Birthday Girls (18 page)

She turned to the map of the United States. Should she remain in this country? Would she be happier on more familiar turf?

Suddenly the phone rang. Abigail jumped, slapping the atlas closed. Who on earth would be calling this late at night? She sprang for the phone before it could wake up Louisa.

Was there trouble?

Had Edmund’s plane crashed?

Did Sondra have a miscarriage?

Her thoughts whirled as her heart thumped wildly. “Yes?” she cried into the receiver.

“Abigail?” the voice asked. “It’s me, Kris. Christ, you sound awful.”

She slumped back into the gilded chair. “You scared me half to death. It’s almost two in the morning.”

“Oh. Sorry. I needed to talk.”

“Talk to me as long as it’s to tell me you’re coming home. I’ve got most of the details of my plan worked out …”

“I won’t be back for at least another week. Maybe two.”

Abigail stopped. She stared into the phone. “Two weeks? This is a joke, right?”

“No joke, girl. They’re going to shoot me up with some lucky guy’s sperm next week. I might be singing lullabies after all.”

An ache of disappointment crept through Abigail. “Oh, Kris. That’s wonderful.” She hoped her voice sounded sincere.

“Yeah. I guess out here they don’t care how old you are. I only hope it works. The doctor said it might take a few tries.”

“A few tries? Do you have to stay out there the whole time?”

There was silence. “I forgot to ask. I’m so used to doing everything alone. Hey, that reminds me, Maddie’s on her way home.”

Abigail groaned. Somehow she sensed that Maddie wouldn’t be much help. Maddie was too soft, too afraid of taking risks. Besides, she wasn’t streetwise. No, Kris was definitely the one Abigail needed. Kris, who wouldn’t try to talk her out of it; Kris, who would help her devise the foolproof plan. “I’m tired of trying to transform Maddie. Between you and me, I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“It won’t if she doesn’t relax. She kind of pissed me off anyway. I asked her to stay. She wouldn’t.”

“Maybe we should forget about her …” Abigail started to say, then realized that the last thing she needed was to alienate Maddie. Maddie, after all, knew Abigail’s wish. Alienating her might cause problems later. A flash of
Enquirer
headlines—the
real
story, as told by Abigail Hardy’s friend—raced through her mind. She closed her eyes and felt the familiar feeling of once again being trapped.

“I don’t think she’s too thrilled at what I’m doing,” Kris continued.

Abigail opened her eyes and sighed to herself. “I think she’s probably jealous. She looks at you and thinks you have it all already.”

“Me? I thought what mattered to her was a man. I certainly don’t have one of those.”

“Not true. You have as many of those as you want. Whenever you want. I think Maddie’s always envied that. Ever since we were kids.”

“Whatever. I only know I’m excited. And a little bit scared. And if you ever tell anyone that, I’ll kill you.”

“You don’t have to kill me. I’m going to do that myself, remember?” Her eyes quickly roamed the library, as though
someone might be listening. No one was there. “I know how I’m going to do it, Kris.”

“How?”

“Well talk when you get back. In the meantime, keep me posted. And think of a decent place for me to live. The damn atlas is no help at all.”

“Seattle
might be a great place for an initial test market,” Larry said as they sat with the executive board of Rupert’s Department Stores. “We’ve only been syndicated there for a short time, and it would help boost Abigail’s visibility.”

Abigail squiggled a note across her pad.
Seattle
. She studied the word, then carefully outlined each letter.
Seattle
, she thought. The opposite coast. Another world. A place where she was not yet an everyday, every-household name.

“Abigail?” Fran Whiting asked.

She stopped doodling and looked up at Rupert’s national vice president of sales. “I don’t know,” she responded. “Whatever.”

Two board members—men—stopped cleaning their fingernails. One woman stopped playing with her hair. A collective sigh of exasperation breezed through the room. After all, they had already agreed to ten million dollars, not five. They had agreed to all the points Larry had requested. Yet Abigail stalwartly refused to say yes.

“Do you like the designs?” Fran asked.

Leaning across the conference table, Abigail peered at the prototypes of dinnerware, complete with coordinating utensils, canisters, teapots, and cookware. Matching fabrics for curtains, wallpaper borders, table linens, and pot holders were depicted on large layout pads.

Everything, of course, was designed using her trademark ivories and beiges lightly accented with gold—the barest of the neutral zone, created to make the food presentation and the floral centerpieces the heroes. Or heroines, depending on one’s point of view.

The designs were quite extraordinary, but Abigail knew that once she gave final approval, negotiations would accelerate.

She knew she was stringing them along. As for Rupert’s, she didn’t much care. But she hated being unfair to Larry, though in the end he would silently thank her for not complicating matters with a future that did not exist.

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said, then rose from her chair.

Larry stood as well. The Rupert executives followed.

Melvin Archer, the board president, adjusted his French cuffs. “We don’t want to push you, Abigail,” he said with the gravelly voice of a man on the edge of retirement, a man who had smoked too many cigarettes and had spent too many decades in the chaos of retail. “But, as I’m sure you’re aware, time is marching on. We’d like to have the Abigail line ready to break in the spring.”

She nodded. “I’ll have an answer for you by Thanksgiving.” She did not add that by Thanksgiving, hopefully, she would be gone.

Slinging the strap of her briefcase over one shoulder, Abigail kept her eyes on the door, unable to look at the faces of frustration. “Box up a couple of those samples and send them to my office. We’ll be in touch.”

With Larry following close on her tan Bali heels, Abigail marched from the boardroom, knowing she had clearly irritated them all.

It wasn’t until they were safely on the elevator, the door closed behind them, alone in the car, that Larry spoke.

“Abigail, are you okay?”

“Of course.”

