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Laurel had drawn a blue heart in the upper right-hand corner of the day. She’d colored the heart in with thick, scrabbling lines, the ink pressed hard into the page.
Emma stared at the heart for a moment, unsure what it meant. She flipped to September, staring at the dates marking Nisha Banerjee’s end-of-summer party, the first day of school, the first tennis invitational. Nothing was amiss. But then something on the back side of the August page caught her eye: Pressed into the paper, directly behind the box for the thirty-first, were the initials TV.
For Thayer Vega?
Emma’s heart picked up speed. Laurel had obviously written the initials first, then covered them up with the solid blue heart. But why?
I wish I knew.
“What are you doing in here?”
Emma let the calendar fall back to October and whipped around to see Laurel standing in the doorway. Her lips were pursed. Her hand was on her jutting hip. She shot across the room and pushed Emma away from her calendar.
Emma scrambled for an excuse. “The Haverford match,” she said quickly, pointing to a Friday two weeks in the future. “I just wanted to check the date.” Laurel peered around her desk, as though to make sure nothing was missing or out of place. “With the door closed?”
A tiny beat passed, then Emma stood up straighter.
“Paranoid much?” she snapped, channeling her inner Sutton. “The air conditioning must have pushed it closed.” Laurel looked like she was going to say something else, but then Mrs. Mercer’s voice sounded at the bottom of the stairs. “Girls? We have to leave now!”
“Coming!” Emma trilled, as though she’d done nothing wrong. She swept past Laurel, trying to remain poised, blameless, and aloof. But she could feel Laurel’s eyes searing into her back.
I could, too. It was obvious she hadn’t bought Emma’s lie.
Mrs. Mercer was standing at the bottom of the stairs, checking her BlackBerry. She smiled at the girls as they walked down the stairs. “You both look lovely,” she said in an eager voice. Probably too eager. Emma knew she was going to be disappointed by tonight’s outcome.
Mr. Mercer rounded the corner and jangled a set of keys in the air. He’d changed from hospital scrubs into a pair of wrinkle-free khakis and a salmon-colored button-down, but his eyes looked tired and his hair was mussed.
“Ready?” he said a bit breathlessly.
“Ready,” Mrs. Mercer echoed. Laurel crossed her arms over her chest sulkily. Emma just shrugged.
They walked to Mr. Mercer’s SUV and climbed in. As Emma belted herself into the seat behind Sutton’s mother, Mr. Mercer caught her eye in the rearview mirror. She quickly looked down. Aside from a few run-ins in the hall, she’d hardly spoken to Sutton’s dad since Saturday morning—he’d been working around the clock at the hospital. Now he was staring at her like he knew she was hiding something.
As Mr. Mercer hit reverse and pulled into the street, Mrs. Mercer plucked a gold-tone compact from her purse and smoothed on a layer of mauve lipstick. “This weather is so odd for early October,” she chattered. “I can’t think of the last time we expected rain like this.”
No one responded.
Mrs. Mercer cleared her throat, trying again. “I got that great mariachi band you love for your party, honey,” she said, laying a hand on Mr. Mercer’s arm. “Remember how brilliant they were at the Desert Museum benefit?”
“Great,” Mr. Mercer answered in a tepid voice. It seemed like he didn’t really feel like doing family dinner either.
Mrs. Mercer fell quiet, looking defeated.
I watched them all settle into stony silence. Something about this situation seemed familiar to me. I wondered how many other times my parents had tried whatever means necessary to force Laurel and me to be friends. We’d been close, once—I had glimmers of us spying on our parents together during family vacations, playing a game I’d made up called Runway Model in the basement, and even me teaching Laurel how to hold a tennis racket and hit a decent backhand. But something had happened over the years—
I’d begun to push Laurel away. Part of it might have been jealousy—Laurel was my parents’ real daughter, while I was their adopted child. I worried they loved her more. Maybe Laurel was just reacting to me. And things had just snowballed until we went through phases of barely speaking to each other.
Fifteen minutes and zero conversational topics later, Mr. Mercer eased the SUV over a speed bump and pulled into the resort parking lot. A little grotto with the name ARTURO’S etched in a boulder was lit up with Christmas lights. Outside the front entrance, a man in a business suit with a briefcase talked on his BlackBerry. A woman stood next to him, fussing with her blonde hair. Two waiters dressed in dark pants and crisp white button-downs took a smoke break next to a spindly cactus.
Emma followed Sutton’s family along stone steps that wove through a garden spotted with tiny yellow and violet flowers. Inside, thick, dark wood framed the windows in the adobe walls. Exposed beams hung overhead, and soft classical music floated from miniature speakers. The room was full of people, and waiters swirled with plates full of beautiful-looking racks of lamb, strip steaks, and lobster.
A maître d’ with a pencil mustache and a dark gray suit checked their reservation, and then led them to their table.
As they walked through the room, Emma stood up a little straighter, feeling out of place.
“This is lovely,” Mrs. Mercer cooed as they sat, picking up a thick piece of cardboard and perusing the wines listed. “Isn’t it, girls?”
