Wellesley Wives (New England Trilogy) (2 page)

“Oh, that. Um, Ricardo was trying out a new state of the art treatment. It was rather expensive.”

“What was he doing? Putting actual liquid gold through your hair?”

“Yes. It’s a new product that claims to have tiny nuggets of real gold.” She swung her head around to give him the full view of her recently done hair.

“More like nuggets of bullshit if you ask me.”

“Peter . . .” She pretended to look horrified, but this was typical of him.

He was a ruthless businessman and liked to win. He didn’t like the feeling that somebody was overcharging him. But for the benefit of her beautiful hair, and her happiness, he pretended to look sheepish—which of course he wasn’t—and replied, “Sorry, doll. You look great. Honest.”

“But the car . . . It really does seem so expensive. What if I crash it?”

“It’s insured,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Now I have to go and sort out some paperwork. Nothing for you to worry your pretty little golden head about. What are your plans for today?

“I have a ladies’ charity lunch. It will probably take up most of the afternoon, and then you and I are going out this evening. Is that still good for you?”

“Absolutely, I can think of nowhere I’d rather be tonight.” He looked at her warmly.

After all these years, they still had a terrific relationship. Popsy kissed him again. “Thank you for the most amazing birthday present I think I have ever had.”

“You’re worth every last cent and the same again,” he said. “Go and enjoy your ladies’ lunch.”

“What are you doing for the rest of the day?”

“I have a meeting at the bank.” He pretended to yawn. “Boring but necessary.”

“Why don’t you tell them to get lost and we can spend the day together?”

“Believe me, doll, there’s nothing I would like more, but I have to keep them sweet.”

Popsy thought she caught an edge in his voice, and she was all too aware how tough the economy had been for the last few years. Thankfully, Peter’s business group had not been hurt too much by the global downturn.

“Everything okay? Nothing to worry about, I mean?”

“No chance.” He laughed. “They love me. I’m the only guy in the city still capable of paying them what I owe.”

“Yes, but they would never call in their loans suddenly or anything?”

Peter looked completely self-assured. “Absolutely not. That would be suicide for them. They could never do that. Relax. This is just a regular meeting. It’s only lunch.”

Half an hour later, Popsy Power was in her favorite flower shop. The sweet smell of the tiger lilies hit her first, and then as she meandered around admiring the colors and foliage, she picked up the richer smell of roses and the subtler scent of the freesias.

“Well, hello there, Mrs. Power,” Karen said from behind the counter.

She smiled when the woman’s face brightened. “It’s a ladies’ lunch today, Karen,” Popsy said. “What with Halloween just around the corner, I’d like to bring the hostess something with a lot of orange in it. Could you do me up a center table arrangement, please?”

“You got it,” Karen said. “I have some great Chinese lanterns.” She pulled out the incredibly delicate stems with large bulbous orange seed heads. “If I pair them up with orange daisies and black grass, you’ll have a real Halloween theme going. I also have these,” she said as she pulled out a miniature witch on a stick and added it to the foliage.

“Perfect.”

On her way home, Popsy mentally ticked off her to-do list. Her birthday was shaping up to be very nice. Already, she’d had her hair and nails done, taken her new car for a test-drive, and picked up the dry cleaning. All she needed to do now was remind Matilda to do the silver and perhaps get a start on setting the table.

Today’s lunch would be fun, but her dinner party on Saturday night was what occupied most of her thoughts. Peter’s business partner, Jack Hoffman, would be there with his wife, Sandra. They were easy to entertain, being Popsy and Peter’s best friends, but she was also having some European investors and their wives whom she’d never met before.

She was used to corporate lunches and black-tie dos because Peter kept a high profile in the business world. And while she didn’t particularly like the public lifestyle, she loved the lavish clothing budget and the jewelry he’d bought her over the last twenty-nine years. Peter reasoned that she had to look magnificent all the time if he was to look successful, and she wasn’t going to argue with that. But she did find the whole public image thing a little wearing after all these years.

Even on vacations, Peter worked. She had often, at his request, thrown big parties in their Florida home—but that was the life of a successful businessman and it was hardly going to change now.

