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  Amanda, puzzled, flopped down on a couch in the living room, realizing from the stinging pain in her behind that she had seated herself on top of Will’s Game Boy, which she removed and stared at disdainfully. Children have great eye-hand coordination and the strongest thumbs in the world, she thought, but if it weren’t for skateboards, they would probably get no exercise at all.

  “Mom,” she said, turning her attention back to the phone, “I didn’t order anything from Neiman’s.”

  “I don’t know whether you ordered it or whether you went there and picked it out, but you got a bunch of stuff, and that’s that. Want me to bring it over?”

  Amanda sighed. She was about to tell her mother that she was exhausted, that it could wait until morning, and that the idea of bringing even one more material item into a house so overwhelmed with clothing, pots and pans, furniture that didn’t fit rooms, and rooms scattered with boxes would make her physically ill. But then suddenly she realized that her mother was actually trying to reach out to her, and that as tired as she was, a visit would be most welcome right now.

  “If it’s no trouble,” she said, brightening for the first time that day. She was not normally a down or depressed person. But the divorce, the move, and above all, her constant run-ins with Will had begun to take a toll.

  “Oh, it’s a bother, all right,” Elizabeth answered. “But I’ll manage it. Give me fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll need a hand,” she said, when she arrived at Amanda’s door.

  “A hand? Is there a lot of stuff?”

  Elizabeth gave her daughter a look that was both accusatory and bemused.

  “You could say that,” she said without further explanation.

  Amanda, intrigued, followed her mother out of the house, down the big lawn, and to her mother’s Range Rover. Its passenger and backseats were jammed with boxes. “What’s this?”

  “You’re not serious! The back is full, too. And this is just the first load.”

  “First load?” Amanda blinked rapidly. “What do you mean, first load?”

  “It’s going to take at least four trips for me to get everything from my house to yours. Why they couldn’t have just delivered this stuff to your house in the first place, I’ll never know.”

  “What the—” Amanda was all but speechless.

  “Are you just gonna stand there,” her mother asked, placing her hands on her hips, “or are you gonna help me unload?”

  For the next hour, mother and daughter unloaded boxes into the already overfilled living room. Every ten or fifteen minutes, Elizabeth went back home for another load. In all, thirty cartons of various sizes, shapes, and weight had arrived from the venerable Dallas department store.

  Once it was all inside, the tired women surveyed the haul. “A little retail therapy?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I swear to you, Mom,” Amanda said, staring awestruck at the boxes, “I’ve had no contact whatsoever with Neiman’s. Not today, not since I got back . . . frankly, not in the last ten years.”

  “Then where do you buy your clothes?” Elizabeth asked, genuinely confused, as if there were no other place to shop in the United States.

  “Neiman’s isn’t the only place to buy something to wear,” Amanda insisted with a roll of her eyes.

  “Well, for me it is,” Elizabeth insisted regally. “And that’s blasphemy, coming from a Texas girl!”

  They dug into the first box. It contained half a dozen Chanel dresses, each more perfect than the last. Both women gasped. This box alone had to contain twenty thousand dollars’ worth of clothes.

  “Oh my God!” Amanda uttered.

  “Un-f’ing-believable!” Elizabeth exclaimed, reeling. Amanda shot her mother a startled glance; she had never heard her mother use any expletive, in any context, ever. “Aw, for goodness’ sake,” Elizabeth said, sighing. “It’s only a word.”

  They moved on to the second box, which contained eight pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes.

  “I’ll tell you what’s so bizarre,” Amanda said, shaking her head slowly. “All these things are exactly my taste. There’s not a single thing I’d return. And they’re just the right size, too.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed as she studied her daughter. “You’re not sending all this back, are you?”

  “All of it,” Amanda answered, in a tone brooking no argument. “It doesn’t belong to me. First thing in the morning, I’m calling Neiman’s. They can send a truck and they can get all of this out of here. In fact, I wouldn’t mind it if they took another ten or twenty boxes with them,” she joked, making a sweeping gesture at all the moving boxes scattered about.

