Page 45 of The Best Worst Thing

The Ice Queen

On Saturday afternoon, Nicole was sunbathing in her backyard and nearly through the novel she’d snatched from Logan when her doorbell rang.

Nero, who’d been napping in a hot tuft of grass with his backbone flush against Nicole’s shin, let out a startled woof and darted toward the door, tail up.

Nicole creased her page, tucked her book under her arm, then wandered through the open slider and straight toward the foyer.

Her stomach dropped.

Her chest grew heavy.

Her sun-warmed body went cold.

The glow of her whole day—that miles-long walk on the Strand with Mari; the thirty-minute FaceTime with Paige devoted almost entirely to internet stalking their little brother’s newest girlfriend; the delightfully absurd, occasionally explicit texts she and Logan had been trading back and forth while he killed time at the Monterey Airport—was put out at once.

Because from the windowpane that flanked the side of Nicole’s front door, Cynthia Speyer—with her tight face and her tennis bracelets and her honey-colored bob, blown out just so—was staring at her daughter-in-law with pursed lips and a pair of ice-cold blue eyes.

Nicole swallowed the lump in her throat.

Cynthia flashed a careful, cordial smile, then tipped her head toward the door.

“Cynthia,” Nicole said, barely opening it. Nero pushed his snout between Nicole’s wobbling knees. “Gabe’s … Gabe’s not here. He’s in Aspen.”

“I know where my son is, sweetheart,” Cynthia said, stepping inside.

She placed her white Chanel flap bag on the entryway console and looked around, studying the half-drunk iced coffee cup sweating onto the bottom stair, the pair of cutoffs abandoned in the foyer, the trail of dirt and sand and summer that Nicole had let gather down the hall.

“Do you need something? I—”

“Did you let your person go?” Cynthia said, walking herself into the kitchen. She ran a few freshly manicured fingers along the veined marble of Nicole’s cluttered island, then looked her up and down.

Nicole just stood there, holding her book over her stomach, wishing she was wearing more than an old bathing suit and a beat-up Cardinals cap.

Wishing she was wearing a goddamn snowsuit, ten sizes too big.

Wishing she didn’t care that her husband’s mother was inspecting every inch of her home, every inch of her body—every stretch mark and chipped nail and split end—to add to Nicole’s decade-thick file of itty-bitty mistakes.

“I was going to head out soon. I’ll—”

“Gabriel told me you have the only pictures of my grandchild. I would like to see them.”

Nicole nodded, then walked across the kitchen to a writing desk opposite the pantry.

Hunched over, she rifled through a stack of mail, a couple of shopping lists, and a few random podcast ideas scribbled onto old receipts.

She found the envelope from the clinic, pulled out a glossy black-and-white square, and handed it over.

Cynthia peered at it for a few seconds. “You’re finally going to be a mother, Nicole. After everything you put your body through. It’s very exciting.”

“It is.”

Cynthia looked at the picture again, then back up at Nicole. “Are you going to offer me some tea?”

Nicole flinched. “I … I didn’t realize you were staying.” She fumbled over to her electric kettle and flicked it on without a second thought. “It’ll just be a minute.”

“Iced, Nicole. It’s August.”

Nicole just stood there. “I don’t have any. I—”

“What if somebody stops by?”

“Nobody stops by.”

Cynthia smirked, then placed the sonogram on the counter and pushed it a few inches toward Nicole, who shuddered as it slid across the marble.

“We both know that somebody’s been stopping by, honey. And that it’s not my son.”

Nicole’s pulse had quickened. She was rubbing her throat, and hot red splotches were spreading across her skin. “Why did you come here? What do you want from me?”

Cynthia tilted her head. “I’ve come to discuss my grandchild.”

“You should do that with Gabe.”

“My son is committed to his family. He is aware of his responsibility to you and this baby. There’s nothing left to discuss with him. You, on the other hand, seem to have forgotten what you’ve signed up for.”

Nicole clutched her sweating palms onto the edge of a counter stool and drew a long, steady breath. “I signed up to love him. The rest of the games your family plays, as far as—”

“I spoke to your mother, Nicole.”

“You what?”

“I picked up the phone, and I called your mother. She’s worried about you. She says you barely call, that you—”

“I’m thirty-two years old! Why on earth would you call my mother?”

“Because,” Cynthia said, “your mother and I have quite a bit in common. We both had our firsts before we’d even turned twenty-five.

And it changed us. We learned to put our families first. We dedicated ourselves to our children.

We learned that our husbands were here to provide, and that we were here to hold the family together.

That’s what good mothers do, dear.” Cynthia paused for a moment, looked around. “They make a house a home.”

“You should go,” Nicole said as the kettle began to howl. Cynthia shook her head, then walked over and stopped the noise herself. She pulled a water glass off the shelf, held it up to the light, and frowned before placing it in the crowded sink and turning to Nicole.

“You chose this life, you know. When you married him.”

“I did not choose this life.”

“But you did,” Cynthia said. “When you moved to California. When you let him pay your rent. When you let him take you to Saint Tropez, to the Maldives, to Morocco. When you let us throw you that wedding. When you let us buy you this house. When you decided to stop working.”

Nicole’s whole body was burning. “That’s not what happened! That’s not what fucking happened, and you know it!”

“Of course that’s what happened, sweetheart.

You were so stressed. You were so desperate to prove yourself.

It was so hard for me to see you like that.

To see both of you like that. My son, working so hard, and for what?

So his wife could slave away and lose sleep—lose her own babies—over a job that she didn’t need?

Oh, Nicole. I didn’t think you needed to take on more stress.

I didn’t think you needed to work longer hours or travel across the country twice a month.

I didn’t think you needed to spend your nights at USC sitting in on a silly contract law class.

But I would have never told you to quit. You did that. Nobody else—”

“I need you to leave.”

“Nicole,” Cynthia said. “I expect my son back in this house by the time my grandchild is born. Whatever’s going on with you, get it out of your system.

And quickly. Because when that baby is finally here, you’ll realize it.

That family comes first. That a mother will do anything for her child. That—”

“You don’t know me,” Nicole said. “And you don’t have a clue what I would or wouldn’t do for my child.”

“But I do know you, Nicole.” She lifted the sonogram off the counter.

“So believe me when I tell you this, because the sooner you realize it, the better. You’re the one who’s calling the shots.

You’re the one with the ring on her finger.

All those other girls—they don’t matter.

He’s coming home to you. I just hope you realize that before you break up your family.

That you’ll never have a chance at a life like this again. ”

Nicole closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Get out of my house.”

Cynthia smiled, then walked toward the foyer, sonogram in hand. She picked up her purse by its gold-knotted chain, then put her hand on the doorknob and turned to Nicole.

“It’s not your house, sweetheart,” she said. “Surely you know that by now.”