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“You’re not going to make me go alone,” she warned him, hands on her hips.
“Who would I know there?” he asked for about the fiftieth time.
“You’ve met Bailey Quintar.”
“The cop obsessed with her friend’s death? Yes.”
“And you know of Amanda and Delta.”
“The Fucking First Fifths.”
Zora ground her teeth together rather than correcting him. He was goading her. Making fun of her friends. Maybe she did talk too much about them. They’d had a big impact on her life.
“And Delta has a son,” he singsonged, “who’s about one now, and she chased down her husband, the inestimable Dr. Tanner Stahd of the Stahd Clinic, handing out nutritional supplements that contain lead—”
Zora interrupted, “That was his dad. It was trace amounts. A bad batch.”
“—like the quack that he is.”
“And they don’t do that anymore. It’s a good clinic. You’ve been there.”
“Yessirree. Which is why I know better than to go back.”
Zora fought back another angry retort. Max knew as well as anyone that Tanner was a celebrated doctor who shouldn’t be blamed for his father’s mistakes. Even Dr. Stahd Senior was a victim of the tainted products, which had ultimately been determined to be the manufacturer’s fault, though that was too late to save his career. Max knew all that and didn’t care. If Zora had to put her finger on what Max’s problem with Tanner Stahd was, she would label it envy.
Which is exactly what Zora felt when she ran into Delta one day, about six months into her pregnancy. Delta had been as beautiful as ever. Her burgeoning stomach only seemed to add to her beauty. For God’s sake, she’d actually glowed, something Zora had always thought was a myth.
Delta had put on a few pounds, though. Hopefully ones that were hard to lose. If Delta showed up at the reunion with ten or twenty extra plumping her up, it might even the scales out a little in the cosmic “who has the most” race.
“What’s so funny?” Max asked.
Immediately, Zora stopped the smile that had crept over her face. She couldn’t let Max know how she felt. Delta was supposed to be her friend. She was her friend. Zora didn’t really want bad things to happen to her. She just wanted everything that Delta had.
“Okay,” she snapped, gathering up her small silver purse, a Target buy that she hoped no o
ne would recognize. She hadn’t really expected Max to accompany her anyway. She’d just been hoping.
Once in her ancient white Mazda, she turned her thoughts to the upcoming reunion. She was nervous, for sure, but eager, too. She wanted them all to see that she’d done all right. Maybe not as grand a life as she’d once had—thanks a lot, Mom and Dad—but not as bad as, say, Woody, who’d basically peaked in high school and then become a garage mechanic or something . . . although she had heard that he’d actually bought the business, but that could be just a rumor.
Zora grimaced. She was being unkind, and she didn’t want to be unkind. And though it was mean and shallow—la di da di la and all that—she resented the fact that the other Fives, and Ellie, had all gotten what they wanted out of life. Delta was married to Tanner and had an adorable one-year-old, Bailey had become the cop she wanted to be, Amanda was a successful defense attorney, and Ellie, for God’s sake, was a television weather girl, her journalistic aspirations taking her to TV. Why was she the only one still struggling?
You chose Max.
Okay, yes. She’d chosen Max. He’d saved her in the beginning, and he’d really seemed to be going places. Funny how things turn out. How was it that Amanda, who’d taken her shot in Hollywood and failed—there, at least, was failure—how had she come back to Oregon, enrolled in college, and then law school and been accepted by a prestigious Portland firm right away and was supposedly brilliant? Oh, and married to Hal Brennan, one of the firm’s partners. Zora would like to believe that Amanda had been given the job by nepotism, but it was the other way around. She had apparently blown their socks off with her decisive manner and scrupulous attention to detail. This she’d learned from do-gooder Rhonda Clanton, who’d run into Zora at the only decent restaurant in West Knoll, an Italian eatery called Nona’s, and who’d been only too happy to tell Zora all about her old friend.
“My husband’s friends with one of the partners at Amanda’s firm, and he just raved about her,” Rhonda declared. She’d then leaned in and whispered, “She always was intense.”
Not such a do-gooder anymore, Zora had realized, and she and Rhonda had dished a bit about Amanda.
But though Zora was mildly irked at Amanda’s success, she didn’t feel the anger and despair she did toward her that she did toward Delta. Amanda could have her career. Go for it, girl. But Delta . . . with her husband and baby . . .
Max was the problem.
And what if, though no one was saying it, Zora’s inability to conceive was his problem, not hers? What if she’d just picked the wrong guy? What if somebody else could do the trick? She was twenty-eight years old, and her eggs weren’t getting any younger. How many years was she supposed to wait?
She growled low in her throat and then, with an effort, pushed those thoughts from her head and concentrated on driving to the event, but as she negotiated the traffic, the niggling thought that she needed to rethink her marriage kept circling back to the forefront of her mind. It wasn’t a new thought, but it was one that was growing in intensity. Becoming increasingly critical. A decision had to be made and soon. That goddamn biological clock.
Maybe . . . maybe it was time to look for someone new.
