Читать книгу Lovely Wild - Меган Харт - Страница 11

FIVE

“MARI? MARI CALDER, right? Ethan’s mom.”

Mari turns with a half smile she was taught long ago was considered polite. “Yes?”

The woman in front of her looks as though she stepped out of one of the magazines Mari reads every month but rarely enjoys. Perfect hair, perfect outfit. Perfect smile that makes Mari cover her own mouth with her hand in reaction, though her teeth are no longer gray and broken and jagged.

“I’m Lorna. Davis?” The woman pauses. “Bev’s mom.”

Bev. Beverly. Beverly Davis... Mari vaguely recalls a girl with curly red hair and a set of sprouting buckteeth. She is in Ethan’s class.

“Oh. Yes. Bev.” Mari nods, wondering how it is that Lorna Davis knows who she is.

“Bev told me Ethan had an accident. Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Good. Kids,” Lorna says with a laugh and shake of her head. “It’s amazing any of us survive childhood, am I right?”

Mari has mastered the social smile, but laughing at something she doesn’t find funny is a skill that still escapes her. “Children are capable of surviving a lot.”

It wasn’t quite the right answer. She sees that in Lorna’s blink, her raised brow. The woman recovers quickly.

“Right. Yes. And thank goodness it was just a cut, not something worse, am I right?”

“You’re right,” Mari says.

Lorna nods. They stare at each other there in the bandage aisle of the pharmacy. Mari has a package of gauze pads and antiseptic wipes in her hand. Lorna’s small basket contains mascara, feminine deodorant spray, skin lotion, a beauty magazine.

“You know, you should think about coming to one of our Mommy’s Day Out meetings,” Lorna says suddenly.

It’s Mari’s turn to blink. “Umm...”

“You don’t work, am I right?”

“I take care of my kids,” Mari says.

Lorna laughs. “Oh, yeah, which is a full-time job, I know that. I feel you. I just started back to work last year, part-time. Gets me out of the house, but leaves plenty of ‘me’ time.”

There’s a silence that goes on too long, until Mari says, “What’s Mommy’s Day Out?”

Lorna’s eyes gleam. “Oh, we get together once a month at someplace really delish for lunch. Then sometimes a spa treatment, manicure, something like that. We have a great place we go to that does this amazing chi rejuvenation or a sugar scrub or hot stone massage, really everything they do there is fantastic. It’s a chance for us to get together away from the husbands and kids, you know what I mean? If I didn’t have my ‘Mommy’s’ days, I’d lose my mind.”

Mari shudders involuntarily at the thought of suffering a massage, of being touched so intimately by a stranger. “I like spending time with my kids.”

“Oh...of course. Me, too. I love my kids. Of course.” Lorna puts a friendly hand on Mari’s arm. “Just, you know, they can drive you crazy. You know what I mean?”

The touch makes Mari’s skin crawl, but she doesn’t back away. Mari puts on that same polite half smile she’s practiced for so many years. She will never be a social hugger, but she’s learned to tolerate a lot.

“Of course. Well, I’ll think about it.” Mari holds up her packages. “I should get home.”

“Oh, right.” Lorna pauses, expectant.

Mari has no idea what she’s waiting for and the silence stretches on until she nods and smiles and ducks away from Lorna, who stares after her.

In the car, she thinks about what she will say if Lorna actually does invite her to a Mommy’s Day Out. It might be nice, she tells herself as she lines up with the other mothers in the school parking lot, each car inching forward slowly, though the kids haven’t been dismissed yet. To do something with other women. Have some...friends.

Except it wouldn’t be nice. It would be strange and awkward. For them, not so much for her. Mari gets along with most anyone. It’s other people who usually don’t know how to react to her.

“You’re too honest,” Ryan told her once, long ago, in the very beginning when things between them were fresh and new and still strange. He’d tangled his fingers in a strand of her dark hair, pulling it along his much lighter skin to show the contrast between them.

“You’d like me to lie?”

“I don’t think you know how to lie,” had been his answer, and he’d kissed her.

It isn’t that she doesn’t know how. It’s that she doesn’t see the point. Lies are secrets, and there’s no use for them, either.

“Hey, honey,” she says when Ethan at last limps to the car and slides into the backseat. “How was school?”

“It was okay.” He shrugs, clicking his seat belt. “Can we get cheesesteaks from Pat’s for dinner?”

Pat’s, King of Steaks, isn’t on the way home. In traffic, it will take them an hour or so to get there and back. Still, Mari looks at her son’s hopeful face and doesn’t have the heart to say no. His grin and shout of laughter when she nods is enough to make her laugh, too.

Small things, she thinks as she pulls away from the school. That’s what matters. Small but beautiful things.