Page 8 of The Alibi Club

Upon graduation, Elaine and George married is a small ceremony in Nantucket surrounded by his family. Her mother was invited but could not afford to attend, nor did Elaine ask George to foot the bill for her flight. French champagne was served with lobster canapés. It was a happy day.

George was dead three months later, cast off like a human anchor into the North Atlantic from a boating accident. His family grieved without her. She grieved alone, mourning the guileless boy with the sparkle in his eye, but also the life she could have enjoyed with that fortune. She gave his ashes to them, they gave her a check, and she kept his name.

The second man Elaine Cromwell married was not a refined aristocrat, but rather an outdoorsman whose family grew wealthy from logging the forests of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. They had lumber mills and furniture stores and owned three thousand acres of virgin forest along Lake Michigan. His name was Hal Frisco and Elaine understood that while his rough edges weren’t exactly what she wanted, his business sense was. He gave her a ring and within a year, he built her a cradle out of cedar wood.

The day her daughter, Charlotte James Frisco, was born, Elaine came as close to love as she ever could. Charlotte was Hal’s mother’s name. Elaine looked down at the warm, gurgling bundle in her arms, and pair of blue eyes, the exact same shade as hers, peered back. She marveled at this miracle, felt the stirrings of an emotion she had never felt before, a feeling that flooded her with warmth and an urge to protect and whispered, “Jamie.”

Having Jamie meant Elaine would officially be considered part of the family and have access to its vast Midwestern wealth. She agreed to have a second child to further secure this position and lo and behold, Hal and Elaine were then blessed with a son, Ripley, heir apparent.

Her work here done, she could finally relax.

It was at that moment Elaine Cromwell Frisco sat in her salon chair and scoffed. She hadn’t relaxed in forty-one years. Hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since the ’80s, a dastardly affliction that started with the birth of her first child, a disquiet that never relented. The worry, the fretting, the agony of enduring their romantic failings. It’s no wonder she needed Botox and Juvéderm, a fact she would remind them of the next time she saw them.

Elaine mulled over yesterday’s meeting at Jamie’s house with a sneer on her lip. How could her children turn out to be so disappointing? How did they not inherit her grit, her tenacity, her drive? Maybe it was their generation. Indulging in the fleeting joy of avocado toast and craft beer instead of diligently working toward home ownership. Jamie had wasted more than a decade in public service as a forensic psychologist, of all things, instead of a more lucrative career like cosmetic dentistry or managing a hedge fund, or better yet marrying a hedge fund manager. She could literally write the playbook for the latter.

Although Elaine tried to impress the lessons of the world upon Jamie, she realized she was her father’s daughter, incredibly bright, confoundingly stubborn, infused with some intuitive knowledge that she never put to good use. So, when Elaine learned of Jamie’s near-fatal attack, she knew she could wrench her daughter back onto a more sensible career path coaching C-suite executives. Surely one of those CEOs was marriage material.

Threats always seemed to work better on Jamie, less so on Rip. She knew how to get to her. Had always known. Jamie had a deeply sentimental and tender heart, which explained that scrappy rescue dog of hers. It reminded Elaine of her own sad, used-up, weak mother. She did everything she could to toughen Jamie up, so she had a fighting chance. When Elaine applied the right kind of pressure, Jamie always caved. Yesterday was no different.

Her plan to marry her off to one of her C-suite clients was taking too long.

She inspected her face once more and grudgingly tipped the salon owner.

In three months, she would pull off a perfect wedding in Hawaii, wed the newest shining star in the political landscape, and Elaine Cromwell Frisco would finally reach the stratosphere of society she had so relentlessly desired.

As long as her children didn’t fuck it up for her.

Just then, Elaine Cromwell Frisco heard the most interesting words directed at the woman sitting in the med spa chair right next to her. “Oh, so you’re a matchmaker, how fascinating.”

Elaine’s lip curled into the briefest, tiniest smile. Timing, as always, was on her side.

CHAPTER SIX

Leave Nothing to Chance

LORNA

Lorna smiled up at her med spa nurse. Yes, she was a matchmaker.

She could not think of a more foolhardy plan than leaving your love life up to fate. Since when could anyone count on serendipity? The universe has a plan? No. Love is too important to leave to the unpredictable idea that kismet actually works in our favor.

Sure, the idea was romantic, but in today’s world, love took a little more planning.

Such was the life of a matchmaker.

Emily Dickinson once wrote that ‘the heart wants what the heart wants.’

While this may be true for lovelorn poets from the 1800s and certain characters in a Woody Allen movie, it is also true, in these modern times, that the heart is a fickle, unreliable instrument, easily distracted by dating apps, indecisive and impulsive. To rely on nothing more than the heart meant dashed hopes and misread signs.

Might as well rely on moon goddess magic.

The head, on the other hand, was worse. The head could very easily fuck with the yearnings of the heart by dispensing logic, reason, and ruthless rationale. This explained why the head might coerce one to bring home a dull yet stable data analyst for Thanksgiving instead of a deep and sensitive artist living in a grimy, rat-infested loft downtown for whom the heart yearned.

Love was forever a relentless battle between the head and the heart, where the head could force the heart to snuff out even the brightest spark, turning it to a shiny, hard stone. Or the heart could lead a would-be lover to madness, ruin, and an unhealthy addiction to drama. Literature was littered with shattered hearts and tortured minds. Hamlet’s Ophelia, Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff, Emma Bovary. Cautionary tales, all.

So, she had learned time and again to trust her gut.

Her gut was never wrong.