Shadow Creek by Joy Fielding Page B

lucky number twenty-one.”
    “A total cliché.” Brianne’s laugh filled the house.
    “Hello?” Val said.
    “Hey, you,” said Evan.
    Two minutes later, Val returned to the living room. “Brace yourself, everyone,” she said. “There’s been a change of plans.”

FOUR
    A RE WE THERE YET?” Brianne asked from the front passenger seat of Val’s crowded SUV some three and a half hours later.
    “Still a ways to go,” Val said.
    “How much longer?”
    “At least an hour. Maybe more.”
    “Shit.” Brianne pulled her BlackBerry out of her oversized leather purse.
    “Who are you texting now?” her mother asked.
    “Sasha.”
    “You just saw her.”
    “So?”
    Val gripped the steering wheel, watching her knuckles grow white. This wasn’t going quite the way she’d expected whenshe’d agreed—against her better judgment—to act as chauffeur for her daughter and her husband’s fiancée, then somehow managed to cajole Melissa and James into postponing their trip into Manhattan in order to drive to the Adirondacks and the Inn at Shadow Creek.
    First of all, she’d forgotten what a long trip it was—five hours of twisting and congested highway—and while it was true she’d driven up here dozens of times and probably knew the way blindfolded, all previous trips had been with Evan, and he’d always insisted on doing the lion’s share of the driving.
    Second, while it was also true that Jennifer’s car was too small to hold Evan’s daughter, his fiancée, and their combined luggage, they could have simply postponed their trip until Evan’s business was completed, as Jennifer had suggested repeatedly. It hadn’t really been necessary for Val to put her own plans on hold to accommodate her soon-to-be ex. So why had she?
    The answer was sitting in the seat beside her, pointedly ignoring her.
    Silly me, Val acknowledged, reluctantly dismissing her erstwhile fantasies of mother-daughter bonding. Brianne had said barely two words to her since they’d left Brooklyn, spending almost all her time on that damn BlackBerry. Had Val really thought she might be able to mitigate Jennifer’s influence on her daughter, at least a little, by going head-to-head with her?
She may be younger and prettier, but I’m smarter and a much better driver
. Was she seeking to remind the other woman that even though she might have taken her place in Evan’s heart, this would never be the case with his only child?
I’m still Brianne’s mother. No one can take that away from me
.
    “I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” James remarked fromthe backseat, glancing out his side window at the passing panorama of woodlands, meadows, and streams, as the car continued along Route 9N toward Prospect Mountain.
    “What are you complaining about now?” Melissa asked from the other side of the car. “Can’t you just enjoy the scenery?”
    “The only scenery I like is on a Broadway stage.”
    “So picture Julie Andrews coming up over that ridge singing ‘The hills are alive …’ ”
    “Please … that was in the movie. It was Mary Martin who originated the role on Broadway. Julie, sweet though she may be, doesn’t compare to Mary.”
    “That had to be, what, fifty years ago?” Melissa reminded him. “You weren’t even born then.”
    “So what? My grandmother attended the premiere, and she told me it was spectacular.”
    “It’s spectacular here, too, if you’d give it a chance,” Val interrupted, again glancing over at Brianne. “Nature at its most breathtaking.”
    “I hate nature,” James said. “It makes me nervous.”
    Brianne laughed.
    So, she
is
listening, Val thought.
    “You laugh, but there’s something very unnatural about it,” James said. Now everybody laughed.
    Everyone except Jennifer.
    What does she think of all this? Val wondered, deciding that the poor woman probably didn’t know what hit her. She looks as if she’s about to burst into tears, Val thought, almost feeling sorry for her.