CHAPTER 21
THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK
February 26, 2024
A Lululemon-clad redhead pushing a designer stroller swept into Wilde Things. Her eye was drawn to the casually sharp gentleman in gray jeans and a denim utility shirt, lifting a tropical bouquet onto a high shelf. He had an… important air about him. She made her way over.
“Hi! Do you work here?” she whispered, so as not to wake her baby.
“Morning, ma’am. Yes, I’m director of first impressions. How may I be of service?”
“Well, you make quite a first impression.” She winked.
Ezra stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled bashfully.
“I’m looking for a plant to give my place a kick. I don’t get a lot of light, though.”
“I see.” Thinking, he scratched the side of his jaw and cocked his head. “How about a low-light flowering plant? Like begonias or African lilies. They can grow anywhere, I’ve heard tell. Just make sure they get at least eight hours of artificial light daily.”
The redhead beamed, satisfied. She left with a great bundle of African lilies and a tiny parlor palm plant for her baby’s nursery (the tall hottie with the Tupac lashes assured her it would help purify the air).
From the outside, things looked perfect. It was a clear, sunny day, and the shop was, if not packed, definitely almost bustling. Ricki mingled with her clients, looking cute in a full ’50s tulle skirt, a clingy tee reading BUY BLACK, and Capezio ballet flats. She looked calm enough. That is, if you didn’t notice the dark bags under her eyes. Or the worried pinch to her brow. Or the fact that Ezra was nursing a similar pained look under his courteous, helpful smiles.
Across the room, their haunted eyes locked on each other. The air crackled with the intensity of their longing. They’d been like this all day, veering between panicked melancholy and an electric ache. They had three days left. Time was winding down, as steady as the final remaining sands through an hourglass. Reality had set in.
And the only comfort they felt was when they were no more than five inches apart.
But it was impossible for Ricki and Ezra to be together constantly. Ricki wept in silence in the shower. Ezra returned from grocery runs with his eyes hollow and his mouth drawn. Following these quiet, devastating moments, they’d run to each other—grasping and dizzy with need—with nothing left to say.
Ricki did have things to say to Ms. Della. But Ms. Della had utterly iced her out. Ricki was at a loss. She’d slipped letters under her door. She’d left voicemails and floral arrangements, baked cookies and cakes. She spotted Naaz coming and going less frequently and wondered if she’d moved in with Ms. Della to provide around-the-clock care. Her health was clearly declining, and it gutted Ricki. Who’d care for Ms. Della after she was gone? She’d been in the older woman’s life for such a short time, but they were family. At this moment especially, Ricki missed Ms. Della’s no-nonsense outlook, the gentle arm pats, the comforting cups of tea. Ricki needed to reconcile with her.
While Ricki was wrestling with these thoughts at her workstation, Ezra was pulled away from his current customer by Tuesday, who’d just rushed into the shop out of nowhere.
“Sorry to bust in on your sale, but I really owe you an apology,” said Tuesday as she led him to the emerald throne in the far corner. Her face was barely visible behind a snapback.
“What for?” Ezra wasn’t sure which thing she was apologizing for. Breaking into his house, maybe?
“I hate the way I acted at that wedding. Trying to fight you and all. Old habits die hard.”
“No need to apologize.” Ezra meant it.
“Seriously?”
He shrugged lightheartedly. “You were looking out for your friend. It’s honorable.”
“Here’s the thing about me. In general, I feel like men are guilty until proven innocent. I know it’s problematic, but…” She let out a defeatist exhale. “Look, I’m still healing, okay?”
“We’re all healing from something,” he said, his voice filled with understanding. He leaned against the wall. “Say no more.”
“Also,” Tuesday continued, “in my defense, you acted scary.” Lowering her brim, she whispered, “The way you kept quote-unquote running into Ricki? How was I supposed to know you two were magical soulmates rendered helpless to the involuntary gravitational pull of love?”
“If you’d guessed that, you’d be the scary one.”
“I don’t think for a second that you two are in real trouble. Curse or no curse,” said Tuesday with a dismissive wave. Ricki had been trying to say a permanent goodbye to her for days, but she refused to allow it. “Light overpowers dark. And love conquers all.”
“That’s what they say,” he said ruefully. He could barely stand to hear it said out loud. He was too old to believe in slogans.
“Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I’m not an asshole, Ezra. I’m just protective.”
He chuckled at this. It was clear to Ezra why Ricki was drawn to Tuesday. This woman was a force of nature. “I knew I was just seeing one side of you. I could always tell by your performance on Ready Freddy that you’re multifaceted. Creativity bends; it contorts.”
