Pru felt a cool weight settle in the pit of her stomach at hearing her own words—her own fears—echoed back at her. But even if she had indeed ended up exactly the way Hazel had known she would, Pru refused to capitulate to the other woman’s meanness.
Schooling her features into the blandest expression she could, she replied evenly, “Really.”
Hazel nodded. “Oh, yeah. I imagine most of the class of ’90 assumed the same thing. Even if you were Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes for the most part, someone as irresponsible as you were was bound to wind up pregnant and alone and relying on welfare. It’s just the logical conclusion to make.”
Amazed at her ability to remain civil, Pru repeated, “Really.”
And in that moment she knew she had made the right decision in disregarding the invitation to her ten-year reunion. There was no way she would let her senior class discover firsthand just how right they’d been about her all along. The last thing she needed was for 240 people to laugh and point and say, “Man, it’s even worse than we thought it would be. She really did get knocked up and abandoned.” And worse, “Hey, Pru, we told you so.” And worse still, “We knew what kind of person you were all along, even if you never believed it yourself.”
Hazel nodded again, more adamantly this time. “But, gosh,” she said, “just look at you, all professional in your nurse’s uniform. Maybe you have built a solid, responsible life for yourself. I suppose stranger things have happened. Probably. Maybe. In outer space somewhere.”
A solid, responsible life, Pru repeated to herself, ignoring the sarcasm inherent in the response. She hoped the heat she felt flaming in her midsection didn’t show up in her face.
“I mean,” Hazel went on, as if she sensed Pru’s discomfort and wanted very much to compound it, “for all I know, you’re happily married, and you and your husband have a big, beautiful house right here in Cherry Hill. Hey, for all I know, you married a doctor.” Hazel’s smile, however, indicated what a joke she thought that was. “I can just see you subscribing to the orchestra, the ballet, and the theater,” she went on blithely, clearly not meaning a word of what she said. “You probably spend your spare time volunteering at an art museum or being active in your garden club and your reading group and your cooking club. And your kids are probably all beautiful and smart and going to private school. Tell me I’m right,” Hazel dared her. “Tell me that’s exactly the way you live these days.”
Pru swallowed hard, wishing she could agree with every word that Hazel said. Not because she wanted it to be true, and not because she particularly aspired to such a grand life. But because she knew that once her old classmate found out the truth, Hazel would gleefully recount the situation to every single member of the Easton class of ’90 when she went to the reunion.
Oh, I saw Pru Holloway last month, and she hasn’t changed at all. She’s still totally irresponsible. Got herself knocked up by some jerk who dumped her. Now she’s a single mother struggling to pay the bills on some dinky apartment. She’s probably on food stamps and has credit-card debt out the wazoo. Most likely her kid’ll end up in jail. Then we honest taxpayers will have to pay both their ways through life.
Oh, yeah. She could see it now. Everyone in the Easton High class of ’90 ought to have a lot of laughs at her expense. And even if Pru wasn’t planning to attend herself, she didn’t want her title of “Most Irresponsible” to be perpetuated forever. She hated to be the butt of jokes, even in absentia.
But the fact was, she forced herself to admit, that the label still fit. As much as she had tried to change her ways, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was irresponsible. She always had been. She always would be. She didn’t know why she tried to kid herself otherwise.
There was no husband, no house, no lifestyle of forthright responsibility. There were no subscriptions to the arts—hey, who could afford it? There was no volunteer work—hey, who had time? There were no garden clubs, reading groups or cooking clubs. The closest thing Pru had to a garden was the questionably breathing African Violet on her kitchen windowsill, the one she—irresponsibly—kept forgetting to water. The only books she’d bought in the last year had been about infant care and breastfeeding, and even those she’d only—irresponsibly—skimmed. As for cooking, well…she wondered if microwaving pot pies and Beefaroni on a regular basis counted for anything. Anything other than being totally irresponsible about one’s health.
And then, of course, there was that business about having been knocked up and abandoned, Pru reminded herself unnecessarily. Yep, pretty much the ultimate in irresponsible behavior.
“So just what is your life like these days, Pru?” Hazel challenged her again, smiling in a way that indicated she just couldn’t wait to hear. Mainly because she just couldn’t wait to tell everyone they knew that Prudence Holloway had turned out exactly the way they had all known she would.
Resigned to her fate, Pru opened her mouth to confess.
But she was intercepted by a deep baritone that answered for her, “Her life is pretty much exactly the way you described it.”
She spun around to find Seth Mahoney standing behind her, smiling that incredibly charming smile that made every female in a fifty-foot radius melt in a puddle of ruined womanhood at his feet. Hazel Dubrowski Debbit, Pru realized upon turning her attention back to her old classmate, was no exception. Because she stood gaping at Dr. Mahoney as if he were a great, big, hot-fudge sundae with marshmallows and strawberries on top.
“Who’re you?” Hazel asked, heedless of the lack of courtesy in the command.
He extended his hand toward her and jacked up the power on his smile about a hundred kilowatts. Pru was nearly blinded. And her heart went vah-rooooom. “I’m Seth Mahoney,” he said smoothly, easily, sexily, taking Hazel’s hand in his. “I’m Prudence’s husband.”
Three
My what?
For a moment, Pru feared she had spoken the question aloud—loudly aloud—then realized the echo she was hearing was only in her brain.
Oh, no, she thought, when she understood what Dr. Mahoney was doing. Oh, no, please. Not that. Anything but that. But before she could say a word to contradict him, he launched into what she was sure would become the biggest, fattest, whoppingest lie she had ever heard in her life.
“It’s uncanny, really,” he told Hazel, “how you hit on things so exactly.” He dropped an arm casually around Pru’s shoulder and pulled her close, and the vrooming in her heart compounded. “We do, in fact, have a big, beautiful house right here in Cherry Hill. Four thousand square feet, if you must know. And frankly, Hazel,” he added, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial murmur, “you do seem like the type who must know.”
He straightened again before continuing, then went on without care, “Pru, God love her, is active in so many things. In addition to her work here at the hospital, she is involved in nearly every one of those activities you listed. Just between you and me, I don’t know how she does it. She’s an amazing woman.
“Oh, and this,” he added, picking up a framed photo of Tanner she kept at the nurse’s station, “this is our son, Tanner.” He thrust the picture at Hazel, who, still gaping, took it from him and dropped her gaze toward it. “He’s nine months old. A great-looking kid and smart as a whip. He’s the only one we have right now, but we’re planning on at least two more. It goes without saying that they’ll all be going to the finest school we can find for them.” He turned to Prudence, beaming. “Right, honey?” he said.
Too stunned to do anything else, Pru nodded and replied faintly, “Right.”
And then, catching her totally off guard, he bent his head and brushed his lips lightly, affectionately, over hers.
It was a brief, simple, chaste kiss. There was no reason for it to set off explosions throughout her midsection. There was no reason for it to send a sizzle of heat right through her body, from fingertips to toes. There was