All Dressed in White

13

Sandra gave her daughter one final hug in the building lobby. “I’m so proud of you, love,” she said.

“Mom, I’m going to see you for dinner in a few short hours. Marea, eight o’clock. You know where it is, right?”

“You told me: take Central Park South straight across almost to Columbus Circle. I think I can manage not to get lost. It’s a joy to see you twice in one day.”

Sandra cherished her time with Charlotte. When she lived in Raleigh, she saw Charlotte and Henry equally, two to four times a year, never enough in her view. She made a point to visit Charlotte as least as often once she moved to Seattle, but if anything, the fact that she now saw Henry regularly made her miss Charlotte all the more.

It was sweet of Charlotte to have spent the entire afternoon with her. After a long lunch at La Grenouille, they walked up Fifth Avenue perusing shop windows and then across town until they reached Ladyform’s corporate offices next to Carnegie Hall. There, Charlotte had proudly given her mother a preview of the latest designs.

As Sandra walked back to her room at the Pierre, she pictured Charlotte’s face at lunch when Sandra first brought up Amanda’s name. In retrospect, she thought, I should have told Charlotte yesterday on the phone about my plan to go to the Under Suspicion studio. That way, today could have been purely a fun day.

She should have known that any mention of Amanda would put a damper on the visit. Charlotte was always comparing herself to her little sister. Even five years after Amanda disappeared, she was competing with Amanda’s memory.

Once I told Charlotte about my meeting this morning with Laurie Moran, she seemed excited, Sandra thought. And she was quick to volunteer her willingness to participate if the show got the go-ahead. “A day never passes that I don’t miss Amanda,” Charlotte had said. But there was that moment when her face fell at the mention of her sister’s name, followed by the urgent request for a martini.

Charlotte is a good, decent person, but why is she so insecure, even jealous? Sandra sighed. Charlotte’s envy could bring out the worst in her. In the seventh grade, she had been suspended for tampering with another student’s entry in the science fair.

But no matter how jealous she had been of Amanda, Charlotte would never hurt her little sister. Or would she? Sandra, horrified that the thought would even cross her mind, felt a stinging lump in her throat.