SPOILER: IT WAS Lucinda.
A human cold shower if ever there was one.
We froze at the sound. I squeezed my eyes shut, but Joe craned around to peek at the door.
“It’s a middle-aged lady,” he whispered. “I can see through the glass.” “Does she look like Martha Stewart?” I whispered back.
“Yes,” Joe whispered.
“With kind of a sourpuss face?” “Yes,” Joe confirmed.
“And a vibe like she maybe sucks the fun out of everything?” “Not sure, but maybe?”
“It’s my stepmother,” I confirmed. “Just ignore her.”
I pulled his mouth back down to mine. But at that, Lucinda started knocking again.
“That’s going to be challenging,” Joe said.
Lucinda talked through the glass pane in the door, her voice muffling its way into the room. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “Stop ignoring me. I can tell you’re in there.”
She could certainly kill a mood, I’d give her that.
I sighed. Was I really about to shut down the best kissing of my life for Lucinda?
The knocking continued. And continued. I guess I was.
“Promise me,” I said then, looking deep into Joe’s eyes, “that we are not done here.”
“We are not even close to done here,” Joe said. “I promise.”
And so we shut it down.
Joe found his shirt and his jacket. I straightened the apron we hadn’t even had time to remove. We steadied our breath. Shifted gears.
And then, with dread, I opened the door.
“How did you even get up here?” I said as Lucinda walked in.
“Mr. Kim gave me your new passcode. Because it was an emergency.” Kindhearted Mr. Kim. We’d have to have a talk about Lucinda.
“What emergency could possibly exist between me and you?” I asked. But Lucinda was sizing up Joe. “Is this the man you stole from Parker?”
she asked then.
Stole? From Parker? “I have never stolen anything from Parker,” I said. “That’s not the way I heard it,” Lucinda said.
“That’s never the way you hear it,” I said.
Joe cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Sadie’s right. I was not stolen.”
“Look,” I said to Lucinda. “We’re kind of in the middle of something.” “I can see that,” Lucinda said.
“Please don’t come over here and peep through my windows, Lucinda,” I said in a tone like we’d been over this a million times.
“I wasn’t peeping. I was knocking. I couldn’t see anything but feet, anyway.”
“Lucinda,” I said, “I’m busy.”
But Lucinda remained righteous about her choices. “You left me no other options! You wouldn’t answer my calls. You wouldn’t respond to my texts. Do you think I wanted to trudge over to your hovel in the middle of the night? I did not. But I need to speak to you!”
“So speak,” I said.
Lucinda looked Joe up and down. “Privately.”
“Let’s get this clear,” I said, gesturing at Joe. “He is my guest. You are an interloper.”
“You can’t ignore me forever.”
“Yes, I can. I absolutely can. Why would I do anything else?”
But now Lucinda had decided to start looking pitiful. I didn’t even have to see it to know the choreography: the trembling bottom lip, the moistening of the eyes, the drooping of the brows. A signature technique for getting her way. Which worked on a surprising number of people. But not me.
Unfortunately, Joe hadn’t built up an immunity to it.
He could watch for only so long before he caved. “You know what?” Joe said. “I’ve actually got some stuff to do.”
Ugh! Damn human compassion! “No, you don’t,” I said.
“Yes,” he nodded at me, like, This has to happen. “I do.”
But I was shaking my head. I could not, not, not be trading Joe for Lucinda. “Don’t go.” I followed him to the door. “It’s not a real emergency. She just wants attention!”
But Joe shrugged, like he didn’t know how to stay.
I couldn’t blame him. Developing emotional armor for someone like Lucinda takes years. You needed, like, a graduate degree in emotional manipulation.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Joe said as he slipped out the door. Tomorrow? That was an eternity.
As soon as he was gone, I rounded on Lucinda. “What,” I demanded, “is this ‘emergency’?”
Lucinda took a deep breath and crossed her arms. “Your father,” she said, “has had an accident.”
Okay. I admit. She got me. “What?”
She nodded, like my panic was legit. “And I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“What happened? Where is he?”
And here, leaning in and just owning it, she said, “He slammed his hand in the garage door.”
I paused. “He what?”
“It’s very swollen and bruised. He fractured his small metacarpal.”
“His pinkie?” I said. “You came all the way over here like the buzzkill of all buzzkills to tell me that Dad fractured his pinkie?”
“That’s a very big deal to a surgeon.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “But it’s not”—and I hit the T pretty hard on not
—“an emergency.”
“It was very frightening at the time.”
“Lucinda,” I said, “why are you really here?”
Lucinda sighed. “The point is,” she said, “because of his hand, your father won’t be making his trip to Vienna next week. So I invited him to
your art show.”
I shook my head. “Why?” “Because! We’re family.”
“Have you ever seen a family?” I demanded. “We’re nothing even close.”
What was this new determination to bond?
More important: Was the art show next week? Wow, the time really flew after brain surgery. After a second, I said, “He’s not coming, is he?”
“Of course he’s coming,” Lucinda said proudly. “We’re all coming. Me, your dad, and Parker.”
“No,” I said.
Lucinda’s shoulders dropped, and her disappointment almost felt genuine.
“You’re not coming,” I said. “Not him. Not you. And sure as shit not Parker.”
“But he had his secretary add it to his calendar.” “Make her un-add it.”
“But I’ve already bought an outfit.”
“I feel like you’re not listening. You’re not invited. If you show up, I will call security and have you forcibly removed.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Lucinda said
And then before I had a chance to say Watch me, she lifted up a shopping bag I hadn’t noticed in her hand and held it out to me.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
I looked between Lucinda and the bag. Finally, curiosity beat out hesitation. I walked to my art table and set the bag there so I could reach inside.
And what I pulled out made me gasp.
It was pink fabric with appliquéd flowers.
I held my breath for a few minutes, was afraid to even hope … “Is this…” I said, just holding it and staring.
Lucinda waited for me to finish the question. But I just started over. “Is this…?”
I loosened my grip so the fabric could unfurl, and then I had my answer.
It was.
“It’s the dress!” I said. It was so impossible, I turned to Lucinda. “Is it the dress? From the hospital that night?”
“It is,” Lucinda said.
“But how?” I said, still staring at it in disbelief. “I thought it was destroyed.”
“After I left your room, I went looking for it.” She paused, then said, “What’s the expression? I went ‘full Karen’ on that hospital. I even demanded to see the manager.”
“I don’t think going full Karen is a good thing,” I said. “It worked, though. Didn’t it?”
I marveled at the dress. “I thought it had been incinerated.” “Five more minutes, and it would’ve been.”
I walked over to the mirror on the closet door to hold it up in front of myself.
“It’s not the same,” Lucinda said next. “There are a few dark spots where the wine stains wouldn’t come out. We were able to reweave some of the shredded fabric, but not all of it—so the fit may be more snug.”
I felt like I’d never been so astonished. “You did this?” “Lord, no. I took it to a tailor.”
“But…” I didn’t fully understand what was happening. “You saved it.” “Yes,” Lucinda said, her voice softer.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it was your mother’s.”
My eyes filled with tears at those words. “I never told you that.” “You didn’t have to.”
She let the softness linger for a second, and then she snapped back to business. “Anyway, that’s the emergency. We need to make sure this version fits you. Now. Tonight. Otherwise, we’ll never get the alterations back in time.”
“In time for what?”
But Lucinda’s answer was almost as incredulous as my question. “For you to wear it to the art show.”
And as I tried the dress on so she could check the fit, and as she fussed and clucked over me like real mothers sometimes do over their real daughters, one thing was pretty clear.
Lucinda would be coming to the art show. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
