A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris Page A

front of the mirror and looked over my shoulder. My partially bare back told me my tan was holding up pretty well.
    ‘Great!’ Mimi applauded from the doorway. She was wearing true red and she looked like a million dollars. She came and stood beside me, and I revolved to look at our reflections in the mirror. We had gazed into many mirrors together across our friendship’s span of thirteen years. I liked this reflection better than any I’d seen.
    We were as sharp a contrast as ever – Mimi small and dark, myself tall and fair. Some of the arrogance was missing in the way she stood and held her head; it had been pared off by the divorces. Some of the self-conscious power vested in me by my face had been knocked off my shoulders. Mimi was not so wild and willful. She was not so trusting, either. I was less defensive; and I knew now I would never conquer the world.
    I don’t know what Mimi was thinking during that long moment. Maybe her thoughts were traveling the same road as mine. But somehow I was convinced that she saw us as we used to be; not as we were.
    She put her arm around my waist and hugged me close, then loosed me to lift my hair on my shoulders and rearrange it in a drift she liked better.
    ‘Let’s get this party rolling,’ she said briskly.
    I blinked, and the moment was gone.

4
    PARTIES IN KNOLLS started (and ended) earlier than I was used to. About eight-thirty I decided that the entire population of the town was crammed into Mimi’s house. At least the entire
white
population of Knolls – some things hadn’t changed much in the years I’d been gone.
    Aside from their uniform skin color, our guests ran the narrow gamut of Knolls society. There were friends of Mimi’s with their husbands in tow, women I vaguely remembered, most of them giddy with the excitement of a night off from the kids. There were plenty of college people. I met the cowardly college president, Jeff Simmons, and found him charming. He had a beautiful head of wheat-blond hair for which most women would’ve sacrificed their microwaves. And there were people unaligned with either college or society cliques, whom Mimi just knew and liked. Town and gown and independent.
    I hadn’t been to see Mimi’s parents yet, so I was glad to see them come in the door. Sleek, dark Elaine was still one of the most attractive women I’ve ever known. She swept me up in a carefully loose embrace and brushed her cheek against mine, bombarding me with questions it would take me a week to answer. Not that Elaine intended to stick around and listen if I did. She was wearing a beautiful dress that revealed a lot of still-prime cleavage. If Elaine subscribed to Mimi’s dictum, the people here tonight must know Elaine very well indeed.
    Elaine’s husband Don was close on her heels, as always. I hugged Mr Houghton with far more enthusiasm. I’d always been very fond of him, a fondness compounded both of pity and of gratitude for his kindness. I believed it was not easy to be married to Elaine, and I sometimes thought it couldn’t be too easy to be Cully’s and Mimi’s father. In social situations Don was always overshadowed by his family. But he did have his own flair; Don could make money, and he was shyly proud of that, I’d discovered years ago.
    ‘How’s the man with a finger in every pie?’ I asked lightly.
    Mr Houghton looked pleased and embarrassed and altogether like a great teddy bear. He’d lost some hair and gained some weight since Mimi’s last marriage, but his face wasn’t deeply lined and he still had a bounce to his walk.
    ‘Well, I can’t complain,’ he admitted proudly.
    I led Mr Houghton over to the bar, where Cully mixed his father a gin and tonic. They shook hands with an odd formality, but they looked glad to see each other.
    ‘What are you up to now?’ I asked in a whisper.
    ‘Well, Nickie,’ Don began slowly, taking a sip of his drink, ‘I’ve bought me a restaurant.’
    ‘Which one?’ This was sure to be