Juliette Mabry is a happily married stay-at-home wife and mother...until there appears to be trouble brewing in her nearly ten-year marriage. Juliette takes it upon herself to find out if her husband is up to no good, but does she want to know the truth? Everything is revealed on Christmas, and Juliette is in for her biggest Christmas surprise.
“Isn’t twerking just having sex?”
“Who told you that?”
“No, that’s not it at all!”
“I could have sworn I heard the TV say twerking was just sex. What the hell is it then?”
“It’s a dance . . . style. Thing. It’s like . . . it’s like this.”
“What? You look like you’re having a seizure.”
“Hey, I thought it was pretty good!”
“Oh, if the rest of the PTO moms could see us now!”
I laughed to myself in the stall, doing a final check of my social media accounts on my cell phone. What? I’m a mom to a toddler. Having alone time in a bathroom stall is the highlight of my day. I was getting ready to exit and join the great twerking debate, when I overheard the next part of the conversation.
“Anyway, back to the original subject. Do you think it could be true?”
“I don’t think so. They seem happily married.”
“Are you sure? She’s never really seemed. . . right for him. To click with him. You know?”
I wrinkled my brow as well as my Botox injections could let me. Was someone having an affair? I wondered who it could possibly be! My mind started to race with all the candidates before I told myself to calm down. Having an affair was no laughing matter. I knew that matter than most.
“I just hate seeing families split up. And he’s so adorable.”
Okay, someone who was definitely married, and had a son. I doubt she was calling the husband adorable.
“But after what Carolyn did, are you really that surprised?”
Wait a minute. Were they talking about Carolyn, my best friend? So what, she had an affair. Okay, it was a bad deal. Her husband was the town sheriff, and she got caught sleeping with her gardener. It was so Desperate Housewives of her! Not in a good way, of course. But that was last year, and the tension was somewhat resolved. Carolyn and John even played nice at their daughter Claudia’s wedding a few months back.
“You have to admit, she is pretty fake. I know every time she’s nice to me to my face, I know she is just waiting to catch me slipup and say something she can twist around and report back to others. He probably is fed up with her. I wouldn’t be shocked.”
I heard the sound of paper towels being pulled out of the dispensers, and the women’s voices fade as they left the community bathroom at the pre-school, leaving me standing in my stall in shock.
Someone was having an affair. It was affecting a married family. I was married. I had been married to my husband Christopher ten years this January. They had a son, an adorable son. Call me biased, but I thought my son Colin was pretty freaking adorable. He skipped my red hair gene, thank the good Lord, and instead was a spitting image of Christopher – dark floppy hair (already it did the flop!) shiny brown eyes and one fierce dimple in his left cheek. He was in pre-school, was four years old, and was the true light of my life.
The people involved were also somehow connected to Carolyn, my best friend. And apparently people thought “she” whoever she was, was a fake. And maybe liked to spread rumors.
Now, I don’t think badly about myself. I’m a good person. I’m a good wife, and I’m a damn good mother. I’m a good friend to those who are actually my friend. But yes, I liked to. . . be in the know. I took it upon myself to be the eyes and ears of our small little town of Delany, Maine. Especially after the tragedy that rocked us two years ago, there needed to be a lookout. And I designated myself that person right after Portland’s death. But I scaled back a lot on poking myself into business I didn’t belong to in the past couple of months. And I never meant to spread rumors, and I wouldn’t even think about telling lies. But was I fake? I didn’t think so. Sure my boobs were. And my nose. But that was my outside persona. Inside I was a good and real person.
They weren’t talking about me . . . were they?
With a start, I realized I was still standing in the stall, cell phone in hand opened to Facebook. I felt a little ill, but knew I had to get out of the bathroom and start my day. It was silly to worry. They weren’t talking about me. The similarities were a coincidence. But I would make it my mission to find out who they were talking about.
Samantha March is an author, editor, publisher, blogger, and all around book lover. She runs the popular book/women’s lifestyle blog ChickLitPlus, which keeps her bookshelf stocked with the latest reads and up to date on all things beauty, fashion and fitness. In 2011 she launched her independent publishing company Marching Ink and has four published novels – Destined to Fail, The Green Ticket, A Questionable Friendship and Up To I Do. You can also find her on Youtube sharing beauty reviews and creating makeup tutorials. When she isn’t reading, writing, or vlogging, you can find her cheering for the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Cubs. Samantha lives in Iowa with her husband and Vizsla puppy.
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