Chapter 1
I wish I could be as happy as others seem to be.
[ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE
The party was roughly divided into the same-sex groups of a grade school dance, both sides seeming to enjoy the break from their significant others. The women, most of whom seemed to be named Carol, laughed explosively, touching one another’s forearms in agreement or emphasis as they sucked down wine coolers and long, skinny cigarettes, while men with mustaches cradled koozie-swaddled Miller Lites and rushed punchlines to dirty jokes under clouds of cigar smoke.
Francine stood alone in the kitchen, digging her thumbnail into the wood of the door jamb as she studied the residents of Hawthorn Woods. There was a time when she could have guessed professions, habits, personalities. But not anymore. She could see only a party of question marks, mingling on the cement patio under the glow of porch lights.
Yellow dust gathered on the linoleum floor below as splinters of wood chipped at her nail polish, revealing details only visible once they’d been separated from the whole.
Like the way Ben used to roll her toothpaste tube.
He had always used mint toothpaste, only touching Francine’s cinnamon flavor when it was almost out, crimping the ends so the last of the paste was ready to go. Now Francine had to roll the empty tube herself, but she could never get the crimp quite right. One detail in a thousand, and such a stupid one to miss, but that’s what stuck.
“Ow!” She jerked her hand back and flapped it in pain. A splinter had lodged deep under her thumbnail. She bit at the spot, watching as a head of strawberry blond hair wove its way through the crowd.
“There you are!” Ellie said, yanking open the screen door. “C’mon, you need to meet more of the neighbors.”
“Ellie, I’d really rather—”
But Francine’s sister had already pulled her out into the dizzying carousel of suburbia.
She took it all in as best she could, smiling and shaking hands while trying to look happy. The marathon of introductions was doing a number on her already exhausted psyche, especially since she was without her once-keen ability to read people.
Her ex-husband had taken a lot: a good chunk of her thirties, her faith in one half of the human species, and her favorite Whitney Houston cassette. Worst of all, though, was the theft of her confidence. How could anyone pretend to have good sense after marrying a man who’d turned out to be…what Ben had turned out to be?
“Ellie, I need a break,” Francine said after meeting yet another Carol and her mustachioed husband.
“Ooh wait, just one more. Laura Jean!” Ellie towed Francine toward a short, blond woman whose waist-length ponytail swung as she spun to face them. Hair was always the first thing Francine noticed about someone; the curse of the stylist, she supposed.
“Best friend, meet big sister,” Ellie announced. “Laura Jean, Francine. Francine, Laura Jean.”
Please let there be at least one genuine person here, Francine prayed. Every woman she’d met that night had taken great trouble to appear welcoming, but never quite managed to transcend constipated pleasantries.
“You make us sound like a couple of Muppets when you say our names together,” Laura Jean said to Ellie. Her voice had a faint twang, not a Southern accent so much as Diet Southern. “Francine. So very nice to finally meet you, even in seventy-percent humidity.”
The woman’s perfectly put-together look was a touch intimidating, but her words seemed sincere, her smile warm. Francine decided to risk being herself.
“Really wish I’d remembered how tropical Illinois is in the summer.” She wiped a strand of sweaty brown hair from the sun-bolded freckles on her cheeks. “I’m starting to smell like a locker room.”
“Oh boy, I’m right there with you.” Laura Jean made a show of sniffing her own armpits. “I’m getting notes of eighth-grade boys, post-gym class, pre-deodorant.”
The exchange sparked a smile from both of them, and Francine wondered if they’d decided to be friends at the same moment.
Still in auto-introduction mode, Ellie tugged on Francine’s elbow. “Okay, we should keep meeting people. Ooh, you still have to say hi to the coupon club ladies and you gotta meet the Chief, of course—”
“Ellie, I just remembered.” Laura Jean bumped her palm against her forehead. “Pete said to tell you the ice is running low in the beer tub.”
Ellie’s eyes went wide at the scandalous thought of warm beverages, and she ran for the garage. “I’m on it. Keep her company!”
Laura Jean plucked two bottles from the beer tub—already overflowing with ice—and handed one to Francine with a wink. “Looked like you could use an Ellie break. I adore your sister, but mercy, she is a treadmill jammed on High.”
“Thanks. And thanks for not dying of surprise that we’re related. That’s the normal response from people, usually after they gush over how pretty she is.”
“Oh, please. My older sisters had legs for days and nobody ever let little ol’ me forget it. You and Ellie look plenty related to me.”
Francine shrugged. “She took the aggressively-petite approach, which has its advantages. But I suspect the day you become a size zero is the day somebody makes off with your sense of humor at gunpoint. Though that may just be my rationale for finishing a pizza by myself.”
Laura Jean gave a wry grin. “In any case, you’re on vacation now, so you can eat as much of whatever you damn well please.”
“Yeah. This is kind of a vacation, I guess.” Francine wondered how chummy she should get in the first thirty seconds. They stood in silence for a moment, watching barefoot children chase each other around the patio’s ring of citronella candles. “Did Ellie mention why I’m here?”
“Well.” Laura Jean studied her beer bottle. “Since this feels like a feet-first-into-the-deep-end kind of friendship to me, I won’t feign ignorance. She did say you were having a hard time.”
Francine nodded. “That’s polite-speak for a runaway train headed for a bottomless pit. Also the train is on fire or something.”
They both laughed. Francine took a swallow of her beer and pinched at the faded daisy sundress sticking to her skin.
“My husband and I got divorced two years ago. The paperwork was easy enough to sign, it’s just the moving-on part that’s been tricky. Not one of my strengths, I guess.”
“Oh please, when the grocery store stopped selling my favorite ice cream flavor, I wrote a letter to the CEO. ‘Where’s my rum raisin?’” Laura Jean gaveled the air with her fist.
Francine laughed as Laura Jean continued the ice cream story, but her attention had caught on a middle-aged couple across the patio.
A barrel-chested man, his pomade-drenched hair combed into immaculate lines of gold, was quietly arguing with a waif of a woman with a black pixie cut. Their body language was a unique brand of tenseness Francine expertly recognized as marital discord. Apparently she could still read people if it was both obvious and marriage-related. Less obvious, however, was the meaning behind the occasional glances Pixie Cut seemed to be sending in Francine’s direction. Something about them seemed…hostile.
Francine brought her attention back to the conversation at hand as Laura Jean wrapped up the ice cream epic. “‘Read my lips,’ I told ’em. ‘No. New. Flavors.’ In the end, they politely told me to get over it. Not the same thing, I know.”