Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) by Amy Lee Burgess

like I’m dying or something. I just had a miscarriage, but I’ll be all right soon. I always am. Right, Vaughn?” She turned with a sweet smile that melted him like butter in a sauce pan.
    At that moment he had a choice—to agree with her or to grow some balls and tell her the truth. She’d always been the leader in their triad. He and Peter had always danced to her tune.
    “I...I’m really worried about you, Cal,” he said. “You can’t see what this shit is doing to you, but you don’t actually bounce back after losing these babies. Each time takes more and more of a bite out of you.”
    Her smile faltered, but she regained it. “I’m just depressed. But I promise I’ll snap out of it. I do feel sorry for myself, don’t I? And I drag all of you down with me. I’ll do better, you’ll see.” She patted his hand the same way she would a dog and turned back to me, missing the complete despair written all over Vaughn’s face.
    “Stanzie, that was awful of me. I’m sorry too, sweetie. Friends again?” She gave me one of her blinding smiles and, just like Vaughn, I melted. Everyone did when she smiled like that.
    “We were always friends, like I told you,” I said and she hugged me, burying her face in my neck, burrowing in for comfort I wasn’t sure I could provide. I wanted to wave a magic wand and fix it so the next time she got pregnant—because she would, she was determined—it would stick and nine months later she’d have a beautiful baby who would be perfect and healthy and Callie’s world would be complete. But it wasn’t up to me.
    “I’ve missed you,” she whispered when she raised her head. We were both crying a little, but they were good tears. Vaughn handed us cocktail napkins which we used to wipe our eyes, carefully because cocktails napkins are stiff and tend to scrape the skin if pressed too hard.
    Kathy Manning chose that moment to herd us all to the table for dinner. I’m certain she wanted us to get substantial food in our stomachs to counteract the alcohol we’d sucked down in self defense to get through the awkward reunion.
    As we were a party of eleven and the Colonial dining room only seated six, the table in the small conference room had been covered with a fancy white tablecloth and pressed into service.
    All offers of help disdained, Kathy had us sit around the table while she bustled back and forth from the kitchen with the food.
    Allerton sat at the head of the table and she took the foot. The rest of us ranged out on either side of the table.
    I sat between Peter and Devon. Murphy was between Devon and Allerton, and Colin was across from Peter, the farthest he could get from Murphy.
    As predicted, the Brussels sprouts were delicious and so was the seafood casserole—a steaming hot combination of scallops, shrimp and flounder mixed with seasoned, buttered breadcrumbs. For appetizers we had lobster bisque and there were hot, homemade dinner rolls that seemed to be in endless supply no matter how heavy the demand.
    The wine, a slightly chilled Chardonnay, was excellent and everyone concentrated more on their plates than on conversation.
    Devon and I chatted amiably, but we were the exception to the rule. It was not one of the more convivial dinner parties I’d ever attended.
    The fireplace crackled behind my back, casting off warmth that at times made me wish I could take off my bolero jacket. Beads of sweat popped out on Devon’s face but she didn’t complain. We both had seconds of the Brussels sprouts.
    Nora’s empty chair was a silent accusation and everybody tried to ignore it but we couldn’t.
    Once we heard the water pipes gurgle—a toilet upstairs had been flushed and I remembered with a gut-wrenching stab of dismay that Grandfather Tobias was locked upstairs in the bedroom closest to Councilor Allerton’s master suite.
    The sound did not help the atmosphere of the dinner.
    A pall was upon us all and eventually even Devon and I gave up trying to liven