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  “What you’ve done is disgusting,” this new stranger said. “First, you completely sabotaged Susie, and now you’re trying to take down Sharon as well and send her to prison?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amanda began, but her accusers had already turned their backs and gone off in search of their children. As they turned away, Amanda heard one of their cell phones ring and couldn’t believe her ears. This mean-spirited stranger’s ring tone was set with Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel.” Oh, please! “She might want to rethink that,” Amanda said under her breath. “Maybe I’ll change mine to Guns n’ Roses’ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ or Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer.’ ” How befitting, she mused. Amanda wandered around, crushed emotionally, wondering what she had done to deserve these outbursts, looking for Will and Sarah. When she found them, and Will went into his litany of the seventy-nine reasons why Hillside Park Middle School sucked, Amanda didn’t even have the energy to tell him to quit using that word.

  Sarah had more harsh comments regarding the obesity, lethargy, and nonathleticism of her classmates, but Amanda lacked the energy to respond to her, either. She wanted to work up the strength to tell her that there were plenty of athletic children in Hillside Park, and she would find them before long, and that even a community as intellectually advanced as Hillside Park still existed in the United States, where a vast childhood obesity problem was increasing year by year. But she was just too crushed by the attacks. She dropped the children at her mother’s place and went back to the Longhorn Ball office, where she sat alone in the dark.

  Suddenly it was just all too much for Amanda—the new house, the new life, the new responsibilities of the Longhorn Ball, and the new accusations that she had done something terrible to the lives of both Susie and Sharon. She sat in her chair behind a desk that had neither computers nor phones, in an office that lacked electricity, and she put her head down on her desk and began to sob uncontrollably.

  Chapter 21

  Elizabeth, Will, and Sarah looked up with surprise from the dinner table as Amanda entered the kitchen, as dressed up as any of them could ever remember having seen her. Elizabeth suppressed a grin while Sarah and Will stared at their mother, trying to figure out why she would be so dressed up. Amanda was wearing a stunning champagne-colored Roberto Cavalli dress. “You look gorgeous, Mom,” Sarah exclaimed. Even Will couldn’t think of a clever comeback.

  “Glad to see you’re going out finally,” Elizabeth said. “I thought I was going to have to fill in for you a second time.”

  Amanda, embarrassed, turned away from her family and busily started moving dishes and plates from the sink into the dishwasher.

  “Where are you going, Mom?” Sarah asked. “Some sort of charity thing? Is it connected with the Longhorn Ball?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Elizabeth said, her grin spreading. “Your mom has to talk to one of the major donors. See if she can get him to up his donation.” She winked at her daughter.

  “That’s not true,” Will said, raising his voice. “Mom! You’re going on a date!” His tone was halfway between accusation and betrayal. Amanda could feel herself blushing, and kept herself turned away from her children.

  “Are you going on a date?” Sarah asked.

  “You’re not even technically divorced!” Will exclaimed. “I’m telling Dad!”

  That did it. “If your dad hadn’t started dating a year after we got married,” Amanda retorted, “we’d still be living in Newport Beach!” She put her hand over her eyes. “Why did I say something that stupid?”

  “It’s true,” Elizabeth told Will. “I know you love your daddy, but he was no saint. I understand you’re very angry right now, but you’ve got to let up on your mother, Will.”

  Sarah closed her eyes and put a hand in the air. “Could we just, like, slow down a little bit? I just feel like we’re getting a little too much information over here. Mommy, are you really going on a date?”

  She took a closer look at her mother. “Are your eyes red? Oh, Mommy, you look like you’ve been crying again!”

  “Yes, my eyes are red,” Amanda admitted. “And no, I’m not technically going on a date. There’s a man who gave one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Longhorn Ball. He’s the same man who—well, never mind that. When somebody gives you that much money, you have to sit down with them face-to-face and find out what their expectations are. How many Ball tickets will they want, is this to underwrite something specifically? You have to ask these questions; it’s part of your responsibility. That’s just how things work.”

  “So is it a date or isn’t it?” Will asked, getting back to the crux of the matter. He looked less like the tough guy he pretended to be and more like a little boy who suddenly realized just how shattered his world really was. Amanda turned off the water and came to the table. She put her hand on Will’s head. “Your daddy and I aren’t married anymore,” she said gently. “I wouldn’t exactly characterize tonight as a date. I’m not in a dating mood, and you’re right—technically, your father and I are not divorced. I’ve got no interest in other men. I’ve certainly got no interest in your father. But I’m not ready to be involved with anyone else. I promise you that. My primary concern is taking care of you guys.”

  Will shook his mother’s hand away. “Well then, why are you going out? Why not send Gigi?”

  Amanda thought about telling her son the truth—that she was intrigued by the extraordinary, even overwhelming generosity of the man she was going to meet tonight, and she had to satisfy her curiosity as to who would seek to give her a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car, a ninety-eight-thousand-dollar wardrobe, and a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar donation to the Longhorn Ball. Especially when it seemed that everyone in Dallas was running as far away from the Ball, and from Amanda, as they possibly could.

  “I know it’s all hard to deal with,” she told her son quietly. “Believe me, it’s hard for me, too.”

