P.s. Love You Madly

I had a thought for your free week—what do you say to coming here? I got the brochures you sent on lower Florida. You’re right; it looks like an excellent buy.

Oh, darling, I’ve got to figure out when to tell my girls about this, but I think it’s way too soon. They don’t even know I’m online yet. You’re so-o-o brave to tell your family.

But I will try to drop Em a short note today. I worry about her. I know she’s twenty-one, and it’s time for me to let her fly on her own, but it’s hard for a mama to let go. You know, darling—you’re a parent yourself.

Love to you (and your Etcetera)

Olivia, whose mouth waters for another taste of her BanditKing.

P.S. Thanks again for the anniversary roses. Who could believe we met only three weeks ago? Blessed be the name of the Chat Room. Oh, darling, we do live in an age of miracles!!

Darcy stared at the message in bewilderment. “Ye gods.”

“Well,” demanded Emerald. “Still think it’s funny?”

“Maybe we’re reading too much into this,” said Darcy. “Maybe we’re—misconstruing it.” But the explanation struck her as pathetically weak, even as she said it.

Emerald snatched back the paper. “How do you misconstrue something like this—? Her ‘mouth waters for another taste of her BanditKing’?”

“Maybe he’s a chef,” Darcy said lamely. “Maybe he cooked for her.”

“Something’s cooking, all right,” Emerald retorted. “Mama’s libido. She’s spent the weekend with this man. She’s going to do it again. And she barely knows him—it’s here in black and white.” She rattled the paper under Darcy’s nose for emphasis. “Three weeks—and she’s having an affair. She met him in a chat room. God—a seventh-grader would be more careful.”

“Let me think,” said Darcy. She raked her hand through her hair and tried to control her wildly spinning thoughts.

None of Olivia’s marriages had been happy—certainly not the ones to Darcy’s father or to Emerald’s father. But the third and last, to Gus Ferrar, had at least been tolerable—some of the time.

Gus had been good-hearted, but oversexed and quarrelsome and brash. He had clearly adored Olivia, but just as much, he loved bickering with her. He had honed complaint into an art form, and the older he got, the more he demanded to be the center of Olivia’s universe.

After Gus’s death last year, a well-meaning friend had told Olivia that she was still young and attractive, that someday “someone else will come along.”

“I’m through with marriage,” Olivia had said with cynical conviction. “I’m through with men. I’m going to get a Pekingese. A Pekingese doesn’t argue, it doesn’t nag you about how much you spend, and you can make it sleep in a separate room.”

Olivia had been true to her word. Because she was beautiful and well-off, eligible men tried to court her. She’d rebuffed them all.

“In my golden years, I’m going to be as chaste as a nun,” she’d told Darcy. “Besides,” she’d added thoughtfully, “sex has never been as much fun as shopping. Not really.”

Olivia bought the Pekingese, got it neutered, and named it Mr. Right. Mr. Right was spoiled rotten and had an engraved collar of silver links and ate from a silver dog dish. But he made her sneeze, so she gave him to Rose Alice, saying that apparently she was allergic to all things male.

“Mama said she was through with men,” Emerald fumed. She began to pace. “I don’t want another stepfather. One was enough.”

More than enough, thought Darcy, who had lived through two. But someone had to be calm, she thought with wry resignation. It wouldn’t be Emerald—she’d spent too many years competing with Gus for attention; his tempestuous ways had rubbed off on her.

“She’s not going to marry anybody,” Darcy said, almost certain it was true. “She’s having a little fling, that’s all. This thing will run its course, and she’ll snap out of it. She’s not a stupid woman. Or a naive one.”

Emerald stopped pacing and drew herself up to her full height of five feet one inch. “She is naive. She knows nothing about the Internet or these chat room Casanovas. She’s like a little child—a total innocent.”

Darcy crossed her arms again. “Emerald, that letter was hardly written by a ‘total innocent.”’

Emerald threw out her arms in despair. “But don’t you see? She’s at a terrible disadvantage here. She’s only had experience with real men.”

Darcy frowned, trying to digest this logic.

“This man is a fantasy,” Emerald persisted. “He can pretend to be anything she wants. That’s what she doesn’t understand. I grew up with the Internet. But she has no idea what it’s about—do you?”

Darcy felt an uncomfortable sense of disadvantage. She could use the computer for basic things, but she knew only a fraction of what Emerald did. Emerald had spent most of her teenage years cloistered in her room, communing with cyberspace.

“Well, do you?” challenged Emerald.

Darcy looked down at the library’s bookworm, curled up at her feet. She thought about books and research and computers and networks of knowledge.

Defensively she said, “It’s about communicating. And information. It’s about accessing vast reserves of—”

“No, no,” Emerald said with emotion. “The Internet is about lying.”

Darcy gave her a skeptical look. “That can’t be true. Al Gore wouldn’t like it so much.”

“It is—it’s about lying,” Emerald repeated emphatically. “You get in these chat rooms. You write messages to people you don’t know. You can’t see them and they can’t see you—so what does everybody do? They lie.”

Darcy shook her head stubbornly. “That’s an exaggeration.”

“It’s not,” Emerald tossed back. “Suppose I’m wandering around the Internet, and I meet a guy who seems interesting. Do I tell him I’m short, that I have a thirty-one-inch bust? That I’m blind as a bat without my contacts? That I’ve been on Prozac for four years? Of course not!”

“Well—” Darcy said. “Withholding a few facts at the start isn’t lying…exactly.”

“Right,” Emerald replied sarcastically. “So this guy doesn’t tell me that he weighs four hundred pounds and has the social skills of a clam. Or that he’s a fourteen-year-old horny geek. Or worse, a horny old married man. Either way, he’s horny. Because, first the Internet’s about lying. And second, it’s about sex.”

Darcy blinked in displeasure. “Maybe that’s true for some people. But Mama’s an adult—”

Emerald narrowed her eyes. “Mama’s a babe in the cyber-woods. And she’s a rich widow. You think there aren’t men out there waiting to pounce on women like her? Oh, they’ll sweet-talk you, these guys. They’ll make themselves sound like God’s gift to women. Darcy, I’ve been there.”

Darcy’s confidence took an unsteady stagger. She realized that she had entered a realm where, for once, Emerald was far worldlier than she was. Emerald might be dressed as a creature of fantasy, but her words had the ring of cold reality.

“He’s talking to her about investing,” Emerald said ominously. “In Florida—swampland, probably. He’s already sweet-talked his way into her bed. Next it’ll be her bank account.”

Darcy’s muscles tightened. Olivia wasn’t exactly conservative with money. To protect her, Gus had left her a generous monthly allowance dispensed from a trust fund, as well as a large sum to tide her over. But Olivia had already spent almost a third of the ready money on the property in Maine.

The rest of her inheritance was tied up in bonds and real estate. But not so tightly that a clever and determined man might not untie it—the lake house was already for sale.

The nickname of Olivia’s new paramour echoed in her mind like an evil prophecy: BanditKing. Darcy thought, My God! He could be a con man. He could ruin her. Take everything she’s got.

Emerald said, “Mama’s never had much luck with men. This could be, like, the final insult. He could take all her money and destroy her pride.”

The two women looked at each other, and Darcy knew they were thinking of the same thing: Gus’s will.

To each of my stepdaughters, Gus had decreed, I leave the sum of $10,000 in cash and the solemn charge to watch over the welfare of their mother. She’s a wonderful woman, but stubborn, and frankly, sometimes she doesn’t know her ass from a muffin.

Only Gus would have slipped such a phrase in as staid and somber a document as a will—but there it was. Olivia, of course, had been furious, and the girls had only shrugged and smiled sadly.