“The designs are superb.”

“I know.”

“They’re doing more than they promised.”

“I know.”

“Even the ten million …” He clipped his words. “So what’s the problem?”

“Problem? No problem. I just want to be certain that Rupert’s is the best outlet for us. We do have others with a financial stake in the business.”

The “others,” of course, did not really matter. Abigail held 40 percent of Hardy Enterprises; Larry, 15. Ten percent was Sondra’s; the rest was divided in 5 percent blocks among various investors, all of whom Abigail had chosen, all of whom were grateful for the hundreds of thousands she’d earned for them and consequently never challenged her executive decisions.

Edmund owned no stock, as he had requested. Another wedge of male independence that had helped widen the gap in their bed.

The elevator stopped; the doors opened. As they stepped into the slate atrium of the Rupert Building, Abigail tried to act as if nothing had happened, as if she weren’t aware that Larry was upset. As if she didn’t know he had a perfect right to be.

Kris needed
help. She sat in the lounge of the doctor’s office—the
reference room
, the perky blonde nurse had
called it—and scanned the pages of potential fathers for her child, if one could trust anything they’d said.

Black. White. Christian. Jew.

Six-two. Five-ten. Five-ten. Five-ten.

Some college. Some not.

Investment banker. Iron worker. Stunt man. Songwriter.

“Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief,” she grumbled and slammed down the book, convinced that the five-tens were probably more like five-six in boots, that the “some college” probably meant they lived near a campus. She’d have a better chance at getting who she wanted by parking herself at the nearest bar and waiting for Mr. Right to saunter in. At least his lies couldn’t be much worse than the ones these guys had put on their bios before they’d jerked off into a jar.

She lowered her head to the table. She was tired of thinking about it. Tired of trying to picture a kid looking like any one of the faceless statistics numerically catalogued by age.

Still, the procedure was scheduled for next week, and so far her tests had come back fine: she was healthy enough to have a baby. Well, shit, she’d already told them that ten thousand needle sticks ago.

“Any luck, Ms. Kensington?” It was Nurse Perk from the outer office.

Kris sighed. “I need a break,” she said, and pulled her body up. “Picking out a lover was never so tedious.”

Nurse Perk smiled. “I’ll be here until six.”

Watching the swinging backside of the twenty-something blonde, Kris wondered who screened these guys anyway. Was it Nurse Perk? Did she examine them through a peephole in the bathroom wall while they did their thing in a sanitized cup? Did she study their dicks? Or did she accompany them, strip, and make their task easier to perform?

Oh, God, Kris moaned with a laugh. Why was she thinking about this?

She returned to her chair and stared at the book. If only it hadn’t taken so many years for her to realize what she wanted. If only she’d been smarter. She would not be reduced to pinning her hopes for a reasonably intelligent, well-adjusted, good-looking kid on some guy who masturbated while Nurse Perk eyed the goods. Some guy who lied on his bio; some guy Kris didn’t know. Or could trust.

Trust
, she thought. The one thing she’d never expected—or looked for—in a man. Except one. No, two. One was already dead. The other, she’d never thought to ask. Too bad she was too late. A wife and three kids too late.

She opened the book again, closed her eyes, and let her finger drop on a page. Drawing in her breath, Kris looked down at the paper, then wondered what Devon would think if she had a child whose father was five-ten, UCLA educated, and black. Black like her. Like them.

Driving
into town to pick up a camera that had been in for repair, Maddie realized she hadn’t spoken with Abigail since her trip to L.A. Abigail had called to say she was too busy with holiday things to work out, so Maddie had managed the thrice-weekly trips to the gym alone. Alone, of course, except for the merciless Andrew, who seemed to think sweat was the fluid of life.

She hoped Abigail wasn’t avoiding her. She hoped Abigail wasn’t angry that she’d run out on Kris.

Yet it had been worth it.

Smiling now as she pulled into the parking lot, Maddie thought about the day she’d returned.

Parker had taken the boys to a football game. There was just enough time for her to take her position on top of the knoll before they came home—to crouch on the pine needles in the grove overlooking the driveway.

Luckily, Sharlene wasn’t with him. Maddie always hated it when
she
was there; it meant trying to figure a way to keep her out of the frame. Most often Maddie ended up having to crop out Sharlene’s image, chop off her arms and legs, dismembering her picture, decapitating her likeness on the final print. As satisfying as the process was, it was easier if the witch simply was absent in the first place.

Pulling into the parking lot, Maddie wished she had the guts to kill her off and be done with it. She wished she had the guts to kill them both, to trade in her telephoto lens for a scope, and her camera for a high-powered rifle.

If she were one of Kris’s characters, it wouldn’t be a problem.

She got out of the car, marched across the lot, and headed toward the camera shop. Suddenly Maddie caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass storefront. She stopped.

Was that really her? Maddie Daniels, with the gray-free, styled, short hair; the leather-trimmed, hunter green corduroy jacket and matching straight skirt that hugged her nearly trim thighs and ended above her knees?

Were those really her manicured nails that reached for the door handle, and … was that her face that wore a
smile
?

Yes. It definitely was her smile, though it had been years since she’d seen it. But why was it there? Because she’d been thinking about killing Parker?

Good God
, she thought, pulling open the door and stepping inside,
I really must be losing my mind
.

“Well, Maddie,” the man-boy behind the counter said with a grin. “You’re looking cheerful today.”

Cheerful
, she thought.
If only he knew
.

“What can I do for you?”

She stood at the counter and looked at him blankly. She had forgotten why she had come. She had even forgotten his name. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Some film, I guess.”

“Hey,” he asked, pulling packs of black-and-white film
from the rack, “when will that
Savoir
cover of Madonna be out?”