Almost thirty years married, she thought. Wow. That was another big date looming on her calendar.

She and Peter would be celebrating their anniversary on December twenty-sixth. How fast those years had gone by. She’d only been twenty when they’d tied the knot. She’d felt so grown-up back then, but looking back, she realized that they’d been little more than babies. She remembered her parents expressing concern about their ages at the time, but she wouldn’t listen.

Popsy’s parents had been wealthy, and she’d received a private education just outside Wicklow in Ireland, where she grew up. Her friends teased her that she still had the accent. She didn’t believe it, but her daughters did sometimes come out with an Irish expression or hint of an accent, having lived with her influence for so long. As it happened, that wasn’t a problem since the Bostonians loved the Irish more than the Irish liked themselves.

She’d met Peter while doing a sabbatical year at Boston College, and he’d pursued her hard. While he hadn’t been very rich when they got married, it was pretty clear that he was on his way, and she’d never looked back.

She was fifty today with two terrific daughters to show for it and still so happy. How lucky was she?

She turned the car into the driveway of her house on Cliff Road and saw the front door open. The jet-black paint of the door momentarily shined in the sunlight as it swung closed again. Popsy watched her firstborn come down the steps. In Rosie’s arms was her own firstborn, five-year-old Natasha.

Popsy left the shopping and her purse in her car and quickly ran over to hug them. “Rosie, I wasn’t expecting you! If I’d known, I would have been here.”

“I just popped in for a minute.” Her daughter smiled. “We wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Oh, thank you.” Popsy beamed. “And how’s my favorite granddaughter?” Her smile brightened as she turned her attention to the youngster.

“Mom, what are you going to do when Lily has a kid? She might have a girl.”

Popsy raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Oh, is there something I don’t know?”

Rosie laughed. “No, no, it’s just that the chances are—at some point in the future—you’re going to have another granddaughter and Natasha, here,” she hugged her daughter tight, “will wonder why you’ve stopped calling her your favorite.”

Popsy waved her hand in a sweeping gesture. “They will all be my favorites. It’s a grandmother’s privilege.”

“The most glamorous grandmother in New England, I think, and happy birthday. So tell me, are you going somewhere special today? You look terrific.”

Popsy smiled gratefully. “Thank you, pet. Today is a ladies’ lunch out in Marlborough, nothing too serious. Just a friendly natter. What about you? Any plans?”

“No. Today it’s just me and Natasha. I think we might go to Boston to see if we can find a nice winter coat for her—or me.” She smirked with a hint of devilment in her eyes.

The expression reminded Popsy of Peter. Rosie took after her father, and Lily looked like her. Popsy knew that Rosie thought her sister was the beauty in the family, but it wasn’t true. Rosie was very pretty, too, just in a different way. She had Peter’s square face and hazel eyes. It was more a handsome look, but nonetheless striking. Rosie’s figure was a little fuller, too, but she’d had a baby and she certainly wasn’t fat. It was just that Lily and her mother were particularly slight. Lily also had her mother’s platinum hair, but she’d told Rosie a million times that it was more to do with good hairdressers than good genes.

“You’re still good for lunch on Sunday? That will be my family birthday party.”

Rosie nodded. “But we brought your present today. I left it inside with Matilda.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have, honey. And Marcus?” Popsy asked about Rosie’s husband. She wasn’t certain whether it was her imagination or not, but she thought she saw Rosie hesitate for a split-second. “Everything okay?” Popsy instinctively reached out and rubbed her daughter’s arm, but soon Rosie was in full control of her emotions again.

She pasted a broad smile on her face. “Yes, he’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll all be here on Sunday.” Rosie buried her nose into her daughter’s neck and inhaled her little girl smell like perfume.

Popsy knew that her daughter and son-in-law had a tumultuous and passionate relationship. In fact, the fights they’d had when they were still in the dating stage convinced Popsy that they would never last. But then Natasha came into their lives and changed everything. Popsy assured both of them, but especially her daughter, that she didn’t have to get married, but by then they were starry-eyed with each other and their beautiful daughter. Who could blame them? Popsy thought Natasha had settled them down somewhat, but judging from Rosie’s behavior, there must be some new trouble at home.

