Some Women (3 page)

It wasn't as though she thought Fern deserved to grow up without knowing the man who was responsible for half of her genetic makeup; it was that she thought he didn't deserve to know her. Or to be a part of her life in any tangible way. Not that he'd offered. Not that she'd heard from him since last year around this time, just before Thanksgiving; three years had passed before that. He'd sent an e-mail saying he was on a ship in the South Pacific and that, if he had the opportunity, he'd try to send Fern something for Christmas. Piper hadn't bothered to mention it to Fern, since his promises were notoriously empty. And by the time she'd tried to write back a few days later, his account had been shut down. Unfortunately, this was the most contact Piper had ever had with Max, since the day he'd left. For Fern's part, she'd never even seen her father in person. Not even a photograph.

When Fern was younger, Piper would purchase one elaborate gift each year and set it under the Christmas tree, affixing a tag that read,
Love, Daddy
. Without fail, it had always been Fern's favorite present. And, at some point, this had begun to irk Piper. Why should this man who'd never so much as changed a diaper or been projectile-vomited on in the supermarket get to be the hero?
She
was the hero. The heroine.
Whatever.
Either way, it was a lie. She was deceiving her daughter in order to dull the inherent pain that came with having a father who'd fled for the hills shortly after she'd been conceived.

She'd never told Fern the details. Only that her dad loved her and that he had important business traveling the globe. The business of having no accountability—she'd left that part out. And
Fern, to her credit and possibly to Piper's, had never once showed any signs of feeling abandoned. Until now, she'd never even expressed an interest in meeting him. Sure, Piper had known the day would come, although she'd secretly hoped it would turn out to be years away.

Her sole purpose in life had been to make sure Fern always had enough love. To make sure that she loved her for both of them. But yet here they were. Fern's tortuous request. If only she understood it wasn't that easy.

Piper pushed through the front door of her office building, as Bernie the doorman came running toward her.

“Who's da bomb?” He held up his hand for a high five, and Piper slapped it, giggling at the same time.

“Me?”

“That's right, little lady.” He smiled magnanimously.

“Not so little these days.” She patted her stomach.

“You're crazy! You're one hot number!”

Piper laughed. Bernie had been working there for at least twice as long as she had. If he'd ever had a bad day, he'd never let on. She'd once asked him how it was possible that he was so happy all the time. He'd just shrugged and said, “I guess I got nothin' to complain about.” Of course, Piper knew very little about Bernie's personal life, except that he had two teenage daughters and that his wife had passed away about five years ago, which couldn't have been easy. Not to mention that he probably wasn't commanding a hefty salary while opening doors and buzzing in visitors. Yet he always had a smile on his face and a skip in his step. Piper thought about her own circumstances. She was a single mom, but still. She had a steady job, only one child, and a significant other who was
devoted to both her and Fern. Regardless, it seemed like there was always something to gripe about—whether the garbage disposal was on the fritz
again
or, you know, your daughter asked you to find her wayward father.

She took the elevator up three floors and headed straight for her office, bowing her head so that Chatty Jenny—her colleague Rachel's assistant—wouldn't try to cut her off at the pass for an exhaustive discussion about some trashy reality-TV show Piper would have to deny watching. She'd received an e-mail that morning from her boss saying there'd been a rash of robberies the previous night and that Piper had a lot of work on her hands to make sure all the details were in place for her article, which would go to press at five o'clock—not a minute later. She'd have to interview the victims, locate any witnesses, and pay a visit to each crime scene. For now, she shucked off her puffy winter jacket and wrangled her stubborn dark brown curls into a style she hoped resembled a ponytail.

“You look stressed.” Her protégée, Lucy, stood in her doorway with a steaming mug of coffee.

“That's exactly how I feel.” Piper motioned to the chair opposite her. “Come. Sit. Please tell me that's for me.” She motioned to the cup.

“Of course.” Lucy placed it on Piper's desk and sat down. “What's on the agenda today?”

“You don't even want to know.” Piper circled her head slowly in either direction, straining to get rid of a crick in her neck.

“What's going on there, Stevie Wonder?”

Piper nearly spit out her coffee. “Funny. I must have slept on it in some weird way, during the few hours I actually slept.”

“Uh-oh. That doesn't sound auspicious. Tired Piper equals cranky Piper.”

