She drove from Theo’s place to the boutique. Serena and Natalie were there, but no Gillian.
“Are we surprised?” Serena asked, trailing a hand along the long row of plastic-encased bridal gowns. Other than for lip color, Gill was not much of a shopper.
“More surprised that you picked this place. I thought we’d be tailoring something from a thrift shop and we would all think you were way off-base but you’d turn up looking like a goddess in some transformed orange polyester jumpsuit.”
At the look Natalie shot her, Rachel said, “What? You know it’s true.”
Serena’s shoulders shook. “Okay, not polyester, if I can help it. But, yeah. All this is much more your kind of thing, Nat.”
They caught Natalie admiring her engagement ring. Again. And she blushed. Again.
“Oh, you’re too easy to bait.” Rachel turned to Serena. “So, is this a stealth mission to find Nat’s dress instead of yours? Or did Dillon talk you into a big elegant formal affair?”
She snort-laughed. It was not elegant. “Hardly. I promised my mom I would look at traditional dresses before going my own way.”
Rachel’s forehead creased. “Your mom expects you to get all poufed out in white?” Caricatures of aging hippies were based on Serena’s mother.
She shook her head, rueful. “I know, right? It’s because of Ridley and Neera’s wedding.” Serena’s stepbrother had married not long before, and Serena claimed she’d heard every story about the event at least five times. “She wasn’t allowed to do anything to help, so now she’s devouring bridal magazines and coming up with all these tradition-bound schemes we have to keep shooting down.”
The shop assistant showed them to a seating area when Serena refused to make any preliminary decisions. “I’m trying on two dresses, so I can show her the pictures, and I’m making Gillian help because that’s her punishment for showing up late.”
“Okay then, someone distract me from all the pretty lace,” Natalie said. “I promised my mom I’d dress shop with her, and this place is seriously tempting me to break my word.”
“Go for it. You can tell her how Serena is thwarting Becky’s mother-of-the-bride fantasies, and she’ll forgive you anything.”
“I would, but I also promised Evan’s mom—remember Marisa?—she could join in the dress hunt. I have to have someone there who won’t tell me a princess dress is magnifying my hips. Mom already gave in to Marisa joining us, and I don’t want to push her too far.”
Rachel nodded, then shook her head.
“What?”
“No, your reasons make sense. But talking about Marisa reminded me of my mother-in-law problems. Ex-mother-in-law problems.”
Serena extended a water bottle across the gilt mirrored table. “This sounds distracting. What did Depy do now?”
She tucked the bottle against her leg and pulled out her phone. “Okay, you know about name days, right?”
Natalie glanced towards Serena, then back at her. “Um, maybe?”
“Basically, if you’re named after a saint, that saint’s name day is a big damn deal. Party time, everyone gathers round. No cake, but for Depy, anyway, it’s bigger than her birthday.”
“I’m sensing this is where the problem comes in,” Natalie said.
“You’re a regular Phryne Fisher. Of course that’s the problem. Despoina’s name day is August fifteenth, and that’s the week I’m taking Hannah to visit my family. And I’m already on her shit list because Hannah’s name day is Thursday and I won’t let Sergei take her.”
“Did he put it on the schedule?”
She rolled her eyes at Serena. “Ha. Anyway, he’s doing some nonsense at Elixir on Wednesday instead, but that hasn’t stopped Depy moaning about it. Or about August.”
“So, she wants you to cancel your trip?” Serena asked.
“Her first suggestion was that I leave Hannah with her all week, and visit Blythe and my folks on my own. She tried to make out like I would have all this great freedom to stay up all night gabbing with my sister. As if she doesn’t know that perfect Blythe only breaks her early to bed routine if she’s on an overnight rotation.”
“One of these days that woman will have a problem she can’t solve with seven solid hours of sleep at night.” Serena rolled her eyes.
Rachel scraped her hair back from her forehead. “Mom and Dad will be there to help stop whatever tries to bring her down.”
“Never mind Blythe. What did Depy do?” Natalie asked. She nabbed Rachel’s phone. “Can I?”
She nodded. “Read the two newest emails.”
Nat tapped in Rachel’s passcode and began scrolling. After a bit, she passed the phone to Serena, asking, “What’s it called when you combine blackmail with emotional blackmail? There should be a special term for that. Remind me to ask Gillian when she gets here.”
Serena snorted again, more elegantly now that she was expressing disdain instead of humor. She must have gotten to the part about Rachel’s job. When she’d refused to switch her vacation dates, Depy had phoned her boss to check Rachel’s story. Rachel’s boss had refused to confirm or deny her ability to change her schedule, which offended Depy but didn’t stop her campaign.
Her current offer was to pay to fly Hannah to Colorado after the party. Alone. ‘She takes her dose of cold medicine before takeoff, she will sleep the whole flight, she’ll never notice a thing.’
Rachel had paced the perimeter of her apartment fourteen times upon reading that, working up the calm with which to ask Hannah questions about her bedtime routine at Daddy’s house. Two-year-olds were not reliable witnesses. Even leading up to the topic—‘what color is your Daddy house toothbrush?’ ‘do you want to pick another animal friend to sleep at the Daddy house with you?’ ‘does Yia Yia read you bedtime books sometimes?’—she didn’t expect an easy yes or no to ‘do your father and grandmother make you drink cough syrup so you’re easier to get to sleep?’
In the end, she only learned the toothbrush color. Though Hannah might have been thinking of her purple toothbrush in their own bathroom. She might never have noticed toothbrushes came in any other color, since Rachel tended to buy purple ones for them both.
