The Party Page 17

  What really stung was the fact that Jeff and Hannah were in cahoots together. They were a deceitful little team, keeping Kim in the dark. She could imagine how that evening had played out, could almost hear the exchange as Jeff gave Hannah the champagne.

  Don’t tell Mom. You know what she’s like.

  Hannah would have laughed. She’d totally freak out. Then she’d thank Jeff for being the cool parent, and all her sneaky little friends would agree.

  It wasn’t that Kim was jealous, exactly, but she had hoped for a different relationship with both her husband and her daughter. She couldn’t fault Hannah for her deceit; she was just a kid after all. But Kim had wanted an open, honest marriage, one where Jeff talked to her, colluded with her on issues like providing champagne to underage girls. “Just this once? Just a glass each?” Given the opportunity, Kim might have said yes. She might have said, Let me call all their parents and if they’re okay with it, so am I. Then there would be no question of their liability. But instead, Jeff and Hannah had sneaked around behind Kim’s back, laughed at Kim’s naiveté. She added chocolate chips to the mixing bowl—someone had been eating them despite the label she had affixed: FOR BAKING. DO NOT EAT. At least she still had a chance with Aidan.

  She had just taken the last tray of cookies out of the oven, when she heard a key in the lock and Hannah let herself into the house. “Hey, you,” Kim said cheerily.

  “Hey.” Hannah marched directly to the stairs, headed for her room.

  “I made power cookies,” Kim called. “They’re for Aidan’s soccer team, but I’ll leave a plate for you.”

  Hannah didn’t pause. “I’m not hungry.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Kim hurried to the foot of the staircase and spoke to her daughter’s departing back. “Stop!” Kim wasn’t entirely sure that Hannah would listen. A few months ago, she would have had no doubts, but Hannah was a different kid these days. But the girl halted and turned to face her mother. Kim had been about to launch into a stern lecture about being polite toward those who offer you fresh-baked cookies, but Hannah’s expression stopped her. Her sweet, youthful face was pale, her features contorted with anger, or grief, or both.

  “What happened, Hannah?”

  “Oh, not much,” Hannah said, aggressively sarcastic. “My boyfriend dumped me.”

  “What?” Hannah had a boyfriend? Kim had no idea. God, their relationship was even worse than she’d thought.

  “Yeah. He broke up with me because I don’t want to join in in bullying Ronni.”

  “Kids are bullying Ronni? Why?”

  “Like you care.” Hannah turned and stomped up the stairs.

  “Of course I care!” Kim cried, hurrying up after her. By the time Kim reached Hannah’s room, the girl had thrown herself onto her soft-yellow bed and covered her head with a pillow. “Why are kids bullying Ronni?”

  Hannah kept her face buried. “I don’t know. I guess because she was pretty and popular, and now she’s not.”

  “I’m sure she’s still pretty… .”

  Hannah sat up then. “Everyone says her eye looks scary. Her eye socket is like deformed.”

  “That’s unkind, Hannah.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s the truth! You’re the one who’s unkind!” She was screaming now. “Everyone’s being horrible to Ronni. They’re saying cruel and nasty things. Even her friends have turned on her. I want to be there for Ronni, but I’m not allowed!”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t allowed… .” Kim’s voice was tremulous. “It’s just … very complicated with Lisa’s lawsuit.”

  “That stupid lawsuit again.”

  “Lisa’s trying to ruin us, Hannah.”

  “And everyone at school is trying to ruin Ronni! But all you care about is money.”

  “I care about this family!”

  “No, you don’t! You and Dad hate each other!”

  “We don’t hate each other. Being married is just hard sometimes.” But it sounded unconvincing, even to Kim’s ears.

  Hannah climbed off the bed and moved toward her mom. “You care about the house, and the cars, and the stuff!” She was in Kim’s face now, screaming. “You don’t care about me! You don’t care about Ronni! You don’t care about what’s right!”

