Page 13 of Halloween Haunting
Caroline waved her hand. “And…?”
“Oh!” Olivia fully faced Grace. “I’ve got a long-term boyfriend of about six years now, and we live apart. Permanently.”
Grace’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Sure! What’s weird about that? We’ve got our own space. Sometimes space is the key to a healthy relationship, you know.”
Grace chewed on the inside of her mouth. She didn’t suppose she really knew what the key was to a good relationship anyways. Knowing that other women her age were proud of their lives without being married or having children was reassuring to a degree, but a part of her was still too stuck on how important those things have seemed to be all her life.
“What about Anna?”
Anna raised a brow. “Me?” She let out a long, exaggerated laugh before settling into her seat with a shrug. “Well, I don’t think I’d fit in this scenario. I’m happily married with twins. They’re off at college now, but they’re still my babies.”
Grace almost melted at that. “How sweet.”
“But there’s so many different things that can make you happy, Gracie,” Caroline interjected, her hand resting on Grace’s shoulder. “We are all in different spots, but we are collectivelyhappy. What you’ve always envisioned to be your be-all-end-all doesn’t have to be just that. Itcanchange, and thatcanbe okay.”
When the food arrived, their conversation continued and only deepened. Laughter came easy to them, the jokes even easier. Grace’s shock at being welcomed in with such open arms was quickly overshadowed by how simple it was to talk to them. She hadn’t ever clicked with people before in her life, at least not in a way that took lots of time and conversation. With them it was like Grace had been there all along, like she had been the fourth member of their group that was finally stepping into the light. By the time their plates were being removed, Grace was leaning against her hand overlooking them like sisters she knew from diapers.
“What’re you thinking about?” Caroline asked.
Grace jolted as though she had been shaken awake. “Can I be honest?”
The women eagerly leaned forward, nodding in tandem.
“I’m just realizing how envious I am of your lives,” Grace murmured. “Each of you, so different and unique, so enthralled and happy with the lives you live. It looks so effortless.”
Anna huffed. “Not a damned thing about it was effortless.”
“You can say that again.” Caroline clicked her fluted glass against Anna’s. “We’ve all had our fair share of downs to get to the ups, Gracie.”
Grace breathed in slowly, staring down at the swirling liquid in her short glass. “I’m not sure how the road is supposed to go up after going through a divorce that not only rid me of everything I owned, but the only thing I thought would be by my side till death parted us.” She pressed her lips together, the anger over it rising like the liquid within a simmering pot. “And to top it all off, I’m supposed to go on living – happy, sad, fine, regardless – I amexpectedto go on living when he has found his much younger partner, who managed to get pregnant afterI spent years failing. Years rendered to nothing, all because of a twenty-one year old named Tiffany.”
“Is that why you moved then?” Olivia asked. “The pregnancy?”
“I’ll say that was the final straw in my downward spiral.”
Caroline reached for her. “I wouldn't call it all that much of a spiral, Gracie! Without Tiffany, you wouldn’t have found the Lantern House. Without your ex-husband, you wouldn’t be surrounded by the most stunning andhilariouswomen across from you.”
Grace allowed herself to laugh, and the feeling was more freeing than she imagined it to be. Her shoulders fell and the weight lifted, and even if she knew that it would return before the night was over, Grace wouldn’t at all let it go unnoticed. She laughed alongside her newfound friends as the conversation took a lighter turn, where they reminisced over failed relationships that would’ve been even more tragic if they had the chance to see the light of day ever again. It was girl talk, simple talk, discussions that Grace never indulged in while growing up.
The night carried on as the rest of the restaurant slowly filed out, leaving a few straggling customers around them. Olivia was in the middle of retelling a vivid story, her arms flailing about, when a waiter was about to pass behind her, juggling a very precarious tray of steaming mugs of bitter smelling coffee.
Wait!
Grace’s eyes jumped back to the waiter. He was only a few feet away from Olivia, and the mugs were already beginning to teeter. The other women were far too engaged in their storytelling to be pulled away, to be convinced to move with some stupid story Grace had to forge on the spot.
In the nick of time, Grace let go of her restraints and simply lunged, pushing at the tray as it started to lean in Olivia’sdirection. As the waiter still took his tumble, the coffee spilled over the floor, the loudsplatechoing across the entire quiet dining room. What she saw, the dream that seemed to hang over her head like a storm cloud, suddenly lifted off her shoulders. The sensation she had been carrying faded like the seasons, slow before she realized it was entirely gone.
Grace blinked as she came back to. The three ladies were fixated on her, eyes wide and jaws slack as the waiter stood and murmured his apologies before beginning to clean the spilled drinks. “I – uhm –” she stammered, her fingers nervously fidgeting in front of her. “I-I had this crazy deja vu! D-Don’t you know that feeling? Uhm, sorry, Olivia, for reaching over you. I-I had that dream and it looked just like – and I – but –” Grace held her hands up and stopped the words before they kept incoherently tumbling out.
The ladies shared a look.
Caroline slowly stood. “I was having so much fun, I didn’t even think about the time,” she said as she raised her watch. “It’s after eleven! Why don’t I go pay the bill, a-and we can take a walk? A walk and talk?”
Before Grace had the chance to argue, the ladies were already turning back to the front counter, hooking their arms around her and pulling her along with them.
7
