Page 88 of Family Affair

Chapter 20

“Your nutcase of a boss lost what few marbles he had. Which I don’t believe he had many to begin with.” Stella took a large sip of wine, a gulp, really, from her glass. “Little twat.”

Lucy looked at Coco with worry. “I’m afraid Aaron can make your life at the office miserable.”

More miserable than it already is?Coco wanted to say, but instead went with, “It’ll be alright. Aaron is easily excitable. He needs time to cool down.”

The three of them were gathered around the small round table in her mother’s kitchen, drinking wine and snacking on cheese and homemade bread liberally slathered with plum preserves.

Coco nearly teared up, so grateful she was for their support. She’d give anything for these two women, for their love, for the indescribable sense of comfort they provided in their different ways, but always when Coco most needed it.

She had come home exhausted, and dispirited, and angry, and carrying a tangle of all the other emotions that threatened to tear her apart. And here they were, her mother and Stella, lending a sympathetic ear to her rant about Aaron. She had described what happened at her office in detail, both the visit from Detective Smirnoff and Aaron’s out-of-proportion reaction to it.

“Listen,” Stella said, “how about you take a vacation? Pack your easel and hightail it from the city for the time being. It doesn’t matter where. To my cabin in Tennessee. To your relatives in New Mexico. Hell, to my folks in Oklahoma, for all that matters.” Stella emphatically shook her sleek, shiny hair. “You need a break from all this craziness.”

Coco considered it. “I don’t believe it’s necessary. You’re right, it’s been crazy, but things are bound to get back to normal now.”

“The investigation is still ongoing,” Stella pointed out.

“I’m not part of it.”

“Oh, really? You’ve been in contact with the police three times.” Stella held up three fingers. “Looks like you are, sweetcakes.”

Stella had a point. And Stella didn’t know the whole of it.

Coco had shared with Stella and Lucy how Cade and Dan so spectacularly pummeled each other at the police station, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to explainwhythey fought. The contents of that security video were too embarrassing for her to reveal even to Stella, much less to her mother.

Her conversation with Ross, she hadn’t shared at all.

And so she sat there, chewing on the bread, contemplating how her dearest confidantes had suddenly acquired a strictly need-to-know status.

“I’ll have to request time off from work, and Aaron is not going to approve it. He considers me a blemish on the eye of the company because I’ve become a person of interest to the police.”

“Whaaat?” Stella’s eyes widened.

“His words, not mine.”

“Coco, that’s ridiculous! I say, screw little Aaron. Leave and never look back.”

“I need the job,” Coco reasoned with her outraged friend.

“You needajob. You don’t need to put up with the daily humiliation of being this man’s assistant. Lucy, talk to her.” Stella turned to her mother for support. “I don’t understand this fixation with Aaron.”

Her mother smiled her cool, serene smile. “Coco’s committed, that’s all.”

“To Aaron?” Stella sounded incredulous.

“When she took that job, she invested something of herself in it and in her relationship with Aaron. And Coco always upholds her commitments.”

Stella disagreed. “She divorced Mike. She quit her old job.”

“And both were devastating decisions for her to make.”

Lucy, as always, supplied the right answers, and in the process made Coco uncomfortable by how transparent she was to her mother’s eyes.

“Thanks, mom, for your insight, but will you two stop discussing me like I’m not in the room?”

Stella threw her arms up in exasperation. “Please think about a long weekend away, at least! Wait. You aren’t under the orders to stay put, are you?”