“And I didn't have time to eat because I was late getting Fern to school.”

“Oooooh! Double whammy. Tired and hungry Piper equals all hell breaking loose. Can I get you something at the food truck down the street? They make a mean breakfast burrito.”

“Really? What's in it?”

“Who knows? Who cares? It tastes like heaven in a wrap.”

“Good sell. I'm in.” She reached into her purse for her wallet and handed Lucy a twenty-dollar bill. “Buy one for yourself too. My treat.”

“Thanks, but I'm on a strict diet. Anything else I can do for you?”

She'd never heard Lucy mention trying to lose weight before, not in the two years they'd been working together. She was one of those people who wore her extra padding well. A little here, a little there, a little more in the rear. She had pretty features and nice long, thick wavy blond hair.

Piper cleared her throat. “Now that you mention it . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I was hoping you could help me out with something.” Piper trusted Lucy implicitly. After all, she'd proved herself time and time again. “Something personal.”

“Sure, anything.”

“Excellent.” Piper exhaled, releasing the tension that had her shoulders at her ears. “I need you to help me find Fern's dad.”

Annabel sat, wearing only her underwear and a sports bra, on the edge of her bed with her pale, flabby legs flung over one side. All she had to do was wriggle into her workout clothes, lace up her sneakers, and drive to class. Seemingly simple tasks and ones that she'd been executing for the past eight weeks, ever since she'd committed to a new exercise regimen—every-other-day barre classes, a body-sculpting combination of ballet, yoga, and Pilates—come hell or high water. It was hard to say what had motivated her after so many years of doing absolutely nothing to raise her heartbeat beyond the mad rush of getting her boys off to school in the morning.

Today she'd cried when the bus had pulled away. Hot, bulbous tears. The kind that sprang without warning. The kind you couldn't squelch without diverting your mind to something benign, like getting dressed. This was new to her. Even on Harper and Hudson's
first day of kindergarten she hadn't been nearly this distraught. And every day after that had felt like cause for a minor celebration—seven whole hours with no one to yank on her shirt, asking for more milk or begging her to help them construct yet another skyscraper out of Magna-Tiles. Only now their departure felt like an affront. Why did everyone have to leave her?

The kids had no idea what was going on with her and Henry. He'd wanted to explain things to them, but she'd balked, insisting it was way too early to involve them. What if Henry decided he'd made a mistake? He said he wouldn't. What if he missed his home? His children? What if he missed
her
? He'd reiterated that his decision was final and, surprisingly, the sting of rejection was no less excruciating the second time around.

That was when she'd gotten angry and started taunting him with threats they both knew she'd never follow through with.
I'll fight for full custody,
she'd avowed. Then she'd practically spit at him,
You'll never see your sons
. Annabel had cringed, detecting the pointed cruelty in her own voice. Was she capable of using their children as pawns to punish Henry? For no other reason than that he'd excluded her in his decision to bulldoze everything she'd worked so hard to construct? For him. For all of them. She didn't think so. But sometimes the depth of her indignation over being jilted so suddenly and definitively consumed her. And, in those moments, she thought she might be capable of just about anything.

Why had she promised Piper she'd meet her for class this morning? Her body ached from thrashing about restlessly in her king-sized bed, which had once felt like limited space. Now, without Henry by her side, she was like a tick on a horse's back: there was so much surface area that all she wanted to do was needle her way
into a comfortable fold. Piper had been the one person she'd confided in about Henry's game-time exodus. They'd been friends for only about two months, since they'd met at the opening of the new barre studio in town. They'd hit it off immediately by grimacing and griping about the women whose emaciated physiques belied their inherent bone structures, and the ones who could drop down into a split with the ease of sitting in a chair. After their first session, Piper had asked Annabel to grab a coffee at the café next door, and they'd been doing so regularly ever since.

The thing was, Piper wasn't really the sort of person Annabel was typically drawn to. She was often disheveled and, while she clearly loved her job as a crime reporter, Annabel had observed that Piper didn't possess the sort of ambition Annabel had once worn like a badge of honor when she'd been vice president of marketing for a fine-jewelry conglomerate. When Annabel had asked Piper where she saw her career headed, she'd replied that once upon a time it had been her dream to work as a producer on
America's Most Wanted
or some equally grisly show, but that the combination of her responsibilities to Fern and her ever-growing debt had forced her to set aside her own goals. Annabel had wanted to encourage her, though she'd realized it might appear hollow coming from someone who hadn't been employed by anyone other than her own family in more than five years.

