Four #2
“Oh, I decided to do the vaginal rejuvenation instead. Simon loves it. You know what they say—keep it tight at night if you want to keep your man.”
“Oh my God,” Linda murmured. She swallowed hard, looking around them again, trying to catch the eye of someone to save her.
“Would you like a referral?” Edie asked sweetly. “I have a wonderful doctor.”
Linda opened her mouth like she was about to say something she would probably regret, but then clamped her mouth shut. Then opened it again. “Thanks for the flowers. I wish I could invite you to stay, but unfortunately, we have no seats left.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Edie said, and thrust the arrangement at her, forcing Linda back a step. “Sounds like a big fat scam to me. Ta-ta!” She turned on her heel and sailed out the way she’d come, head high, shoulders back, calling and waving to old friends.
She would hear about it from Simon, she knew, but she didn’t care.
She got in her red Porsche and peeled out of the parking lot, headed home.
Her only regret was that when she was feeling this spectacular, she needed someone to do a couple of shots with her.
Unfortunately, having a philandering husband meant that half the women in town were too scared or too pissed at her.
Because no matter what Simon did, Edie always managed to hang on to him.
Sometimes, she could even exert a bit of influence over him.
“How do I do it? It’s a mixture of good luck and good dirt,” she imagined herself saying when she accepted her gardening award again this year. And people wouldn’t know if she was talking about flowers or the dirt she kept on Simon’s lovers.
She pulled into her circle drive in front of her house, got out of her car, and started the walk up the brick pathway to the double-door entrance of the Colonial.
She paused and turned, admiring the magnificent grounds that she had planned and she maintained with the help of Chuck and his landscape crew.
As she stood there, admiring her handiwork, she heard what sounded like sobbing.
She paused, cocking her head to one side like a dog, trying to detect where it was coming from.
Her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, but she eventually began to zero in on the sound.
She turned slowly, looking to the right, at the windows of her living room.
One of them was open. Probably her housekeeper, Bernie, had opened it.
She had an almost compulsive need to air out rooms. Was that Bernie?
No, it couldn’t be—Bernie was a salty old cuss from the old country—wherever that was—and Edie had never seen her cry.
The sound made her panic a little, because if that sobbing was Bernie, something terrible had happened.
She hurried up the path and the steps to the door. Inside, she dropped her purse on the foyer console. “Hello?” she called.
The crier hiccupped. Edie walked to the door of the living area and glanced inside.
Across the room, past the grand piano, and the chic seating upholstered in silk, and the giant Ming vase Simon had bought her after one of his early affairs, was a couch before the hearth.
Someone was sitting with their back to Edie, their dark head bent over.
She walked forward, straining to see without going back for her progressives. Simon was right—she ought to just wear the damn things, but she was too vain.
As she drew closer, she recognized one of her granddaughters. Her favorite granddaughter, which she would never admit. “Marcy?” She was shocked to see her here.
Marcy didn’t sit up. Her dark brown hair was the color of her father’s, Edie’s second son, Stephen. It spilled over her back and shoulder. She turned her head slightly away from Edie. “Don’t come in, Nana. I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“In distress?” Edie asked, coming closer.
“You know I’m an ugly crier!” Marcy exclaimed.
“I certainly do. But I’ve seen you ugly cry before, so it won’t be quite as much of a shock.” She walked around to the front of the couch and sat carefully next to her granddaughter. “Why are you crying?”
“You won’t understand,” Marcy moaned.
“Try me.”
Marcy lifted her head, and yikes, she was indeed a hideous crier. Her skin was splotchy and red, her nose swollen and leaking. Edie took several tissues from the box nearby and handed them to Marcy, indicating she should have a good wipe of her nose. “Did someone die?” Edie asked tentatively.
“No, but I wish I had.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Edie said, and put her arm around her granddaughter. “Tell me what’s happened.” She was guessing a man. She would hear what he’d done, tell Marcy to take a nap, and when she got up, they’d have cocktails. That’s what she did for her many heart fractures. It worked like a charm.
Marcy swiped at her nose with the tissue and took a deep breath. “I’ve lost everything, Nana. All my money.”
