Not Quite A mom

  Not Quite a Mom

  Also by Kirsten Sawyer

  Not Quite a Bride

  Not Quite a Mom

  KIRSTEN SAWYER

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  To Eleanor

  for napping just enough to let me write this book.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  1

  “He finally did it!” I squeal with excitement into my black cordless phone.

  “He” is my boyfriend of seven (and a half ) years, Daniel McCafferty. “It” is a proposal. I guess now he is technically my fiancé, since I am wearing a stunning 1-carat (.85 carat) engagement ring on my left ring finger. On the other end of the phone is my best friend (only friend), Courtney Cambridge.

  “Oh my God, Elizabeth, congratulations!” she screams back at me, sounding as excited as I feel.

  This is why I love Courtney. She is the kind of friend who really cares. She sounds as excited as I feel because she feels that excited. She’s been like that since the day we met, in our freshman year at UCLA. Courtney and I were both cursed with horrible first-year roommates and so we spent most of the year in the mildew-smelling lounge eating vending machine food and trying to top each other with bad-roommate anecdotes. It created a bond that has lasted until now.

  Now we are thirty-two. We have our own, roommateless apartments in Los Angeles and instead of spending our nights eating Kit-Kats in a dorm common room, we spend them eating Chinese take-out in our respective apartments on the phone.

  “Tell me everything,” Courtney demands.

  As I begin to tell her, in specific detail, every event of the evening, I gaze happily at my hand. The evening had begun like any other. It’s Saturday night, so of course Dan and I had plans to go out. Like almost every Saturday, he picked me up at 8 p.m. with a bouquet of roses in hand. We went to dinner at a new place on Beverly Drive and then decided to splurge on dessert. This is where the evening stopped being ordinary for a few minutes. When our crème brulée arrived, neatly wedged in the caramelized sugar was a ring. In utter shock, I looked from the ring to Daniel, still holding the spoon I had poised to dig in.

  “Will you marry me?” Daniel asked, leaning over the table.

  I looked once more from the bejeweled dessert into his eyes before responding, “Absolutely.” Then I took the ring out of the custard, licked it off and slipped it onto my finger. On cue, the waiter brought two glasses of champagne. We toasted and then ate the dessert.

  After we left the restaurant, the night pretty much returned to normal—except for my new accessory. We went back to my apartment, had sex, I faked an orgasm, and Dan smiled proudly. Then he got dressed, I wrapped myself in a pink silk robe and walked him to the door. Some nights Dan stays at my apartment, but if he has plans for early the next morning, like he did this night, he goes back to his own apartment to avoid disturbing me on a day when I can actually sleep in. The next morning, he was playing golf with a judge, so I kissed him at the door and watched through the window as he climbed into his navy blue Audi A4 with a glowing smile. As soon as he drove off, I lunged for the phone to dial Courtney.

  Just as I get to the part with the ring in the crème brulée, my call waiting beeps.

  “Ignore it,” Courtney instructs.

  “I can’t!” I argue, “What if it’s Dan?”

  “Okay, fine,” she concedes and I click over.

  “Elizabeth Castle?” the voice on the other end inquires. It’s obviously not Dan…it must be some stupid sales call.

  “Speaking?” I reply in a clearly annoyed tone.

  “Ms. Castle, I am calling in regards to your best friend.”

  I am distracted thinking about how soon I will be Mrs. McCafferty instead of Ms. Castle and so it takes me a second to process what the caller has said.

  “Courtney?” I ask after a lengthy pause.

  “Oh, um, no,” I can tell the caller feels awkward, and my feelings of irritation begin to return. “Charla Dearbourne Tatham,” he finally says.

  He pronounces the last name as it’s spelled, and instinctively I correct his pronunciation: “Dearburn.”

  It’s like I’m instantly transported to the fifth grade, when Charla Dearbourne actually was my best friend and I had to stand up to every moron who pronounced her name incorrectly. At eleven years old, we were positive it was the people who were idiots and not the fact that her name was not pronounced the way it was spelled that was the problem. I probably haven’t thought about Charla for a dozen years. All at once, I’m flooded with memories of my childhood friend, quickly followed by the disdain I feel whenever I think of my hometown.

  I grew up in a small (pathetically tiny) town in Central California called Victory. Of the town’s approximately seven hundred residents, 70 percent were rednecks and the other 30 percent were hicks. Basically the only thing Victory has going for it is that it’s a bump in the road on the way to a posh ski resort. Granted, there are nicer bumps on either side of it where most people take their rest stops, but occasionally a yuppie couple will miscalculate the distance and end up stopping in Victory to refuel their Range Rover and have lunch at one of the “quaint” (crappy) local eateries. My childhood dream was for a wonderful, childless couple on their way to a lavish ski vacation to fall in love with me, adopt me on the spot, and take me with them. This never happened, so the day I turned eighteen, I burned rubber out of Victory and never looked back.

