Kindred Spirits (23 page)

Beth sucked the end of her chopstick. Mary Kay was right. If Carol and Jeff had been able to communicate their emotions from the get-go, there wouldn’t have been a divorce to begin with. “She’s self-destructive.” Then, remembering how she’d drunk-dialed Marc the night before, Beth said, “You don’t think Carol will do something crazy and call Jeff while she’s like this, do you?”

“She might.” Mary Kay wrapped up her sushi. “Would that be a bad thing?”

“Are you kidding? She’d never speak to Jeff again, she’d be too mortified. That would be the end of them once and for all.”

Mary Kay left to throw the sushi containers outside so they wouldn’t smell up the room. When she returned, she said, “Carol’s not at the ice machine. I just passed it and there’s no one there.”

“She has been gone an awfully long time.”

They looked at each other. Uh-oh.

“Maybe she went to her room and passed out,” Beth said, getting up and dumping her sushi tray in the wastebasket.

“Not likely,” Mary Kay said, picking up Carol’s key card, which had been lying on the desk.

“Maybe she took her spare.”

“Or maybe not.”

“Jeff!” Beth said. “She’s calling Jeff.”

They went to Carol’s door and knocked loudly. “Carol. You in there, Carol?” Had Carol been sober, she would have been appalled by their ruckus. “Come on, Carol, wake up!”

A man passing by carrying a brown paper bag and a pizza box said, “You wouldn’t by any chance be looking for a blond woman in her Dr. Dentons?”

Beth said, “You’ve seen her?”

He grinned and pointed toward the karaoke bar. “The life of the party.”

Shit! Without waiting for further details, they dashed to the emergency exit, taking the stairs two at a time. “She’s in her pj’s,” Beth said, running so fast she nearly slipped on the bottom step. “What is she thinking?”

Mary Kay said, “Obviously, she’s not thinking.”

They arrived at the lobby floor and pushed open the emergency exit doors, quick-stepping down the hall toward the music that grew louder as they got closer to the bar. Bursting into the lounge, they squinted as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, searching for Carol.

It didn’t take long to find her. For there, on top of a table at the center of the hotel lounge, surrounded by a group of chemical engineers, Carol Goodworthy was in her pajamas belting out “Harper Valley PTA.”

It was shocking.

It was also kind of funny.

She was surprisingly entertaining. Not because Carol was slapping her thighs and gyrating her hips to the applause of ogling engineers, but because she was actually doing an admirable job, singing all the words on cue and not missing a beat.

They let her finish, to resounding applause. Carol bowed and said, “I’ll be here all week.” Then, catching sight of her friends, she waved like a lunatic and got down from the table, as steady as a rock. “It’s after eight. Ladies free. Remember what you said? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

A group of men in the bar urged Mary Kay and Beth to join the party. “Don’t be a spoilsport,” one said. “What’ll you have?”

“A pink cosmopolitan,” Carol answered for her. “For her, too.” She pointed at Beth.

Beth opened her mouth to object. She’d already had one martini and it was time for bed.
Oh, screw it,
she thought.
When in Rome. . .
“Thanks,” she said. “A cosmo on the rocks would be nice.”

“How about ‘I Love Rock N’ Roll’ next?” Carol suggested, flipping through the monitor.

“Carol . . .,” Mary Kay began, trying to do the right thing. “Don’t you think. . .”

“No. I’m tired of thinking, MK. Lynne was right. We need to have more fun in our lives and I plan on doing exactly that, starting tonight.”

Without further argument, Carol climbed back on the table and started snapping her fingers to the opening strains of “I Love Rock N’ Roll.” If Lynne were here, she’d tell them to let Carol be, that this was exactly what the doctor called for.

“Come on, you two.” She held out her hand, pulling up Beth, then Mary Kay, who were promptly handed microphones.

“OK,” Carol directed. “The trick to this is you’ve got to become the chanteuse. Channel your best Chrissie Hynde.”

“Joan Jett,” Beth corrected. “And the Blackhearts.”