She was practically a different person now than she'd been half a decade ago. She'd had nothing to focus on back then, beyond her career and a husband who'd toiled to build his technology company from the ground up. Those had been the days. Annabel had thrived on the pressure; she'd marinated in the Kool-Aid of shared misery with her colleagues. The workdays had stretched longer and longer
until finally there'd been little distinction between one day ending and another beginning. The last-minute international flights out of Newark at six in the morning, which had required her to be up, alert, and out the door no later than three—an ungodly hour to inhale frozen waffles in a taxi cab. And, finally, the verbal abuse from a team of executives who'd always expected more, no matter how much of yourself you'd applied to the job.

How many Thanksgivings and Christmases had she and Henry willingly forsaken in the name of their skyrocketing careers? How many times had she let her parents down? Parents who'd said they understood, but could never truly fathom the intensity of her passion, the way it seared her from within, and the sudden rushes of handling marketing catastrophes that she metabolized like a ravenous pit bull.

In the early days, before Henry, even months after they'd been dating, the idea of marriage and children had terrified her. Annabel had viewed them as obstructions, even nuisances, that would inevitably stunt her ascending mobility. More to the point, she hadn't been remotely concerned about the internal clock that seemed to plague her female coworkers with its tick, tick, ticking until many of them had settled for their not-so–Prince Charmings, in exchange for an appropriately sized engagement ring and the promise of never being dubbed an old maid.

Then Henry had proposed. And she'd told herself they would wait years to have kids. Until she'd gotten pregnant after she'd quite unintentionally forgotten to renew her prescription for birth-control pills. The irony being that she'd forgotten because she'd been overwhelmed by a major project at work. When her obstetrician had announced, “Congratulations, you're having twins,”
Annabel had felt like her whole world was imploding, though she'd never let on. She'd mustered a wide smile and immediately started trying to piece together how she was going to make it all happen. Other women did it. Other women who had bigger careers than she did and more than two children, in some cases. She would hire a team of baby nurses and nannies. Whatever it took.

By the time Harper and Hudson had made their way into the world, she'd had an infallible plan in place, one that would entail comprehensive maneuvering and multiple hands on deck, but it was a plan nonetheless. Then she'd held her babies in her arms and, like the parting of the Red Sea, in an instant she'd recognized her plan was entirely wrong—a realization that had both delighted and frightened Henry. He'd admitted that all along he'd hoped she would come around. He'd said that he'd yearned for Annabel to be the kind of mother to their children that his own mother had never been to him. Not because she'd been married to her career, but because she'd been a raging alcoholic who could only be counted on to show up at school reeking of gin. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, she'd wanted to be the perfect mother
and wife
. For him. And for herself. That had been the unexpected part.

And now, after five years of devoting herself to her husband and children with the same fierce dedication she had to her burgeoning career, he'd up and left. Without so much as a thank-you for establishing and maintaining the beautiful life they'd built. The beautiful life
she'd
built for all of them. She was disoriented. Henry's abrupt departure had rendered her useless. The gaping fissure in her family structure had left her unsure of her role, not only as a wife and mother, but also as a person. And Annabel couldn't stand for that. She needed a whole new plan. A clear direction with
which to forge ahead. Either that, or she feared she might stay lost forever.

•   •   •

“Okay, before we discuss what's going on with you, can we please talk about the chick in the front whose arms looked like Hulk Hogan's?” Piper slipped off her rain slicker as she spoke and hung it on the back of her chair.

“The ripped one with the fake tan and the white tank top?” Annabel smiled knowingly. They'd learned quickly that there were women in their class who had staked their claims to certain spots. Spots that were not meant to be taken by newbies. Piper had made that mistake early on. There'd been a real hubbub about it, including a few malevolent glares.

Piper motioned to the waitress. “I don't know about you, but I'm famished. I'm thinking eggs and bacon.”

“They take forever with the cooked stuff. Don't you have to get to work at some point?” Annabel was well aware that Piper's hours were anything but regular, but somehow it still made her anxious that she didn't need to be at her desk before nine.

