Single in Suburbia (37 page)

“It’s all going to be OK,” she promised, and this time she knew it was the truth. “I love you guys completely and so does your dad.

“Things are going to turn around for us. I started cleaning out of desperation. But I’m really good at it and with Candace and Brooke’s help I think I can turn it into something big enough to support us.”

She gave their hands a final squeeze. “But first I have to repair my reputation and get my customers back. That means Susie Simmons is going to have to confess that nothing was stolen.”

“How are you going to get her to say that, Mom?” Meghan asked.

Amanda ate her breakfast as they talked. It felt so fabulous to be able to share her ideas and goals rather than trying to hide them.

They were a team, just as she and Brooke and Candace were. She didn’t have to go it alone.

“I’m not exactly sure,” Amanda admitted. “But the three musketeers are going to pay her a little visit. And we won’t be leaving until the issue is resolved.”

The three of them met at Candace’s house and decided to take the vacuummobile for old times’ sake.

“Do we have a plan?” Brooke asked as they piled into the bright yellow Bug.

“Not really,” Amanda said, slipping into the driver’s seat. “I thought we’d just ring her bell, step inside, and explain what we need from her. We’ll only use brute force if we have to.”

“That’s too bad.” Candace looked truly disappointed. “I’ve been dying to smack Susie Simmons up against a wall since I met her.”

“She wasn’t always like this,” Amanda said as she headed north on Johnson Ferry Road. “When we first met, she was—well, not completely warm and fuzzy—but kinder and gentler. Ever since her divorce she’s become so bitter and judgmental. I don’t know why.”

“Well, I don’t care why,” Brooke said. “You’ve been treated worse than she ever was and you haven’t gone all hostile.”

“I’ve been too busy to get hostile,” Amanda pointed out. “But I’m working up a good, clean mad right now. Susie’s lies could destroy everything. The only clients who haven’t canceled so far are Sylvia Hardaway and Hunter—and I’m afraid that may be because he hasn’t heard about our arrest yet.”

“God, that man is hot,” Candace said.

“Yes, he is.” Amanda smiled, but his continued silence had made her question his sincerity. “I’m trying not to be hurt by the fact that he’s so totally disappeared, but I’m really not sure what to make of him.”

She put on her blinker and changed lanes.

“You don’t have to make anything of him,” Candace said. “He looks pretty well formed to me. Just enjoy yourself. You deserve it.”

Amanda eased into the middle lane as they neared Upper Roswell. It felt strange to be in the bright yellow Bug without Solange’s uniform and makeup. When she pulled out to pass a silver Mercedes, the driver pointed to the three of them, nudged her passenger, and laughed.

Amanda waited for the burn of embarrassment, but nothing happened. “Hey,” Amanda said. “Those ladies think we’re funny.” She pointed to the twosome in the silver car.

“They don’t know the half of it.” Candace turned in the passenger seat and stuck her tongue out at the Mercedes’ occupants as they flew by. She actually put her hands up to either side of her head and waggled her fingers at them. The only thing missing was the “nya nya nya na nah.”

The driver’s mouth puckered into an O of shock and disapproval. The Mercedes sped off.

“Damn straight,” Candace said. “They’re lucky I didn’t moon them.”

Amanda looked at the elegant Candace. She was still perfectly turned out and had dressed with obvious care for their confrontation with Susie. But something about her was different.

“What in the world has happened to you?” Amanda asked. “You actually seem to be not only understanding, but interested in baseball. Yesterday you had an urge to lead the wave. Today you’re talking about mooning two total strangers.”

Amanda met Brooke’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “What do you think, Brooke? Have aliens inhabited Candace’s body?”

Amanda waited for the expected retort, but none came. She turned to Candace, concerned. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Well, something has sort of invaded my body.”

Brooke leaned farther into the front seat. “Are you OK?”

Candace blushed.
Candace!

“It’s a baby,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m, uh, pregnant.” Candace’s smile was both mocking and filled with wonder. “Forty-two-year-old, allegedly infertile me is going to have a baby.”

“Oh, my God.” Amanda turned into Susie’s neighborhood then found a place to pull over. “You’re joking, right?”

Candace shook her head.

“Is it…” Brooke began.