Carol slapped the air. “Whatever. I always get those two confused. Brunettes. Eighties music.”

The cosmos were delivered and the women clinked their glasses, taking huge swigs as the words started rolling across the screen.

At first they were really lousy. Beth was too careful to articulate each lyric and Mary Kay was off-key. But then Carol let out a couple of trademark Joan Jett cougar calls, much to the thunderous appreciation of the chemical engineers, and the women got the hang of it.

Let go
, Beth thought, strumming her air guitar as she flung her head in circles until her hair fell out of its clip. “I’m a librarian!” she shouted. “And I’m here to rock ’n’ roll!”

“Get the librarian a shot! Get ’em all shots!” someone demanded. “Schnapps.”

Probably, schnapps was not the brightest of ideas. Then again, neither was Mary Kay’s decision to pole dance without a pole while crooning “Lady Marmalade” or their attempts to jump out the letters to “Y.M.C.A.” on the tabletop. It was a miracle they didn’t break something, like their necks. Or that the police weren’t called.

But mostly it was a miracle that their grief could be washed away in a greasy hotel bar by the unholiest of Madonnas.

‟‛L
ike a Virgin’?” Drake loved the story of Carol Goodworthy letting loose, even though he’d met her only once. He had no idea what a big deal it was that the past chairwoman of the Marshfield School Board closed down the Calais Radisson lounge, seducing strange men with her impersonation of Madonna. “How did she top that?”

“She couldn’t.” Outside their balcony overlooking the parking lot, Mary Kay took a sip of peppermint tea in the gray dawn as tractor trailers rumbled past on highway 80. She watched a groggy engineer unlock his car, throw in his bag, and drive off. “Then Beth and I put her to bed in our room so there’d be someone with her all night in case she got sick.”

“And did she get sick?”

“No, she slept like a baby. Me, on the other hand, not so much.”

“Overserved, were we?”

“Actually, I didn’t drink all that much. One ginger martini in our hotel room and then part of a cosmo downstairs. I don’t know why I feel so lousy this morning.” She decided it was better not to tell him about the schnapps. “I’m thinking maybe sushi from the boonies isn’t such a hot idea.”

“Either that,” he said with a devilish tone, “or you’re pregnant.”

Mary Kay let out a snort. If he only knew. “Yeah, right.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I did happen to notice you left your birth-control pills in the bathroom.”

The blood drained from her face as the churning in her stomach returned. Drake had found her pills. She was cooked. “Yeah, I know. I realized that yesterday morning.”

“If this is your way of roping me into a shotgun marriage, the old trick seems hardly necessary. As you recall, I
did
propose.”

She twisted the ruby on her finger. “I’m wearing your ring now.”

“That’s a start. Now, repeat after me: ‘Drake, I would love to marry you.’ ”

“Drake, I would . . .” This was it. She had to ask him while she was too hungover to know better. “Drake, what if I
couldn’t
get pregnant?”

There was an ominous silence. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean”—she peeked into the room where Carol and Beth were still asleep, half snoring—“what if we get married and we find out I can’t have children?”

“Don’t worry about it, MK. I’m not marrying your uterus, I’m marrying you. If it turns out that after a few years of trying we can’t have kids, then we’ll deal with it.”

Mary Kay clutched her middle. “Deal with it like how?”

“You’re a nurse. You know better than anyone what kind of reproductive technology’s out there.”

But what would happen when he found out that she’d known all along? In vitro fertilization—the most common treatment for women in her situation—was a long, arduous process of doctors’ appointments and fertility drugs. That Drake would learn Mary Kay’s blocked fallopian tubes had been diagnosed years before they met was inevitable.

Her deception had woven a tangled web, indeed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m getting all worked up over nothing.”

“So, it’s a yes? I can tell our friends we’re going to do the deed?”

Another twinge. “Wait until I get back tomorrow. Just do me that favor, OK? Meantime, Carol and I are meeting the lawyer who arranged for Julia’s adoption. This could get us the names we need. I should concentrate on that.”

