Page 39 of The Launch

“She’s going to be fine though,” Jo says, mostly to reassure herself. The look on Dr. Chavez’s face as he’d spoken to Vance that afternoon had been worrying. “She has to be fine.”

“You’ll keep me updated?”

“Of course. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

In the end, the girls do end up sleeping over, and Vance comes to retrieve them first thing in the morning. “Thank you so much, Jo,” he says sheepishly from her front doorstep. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me nothing.” She’s put on a pair of capri pants and a blouse, but the only makeup she’s had time for is a swipe of lipstick after brushing her teeth. “Come in for a cup of coffee?”

Vance wipes his feet on the doormat and follows Jo to the kitchen, where he looks slightly out of place. He waits to be pointed to a chair, and without thinking, Jo gives him Bill’s spot. “The kids are still sleeping,” she says as she pours him a steaming mug of coffee. “I can wake your girls if you like.”

Vance’s eyes are rimmed with dark circles and he looks like he hasn’t slept. “Actually, do you mind if they sleep a bit more while I run home and take a shower?”

“Of course not. I’ll get them breakfast.”

“Thank you so much. I’m just going to have to piece things together while Jude is in the hospital. I got a couple of days off of work here, and my mother has agreed to fly in from Houston.”

“Oh, Vance,” Jo says. She slides into her usual seat at the table with a mug of coffee in her hands. “Why don’t you leave the girls here again today while you handle things. Seriously, they’re fine. And if we need a change of scenery, we’ll go to the library, or call Carrie and see if her kids are interested in a trip to the beach or something.”

“Jo, you are a lifesaver,” Vance says. He looks relieved. “Bill is a lucky man.”

Wordlessly, Jo sips her coffee. She’d like to believe that Bill is a lucky man, but her attitude lately has left something to be desired, and she’s well aware of that. Why is it that she’s so willing to step in and be there for someone else’s husband in his hour of need, but she has such a hard time doing the same for her own? Of course, the answers are not so simple—there are emotions and feelings and plenty of tangled thoughts involved in her own marriage, and right now all she’s doing is being a friend to Vance and Jude, which is so much easier.

“Thank you,” she says to him, looking at her placemat instead of at Vance’s face. “Vance, I have to ask, is Jude okay? Not just presently, but in general?” He’s quiet, and this forces Jo to look up at his face, which is set in stony silence. “I mean, there was this one day when all of us girls were together, and I didn’t want to gossip about it so I haven’t mentioned it to anyone, but I found Jude in the kitchen…drinking Carrie’s vodka.”

Vance says nothing, but stares into his cup of coffee for the longest minute Jo has ever lived through. When he finally looks up at Jo, there is worry in his eyes. “I think it’s a bit of a problem,” he says. “But I need to get her well before I think about trying to get her to stop drinking.”

Jo bites her lip as she nods. “Absolutely. And I’m not trying to be nosey, Vance, I was just worried.” She wants to tag on something nice—a compliment about Jude being a great mom, or a good friend, but truth be told, she doesn’t have those kinds of feelings about Jude. Not yet, anyway. But she wants to know the woman better; she wants to help her, if she can.

“Thank you.” Vance takes a long drink of coffee and then pats the table his hand. “Okay,” he says, standing up with the bone-weary type of exhaustion that comes from spending a sleepless night in the hospital. “I’d better shower and get this day started. I want to get back to the hospital as soon as possible and see if there have been any changes.”

“Don’t you worry about a thing here, alright? If the girls need anything from home, we’ll just swing by there and they can run in and grab it.”

“The front door is unlocked,” Vance says, patting his pockets for his keys and wallet as he makes his way to the door. “And, Jo?”

Jo is in the living room, escorting him to the door. She pauses. “Yes?”

“Thank you again. I really appreciate this, and your discretion about…everything.”

“You got it, Vance.”

“And then we put on the dress and Frankie played a song and we all danced,” Kate is saying to all the other children as she stands in the sand in her little flowered swimsuit. “And I think someday I’m going to dance on New York, too!”

Jimmy looks like he hears his sister’s grammatical mistake again, but rather than correct her, he turns to Marcus instead. “Want to go in the water?”

There are three years between the boys, but Marcus is an easygoing kid who is always up for whatever Jimmy wants. They frequently ride their bikes around the neighborhood, play catch together, or talk about sports. With a shrug, Marcus follows Jimmy to the water.

“I want to hear more about this whole Rockette business,” Carrie says from her spot on the giant blanket as she watches Frankie with awe.

Jo has gathered all the women and children—minus Jude, of course—that afternoon for a beach picnic, and the little girls are playing together in a group while Marcus and Jimmy do theirthing. Barbie is nursing Huck under the blanket that she has thrown over one shoulder, and her toddlers are happily digging in the sand with shovels.

“Oh,pshhh,” Frankie says, waving one hand and not looking at any of them. “That’s yesterday’s news. I was on stage dancing, and now I’m just an old married broad.”

Carrie huffs. “Old, my behind. You look like a movie star.”

Frankie finally looks her in the eye. “Well, I’ve done some things that might seem glamorous on the surface, but I’m no brainiac. Not like those girls who are working with our husbands now.”

“Come again?” Barbie has been watching Heath and Henry build a sandcastle as she nurses Huck, but she turns back to them now. “What girls?”

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