“At some point, yes. I was on location until two in the morning and then had to get up at six to help Fern get ready for school.” Her stomach grumbled. “Thus these lovely black circles under my eyes.”

“Please. Don't even talk to me about black circles. Do you see this puffiness?” She pointed to the socket under her eyes and then pinched the fragile skin between her thumb and index finger.

“Would you stop? That'll only make it worse!” Piper swatted at Annabel's forearm and then motioned to the waitress, who was standing idly in the corner, intermittently checking her cell phone.

“What can I get for you ladies?” She'd made her way over to them reluctantly.

“I'm going to do one of those fruit-smoothie things and a fat-free oat bran muffin.” Annabel snapped her menu shut before noticing Piper's bulky hand-knit scarf, which was spattered in what appeared to be congealed food. She made a mental note to buy her a new one for Christmas.

“You're a better woman than I am.” Piper looked up at the waitress. “I'll do the eggs Benedict with a side of honey sausage. And hash browns. Black coffee, please. As strong as possible.”

“Good for you.” Annabel nodded. She'd never been able to eat that way without inflating like a hot-air balloon. Piper, on the other hand, seemed to indulge in whatever she was craving at the moment and somehow managed to remain in decent shape. She wasn't quite thin, but she didn't need to lose more than, say, ten pounds—much like everyone else in the world—to achieve an enviable figure. If Annabel didn't like Piper so well, she might have felt resentful toward her.

“I wouldn't go that far, but I have too many other things to think about than dieting. Plus, doesn't this class burn, like, eight hundred calories? That should knock out the sausage and potatoes, no?”

“I'd say so.” Annabel took off her own jacket now. She was always cold, but the heat generating from the close-packed quarters had warmed her. It was something she and Henry had always struggled over. He liked the thermostat at sixty-six. She preferred it at seventy-three, seventy-five if she really had her way. Unfortunately, the boys took after their father, so she'd been outnumbered for three solid years—since they, too, could express their penchants.

“Now that we've ordered, give me the scoop. How are you
doing with everything?” Piper propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward.

“Better, I guess.” Annabel shrugged.

“That's
great
.”

“Actually, that's a lie.” Annabel covered her face with her hands and then dropped them into her lap again. “I'm miserable. Angry. Hurt. Pissed. Furious. Sometimes even vengeful. It's a lot of fun.”

“It sounds it.” Piper exhaled. “How about the kids?”

“They don't know yet. Henry wants to tell them, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I just think it's too soon.”

“You have to do what feels right to you.” The waitress returned with her coffee and Annabel's strawberry-colored smoothie. “Although, haven't they asked where Henry is?”

“Not really. I keep making stuff up before they have the chance. And then I have to e-mail Henry to get him to corroborate, which he doesn't seem to appreciate.”

“That sucks.”

“Ya think?” Annabel bent her straw into her mouth and sucked hard to imbibe the dense liquid. “The worst part is that I don't really understand why he left in the first place. It was like everything was completely normal one minute, and then the next he was toting his already-packed suitcase out the door.”

“He hasn't offered any explanation?” Piper sipped her coffee.

“Not much. He said he's sick and tired of living in my world. That I always have to control everything, and he feels like he can't breathe.”

“Okay. Does that resonate with you?”

“No! Not at all. He thinks we live in
my
world? All I do every
day is run around getting things done for him and the kids. How is it
my
world to be grocery shopping, picking up
his
dry cleaning, getting the kids on the bus in the morning, picking them up in the middle of the afternoon, and chauffeuring them around to their various extracurricular activities, only to come home and bathe them before making dinner?” Annabel huffed. “All he has to do is shower, dress himself, saunter out the door, and return ten hours later to a perfectly tidy house with everything in its place.”

“Maybe he feels left out because he's not around as much as you are?”

“Is that cause to leave someone?” Annabel raised her voice and then, aware of her intimate proximity to their neighbors at the next table, lowered it again. “I'm sorry, but it's maddening.”

“It sounds like it.” One of the runners appeared with Piper's eggs Benedict and Annabel's muffin. “Don't forget the sausage and hash browns, please.” He nodded vaguely and scurried off to relay her message.