Candace nodded, her face still split by her smile. “It appears that mild-mannered Dan Donovan’s sperm are a hell of a lot more potent than the macho men I was married to.”

They sat in silence for a moment, absorbing the news.

“Are you OK with this?” Amanda finally asked.

“I’m better than OK,” Candace said. “I’m just a little offkilter. And these mood swings sneak up on me when I least expect them. But the nausea seems to be over, thank God.”

Still absorbing the news, Amanda pulled back on the road and headed toward Susie Simmons’s.

“Frankly,” Candace said, “I wouldn’t want to be Susie Simmons right now. Because if she doesn’t behave herself, I’m going to turn my hormones loose on her. And believe me, it won’t be pretty.”

“What do you want?” Susie stood in her doorway and glared at each of them individually. Her hair and makeup were flawlessly done. Her lipstick-covered mouth turned downward. “I’d think you’d be too embarrassed to show your faces here.”

Amanda didn’t wait to be invited in. She stepped forward, practically into Susie’s face. The other woman dropped back.

Candace and Brooke pressed into the foyer behind her. The door closed and the three of them formed a solid wall in front of Susie. “Obviously you thought wrong.” Amanda took another step forward, intentionally crowding the other woman. Candace and Brooke stepped up beside her. “About a lot of things.”

A look of panic washed over Susie’s face. There was a noise up on the landing.

“Are you all right, Mom?” Lucy Simmons’s voice quavered with uncertainty. “Should I call the police?”

“Why don’t we have her do that, Susie?” Amanda asked quietly. “And when they get here, we can ask them to search for the jewelry and money you claimed was missing.”

She stared Susie in the eye adding a silent challenge to the one she’d just issued.

“That’s, um, not necessary, Luce,” Susie finally said. “I’ll handle this.”

“Good move,” Candace muttered.

“I’ll say.” Brooke gave her a menacing look.

“Why don’t we continue this in your office?” Amanda took another step forward. “Unless you want Lucy to hear how you tried to set up your poor unsuspecting maids for something they never did.”

Susie fell back another step and then another. With a sigh of what Amanda thought might be resignation, she turned and walked into her office. Amanda, Candace, and Brooke followed.

Susie took a seat behind her desk. The three of them sank down on the sofa across from it.

Once again, silence reigned.

“So, what’s going on, Susie?” Amanda asked as calmly as she could. “What did Solange—or I—ever do to you?”

Susie stared back in silence. Every item on her desk was aligned at a perfect angle to something else. The books on the shelves formed perfectly straight rows, the bindings lined up according to height.

“All I’ve done is try to keep a roof over my children’s heads,” Amanda continued. “I didn’t do you any harm. Or attack you in any way. I cleaned your house, and I was happy to have the work.”

Susie flushed, but whether it was with embarrassment or disdain, Amanda didn’t know. “Your accusations are threatening my ability to take care of my children. As a mother, I’m sure you understand I can’t have that.”

Still Susie remained silent. Beside her, Candace took a breath as if to speak, but Amanda laid a hand on her arm to stop her.

“I’m not here to beg for your friendship, Susie. I have to make a living and Maid for You is the way I intend to do that. If you don’t want someone you know cleaning your house, that’s fine. But you have to clear my name.

“We all know that your things weren’t stolen. I expect you to take back the accusations and I want you to tell me, right now, why you made them.”

Still no response.

“Jesus, Susie.” Candace couldn’t take it anymore. “You walked away from your marriage with a sweet deal. Why behave so viciously to someone who didn’t?”

“Let’s go, Amanda.” Brooke stood. “It’s clear she isn’t going to…”

“My deal wasn’t so sweet,” Susie said. “In fact, there was no deal.”

The three of them froze where they were.

Susie studied the paperweight on her desk as if it held some sort of answer. Then she moved it several inches to the left. When she looked back up at them, her mask was gone. “I got screwed too.” Her mouth twisted in bitterness. “Worse than screwed.” She looked at Amanda. “Charles spent years hiding his assets before he finally divorced me. Fucking years, making sure I didn’t get anything.”

“But everyone said…”

Susie looked weary, as weary as Amanda felt. “Everyone repeated what I told them. I couldn’t stand for anyone to know what he’d done, how stupid I’d been.” She smiled, but it was tight and bitter. “So I pretended.” She aimed the smile at Amanda. “You dressed up in a disguise and cleaned houses. I pretended I had money I didn’t.”