“Hold on.” She took a step back and pointed at him. “You watched my show?”
“I never missed an episode!” he said passionately. “I’ve been a TV junkie since the birth of the art form.”
“I keep forgetting you’re an old person.” She shook her head, marveling. “It’s so Freaky Friday. I can’t.”
“You brought such depth to your character. I loved the episode when you auditioned for cheerleading but forgot the routine and ran offstage to the bathroom…”
“And sat on the toilet, crying, and when I stood up, the audience saw the bottom of my skirt had fallen in the toilet.”
“You played it for laughs, but it broke my heart. Your talent’s plumb astounding.”
Slowly, Tuesday’s face brightened under her hat. She rarely heard anything positive about her acting—it was always about her looks, her sexy figure.
She caught herself going soft and rolled her eyes. “That’s a lie from the pit of hell.”
“It’s no lie,” he said. “Lately, I’ve been watching these floral design competition shows, just to understand Ricki’s business. And I learned that moss can hold up to four times its weight in water. Your performances were like that. You were so young, but the emotional weight you took on was greater than your years.”
This time, she allowed her delight to show. She flashed a dazzling smile. “Aw, you just wanted to drop your lil’ moss fact.”
He grinned. “That obvious, huh?”
“You love Ricki. That’s what’s obvious.”
Ezra glanced again at Ricki. “I love her too much.”
“No such thing,” said Tuesday. “Hey. So, uh, not to change the subject, but I’m writing this memoir. It’s so hard. I hate it, actually. But that was a great line, about my emotional depth. Can you repeat exactly what you said, so I can catch it on my voice recorder app?”
Ezra laughed. “Sure. But why write the memoir if you hate it?”
“To set the record straight about everything I went through in Hollywood. To tell my side of the story. But the deeper I get into it, the less I feel like I owe the world an explanation for a single fucking thing.”
“I reckon you don’t. If you could do anything else besides write it, what would you do?”
“Open a medi-spa,” she blurted out, breathlessly and without hesitation.
“A medi-spa! All right, now.” After a beat, Ezra asked, “And what is that?”
“A medical spa, with aestheticians to provide dermatological procedures. Lasers, facials, steams, Botox, dermaplaning. A through Z.”
“Oh, clearly you’ve thought about this.”
“I’m obsessed with skincare. I dream of complexion perfection. By the way, you’re virtually poreless. Kiehl’s?”
“Curse,” he said with a wink. “Tuesday, forget the memoir. You just lit up talking about this spa. Make yourself happy. Open your business.”
She beamed, radiating nervous excitement. And then it abated. “But I was really leaning into being a memoirist.”
“Maybe you were a memoirist.” Ezra shrugged. “But identity changes all the time, I’ve found. There’s a few more ‘yous’ you haven’t met yet.”
Tuesday took this in. Then she leaned in and hugged Ezra. She waved to Ricki and bounced out of the shop, excited to begin researching her new endeavor. As he watched her leave, Ezra realized that was the first non-Ricki hug he didn’t hate.
He liked it, actually. Growth had funny timing.
Steadily, the crowd thinned as the day went on. By 5:45 p.m., the last customers left the shop with an armful of delphiniums and snowdrops. Ezra locked the door behind the couple and then drew the blinds, but not before stamping their punch card and offering a courtly “Y’all come back, now.” It was his third night of closing. He was practically an expert.
As soon as the door shut, Ricki sank against her workstation table, depleted. She grabbed a plastic flute of prosecco from the table (she always offered wine to her customers after 4:00 p.m.). With a beleaguered sigh, she downed one flute and then grabbed another.
It took a physical toll, the effort to seem so la-di-da, business-as-usual for eight entire hours. Ezra could relate.
He stood with his back to the door, watching her in the shadows. Ricki looked up, meeting his eyes. There was nothing left to say.
Within two heartbeats, Ezra was in front of her, comfortingly large. He rested his forehead against hers. His touch was a relief, an exhale. She let out a small sound of surrender.
He bent down, sliding his strong arm around her lower back. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he picked her up. They melted into a ravenous, possessive kiss, a desperate blur of hands, tongues, teeth. Hungrily, he tore off her T-shirt. As she trailed kisses down his throat, he grabbed the bottle of prosecco, taking a lusty swig. With a low growl, he kissed it into her mouth, liquid trickling down her chest, dampening the filmy lace of her bra. Ezra ran his tongue up her neck, making her shudder. Gasping, Ricki arched her back, clawing at his shoulders. Then they were kissing again with delicious urgency. Ezra hiked up the diaphanous layers of her skirt, and then—
Brrriiiing! It was the Wilde Things doorbell.
