Page 20 of Meet Me in the Garden

“Well, we knowyoudo,” Ginny says.

Lionel groans. He bends forward, rests his head in his hands. “I fucked up.”

“Hope it was worth it,” Jeremy says. “Did you get the secretaries’ numbers at least?”

“You should have seen them cry. I feel terrible, to tell the truth.”

“Hey, it’s not the end of the world.” Ginny checks over her shoulder to make sure no one’s coming from the house. “Jeremy already knows this, but I got fired from my job right before this one.”

At this, Lionel lifts his head. “That right? Why?”

She and Jeremy share a glance. I’m an outsider. “I’ll go check on the children,” I say.

“No, stay,” Lionel tells me. To the others: “Go ahead. You can speak freely with Odette.”

“There was a company party at my boss’s house,” Ginny says. “I wasn’t looking for any trouble, but his wife took an interest in me.”

This brightens Lionel up. “Cultural interest?” he asks. “Anthropological? Perhaps biological? Oh no, no, wait:anatomical.”

They laugh, Lionel boisterously, Ginny quietly, averting her eyes. Todiscuss this, plainly, on a weekday evening in Adele and Al’s backyard. I can hardly trust that it’s real.

“But really, though,” Jeremy says. “The wife kept following her around, making her taste all the food and the cocktails. Took her to their bedroom to look at the art.”

“Were you interested?” Lionel asks.

“Ginny doesn’t kiss and tell,” Jeremy says. “It’s some kind of code among her people.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jeremy. I wanted myjob. I was just being polite. The next day I got a call. He’d cut my position.”

“Man,” Lionel says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Wouldn’t have met any of you if I’d stayed.” She takes the last sip of her beer, leans over to set the bottle on the grass. The curve of her breasts, the gold glint of her necklace.Look away, I tell myself.

Our chair legs, digging into Adele’s lawn.

The fence line where it meets the sky.

Blackberry vines at the edge of the garden.

A chip in my nail polish.

And now I can’t resist any longer. A smile at the corner of her mouth when we lock eyes. She gives me a wink.

Later, the guests gone, the kids asleep, Adele says, “Can I ask you a question?”

My heart races, sure it will be about Ginny. I’ve been sitting in the living room with the new Agatha Christie, stuck on the same paragraph for far too long.

But she says, “Maman called today. We had a long talk and the whole time I kept craving things from her—approval, mostly, as embarrassing as that is. But she didn’t give it to me. All these years, I’ve been waiting for her to think well of me again, but I’m starting to believe she never will. It made me want to ask what happened between you and her, before we left home. Finally. I know it’s long overdue.”

I set the book down. “Did she say something about me?”

“She didn’t need to. You never speak to each other.”

“You know things were bad between us.”

“I do,” she says. “But then they got worse, and we never talked about it. Maman had such a hold on us. Still does. Like she’s here, watching over my life. Do you ever feel that way?” She’s on the sofa, legs tucked under her, a striped robe open over her pajama set. Hair soft, face clean, looking young and lovely.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve tried so hard to leave everything behind.”