“Don’t tell me you’re so afraid of the empty nest that you’re going to try to win your ex back,” my mother exclaimed.
“Get serious, Mother.”
“Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Bernice stood. “Take a look at what’s in the shopping bag. And don’t be stubborn about it.” She kissed my forehead, then clicked her way to the foyer. “Good luck with…whatever,” she yelled before the door slammed.
I kept glancing over my shoulder at the bag. Curiosity finally won out and I went to investigate.
Another little black dress. I drew it out and held it in front of me. Not bad. Maybe I’d wear it tonight. If it fit. I looked at the tag and was surprised to see that it was actually my size. Maybe Bernice had finally gotten it into her head that I was never going to be a size eight. I grinned. If that was the case, was anything possible?
Nikki Rivers
Nikki Rivers knew she wanted to be a writer when she was twelve years old. Unfortunately, due to many forks in the road of life, she didn’t start writing seriously until several decades later. She considers herself an observer in life and often warns family and friends that anything they say or do could end up on the pages of a novel. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and best friend, Ron, and her feisty cairn terrier, Sir Hairy Scruffles. Her daughter, Jennifer, friend, critic, shopping accomplice and constant source of grist for the mill, lives just down the street.
Nikki loves to hear from her readers. E-mail her at [email protected].
Window Dressing
Nikki Rivers
From the Author
Dear Reader,
Don’t you just love a road trip? Music blasting, wind in your hair, brand-new pair of sunglasses perched on your nose? I’ve been taking road trips with my best girlfriend, Deb Kratz, ever since we’ve been old enough to drive. The destinations have changed over the years—and so have we. But we always have a blast.
Window Dressing starts with just such a road trip between Lauren Campbell and her best buddy, Moira Rice. Lauren, divorced for ten years, thinks she knows exactly where she’s going—taking her son, Gordy, to start his freshman year, after which she will do all the things she’d always planned. But, as we all know, the roads we take in life don’t always get us to the destinations we’ve planned on. Too often there are detours.
In some ways, I’m like Lauren. I had my trip planned, too, but found myself on a different highway in midlife. As Lauren does, I discovered that an alternative route can turn out to have an even better view. It’s not easy leaving some of that window dressing behind. After all, it’s not nice to litter on the highway of life—but everyone does. And along the way, we also pick up things—other ideas, other people, other careers. Other ways of living.
Window Dressing celebrates the choices we make in our lives—and the friendships and loves we find along the way.
I hope you will always stay open to the journey.
Nikki Rivers
P.S. I would just like to add that neither Deb nor I ever flashed any truckers on those road trips. Really.
This book is dedicated to friends and road trips and the millions of chips and snack cakes eaten along the way.
I’d also like to thank my editor, Kathryn Lye, for her continued support and encouragement over many years and many journeys. Special thanks to Ron, my husband extraordinaire, who leaves me little treats to find among the manuscript pages on my desk and keeps me fed when I’m on deadline and my daughter, Jennifer, who helps me keep my sanity in this insane process we call writing. Both of them, by the way, are excellent road trip companions.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 1
“Welcome to weirdness,” Moira Rice said as she rode shotgun in my aging Chevy.
“Put on your glasses, Moira. That sign said Welcome To Indiana.”
Moira shrugged her shoulders. She was the only woman I knew who could make a shrug look sexy. It didn’t hurt that she was wearing a turquoise off-the-shoulder sweater and that her long, wavy chestnut hair was pinned loosely on the top of her head.
“Same thing,” she said. “I mean, Lauren, just look—” she jutted her chin toward a steak and waffle house we were passing, “—they don’t even have normal fast food down here. And every other car on the road is a pickup truck. And, have you noticed, they all have gun racks? And every driver is wearing a cap extolling the virtues of farm equipment or beer. Even the women. Like I said, welcome to weirdness.”
I craned my neck so that I could see the backseat in the rear view mirror. “I’m sure Indiana has no more weirdness than any other state and I’d prefer you didn’t make comments like that in front of Gordy,” I said primly.
Moira arched her brow and gave me a sideways look. “Gordy isn’t hearing anything but whatever passes for music these days via that wire attached to his ear.”
It was true. My eighteen-year-old son, Gordy, his head leaning back on the headrest, his eyes peacefully closed, had been hooked up to his iPod since we’d taken I-94 out of Milwaukee just after dawn. He’d only unplugged long enough to order when we’d pulled into a drive-through south of Chicago.
“I just want him to be happy with his choices, that’s all,” I said defensively.
Gordy was going to be living in Bloomington, Indiana, for the next four years while he majored in finance at Indiana University. Like the slightly obsessive mother I am, I wanted him to be enraptured with his surroundings. As much as I was going to miss him, I wanted him to be happy enough to justify my agreeing to let him go away to school.
Moira checked out the backseat. “Looks happy enough to me,” she said. “You know,” she added with a frown, “the kid is starting to look like the shirt more and more every day.”
Moira had been calling my ex-husband, Roger Campbell, the shirt ever since she’d discovered that he had his business shirts custom made. I glanced in the rearview mirror again. Gordy did look like his father—which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like his father, my son was a brown-eyed blonde—handsome with an athletic body. But I knew that he also got some of his beauty, style and grace from his grandmother. My mother. Who I am nothing like.
“How can he not be nervous?” was my question. The fact was, Gordy seemed as cool as the Abercrombie and Fitch clothes and the hundred and fifty dollar sunglasses he was wearing—all gifts from the shirt.
“Honey, how can you not be relieved?” was Moira’s comeback.
Moira