Page 94 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

“Of course,” I replied without pause, giving his arm an affectionate squeeze.Comfort, I tried to convey, except I wasn’t as good at it as he was. I turned to Michael. “It was nice to meet you.”

He had a smirk on his face as he glanced between the two of us, offering his hand out once more. “Hopefully we can get to know each other before I go back home. It was a true pleasure to meet you…” He trailed off expectantly.

I placed my hand in his grip. “Margot.”

The easygoing grin he’d had on his face the entiretime faltered then, subtly enough that if I hadn’t been looking, I wouldn’t have noticed. But I was always looking; I always noticed.

I still gave Sumner the privacy he asked for, though, mind working. If this was the friend who’d introduced him to beans on toast, the one he butted heads with on the phone, maybe Sumner had mentioned me. Maybe Sumner told him more about the selfish rich girl side about Margot Massey in the beginning instead of the version of me now, maybe that was why Michael’s expression had faltered. Maybe?—

I stopped at the mouth of the lobby. In front of the front desk sat a woman in a wheelchair, her head too low to even see over the top of the mahogany. “Nancy?”

She didn’t hear my voice at first, so I called her name again. Nancy seemed to slump back in her wheelchair when she found me, her frail hands reaching for the guards on her wheels. “There you are,” she said, her voice breathy as if she were about to cough. She shot a glare to the receptionist. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Like she had Sunday, she lookedrough. Gray. Like keeping her spine upright was taking all her energy. “Why were you looking for me at the country club and not the hotel?”

Nancy did cough this time, a congested sound. “I… thought I was at the hotel.”

“Who brought you here?” I didn’t recognize anyone in the lobby.

“Ally had hot yoga.” Nancy craned her neck, attempting to look around. “I understand why living here isn’t a hardship. There are delicious meneverywhere.”

The urge to give her the cold shoulder was strong, especially because she was acting like the last time we parted had been on good terms. Not her being rushed to the hospital and then yelling at me for being concerned. The urge, too, to scold her for yet again leaving the house tugged at me, but I held back.

Nancy picked up my hand before I could say anything. Her fingers were icy cold, and when I looked closer at them, I could see their color was grayish. “Walk me around the grounds, would you?”

“What? Why?”

“It’s been too long since I’ve seen everything.”

It wasn’t often Nancy asked me for favors, at least not in the direct way as she had. Perhaps this was her way of waving a white flag after the whole hospital incident, attempting to get on my good side so I’d start visiting again. Perhaps she just needed someone to wheel her around and preferred me, who wouldn’t be sappy and dramatic like Ms. Jennings or Yvette would be.

I walked around to the backside of her wheelchair and grabbed the handles. “Annalise’s setting up in the ballroom.”

Nancy coughed, and it morphed into a grumble. “Show me everywherebutthe ballroom, then.”

Despite everything, I allowed myself a small smirk.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Nancy sat with her hands in her lap as we walked through the building, quiet as she took it all in. We stopped by the indoor rec center, where the daycare had taken the kids to play around in the open space. I paused there, allowing Nancy a few minutes to smile at the children, before we moved onto the indoor pool area. Though it was well-occupied in the winter months, it was empty now, everyone preferring the summer sun than to indoors.

“I remember breaking ground for this and thinking it was ridiculous,” Nancy said as we walked past the broad, glass windows where we could see inside. “We hadtwo poolsoutside; why did we need one inside? But Herbert was persistent…”

From the indoor pool, we made our way outside to the west pool. Little kids filled its shallow waters, splashing around, the loungers filled with parents who barely watched and allowed the lifeguard to do all the heavy lifting.

Nancy was quiet for most of the meandering we did, though, taking in the nostalgia in silence. I tried not tothink too hard about why she suddenly came to the country club just to tour it, a place she never cared to visit in the previous years. Instead, I, too, remained quiet, focusing on the clicking of my shoes as I walked across the cobblestoned path.

We ended our journey near the beginning of the golf course. Nancy lifted her hand to signal me to stop, and we came to a halt at the crest of the hill that overlooked the visible holes. There were a few carts in the distance, men lining up their shots, and we watched them in uneasy silence.

“It’s quite lovely to build something from the ground up,” Nancy murmured, her voice almost too soft to hear. I had to lean in, gripping the handles of her wheelchair tighter. “This country club—it’s like a child of mine, in a way. No one thinks about that anymore, though. That receptionist in there had no idea who I was.”

“You’re not royalty, Nancy.”

“No,” she agreed, lacking the bite and scorn I’d been waiting for. Her tone was too hushed. “I’ve watched it grow so much, but you know, Margot… I don’t care to watch it anymore.”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “You did a good job,” I got out, matching her seriousness despite the slow suffocation in my lungs. “You’ve built a beautiful place.”

“And everyone inside it is rotten.”

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