  Kim instinctively stepped back in the face of her daughter’s rage. She wasn’t afraid of Hannah, but the girl was so angry, so incensed, that Kim felt helpless. She struggled to find the right words, but no parenting manual had ever addressed the complicated scenario they now found themselves in. And what had all those carefully chosen parental platitudes gotten her? A child who lied, a child who kept secrets, a child who did not respect her mother.

  “You know where I stand,” Kim managed, her voice hoarse.

  Hannah looked at her mom with such overt contempt that it felt like a physical blow. The girl started to say something, something ugly, something horrible, something that would damage their relationship forever, but she stopped herself. Instead, Hannah burst out laughing.

  Kim stood, for several awkward seconds, until her daughter got some sort of grip on her hysteria. She glanced at Hannah’s bedside clock. “I’ve got to take Aidan to soccer. I’ll pick up some dinner on the way home.” For some reason, this set Hannah off again. She threw herself onto her bed, giggling uncontrollably. Kim left, her daughter’s inane laughter getting quieter as she hurried away.

  HILLCREST MIDDLE SCHOOL was conveniently adjacent to Hillcrest High School; Aidan would move to the larger school next year for ninth grade. Her son was waiting in the parking lot, as arranged. He barreled into the passenger seat in his soccer uniform, displaying a surprising lack of coordination for a gold-level soccer star.

  “Hey, hon.” Kim smiled at her boy. “No one else needed a ride to the game?”

  “Nah. Connor’s mom has a van and Coach Patrick took four kids.” He was already rifling in the backseat. “Do you have snacks?”

  “The power cookies are for the team. But there’s a turkey wrap and a container with apples and almonds for you.”

  As Aidan dug in the insulated bag for his sustenance, Kim eased her Audi onto the road. She treasured these moments alone with her youngest, when he wasn’t distracted by screens or friends. She liked to think Aidan valued this time, too—otherwise he could have squeezed into Connor’s mom’s van or hitched a ride with the coach.

  “How was school today?”

  “Decent,” he said, removing the whole-wheat wrap and taking a huge bite.

  “Anything exciting?”

  “Nope.”

  They drove without talking for a few minutes. Kim listened to her son chewing and the radio edit of a rap song where every third word went silent to hide the fucks and bitches and hos. Why did they bother cleaning up songs like that? There were basically no lyrics left. Kim turned down the radio, cleared her throat. “Have you seen Ronni Monroe since … the accident?”

  “Just once.”

  Kim wasn’t sure how to ask the question without sounding insensitive. But this was a teenaged boy: they personified insensitivity. “How does she look?”

  Aidan turned toward his mom, and the vexation on his face revealed how Kim had misjudged him. “Not very good. Her eye … it’s not right.”

  “It’s a glass eye, so it won’t move with the other eye. It’s just like Uncle Doug, Aunt Corrine’s first husband. He had a lazy eye.”

  “It’s not like that. Ronni’s eyelid is kind of stretched across, and you can see too much of the white part of her eye. It’s freaky.”

  Kim took a deep breath. “Hannah says the other kids are being unkind to Ronni.”

  Aidan shrugged solemnly and bit his wrap. “I heard something about that.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Some kids made a Facebook page. It had Ronni’s name with a picture of Mike Wazowski.”

  “Who’s Mike Wazowski?”

  “The monster from Monsters, Inc. The little green gu
y with one eye.”

  “Jesus Christ …” Kim knew human nature could be ugly, and teenaged human nature was the ugliest of all. People loved it when the pretty, popular, and privileged were toppled from their roost. But Ronni was maimed. She had lost an eye. Were her peers savage enough to be delighting in her misfortune? Kim’s hands trembled on the steering wheel.

  Aidan, the most sensitive member of the family, sensed his mom’s distress. “I’m sure someone’s reported it by now,” he said to console her. “It’s probably been taken down.”

  They were nearing the soccer field. Kim’s questions would go unanswered if she didn’t ask them now. “Why do you think the kids are being so mean to Ronni?”

  “I don’t know … maybe because of Lauren Ross. She’s like this power b—,” He stopped himself before he uttered the word bitch in front of his mother. “Lauren’s really popular, and people are kind of scared of her.”