“This is ridiculous.” Serena handed back the phone. “I get she cares a lot about her party, but if she wanted to be sure Hannah was at it, she should have checked the custody schedule.”
“If we can, she can,” Natalie agreed.
Rachel stashed the phone and locked together her fidgeting fingers. “I know it’s ridiculous. But how should I respond?”
Natalie was scrolling through her own calendar. “If you want, I could fly up with Hannah, so she isn’t taking the trip on her own. I can even hang out a while and drive back with y’all. Depy would have to pay for my flight, though.”
“That’s also ridiculous,” Serena said. “If anything, Depy can pay to fly them both round trip, then Rach can save herself the long drive and still have almost as much time with her family.”
Natalie had opened her browser and was checking flight schedules. “Tell her she’ll also have to rent you a car.”
“And a car seat,” added Serena, waving off the boutique assistant who was trying to lure her to a rolling rack of dresses she’d selected.
“Right, and a car seat. Tell her it will be a thousand dollars. Then she can decide if it’s worth a grand to her to have Hannah fall asleep at the table halfway through her party.”
Rachel was circling the heel of her hand against her heart when Gillian plopped down beside her. “What are we talking about?”
“Oh, hey, you made it. What’s the word for blackmail on top of emotional blackmail?” Natalie asked.
“What’s the context?”
“Depy wants to change the schedule for Rachel’s vacation.”
Gillian’s snort was more eloquent than anything Serena could manage. “In that case ... blacklighting.”
Natalie leaned across to grab Gill’s knee. “You’re the best.”
“Right back at you.” She turned to Serena. “What dress did you choose?”
“Nope. Nice try. Haven’t even looked at them. I waited until you got here.”
“You’re the worst.”
“Maybe, but it gave us a chance to brainstorm ways to get Depy off Rachel’s back.”
Pivoting towards Rachel, Gill arched her brows. “And what prompted us to brainstorm that?”
She explained about name days and the options that would let Hannah attend the party.
“Three questions,” Gillian said, once her narrowed eyes silenced Rachel’s justification of their thinking.
“Okay?”
“Did Sergei ever make up his child support?”
Across from them, both Serena and Natalie hitched themselves forward on the chaise cushions. Rachel applied the heel of her hand to her stomach. “The ombudsman should be giving me a case update next week. It’s clear-cut, so I expect the order will go through to increase his withholding by twenty percent until he’s caught up.”
“And never mind that while he wasn’t paying you because he wasn’t working somewhere they could send a court order, he bought that obnoxious vehicle?” Gillian held up a hand. “That’s not my next question, it was rhetorical. Next question: is Despoina Matsouka the pattern of motherhood you want to copy and model for your daughter?”
“God, of course not. I mean, at least she loves Hannah. And Sergei. But she helped turn him into the narcissistic ass to begin with.”
“Okay, then. Why the hell are you considering any change to a plan you made with the full forces of the law, morality, and common courtesy behind you?”
The bridal salon likely wouldn’t approve of her hugging her legs to her chest, since it meant pressing her tennis shoes into the brocade couch.
Gillian slipped a palm onto her back and rubbed gently. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Rach. Why are you defaulting to accommodating them? They don’t get to change your plans. If Sergei wanted Hannah that weekend, he had the option of requesting it as part of his summer custody. Maybe he’ll remember to do so for next year, and maybe he never will, and so what? So what if Depy is mad about it? So what if Sergei blusters? It’s not your problem, Rach. It certainly doesn’t matter one way or another to Hannah. You don’t change your plans. Even if she charters a plane for you. He can learn how to follow the rules, and they can both back off instead of asking you to bend over backwards.”
Rachel wasn’t having any success putting her words together to answer, so she hugged her knees tighter and let Gillian’s touch soothe down her breathing.
Across from them, Natalie peered at Rachel through a cage of fingers over her face. “I did it again. Oh, crap. I’m sorry, Rachel. I always try to make his crap make sense. I treat him like he has the right to anything he wants, no matter what.”
She shrugged. Gillian’s palm shifted over her shoulder blade. She was still not used to being touched by hands so much larger than Hannah’s. Not that she would trade her girl’s cling-strong grasp for any amount of adult contact, from her friends or from Theo or from anyone. Good for Natalie and for Serena that they’d found men to spend forever with; good for Gillian that she filled her spare time with anyone who attracted her. She had Hannah, which made even dealing with Sergei and Depy for the rest of her life tolerable. “You’re not the only one, Natalie. Don’t kick at your heart over it. You were carefully taught, and I was caught up in a gaslighting net so secure it will take me years to remember that Gillian is right.”
“Or you could BCC me on every email exchange with Sergei and Depy,” Gill said. She knocked the water bottle against the back of Rachel’s hand, so she accepted it and took a swig.
“That wouldn’t annoy either one of you,” Serena said, snorting in derision again.
“Judgmental much? You want me to leave?” Gill asked, a little too eagerly.
“Try it. I was going to model two dresses then take you all to that Korean barbecue place, but if I have to, I’ll make Rach and Natalie hold you down while we take pictures of me in every single gown on that rack.” Serena nodded at the sales associate, who was floating their way with a champagne-ivory gown draped in her arms.
Rachel scooted over, bumping her hip into Gill’s. Together they made room for Natalie to sit on the sofa with them as Serena pulled the changing room curtain closed. Despite the bride-to-be’s threats, Gillian and Natalie were the bulwarks on either side of her, keeping her grounded in the moment and fortifying her for the next—the final—email to Depy and Sergei about her refusal to change anything.