“Fair enough. I have to go to work anyway. Can’t wait until you get home.”

Mary Kay’s stomach turned again. “Me too.”

An hour later, everyone was up, showered, packed, and ready to go. The plan was for Beth to drive Carol and Mary Kay to the Andersson law office while she waited for Marc to call with Chat’s test results. That would be stressful enough without adding a lawyer to the mix.

Carol, slightly shaky, gripped her tea in the backseat. Beth and Mary Kay might have had a blast the night before, but she was embarrassed beyond belief. Periodically, blurred images, like drunken Polaroids, reminded her of what a fool she’d been. Shots? Honestly?

“In my pj’s,” she murmured. “In front of strangers.”

“Look on the bright side,” Mary Kay said. “They
were
strangers and you’ll never see them again.”

“Nor will they forget you, either,” Beth added.

Carol slid down and groaned. “Getting plastered and singing karaoke. What got into me?”

Mary Kay turned and said, “Jeff?”

“Jeff?” Carol took another sip. “He has nothing to do with me getting drunk.”

“I know it’s none of my business,” Mary Kay said tentatively, “but it’s pretty evident to me. . .”

“And to me,” Beth said.

“That you still love him.”

“What?” Carol said this so loudly she hurt her own head and had to press her temples to stop the pounding.

“In fact,” Mary Kay continued, “I’m willing to go so far as to say that you never stopped loving him and, possibly, he feels the same way.”

Carol didn’t have the energy to mount an objection. “Even if that’s true—and I can’t speak for him—it’s too late. We’ve been divorced for a year.”

“If Lynne were here,” Beth said, “she’d point out it’s never too late as long as you’re alive.”

“She said something similar the night I left Jeff and went to your house, MK,” Carol said. “I should have listened to her instead of going off half-cocked like a spoiled brat.”

Beth and Mary Kay kept their peace, thereby tacitly confirming she was right.

“So, you think I was a spoiled brat?”

Mary Kay said, “I think you were stretched wire thin and that Jeff and you were both so busy with your careers and the demands of two teenagers that you quit communicating.”

“That’s putting it graciously.”

“Whatever happened, happened,” Beth said. “It’s water under the proverbial bridge. The question is, what are you going to do to set things right between you two?”

“Nothing. Jeff has already made plans to meet up with a friend of his who’s volunteering for Doctors Without Borders. The house is on the market. That window of opportunity is closed.”

“Just tell him you still love him,” Mary Kay said. “Throw it out there and see what happens.”

“Yeah,” Beth said. “What do you have to lose?”

“My dignity.”

Mary Kay said, “Oh, honey, you trashed that last night.”

Carol grinned. “That was kind of fun, wasn’t it?”

Mary Kay couldn’t disagree. “It was. Though, I’m not sure it was entirely necessary for me to swagger like a stripper when I did ‘Lady Marmalade.’”

“You were great. You stole the show! Too bad Drake wasn’t there. Speaking of which,” Carol said, slowly rising out of her slump, “have we made any decisions on that ring?”

Beth slowed to take the exit to downtown Calais. “Can’t help but notice you haven’t taken it off once. Can we assume this means yes?”

Mary Kay said, “What it means is. . .”

From her purse, Carol’s iPhone blared. She dug it out and read the number. “My, my, my.”

And here Mary Kay was just about to tell them what she’d decided, Beth thought, bummed.

Carol put the phone on speaker and said, “Why, hello Doctor Dorfman.”

Dorfman! He actually called. Mary Kay poked Beth. If this brought them closer to finding Julia, then Mary Kay’s decision could wait.

“Hello?” he said, sounding slightly skeptical. “I’m trying to reach a Ms. Goodworthy.”

“This is she. And I’m here with my friends Mary Kay LeBlanc and Beth Levinson, whom you met when you were headed out to the wedding. I hope you don’t mind if I put you on speaker so all of us can hear at the same time.”