Only a few women wanted to talk about the book, an Auschwitz love story Hannah had skimmed the night before so she wouldn’t feel left out. As they stood watching the smoke above the hill, listening to the sirens, Anne sighed and told Hannah she was “done with the Holocaust.” Strike two, Hannah thought. Still, there was something useful about a woman who said out loud what merely skittered through others’ thoughts. Anne was probably an old-fashioned bigot, but at least she was honest.
Another woman, so short she was child-sized, Tara, with pin-straight red hair, offered a vape pen, and Hannah shook her head.
“I know vaping’s controversial now, but if you ever need edibles, let me know.”
Hannah smiled and said she wasn’t into that, especially with a middle schooler at home. The woman looked at her oddly, head cocked, as if she didn’t quite see her point. Some moms secretly smoked pot in Hannah’s old neighborhood, giggling around the fire pits when the kids weren’t home, but she hadn’t expected it here, out in the open, where people were more proper and had more money.
Hillary hadn’t mentioned pot when she’d described the ladies in book club. She’d mentioned kids’ ages, hair color, hobbies, husbands’ jobs. Hannah had asked if any of the women worked, and Hillary had sighed and said they all did volunteer work, which was really, truly a lot of work. Hannah had nodded; she’d heard that familiar refrain but didn’t know firsthand. She’d never had the luxury of being that kind of busy. But they hadn’t gone over their addictions. Pot? Adderall? Alcohol? Vicodin?
Oh well, she supposed. Plenty of time for that.
The emergency response to the fire a few properties away had been robust. No one at book club seemed particularly worried about it; there was no talk of walking down to see if their neighbors were okay. Gone were the days of bringing blankets and buckets of water, but still. Maybe they didn’t know their half-Italian neighbors. Maybe they knew they were away. Maybe they were just leaving things to the professionals. Of course, you couldn’t go down there with a vape pen, could you?
Hannah spoke to Hillary, not the group.
“Shouldn’t we maybe go see if anyone needs help?”
“Help?”
“I don’t know, if they have to go to the hospital for smoke inhalation, if they might need their kids picked up somewhere or their dog fed or—”
“Wow, you really are a writer.”
“Fire is no joke.”
“No, of course, but it’s just a playhouse, Han.”
“That’s even worse. There’s kids, there’s toys—”
“They don’t have any kids. The previous owners built it. They were gonna tear it down. Plus there’s professionals swarming it. I’m sure it’s fine.”
So it wasn’t the fire exactly that brought the evening to a close but a call from Hannah’s mother. Hannah took the call and hurried to the edge of the deck, away from the chittering women, so she could hear. Still, hearing didn’t matter much; she could make out her mother’s words but didn’t quite understand what she was saying. She knew her mother’s tone of voice. Better safe than sorry. She’d always suspected her mother was a little wary of boys and their style of play and speech. She’d raised girls after all.
Hannah told Hillary that Miles was acting out and she had to go home.
“Acting out?” Hillary said.
“Yes.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Yes,” Hannah replied with emphasis and annoyance, grabbing her sweater off the chair, heading for the driveway. It was an old-fashioned phrase, vague enough to mean a million different things. Maybe he had snuck a cookie when she had told him no. Maybe he was teaching Morgan the lyrics to a song that had swear words in it. Who knew?
“I’ll come with you,” Hillary said.
“No, don’t be silly. Stay with your friends.”
Hillary blinked. Hannah knew her sister well enough to know what she was considering in the moment. If there was something left out, a detail in the margins being overlooked. What had their mother actually said? What was going on with their kids, at her house? Subtext—she was scanning for it in the air. Mother’s intuition? No. Hillary had a particularly fine-tuned bullshit detector and knew her sister like the back of her hand. Hannah hadn’t lied to her, but Hillary knew, intuitively, something was off. And every molecule of her being was wondering why. Why, why, why?
“They’re not my friends,” Hillary stage-whispered with a smile, and she linked arms with her sister.
“Wait,” Susan called as she saw them leaving. “Where are you going?”
“Babysitter called,” Hillary said. “Sorry!”
“But you didn’t sign up for the fall festival yet,” she said, brandishing a list on a bright red clipboard. “We still need a few people to help with pumpkin carving and the cocktail station. Ice, napkins, etc. The food and music are all taken care of.”
Hillary had mentioned the fall festival and summer block party to Hannah when she’d seen the house. Cited it as an example of neighborhood togetherness, and she’d liked the sound of it. And she certainly appreciated the value of any drinking activity that took cars out of the equation. People were so stupid around alcohol in the suburbs.
“We’ll do cocktails,” Hillary said. “And napkins. Put us both down for that.”
Hannah bristled. Why did the nondrinker always have to bring drinks? Why, whenever Hillary told her what to bring to dinner, did she always ask Hannah to bring wine?
“Okay, will do. But…we have to vote on the next book! It’s the last meeting before January, remember?” Susan called out as they walked down the driveway.
“Whatever book you want is fine with us,” Hillary replied.
“Well, Anne’s turning everyone against my new Holocaust pick,” Susan said. She pouted at them broadly, animating her face again in a way that was almost hideous in contrast to the rest of her but wasn’t. Jolie laide, Hannah thought suddenly. A French word from her old word list. Pretty but ugly.
“Susan,” Hillary said, “don’t listen to her. Vote your heart.”
They walked back together, not discussing the smoke in the air, the police and fire trucks, the lack of intellectual rigor of the book club, or their mother’s babysitting deficiencies. They didn’t discuss the weather, the week ahead, or any number of things they might have on another evening. Hannah was worried, and her sister knew it, so she kept her mouth shut.
“Wait, did you actually tell her to vote her heart?” Hannah said suddenly, laughing, as they got to the bottom of Susan’s long driveway. “Do you maybe have a brain tumor?”