Page 52 of The Devil You Know
“Of courseBendoesn’t care what you’re wearing.” She shakes her head. “I’m talking about Dr. Handy McHandsome.”
“Handy McHandsome? You’re really running out of ideas for names to call him.”
“Stop dodging the question.” She nudges me. “You think I didn’t see the two of you sneaking out of Kirschstein’s party last week?”
A middle-aged woman clutching an aquamarine blouse gives us a scandalized look. I feel my cheeks growing warm. “He was just giving me a ride home.”
She grins. “Hey, I wouldn’t blame you. I pointed him out to Mike, and even he said he wouldn’t blame me if I wanted to hook up with him.”
“Oh my God…”
“Look,” Lisa says, “let’s go to Forever 21. We’ll get you something really cute.”
Forever 21 is Lisa’s absolute favorite store and possibly her mantra. I’ve only been inside the store a handful of times, and I always feel about twenty years too old to be shopping there. Not everyone can be forever 21.
“Ryan doesn’t really like me,” I mumble as the middle-aged woman disappears into a dressing room, although I suspect she’s probably still listening to us. “You don’t see these gorgeous nurses who are always hitting on him.”
“I do, actually,” she says. “And he doesn’t look at any of them the way he looks at you.”
“Lisa, I’mmarried.”
I hear my phone buzzing from within the dressing room. A text message. I bite my lip, wondering if it’s Ryan. He’s been texting me often enough lately that I changed my setting on the phone so that the texts don’t appear on the screen without my password being entered. The last thing I need is for Ben to see more texts from him.
But the text isn’t from him. It’s from Ben.
Really need to keep working. Can you pick up Leah?
I grit my teeth. I’ve picked up Leah every day this week so far. It’shisturn. Back when Leah was a baby, we shared drop off and pick up duties equally, but somehow since then, he’s phased out his own duties, insisting thathe’s too busy and I’m on my way home anyway. Since we moved out to the island, he practically never picks her up at all.
But I can do it. Really, what excuse do I have? Too busy shopping?
Okay,I write.
He writes back:Thanks.
I wish he’d been more effusive than that. He could have said,Thanks, Jane! You’re the best! I love you so much for doing basically all the childcare while I do crossword puzzles and eat peanut butter at home.Although it’s unlikely he would have written that.
“Are you okay?” Lisa calls to me.
I nod. “Yeah. I’ve got to pick up Leah though.”
“I thought you said it was Ben’s day.”
I shrug. “He says he can’t do it.”
Lisa raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow that is definitelynotan eyebang. “You’re being a pushover. I wouldneverlet Mike get away with that.”
I believe it. But right now, I sense the best thing is just to give in. I don’t want to deal with the consequences if I don’t.
_____
When I arrive at the preschool, Mila is waiting for me like she has something very important to tell me. I wrack my brain, trying to figure out what I did wrong—Leah isn’twearing a nightgown, I remembered to pack her lunch, and I scolded her about not writing on the wall. What am I going to get yelled at for this time?
“Jane.” Mila points her fierce round face in my direction. “There is something that I want you to see.”
Oh no. It’s more wall art. I know it.
Mila stomps across the room to where Leah is playing with her friends. She reaches out her hand and says to my daughter, “Come. We showMamanwhat you can do.”