“But, how did you live?” Brooke asked.

“My grandmother had left me money when she died. We lived off that for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to scale back and maintain the fiction. The money’s almost gone now.” She dropped her gaze to the paperweight. “I was going to sell some of her jewelry, but you never really get what it’s worth. And it was all I had left of her.” Susie sighed and closed her eyes. “I needed the insurance money.”

They sat in stunned silence for a while.

“So, what do you want me to do,” Susie asked. “To prove that Solange and her cohorts are innocent?”

Amanda studied Susie Simmons. Without her mask of frightened arrogance, she looked much more like the woman Amanda had once known. Susie had lashed out at the very thing she’d been most afraid of, as if calling attention to Amanda’s misfortune would somehow keep people from guessing her own.

The truth was Susie Simmons had been every bit as much a victim as Amanda. And she had covered and protected her children in the only way she’d known how.

It wasn’t their place to try to punish her for it.

“Why don’t you just ‘find’ the missing things and let everyone know you were mistaken?” Amanda said. “That would work for me.”

“But…” Candace and Brooke began.

“I don’t know if you’ve given any thought to what you might do next.” Amanda gestured around the scarily immaculate office and then looked pointedly at Brooke and Candace. “But Maid for You is getting ready to expand.”

She waited several seconds for her partners’ reluctant nods. “I think the company could benefit from the services of an…anal-retentive of your magnitude.”

“Me? Cleaning houses?” Susie laughed, but this time with amusement rather than derision. “Would I have to dress up and develop an accent?”

“Nope,” Amanda replied. “There’ll be no more dressing up or pretending. And you don’t necessarily have to clean houses unless you want to. I, myself, have found it very therapeutic, but you could help with training if you prefer.”

Amanda considered Brooke and Candace who flanked her on either side and thought of all they’d been through together and how much still lay ahead. She might be single in suburbia, but she was not alone. Her life, and the opportunities that filled it, stretched in front of her, a veritable smorgasbord of possibility.

“I can promise you one thing,” Amanda said as she stood and prepared to leave, her friends at her side. “Whatever we do from here on out, we’re going to do it as ourselves.”

And that included her next stop.

After dropping her partners back at Candace’s, she drove the vacuummobile to Hunter James’s house. It was, Amanda reflected as she drove the peppy little Bug through the streets of east Cobb, a vehicle she could relate to; a much better fit than the sagging-seated Volvo she’d once left idling in the car lot of her life.

Confirming that his SUV was in the garage, Amanda walked up the front steps and rang the bell.

There was no bark from Fido, but she heard footsteps and then Hunter’s shadow appeared in the sidelight. The door opened.
“Bonjour, Solange
,” he said in beautifully accented French.
“Comment vas-tu?”

She blushed, which seemed to be a regular occurrence whenever he was around. “So, you heard?”

He smiled and there was no censure or judgment in it. “Amanda,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t exactly a revelation.”

He motioned her inside. A suitcase and laptop sat just inside the door.

“I recognized you the first time Solange sashayed into my house. Anyone who didn’t recognize you in her just wasn’t looking. I liked Solange right away. She’s feisty, a real fighter. Fido’s not the only one who knows a good thing when he sees it.”

Amanda blushed again remembering that Hunter James had had his face in her crotch too.

“I’m a little worried about her twins though.” He smiled. “Will somebody be looking after them?”

Amanda was still trying to absorb the fact that he’d known, not to mention how well he spoke French. The invitations she’d issued when she’d thought he couldn’t understand her rushed back to smite her. “But…”

“Amanda, I spent six years playing ball for Montreal.” His smile broadened. “You didn’t say anything in French that I wasn’t thrilled to hear.”

“Fine,” she replied. “So you knew. Then where have you been? Hasn’t anyone told you it’s not nice to sleep with a woman, even if you know she’s your maid, and then not call her again?”

“I left you a note and the key to my house.”

She rolled her eyes.

“And I did get that one call through to your house despite the most unreliable cell phone service I’ve ever encountered. I spoke to Wyatt.” He noted her look of surprise. “Whom I take it failed to mention that I called?”