  “Amanda, are you out of your mind . . .” Elizabeth started to let her have it. But all of a sudden, she stopped. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “No, Mother, I haven’t lost my mind, but Bill certainly did his best to try and take it. Was there a card?” Amanda asked. “I’m assuming this stuff is all from Mr. Black Mercedes.”

  “If it is,” Elizabeth mused, “if you turn him down for dinner and he sends you all this stuff, what would you get if you turned him down for a weekend in Cabo? A new house?”

  “I don’t need a new house, and I don’t need boxes of stuff from Neiman’s, no matter how . . . okay, no matter how perfect it all is. I just don’t get it.” She turned directly to her mother. “Mom. If a guy is so interested in me, why can’t he just pick up the phone?”

  Elizabeth thought for a moment before, unable to resist, tearing into another box. “Maybe he’s in the CIA,” she said, removing half a dozen cashmere sweaters—and not the crummy-quality cashmere making the rounds in the last few years but the real thing, buttery soft to the touch. “And he can’t reveal his identity.” Amanda laughed. “Or the witness protection program.”

  Then they both hit on the probable real answer. “Or maybe he’s still married,” they chorused.

  The likely reality of the situation sunk in. They silently retreated to the couch, which Amanda scanned for Game Boys and other foreign objects before sitting down.

  “The whole thing is a little over-the-top,” she said.

  Elizabeth nodded, still cradling the half-dozen sweaters as if they were a small, multicolored, extremely soft child. “Surely he’s not married,” she said hopefully.

  “He’s certainly got separate bank accounts if he is,” Amanda reasoned. “I can’t see any woman standing for her husband ringing up a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of women’s clothing and accessories at Neiman’s without an explanation.”

  “On the other hand,” Elizabeth countered, “you do get the Neiman’s InCircle points. A hundred thousand points—you could really get something with that.”

  “Yeah, like a tiny piece of Waterford, as I recall,” Amanda scoffed. “Is there a card?” Amanda asked again.

  “Wait, I see one,” Elizabeth answered, producing a tiny card, which looked miniscule and ill-proportioned compared with the size of the bounty it accompanied.

  It read, in a woman’s script: “Missed you last night. How’s Friday at Javier’s, eight p.m.?”

  “Looks like a woman’s handwriting,” Elizabeth noted, scrutinizing the card. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t see a guy at the restaurant last night. Maybe there’s a woman interested in you!”

  “Oh, great! I can already hear them praying for me in Bible study over that one!” Amanda said dismissively. “I’m sure it was just one of the salesgirls who wrote the card. He probably didn’t want his handwriting as an identifier.”

  “Maybe he’s got his DNA on some of the clothes. We could take it to a lab.”

  Amanda raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t mean in a Bill Clinton sense,” Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, maybe he just touched things. When he was picking them out.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s so bizarre. He knows my taste in cars. He knows my taste in clothes. I don’t know whether to be flattered or just plain creeped out.”

  “Can’t you just ke
ep one itty-bitty sweater?” Elizabeth knew full well the answer was no.

  “No, not just one itty-bitty sweater. And don’t you be thinking about keeping one for yourself. Before you leave, I’m going to frisk you, like you were a blackjack dealer in Vegas. What came from Neiman’s goes back to Neiman’s.”

  “How did an unscrupulous woman like me ever raise such a sensible daughter like you?” Elizabeth tousled her daughter’s hair.

  “I ask myself the same question every day.”

  “How are your spirits? This move gettin’ you down?”

  Amanda glanced at her mother warily. Throughout Amanda’s entire childhood, Elizabeth had been so self-involved that any awareness of her daughter’s feelings would have come as an outrageous surprise to Amanda—as it did now.

  “To tell you the truth, Mom, it does have me down a little bit. All I have in front of me, really, is just taking care of the kids and unpacking all this . . . crap.”

  “You need something to get you out of the house. Maybe you could get involved with some charitable thing. Get on a committee or whatever.”

