Part 2 (1/2)

Why had she needed a lover?

”Malcolm has been disinterested in me...”

CJ chewed the tomato, wis.h.i.+ng she didn't feel just a teensy bit gratified that Elinor's home life was not as the world had been led to presume.

Smugness was a sin, she supposed, but what the h.e.l.l. For years, CJ had wondered why Elinor had ended up with it all, when CJ had been the one who'd sacrificed everything, who'd had her art and her work but that really had been all.

The worst part was, it was her own fault.

It had started nearly three decades ago. CJ was in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne. While she was away, Elinor married Malcolm, a research scientist fresh out of medical school. Within months, Elinor gave birth to a baby girl, Janice. Hours later, however, she developed a fast infection and was rushed into surgery. A hush-hush hysterectomy followed. Then deep depression.

”She needs your help,” their father had said when he summoned CJ.

CJ went home without question. They might be different, but they were sisters.

So CJ had helped out with the baby, and with Elinor, who grieved for the other children she'd never have. She showed little interest in Janice, claiming it was too difficult to love an only child. Elinor was a twin, after all. As far as she knew, love came in twos. She told CJ and Malcolm that if only she could have one more baby, everything would be all right.

She was diagnosed with postpartum depression, though back then the condition was pretty much a mystery and there weren't many drugs that helped.

Then Elinor announced that she had a plan.

Elinor always had a plan. She was the alpha dog twin.

”We're identical,” she said to CJ. ”Our cheeks and our eyes and our smiles are the same. So is our DNA.”

If CJ had Malcolm's baby, she reasoned, it would be no different than if the baby had been in Elinor's womb.

No one would know, so whom would it hurt?

Whom, indeed.

CJ stared at her salad now, her appet.i.te suddenly gone. They'd been so young, and, of course, stupid. It had been long before technology was perfected, long before surrogate was a household word.

CJ and Malcolm would have to have s.e.x.

”Once or twice ought to do it,” Elinor had said.

It had taken eight times for CJ to get pregnant, but only once for CJ and Malcolm to fall in love. It had startled them both-horrified them, really. The only way they'd been able to rise above it had been to try and pretend it had never happened, pretend being the operative word.

Elinor and Malcolm had moved to D.C., and CJ moved with them. No one but their parents-not Alice, not Poppy-knew that the twins had switched roles for nine months.

Over the years the lie grew familiar, if not comfortable. Afraid there would always be sparks between Malcolm and her, CJ became adept at dodging family parties and holidays. It was stressful and painful and just plain depressing. But each time CJ looked at Jonas, each time she witnessed the product their love had wrought, she couldn't say she was sorry.

But now, if Malcolm was disinterested in Elinor-as shamefully gratifying as it felt-did it mean the worst thing CJ could imagine: that Malcolm had found someone else?

Five.

Alice's daughter, Felicity, was twenty-five, too old to be s...o...b..arding in Utah, where she lived off-season in a yurt. On the other hand, Alice's other daughter, Melissa, was twenty-seven, not old enough to be the mother of three, the oldest of whom was Kiley Kate. Like Elinor and Malcolm, Alice and Neal had married so young that the lives they now lived seemed too old for them.

Maybe that was why Elinor had sought distraction elsewhere: She'd been suffocating as a New-York-to-Was.h.i.+ngton wife.

Maybe that-not roller-coastering estrogen-was also why Alice had been looking this way and that, obsessing about the potential of out-of-town p.e.n.i.ses when she should have been focusing on her granddaughter's promising career.

She could ask Elinor if she agreed, but that would mean confessing her sins. Alice surely wasn't ready for that. Besides, it wasn't as if she'd had s.e.x with the out-of-towners. (One night with Leonard had left her guilty enough.) Still, she did enjoy the little game she'd invented of flirting and teasing and knowing she still had what it took to turn a man's head.

Hers was a harmless game.

On the scale of infidelity, however, Alice supposed her behavior might be considered as culpable as Elinor's affair. Especially if Neal ever found out.

So, in lieu of confessing (at least not immediately), Alice decided to divert her attention by hopping into her big, white Cadillac SUV and driving to her daughter and son-in-law's to deliver a surprise for Kiley Kate: a sequin-splashed, to-die-for outfit for the upcoming USA Sings audition in Orlando. After all, Alice and Kiley Kate would leave on Thursday, whether Elinor's panties found their way home or not.

With a small sigh, Alice turned the Esplanade onto the back road that led to Melissa and David's house that Alice and Neal paid for because David was just getting started in a Wall Street career, and status began with property worth. It ended, of course, when...if...character imprudence was detected-at least in Mount Kasteel, where status often outranked common sense.

Was that what Alice had become? An imprudent character?

A slightly wicked smile crossed her lips. In light of Elinor's, well, indiscretion, it might be safe now-and kind of fun-to share her own silly truths with her friends.

”There was Donald in Dallas,” she could begin.

”And Larry in Las Vegas.

”And Parker in San Jose.

”I found them online, arranged date after date, in cities and towns where auditions were held-the first rounds, the quarterfinals, the semifinals, too, not to mention the regional tryouts in between.”

Elinor and Poppy would need a drink before Alice could continue. They would have wine, because this would be a long story.

”It began on a lark,” Alice would explain, ”something to pa.s.s the time while Kiley Kate was in chaperoned sessions or early-to-bed.” There was, after all, little to do in a strange place for a few days. The other contestants and their families could hardly socialize; compet.i.tion did not breed good friends.h.i.+ps.

She would say she'd grown tired of being sequestered in hotel rooms, cranking up noisy air-conditioning units with each drippy new hot flash. She would say she'd needed to find a pastime more engaging.

She wasn't certain how much more she should tell. Should she mention that Chicago had been first? Danny. Alice had wondered what sort of grown man would call himself by a childhood nickname; she'd soon learned it was the sort who showed up for their date with a single red rose, who made up for below-average looks with kind, gentle words, who sent teardrop sapphire earrings (”To match your lovely eyes”) the next day with a promise of dinner to be followed by ”clothes-shredding s.e.x.” She'd sent back the earrings and said, ”Thanks, but no thanks.”

She could tell them that in Richmond there had been a Civil War reenactor, who had a tattoo of a Confederate flag on his chest and claimed that his d.i.c.k was a musket.

Or that in St. Louis there had been a tall, thin man who'd resembled the arch and was a descendant of Harland Bartholomew, the great urban planner who'd designed the city.

She just didn't know how much to share with Elinor, her once-perfect idol. Could she admit that this harmless game had begun on a lark but had grown to salvage her day-today sanity? That it ma.s.saged her dispirited life, which should have been ideal, because, like Elinor, Alice Sussman Bartlett had made sure she had gotten it all: home, husband, children, health, wealth, and oh, yes, status, at least unless Mount Kasteel learned the rest.

Had middle-aged mania spurred Elinor, too?

If Alice only knew who Elinor's lover was, it might help her decide how much to share. Was he one of many, or was he a real lover? Was he a man Elinor might leave Malcolm for? No. Not hardly, any more than Alice would leave Neal for the amus.e.m.e.nt she found on the road.