Chapter Twenty-Nine
As the Alcott Memorial Library Spring Fling begins, Diana is in the women’s bathroom forcing her hips into a black sheath dress she found in the back of her closet but didn’t try on until now. As she grabs for the zipper, the satiny fabric tugs and pulls, leaving bulges across her midsection.
The last time she wore this dress was Tom’s funeral; after weeks of subsisting only on coffee, the dress was loose.
Since there’s no time to go home and get another option, she can wear this dress or her work clothes, a sensible navy skirt and cotton sweater, which are all wrong for the Spring Fling.
She curses and yanks the zipper closed. This dress will have to do.
In the past, Diana and Andrea would have chosen dresses to wear to the event together, squeezing into a changing room at the mall and laughing about the unflattering lighting.
But Andrea is working tonight, and Diana isn’t sure she’s up for dancing with her sister.
She still hasn’t been able to let go of the hurt caused by Andrea’s reaction to Tom’s letter.
For the hundredth time that day, Diana checks her phone.
After reviewing the feed from her doorbell camera app and confirming no one is currently trying to break into her house, she looks for a response from Jessica.
Nothing. Ever since she reached out, Diana has been hyperaware of her phone’s beeps and buzzes.
She’s slept with her phone under her pillow and once tried to take it into the shower.
There is, however, a text from Chris—Have fun tonight! Wish I was there with you—that makes her stomach wobble. Attending the Spring Fling with Chris would be a date, and she is absolutely not ready to date anyone, not even him.
Or is she?
Diana scans the text thread she and Chris share.
Since she returned from Vermont, they’ve sent hundreds of texts to one another, from early-morning hellos to late-night check-ins.
Their connection has been such a surprise, and she isn’t sure what to do about it.
She’s still in love with Tom; how can she have feelings for Chris, too?
Her phone alarm beeps, a reminder she’s due to meet up with Camille and get to the party. Diana texts Chris a dancing emoji and drops her phone into her tote. Tonight, wearing an ill-fitting dress without pockets means the phone will have to stay behind.
“There you are!” Camille says when Diana steps into the hallway. “I was looking for you.”
Diana suspects Camille was worried she’d skip out on the fundraiser.
She considered it, making a list of reasons she could offer up as an excuse: migraine, food poisoning, basement flood, Legionnaires’ disease.
Since Diana is more afraid of disappointing Camille than she is of navigating this event, she’s pushed aside the excuses to show up.
“You look amazing,” Diana says. Shimmery bangles replace the customary silver bracelets at Camille’s wrists, and her braids are held off her face by a band of rhinestones. Her gold-and-silver dress has bell-shaped sleeves, with alternating stripes on the bodice.
“Yes, I do,” Camille says, smiling. “You look ready, though I’m not sure about all black.” She unties a gold silk scarf from her neck. “May I?”
Camille concentrates on adjusting the scarf around Diana, as if she’s sending her off into battle with the silk as a shield against the arrows that might come her way. Yet the gossamer fabric is too delicate, too transparent, and too beautiful, and it can’t safeguard Diana.
“That’s better.” Camille nods appreciatively. “Let’s drop off your bag and get to the party.”
When Camille and Diana arrive at the Spring Fling tent—the event having long ago become too large to be held inside the library—the DJ, who spends his days as the high school lacrosse coach, blasts “YMCA” by the Village People from a stage in the corner.
Diana waves to Stephanie, whose hair tonight is fluorescent pink.
Stephanie smiles and gestures to the dance floor, but Diana mouths “later” and follows Camille through the crowd.
When Camille pauses to answer a question from the caterer, Diana continues on, keeping her eyes down. She looks up once or twice in the hope that she finds someone to talk to who won’t demand anything of her.
As if she conjured up Lakshmi and Ramesh, they appear at her side, holding hands.
Each time Diana sees the two of them together, she’s reminded that some people have more luck than others, that they can find their forever love and hold on to one another, never having to face life’s ups and downs alone.
“How are you?” Lakshmi says, as she kisses Diana’s cheek. Lakshmi smells like jasmine and turpentine, and Diana finds the combination comforting.
Since Lakshmi is one of the people in Diana’s life who can see through any pretense, she says what is true. “I wish I was anywhere except here.”
“You’re not on your own, are you? I thought you were with Camille,” Ramesh asks. His dark eyes scan the room as he moves to Diana’s right elbow. “You must stay with us.”
“You two are not going to babysit me all night.” Diana’s voice is prickly, and Ramesh and Lakshmi share a look. “Truly,” she adds. “Please have fun, and don’t worry about me.”
“We’re here if you need us,” says Lakshmi.
Spying Camille waiting for her, Diana forces a smile and maneuvers through the crowd.
The next hour blurs as Diana and Camille greet the library’s largest donors and the town’s leadership.
The chair of Alcott Bank asks after Diana’s parents, and the Alcott Historical Society’s executive director talks about a book he recently borrowed from the library.
It’s Elizabeth Donahue, the president of the library board, who asks about Tom.
“You’ve had such a difficult time, Diana. I remember what it was like when my husband died. The grief can be debilitating. How are you? Your children? How are they faring without their father?” Elizabeth takes Diana’s hands in hers, holding them together as if in prayer.
While Diana assumes Elizabeth means well—or, at least, she can convince herself the questions are asked with kindness—she’s had enough.
She jerks her hands away, causing Elizabeth to stop midsentence.
“Losing my husband has been awful,” she concedes.
“Thank you for asking after me and my children. We’re doing a little better every day. ”
“It gets easier with time,” Elizabeth says.
“That’s what people tell me. It’s still the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Diana excuses herself. Maybe that’s the answer, she thinks as she walks away. Not hiding from the truth but owning it.
