Now, trying to make small talk with Sten while dodging his wife and sipping her own margarita—she’d made a pitcher, frozen limeade, triple sec, tequila and the juice of a couple limes for the extra kick—she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel out front, which would have been Christabel. Finally. She was almost an hour late, typical of her, but why couldn’t she have been a little later, just this once?
They were on the porch, sitting at the redwood picnic table and talking about the glories of nature. Sten swirled the dregs of his drink around the bottom of the glass and showed every indication of wanting to get out of there but Carolee was still rattling things around in the house. You could smell the potatoes now, which meant it was time to put the cordon bleu on. “How you like staying out here in the woods?” he was asking in a general way, trying to be kind. “You are staying here now, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, appending a little laugh, as if to say it was as much a surprise to her as to him. “Just temporarily. For a few days, I mean. Till I sort things out with my landlady.”
“Peaceful, isn’t it? Seen any deer? Coyotes?”
She was distracted, picturing Carolee trotting out to her car with an armload of things and encountering Christabel before she could introduce her, but she wasn’t going to let it show. “One coyote,” she said, looking past Sten to the new metal door, which had been propped open with a rock. “He comes by like every night, or so far, anyway, at eight-thirty or so, right on schedule,” she said, but then she broke off and gave him her richest smile. “That’ll be my friend, Christabel?” And then, maybe because she wanted his approval or at least a little acknowledgment of common ground—two educators, three—she added, “She’s a teacher’s aide.”
16.
CHRISTABEL WAS WEARING HER black jeans, heels and a red spandex top that displayed her figure to good advantage, the sort of outfit she wore when they were going bar-hopping, which was a little puzzling because they weren’t going bar-hopping tonight, as Sara had made abundantly clear, or at least thought she had. They were going to have a homey night, drinking and laughing and eating a nice meal, and they were going to sit out here on the porch and feed the mosquitoes because Adam would definitely be more comfortable out of doors with a new person to deal with—if he stuck around, that is, and there was no guarantee of that. And while he likely wouldn’t be too thrilled to see Christabel there, whether on the porch or in the house or anywhere else, he was going to have to get used to it because she wasn’t about to give up her whole life however far this thing went. Plus—and she’d be the first to admit it—she wanted to show him off. If Christabel was jealous over the phone, just wait till she got a look at him.
Unfortunately, Christabel was out of sorts. She appeared there in the propped-open doorway with an exasperated look on her face, her lips pursed and her eyes beaming out all kinds of lethal rays that could have dissolved flesh and stone alike, because she’d been lost on a succession of dirt roads for the better part of the last hour and only found the place after stopping some old lady out walking her dog and having her draw a map on the back of a greasy McDonald’s bag. Sara didn’t know that, or not yet, but she shot her a frantic wave, in stride, hustling across the yard to intercept her and warn her about Sten and Carolee. Not that it was a huge deal or that she was apprenticing for the role of daughter-in-law or anything like that because Adam was strange and a week of hot sex didn’t make a relationship (though it was a damn good start and no denying it), but that the whole thing was awkward, her moving in and their happening to show up now of all times. Because this wasn’t really her house. And she didn’t really belong here.
Before she could warn her off, Christabel was saying, “Shit, Sara, I’ve been lost for an hour and my phone kept flashing that fucking infuriating no service light—”
“Hi,” she said, trying to smile and signal with her eyes at the same time, before turning to where Sten stood on the porch. “Sten, this is my friend I was telling you about?” Kutya surged round Christabel’s ankles, yapping out his joy as she made her introductions: “Christabel, Sten; Sten, Christabel.”
Then they were all on the porch and Sten was taking Christabel’s hand in his own and looking down the front of her blouse the way all men did when they liked what they saw, whether they were sixteen or sixty (or seventy in this case). “Nice to meet you,” Sten said, grinning like a gargoyle. He held her hand a beat too long, his eyes going from her face to her tits and back again. “I’m Adam’s father.”