her shoulders, but she always kept it swept up tight in those ugly clips. Everything in her wardrobe was a variation on beige, and her standard outfit was a turtleneck under a shapeless jumper, which made her look, well ... kind of squat.
I glanced at my own reflection in the glass door that led out to the back hallway. I was wearing jeans, and a pretty green scoop-neck shirt, and I had hair and makeup kind of going for me, but if I had to be honest I looked, well ... kind of squat. Peach and Stacy were the beauties in this group, and Millie and I were the quirky ones with the good personalities. That was just how it was.
I sighed, reached for my margarita, took a big gulp, and decided to change the subject.
"Do you think I should sell the house?" I asked. "It's not like I'm paying much for it, just property taxes and insurance. Maybe I should keep it? Do you think?"
"Hmmm." Millie thought for a minute, then said, "I don't know." Her face lit up, and she dropped her knife to grab a pencil and a pad out of my junk drawer. "Pros and cons." She jotted the headers for the two columns on the page. "Pros: You own it outright."
"Cons," I said. "It's too much space for one person."
She scribbled. "Pros: It's interesting and fun."
"Oh, please," I said. "It's Willy Wonka's country home."
Millie jutted her lower lip out. "I like Momelia's aesthetic."
Momelia. Millie's own mother had died when she was very young, and her grandmother had raised her in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town, so it had been natural for my mother to become Millie's surrogate mother. Millie had never been quite comfortable enough to call her Mom, but one day, she'd accidentally morphed "Mom" and "Amelia" while talking to my mother, and the nickname had stuck.
"What aesthetic? Modern Flea Market?" I scrunched my nose. "Forget that nothing matches, and I have a guest room that is chartreuse. The exterior is pink."
"I like it," Millie said, ever loyal to the memory of my mother and the legacy of her outrageous taste.
"It's like living in a box of Strawberry Nesquik."
Millie shrugged, conceding the point. "You could always paint it."
I tapped my finger on the Cons side. "Willy Wonka."
Millie dutifully jotted it down. "Pros..." She thought for a bit, then said, "It's right next door to Peach."
"Right," I said. "And Cons ... it's right next door to Peach."
Our eyes met and we both laughed. Bernadette Peach was the kind of person you love, not because of any particular qualities you could name, but just ... because. She traveled in a swarm of perfume and Aqua Net, a shameless bottle blonde with a Barbie-doll figure and a fifties' fashion sense. She was achingly gorgeous, slightly narcissistic, a little thoughtless sometimes, but fiercely loyal. She and I had become friends because we were the same age and we lived next door to each other. When we got to school, she bonded with beautiful Stacy Easter, and I bonded with the more cerebral Millie, but Peach would not allow those differences to pull us apart. I was her friend, I would always be her friend, and that was that, so instead of dividing along lines of beauty and social grace the way most kids do in school, we ended up uniting as a foursome.
"Speaking of Peach, on the pro side for keeping the house, she bought her parents' house when they moved to Florida specifically so we'd stay neighbors."
Millie shook her head. "You can't let other people's choices influence your decision."
"I can if she kills me," I said, "which she will."
Millie smiled and jotted "Peach will kill you dead" on the pro side.
"I am going to miss the Confessionals," Millie said. "We've been doing this every Saturday since, what? Junior high?"
"Yeah," I said. "You don't think you guys will do it without me?"
She shook her head, and stared down at her list.
I tossed the jalapenos into the bowl. "Okay. Cons. I still have to manage the upkeep of it while I'm in Europe."
"But what if you decide to come back?" Millie said. "Can you imagine living in Nodaway and not living here?"
I looked around at my kitchen. The bright yellow walls, the daisy curtains moving gently in the breeze from the open window over the sink, the chink in the plaster in the ceiling from the time the fire alarm went off while Mom was cooking