  Suddenly Amanda remembered the conversation she’d had earlier that day with Heather and Sharon. “Oh yeah . . . Mom, you’re not going to believe this,” she said. “But Heather Sappington and Sharon Peavy? They stopped by this afternoon. They want me to get involved with the Longhorn Ball.”

  Elizabeth, surprised, turned to study her daughter. “The Longhorn Ball! I wouldn’t go near that thing, after what Susie did to it. I don’t even think it’s going to survive.”

  “They asked me to be Chair.”

  Elizabeth looked stunned. “Why on earth would they do that? I know you’d do a fabulous job, but you’ve been out of the loop for, what is it, twelve years! Why would they ask you?”

  “Beats me,” Amanda said with a shrug. “I mean, I had the exact same reaction you did. And I also figured that between the children and the unpacking, I wouldn’t be coming up for air for a long time.”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “I told them no.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and the women sat quietly on the couch, both lost in thought.

  “It would be good for you, you know,” Elizabeth said suddenly, still stroking the cashmere sweaters.

  “What would? Being the Chair of the Longhorn Ball?”

  “After your father died,” Elizabeth said in a serious tone, “I was at my wit’s end. They came to me and asked me if I’d want to get involved with the Diamond Ball.”

  The Diamond Ball was the leading charitable organization in Dallas, run by women in their forties, fifties, and beyond. It had even more cachet in Hillside Park than did the Longhorn Ball.

  “At first, I thought it was a terrible idea,” Elizabeth continued. “I thought I just needed to mourn the loss of your father and be off by myself. It turned out that having something worthwhile to do and having those wonderful women to talk to was the best therapy I could have imagined. I think it really helped me bounce back a whole lot sooner than I might have otherwise.”

  Amanda pondered her mother’s words. “You really think I should be Chair of the Longhorn Ball?” she asked. “I’ve been away for too long, things change in twelve years.”

  “Not in Hillside Park,” Elizabeth assured her. “You’d be amazed at how little has changed. People are still people. Money is still money. The neighborhood’s still in the neighborhood.”

  Amanda let out an exhausted sigh. “I don’t know. Susie must have messed it up pretty badly if there’s not a woman in town who’s willing to take this on.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with any of that. But look at it this way. If you don’t do it, probably nobody will, and that’ll be the end of the Longhorn Ball. This’ll be a great way for you to get reacquainted with your old friends, meet the people who have moved in since you left, and generally have something to do other than just sit around this big ole house and think. That’s what I was doing after your daddy died, and it damn near drove me crazy.”

  “I understand that Susie’s husband gave pretty much every dollar they took in,” Amanda said, taking the idea seriously for the first time. “Whatever I did, it would be an improvement from last year.”

  “It’s kind of perfect,” Elizabeth noted. “There’ll be no expectations. It’s kind of a win/win proposition.”

  Amanda shrugged. “Okay, maybe you’re right. I guess I’ve lost my mind, but what the heck! It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do with my time. I know the unpacking seems like it will last forever, but I know it really won’t. And I just can’t stand the thought of being idle.”

  Elizabeth patted her daughter’s shoulder. “I think you made an excellent decision. And I’ll give you a hand with the Old Guard.”

  The Old Guard were the women Amanda’s mother’s age who served as informal but undeniable social arbiters of Hillside Park. Darlene was one of them, and so was Amanda’s mother, along with a few dozen other women, all of whom possessed great wealth, status, and indeterminate age. They ran the town.

  “I may not bring in four million like Susie did,” Amanda said, warming to the task, “but it won’t be a total disaster.”

  “It’ll be great. I know you’ll do a great job. So, why not give me just one little itty-bitty sweater as a way of saying thank you for giving you such great advice?”

  Amanda shook her head firmly. “It all goes back. If Mr. Black Mercedes, hundred-thousand-dollars-from-Neiman’s, witness protection program, CIA, married guy wants to ask me out, he can just pick up the phone like a normal person.”

  “You’re tough,” Elizabeth said admiringly.

