Snowfall at Willow Lake: Lakeshore Chronicles Book 4 (25 page)

“We'll watch it together,” Sophie suggested.

“What's it about?”

“A kid whose domineering mother drives him crazy.”

“Sounds like a laugh a minute,” Max said.

It was a strained afternoon, during which Max consumed four muffins, finished his homework, declined a game of cribbage and lasted through exactly seven minutes of
Judge Judy.
Sophie made things worse by insisting on leaving extra early to pick up his two friends for hockey practice, just in case the roads were bad. As a result, the friends weren't ready when they showed up and she had to sit there with the car idling while they threw together their gear. She'd hoped the boys' mothers might come out to the car to meet her, or even invite her in, but they didn't. She wanted to make friends here in Avalon, but perhaps car-pool pickup wasn't the best time to socialize.

The boys didn't have a lot to say during the drive to the hockey rink—not to her, anyway. Among themselves, they appeared to communicate in some private, incomprehensible language that involved elbowing and snickering.

At the rink, she introduced herself to the coach, who didn't look much older than Max himself, an apple-cheeked, eager man with a somewhat high-pitched voice. Once on the ice, though, the boys seemed to respect him as they went through warm-ups and drills.

Sophie joined a group of mothers who sat in the ringside bleachers behind a Plexiglas barrier, and felt the other women scrutinizing her. This, she knew, was going to be the hard part. She suddenly felt self-conscious about her bag from Italy, her designer belt and gloves. She was overdressed and clearly hadn't mastered the soccer-mom look. She wanted to. She wanted to look relaxed in sweats; she wanted to be comfortable in her own skin. She had a long way to go.

“I'm Max's mom, Sophie Bellamy,” she said to the women, and then memorized their names as they introduced themselves. “Do you mind if I join you?”

The line of mothers shifted to make room for her.

“Ellie,” said one woman. She was knitting something, a string of brightly colored yarn coming out of her bag.

“Max's mother.” A woman named Gretchen lifted her eyebrows. She exchanged a look with the one beside her, who had pretty, olive-toned skin, glossy dark hair and unfriendly eyes. “Maria, it's Max's mother.”

Maria folded her arms across her middle. “You don't say.”

“It's nice to meet you at last,” said the woman who had introduced herself as Gina. Either consciously or unconsciously, she emphasized the
at last.

“You still go by the name Bellamy,” Maria observed. “Wasn't that your married name?”

Sophie nodded, assimilating the reality that here in a small town, people knew each other's business. “In my profession—all my licenses and certifications are in that name. Everything I've published, too.” As she explained, she watched their faces and realized she should have given them a simple, politically correct explanation—I wanted to keep the same name as my children. Too late. If she said that now, it would sound as though she had just thought of it.

“Aren't you the one who's been living in Europe?” the woman named Vickie asked.

Oh. So that's where this is going,
thought Sophie. She could tell from the tone of the question and from the looks she was getting from the women that they were not okay with her choice. She decided to confront the issue head-on. In the year since she'd been apart from her kids, she had discovered that one of the most awkward aspects of the arrangement was actually explaining it.

People might think they had open minds about today's families, but that tolerance only went so far.
They live with their dad
ranked right up there with
They've never been to the doctor
or
They're allowed to smoke.
In the eyes of the world, Sophie knew what these women were thinking. She was a terrible person, a woman who had turned her back on her children in their time of greatest need, the aftermath of divorce. What kind of mother would do that?

“That's right,” Sophie said. “In The Hague, Holland.”

“Must've been so exciting for you.”

“It was, sometimes.” She cautioned herself not to get defensive. For Max's sake, she wanted to get along with his friends' moms. Yet among these women, she felt a distinct prickle of discomfort. She used to be defined by her career, prosecutor, diplomat. Now that she had no career, what would define her? Being a mom? Would that be enough to gain acceptance into this chilly tribe?

“We had this image of you as a jet-setter with a string of mysterious, foreign lovers,” Ellie said.

“I'm sure you're joking,” Sophie said. She wasn't sure, though.

“I always wanted to get away to Europe, but my family needs me,” said Maria.

“Same here. I'll wait until mine are grown,” Gretchen agreed.

“I flew to New York on a regular basis,” Sophie explained, “to work at the UN and see my kids. And Max visited me in The Hague several times.”

“Don't you have a daughter, too?” Gina asked. Their scrutiny burned like the glare of an interrogation light. “In high school?”

“Daisy,” Sophie said. “She just started college in New Paltz.”

“Daisy. Didn't she used to work at the bakery?” Vickie asked.

“Oh, that one,” Gretchen said. “I'm so sorry about…what happened.”

Sophie took a direct hit on that one. There would never be any definitive explanation as to why Daisy had been so rebellious, so angry and careless. Sophie could ask herself until the cows came home if it had happened due to the divorce, or if it would've happened anyway. She told herself not to take the bait of this woman's phony condolences. “Actually, I'm extremely proud of my daughter.”

“What happened?” asked Ellie. “I didn't hear. Is she all right?”

“Daisy is fine,” Sophie assured her.

“And the baby, too, right?” Gina said.

The others exchanged glances of surprise. “Your daughter has a baby?” Ellie asked.

“My grandson, Charles,” Sophie informed them. “We all adore him.”

Maria leaned over to one of the other women and said something in an undertone, but Sophie caught the tail end of it, “…out of wedlock.”