They froze, two pre-orgasmic deer in headlights.
“Maybe they’ll go away,” he rasped.
The bell rang again. And then there was an urgent pounding on the door.
“Who could that be?” hissed Ricki.
They disentangled themselves from each other. Ezra hurried to the bathroom as Ricki straightened her skirt, threw on her T-shirt, and rushed to the front door on extremely wobbly legs. So annoying, but actually it was five minutes to closing—Wilde Things was technically still open.
Pasting on a customer-service-ready smile, Ricki flung open the door. And let out a bloodcurdling yelp.
Almost instantly, Ezra came flying back into the shop, shirtless and brandishing a candlestick.
The three women standing in the doorway gasped. They all had the forty-something version of Ricki’s face but were taller—over six feet in stilettos—and intimidating in their austere, monochromatic designer fashions. Individually, they would have been a force. But together, they were an impenetrable wall of icy glamour. Even if Ricki’s sisters couldn’t agree on the color of an orange, they certainly presented as a unit.
Ezra’s eyes widened. And Ricki’s squeezed shut.
This was not happening. No. There was too much going on. Ricki was three days from certain death, quietly withering under Ms. Della’s silent treatment, and attempting to fuck her soulmate for one of the last times ever. She couldn’t take this on! Why the hell were the Witches of Eastwick at her shop?
Ezra just stood there in his bare-chested glory, his face registering awe and panic.
“What,” started Ricki, “the absolute fuck are y’all doing here?”
“We were in town for business, and we wanted to see your shop. And you.” Rashida then pointed at Ezra without taking her eyes off Ricki. “Are you aware there’s a shirtless himbo wielding a lethal weapon behind you? What kind of establishment are you running here?”
Delighted judgment flickered in Rashidaginarae’s eyes. Ricki was all too familiar with this look. Wearily, she gestured at Ezra to come over. With a winning smile, Ezra placed the candlestick on the table and joined Ricki at the door.
“He isn’t a himbo; he’s my boyfriend.” “Boyfriend” was too slight a word, but she was too emotionally frazzled to think of another. “Ezra, meet my sisters, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore.”
“Ricki, I swear to God.”
“Sorry. Ezra, this is Rashida, Regina, and Rae.”
“Pleasure’s mine,” he said jovially, shaking each of their hands and trying to approximate some level of normality. “Come on in out the cold.”
“No, stay in the cold,” intercepted Ricki, holding up her hand to stop them. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“Why so suspicious?” asked Regina, who was holding up her iPhone and snapping pics with the demented urgency of a fan who’d later sell the pics to TMZ. Ricki tried to grab it, but Regina dodged her.
“We wanted to see you! And your shop.” Rae peered behind Ricki. “It’s… eclectic. And wow, so much greenery.”
“Like a cosmopolitan Rainforest Cafe,” added Rashida.
Ricki glared at her. “Well, we’re closed. There’s nothing to see here.”
Rashida adjusted her Louis Vuitton Speedy bag on her shoulder. “Are you really going to turn away your flesh and blood after we traveled economy class to visit our baby sister?”
“Also, I’m starving,” announced Regina, pursing her lips and finally lowering her phone.
Ricki and Ezra looked at each other. These women were not budging. And just like that, Ricki slipped into an old habit. Being around her family turned her back into that sixteen-year-old who wanted so desperately to please them. To be accepted, to be validated. Even though she always came up short, she always tried.
“Fine. Do you… um… How about we go to dinner? Le Bernardin or Jean-Georges? They’re legendary New York City restaurants. Michelin stars, very elite.”
“Oh, spare us. New York’s culinary scene is no chicer than Atlanta’s,” Rashida said with a sigh. “You’ve lived here for five minutes—calm down. And by the way, your shirt’s on inside out.”
With that, the sisters pushed past Ricki and Ezra and stormed into the shop, wandering around and touching everything.
“We don’t want to go to a restaurant; we want to see your place,” said Rae. “Invite us over for dinner! Where do you live?”
“I live… here,” said Ricki quietly.
“In your shop?” Rae was horrified. “This is worse than we thought.”
“No! Behind the shop, behind that back door. But it’s so small, I don’t think…”
Ricki’s stomach sank. She wasn’t prepared for her sisters to see her extremely humble private sanctuary. She shared a quick, furtive glance with Ezra. And his eyes were so open and welcoming, she almost burst into tears. For as much time as we have, he’d said to her that morning, I’ve got you.
