CHAPTER FOUR
The hotel was basically like its own city. In addition to several restaurants, it also had multiple stores to shop in. I could have spent the whole day exploring everything. I also attempted to get Milo to just walk out on the slopes, but he refused.
We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to do his schoolwork as best we could. I was going to have to do some serious research tonight. I’d be learning this material alongside him. He wasn’t very enthusiastic about the stuff we had to do, and I went to YouTube more than once to look up how to properly pronounce French words. Milo seemed to prefer my mispronunciations and kept using those instead of the right words.
At five o’clock, as I was supposed to be drilling Milo on some verbs, Sheila came into the kitchen.
“Mommy!” he said, and ran over to her. He threw his arms around her waist and almost knocked her over. She actually looked worse than when we’d left that morning.
“Milo! Why don’t you go run and get your iPad?” she said, sounding congested.
Needing no further encouragement, he shot out of the kitchen.
“You look and sound sick,” I told her.
“I am. I think it’s just a bug, but there’s this fancy charity thing I’m supposed to go to tonight.” She sneezed and pulled a tissue out of her robe pocket.
Yeah, she’d mentioned that to me yesterday. “Well, you’re definitely missing that.”
“I can’t. Bonnie Southworth runs this event every year, and if somebody’s not in our seats, she’ll block us from coming in the future. She takes empty seats personally.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?” I asked her.
“There’s vacation, and then there’s vacation the way we have to do it. Still working. And since we’re out here every January for the skiing, the dinner is such a great networking event for both John and me. He was actually supposed to be here tonight but they were having some kind of emergency out in Palo Alto and he had to go take care of it.”
I was about to offer to make her some tea or chicken noodle soup when her eyes lit up.
“You can go!”
“To Palo Alto?” I asked, confused.
“No, to the dinner!”
Maybe her cold was making her delirious. “You want me to go to a formal charity party? I have nothing to wear.” I was worn out after today, still had a full night of studying in front of me—the last thing I wanted to do was go to some boring charity thing.
“But I have a million dresses you could borrow! Come with me!”
Before I could protest that I knew nothing about this kind of stuff, she was pulling me into her bedroom and then a walk-in closet that was bigger than my apartment.
“Which designer do you prefer? Or color?”
“I . . .” I was distracted by everything around me. There were too many hues and fabrics and I wanted to spin in a circle to take it all in slowly.
“I’ve got it. The Dior.” She grabbed a dark red dress that went all the way to the floor. It was so silky looking that I was afraid to touch it when she held it out to me, so I took it by the hanger.
“I couldn’t possibly—”
But Sheila cut me off. “I’ve always wished for a daughter that I could share my clothes with. It took us so long to get pregnant with Milo and we had to have so many interventions . . . but I do hope it’ll happen again. Maybe someday soon, once our lives settle down. But for now, what size shoe do you wear?” she asked.
“Ten.”
She looked discouraged for a second. “I wear an eleven. But you can just stuff some tissue into the end or something.” She grabbed a pair of black high heel Louboutins that Alice might have sold her twins for.
Sheila handed me the dress and the shoes and all I wanted to do was protest. This had to be outside the scope of my job, but how could I say no? It was obviously important to her and I reminded myself that I’d do anything the Crawfords asked me to do in order to assuage my guilty conscience.
Walking over to an ornate makeup table, she picked up an envelope. “Here’s the invitation. The address is on there. You can tell them our name at the door. There will be dinner and then dancing. It should be fun.”
I glanced down at the dress and shoes. Even in her weakened state, my sister would literally kill me if I missed out on a chance to go to a fancy party in an expensive dress. “I’ll go get changed,” I said, mind made up. Sheila nodded, obviously delighted, before she started a long coughing jag.
“And I’ll go back to bed,” she said. “I think I just need a good night’s sleep.”
“Do you want me to go put Milo into bed first?” I asked. It was something I could easily take off her plate.
“No, you can get ready. It’s starting soon and Bonnie doesn’t like people to be late, either.”
Great. One more rich lady I had to keep happy tonight. I plastered a smile on my face, not very enthusiastic about this event. I headed back to my room. I didn’t have much makeup with me, but I was good at making do with very little. Besides, with this gorgeous dress on, no one was going to notice my face. I undressed; carefully put on the dress, which did fit me (I’d been secretly hoping it wouldn’t so that I would have an excuse to stay home); and did my hair into a messy bun. I probably should have tried for something more elegant, but I was running out of time.
The shoes were too big, and I did stuff some tissue into the toes. All that did was make me more uncomfortable, and they were only kind of staying on. My heels kept sliding out, so I located a couple of Band-Aids to help create a barrier that would keep the shoes in place.
I gave myself a once-over in the mirror and headed out toward the front door. Milo and his mom were watching a show in the family room and I stepped inside to say good night. So that she could see I was doing what she’d asked.
“Wow! Diana looks like a princess!” Milo declared, and I will admit, it did make me feel pretty.
“She sure does!” Sheila agreed, and then blew her nose. She gave me a watery smile, and I could see that this was making her happy.
“Thanks, guys! I’ll see you in the morning!” I waved and grabbed my coat from the front hallway. I didn’t actually plan on staying out that late—just long enough that this Bonnie person would see me sitting in the Crawfords’ seats during dinner, and then I’d make my getaway when the dancing started. Despite Sheila’s hope that I might have fun, I had to imagine that most of the people there would be either way too old or, if they were age appropriate, probably not dysfunctional enough to be attractive to me.
I wished that were something you could just decide. That you would like only nice, sweet men from now on, instead of the kind who made you question all of humanity.
When I got to the lobby I discovered that Sheila had hired a driver for me, and the driver gave me a card with his number so that I could call when I was ready to leave. Her thoughtfulness, even while sick, was a bit overwhelming.
It made me feel like a truly terrible person all over again. I pulled out my new phone and looked at the photo that Alice had recently sent me, a selfie with her kids. This was why I was doing this.
It took only a couple of minutes to reach the party, and the outside was kind of . . . dull. I didn’t know exactly what I had imagined when Sheila had mentioned the event—maybe people taking photos or a red carpet. Instead there was just a bored-looking man in a suit with a headset asking for my name. I told him Crawford and he didn’t even ask me for an ID. It was actually a bit of a disappointment, not only in that I had wished this whole thing might be more glamorous but also because there had been the slight hope that he might tell me I couldn’t come in.