And One Last Thing... Read Online Free PDF Page A

Penny Frensley is wearing? What was she thinking?”
    “This is just so typical of Mike,” I groused. “And he didn’t even plan the damn thing. He let his secretary do it.”
    “Well, she did a good job; it’s a perfectly nice party,” Mama conceded. When she saw the glare I was giving her, she added, “Which is entirely beside the point. You’re absolutely right. Mike was wrong, wrong, wrong.”
    “Thank you.”
    Mama gently brushed powder across the bridge of my nose. “You might want to do something about your jaw, honey. It’s clenched awfully tight.”
    “Because I’m planning on chewing on Mike’s ass when I go back out there.”
    “Lacey, I know that I taught you better than to have a tantrum in public,” she said, patting her hair purely for dramatic affect. “It reflects badly on me as a mama. Of course, I also taught you when somebody screws you over, even when that someone is your husband, you don’t just lie back and think of England.”
    “I haven’t done anything irrevocable yet, have I?” I asked.
    “No,” she assured me. “It was a very quiet hissy fit, barely noticeable. I only swooped in because you were doing that frozen beauty queen smile and that means you’re about five seconds from Chernobyl territory.” I laughed. She squeezed my shoulders. “I know my baby.”
    She turned me toward the mirror to show me she’d painted my mouth a bloody-murder red. “The question is, what do you do from here?”
    With what Mama called my “scary-pleasant hostess face” on, I floated across the room and very loudly, very sweetly thanked Beebee for putting together such a wonderful party for Mike.
    “Oh, don’t think anything of it,” Beebee said, blushing to the roots of her hair. She kept looking over my shoulder for some sort of escape route. At the time I thought she was just uncomfortable being caught between her boss and his pissed-off wife. Now I think she was nervous that I’d figured them out and was about to smack her. “Mike - Mr. Terwilliger - just wanted to make sure you had a nice birthday.”
    “Well, aren’t I the lucky girl?” I asked, my smile stretched tightly across my face.
    Beebee didn’t answer, instead waving at the caterer to begin the circulation of canapes.
    After Mike spent most of my birthday toast talking about the new online debt-tracking packages available through Terwilliger and Associates, I went around and introduced myself to nearly everyone in the room and asked them how they knew Mike. Including Mike’s parents.
    My mother-in-law was not impressed with my display.
    The problem was that, once again, my performance was so convincing that by the end of the night, Mike thought I’d really enjoyed myself. He really had no idea that he’d screwed up. He seemed so pleased with himself for weeks afterward, talking about how he knew it was right to trust the whole thing to Beebee. That she’d known to pick the best caterers and the best florists (Cherry Click, ironically enough) and then trusted their good taste. The implication was that I was a control freak who would have wanted to see to every detail myself, and look how much easier it was when you trusted the “experts.”
    Sadly, even then, it didn’t occur to me that Mike would sleep with someone else, much less his secretary. I could believe him to be clueless, obtuse, even shamefully oblivious to the feelings of others, but never a cheater. I wanted to believe he was better than that. Or that he was too lazy to pull off an affair.
    Looking back, the party probably served as an opportunity for Mike to introduce Beebee to his client list. To show them what a find she was, how beautiful and “well put together.” And by contrast, what an ungrateful social misfit I was. Really, who could blame him for replacing me with a more gracious model?
    “I’m sorry,” Beebee said, smiling up at me and snapping me back into reality. “The phone just rings off the hook this time of year.”
    As I