to her in that tone or touched her in any way that wasn’t purely affectionate. She stepped into the restroom to compose herself. How dare he! She hadn’t been talking about Nora! (Okay, maybe she had been talking about Nora. A little. God forgive her.) She bent over and washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked horrible because she was horrible. How had she been so wrong about everything and everyone? Not realizing Nora was gay and not knowing how to talk to her about it and, by extension, about anything; not noticing the girls’ deception; not understanding Leo was a liar and a thief. Not being the type of mother who would sacrifice a house for her daughters’ college tuition—not willingly, anyway, not lovingly.
She didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know how to be the person she’d always been. Besides, that person had been a bit of a chump, hadn’t she? She walked back to the table where everyone was silently chewing, watching her approach with, she ruefully noted, dread. She sat and picked up her egg roll. She tried to say, I’m sorry, but she couldn’t speak. She took a bite and thought, dead dog, and spit out the food in her napkin.
Without a word, she grabbed her purse and went and sat alone in the car. Through the large restaurant window, she could see Walt and Nora and Louisa. They were eating, but not talking. All of them silently passing platters and chewing while looking down at their plates. She tried to imagine she’d gone somewhere, just disappeared without a trace, and this was their life now. A husband without a wife, daughters without a mother. The tableau was so unbalanced and incomplete and sad.
Walt said something and the girls shook their heads. They each took a little more food from the big platter in the center. They kept looking over at the other side of the room, away from the window, all of them. She wondered if someone they knew was sitting over there or if they needed the waitress for drink refills or take-out cartons. The staff at this place had a habit of disappearing when you needed something. Nora probably wanted more fortune cookies. Walt leaned across the table and took one hand of each daughter. He said something to them. She squinted and leaned forward, as if she might be able to read his lips. She wondered what he was saying. The girls were looking at him and nodding. Then smiling. Then they all turned and looked across the room again and she realized what they were doing; they were looking toward the door. They were looking for her.
CHAPTER THIRTY–NINE
It was a Tuesday, which meant Jack opened the shop a little early after having been closed on Sundays and Mondays. Tuesdays were the days that most of the decorators made their rounds because the stores weren’t full of weekend amateurs or tourists, but the morning had been slow. So what else was new? Jack was sitting at a small desk in the back of the shop. He’d been making a few calls, writing e-mails. The front door opened and the little bell rang announcing someone’s arrival. Jack stood and couldn’t quite make out the person in the door; the sun was shining through the transom and hitting him square in the eyes.
“Jack?”
“Yes.” He squinted and moved out of the light and let his eyes adjust. “Melody?”
“Hi,” she said, a little meekly. “I brought you some lunch.”
“SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” Jack said. “You’ve brought me these delightful sandwiches and cookies and even an overpriced bottle of sparkling water because you want my advice on having a lesbian daughter?”
Melody sighed and picked some kind of dark wilted lettuce off her sandwich. Why was it so hard to find just a plain turkey sandwich? “What is this stuff?” she said, sniffing it. “Arugula. Ugh. Whatever happened to good old iceberg lettuce?” She put the sandwich down and looked at Jack. “I don’t want advice exactly … I just … I don’t know what I want, to be honest. I guess I’m a little scared.”
“Of having a gay child?”
“No! Of being a crappy parent.”
“Because she’s a lesbian?”
“I’m not trying to be an asshole, Jack. I’ve never cared that you were gay. You know that. None of us did. You were the one who didn’t invite anyone to your wedding, which is a shame because we all would have