That was a bit dramatic, but Edie wasn’t too concerned. For one, all her children and all their children tended to exaggerate. Two, Marcy didn’t have much money of her own. She had some inheritance, but there were safeguards around it. “Is that all? We’ll lend you some.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’ve been swindled.”
Swindled was such a funny word, and Edie couldn’t help but smile. “What?”
Marcy turned on the couch to face her. “Remember Rocco, my friend in college?”
Edie had to think.
“Rocco Vitali,” Marcy said.
Edie remembered. She and Simon had joked about him being in the mob. And yet, that name had always sounded so familiar to Edie, although she hadn’t bothered to figure out why. But that was college. Marcy was twenty-seven now, had been out of college a few years. “Yes, I do, but—”
“A couple of years ago, he got in touch.”
“Okay.” Marcy was a beautiful young woman, so that was no surprise. Hadn’t he tried to date her in college? Edie couldn’t remember. But he’d probably seen her picture or followed her on some social media app and decided he was man enough for her.
“He had this amazing opportunity, Nana. And you know, he was always first in our finance class. Now, he’s a big investor, and he’s rich, and he knows what he’s doing.”
Edie’s spidey senses were suddenly ablaze. She felt as sick as she did when Simon would say, We need to talk. “What was the opportunity?”
“Cryptocurrency.”
Crypto-what? Of course Edie had heard of it, but she didn’t really know what it was.
“He’d set up this business, Roc V, and I invested. All our college friends did. And for a while, it was doing great, and we were making some money. Really good money, Nana. That’s how I started my PR firm.”
Edie swallowed down the first thought—What PR firm?— because Marcy had never really gotten it off the ground. She kept chipping away, but as far as Edie knew, she’d only had a couple of clients.
“But then it started doing bad, and Rocco said we should put more money into it, and I did, and now … now the market has bottomed out and I’ve lost everything.”
Kids. Everything was so serious. They didn’t understand that markets were a marathon, not a sprint.
What could Marcy have invested? A couple of thousand dollars?
What could she have made? Twice that? “A few hundred dollars isn’t the end of the world,” she said soothingly.
“I know it might feel like it, but really, it’s nothing compared to what you will earn over your lifetime. ”
Marcy looked at her like she was speaking another language.
“What?” Edie asked.
“It was more than a few hundred dollars.”
Edie didn’t believe that and forced a smile. “My point is it probably looks a lot worse than it is. But I know you, Marcy. You wouldn’t have invested more than you could afford to lose—”
“Now you’re making me feel bad!” she cried, and covered her face with her hands. “Just never mind. You’re obviously going somewhere, so I won’t bother you. Nice dress, by the way.”
“Thank you. And I just came home, so I have all the time in the world for you. How much more, Marcy?”
“You don’t want to know,” she muttered, and dropped her hands.
“I really do.”
“Thousands, okay? Thousands, Nana.” She turned her face away. “My inheritance. My savings.”
Oh no. That couldn’t possibly be. But what if it was? Edie couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even swallow.
“I know what you’re thinking!” Marcy said accusingly.
No, Marcy didn’t know what Edie was thinking, because the fuckity-fucks going through her brain right now were on turbo speed and nothing coherent could get in.
“Rocco said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that he wouldn’t lead me astray, ever, and now was the time to go big or go home, because crypto was the way of the future, and I’d be rich.”
“Your inheritance?” Edie managed to croak.
“And I maxed out my credit cards.”
“Oh, Marcy—”
“I wanted to go big or go home! He said I’d see a return within a few months, and I did, I saw a big return, but then …
then it started to fall, and now it’s been almost a year since it fell completely off and it’s not coming back, and it’s all gone Nana.
All of it.” Marcy started to sob again, falling against her grandmother, her snot and tears soaking her designer dress.
Edie held on to her, her mind racing. What sort of bastard would take advantage of a young woman? She felt something bubbling in her. It was rage. A good, seething rage like she hadn’t felt in fifty years, since Nils Karlsson stiffed Frances for everything she rightfully deserved.
Her torture of Linda Sampson would have to wait. Edie had someone else in her sights now. The only question was what she would do to him. And how. And when.