Hand-Me-Down. Lee Nichols

faces. Charlotte was stunning in a short, burgundy velvet dress with a mandarin collar. She laughed again and touched Ian’s arm. They were glowing so brightly, it took me a moment to realize that David, for some reason wearing a green Hawaiian shirt, was with them.

      “Oh, she’s weeping,” I said, wondering why I’d chosen pale lilac instead of burgundy velvet.

      “She always looks happy,” Emily said. “That doesn’t mean she is.”

      “What does Charlotte Olsen have to be unhappy about?”

      “You’d be surprised,” she said.

      “Name one thing.”

      Emily opened her mouth, then closed it again. Even her oversized brain had trouble with that one. Finally, she said, “Her bratty younger sister.”

      “Oh, Emily, you’re not that bad,” I told her, and slipped back toward the safety of the herd.

      There were about twenty people. The immediate family and a number of Charlotte’s and David’s closest friends, mostly from David’s hospital. We milled around, sipping wine and talking about medicine: this crowd could really get in a lather about HMOs and payment plans. They were the unsexy friends that Charlotte and David preferred. There was a B-list of friends, too, made up of people on, well, the actual A-list, from Charlotte’s modeling days. But most of her real friends were of the unglamorous sort.

      I avoided Ian, doing an invisible contra dance with him across the room. Every time he approached, I withdrew. He went left, I went right. I almost got trapped between a blond sofa and a brunette neurologist during one do-se-do, but slipped nimbly out to the deck and back in through the kitchen to save myself. My theory was that if we weren’t seen together, I could pretend it hadn’t been me who’d invited him.

      As I closed the door to the kitchen behind me, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder. I froze. It would be Emily hopping after me with her hatchet. I turned slowly, resolved to meet my doom, and saw that the heavy hand belonged to the caterer. A harried-looking woman in her late forties with no body fat and an inordinate number of freckles.

      I beamed in relief and babbled, “Oh! I was just outside. On the deck. Then I came in. Here. To the kitchen.”

      “We’re ready to serve dinner,” she told me, wiping a strand of hair from her face.

      “Right. Right! Should I let everyone know?”

      She thought that was a fine idea, so I slunk into the other room and told Emily, the idea being that she’d spring into action and shove everyone into their chairs. She glared at me, instead. “He’s flirting with her!”

      Oh, here we go. I peeked over her shoulder. Ian was chatting with David. Charlotte was nowhere in sight. “What, telepathically?”

      Her glare hardened. “Don’t be stupid.”

      “Calm down, Em.”

      “I won’t calm down. It’s disgusting.”

      “It’s harmless flirtation. They dated, they’re like siblings.” I shuddered, unable to believe I’d just said that. “I mean, not like sibling-siblings. More like cousins. Kissing cousins. No. That’s wrong, too. Anyway, it’s harmless.”

      “They dated?” she asked. “Who dated?”

      I glanced at her wineglass. “How much have you had?”

      “Anne, focus.” She nodded across the room. “She’s half his age.”

      I followed her nod. Dad was talking with the caterer at the kitchen door. Looking a little more animated than usual, but nothing sinister. Well, he was intensely focused on her face. Probably trying to see if he could identify freckle constellations. I expected him to rear back any moment and say: “There! I found Cassiopeia!”

      But he didn’t rear. He drained his wineglass and chuckled as the caterer refilled. He gestured, offering her a sip, and when she refused he made serious inroads into that glass, too. Hmm. He wasn’t much of a drinker, normally.

      “Ah-ha!” Emily said.

      “So he’s flirting a little….”

      “She’s half his age.” Emily lived in fear that Dad would marry a woman who was younger than his daughters. “She’s twelve!”

      “She’s pushing fifty,” I said. “And he doesn’t have a chance, anyway. Coming on to a caterer is no cakewalk.”

      “It’s not funny.”

      “What is up with you? She’s just asking if he wants tabouleh.”

      “You’ll see,” Emily said. “She’s already got him drinking. She’ll be bringing him waffles in bed, next.”

      “Better than cold cereal.”

      “Fine,” she snapped. “Forget it.”

      She stalked into the thick of the party and herded everyone toward the dining room, like a bad-tempered sheepdog. I watched her and sighed. A bad-tempered sheepdog who was feeling out of control of her own life. Her book, her family: Emily always lashed out when she was worried.

      I trailed behind as I worried about her being worried. Her book must really be a problem. Maybe she’d told Jamie she wanted another publisher. I glanced at him, settling down between a househusband and a dermatologist. He was extracting his napkin from the napkin-ring, and he smiled when he saw me looking—totally unconcerned.

      Maybe it was only my overactive imagination. I took a calming guzzle of wine and surveyed the room. The party had a Moroccan theme and the dining room had been decorated in casual Casbah. The room was lit by candles in the hanging silver candelabra, with other white candles placed among the fuchsia and violet silks lining the table. More silk had been artfully twined around the chair backs and gold-embroidered white pillows had been placed on the seats.