  Charla and I had been friends since the day we started kindergarten, and we pinky swore up and down that we would remain best friends until the day we died. By high school, we both knew we were growing apart, but we still vowed to keep our schoolyard promise. Then, at seventeen, Charla made a mistake very common among the girls at Victory High…she got pregnant the night of our senior homecoming dance.

  While I helped her decide between Tiffany and Debbie (after the beloved ’80s pop stars Tiffany and Debbie Gibson) as the best name for her daughter, I also decided to make my life different. I kept my legs securely crossed while I anxiously filled out applications for every college I could get a scholarship to. In May, one month before graduation day, Tiffany Debbie Dearbourne was born (four other babies were also born to girls in our graduating class that
month) and I announced my decision to enroll at UCLA for the fall and to get a jump on things by attending the summer session starting in just six weeks.

  Charla was my biggest champion, and she promised that as soon as she got back on her feet, she and Tiffany would meet me in Los Angeles. We kept this dream alive until about halfway through my freshman year, when Charla informed me that her boyfriend, Clark Winters (not Tiffany’s father), wanted to marry her. Even though part of me knew she was never coming, I was so disappointed in her that I not only didn’t return home for her wedding, I never spoke to her again. I heard from my mother when three years later Charla went down to the courthouse with a black eye and filed for divorce. A few years after that my mother updated me that Charla was marrying Chuck Tatham, and while I didn’t care enough to send her congratulations I was happy for her because I remembered Chuck from high school and knew him to be a nice guy.

  “What about Charla?” I ask the caller, wondering why this person, and not my own mother, is calling to share Charla gossip with me.

  “I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Castle, that Mrs. Tatham has passed away.”

  At first his worlds don’t register or make sense. “Mrs. Tatham?” The only people in our small town who went by Mr. or Mrs. were teachers at the school. Mrs. Tatham wasn’t ringing any bells. Then it hit me like a bucket of ice water.

  “Can you hold on a moment?” I politely ask and I hit the “flash” button on my phone before he can answer. “Court, I have to call you back,” I say, my mouth feeling filled with sawdust.

  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I reply without meaning it. “I’ll call you right back.” And then I click back over to the stranger waiting on my other line. “I’m back,” I tell him.

  “I’m sorry to bring such bad news,” the caller apologizes. “Mrs. Tatham and her husband were driving home early this morning when their car swerved off the road. Unfortunately the style pickup that Mr. Tatham was driving had actually been recalled many years ago on account of the gas tank being underneath the passenger cab and the risk of explosion upon impact. They were both killed immediately.”

  I can picture the kind of pickup they were driving as if it were sitting in my living room. The rusted old trucks are common in Victory—I think my own stepfather drives one.

  Thinking of Russ and his hunk-of-junk car makes me think of my mother. I haven’t talked to her in some time, but I’m certain that she and Charla’s mother are still friends. Why didn’t she call me? Then I remember—my mother and stepfather are away at a bowling tournament this weekend. Russ is a big bowler in the Victory league and he and my mother often travel to compete. Charla’s parents are in the same league.

  Suddenly my heart fills with sadness. For the first time since the day I loaded all my worldly possessions into my old green Datsun (a car I thankfully no longer own) and left Victory, I feel a pang of homesickness and a longing for my mother.

  “When will the funeral be?” I ask, trying to focus on the details in an effort to avoid the pain.

  “No arrangements have been made yet, Ms. Castle. Mrs. Tatham’s family is out of town at the moment—”

  “Thank you for the call, I will keep in touch with family in Victory to get the details,” I say, cutting him off.

  I hang up the phone before he can get another word out, and I immediately pull the cord from the wall. I wonder for a split second who the person on the other end was—he never did identify himself, but the truth is that I don’t care. I am flooded with conflicting emotions. This was the happiest night of my life and now the joy has come to a crashing halt. Suddenly I am heartbroken over the loss of a friend I haven’t even thought about since I was in my twenties.

  “Humph, some friend,” I say to myself as I swallow four Nyquil with the glass of water that has been on my nightstand since yesterday. Still in my shiny pink robe, I curl up on the slightly tangled sheets left from my tryst with Dan and close my eyes tightly.

