The Friends We Keep. Susan Mallery
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Kennedy discuss what Jasmine would wear if she and Boomer could get married. It wasn’t the dress that stumped them so much as the wedding bouquet. How would a cat carry it down the aisle?
Gabby looked at the few kids still standing on the edge of the park and spotted Makayla. Her stepdaughter was tall with impossibly long legs. Her naturally blond hair hung halfway down her back. She wore a loose, flowy sleeveless shirt over shorts. She was pretty and still a little gangly, but in a couple of years she was going to have that easy beauty women everywhere envied.
Makayla looked a lot like her stunning mother. Around both of them, Gabby felt short and bottom-heavy, neither of which was Makayla’s fault.
Gabby pulled up to the curb and watched the teen approach. Her stomach tensed as she tried to judge her mood. It was Friday on a visitation weekend, which meant things could go either way.
“Hi,” Gabby said brightly as Makayla opened the passenger front door.
“Hi.” Makayla slid onto the seat and fastened the belt before turning toward the twins. “Hey, munchkins.”
“Makayla!” Both girls greeted her happily.
“We think Boomer and Jasmine should get married,” Kennedy added. “In a white dress.”
“Huh. I don’t think Boomer would look good in a white dress, do you?”
The twins laughed. Gabby smiled, imagining their basset hound draped in white tulle.
“Not Boomer,” Kenzie corrected. “Jasmine.”
“Oh, that’s different.”
The knot in Gabby’s stomach loosened. Makayla was okay. There wouldn’t be shouting or door slamming this week. No sullen silences. She would get herself ready to visit her mother and then she would be gone for forty-eight hours. Odds were Sunday night would be awful—it usually was—but that was for then.
The highs and lows that came with being a fifteen-year-old were amplified by Makayla’s relationship with her mother. It was erratic at best. Sometimes Candace wanted to be all in and other times she saw her daughter as little more than an inconvenience. Sadly, she didn’t mind sharing that factoid with Makayla.
Gabby tried to understand that the resulting fits of rage and depression weren’t about her. Makayla needed to blame someone and Gabby was a safe target. When things got tough, there was always chocolate, and the knowledge that whatever else was going on, Makayla loved her half sisters.
Gabby drove through Friday-afternoon traffic. The three blocks on Pacific Coast Highway took nearly fifteen minutes, but once they made it into their neighborhood, the number of cars lessened.
Gabby had grown up not five blocks from here. She and her siblings had gone to the same elementary school as Kenzie and Kennedy. She’d attended the same high school as Makayla. She knew where the kids liked to hang out, the exact amount of time it took to walk home and the quickest way to get from their house to the beach.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have moved here from somewhere else. To discover Mischief Bay as an adult. For her there was only complete familiarity.
She pulled into their driveway. Makayla got out of the SUV, then opened the back door to help the twins. Gabby went to unlock the front door. She could already hear Boomer baying his greeting and scratching to get out. The only thing preventing him from going through the door was the metal plate Andrew had screwed into place.
As soon as she opened the door, Boomer raced past her to get to his girls. Because while Boomer loved his whole pack, Makayla and the twins were his girls. He followed them around, did his best to keep them in line and when they disobeyed his list of rules, he ratted on them.
Now he ran in circles, looping around all three kids, baying his pleasure at seeing them again, as if it had been weeks instead of a few hours. Gabby thought about pointing out that she’d been home much of the afternoon, but doubted that information would impress Boomer.
Makayla and the twins stopped to pet him before heading toward the house. Once they were moving, Boomer wiggled his way to the front and darted through the open door. The girls followed. Gabby made sure that Jasmine hadn’t bolted for freedom, then stepped into the foyer and pushed the door closed behind her.
It was nearly four. By her calculations she had less than two hours to get the twins settled in for the evening, dinner started, the pets fed and herself turned from frumpy mom to glamorous, charming wife to successful Andrew Schaefer. It was going to be a push.
She went directly to the kitchen and dropped her handbag on the built-in desk that was her catchall for crap. Next she looked at the calendar posted on the wall, the one with all their activities color coded by person. Makayla’s mom was picking her up at six, Gabby and Andrew were due to leave at six-fifteen and Cecelia, their go-to sitter, was due at five forty-five.
“Mommy, can I wear my purple hat to dinner tonight?” Kenzie asked as she ran into the kitchen. “Kennedy wants to wear her green one. I like my purple one better. It has feathers and lace.”
“Did you pick up my dark-wash jeans from the dry cleaner?” Makayla asked as she, too, entered the kitchen. “I’m going to need them for this weekend. Mom’s taking me to the movies and out to dinner and you know that means we’ll be going somewhere nice.”
“I did. They’re in your room.”
Which you would know if you’d bothered to go look. But she didn’t say that. Nor did she mention she thought it was ridiculous that a fifteen-year-old was allowed to send her jeans to the dry cleaner. Couldn’t she wash them with the rest of her clothes? But Makayla had deemed it critical and Andrew had agreed. Gabby felt that if she was going to have to die on some hill when it came to her stepdaughter, it wasn’t going to be the one about dry cleaning.
Makayla sat on one of the stools by the island. “Mom said she’s going to take me to her stylist and get my hair cut. Maybe I’ll get bangs. There’s enough time to grow them out before school starts. You know, if I don’t like them.”
As she spoke, she stretched her long arms out across the granite countertop. Her hands were laced together as she stretched. Kenzie watched closely and Gabby knew that in the morning, she would see the same pose at breakfast. Because there was nothing the twins liked more than to imitate their older sister.
“We might do some school shopping. She can get me in to see all the fall clothes that aren’t out yet. We went through the look books already and I chose some things.”
Candace was a buyer for an upscale department store and had access to a lot of things, including styles and brands not yet available for sale to the public. Gabby told herself it was nice that Makayla got to feel special with her mom. That was how it was supposed to be. Most of time she nearly believed herself, as well.
Makayla raised one shoulder dramatically. “It’s because I have an eye for trends.”
“You do.”
Makayla eyed Gabby’s baggy, knee-length shorts and oversize T-shirt, the blue one with a stain on the front and a small but growing hole near the hem.
“You want me to talk to Dad about giving you a make-over?”
“Thanks. Sweet, but no.”
She told herself that she didn’t have it so bad. Makayla was a pretty good kid. She had her moods, but most of those were either hormone or mother-induced. She loved her baby sisters and looked out for them.
What made things difficult was the nagging sense that Makayla wasn’t treated like a member of the family. Her place was more revered guest, with everyone circling around her illustrious orbit. Like the dry cleaning. Seriously? For jeans? Or that Makayla didn’t mind looking after the twins if Gabby needed her to. But only for an hour. Never for an afternoon or evening. And even the few minutes of watching was always a favor—never something Gabby could depend on. Giving Makayla orders wasn’t allowed.
Second-wife syndrome, Gabby