The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,4

being able to kill a man with your bare hands. In that regard yes, the military turned me butch.”

Mary barked out a laugh. Jamie was stunned into silence (mission accomplished) so Tiffany jumped in.

“You’re just as pretty as the day you were crowned homecoming queen. Same haircut, I see,” Tiffany said.

“I was football sweetheart,” I clarified.

“That’s right,” Tiffany said. “Sophie was homecoming queen. You two won everything, didn’t you?”

“We tried,” I said.

“Have you seen Sophie?” Jamie asked, her eyebrows arching.

Of the three, Jamie had always been the cattiest, the one with the instinctive ability to know someone’s soft spot and poke at it until it was inflamed. I smiled at her, feeling nothing but pity. She was trying to psychologically torture the wrong person.

“Not yet.”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Kim said, grasping my forearm. “I lost my father a few years ago, so I understand how difficult...” She swallowed. “If you want to talk—”

“It’s hardly the same thing,” Tiffany said. “You adored your father. You lived next door to him, for Christsakes. Nora hasn’t been back to Lynchfield in, what? Twenty years?”

“Eighteen. The anniversary is next Saturday. I celebrate it every year. Maybe we can celebrate it together this year?”

Jamie, Tiffany and Kim stared at me, their smiles fixed somewhere between amusement and anger. Kim finally said, “That’s Charlie’s fund raiser. He’s running for State Senate, you know.”

“I did not.”

“I’m sure Sophie and Charlie would love to have you there.”

My smile froze, and there was a spark of triumph in Jamie’s eyes. I forced my smile to relax, leaned forward and whispered, “Every fund raiser I’ve been to in DC has free-flowing alcohol. Think Charlie will too, or are the Baptists around here still pretending not to drink?”

“Oh, I don’t think—” Kim started.

“Are you implying we’re hypocrites?” a cold female voice said from behind the trio. Jamie, Tiffany and Kim parted, eyes wide, to make way for Brenda Russell: tall, elegant, dripping with gold jewelry and stinking of Chanel No. 5. I struggled to swallow the bile that rose in my throat, an automatic reaction the scent had triggered in me since I was eighteen years old.

“Brenda.”

Brenda Russell’s nostrils flared at my use of her Christian name. Check that, her first name. Though professing to be devout, there was nothing Christ-like in the woman. I looked for her husband. “Where’s Doug?”

“He died of cancer three years ago.”

“Did he?” Everyone waited for me to offer my condolences, but I merely stared at the woman. I’d rather be waterboarded than offer her an ounce of sympathy.

“How are you doing, Mrs. Russell?” my sister said.

“As well as can be expected. I’m sorry for your loss,” Brenda said to Mary. “Your father was a fine, Christian man. Moral and always willing to do what was right, regardless of the consequences.”

I clasped my hands in front of me and kept my expression placid. I might have envisioned her face a time or two during my sparring sessions, but the woman who stood before me bore only a passing resemblance to the woman from twenty years earlier. Her hair was the same style, but entirely gray. Her face, once perpetually tanned and smooth, was lined with wrinkles and freckled with sunspots her foundation couldn’t mask. The deepest wrinkles were around her pursed mouth and looked strikingly like spokes on a wheel.

“How’s Sophie?” I didn’t care or want to know the answer. But, I wanted to see the expression on Brenda’s face when I said her daughter’s name. Brenda Russell didn’t disappoint. I smirked, and she knew I was baiting her. From the corner of my eye, I saw Jamie look on with an admiring expression. Approval from that corner made me feel petty and small, but not enough to apologize to Brenda Russell.

The line was backing up, so Brenda moved on to Emmadean, as did the other three, though reluctantly. I placed a hand on Kim’s arm. “Thank you for the offer. I appreciate it, and I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

Kim grasped my hand and smiled. She swallowed thickly. “Thank you, Nora. It’s so good to see you, I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances...”

“It’s good to see you, too, Kim.”

“I’ve always liked your hair,” she said. “It’s classic. Don’t let Jamie give you shit. You should see some of the hairstyles she’s gone through in the last twenty years.” She winked at me and went to pay her respects to my father. I smiled at the sight of Jamie and Tiffany scurrying after