He calmed her down just with one look, automatically understanding the stress and anxiety her sisters brought her. And he’d take care of it. He took care of everything.
“I have an idea,” said Ezra. “Why don’t I make y’all dinner?”
“Where?” asked Ricki, Rashida, Regina, and Rae.
“Here,” he told them. “I’m an excellent cook. Where are you staying?”
“The Wallace Hotel,” answered the eldest sister.
“That’s just a fifteen-minute ride down Amsterdam. Tell you what, if you go back there for a couple hours, it’ll give me time to grab some groceries and get it ready. Uber’s on me, round trip.”
Ricki understood that he was also buying her time to emotionally prep.
“I’ll make y’all dinner and then I’ll go home,” continued Ezra, “so you can catch up.”
The three older sisters mulled this over. They were visibly shocked that Ricki was dating a person with actual practical real-life skills. And this was far too interesting a situation for him to go home early.
“But we don’t want you to go home after,” purred Regina, with all the sincerity of the Cheshire Cat. “We want to get to know you better.”
He quickly looked at Ricki, whose eyes were pleading.
“I’ll stay.”
Three hours later, they were all sitting around Ricki’s stoop-sale coffee table on the rickety stools she’d refurbished and hand-painted. Her sisters were in high-judgment mode. Rashida kept asking “Where’s the rest of it?” while Rae marveled at her ability to maximize a space “the size of a Nissan Sentra.” Regina glared at the radiator every time it hissed and clanged.
While her sisters hung out at the Wallace, Ezra had gone food shopping and Ricki had cleaned her studio. She felt like sex was all over her apartment: in the rumpled, rainy-day sheets, the coffee mugs on the nightstand, the pile of his clothes in her hamper. What was hers had quickly turned into theirs, and it was intimate, beautiful and sacred. Ricki didn’t want to share it with her sisters, who’d never understood her and didn’t want to. They thought she was a kooky slut with no impulse control.
By the time her sisters returned, the space was spotless. And Ezra had whipped up a delicious menu of shrimp purloo, Gullah red rice, and fried corn cake, ending with peaches-and-cream pie.
And she knew, without them explicitly saying so, that her sisters were impressed. She could tell by the way they’d stopped being so judgy and they could talk only about the food.
Not that I care, Ricki reminded herself.
“Frankly, I’m shocked,” said Regina, tapping a napkin to the corner of her mouth. “Given Ricki’s track record in the kitchen, I was expecting a variety pack of cereal boxes for dinner. Ezra, you’re a keeper.”
“Down-home delicious,” gushed Rae.
“What’s this vegetable I’m tasting?” asked Rashida, spooning the thick, rich soup.
“Okra,” said Ezra, visibly proud of his hastily prepared but delicious dinner. “My mom taught me how to cook. She was originally from Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. You know, real Low Country Gullah folk put okra in everything down there.”
Rashida didn’t know anything about Low Country Gullah folk, so she offered a mild “Ah, yes” and continued to inhale the soup.
“Well, it’s so tasty,” said Rae. “You’re quite the cook, Ezra.”
“Oh, I’ve had these recipes for like a hundred years,” he said with a smile. “I’ve had time to perfect them.”
“There’s no healthy way to eat like this,” said Regina, reaching for a piece of pie.
“My sister only eats dishes recommended by Gwyneth Paltrow,” said Ricki, relieved that Ezra had taken over. Her sisters’ presence not only was triggering but was taking up valuable time with Ezra—time that was disappearing. She felt nauseous every time she thought of it. Thank God Ezra had picked up their side of the conversation.
Such a luxury, she thought, having someone who fills in your gaps when you’re depleted.
“Sometimes food serves purely as a comfort,” Ezra pointed out. “Not just sustenance.”
Regina cocked a brow in his direction. “Wait till you turn forty, kid. It’s all fun and games until metabolism plays in your face.”
Rashida had had enough of this surface-level chitchat. “So, Ezra, tell us about yourself. Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? What do you do?”
“Can we skip the interview?” Ricki turned toward her. “Isn’t it enough that he whipped up a five-star dinner for you in, like, five seconds?”
Ricki sounded and felt like a petulant teenager, and she knew it.
“It’s all right, Ricki,” he said mildly, squeezing her knee under the table. As always, he was cool as a breeze. “You can ask me anything. I’m from South Carolina. A little town called Fallon County—it doesn’t exist anymore, though. My parents and my sister were all sharecroppers.”
