It was New Year’s Eve, after all. Sharla and Jade talked through what had happened over the last year. I talked a little, too. Where we’d been (me nowhere; both of the others to Vegas). Who had died or got married. The bad and good things.
With a sudden shout, Sharla jumped out of the tub. “Shit, I did it again!”
She grabbed a short terry robe and ran to the kitchen. Whatever she had in the oven smelled good.
“Don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone!” she yelled back.
That left us with nothing to talk about.
After a minute I said, “Ron told us your husband went to Vegas for some golf.”
Jade laughed. “We won a trip in the hospital lottery.”
“That was lucky,” I said.
She said, “Nah. Who wants heat and sun anyway, when you can have weather like this?”
I shuddered.
“I’m from up north,” Jade said. “I don’t mind the cold. I’d like to go home to Yellowknife. But it costs too much.”
“Do you golf, too?” I asked her.
She laughed again. “No! Tim doesn’t either. Golf is just an excuse.”
“What’s he gone for, then?”
“He’s leaving me.”
Jade moved in the water. She swept her hair back and leaned her head on one hand. Water dripped from her hand and face.
She corrected herself. “He’s thinking about it, about leaving.”
I thought she might be crying, but her voice was calm.
I said I was sorry. Looking at her, I couldn’t imagine her being left. She was so beautiful. How could he find somebody nicer?
“The boys are old enough now. They’d be okay. It’s not like we haven’t thought about this before. I used to think about it all the time, when the kids were little. About how I’d leave him. What I’d do. I was going to get a bachelor apartment in Edmonton. I used to look at the apartments for rent section in the newspaper.”
I wanted to tell her I did that, too. But it seemed disloyal to Grady, to tell someone that I thought about leaving him. Thought about it pretty much every day.
“What—” I broke off. None of my business.
“What what?” Jade flicked water at me.
“What happened, I was going to ask. That your husband’s going to leave you.”
“I told him I’m in love with somebody else. I have been for a while.”
Sharla shouted from the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what she wanted.
“The stupid thing is, I’m not even doing anything about it,” Jade said.
I didn’t say anything.
Jade’s hands clenched and unclenched under the water. She looked at the fans her fingers made. “He’s married.”
You are, too, I thought.
“He doesn’t know,” Jade said. “I mean, the guy. I haven’t told him. It’s just hard.”
She was staring at me, trying to tell me something in code.
I thought, it’s Grady. She’s trying to let me know.
But that was dumb. Grady had never even met Jade, as far as I knew.
But he might have, when he was on a course or something. Or at the hockey tournament. I couldn’t go last year because I was pregnant and sick. I was pretty pissed off that Grady went, in fact. He got his mom to come and help me out while he was gone.
Sharla came back with a tray, carrying the police radio by its antenna. The radio was crackling again.
I could hear Ron. He was saying, “We’ll be 10-77, you can reach us here.”
In the radio code, 10-77 is at home.
Just as I figured that out, Ron put his head around the sunroom door. He grinned at us and waved. He said 10-4 into the small radio on his shoulder and clicked it off.
“Hey, ladies!” Ron said. “Grady, we picked the right time to come home! It’s a strip show!”
Grady stuck his head around the door, like a cop checking the scene before entering. He can’t help it. In a restaurant he always has to sit with his back against the wall.
“This is Jade, Tim Lamont’s better half,” Ron was telling Grady. “Really great you could make it, Jade—I thought you were stuck helping with the teen party?”
Sharla talked over him. “We found her at the hall. Did you guys even see us? I was right there on the dance floor when that all started.”
Sharla was trying to cover up the mean thing she’d done, but it was too plain. She must have told Ron that Jade couldn’t come. But really, she had never invited Jade.
Jade looked at Ron, then at Sharla. “I—no, it turns out. They went to Donna’s, so they didn’t need me.”
Ron didn’t seem to notice that Sharla had been mean. Or that Jade had figured out the truth and was playing along, being kind. Guys miss things. They expect everyone to be as straightforward as they are.
