Skinny Dipping (20 page)

“What can I say? I’m a people person. And here you and Oz were worried I didn’t have anything to take care of so I could be as blissed out with obligations as you two. Well, there you go. I have Jess to take care of. Is this a happy face or what?” She framed her grimacing face with the thumbs and fingers of both hands.

“Yeah, yeah,” Brooke snickered. “Don’t you have somewhere you were going?”

“Yup,” Mimi agreed, picking up her bag and swinging it over her shoulder. “Ciao.”

It was only when she was moving down the staircase to the first-floor lobby that she realized that despite her mockery, she had in fact been telling Brooke the truth.

And it didn’t scare her.

“You know, my initial impulse is to use your request as leverage.” Solange finished pouring the cream into her coffee mug and regarded Mimi across the solarium’s wrought-iron table. Overhead, a dusting of snow had collected along the roof’s glass panes, but inside palms and orchids scented the air.

“You go to work for one of Tom’s companies; I buy the other heirs’ shares of this swampland,” Solange elaborated as though worried Mimi might not be familiar with the concept. “That sort of thing.”

“There is a certain historical precedent,” Mimi acknowledged, picking her way carefully. She wanted Solange’s help badly, more than she could recall wanting anything from her mother in a long time. It made her nervous, as if she were holding the door open and ushering in disappointment. If you didn’t ask things, expect things, then you might be able to keep that door locked.

Solange picked up the box of vanilla wafers from the table and shook it invitingly.

Mimi declined. “No, thanks.”

Her mother dug out a fistful of wafers and pushed the box away. Solange might be all about appearances when appearances counted, but in the privacy of her home, she was not nearly as buttoned-down as her public persona suggested. After all, she had once been married to John “Summer of Love” Olson.

Right now, swimming in an oversized pale blue sweater and loose-fitting corduroy slacks, most of her lipstick left on her coffee mug, she looked like a slightly frowsy suburban housewife. Her demeanor, however, was one hundred percent regal. Though how a plump woman in a baby blue sweater working her way through a handful of vanilla wafers still managed to exude a royal air was a mystery even to her daughter.

“Well, I’m not going to,” she said. “Are you surprised?”

“Not really,” Mimi answered truthfully. She’d never
really
expected her mom to rescue Chez Ducky.

“Do you want to know why?”

“Not really,” Mimi repeated. She already knew why. Solange was fundamentally opposed to all things Olson.

“I consider your proposal ill considered and poorly thought out,” Solange said anyway. “You arrive with some nebulous plan for me to buy a piece of property without knowing exactly who the heirs who want to get rid of it are, how many there are, and what price they are asking.”

“I was sounding you out,” Mimi said, trying to control the flutter of eagerness in her voice. “Why should I go through the trouble of pinning things down without first finding out if you’d even consider it? Should I come up with the particulars for you?”

Solange munched thoughtfully on another wafer. “No,” she finally said. “I don’t think so.”

The bottom dropped out of Mimi’s stomach. That was it, then. There was nothing more to be done. Nothing more to be said. “Oh.”

“Let me explain myself,” Solange said.

“Not necessary.” Mimi started to push back from the table.

“But I want to,” Solange protested. “In the last twenty years you have never asked me for any money or financial help of any sort. I know why. You don’t want me to have any control over you or feel any sense of obligation, even a financial one. I appreciate that. Very wise of you, truth be told. I would take merciless advantage of it if you let me do things for you.”

Mimi had to hand it to Solange; she never minced words.

“So, for you to show up on short notice and ask me for this kind of financial backing can only be an act of desperation. Which is very interesting, especially coming from you. Interesting enough”—Solange paused, not above extending a dramatic moment—“that it gives me hope for you. Desperation is a powerful motivator.”

Mimi pulled herself together. Chez Ducky was a place, for God’s sake. Third-rate lakeshore on a fourth-rate lake. Sure, it would be nice to have it. But them’s the breaks. If people could disappear from your life, why the hell not places? She wasn’t going to make a mountain out of the Chez Ducky molehill, and she wasn’t going to let her mother think this was something it wasn’t.

“For the love of God, Mom. I’m not experiencing an epiphany, a metamorphosis, or a come-to-Jesus moment. I’m just trying to continue enjoying free-rent summers at a lake.”

“I don’t believe it,” Solange said calmly.

