her husband was giving her at the end of the year. And Madison already knew! Apparently, at some point, Lily told her.”
Mina felt a sharp, biting pinch at the nape of her neck.
“They talk about things like that?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said.
This was the time, Mina thought, to mention that she had seen Lily at Saks. It wasn’t even a secret. There was no information embedded there to hurt anyone; it was of absolutely no import that she’d declined to mention it at the time. But now they were actually discussing it, Suzanne, the idea that Isabel had to work to keep them on her side. Now it seemed relevant.
But then it was back, the chilled smoothness in the voice on the phone.
“I should go get dressed,” Isabel said. “Lunch with Concetta.”
“Oh, God, I completely forgot you’d agreed to do that. You really should have made him come along.”
“Yes,” Isabel said, and then the conversation was over, Mina knew it. See you soon, they told each other, and hung up.
MINA WAS IN THE PRODUCE SECTION when she saw Alexandra Barker, smelling a melon, holding it in front of her face and watching Mina from behind it.
Mina waved. Alexandra chucked the melon into her cart, waved back, and stalked around the corner into an aisle.
This was unpleasant. To be pumped for information by Alexandra Barker was bad enough; to feel that she was stalking you through the displays of misting vegetables, waiting for the moment when you might accidentally speak one of your private thoughts out loud, was much more distressing.
Mina was gathering the ingredients for Tom’s favorite pasta sauce, debating whether to use sour cream or whole milk yogurt, when she felt eyes on her once again. This time it was a guy, much younger than her. Cute, maybe, in the way young women seemed to like these days. They prized the nerdier ones, now. In Mina’s heyday, marrying a balding, slightly hook-nosed kid with glasses was considered settling, an admission of the fact that it was very difficult to find a handsome man who was also going to make the salary you’d been hoping for. Now, girls just out of school didn’t seem to like them too pretty, didn’t seem to write them off for being skinny. And certainly not for having glasses.
Of course, Mina had been grasping at whatever she could get, and had been as surprised as anyone when that turned out to be Tom.
This kid had glasses, and that coarse sort of curly hair that could look by turns adorable or distasteful, depending on the lighting and how recently he’d showered. His hairline was strong and consistent on his forehead, good for him. He had a hungry look to him, was the best way she could think to describe it. She’d noticed him a few times already in the grocery store, always somewhere in her general area, but now he seemed to be almost openly watching her. He was pretending to read the label on a carton of milk. Whatever he did for a living, she hoped it didn’t involve subtle surveillance.
She turned back to the sour cream. When she pushed her cart away, turning to leave the dairy aisle, he was suddenly right there looking at cottage cheese, and she’d rammed into his foot.
“Jesus,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “Why are you sorry? Are you all right?”
He bent over, his tight jeans looking like they might rip without warning, and massaged his ankle.
“Totally,” he said. “And also totally not your fault. I was tuned out.”
“Sure,” Mina said, resisting the impulse to reply with “totally.”