Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,81

head, holding back her bright hair. It was clear she’d taken her preparation seriously: her copy of Scruples was heavily dog-eared, with neon-colored Post-its sticking out from a quarter of the pages.

Vivian pursed her lips. Sadie stared at her phone.

“Sadie, no phones,” Leah said.

“The book is on my phone,” she said.

“Well, then—unless you have any more surprises for us, Leah, shall we get started?” Vivian said.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Vivian adjusted the silk scarf around her shoulders, then consulted the monogrammed notepad in front of her.

“What do we think of the heroine’s transformation early in the story?” Vivian said.

Scruples, the story of an ugly-duckling-turned-swan, unfolded in a torrent of sex, scheming, and shopping, to show Billy Ikehorn Orsini evolve from an overweight wallflower to a powerful beauty.

“I think all women experience their early twenties as transformative,” Leah said. “Maybe not as dramatically as in this book, but there is that intense post-adolescent moment that defines who we will be for the rest of our lives.”

“That was certainly true for me, getting married and moving out here,” Vivian said.

“I feel like my twenties are still my teens, but at the same time, like my thirties. Does that make sense?” Bridget said.

“No,” said Vivian.

Leah saw Sadie bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“One thing that strikes me after rereading a book I’d first read as a teen is that it seems like a different story entirely now,” Leah said. “If you’d asked me a month ago what Scruples was about, I’d have said it was a novel about sex and shopping. Now it’s clear it’s a story of a woman overcoming the wounds of her childhood to become her own person.

“What do you think, Sadie?” she said.

“I thought a lot of the stuff in the Paris section was fat-shaming,” she said.

“What does that mean?” Vivian said.

“One of the characters refers to Billy as a hippo. Or thinks of her as a hippo? Either way it was offensive.”

Leah nodded. “It’s clearly not the way we talk about women’s bodies today. But we have to give the author some latitude. It was a very different time.”

“I liked the fact that Billy changed because of a trip to a new place, not because of a man. That’s usually how these types of books go,” Bridget said.

“What types of book?” Leah said.

“Romance novels.”

“This isn’t a romance novel. Romance novels are about falling in love. This book is about a woman finding herself.” Leah wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a traditional romance novel—not with her own relationship feeling so stale.

“But her power comes only after she’s beautiful. And it comes through sex. And it comes through marrying a rich man,” Sadie said.

“That’s how things worked,” Vivian said. “You girls don’t know what it was like fifty years ago. You take so much for granted.”

“She didn’t marry Ellis Ikehorn for money,” Bridget added. “She loved him.”

“Yeah, she loved him so much she started sleeping with all the male nurses she employed to take care of him. Which—by the way—is sexual harassment,” said Sadie.

“I can’t take all of this political correctness,” said Vivian. “Bridget is right: she loved her husband. She was grieving even before he died. The sex was a distraction.”

Leah looked at her mother and thought, Bridget is right? I think hell just froze over.

She flipped through her book. “It seems to me that the author was clear about her intent with Billy’s journey. I’m going to read a line I highlighted: The fact that Scruples represented the smallest part of her fortune didn’t make it any less important to her, because, of all the sources of her income, Scruples was the only one she had been personally responsible for establishing.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing that she becomes happy when she turns beautiful,” Bridget said. “How we look on the outside can affect how we feel on the inside.”

Leah saw her mother look at Bridget as if seeing her for the first time.

Footsteps on the stairs interrupted them. Mateo appeared, carrying a bin full of vine trimmings.

“Apologies,” he said. “I just need to drop these off inside.”

Leah felt, even before she saw, the immediate change in Sadie’s demeanor. She sat up straighter in her chair and turned toward Mateo, the intensity of her focus like a plant leaning toward the sun. In turn, he glanced at her with a look that could only be described as . . . intimate.

Could it be? And if so, how long had this been going on?

It was amazing what