Page 32 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Jane.

No text, no voicemail. Just the record of the call. That was peculiar. Jane had never called Lizzy when she was on a mission. Very rarely, when Lizzy believed it was safe but felt especially lonely or demoralized, she would call Jane. Talking with her friend for just a few minutes would center her, encourage her.

But Jane never called Lizzy. Jane knew better; she had been an analyst. So why had she called, and so late last night?

Lizzy needed to know.

Her first thought was that there was some emergency, although if that were it, Jane would likely have kept calling. Jane had no family; she had grown up in an orphanage. Lizzy could return the call from her apartment. Neither Darcy nor Charlie should be surveilling it at this time.

Even so, she thought better of it. She hadn't made coffee yet, so she decided to buy a cup at a coffee shop. There was one nearby?she'd seen it when she went for her pedicure. A Starbucks. The call could be returned from there.

She still had on her sweats, so she slipped on her shoes and grabbed her leather jacket. With a wave to the security guard, she left the building and hurried to the shop.

A few minutes later, she was seated with a latte in a corner booth, back to the wall, facing the door, and calling Jane. The phone rang and rang. No answer. Lizzy ended the call and sent a text.

Is everything okay? Text me a Yes or No. I'll call again when I can

Since she was out of the apartment and still had coffee to finish, she decided to go ahead and call her mother.

She pressedMomon her list of recent calls. The phone rang once, twice, and then her mother answered. "Elizabeth…Lizzy, is that you?"

At least her mother sounded sober. "Yes, Mom, it's me. Just checking in."

"I didn't expect to hear from you so soon."

"No, I know. I'm working, but I had a minute and thought I'd touch base with you. Is everything okay?" The same question she'd texted Jane.

"No. The shop's not doing well. Your Aunt Gardiner is driving away business. I had an idea for an amazing window display, very trendy and edgy?just the kind of thing she doesn't comprehend."

Lizzy's stomach sank. "What did you do, Mom?"

Her mother's tone became proud, defiant. "I went to the shop one night after hours and put a couple of half-price gowns on mannequins, and then I splashed bottles of Day Glow paint all around, on the dresses and the mannequins. I used a black strobe light in the window. It looked spectacular. People stopped their cars to look. One man was so entranced that he rear-ended the car in front of him."

Lizzy could imagine. The shop stood next to a busy intersection in town. The flashing lights and fluorescent paint must have created a dangerous, confusing spectacle. Her mother would be lucky to keep from being sued. No doubt liquor had played a role in her mother's late-night staging of an impromptu bridal rave.

"Late in the afternoon the next day when I came in, it was all gone. Gone! The dresses in the trash, the paint scrubbed off the floor and the window glass, the strobe gone. Christine will not talk to me. We're back to a virginal white window." Her mother made the last comments in her most aggrieved voice, obviously expecting sympathy and for Lizzy to take her side.

"Mom, who is supposed to want a Day Glow-splashed bridal gown? Who's going to be married under a black strobe light?"

Her mother huffed. "Forward thinkers like me, Lizzy! Customers who want to interject life and color into non-chromatic tradition."

Sometimes Lizzy forgot that her mother was a clever woman. Not as clever as Mr. Bennet had been and certainly not nearly as quick. But when she wasn't addled, she could talk. Lizzy knew she had inherited a large portion of her native verbal gifts from her mother, even if they had been tutored and quickened by her father?his demanding, give-and-take conversation, his constant play with the language. Her mother was not made for that sort of conversation. She lectured or she complained. Soliloquy was her thing. Her primary audience was herself.

"Mom, are you at the shop? Is Aunt Gardiner there?"

"No, she's not here. I'm at the church, helping prepare a luncheon for a youth group."

"You should have told me, Mom. I'm sorry to interrupt you."

Her mother scoffed. "They can do without me for a minute. The soup won't burn just because it's not being stirred."

"Mom, I'll call you again. Go stir the soup, please."

"Fine. Have you met anyone on this trip…any man?"

Thinking of Darcy and of Wickham, she told a lie that was responsive to the facts: "Yes, two. But one's too full of himself, and the other’s not quite reliable."

"How can you know that already? You haven't been there long."

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