Chapter 35: The gossip

Luna sipped from her champagne flute as she lazily scanned the party with her eyes. She was determined to take it slow on the drinking tonight, she wasn’t going to get buzzed like the other night.

Rita had stepped out to make a call, no doubt something that had to do with the office. Rita took her job very seriously, even more than Luna herself. She was always available 24/7 and she never let her company phone where she received company calls, out of her sight for even one minute. The thing was practically glued to her hand.

Luna smiled a little, she knew how lucky she was to have someone so dedicated in her corner, she didn’t even need anyone to tell her that.

“Poor girl,” Luna heard someone say behind her.

Luna turned her head just a little to glance briefly at who was talking, she saw three women standing and talking with champagne flutes in their hands. Luna turned back as the women continued talking.

“I know,” another one said, “All that child ever did was suffer in that witch’s claws. Her marriage to the son was a sham, I knew that from the beginning. No one told me, but I had a feeling, you know?”

Luna realized with a sinking heart that they were talking about her.

“You don’t even need a feeling to see that that marriage was a sham,” the first woman spoke up again. “The boy looked miserable anytime he and his supposed ‘wife’ came out. Never seen a couple look more sad to be with each other my whole life.”

“You’re talking about how miserable Justin looked? What about the girl?” the second woman piped up again. “She looked like she was being sold to the family rather than marrying the love of her life.”

Luna winced at how uncomfortably close the woman’s words were to the truth.

“The day that was supposed to be their honeymoon, I heard Justin came into work that day,” the first woman continued, “He was so unhappy in his marriage he couldn’t even bear to be with his wife on the second happiest day of their lives together.”

The women clucked at this, Luna imagined they were shaking their heads. She wanted to stop listening, she wanted to leave and walk away from the gossiping women, but she stayed. This was her they were talking about, if they didn’t have the guts to say it to her face, then she would just have to hear it behind her back now, wouldn’t she?

Besides, as Rita had rightly said, information is power. She needed to know what the people she was partying with thought about her, to know how to deal with them. When she left three years ago, she had shut herself off from the press, the media, and anything news agency-related. She hadn’t wanted to hear anything about her, she hadn’t wanted to see anything about her, she hadn’t even wanted to know anything at all. She had just wanted to die. She had wanted to burrow into a dark corner and not see the light of day again, that’s how wrecked she had been.

But now she had to know, she was stronger now and she was in the thick of it all again, she needed all the help she could get. So she continued to listen.

“Well, we all know why she was miserable now, don’t we?” the third woman, who hadn’t spoken at all, finally did. She paused. “The witch herself.”

The other two women made sounds of agreement.

“If my daughter married Justin Lake and had Moira Lake as a mother-in-law, I’d shoot myself dead,” the third woman continued.

Luna realized the third woman had more balls than the other two. From the sound of her voice and the way she didn’t mince her words, Luna had the feeling the third woman could say everything she was saying right now to Moira’s face if it came to it.

The other two women snickered and chuckled.

“You’re so bad!” one of them said, chuckling.

“And why would you be the one to kill yourself?” the second one asked, “you’re not the one married to her son.”

“Well, you didn’t let me finish,” the third woman continued, “If I had Moira Lake as my daughter’s mother-in-law, I’d kill myself after I’ve killed her for being snarky and evil.”

“Oh my God,” the other two women laughed.

“And prison is not for me,” the third woman said and snickered. “It is so not for me, so I would just kill myself and get it over with. My daughter is smart, she will find another man and marry him. And Moira and I would just have to meet in hell, I guess, and there, we can continue our sparring.”

The three women laughed at that, and then they laughed some more.

“I wonder who that poor girl’s mother was, that she allowed such a terrible thing to befall her child,” the third woman finally said when they stopped laughing.

Finally, Luna had heard enough, she walked away from them and made her way blindly toward the bathroom.

She pushed open the door and went in. Thankfully, no one was there, she locked the door and leaned against it as she closed her eyes.

Her mom was a strong woman, Luna thought to herself. Those three women back in the hall had asked themselves what sort of a mother was her mom, and Luna replied silently in her heart now. Her mother was a strong woman, a woman who had had to watch her young and naive daughter shipped off to the big city to marry a man she did not know. And she had to do it for the family.

Neither of the people out there knew her, they didn’t know her then and they didn’t know her now. Luna told herself she didn’t care what they thought of her, but there was an ache in her heart.

Luna opened her eyes, she walked over to the sink in the restroom, she placed her hands on the slab and looked at herself in the mirror. The memories came crashing in.