Birthday Girls (6 page)

She opened her eyes, stared out the small window, and wondered why, after all this time, the mention of Abigail Hardy’s name still evoked so much … emotion.

“Here it is,” Devon said. “It says: ‘Lunch at La Chambre. September 24th, one o’clock. Someone named Maddie will be there, too.’ ”

Abigail. Maddie. Her long-ago friends. Her long-ago partners in childhood pranks and childhood crime. She drew in a short breath. “What’s the occasion?” Abigail, after
all, had always had an agenda. There was no reason to believe that she’d changed.

“The occasion? Christ, I’m your agent. Not your social director. Besides, you can forget it. You’ll be in Houston on the 24th. The Texas tour, remember?”

The Texas tour. Of course. Kris closed her eyes again. No matter what Abigail had on her mind, work must come first.

Or must it?

Slowly Kris felt her curiosity grow. Curiosity—her weakness, her passion, her foible. What could Abigail want? After all these years, what could she possibly want?

Still, it would be fun to see them again. Abigail and Maddie. Just like old times.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

It all depended on how much Abigail knew.

“Change the Texas tour,” Kris heard herself say.

She quickly clicked off, listened to the hum of the jet engines, and tried—not for the first time—to convince herself that chances were Abigail had never found out, and that anyway Kris had done absolutely nothing wrong.

September 1997

Maddie
couldn’t believe that she’d let Sophie talk her into bringing a copy of Abigail’s latest book.

“If you get her autograph, I’ll make pot roast for dinner.” Her mother’s words echoed now, the wheels of the train clack-clacking beneath Maddie’s feet. She’d been racing out the door, knowing she’d have to speed to the station to make the 11:15 into Manhattan, pissed that she was late and equally irritated that September 24th had come so fast, before she could mentally gear up to see her old friends again, before she could find enough ways to make herself believe she was as successful and happy as they were.

“Mother!” Maddie had screeched. “This is shameful bribery! Abigail is my friend. Not some hot-shot celebrity.”

But Sophie’s eyes twinkled as she repeated, “Pot roast. With gravy.”

So Maddie had taken the book, silently thanking God that her mother did not like fiction and had never read one of Kris’s hair-raising, edge-of-the-seat tales, or Maddie would be toting copies of those, too.

She stared out the dirt-streaked train window and wished she were more excited about seeing Abigail and Kris again. But four days in L.A. last week had left her drained: four days of behind-the-scenes grunt work for six hours of shooting a star. Thankfully, Madonna had not lost it when the donkey shit on the set. Thankfully, the photo turned out to be dynamite.

Still she was exhausted. And today, when she should have wanted to feel great and look great, she did not.

Dressed in a long dirndl skirt and matching shapeless vest that she’d hauled from the back of her closet, Maddie knew her only fashion salvation was the large antique cameo at the throat of her beige satin shirt, and the brown, high-buttoned shoes on her feet.

Yet she also knew she couldn’t blame her lack of enthusiasm on being tired. Or on looking like a frump.

Removing the chestnut-colored tam from atop her brown-and-gray, straight-hanging hair, Maddie tossed it on the seat beside her backpack, reached into the bag, and pulled out the book that Sophie prized.

In the Rose Garden with Abigail
, the title read. Beneath it a full-color photo showed Abigail Hardy dressed in a pale peach sheath that screamed Neiman-Marcus, clutching a pair of snippers in one hand and a bundle of blooms in the other. She was framed by a cluster of coral roses. Though the set was predictable and the lighting too harsh, even Maddie had to admit you could almost smell the fragrance.

“She’s still just as pretty as can be,” Sophie said each time she received another volume from Abigail’s monthly book club—of which Sophie had been a charter member from day one.

It was a proclamation that wasn’t new. Sophie had always admired Abigail’s petite, lady-like looks. Maddie supposed it should have made her crazy, each time she looked at her own football player shoulders, her big hands, or her
thick, squat thighs. But her physique—like her sullenness—had been inherited from her father, and even at a young age Maddie knew she was who she was and that she could never have changed her skin to “fair” and manufactured those blushy pink cheeks for herself.

She was, after all, a photographer, not an artist. Her canvas was real life reproduced, not embellished.

Besides, Maddie had never really
wanted
to look like Abigail—maybe because she knew how hard Abigail worked at being flawless and struggled with her endless preoccupation with perfection.

It had always amazed Maddie that when they were kids Abigail would never even leave her house until her bedroom was spotless, until everything was neat and orderly, as though the Queen of England would come while Abigail was out and take away her princess crown for being a slob. The weirdest part was, Abigail didn’t even
have
to do those things: she had
servants
, for godssake. Servants, and no mother to cluck-cluck behind her back if a dust bunnie lurked under her bed. Not that Sophie ever would have clucked.

But mother or no mother, Abigail had continued to primp at her vanity, clean her room, then primp again. As for Maddie, she merely brushed her teeth, washed her face, then set out to do fun things, like roam the school grounds with her camera while the dust and clutter seemed to grow in her absence.

Looking at Abigail’s perfect smile now, at her perfect white teeth and professionally styled hair, Maddie wondered if she should have paid more attention to herself back then. Certainly Abigail had no obvious gray hairs, no lines on her face, no sag to her cheeks, or other nearly-fifty, dead-giveaways. And though Maddie knew the salvation of photo retouching, she shuddered at the possibility that with Abigail, none had been needed at all.

Neither, she supposed, would any have been required for Kris.

She slid the book back into her bag next to the other volumes that she’d tucked inside: two photo albums of their early birthdays, memories of years past.