She accepts a glass of wine from a passing server and looks around. She expected to be exhausted after talking to so many people; instead, she’s alert and full of energy. She feels victorious, as if she’s overcome a demanding challenge and claimed a hard-fought medal.
She locates Jonathan on the other side of the dance floor, standing on the edge of a group of men. She walks nearby, to a high-top table covered in half-drunk champagne glasses, and catches his eye.
When he joins her, Jonathan says, “You saved me from a boring conversation about golf. Thank you.”
“You don’t like golf?”
“I like it, but I don’t need to hear every detail of other people’s golf vacations.”
“Where’s Lily?”
“Dancing.” Jonathan points to the dance floor, where a group of women in strapless dresses undulates to “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the Bangles. Lily and her friends square their hands to imitate hieroglyphics and shimmy across the floor. “She’s had a few cocktails.”
“Looks like she’s having fun.” Diana swallows a lump in her throat. How fortunate Lily is to have everything she wants. “Sorry I haven’t responded to your texts. What did you want?”
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“Right.” She decides then to voice the question she should have asked the minute she returned from Vermont: “What can you tell me about Jessica O’Connor?”
Jonathan doesn’t respond, but she can tell by the pulsing vein along his brow that he’s heard her question.
He lifts his cocktail—vodka on the rocks with a twist of lime, Diana remembers, that’s his drink—and empties the glass, placing it next to hers.
She wasn’t sure he knew about Jessica until he met her question with silence.
“Do you really want to talk about this now?”
“No,” Diana answers truthfully, “but you’re here. And I’m here. This is as good a time as any.”
Jonathan gestures to a café table at the perimeter of the tent. “Shall we sit? It might be quieter over there.”
“Stop delaying,” Diana snaps.
“You didn’t ignore Tom’s letter.”
“Of course I didn’t. Now tell me about Jessica.”
Jonathan avoids looking at her, focusing instead on pulling at his shirtsleeves and lining up his cuffs with the edge of his jacket.
“I never met her. Never even knew who she was until Tom took her on as a pro bono client. All he said about her was that she was a single mom who had gotten in trouble—drug charges, I think.”
“What kind of charges?”
“Possession, maybe? I don’t remember the details. After you visited, I went through our old files to see what we had documented about her case, but there wasn’t anything there.”
“Don’t you typically have files on all your clients?”
“Yes, we do. Or we should.” Jonathan clears his throat. “It’s possible Tom never opened a file for her, or it was destroyed at some point. Either way, at the time, all I knew was that he wanted to help her. I had a feeling he’d known her before, but nothing then made me suspicious.”
“Nothing then? When did you start to question their relationship?”
“I always knew something was off about it. We were open about our clients. We bounced ideas off one another all the time, but he was vague about Jessica. It was almost like he made a point not to talk about her. It didn’t worry me until afterward.”
“The money.” Diana wishes she’d sat down as he suggested. “You think she might have been the something important that drove him to steal from the firm.”
The vein in Jonathan’s brow pulses again. “It’s all in the past. I really mean that.”
The DJ switches to “At Last” by Etta James, and as the ballad fills the tent, couples gravitate to the dance floor. Ramesh leads Lakshmi to a spot near Lily and her friends, all of whom are being claimed by their significant others.
“If this is all in the past, I’d like that copy of the letter back.” Diana hadn’t expected to ask for it, but it’s the right decision. The message was for her, not Jonathan.
Jonathan waves at Lily as she beckons him onto the dance floor. “I promised to keep it confidential.” His voice is brisk and businesslike, and Diana senses he’s hurt by her request. “I would never violate my oath. You have my word.”
“If this really means nothing to you, you don’t need to keep it, right?”
“I can destroy it for you. We have a service we use to dispose of our papers. They’re reputable.”
“No, I want my letter back,” Diana says, trying to forget that “At Last” was the first song she and Tom danced to at their wedding. “I can swing by the office on Monday to pick it up. When’s a good time?”
“I’ll drop it off at your house. This weekend.” She thinks he’s going to say something else, but instead he leaves her alone at the table to join his wife.
He takes Lily by the hand and spins her around before pulling her close. They sway in sync, Lily’s head on Jonathan’s chest. He presses his lips against her hair, and the crowd surrounds them, hiding them from Diana.
She takes it as a sign to leave. She spies an opening in the corner, where the catering staff enters with trays of canapés, and she’s through the tent flap before anyone engages her in conversation.
Too wired to go home, Diana settles on the stairs leading up to the library’s main entrance. She tucks Camille’s lovely scarf tight around her body and makes her list: What Could I Have Done Tonight Instead of Attend This Party?
I could have cleaned out the refrigerator.
I could have started that novel Mom keeps telling me to read.
I could have gone to sleep early.
Diana finishes off the last of her wine and sets down the glass, knocking it against the marble step. A crack appears down the middle. She holds up the glass in the dim light to look more closely at the breaking point. So fragile, so broken. How is it still together?
The DJ makes the odd choice to segue from Etta James to Def Leppard, and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” pounds through the speakers.
As the servers go in and out of the tent, the light from the party and the unrelenting cheers from the dance floor rise up and recede.
Diana catches brief glimpses of the partygoers: women on the dance floor, arms above their heads, mouths open to the ceiling; men, ties undone, laughing; a couple locked in an amorous embrace.
It’s like she’s looking through a children’s viewfinder toy, the images frozen in time, each clicking ahead one by one.
She wonders who here tonight is truly happy, who is here because their spouse forced them to attend, and who is keeping a secret from the person they love most.
Diana stands up, swaying on her feet. “He could have been honest with me, instead of leaving that letter.”
She throws her glass. It leaves her hand easily, disappearing between the bushes lining the stairs. She doesn’t wait for it to hit the ground and shatter into pieces. Instead, she turns away from the party and runs down the steps, plunging into the darkness.