“Look, would you like to come in for a cup of coffee and a chat, just while I’m getting changed?”

“No, really. It’s all good. Like I told you, we’re heading into town to spend Daddy’s money.” She took a few steps back. “We’ll see you Sunday, but everything is fine—honest.” Another slightly forced smile.

Popsy was fairly certain her daughter was lying, but she didn’t have time to push the issue. The truth was, Rosie was regularly in need of her mother’s attention, but she decided tough love would have to suffice this time around. “All right, pet. Well, come over a little earlier than your sister on Sunday so we can have some one-on-one.” She winked.

Rosie nodded and half-grinned. “Perfect. Enjoy your party in Marlborough.”

“It’s only lunch.” Popsy shrugged. That was the phrase Peter had used with her only a couple of hours before. Funny how it came to mind, she thought. “I don’t expect anything too wild to happen,” she said as she mounted the steps to her perfect New England house and her perfect suburban life.

Chapter 2 

Rosie Power

As Popsy prepared for her ladies’ lunch, Rosie started to cry. She was stuck in appalling Boston traffic on her way into town to buy a coat that she didn’t really need, with a daughter who didn’t really care, and when she got home, she would attempt to model it for a husband who wouldn’t really notice. Yes, this was a
really
bad day.

    All she’d actually needed was an excuse to get away from her mother as soon as she began to probe. She was very good at that. Popsy had a way of reading her daughters quickly and getting under their skin, and Rosie wasn’t ready to deal with her problems on the doorstep of her parents’ palatial Wellesley home.

Now that she’d managed to get away, it occurred to Rosie that she could just exit the Mass Pike at the next junction and go home. But she didn’t even have the emotional energy to do that. She’d told her mother she was going to town to look for coats, and that is exactly what they would do, even if it wasn’t necessary. Frustratingly, the four lanes of traffic on the highway were gridlocked, and that meant they were trapped. She couldn’t move forward, and even if she wanted to, she couldn’t turn back. Little Natasha was happy in a world of her own thanks to the iPad which churned out Barney and all of his friends ad nauseam for the child’s amusement.

As she inched along going nowhere fast, Rosie felt more tears start to fall. She was miserable, and other than her mom, she didn’t know who to turn to. Her younger sister, Lily, had certainly been no help. There was less than a year between them, but to Rosie it felt like a lifetime.

Friends and family called them “Irish twins” because they were born in the same year. Rosie arrived in January and Lily the following December. It had certainly been fast work on her mother’s part, but that was just about all the sisters had in common. Rosie was the passionate, melodramatic sister. Nobody had to tell her that. It was quite clear from a young age.

She always got into trouble in school. During her years at Newton County Day School, Rosie could claim three suspensions and an expulsion while Lily, her perfect little sister, was an honor student in her senior year. Rosie used to tease her that she was a goody-two-shoes, but she was jealous of her younger sister’s perfect academic records and her first-class economics degree from Princeton.

Even Lily’s figure was better. Rosie wasn’t large, but Lily was prettier and smaller, more petite. She tried to convince herself she was better off because she was the one with the husband and family. Now that she’d given up work, she lived a life of leisure.

Lily didn’t have any men in her life. It sure was a little strange but was probably because her sister worked so darn hard. Too hard by Rosie’s standards but then again, Rosie didn’t like work at all.

She’d become a stewardess because she liked the idea of seeing the world for free, and despite what her parents told her, she’d thought it would be a glamorous and desirable occupation. But now she knew a stewardess was just a glorified waitress. Back in the old days, the training involved how to make the perfect martini. In Rosie’s case, it was how to restrain a passenger at thirty-five thousand feet. Still, on the plus side, it was how she came to meet her husband Marcus. He was a pilot. Such a cliché, but one that resulted in adorable little Natasha and a wedding the year after that.

Rosie tried to convince herself she
did
have it better than Lily, but it wasn’t easy to do, especially after the argument they’d had the day before.