as they possibly could. Sometimes it seemed to Dinah as though she’d blinked and half her life had passed her by. ‘Can it, Derrick,’ Dinah said, still smiling. ‘I don’t have time for any of your silver-tongued charm right now, playboy. I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’
‘How big of a bone?’
‘Ever heard of a Tyrannosaurus Rex?’
Derrick laughed. ‘Sounds like a pretty big bone. What’s the problem, babe?’
Dinah let out a frustrated breath. ‘The problem is that I don’t like going out every night like this, Derrick. I don’t care if it’s good for my career or not. It’s not natural. I’m a housewife, for God’s sake. It even says so right there in the name of my show: “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”. But I’m never home long enough any more to actually be a housewife. You’ve always got me running around like a chicken with its damn neck cut off. I need a break.’
Dinah heard Derrick scribbling notes on his end of the line, no doubt finalising the details on yet another public appearance for her to make. ‘I hear ya, babe,’ he said after a moment. ‘But you know we’ve got to keep you in the public eye, don’t you? It’s just the way these things work. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.’
Dinah smirked. She and Derrick had played this game ever since college and she always won. Ever since they’d first met at Spellman, they’d tired to one-up each other with competing clichés that possessed exactly opposite meanings. ‘How about absence makes the heart grow fonder?’ she asked.
‘She who hesitates is lost.’
‘Look before you leap.’
‘Strike while the iron is hot.’
‘A stitch in time saves nine.’
Derrick paused. ‘Dead men don’t wear plaid?’
Dinah burst out laughing. ‘I win,’ she said. ‘Again. I’d say that puts the all-time record at somewhere around a billion to one, wouldn’t you? Anyway, what’s my schedule look like this week? I haven’t seen Tyler in for ever now and I need some time with my man.’
‘Let me take a look here.’
While Derrick shuffled through some more papers, Dinah stretched her neck and thought of her husband. Between Tyler’s job as the starting power forward for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and Dinah’s own job on the reality television show, spending any quality time together these days sometimes seemed a virtual impossibility. Dinah knew other couples had it worse than them and that she and Tyler needed to count their blessings, but she still couldn’t help resenting their busy schedules. After all, what was the point of working so hard all the time if they couldn’t enjoy the fruits of their labour together every once in a while?
Derrick finally stopped shuffling papers on his end of the connection. ‘You’ve got a book signing at Borders Tuesday, a speech to the rotary club in Roswell on Thursday and that cancer benefit thing at the children’s hospital on Friday.’
Derrick paused and cleared his throat. ‘Speaking of that,’ he said, ‘are you sure you won’t let me alert the press to the fact that you’ll be appearing at the hospital, Dinah? It would look really great to the public and up your rep with the bleeding-heart liberals. Probably score you a few more fans for your Facebook page, too.’
Dinah shook her head and pulled the BMW onto the freeway just north of Buckhead as the skies opened up and rain began to pound against her windshield. Flicking on the wipers to the most powerful setting made hardly any difference at all. ‘No, Derrick,’ Dinah said, raising her voice now to be heard above the incessant whine of the wipers. ‘I’m not trying to benefit from my charity work; you know that. This is personal to me.’
Dinah’s eyes misted up. Ever since her and Tyler’s only child had died of leukemia three years earlier, she’d worked tirelessly to help find a cure. Still, she never quite felt like she did enough. There was always more she could do. More money she could give. More charity events she could attend.
Derrick shifted back into friend-mode, putting aside his agent role for the moment. ‘We all miss, Marilyn, Dinah,’ he said softly. ‘She was an angel.’
Dinah wiped at her eyes with the back of her left hand. Between the tears in her eyes and the waterworks coming from the heavens it was almost impossible to see anything on the road in front of her.
‘Yes, she was an angel, Derrick,’ Dinah said, sighing softly. ‘She was an absolute