  “Not half as tough as you are,” Amanda said with a smile.

  “I’m going home,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve got to be ready for whatever your boyfriend sends you in the morning.”

  “I’m gonna call Heather. Tell her I changed my mind. Unless she already found some other poor, unfortunate, willing victim to take the thing on.”

  Elizabeth stood to leave. “I can tell you as sure as I’m standing here,” she assured her daughter, “there’s no woman in Hillside Park foolish enough to do what you’re about to do.”

  “Guess I’m just taking one for the team then, huh, Mom?” Amanda asked playfully.

  “Guess you are at that, honey.” Then Elizabeth’s expression turned serious. “Just brace yourself, is all I’m saying.”

  Chapter 12

  Sunday morning at Hillside Park Presbyterian, Amanda had the uncomfortable feeling that people were staring at her. Every time she glanced around the sanctuary to see if anyone was indeed looking in her direction, she thought she kept catching people glancing away from her, looking down at their hymnals or otherwise pretending not to have been studying her.

  “Am I going crazy,” Amanda whispered to Elizabeth, “or are people staring at me?”

  “Even the paranoid have real enemies.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  When Amanda was growing up, her parents had always taken the family to the same restaurant, Geno’s, for brunch practically every Sunday after services, and it was to Geno’s that the family headed now. Contrary to its Italian-sounding name, the restaurant served nothing but Texas food, heavy on fried chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, fried okra, and the best chicken-fried steak north of the Guadalupe. Sunday wasn’t Sunday without peach cobbler at Geno’s. Wayne, the movie-star-handsome maître d’, who hadn’t changed in the twelve years Amanda had been gone, recognized her immediately. He ushered the family, who had not bothered to make a reservation, past dozens of other groups and couples—some of whom had been waiting a full hour to be seated. Wayne gave them the same table they had occupied throughout Amanda’s childhood.

  She had to admit, it felt great to be home. Will, staring around the restaurant, was on the verge of opening his mouth when his grandmother cut him off.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Elizabeth said sarcastically. “Th
is restaurant sucks. Am I right or am I right?”

  Will, his thunder stolen, could do nothing but nod unenthusiastically.

  “No Hooters girls to stare at, huh, little man?” Elizabeth stuck the knife in a little farther.

  “Mom, let up on him,” Amanda said, studying the menu, which hadn’t changed, except for the prices, in all the time she had been gone. “He’s just twelve.”

  “Fair enough,” Elizabeth said, studying her grandson’s shaggy blond hair and California good looks. “He’s a good-looking kid, I’ll say that.”

  “Just like his daddy,” Amanda noted with a sigh.

  “This is practically all carbohydrates and hydrogenated fats,” Sarah said disdainfully, studying the menu. “Can you get anything organic here?”

  Elizabeth stared at her granddaughter. “How old are you?”

  “Nine,” Sarah answered, confused. “Gigi, don’t you know how old I am?”

  “I never heard of organic till I was over forty,” Elizabeth said.

  “Maybe that’s why your skin is so wrinkled,” Sarah said innocently.

  Elizabeth looked furious. Amanda tried hard not to laugh.

  “They were living in a different culture,” she explained to her mother.

  “The only culture in Southern California is yogurt,” Elizabeth replied, peeved.

  Sarah, for her part, had no idea why her comment had been taken as an insult by her grandmother and as a reason for laughing by her mother. In California, or at least in Newport Beach, everybody ate organic.

  “Beef is protein,” Amanda told her daughter. “When I was growing up, I always liked to eat the pot roast at Geno’s on Sundays after church.”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose at the idea of beef. “Do they have anything here made of soy? Like the veggie burger you made me the other night?”

  “Darlin’,” Elizabeth said in a serious tone, “this here is cattle country. Please don’t say soy where anyone can hear you. Okay?”

  Sarah, bewildered, looked at her mother for clarification. Amanda just waved a hand. “Sarah, honey, things are a little different here. People pay a little less attention to what they eat or where it comes from.”