Good Little Wives by Abby Drake Page B

Around each table were ten die-cut slots where Caroline could insert tiny name cards. It was an idea she’d picked up from Windsor Castle, which had made entertaining a proper science.
    She looked at Chloe and Lee’s name cards. The thought of seating them at the coveted table of Meachams and Hallidays and Fultons and Hayneses had waned this morning: They’d not showed up today, Sunday, the day the Meachams typically, historically, without fail, went to the club, had been going to the club on Sundays since before Chloe was born. When Chloe had been at school, Caroline and Jack had gone alone. Mount Holyoke (and Northfield Mount Hermon before that) was an acceptable excuse. A finicky fiancé was not.
    â€œWe can’t make it today,” Chloe said. “Lee isn’t feeling well.”
    Not well, indeed. He didn’t like Caroline, it was now apparent. Didn’t he know how hard she was working to sculpt Chloe into a perfect wife for him?
    It was bad enough Chloe had left the rite-of-spring luncheon early because “Lee had made other plans,” and that she hadn’t been there for the post-party “review” as Caroline liked to call it. It was tradition, wasn’t it? For Caroline and Chloe to curl up on the sofas and talk about everyone who’d come and what they’d worn and what they’d said or done to whom? Why else had she bothered having a daughter?
    But tradition had been broken this year, because Lee had “made other plans.” Would he make last-minute plans the night of the gala? She wondered how bad it would get once he and Chloe were married, once they lived together full-time, not just when he was in town and wanted Chloe in his bedroom at his beck and call.
    â€œHow about if we drive up to the Adirondacks?” Jack, her husband, asked now as he came into the morning room wearing a frown.
    Caroline looked up from her work. “What on earth for?”
    He shrugged. “Something to do.” He, like her, did not want to go to the club, just the two of them, with no acceptable excuse for Chloe’s absence. It was best if people thought they were all out of town, that no one suspected their absence was a hint that the Meachams and their future son-in-law did not get along.
    â€œI don’t think so,” Caroline replied. She’d rather stay there than pretend to enjoy a road trip with Jack. “Why don’t you watch a movie? Or practice on your putting green?” He’d had the green installed last summer so he could finesse his game without leaving home.
    Without offering an answer, Jack left the room. Caroline sighed. She was no longer a good wife, so what? It wasn’t as if Jack would divorce her. It was far too late for that.
    She looked back at the seating chart, thought about Vincent, and wondered if she should have done away with her husband when she’d had the chance.
    Dory wouldn’t let Jeffrey into the birthing room, citing that he’d done too much damage already.
    â€œBut he’s your husband,” Lauren argued on his behalf. “He’s the father of your baby!”
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    Dory threw her a look of disgust, and Lauren convinced Jeffrey and the rest of the entourage to wait in the hall until she could convince Dory otherwise. Though Lauren had never given birth, she knew what it was like to feel smothered. There are too damn many of us, Dory had said quite succinctly.
    So now Dory lay in the bed, hooked up to various monitors and beepers and other sterile-looking things. She breathed in, breathed out, every few minutes when the pains came. “They feel like cramps,” she told Lauren. “Really bad cramps.” She took Lauren’s hand and squeezed it again—really hard—and Lauren said everything would be all right.
    â€œNo,” Dory said. “It won’t.”
    Lauren stroked the younger woman’s hair, knowing that whatever she said, it would not be as