A Bride After All Read Online Free PDF Page B

grabbing on to and holding on to her hair as she examined them.
    Her lipstick could use a touch-up, though.
    She rummaged through her bag, not noticing Marylou’s approach until the woman was standing next to her, leaning forward to dab a tissue at the outside corner of one eye.
    “There, that’s better,” Marylou said, blinking a few times and then smiling at her reflection. “Nonclumping mascara. What a huge fib. Oh, that’s a pretty shade,” she added, taking the open lipstick from Claire before she could apply it to her mouth. “But not the best with that blouse, I don’t think.”
    Claire looked down at her mauve-pink blouse, and then at the lipstick rapidly disappearing back into its tube. “It’s not?”
    “No, not really. There’s a touch of blue to that shade. Better to go with a touch of gold. First thing we need to do is get rid of what’s left on your lips, and then we’ll go from there. You really should wear eyeliner, Claire, you know. A deep burgundy andchocolate sort of shade maybe, to accentuate your lovely brown eyes—make them pop—and then other colors if you want to be more daring. Not a lot, just a smudge, sort of smoky. Oh I know, you’re young, and you’re busy, but there’s no excuse to not take a few minutes each day to pamper yourself. We call it the five-minute face now, or at least that’s what the beauty experts call it. A little sheer foundation, a little light powder, some eyeliner and shadow, a touch of mascara, some color to the cheeks and lips.”
    The entire time Marylou was talking she was also rummaging in a cosmetic bag she’d pulled from her designer purse, handing Claire a moist towelette of makeup remover, a small pack of cellophane-wrapped makeup applicators of different sizes and shapes, a tube of lipgloss, an entire mini-palette of powder eye shadows—even a tweezers, which she quickly took back.
    “Would you mind?” she asked, clasping the tweezers to her chest with both hands. “Just a little thinning, that’s all. It will only take a moment.”
    “I…um…do I really need…?”
    “I couldn’t exist without my tweezers,” Marylou said with the seriousness of a person commenting on the necessity of air to breathe. “Here, put all of that down and just let me play for a few minutes, all right? Because I’ve been dying to. You’ll still have plenty of time to meet Nick in the cafeteria. Salvatore has his marching orders, and knows to keep him busy for a while.”
    “I guess it’s good that one of us knows what you’re talking about,” Claire said, and then just gave in and went along…which was probably what most everyone did when faced with the velvet steamroller that was Marylou Smith-Bitters.
    “There,” Marylou declared the promised five minutes later, “all done. See? I told you it wouldn’t take long. And what a difference. Take a look.”
    Claire obediently turned back to the mirror, and couldn’t believe what she saw. Not that she didn’t used to look like this. But that was years ago. Before the divorce. Before she had buried herself in her work and hoped that nobody would notice her because she’d been noticed enough, thank you, and didn’t plan to be anyone’s possession again.
    “Oh, this isn’t good, Marylou,” she said, even as she admired how her eyes seemed to have new life in them. “I didn’t look like this the last time he saw me. He’ll think I’ve been…that I’m…”
    “A woman?” Marylou supplied evilly as she stuffed cosmetics back into their assigned pockets inside her sophisticated bag that was, when you got right down to it, a feat of brilliant engineering on someone’s part. “Now tell me why this is a bad thing.”
    “You know, Marylou, in some other generation, you’d have been burned as a witch. But thank you.”
    Marylou laughed, appreciating the joke. “You just go have fun, all right? Make Mama proud.”
    Claire lingered in the bathroom another fewmoments after Marylou left,