  “So Lauren’s leading this vendetta against Ronni? I thought they were friends?”

  “Lauren doesn’t like her anymore or something. I don’t know… .” Aidan stared out the passenger window, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. “Ask Hannah. They’re her friends.”

  Kim pulled into the parking lot next to the soccer field. “It’s hard for Hannah to talk about it. I think she feels caught in the middle.”

  “Yeah,” her son mumbled, already opening the door before the car had come to a full stop.

  “Careful, you,” she admonished gently. “The rest of the team just got here. There’s no rush.” But Aidan was already jogging toward his teammates, shoving the last vestiges of his wrap into his mouth.

  Kim took her time following. The boys would warm up for a good twenty minutes before the game started. Gathering the plastic container of power cookies and the water bottle Aidan had left in the front cup holder, she strolled toward the team bench. She dropped the water bottle near Aidan’s running shoes and set the cookies in the designated spot near the coach’s folding chair. When Aidan was younger, moms were allowed to present the snacks at halftime, but at this age and skill level, parents were considered a distraction. Kim missed the appreciative smiles, the occasional “Thanks, Mrs. Sanders,” but she understood.

  She stood on the sideline and watched her lanky son grapevine across the field with the other boys. “Pick it up!” the coach barked. He was about Kim’s age, a stocky guy in a cap who oozed aggression. The boys tried to obey him but they were just kids growing into their man-size bodies. Kim didn’t like the coach. He was too harsh, too competitive, but Jeff said that’s what it took to win the city championship. Aidan didn’t seem to mind, so Kim shook it off.

  Her eyes followed one of the smaller boys. He was quicker and more dexterous than Aidan and the taller kids, moving with the easy coordination of the compact. It took Kim a moment to realize it was James, her friend Debs’s son. Scanning the handful of parents on the sidelines, she spotted her spin-class partner. Kim hadn’t been to SoulCycle in weeks. Since Lisa filed her lawsuit, Kim had struggled to make it to her twice-weekly Pilates sessions. She moved down the field toward her friend.

  Debs was with a couple of women who Kim didn’t know, but the taller of the two was familiar. The woman was obviously a soccer mom, and Kim was pretty sure she’d seen her at the school, too—some parents’ night or at a school play. The other woman, the stranger, looked up and spotted Kim. She muttered something to her group, and Kim felt the perceptible shift in body language. She took in Debs’s rigid posture, the way her back was purposefully angled away from Kim. It became clear: Debs knew Kim was there, and she was avoiding her.

  Kim wanted to turn and scurry back to her car, but she was practically on top of them now. It would have been too obvious, too awkward… . Her eyes darted around for another escape route, perhaps a friendly face in the crowd that could divert her attention, but there was no one. Debs turned around and feigned surprise. “Kim. Hey …” There was a hint of warmth, just enough for Kim to hope she’d read the situation wrong.

  “I wanted to come say hi,” Kim responded. “It’s been ages.”

  “Mmm, it has.” She’d imagined the warmth. “Do you know my friends Jane and Karen? This is Kim.”

  My friends Jane and Karen. The lack of identifier before Kim’s name stung, because she and Debs were friends, weren’t they? At least they had been. Maybe they weren’t deep confidantes, but they had gone for coffee, and they had shared gossip and anecdotes about marriage and raising teenagers. That’s what friends did. What they didn’t do was ignore each other just because one of them was involved in something unpleasant. But perhaps Kim was being too sensitive. Damn hormones …

  Kim turned toward Debs’s friends. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. Jane and Karen gave Kim cool, almost dismissive nods. Who were these women, and why were they being so bitchy? She tried to ignore the elevation of her heart rate: fight or flight. She politely asked, “Do you have boys on the team?”

  “My son’s number eight,” Jane offered.

  Karen, the familiar, angular one said, “Mine’s number twenty-two.”

  “Mine’s number five,” Kim offered. “The tall, awkward one.”