  2

  I awake the next morning with a mind-blowing hangover. It takes me a minute to remember that I got it from the four little green pills and not a night of fun. It takes me a second after that to remember why I overdosed on cold meds when I don’t even have the slightest sniffle. When I do remember, I roll over and plug the phone back into the wall. Then I return to my back holding the handset and dial my mother’s phone number. She answers on the fourth ring.

  “Hello?” she says, and from the mumble I can tell a cigarette is pursed between her lips as she speaks.

  “Mom, it’s me. I heard about Charla.”

  “Oh, baby doll. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. You know your phone was disconnected?”

  “I know. Someone called me last night.”

  I roll on my side and catch a glimpse of the clock beside my bed: it’s almost noon. I’m surprised (and a little hurt) that neither Daniel nor Courtney has broken my door down with a fireman’s axe.

  “Look sweetie, Margie’s over here now and I’m helping her fix up the funeral arrangements. You think you’ll be able to make it home?”

  Margie is…was…Charla’s mother. I can picture the two of them sitting in my mother’s kitchenette smoking Kools in their dingy white Keds with their ratted, teased, and Aqua-Netted hairdos. Victory is in a bit of a time warp. My mother was quite beautiful when she was young. She was even Miss Central California as a teenager, which gave her celebrity status back in Victory. Now you can see the traces of her beauty, but you have to look through the skin grayed by years of nicotine and under the pounds of pancake makeup.

  “Of course,” I say, and I mean it even though every time until now I have come up with a last-minute excuse to avoid returning to Victory. “Send Margie my sympathy,” I add.

  “Will do, sugar, I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

  With that she hangs up, but I don’t move until the “beep, beep, beep if you need help, please dial the operator” lady comes on the line. Even then, I listen to her prerecorded message several times before finally clicking the phone off. I don’t set the phone down, though. I immediately dial Dan’s cell phone. No answer, so I dial Courtney’s and she picks up.

  “What happened to you last night!” she demands before even saying hello. The caller ID has clearly given me away.

  I take a deep breath, “Do you remember my friend Charla, from home?”

  Courtney and I were bonding right around the time that Charla and I were officially coming to an end. Court spent many nights listening to me complain about the rednecks from my hometown, specifically Charla, whom I felt extremely abandoned and betrayed by.

  “Yeah, the girl with the teen-pop baby?” she asks with a giggle. We took to calling Tiffany Debbie the teen-pop baby in our Victory/Charla-bashing sessions.

  “She died yesterday,” I say, my voice as flat as a board.

  “Oh God, Elizabeth, I am so sorry,” she says, her voice filled with horror. “I thought you were going to say she was coming to L.A.”

  “Nope, definitely not coming to L.A.,” I say, and even I can’t help but giggle at my horrible joke (lack of a joke).

  “Tell me how you’re feeling,” Courtney commands in a soothing voice, which I affectionately call her “therapist voice.”

  Courtney had quite a bit of trouble finding her true calling. At UCLA, while I stayed firmly focused on journalism (whole lot of good it did me career-wise), she flopped around in every major from Chinese landscaping to nursing, including an entire year as a psychology major which she thinks makes her Dr. Freud’s equal. She eventually landed in English, with plans at graduation to become an acclaimed novelist. Courtney spent the summer working on her book, which I think never got past Chapter 3, before deciding that going to law school and becoming the attorney general was her definite calling.

  Showing more drive and dedication than I had expected, Courtney graduated from law school, passed the bar, and got a job as an assistant D.A. in Beverly Hills. This is where she met Dan and
introduced us. Less than a year after beginning her legal career, she realized she hated the law. She quit her job, intending to pursue acting, actually explaining to me with a straight face how she thought her experience in the courtroom really made her perfect to star in an L.A. Law–type drama. At the same time, she started gluing rhinestones on everything from cell phones to Ugg boots to sell to rich people. Then, by some miracle, InStyle magazine called her accessories “must-haves,” and ever since then her business, SparkleCourt, has been her main focus, but she still considers herself something of a psychology expert and a qualified therapist.

  “I dunno, Court,” I admit, letting her play shrink, since I definitely need the help. “Conflicted?” I offer.

  “Um-hum,” she replies, and I have to stifle a giggle.

  Courtney does her best to counsel me for the next hour before getting off because she is late for a party at the home of Debra Messing, who is apparently a huge SparkleCourt fan. When we hang up, I’m relieved that our session is over and that Courtney has settled into only helping people through retail therapy. She’s well intentioned, but there certainly isn’t a hidden talent there.

  I glance at the clock again and decide to call Dan…maybe he has been trying all this time and there is something wrong with my call waiting? His cell phone goes straight to voice mail and I click off dejectedly without leaving a message.