Good Little Wives by Abby Drake Page A

fine.”
    â€œFine? Mon dieu . Did you see her today?”
    Caroline said nothing. Several minutes passed, as did two SUVs and a Subaru station wagon.
    â€œWell,” Bridget said finally, “I intend to be supportive. I plan to go with Dana and Kitty to see the lawyer on Monday.” She’d told Dana that, when they’d been at the funeral, right after Kitty made her dramatic appearance. If Bridget couldn’t be in France, she might as well be in Tarrytown.
    â€œDo as you wish,” Caroline remarked, tiny icicles forming at the corners of her newly done mouth. Then, as the car turned up the long Meacham driveway, she added, “And I will seat Chloe with us.”
    A few weeks ago, Bridget had planned—a declaration from Luc that he still, indeed, loved her and would leave his wife and remarry Bridget notwithstanding—to return from France in time to go to the gala. Randall would not want to miss it. Who would? They’d go with their checkbooks and buy their visibility in the form of black and white snapshots for the local newspapers and, if they were lucky, for the Sunday style section of the Times .
    Randall and Bridget Haynes shown here with Steven and Dana Fulton.
    Bob and Lauren Halliday share a cocktail with Jack Meacham and his wife, event chairperson Caroline Meacham.
    The images would be clipped and pasted into thick scrapbooks that would serve as a standard for the next generation of dégout snobs.
    It was, indeed, pathetic.
    â€œIt’s only a damn gala, Caroline,” Bridget said abruptly as she stopped the car at the front entry. “It’s hardly as important as Kitty—who once was your friend, and who now has to fight for her life.”
    Caroline waited a moment, as if expecting a driver to open her door. “Bridget,” she said, “you’re right about one thing. I used to be one of Kitty’s friends. Just as I am one of yours. But be careful, my dear. This is too small a town to take the wrong side.” If her voice hadn’t cracked in the middle of the last sentence, Bridget might have suggested that Caroline go to hell.
    Instead she simply watched Caroline exit the car, clearly not having had the good time her husband had instructed.
    Â 
    Thank God that was over.
    Caroline swept into her foyer and called out to Jennie, who hadn’t been waiting at the entrance. One would think that after working five years for Caroline, the young woman would know better.
    She moved into the music room as Jennie materialized in a simple black dress with a white, starched collar, and black, on-your-feet shoes. At the end of the month, her attire would change to warm-weather light gray. Caroline always felt that if one bothered employing servants, they might as well look the part.
    â€œBe a dear and bring my new trinkets,” Caroline instructed, floating to the settee and sliding out of her shoes. What with the murder and the funeral and the chaos it all wrought, she hadn’t had time to open her rite-of-spring luncheon gifts. “Oh, and Jennie,” she called out, “please remove the cemetery dirtfrom my navy Ballys.” Caroline rarely referred to her shoes as pumps or stilettos or slip-ons. Instead she called them by name, as if they were pets or children. Bally, Jimmy, Lulu.
    Chloe, of course, did the same, because everything Chloe did mirrored her mother.
    Caroline plucked at the gold choker that haloed her neck. For all the things she’d done wrong, for all the pain it had cost to shield the things that needed shielding, she had, at least, raised Chloe right.
    Now twenty-four, Chloe was engaged to Lee Sato, an Asian man, which was where everyone knew today’s money was: technology, minerals, most of America’s manufacturing. What was wrong with outsourcing a love life, too?
    When he had proposed, Chloe whined (“Mummy, he says I’ll have to live in Kyoto for a year or two”), at which time