The sisters eyed each other.
“Sharecroppers?” Rae said, bristling. “That sounds so Jim Crow. Is sharecropping even legal anymore?”
“Girl, who knows what goes on in the sticks,” said Rashida.
“No, I meant farmers. They are… were… farmers.”
Not good. This always happened to Ezra when he was with Ricki: his guard came down and he told the truth.
“Ohhh,” cooed Regina, perking up. “Well! Farming can be extremely profitable. And Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Cornell have brilliant agricultural science degrees. My high school boyfriend was from an old pistachio-farming family in California and went to Harvard. Girls, remember Darryl Remsen?”
“He was so fine,” recalled Rae. “Peaked too soon, though. Somebody told me he got starter locs and left his churchy wife of twenty-five years for a masturbation consultant he met on OnlyFans.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” snapped Regina. “Anyway. All the top farming families know each other. Surely you’ve heard of the Remsens?”
“Well, my family wasn’t really like that. I come from a humble background,” said Ezra, pouring himself more wine and then filling up all the Wilde sisters’ mismatched glasses. “And they’re no longer with us.”
“Your whole family is dead?” whispered Rashida.
“Covid?” gasped Regina.
“Not to pry, but what funeral home did you use?” wondered Rae.
“Every time I think y’all have reached apex horrible, you raise the bar,” said Ricki, protective of Ezra.
“It’s all right; your sisters don’t mean any harm,” said Ezra amiably, even though Ricki’s sisters demonstrably meant harm. Ezra, who was so starved for a family of his own, who missed his sister, Minnie, every day of the world, couldn’t bring himself to be anything but kind to them. “Rashida, can I offer you more fried cakes?”
“Absolutely not. I need to stop eating; we have our cousin Brandy’s wedding in four months. Ricki, did you get your invitation?”
“Yeah, but I’ll probably be dead by then,” she muttered dryly, sipping her wine.
“I can’t for the life of me understand why she’s marrying a man who cleans grout and tiles for a living,” said Regina. “A Lithuanian man!”
“That Lithuanian man owns his own multimillion-dollar grout-and-tile cleaning corporation,” pointed out Rae. “And he looks like Chris Evans.”
“Chris Evans! A man, honey.”
“I’d marry him tomorrow.”
“I know that’s right.”
Ricki rolled her eyes in Ezra’s direction, painfully aware that her sisters sounded like a pack of clucking chickens.
“But Brandy’s father and two brothers are Morehouse Alphas,” said Rashida. “Her great-aunt’s the national president of the Links. A Lithuanian husband is so off-brand.”
“It’s probably liberating as hell,” said Regina, finishing off her wine. “She can walk around with ashy ankles and unlaid edges and he’ll never know.”
“Did you see the size of her rock? Ten and a half carats,” whispered Rae.
Rashida shrugged. “Way too big. Only a cheating man buys such ostentatious diamonds.”
Rae lowered her hand under the table, twisting her ring to the back.
Full and satisfied, Rashidaginarae kept on like this as the night grew later and later. Finally, around 11:00 p.m., the conversation wound down, and Ricki couldn’t have been more relieved. Time for them to go.
“Well, I have to say,” started Regina, “I’m impressed by Wilde Things, Ricki. When we read the New York magazine piece, we didn’t know what to think!”
“Imagine our surprise that you’d made such a prestigious digital publication,” said Rae. “I mean, this is the same girl who thought that a 401K was a gift of four hundred and one thousand dollars you get from the government upon retirement.”
“The same girl who thought buffalos had wings,” Rashida said, snickering.
“The same girl who got a ticket for parking in a no-standing zone, because she thought the sign meant you literally couldn’t stand there.”
All three sisters fell apart at that one, laughing loud and tipsily. Rashida banged her palm on the table, and Rae’s eyes spouted tears of mirth. Ezra watched them, deeply uncomfortable. Every instinct he had pushed him to defend her, but he also knew better than to insert himself into a family affair. He was the outsider here.
Ricki glowered, angry maroon blotches blooming on her cheeks. “Why do you keep bringing up mistakes I made forever ago? What do you get out of that?”
“Oh girl, relax,” giggled Rae airily. “You get so upset. Why can’t you take a joke?”
“Who’s joking? You’re dragging me, on purpose. And, by the way, I was a baby when I said the 401K thing.”
“You were nineteen.”
“I was sheltered.”
“You still are. Which is why this Wilde Things success makes no sense.”
