Birthday Girls by Jean Stone Page A

Timmy? You have two healthy sons, Madeline. Never forget to count your blessings. Even me. You’ve still got your mother. Abigail lost hers when she was a little girl. Your friend Kris lost hers, now, too. Your father died when you were young, but you’ve had me all these years. And you could have been killed in that car wreck, too. Maybe what you need by the time you’re fifty is a little more gratitude.” That said, Sophie plunked down the steamer and took off her work gloves.
    Guilt flowed over Maddie like volcanic lava over atown. A
whole
town. Manhattan, perhaps. “I
am
grateful for you, Mother. And I
am
grateful for my boys. I only wish that Parker …”
    “Parker?”
    “Well, it would have been easier if he’d never left.”
    Sophie laughed. “Easier? It would have been easier for you to work your tail off and have him keep coming home wearing the scent of some other woman? That is not easier, Madeline. That is self-destructive.”
    “If I had been different …” She wanted to continue, but she could not. The words tightened around her throat like a hangman’s noose, squeezing against the base of her skull, forcing teardrops to flow from her eyes.
    And then Sophie stepped forward and enveloped Maddie in her arms. Maddie cried and cried into the nylon sweatsuited shoulder and wondered how her mother would react if she knew what Maddie had decided her birthday wish was going to be.

The champagne was one of their best bottles. Louis Roederer Cristal, 1985. But nothing was too good for Kris and Maddie, the friends who were going to help make her wish come true.
    “More champagne?” Abigail asked and Kris nodded. Maddie declined. They were sitting in the library at Windsor-on-Hudson. Best of all, they were alone. Abigail had paid for Louisa to take a holiday at her sister’s in Phoenix; Edmund had left for the auction in Rome; and Sondra was scouting apartments in the city where, Abigail supposed, she would stay until—and if—she needed more money. The other servants had retired to their apartments above the stables.
    They were alone, so no one would hear.
    Abigail lit another cigarette and tried to stop her hand from trembling. She was nervous and jittery and … excited.
This is it
, she told herself over and over.
I am about to get what I want
. Her pulse quickened with every drag she inhaled.
    Quickly she stubbed out the cigarette and picked up the champagne bottle. She leaned toward Kris’s glass and poured in the last of the light golden liquid. Then she held the bottle up to the light that glowed from the fireplace. “Well,” she said slowly, “all this bottle needs now is our wishes. Who wants to go first?”
    Kris was silent.
    Maddie grabbed her camera and stood up. “I think it’s time for a picture.”
    Kris groaned. “I can’t believe you’re still using a camera to distract yourself.”
    “Distract myself?”
    “Sure. You’ve always done that. Even when we were young, you were always taking pictures of everyone else.”
    The flash popped. “And it’s a good thing, too, or I’d never be able to make a living. I can’t write for crap, and the last place anyone would want to see this homely face is on my own syndicated show on TV.”
    “Maddie the martyr,” Kris commented and sipped from her glass. “Don’t you ever get tired of feeling sorry for yourself, girl?”
    Maddie’s face reddened. “We all weren’t blessed with looks and money.”
    Every muscle in Abigail’s body tightened. She couldn’t have them bickering. She couldn’t jeopardize losing it all. “Girls,” she interjected, more loudly than she’d intended, “it sounds as if you’re both trying to avoid the subject. Our birthday wishes, remember?” She glanced from Maddie to Kris. Despite the champagne, neither woman looked pleased.
    “We’re here, aren’t we?” Kris said. “But for the life of me, I don’t know why. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it’s fairly ridiculous