Sophie was so surprised by the attack that she laughed. “Tell me you didn't just say ‘out of wedlock.'”

Maria looked unrepentant. “You mean she's married?”

“No, but—”

“Ricky, watch out!” Maria was on her feet, yelling to a dark-haired boy on the ice. “Don't turn your back on number forty-seven.”

That was Max's number.

“Your son plays rough,” Maria said. “Didn't he have some kind of meltdown last summer and get kicked off his Little League team?” Maria persisted.

“He was invited to work for the Hornets,” Sophie pointed out. She hoped she'd gotten the story right. Keeping stats for the Hornets—Avalon's independent baseball team—was a privilege. At least, that was how Max had explained it to her. She reminded herself not to get defensive. She had dealt with international criminals. She could handle vindictive women, surely.

Vickie shook her head and added to the chorus of sympathy. “I suppose all kids deal with divorce in their own way.”

“I guess you all have a pretty clear picture of my family,” Sophie said. “I went jetting off to Europe to be with my foreign lover and left my poor kids to suffer and get in trouble. God, I don't believe you women. What century are you living in?”

“We're not trying to pick a fight,” Gretchen said. “Just trying to understand the situation.”

“The situation,” Sophie said, “is none of your business.”

“This is the kind of town where people care about one another.”

Where people gossip and judge, Sophie realized. And she had chosen to move here. To live here. With women like this.

“Just to be clear,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. In her profession she was used to confrontation and arguments. This was supposed to be second nature to her, but she was inches from losing it. “I lived in a furnished apartment within walking distance of the court building and I worked twelve-hour days on human rights cases. I missed my kids every damn minute but they couldn't be with both of us. And—news flash, ladies—we're not the first family that's gone through a divorce.”

“Of course you're not,” Ellie said. “Lots of families handle it just fine.”

The condescending attitude grated on Sophie. She decided to bite her tongue. She
had
put her career first. The fact that these women were horrible didn't change that. She needed to move on from here.

A hockey puck cracked against the Plexiglas with a sound like a gunshot. Reflexively, Sophie raised her arms to shield her face. Then a whistle shrilled, signaling the end of practice. Thank God. Sophie leaped to her feet. It couldn't end soon enough for her.

“You ladies have a nice weekend,” she said, garnering insincere smiles and assurances. As she walked out into the cold winter evening with her three charges, she wished she could get in the car and drive, and keep driving until she came to the end of the world.

No. That was the old Sophie's way of thinking. The new Sophie didn't run from trouble.

“How was practice?” she asked, reminding herself to drive slowly and calmly.

“Okay,” the boys replied, predictably noncommittal. She knew better than to ask. She should, anyway.

“So you met Aunt Maria,” Max said.

Sophie stopped, car keys in hands. “
Aunt
Maria?”

“She likes me to call her that,” he explained. “You know, on account of her being Nina's sister.”

“That woman is Nina's sister?” Sophie should have seen the family resemblance—the olive-toned skin, the glossy hair, the flashing dark eyes.

“Yep.”

“She is the sister of Nina—your brand-new stepmother.”

“Mom. That's what I just said.”

She glared at him in the rearview mirror. “And you couldn't have perhaps given me a little clue about that? Maybe just a hint?”

He shrugged. “Didn't think it mattered.”

It was, Sophie realized, one of the unknown hazards of small-town life. You never knew who you were going to run into.

When she got home, Noah called her while Max was in the shower. “I want to see you tonight.”

Even the sound of his voice was a form of foreplay. She stepped into the bedroom for privacy. “Is this what's known as a booty call? I have to say, I've never been the recipient of a booty call before.”

“There's a first time for everything.”

“My son, Max, is spending the weekend with me.”

A pause. “How's that going?” He sounded slightly chastened.

“He's so bored he can hardly see straight.”

“Bring him over tomorrow. I'll show him around my place. You don't even have to call first. Just show up.”

“Thanks, Noah, but I don't think so. For all I know, by tomorrow he'll be begging me to take him back to his dad's.”

“My son finds me boring,” Sophie said to Gayle Wright the next day. Sophie had adopted the habit of going on a morning run, exploring the splendor of the snowy lanes and trails along the lake. Noah had taken her to buy a special kind of trail shoe made for traction on snow and ice. At the end of her run, she often stopped to visit with Gayle when her neighbor was out playing with her children.

Gayle, presiding over the construction of a lopsided snowman, regarded her with concern. “He's twelve, right? What twelve-year-old ever finds his parents interesting? It's practically a law that he's supposed to find you either boring or embarrassing.”

“I'm right on track, then.” Sophie took a drink from her water bottle. “I had this whole grand vision of how this weekend was going to be so perfect. Instead, I got in a cat-fight with the other hockey moms—”

“No way.”

“Oh, yes. Way. And he liked your muffins but hated my sloppy joes. They used to be his favorite. Now he's into Italian cuisine. Nina is Italian. She's probably a great cook.”

“Don't make comparisons,” Gale reminded her. “That way lies madness.”

“He fell asleep during
Harold and Maude.
”

“Now that's a problem.”

“I know. What kind of person hates
Harold and Maude?
” While Sophie had sat, transfixed and weeping over her favorite film, Max had fallen asleep on the sofa. She had to prod him awake just so he could shuffle off to bed. When she left him for her morning jog, he'd still been sound asleep. “I have no idea what I'm going to do with him today.”