I could feel the last bit of the sun's warm saturation fighting for space with the evening's sharp bite. It was somehow winning, for the moment, and so from the risen window I caught the sound of an SUV's tires crunching; consuming, the gravelly edge of the driveway.
"Lucy was here, already?"
"S#it"
I hadn't even told the girls yet that their "big surprise", which was thought to be spent with me, was being re-allocated to Lucy. Not that they didn't like her, they absolutely adored her. Idolized her even.
"Mommy," they would say, "when we grow up, we're going to be 'law-ers', and wear tall shoes and sparkly rings like Aunt Lucy."
And she did have a style worth emulating. Her shoes, Jimmy Choo. Her makeup, French. And she never entered a courtroom brawl without her suit of Yves St. Laurent armor.
"You girls can be anything you want to be," I would tell them, wincing slightly that not one of three found me nearly quite as interesting or urbane. I was more tropical, I had convinced myself. Where Lucy was a patent stiletto, I was more like a pair of beach sandals. I had looked up to her as well, but somehow my early positioning as a wife and mother made me feel less elevated than the platform of the shoes she walked in. Even when she let me borrow them, though we thankfully shared the same size, they just didn't fit. I would study the foot bed and take note of the deep impressions, as if with each stride she made her presence on this earth known. Mine were barely visible. Like it made little difference where my sandy feet stepped. My imprints were quickly erased by the incoming wave.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate the mire of these thoughts, coupled with the yoke of guilt I carried for pawning them off to Lucy tonight, but I had to advance forward and get them ready. Lucy was waiting, patiently, behind the wheel of her black luxury cruiser and we still had not packed any overnight bags.
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