  Nothing. Not a comment about the typical thirteen-year-old lack of dexterity, or sons growing taller than their moms, or any of the usual parental banter. Just icy silence. “I’ve got to send some work e-mails,” Kim said lamely. “Debs, good to see you.” To the others: “Nice to meet you both.”

  “Actually, we’ve met before,” Karen said, eyes narrowed, tone truculent. “At the Literacy Foundation’s fund-raiser in January. I was with my friend Ana Pinto.”

  Shit. Ana Pinto, Marta’s mom … Kim’s mind skipped back to the Italian coffee shop where Ana had turned Kim’s simple request for support into an admission of guilt, a plot to take down Lisa, a lack of empathy for Ronni. The pieces fell into place then. Ana had poisoned this Karen person against Kim, and in turn, Karen was spewing Ana’s story to the others in the mom network. She could see it in their eyes, in the judgmental set of their chins and the tense distance they kept between them and her. Kim was guilty. Despite the police clearance, these women had made up their minds.

  There were so many things Kim could have said to defend herself, but their resolve was evident. They wanted to blame her; they wanted to hate her… . She could see how much they were enjoying it. Their schadenfreude was palpable.

  “I remember,” she managed to say. “How is Ana?”

  “She’s fine… . Trying to support Marta with all she’s been through. It was very traumatic for her.”

  “For everyone,” Kim said softly. “It’s a tragedy.”

  “It sure is,” Debs added smugly. The other women made affirmative snorting noises and turned their eyes toward the field.

  Without a word, Kim turned and headed for her car. Tears were already obscuring her vision, but she would not hurry, she would not give those bitches the satisfaction of knowing they had broken her. A whistle blew on the field and Kim glanced over through the scrim of her tears. The coach was calling the boys in for a last-minute pep talk. Aidan was jogging across the field, all his attention focused on the impending game. He didn’t notice his mother, shunned and holding back tears, on the sideline. He had probably forgotten she was even there.

  Kim got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind her. In the stuffy warmth of the Audi wagon, she let her composure go. Tears poured down her cheeks and ragged sobs shuddered through her chest. She felt so alone, so ostracized, so bullied. Bullied like Ronni. Oh God, Ronni … Kim thought about the website, about the ugliness and cruelty of adolescents. There was only one thing as mean as teenagers: soccer moms. She cried even harder.

  They would sweeten their offer to Lisa. They would make sure Ronni never wanted for anything. Her life would actually be better now than it was before the accident. Ronni may have lost her eye, but she would gain financial independence. She wouldn’t have to rely on a mother who surfed all day and thoug
ht Reiki healing was a legitimate career choice. Jeff and Kim would ensure Ronni had the financial support to create her own future. The girl just had to survive high school… .

  Kim dug in her purse for a tissue and felt the familiar rectangle of her phone. She withdrew it with a handful of crumpled Kleenexes and dropped it in her lap. As she blew her nose, Hannah’s earlier words replayed in her mind: “I want to be there for Ronni, but I’m not allowed!” Not allowed? The girl was sixteen, for Christ’s sake! She hadn’t asked permission to drink alcohol or to have a secret boyfriend, but somehow, she needed permission to support a friend?

  Kim wiped the greasy touch screen on her pants, then tapped to compose a text to her daughter.

  I’m sorry about before. Do what you think is right.

  She took a breath and hit send.

  jeff

  FIFTY-TWO DAYS AFTER

  “Did you read the RFP I sent?” Graham was standing in Jeff’s office doorway, filling it with his Australian bulk. “I need your notes ASAP.”

  Jeff looked up from his computer screen. “I’m about halfway through,” he lied. He had meant to read the document last night, but lately, he was so damned tired. “I’ll finish it tonight and get you notes for the morning.”

  “Thanks.” Graham hovered for a beat. “How are things going at home?”

  “Fine. Good.” Jeff gave Graham a dismissive smile and returned his focus to the e-mail he’d been composing. He didn’t want to get into it with Graham, or with anyone. Jeff wanted to keep his mind on work, and on his training.

  But Graham never could take a hint. He entered Jeff’s roomy office and pulled up a guest chair. “What’s going on with the lawsuit?”