Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,59

have to. I knew from the color in Glynis’s cheeks and the paleness of Celia’s and the way Beth twitched her nose . . . I knew I was right.

“Well, what do you expect?” Celia harrumphed the explanation. “You don’t really think it’s easy to be perfect, do you?”

It was my turn to be speechless. Which was why Glynis had a chance to interject, “Life in the ’burbs isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We’ve got to be perfect wives.”

“And perfect mothers,” Beth added.

Celia joined the bandwagon. “We’ve got to have perfect clothes and perfect wardrobes and perfect manners.”

“Perfect meals, perfect taste, perfect children.” Glynis looked perfectly miserable about the whole thing. “It’s impossible.”

“Who can blame us for wanting to step out now and again?” Celia asked.

I didn’t get it. But I wasn’t about to argue. “So every Tuesday . . . ?”

“Every Tuesday, we each head out to have a little fun.” Celia glanced at her two friends. “The rules have always been the same. We’re never supposed to go to the same bar twice.”

“And we’re always supposed to say we’re going to cooking class,” Glynis added.

“We’re not supposed to talk about what happens while we’re out,” Celia said.

“Not even to each other.”

I grumbled under my breath. “But then, that means—”

“That we really don’t know who Vickie was seeing or what she was up to,” Glynis finished my sentence for me.

“She did say she’d met someone.” Beth’s voice was so low, we all leaned forward to hear her. “Someone special.”

“She told you that?” Celia wasn’t as surprised as she was obviously pissed that she’d been left out of the loop.

Beth shrugged. “She mentioned it. That’s all. She never gave me the details. She just said . . . you know. She just said he was special.”

I swallowed hard. “Do you think she was talking about Alex?”

Beth answered with another shrug.

It was my turn to drop down on the bench. “Then none of this helps us much, does it? Vickie was probably talking about Alex. We know they saw each other every week at Swallows, so we know she ignored the rule about going to the same bar twice. But that doesn’t mean he killed her,” I added, just so they didn’t get the wrong impression. “Alex didn’t know she was married. And he really liked Vickie. And—”

I listened to my own words and realized I was right back where I started from. “I’m sorry I lied,” I said, and I meant it. “Maybe we could have gotten this whole thing straightened out right from the beginning if I’d just told you the truth from day one. But I wanted to get to know all of you and . . .” I didn’t dare say what I was thinking. I hardly dared admit it to myself.

I wanted these women’s lives. I liked pretending I was a suburban wife and mother who had all the material comforts a restaurant manager could only dream of. Celia, Glynis, and Beth were living my dream life. Or at least what I’d always thought my dream life was.

Finding out that even the most perfect lives weren’t all that perfect was a hard dose to swallow.

For all of us.

“Look,” I said, “I know there’s no reason you should listen to my advice, but I do have some experience when it comes to this kind of thing. That lie about you going to cooking classes on Tuesday nights is going to come back to bite you. You know that, don’t you? You really should come clean with your husbands.” I thought about Jim, about the kind of honest, authentic relationship we had with each other. It was something I wanted to last forever. It was hard for me to get my brain around the idea of couples who didn’t have—or didn’t want—that kind of intimacy. I guess I was talking to myself as much as to the other women when I said, “Isn’t being open and honest with each other what marriage is all about?”

Celia rolled her eyes. “You’re not really married, are you?” she asked before she got up and headed out the door.

Glynis followed her.

Beth dragged behind. I got the feeling there was more she wanted to say, but when I gave her the opportunity by asking, “Is something bothering you?” she just hurried outside.

And me? Well, I should have been thinking about my case, but let’s face it, though I’d satisfied my curiosity about what the women did on Tuesday nights, I really