Grady had seen the truth, though. He didn’t like Ron being fooled.
He passed Sharla and came to say hi to Jade.
“I know Tim from a course,” he said.
Jade looked up—she had been staring down into the water.
“He taught the new member course when Ron and I were on it a couple of years ago. Good guy.”
“Yeah,” Jade said. “He likes teaching. Means a few weeks away from here.”
“He’s an excellent teacher,” Grady said. He undid his parka. “Hot in here!”
Sharla hurried through. Her robe was coming open, showing the top of her pink chest.
“Now you can finally relax,” she told Grady. She pressed a White Russian into his hand.
He took the glass but didn’t drink.
Ron threw his coat on a chair. He undid his collar.
“Wish I could jump in there with you,” he said to Jade. “Grady, you should peel off. Hey, Sharla, no drink for me?”
Sharla gave him a dirty look. She went back to the kitchen.
“What took you guys so long?” she called back.
“Had to wait for a guard. Those boys needed some Band-Aids, too,” Ron said. He smiled at Jade. “Can’t let their moms see them like that. Good thing your boys weren’t in on the fight. I’d hate to have to deal with their mom later. I hear she’s a firecracker.”
Jade laughed, her face bright and happy. “They only fight with each other. That’s enough blood for me.”
Daisy began to kick her legs and complain, reaching with her arms. She wanted to go to Grady. He heard her and came over. He lifted her up with his big hands and settled her in the crook of his arm. He didn’t seem to mind the water getting on his shirt.
“Who’s the baby?” he asked her. “Who’s the baby girl?” Sap. Daisy loved it, though.
“We did meet,” Jade said to Grady.
She smiled at him. Her teeth were as nice as Sharla’s. But she was way better looking, I thought.
And way more Grady’s type.
“We met at Moxie’s, in Edmonton,” Jade told him. “During the course. I went in a few times to have dinner with Tim. I remember you. And Ron.”
Grady laughed. “I was in a daze, trying to remember what I’d been taught. Hoping not to screw up in front of Tim, probably.”
Hearing about Grady being out with other people always makes me jealous. It’s just because I hardly ever get to go.
But if I met him, I’d be in love with him. I mean, when I did meet him, I was. I am. I should not have had that drink, I thought. It’s making me stupid.
“Who did your hair?” Grady asked me. “You look like Princess Buttercup at the wedding.”
“Yeah, Robin Wright, The Princess Bride!” Sharla said. She had brought Ron’s drink in from the kitchen. “She was my idol. I looked like her, back then.”
She put down a platter of egg rolls and slid out of her robe and into the water like a bare pink fish. Sharla still looked like a princess, a lot more than I did, anyway.
“Sharla did my hair,” I said. “She did a good job, eh?”
Grady looked at me over Daisy’s head. He crossed his eyes.
“Oh, yeahhh,” he said, in a voice that meant, What the hell has she done to you? Where’s my real wife?
I laughed.
I stopped worrying. Jade was not in love with Grady. He wouldn’t do that, let someone be in love with him.
Ron picked up his drink and sat on the edge of the hot tub between Jade and Sharla.
“So,” he said. “When do I dare get out of this uniform and make you women happy?”
The radio jumped on the tray.
“Jinx,” Grady said.
“We forgot to tell you, the buffalo got out again,” I told him. We should have phoned Control. It hadn’t occurred to me then. I didn’t say anything about nearly getting mowed down.
Ron was already up and in his coat.
He moved fast, talking to the control room. An MVA—motor vehicle accident.
Grady gave me Daisy and his untouched drink, grabbed his coat, and went out the door with Ron. Daisy looked after him, lost and lonely.
“It’s okay, baby,” I told her. “He’ll be back.”
Ron turned and gave us a quick wave. I looked over at Sharla—she didn’t look up from her egg roll.
But Jade was watching him go. Her face had the same look as Daisy’s. Like she’d been left by her beloved.
Oh shit, I thought—and thank goodness, tangled up in the same thought. It’s Ron.