“Oh, sure. I’ve seen her walking a dog around the neighborhood.”
“Yes,” Myriam said, her mouth tight. “Isn’t he the most darling thing?”
Too late, I remembered something else Phil had told me—that the Mesbahs had filed various complaints against the Zhangs, whose darling dog had a tendency to bark at inconvenient hours.
And then there was Daisy Asbill, former Google employee turned wife of a Google executive. She was young and slim-hipped in a gray silk dress. “Does your daughter babysit?” she asked me. “I’ve got twins, and sometimes it’s about impossible to find someone...”
I hedged, recalling that Danielle’s sole babysitting effort for a neighbor down the street in Livermore had been a semidisaster.
“Oh, I don’t mean all the time,” Daisy qualified, sensing my hesitation. “Only when the nanny has the day off.”
“Of course,” I said, savoring this one: only when the nanny has the day off. Allie would get a kick out of that.
Over and over I said It’s so nice to meet you and We’re loving it out here and took miniscule sips of cabernet, trying to make it last as long as possible. My mouth ached from incessant smiling. At one point, Helen asked if Myriam’s closet was finished, and half the crowd trooped down the hallway to see the improvements. I spotted Phil next to Rich Sievert, a fresh glass in his hand. He smiled at me, and I took a relieved step toward him.
“Oh, here they are,” Deanna called, stepping between us. At the front door, Victor was fussing over another couple, so tall and blond and perfectly paired, they might have been a set of Barbies.
“So sorry we’re late,” the woman said, giving cheek kisses as she moved through the entryway. Her hair was so blond it was almost colorless, her eyes a piercing blue. As she came closer, I realized that she was an older version of a girl I’d seen walking through the neighborhood, her head bent, thumbs tapping the screen of her cell phone. “Oh, hello.” She smiled at me. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sonia Jorgensen.”
“Liz McGinnis,” I said, shifting my glass so we could shake hands. Sonia’s nails were pale silver, her skin buttery soft.
“Liz’s husband is the one with the yummy British accent,” Deanna put in, suddenly at my side.
“Australian,” I corrected.
“Don’t you just love British accents? It’s like those episodes of, what’s it called? On Netflix?” Deanna wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Oh! Downton Abbey!”
Sonia Jorgensen smiled at me, the sort of smile that made us coconspirators. Isn’t she ridiculous? She half turned toward me, her shoulders subtly angling Deanna out of the conversation. “We’re your neighbors right around the corner, I think. The two-story Grecian—”
“Oh, with the columns,” I said. When we’d first passed the house, Danielle had gaped. “Who lives there?” And I’d answered, “A dead president.”
“Yes! Tim—that’s my husband—said he wasn’t sure about them, but when I saw the designs, I just knew.”
“It’s a beautiful house.”
“Sonia’s a party planner,” Deanna said, edging back into the conversation. “She flies all over the world, just putting on parties. Can you imagine?”
“Corporate events, mostly,” Sonia explained. “I try to stay as far from weddings as possible.”
Deanna shook her head. “I’m so jealous it makes me sick. I try to get Rich to go somewhere, and he looks at me like I’ve got three heads.”
Sonia looked at her pointedly. “You just got back from Hawaii.”
“Right, but it was just Hawaii. We go there all the time,” Deanna pouted. Her effusiveness was both familiar and uncomfortable—a slightly more polished version of a high school student. “You’ve been to— Where did you just get back from?”
“Corpus Christi,” Sonia said. “Hardly exotic.”
“Still,” Deanna whined.
Sonia turned to me, her eyes crinkling in a smile. “Liz. Is that short for Elizabeth?”
There was something engaging about her, something that made me lower my guard, my mouth relaxing into its first genuine smile of the night. “No, just Liz. I always wanted to be an Elizabeth, though. I used to sign my name that way on my papers in elementary school.”
Sonia’s laugh showed teeth so straight and white, they might have belonged to a dental hygienist. “What did your parents think about that?”
“Oh, you know, typical kid stuff.” I took a careful sip of wine. Of course she didn’t know; it wasn’t the sort of situation a person could guess. My mom was fully blind by the time I was in elementary school, so she never saw my name on any work sheets or permission slips or report cards. And my dad wouldn’t have noticed—he was too busy seeing everything else. Elizabeth had been my own private rebellion.
“So, Liz, then. What do you do?”
I finished the last drop of wine in my glass. Funny—but after all the introductions tonight, Sonia was the first person to ask about me. “I’m a high school counselor,” I said. “Miles Landers High School, in Livermore.”
Sonia’s eyes widened, and I braced myself for the cocked head, the subtle up-and-down assessment. Was she calculating my salary, my overall net worth? Was she recalling the sudden appearance of my seven-year-old Camry in the neighborhood, remembering that most of our clothes had been packed in black plastic garbage bags, toted from my trunk to the house? But she surprised me by grabbing my arm. “Oh, my God. That’s wonderful.”
“Well...” Wonderful was overstating it a bit, although I did love my job. In seven years, I’d never had the same day twice. “This year will be interesting, because my daughter will be there, too. She’s going to be a freshman.”
“Oh, this is fantastic. You don’t understand... My daughter, Kelsey, is starting there in the fall. She’ll be a sophomore. She used to go to Ashbury Prep, but...well, that’s a story for another time. It turns out those other kids were such bad influences. But this is such a fantastic coincidence. It’ll be so nice for Kelsey to have some friendly faces at Miles Landers, not to mention another responsible adult in her life.”
Her touch was warm, as if we’d known each other for years. I recognized it as the mom connection, a bond that had always been elusive for me. I’d been a single mom for most of Danielle’s life, those early years spent shuttling between her day care and my internships, and later between the carpool lane at her elementary school and the counseling office. There had never been time to get to know the other moms, and I’d envied their chummy closeness at back-to-school nights and honor-roll assemblies.
“That will be nice,” I agreed, allowing myself to get sucked into the moment. Of course, there was no guarantee that our daughters would be friends. Danielle spent most of her days with her nose in a book. Kelsey, from what I’d observed, was years ahead of her socially. I remembered her walking past in her microshorts and tank tops, her bra straps winking like a dirty secret.
“So, would it be weird...” Sonia began. “I’m just thinking out loud here, and you can feel free to say no. But maybe we could plan some kind of get-together for them?”
I grinned. “Like...a playdate?”
Sonia laughed. “Well—I don’t know. Is that silly? It could just be a little thing. I’d be happy to host.”
Deanna returned, as if she’d been listening in from just over my shoulder. “What a great idea! We could invite all the teenagers at The Palms. Let’s see—there’s Mac, the Zhang boys, Hannah Bergland...”
Sonia’s gaze crossed mine, tolerant and amused. How did she do it? How did she keep