It had been a last-minute thought, the reason she’d been late.

The idea had come yesterday. She’d spent the afternoon rifling through old pictures, the pictures the others had always mocked her for taking, though they’d always been ready with a smile and a pose. She’d put her son Timmy to work in the darkroom making duplicates from the ancient, black-and-white, scallop-edge prints, and threatened the young man at the camera shop that she’d take her business elsewhere unless he hunted down two matching, nostalgic-looking albums.

Timmy had been easy to coerce; since he was four he had loved hanging out in his mother’s studio. The young man at the camera shop, who she’d learned was named Cody and was twenty-eight years old, was equally compliant: he had recently bought the small operation and was probably hungry for business.

She’d worked until three o’clock this morning, but the results had been worth it: the identical albums captured the innocence of their youth.

Hopefully, her friends would like them. And hopefully, the albums would help deflect the conversation from the disaster of Maddie’s life, from Parker and
Our World
, and from the hideous fact that she had been dumped.

Still, Maddie mused as the lights surged overhead and the train rumbled into the bowels of Grand Central Station, she did have something that neither Abigail nor Kris had accomplished: two healthy and hearty teenage sons who loved their mother—no matter that no one ever asked for
her
autograph, no matter how many dust bunnies still lurked
under her bed, or how many years it had been since Parker had left her and never come back.

Though
it was politically—and legally—incorrect to abolish men from a restaurant, La Chambre made its own statement with its pink-and-gold decor, Chantilly lace tablecloths, and nearly translucent china. Even the chairs were delicate, with small padded seats and no arms. The menus, of course, had no prices—
all
menus, not simply those handed to the hostess’s guests. It was exactly as Abigail preferred.

The table she’d reserved was tucked in a quiet alcove in front of a large, many-paned window that overlooked East 64th Street. Peering past the organdy draperies and gazing outside, Abigail wondered how long it would take to know if she could count on her friends for help. She wondered if they’d think she was crazy. Then she twisted the gold bracelet on her wrist and wondered if maybe she was.

At first her idea had seemed merely a dream, an unattainable goal. But in the past few weeks it had taken hold of her heart, seizing her with quiet frenzy, emphasizing her resolve in bold print, underlined, capital letters, a headline imprinted on her soul, a shout to the world that she had paid her dues.

It was, of course, not an impossible plan to execute—not for someone, perhaps, other than Abigail Hardy, someone who had not spent a lifetime closed in by rigid expectations and self-perfection demands.

The initial step had been the most difficult: calling Maddie, calling Kris, admitting to herself she could not do this alone. And now, what had begun as that dream might become her new reality—if she could hold on, if she could remember that of all the people on the face of the earth, Maddie Daniels and Kris Kensington were the only ones she could trust. Or, at least, they had been once. Long ago.

She stared at her locket and hoped that the trust had not changed.

“Would you care for something while you wait?” asked a slim waitress with just enough French accent to make her sound sophisticated without being gauche.

Abigail raised her head with what she hoped was her best TV-viewer smile. “No, thank you.” As long as two bottles of Dom Pérignon had been chilled, as long as the cracked crab was fresh today, everything, she assured herself, would be fine. She wished her trembling hands would get the message.

Studying her manicured fingernails (gleaming and nut-colored, a shade deeper than her silk moiré suit but not too dark for September), a chili of excitement ran through her as she realized that with the help of her friends—
if
they agreed to help—she might not have to worry about such trivialities as manicures again, ever again, for the rest of her life, no matter how many years after fifty would remain.

Her thoughts drifted to the unanswered questions of how many more years would have remained for her parents if they had not been killed, if they had lived to see Abigail’s enormous success, lived to see their only child preside over the family manor in the regal tradition of the Hardy lineage. She wondered if they would have approved.

Father, perhaps, would have; for despite his lust for adventure, he still had been Hardy blood.

But Leslie Hardy, the gypsy-woman, may have been appalled that her daughter had become like … them.

“She never understood the responsibility of being a Hardy,” Grandfather told Abigail right after the funeral. Then he had harrumphed and retreated to his study.

Abigail may have been only eight, but Grandfather’s words had stuck in her mind. And she became determined to understand. In a short time, she did. She understood that in order to please Grandfather, in order to keep him from harrumphing about her, she would have to do everything
possible to win his favor. He was, after all, the only family she had left.

Even after her marriage Abigail continued to please him. Or, at least, to try. Though Edmund had protested, she retained her maiden name; though Edmund preferred Europe, she insisted they live at Windsor-on-Hudson, Grandfather’s manor house, Abigail’s legacy.

And though Grandfather remained distant and unreachable, Abigail kept hoping that someday, one day, he would appreciate her, someday, one day, he would be the loving grandfather she needed. So she kept trying. The only thing she didn’t understand was why, ten years after his death, she was still trying to please him, still trying to prove that she understood her responsibility.

And now it was all going to change.

Her eyes dropped to the locket again; her hands relaxed, and Abigail felt herself smile as a small voice within told her that her gypsy-woman mother might applaud.

Then she reached up and took a small sip from her water goblet, grateful that her mocha lipstick was ColorStay, so the rim remained pristine and perfect.

A pink awning
with the name
La Chambre
silk-screened in gold hung on a building that looked more like a posh brownstone than a restaurant for lunch. Maddie hesitated a moment, took a deep breath, then clomped up the three steps. As she reached for the brass knob, on the glass-stenciled door, the door opened. She almost fell inside.

Quickly regaining her balance, Maddie stood face-to-face with a living mannequin in white linen. It figured that Abigail would choose a snotty-stiff place with a doorperson.