  “There must have been a reason Daddy had all those girlfriends,” the boy snapped.

  “The technical term is sex addiction,” Elizabeth cracked, only to receive an angry glare from her daughter.

  “Mother, please. Don’t make this worse than it is.”

  “Why were you crying, Mommy?” Sarah asked, touching her mother’s arm.

  “I just had a tough day, honey,” Amanda admitted with a tiny sigh. “People weren’t exactly kind to me, and they just gave me the sense that something was very wrong with me.”

  “With you? But you’re perfect! You eat red meat, but aside from that, who’s better than you?”

  Amanda could feel the tears coming again, but she forced them back, not wanting to look glassy-eyed at her first encounter with Mr. Black Mercedes.

  “Who’s sweeter than you?” Amanda asked Sarah, kissing her hair.

  “Everyone,” Will said tartly, looking like he might burst into tears, too.

  “That’s enough, Will,” Amanda said sternly. “Look. Let’s just get this straight, once and for all. I’m not going on a date. I’ve got to see a man who is donating a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Longhorn Ball. I’m going to have a drink with him or dinner or whatever, but I’m sure I’ll be back in time to tuck you guys in, say your prayers, and give you good-night kisses. Gigi’s going to stay with you and I’ll be back soon.”

  “You’re not going to spend the night with the guy, are you?” Will asked. “You’re still married.”

  Amanda looked at her son, shocked and speechless.

  “That didn’t stop your father, not for a minute,” Elizabeth told her grandson. “I don’t care how many Game Boys or Wiis your father buys you. If you’re going to be casting blame around, why don’t you keep in mind the fact that he was a serial philanderer?”

  “Mom, will you please?” Amanda demanded.

  “What’s a . . . serial philanderer?” Will asked.

  “Look it up in the dictionary,” Elizabeth told him, grabbing
another piece of fried chicken. “You’ll see his picture right there.”

  “Mom,” Amanda began, sounding exasperated, “I made up my mind when I came back here that I would do everything I could not to poison the children’s minds against their father.”

  “I never signed on for that deal,” her mother said. “From my point of view, the more poison, the better. Let ’em know the truth. Then they’ll get off your case.”

  “Will you please let me handle this my way?”

  “Suit yourself. Sooner or later, you’re going to figure out your way’s obviously not working. Where are you meeting him again?”

  “That Japanese place over off Cedar Springs. I’ve never been.”

  “A wise choice,” Elizabeth said approvingly. “Muy romantico. And muy discreet.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for this.” She got up, grabbed her purse, and kissed each of her children on the top of their heads. “Listen to Gigi,” she instructed.

  “Have a nice date,” Will called out after her. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  “Like smart off? Be disrespectful? I’m probably not likely to do that. Thanks for the advice.”

  “Love you, Mom,” Sarah said, crunching into a carrot. “If you eat the sushi, make sure it’s super-hyper-fresh.”

  “I’ll do that,” Amanda said, barely suppressing a smile. “But thanks anyway for watching them, Mom. Please, don’t say anything more about their father. I think you’ve done enough damage for one evening.”

  “I think I have at that.” Elizabeth sounded quite pleased with herself.

  “Oh, Mom.” Amanda glanced at her watch. “I’m late. Bye.”

  “Bye,” her family chorused, and she was gone.

  Heather Sappington and Sharon Peavy sat at the bar at Bob’s, watching the early dinner crowd arrive and get seated. Bob’s was the hottest singles bar in Hillside Park, offering a combination of convenience and discretion that few other bars could match. It was the darkest bar in the community, and it provided taxi service along with the opportunity to leave one’s car in the secure private parking lot until the next morning, a service that aided those whose blood alcohol levels were over the limit, as well as those who came in their own cars and went home in someone else’s.

  Heather and Sharon often joked that they had barstools named after them at Bob’s, an assertion that wasn’t that far from the truth.

  “Shouldn’t you go easy on those?” Heather said, indicating Sharon’s third double apple martini. “You didn’t even get any sleep last night. Have you eaten anything today?” I certainly haven’t eaten anything, Heather thought to herself, but the vodka soda she was sipping made for as good a dinner as any.

  “What’s the point of eating?” Sharon asked glumly. “I’m a convicted felon.”

  “Honey, honey. You’re nothing of the sort,” Heather assured her, rolling her eyes. “You had a little trouble at the store. Darlene will get it all worked out. Have you called her yet?”

  “What you call ‘a little trouble at the store,’ the district attorney calls ‘three to five years for larceny by trick.’ ” Sharon tried to surreptitiously fix her boobs for optimal cleavage, but her writhing wasn’t lost on any of the men in the bar. Her hot-pink ruffled tunic only attracted more attention. At least it was a Jil Sander—the only one she owned. “And no, I haven’t called Darlene,” she mumbled. “I’m just too embarrassed.”

  “Poor baby,” Heather comforted, chewing on her lower lip. “I still don’t understand how the whole thing happened.”

  “I told you five times,” Sharon insisted, her words slurred. “She set me up. What did I ever do to her?”

  “You were trying to destroy her socially. Maybe she caught on.”

