The Christmas Strike. Nikki Rivers

letting any woman wrap so much as a strand of his hair around her finger.

      There was a sudden crash from the living room and Ashley squealed, “Give that back to me!” Then, “Mom!” I sighed. One thing I’d never have to worry about was Gwen moving back in. I was pretty sure she’d jump from its balcony before she’d give up the high-rise condo near Chicago’s Loop—unless, of course, she’d be giving it up for a mansion on Lake Michigan.

      I was finishing up the dishes while the kids were in the living room with Nat, who was checking over their homework before letting them watch TV, when I heard a plaintive voice behind me say, “Mother?”

      I spun around. Gwen stood there with a look of such raw pain on her face that my heart immediately opened to her. “Honey,” I said as I moved toward her, “what is it?”

      “My marriage is over, Mother. I’ve left David and come home for good.”

      CHAPTER 2

      Through the kind of sobbing that turns into hiccups, Gwen told me that she’d just found out that David never loved her.

      “He doesn’t want to be with me, Mom,” she wailed as I took her into my arms.

      “Baby, I’m sure David loves you. He’s always loved you,” I said.

      She shook her head vigorously. “No. I just fit some kind of ideal that he wanted in a wife. It’s not me he loves. It’s his work. I was just—just arm candy!”

      A tiny pinprick of guilt poked at me. I’d so recently wondered the same thing about Gwen’s feelings toward David and now here she was, my brokenhearted daughter, feeling loved only for her facade.

      “Oh, my God. What happened?” Natalie said from the doorway.

      “David doesn’t love me,” Gwen blubbered.

      Natalie shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans as she came all the way into the room. “Oh, come on. We all know David is nuts about you.”

      Gwen sobbed more. “I don’t think he’s ever really loved me.”

      Compassion was one of Natalie’s more endearing qualities, but she didn’t usually waste it on her sister. Now it warmed my heart to see Nat take her hand out of her pocket to smooth Gwen’s long, expensively maintained, blond hair back from her face. “Come on. Tell us what happened.”

      “I just feel so betrayed,” she said in a shaky voice.

      Over her sister’s head, Natalie mouthed the question affair?

      I shrugged, but, given how crazy David had always been about Gwen, I thought it highly unlikely and I wasn’t going to ask. Not now, anyway.

      Natalie had no such compunction. “Did he cheat on you?” she asked.

      The question brought Gwen’s head up with a jerk. “What? Of course not. Why would he cheat on me?”

      “Then what happened, for heaven’s sake?” I asked, starting to lose patience.

      Nat stepped closer to Gwen and put her arm around her shoulders. I hadn’t seen them present anything like a united front since they’d both campaigned to skip school to go to a rock concert in Chicago when they’d been sixteen and seventeen.

      Gwen, always the more delicate looking of the two, was only five six to Nat’s five ten. She easily leaned her head on Nat’s shoulder and gave a long, shaky sigh. “He—” she sniffed “—he canceled our cruise!” she finished with a wail.

      Nat leaped away from her like she was going for the long jump in the Olympics.

      “What?” she bellowed.

      “He canceled our Christmas cruise because of some project that’s in trouble. He’s so selfish. That’s all he thinks about is work. I spent months shopping for just the right clothes and then he—”

      “Wait just a minute,” Nat demanded, putting her fisted hands on her hips. “You’re pulling this scene because your cruise was canceled?”

      “You don’t understand. We haven’t been on a trip since our honeymoon in Hawaii last spring.”

      “Aw—that’s real rough,” Natalie said, her compassion morphing quickly into ridicule. “Boo-hoo.”

      “Nat,” I warned.

      “You don’t know what it’s been like,” Gwen shrieked, totally undeterred by her sister’s mocking. “He works all the time. We haven’t even been out to dinner in over a week.”

      “Oh, really,” Nat said as she cocked her hip out aggressively and crossed her arms over her chest. She’d been taking the same stance since she was just a toddler. Right after Charlie was killed, the smart-ass started to sprout out of her like someone had fed her liquid fertilizer. “My heart bleeds. Too bad Jeremy’s unemployment ran out or we could take you to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.”

      Gwen abruptly stopped crying. “I simply will not take this kind of attitude from you,” Gwen said with all the dignity of a royal. “Not when you’re taking advantage of Mother the way you are.”

      Natalie shifted her weight to the other hip. “Excuse me?”

      “She’s practically ready for retirement and your whole family is living off of her,” Gwen told her.

      Ready for retirement? I was fifty-two. There was still time. I could still buy a pair of leather jeans and go out and get a life.

      “Mom invited us to move in—and we pay our own way as much as possible,” Nat said. “It’s not Jeremy’s fault he’s out of work, you know.”

      I could see that Gwen was winding up for a retort that would wound. It was time for some mommy intervention.

      “Okay, girls, enough!” I yelled. “Everybody has problems. And everyone’s problems are important—if only to themselves. So let’s show each other a little respect.”

      Natalie looked even more sullen, as she always did when she knew I’d hit the mark. Gwen sniffed and started crying silently. The phrase award-winning performance did come to mind. But still, she’d just left her husband. Being self-absorbed didn’t mean you were protected from pain.

      “Gwen, honey,” I gently asked her, “are you sure this is what you want?”

      “What she wants is for David to come running up here and beg her to come back to him,” Nat said. “Oh, and maybe buy her another hunk of expensive jewelry.”

      “Natalie,” I said sternly, even though I knew there might be more than a kernel of truth in that statement. “Please.”

      “You can be such a bitch,” Gwen said before she blew her nose loudly into a big wad of tissues she’d pulled from her Dooney & Bourke handbag.

      “Look, I’m stuck here living under Ma’s roof again, trying to hold it together with three kids and an out-of-work husband. And you’ve got the nerve to come in here crying because David had to cancel your cruise? Give me a break.”

      Maybe Natalie was saying all the things to her sister that I wish I had the guts to say but I was too busy thinking about Nat’s choice of the word stuck. Is that how she felt living with me? I knew it wasn’t an ideal situation, but still the word stuck—well, it hurt, damn it.

      “Mother, are you just going to stand there and let her talk to me that way?” Gwen demanded.

      Right now I wasn’t sure what was upsetting me the most. Gwen’s self-absorption or Natalie’s anger. I searched for the right words to say. “You know, Gwen, Nat’s going through a hard time right now,” I began.

      Gwen dashed tears from her cheeks with an angry swipe of her hand. “Like I’m not? At least she knows where her husband is.”

      There was a burp from the doorway.