Page 16 of Wrong Mail

I say nothing. I file it away, because apparently that’s easier than having a life.

Julia finds me at the rail after twenty minutes, in a navy silk dress, looking effortlessly radiant.

"You look like a hostage," she says.

"I look like I'm being interviewed for a job I don't want."

"That's the same face." She takes the wine out of my hand, drinks some, and gives it back. "Did she tell you about the name?"

"What name?"

“Peggy wants the members to have a name. For the newsletter, apparently. There's a newsletter now." Julia's face is perfectly grave. "The Huntresses."

"She did not."

"She floated it at the spring meeting. Lil loved it. Yvette loved it. And then Barbara Ellery, who is eighty-four and whose grandmother was on the original committee, said, and I want you to hear this exactly as she said it, ‘We already have a name, dear. It’s on the clubhouse.’" Julia grins. "Peggy hasn't mentioned it since."

I laugh for the first time all evening.

“So, um, Chris isn’t coming,” Julia adds. “Before you ask.”

"I wasn't going to ask."

“You were going to be relieved, which is worse.” She says it lightly and looks at the water.

I let it go. There’s a whole conversation under that one, and this isn’t the terrace to have it on.

Behind us, somebody says my name.

"Mallory, come and adjudicate." Peggy has assembled four women in a semicircle near the outdoor fire, and she calls to me like she's summoning a dog she doesn't own. I go, because the alternative is not going, and I've learned which of those costs more.

"We were discussing the weather," Yvette says.

"No, we were discussing that it isn't weather," Peggy says. "They've had that warning up for three days. It's August. They call every breeze a warning now."

"My phone made a noise like a submarine," Lil says.

"Because the whole thing is theater. They tell you a storm is coming so that when it doesn't come you're grateful to them." Peggy turns to me with her head tilted. "You'd know about that. You people invented that, didn't you? Frighten them, then sell them the calm."

You people. There it is, the little velvet knife, the reminder that whatever I am, I'm not one of them.

"I wrote about crime, Peggy. Not weather."

"Same instinct." She smiles. It's a very good smile. It has been on the front of three charity brochures. "Anyway. Somebody's birthday is coming."

Julia has arrived at my shoulder and I feel her go still.

“You’re about to turn forty," Peggy says warmly, to the semicircle, on my behalf. "Isn't that right?"

"Thirty-nine," Julia says.

“Thirty-nine!” Peggy presses her hand to her chest. “Well. Enjoy it.” She looks at me for a beat longer than she needs to, and her eyes go, without hurry, to the corners of my eyes. “You know, I’ve had the loveliest results from my surgeon in Bellevue. Nothing dramatic. He calls it maintenance.”

She leaves just enough space before adding, “But you have a surgeon at home, don’t you? He can look after all that.”

David operates on people's insides, not their faces, and Peggy knows it. That isn't the point.

Lil laughs before she can stop herself. Yvette lifts her phone.