“No offense, but you’re a disaster magnet. Don’t fault us for being shocked.”
Disaster magnet? That was when Ezra’s reserve flew out the window. Fuck manners.
“With all due respect,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, “I need to speak up. Ricki is a brilliant creative mind. She created this space from scratch. With clarity of vision, she executed this shop exactly how she saw it in her head. Much of it with her own two hands. Wilde Things is objectively beautiful, she’s worked hard to make it financially viable, and she’s created community around her art! Sounds to me like y’all are discounting her achievements because, were the situation reversed, you couldn’t have done it yourselves.”
Regina looked like she’d bitten into a grapefruit with the skin on. “You’re a farmer, sweetheart.”
Ezra’s eyes blazed. “Actually, let’s be clear—I’m a sharecropper. And I’m the proud son of sharecroppers Big Ezra and Hazel Walker, who raised me and my sister, Minnie, to be good people. Kind. Helpful. Generous. I don’t have any education, and neither did they, but learning happens everywhere, if you listen. We don’t all come from kings and queens, and we don’t all make it to Harvard, and that’s all right. Pardon my directness, but you oughta rethink your narrow idea of excellence. And while you’re at it, rethink being the kind of folks who call on somebody unexpectedly and then insult them.”
The room fell silent. Ricki gawked at Ezra, wide-eyed. First of all, no one ever dared to challenge her sisters (not even their husbands). Secondly, she’d never heard him talk like this. And thirdly, no one had ever stood up for her to her family.
“Ezra, it’s okay…”
“Nah, it’s not okay.” Now he was really worked up. “And furthermore, what kind of Colored people never had okra? Ain’t y’all from Georgia?”
“Colored?”
Ricki’s sisters gasped at his outdated terminology. Heart thundering, Ricki quickly jumped in.
“He’s right,” she told them. “You’re not going to insult me in my own home. You know what? I fought my whole life to try to impress you three, to gain your approval, as if you’re perfection personified. But you’re two-dimensional paper dolls! I’m relieved not to be you.”
Furious, Ricki pushed her stool back from the table.
“No, you’ve never made a public mistake or gotten a C in school or dated the wrong guy. But have you ever had an independent thought? Or taken a risk? Your sameness is maddening. Same charities, same art on your walls, same clothes, and the same bland-ass McHusbands who abandoned their own career ambitions to work for Dad. I don’t care if you approve of me. I’m proud of the beauty I brought to the world… even if it’s for a short time.” She glanced sadly at Ezra. “There isn’t one way to experience a life well lived. And I’m glad I chose my way.”
Rashida let out a long-suffering sigh and folded her napkin on the table. “Ricki. We’ve only ever wanted what’s best for you. And you’ve embarrassed us at every turn. Do you know what Daddy had to do to give us a privileged life? You should be grateful—”
Just then, Rae interrupted. “I used to dream of being a dentist. Why do you think I refresh my veneers every five years? It’s not because my smile isn’t perfect. It’s because I enjoy observing the sublime, sculptural craft of it!”
Ricki shrugged. “Well, why didn’t you go to dental school, then?”
“Because we’re not dentists!” she shouted. “And family comes first! Why should you get to run off and chase such a silly pursuit, when we couldn’t?”
And there it was. After all this time, Ricki saw things clearly. Her sisters were resentful because she had the balls to do exactly what she wanted. And she always had.
“Listen,” she said, her voice leveling. “Parents work hard so their kids can have choices. That’s true privilege, not being tied to a life you don’t want, out of necessity. Life’s too short. I could go at any time. Y’all may have regrets, but I don’t want any.”
“Ricki, sweetie. You are one of us. You can’t run from who you are.”
“That may be true. But I can kick you out of my home.”
Her sisters were shocked. Ricki was shocked. She couldn’t believe she finally had the nerve to take a real stand against her sisters. She felt triumphant, almost dizzy with victory.
Rashidaginarae gathered their matching designer purses and marched toward the door in outrage, but not before Ezra—who did, in fact, regret butting into their argument—packed each sister a Saran-wrapped piece of pie.
Back home, the elder Wilde sisters reported to Richard Sr. and Carole that Ricki had lost her mind. That she was dating a suspiciously good-looking farmer and they were living in sin in the back of her store. Distressed, Carole took two Xanax and slept for eighteen hours.
But Richard sat there taking in the news with characteristic silence. After he’d dismissed his daughters, and Carole had vanished up to their bedroom, he stayed there sitting at the table, lost in thought. He was, in his own way, quietly, fiercely proud. And he had an idea.