Damn it.

“I believe you are acting because you care profoundly about Chez Ducky. I might not understand why, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s great you’re willing to work, actively work, for something you probably won’t get.”

“Wow,” Mimi snapped, irritably, “I’m feeling better by the minute.”

Solange smiled. “You try to save it, Mimi. Do whatever you can. Whether or not you succeed will be immaterial. The journey will be the making of you. I can just tell.”

“Mom. I’m forty-one years old. I am not going on any journey, except home to my apartment, and I’m already as ‘made’ as I’ll ever be.”

Solange’s eyelids had slid half closed and the sanguine expression she wore looked weirdly familiar. Mimi had it. She looked like Ozzie on the brink of a mystical pronouncement.

“Some people, Mignonette”—here it came—“some people experience their coming of age later than others.”

Mimi threw up her hands in exasperation. “This is not my coming of age. I did that at eighteen with Jimmy—”

“Stop,” Solange said, picking up another cookie. “I’m speaking metaphorically.”

“Metaphorically or not.”

“We’ll see.” Solange’s smile was infuriating. “Go forth. Save Chez Ducky. You have my blessing. I’d say I was sorry I can’t help, but we’d both know I’d be lying.”

Mimi pushed back from the table and came around to her mother’s side. She looked down at Solange’s upturned face. Solange looked back up, munching happily away. “You don’t
have
the wherewithal to buy a quarter of Chez Ducky, do you?” Mimi asked.

“No,” Solange said. “At least, not by myself.”

“You would have blackmailed me if you had, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably,” Solange agreed without the least bit of embarrassment.

“And all that other stuff?”

“Oh, I meant that. You are changing, Mimi. It’s taken a while, granted, but you’re finally coming into your own. You’re going to be a force to be reckoned with someday. You’ll finally achieve the promise of your youth.”

“Oh, please.” At the sound of Mary’s voice, Mimi turned. Her half sister was standing in the doorway of the solarium, enveloped in a black cashmere coat.

Solange smiled at Mary and said, “Look who dropped in.”

“Unfulfilled Potential?” Mary asked, one brow angling derisively.

“Hi, Mary,” Mimi said. She was in no mood for Mary. She’d always thought of herself as someone who accepted without flinching or whining those things she had no control over. Apparently not so much, because she was practically twitching and definitely on the cusp of a whine. “I was just heading out.”

Her mother’s face crumpled. “Oh? Why don’t you stay? I’ve got another box of vanilla wafers in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, but I gotta go. I have a destiny to fulfill, remember? A chrysalis to burst forth from. Eagle wings to grow. A mountain to climb. A river to cross.” She said all this mostly to annoy Mary, and it worked.

“Yeah, yeah, so I just heard,” Mary said. “You’re on the brink of actually doing something. Or trying to. Let the angel chorus sound! Really.
No
one could be happier about it than me. I promise.” Mary spoke with unsettling conviction.

Mimi, who’d been about to bend down to kiss Solange’s cheek good-bye, checked instead, caught by Mary’s forceful tone. Why would that make Mary happy? It wouldn’t. Mary was just being sarcastic.

“Before you go, Mignonette,” Solange said, dragging Mimi’s attention from her half sister, “have you heard from Sarah lately?”

“Let me think…,” Mimi said. “Yup. I did last Saturday.” Since the Grandmother Werner incident, Sarah had been e-mailing Mimi twice weekly. Mimi still wasn’t sure what to make of this or even how she felt about it. They weren’t girlish confidences, mostly just stuff about patent law and an occasional question about relationships that Mimi invariably answered, “I don’t know,” or, “I’d let matters take their own course.” That Sarah apparently saw her as an expert on human relationships was a sad commentary on her baby sister’s own experiences.

“Why?” Mimi asked. “Is everything all right?”

“We don’t know where she is,” Solange said and, seeing the expression on Mimi’s face, hurried on. “She calls and she sounds fine. I mean, really
fine,
” Solange emphasized. “But she hasn’t been in her apartment for weeks and she won’t say where she’s staying. Or with whom. And I sometimes hear a voice in the background. It sounds male.”

Bingo. The no-strings-attached sexcapades partner. “Have you asked her?”

“I don’t want to pry,” Solange said primly. Which meant she had asked and been rebuffed.

