What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [125]
“I heard you fell over at the gym,” said the woman. “Told you exercise was bad for you.” Oh Lord, she was leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. This cheek-kissing thing was out of control. It was a Mega Meringue meeting! Shouldn’t they keep things a bit more professional?
The woman was unraveling a scarf from her neck, casually looping it over Alice’s hat stand and looking at Alice artlessly, without a shred of guilt. Could she do this if she had kissed Alice’s husband in the laundry of this very house? “I never looked at another woman. I never kissed another woman,” Nick had said. So why did she remember it so clearly? And how did he know what she meant when she talked about it happening on the washing machine?
“You’re late, Mrs. Holloway!” a voice called out from the dining room.
Holloway. Holloway. Alice mentally snapped her fingers. This was the deputy principal. She was far too tiny and pretty and sugary to be a deputy principal.
Mrs. Holloway waltzed into the dining room as if she owned the place while Alice went back into the kitchen. Dominick’s sister had put Alice’s muffins into the microwave and the smell of banana filled the kitchen.
“Mrs. Holloway,” said Alice.
“Bleh,” said Maggie, making a face without looking up from the boiling water she was pouring into a row of coffee mugs. She put down the kettle and winked at Alice. “You make sure you keep Mrs. H. in line if she tries to take over again. It’s your meeting. You’re in charge.”
“About that,” said Alice. “I can’t run this meeting.”
“Why not?”
“Dominick obviously didn’t tell you—”
“Dominick doesn’t tell me anything. You know brothers. Oh, right, you don’t. Well, they’re not like sisters.”
Alice explained yet again about her memory loss, and how, yes, she would be seeing a doctor, and no, she didn’t think she should be in bed, and no, she wasn’t joking, and yes, it must have been quite a thump on the head.
Someone called out from the dining room, “What’s going on in there? We can smell muffins!”
“Hold your horses!” called out Maggie. She turned back to Alice and said happily, “So that’s why you’ve been talking about getting back together with Nick! You’ve forgotten the last ten years! Gosh. It must be the weirdest feeling. I’m trying to imagine it. What was I doing when I was twenty-six?”
Alice realized with a start that Maggie, who seemed so middle-aged, was actually four years younger than she was. In fact, all these grown-up women here today were probably in her age group.
Maggie chortled. “I’d say, ‘Oh my God, how did you end up marrying the chubby guy who services your car!’ And then I’d look down at my hips and think, ‘What happened there?’ ”
She slapped herself on what looked to Alice like perfectly slim hips.
“It’s getting boring in there.” The tall, gray-haired woman with the glasses came into the kitchen and swung herself up onto the counter, swinging long, slim, blue-jeaned legs.
She lowered her voice. “You need to get in there fast, Alice, before Mrs. H. plans a coup. Don’t worry, I’ve been subtly undermining everything she says.” She lowered her voice even further. “If she thinks we’ll ever let her live down the shame of the laundry incident, she’s very much mistaken. The evil little troll.”
“You know about the laundry incident?” Alice gripped the knife she was holding to cut the muffins.
“Alice has lost her memory,” said Maggie. “She probably doesn’t even know who you are. Alice, meet Nora.” She paused. “Actually, you mustn’t even know who I am! I’m Maggie! Did you even know that?” She had that disbelieving, self-conscious expression on her face that Alice had seen so many times now. People couldn’t quite believe you could forget them.
“There’s a rumor going around you lost your memory,” said Nora. “I didn’t believe it. I heard someone in Dino’s Coffee Shop talking about it, but I thought it was just the village grapevine gone haywire.