  “It was all your idea. And I never liked it from the beginning. You pushed me into it.”

  “I did not.” Heather’s dismissal was halfhearted, though. She had pushed her friend into it, and they both knew it. Sharon glared at her cheap platform sandals. Heather busied herself fixing the strap on her deeply discounted Donna Karan halter top.

  “Where do we go from here?” Sharon said. “Do you think they’re going to make me surrender my passport?”

  “Except for Club Med in Cancun, years ago,” Heather noted, “I don’t remember you ever leaving the country. Do you even, like, have a passport?”

  “Mmm . . . not really.” Sharon stared at the mirror above the bar. “But maybe they’ll make me get one and surrender it.”

  “You’ve been watching too much CSI.”

  “The way my social life’s gone,” Sharon admitted, “those guys hollering at me from the drunk tank last night? Those were the best offers I’ve gotten in months.”

  “Poor baby.” Heather stroked Sharon’s hair. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

  “Not for Amanda,” her friend muttered darkly.

  “What do you mean?” Heather checked out a couple of men who looked to be in their early fifties at the maître d’s stand. She positioned herself more advantageously on the bar stool, seductively angling her legs to make her thighs look thinner.

  “I fixed her wagon but good,” Sharon said.

  “How?” Heather asked, only paying half attention to her friend.

  Those guys were cute. “At Bible study.”

  Heather saw the two men joined by two women who had to be ten years younger than herself and Sharon. She shook her head, disgusted. “In Bible study?” she asked, tuning back into the conversation with Sharon. “Don’t tell me you prayed for her,” she added, alluding to one of the favorite surefire methods that a very few Hillside Park women used for getting gossipy information into the public record.

  Sharon gave a self-satisfied smile. “Actually,” she said, pulling on her drink, “I prayed for myself.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?” Heather watched the older men and the younger women smiling, looking unbearably happy in general as they made their way to their table. Isn’t that nice, Heather thought bitterly, silently wishing she had a husband or boyfriend or even an underage manservant waiting back home.

  “It was so cool. I was genius!” Sharon explained. “I asked the women in Bible study to pray for me. I explained that I was the one who needed their prayers, because I had been set up so viciously after I had extended myself in true Christian fellowship to a woman who turned around and bit me like a snake. I told the whole story about the gift card, and getting arrested, and how the whole thing had been a setup from the start. Now that I think about it, Amanda was probably in with the Neiman’s security staff and the Hillside Park police from the get-go. I wish I had thought of that sooner. I could have put that into my prayer request.”

  “How did it go over?”

  “It went over perfectly.” Sharon caught the bartender’s eye, pointing to her drink.

  “Um . . . are you sure you want another one of those?”

  “Don’t worry about me, darlin’. I’m just in a celebratory mood. I might have gone to jail for a night, but Amanda’s reputation is going to be ruined forever. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

  Sharon’s cell phone rang. She fumbled in her purse, found it, and flipped it open. The screen read “unknown caller.”

  She glanced at Heather, as if to say, “I wonder who this could be.”

  “Hello?”

  “Sharon Peavy?” asked a stern-sounding male voice.

  “This is she,” Sharon said, quickly sobering up.

  “This is Detective Paul Martland of the Hillside Park Police Department.”

  Alarmed, Sharon put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s the police,” she whispered to Heather.

  “I think something of an apology is in order,” the detective began, sounding embarrassed and contrite.

  “What are you talking about? I already apologized.”

  The bartender placed a fresh double apple martini in front of Sharon, but she quickly waved it away.

  “It’s actually
. . . well, we’re the ones who need to apologize to you,” the detective continued.

  “I beg your pardon?” Sharon asked, thinking that maybe the call was a function of her alcohol intake.

  “Ma’am,” Detective Martland continued, “I’m just calling to let you know that all charges against you have been dropped.”

  “Dropped?” Sharon was stunned. She had been playing the role of Christian martyr only for a few hours and had begun to relish her status as such. Was it already being stripped away from her?

  “Did you say you’re dropping all charges?” she repeated, speaking slowly, as people who’ve had too much to drink often do—so as to keep others from recognizing just how drunk they really were.

  Heather looked baffled. “They dropped the charges?” Sharon waved a hand to silence her.

  “Why are they dropping the charges?” she asked into the phone.

  “The woman whose card it was?” Martland said, sounding uncertain, as if the story were too hard for him to believe as well. “Actually, the woman whose name was on the card. A Ms. Amanda Vaughn.”

  “I know whose name it is. Get to the point.”

  “I’m trying, ma’am. It’s a little confusing on my end. But the point is this—the security department at Neiman Marcus asked her to come to the store this morning so that she could corroborate the story. Ms. Vaughn explained that the card was not hers, that she had never seen the card before in her life, that you therefore couldn’t possibly have stolen it, and that she was not interested in testifying against you in any way, shape, or form. When the district attorney heard that, he had no choice but to drop the case. I’m sure that Neiman’s is going to work out some sort of compensation for you for the . . . inconvenience you suffered.”

  Sharon’s mouth formed a perfect O. Something she had perfected, as she had had much practice and experience.

  “Are you . . . are you there?” Martland asked. “Did we lose the connection?”