“She’s probably got a boyfriend,” Mimi said, wondering how much Sarah would or wouldn’t like her to say. Mimi had always found it best to stay as close to the truth as possible with Solange. She had a positive gift for ferreting out untruths.

“Really?” Solange asked. “Do you know who?”

“No.”

Her mother’s laserlike truth-finding glare leveled on Mimi and she opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Mary did. “Speaking of boyfriends, seen Joe Tierney lately?” Mary asked.

How would Mary know about her and Joe Tierney? Not that there was anything to know about. Joe was a moment from her past. A couple moments. Three. Two good and one not so good. Or mostly good until he’d proven to be a jerk. Why was she thinking about him again?

“Is Mimi interested in Joe Tierney?” Solange asked, her eyes brightening, Sarah, for the moment, forgotten.

“No. I—We just—I met him at—” She was not going to do this. She was forty-one, for God’s sake. “No.”

Solange sighed. “Well, nothing much would have come of it anyway. The man was putting in eighteen hours a day in order to finish up here last week. As soon as he was done, he said he had another project to start, somewhere overseas. I suspect he’s already left the state.”

Gone? A gentleman would have apologized before blowing town. So maybe he wasn’t such a gentleman after all. Looks could be so deceiving. The thought didn’t bring her as much satisfaction as she thought it should. “Geez,” she said, “look at the time. I’m late for work.”

“Wait.”

Mimi froze.

“You
are
coming for Christmas dinner, are you not?”

Mimi did some quick weighing of the pros and cons. On the con side was leaving her snug apartment to spend an evening answering snide Christmas-themed remarks about her occupation (“Ever run into someone named Ebenezer on the Other Side? Ha-ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”) and unwrap a bunch of expensive presents she didn’t need as Solange blithely informed anyone who’d listen that her oldest daughter was simply a late bloomer and Mary muttered, not quite under her breath, “Like a century plant?” On the pro side, she would get an excellent free meal, make Solange happy, and…get an excellent free meal.

“I’ll try, but you know Christmas is one of our biggest days at Straight Talk. I’ll have to see if I can get two or three hours off.” Whether they woke up missing a loved one or came home filled with Christmas spirits and regrets, more people tried to make contact on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day than any other day of the year.

“Oh, Mignonette. Please. As if taking advantage of those poor souls during a normal day isn’t bad enough—”

The unfortunate choice of words brought ungentlemanly Joe Tierney back to mind, and she was
not
thinking about him. “Gotta go!” Mimi chirped, swooping down and planting a kiss on Solange’s cheek. She snagged her jacket from the back of the wrought-iron chair and fled.

Mimi stopped at her apartment on the way back to work to grab a bite of lunch. She was letting herself in when she heard the door behind her open and Jennifer Beesing say, “Look what came for you!”

She turned around to see what appeared to be a rose shrub sprouting from a plump pair of jean-clad legs. Jennifer lowered the bouquet and peered over the top. “They smell good, too!”

“They’re for me?” Mimi asked.

Jennifer nodded. “They came about an hour ago. There’s a card.”

“Hold on while I get the door,” Mimi said, suiting action to words, then taking the flowers. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Jennifer said. “Secret admirer?”

Mimi smiled at this absurdity. “I’ll let you know,” she promised and backed into her apartment, shoving the door closed with her hip. She set the vase on the table inside the door and opened the note dangling from a gold cord.

That
was supposed to be an apology? It was about as impersonal a statement of culpability as she could imagine. And why now? Why after all these weeks?

Because
now
he was leaving, she realized. Had he sent flowers earlier, she might misconstrue his apology as an invitation to reconnect. But if he left it as the last item on his Things to Do Before I Blow Town checklist, he wouldn’t have to risk any awkward encounters or embarrassing phone calls from her.

Well, he didn’t have to worry. He could pop off to wherever it was he was popping off to secure in the knowledge that he’d acted the consummate gentleman. Bully for Joe.

She ripped the card in half and as she did so heard a scale of notes coming from her purse, signaling that a text message had been delivered to her cell phone. She dropped the torn card beside the vase and dug her cell phone out of her handbag, flipping it open and reading the few short lines of text.

“Hey, Birgie, are you up for another nine holes?” her golf partner, a woman from Bonita Springs who had skin like shoe leather and whom Birgie had just met this morning, called from the golf cart they were sharing.