* * *
When Maren came back to the town house several hours later, I was sitting in the kitchen looking up information on gambling addiction with my laptop. She glanced at the screen, tossed her keys on the table, and sighed.
“Does Kari have a gambling addiction?” I asked.
"No, you don’t have an addiction, just a love of playing cards and an unfortunate losing streak. You’re taking responsibility for your debts, though, and paying them off.”
I flipped from one screen to another. "I'm not asking for the official position, I'm asking if Kari has a problem."
"All you need to know is the official position."
I held my hand out to the computer screen, offering it as proof. “This is serious. Kari needs help. She needs counseling.”
Maren laughed and turned away from me, walking to the cupboards to pull out a glass. As she poured herself a drink, she said, “See, this is the problem with Lorna's allegations. You tell a normal person that Kari Kingsley owes four hundred and eighty thousand dollars to casinos, the only assumption they can make is that she's a gambling addict. People don’t realize that it’s not unusual for wealthy people to blow five, ten thousand dollars on a night of entertainment.”
"Even if they’ve already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars?”
Maren leaned against the counter, the red lipstick she wore still as vibrant as it had been in the morning. "I know celebrities who spend that much going to Cannes every year. And to tell you the truth, Kari owes more than that on her credit cards. Her favorite way to waste time is shopping.” Maren slowly swirled the contents of her drink. "But now that I’m her manager, we’re changing that. I have her on a strict budget, she’s selling off the Lamborghini she hardly ever drives, and no more clothes shopping or gambling until her debts are paid." She took a drink, set her glass on the countertop, and ran her fingers through her hair. "Kari's real problem is that she's dragging her feet on her next album. She records a song and then decides she doesn’t like it. But when the new album comes out, she won't have any problem paying off the rest of her debts. Until then, you’ll do appearances so she can focus on singing. As long as she can make payments on her debts, the casinos will keep quiet about what she owes.”
Maren walked toward her bedroom, kicking her shoes off, but then she bent down to pick them up. She never left her shoes lying around.
"What about Lorna?" I called after her. "Is there a way to stop her?”
"I’ll look into that tomorrow,” she said. "Lorna did sign a nondisclosure contract, so we'd win in court. But the problem is that sometimes when you threaten to sue a publisher, they see it as free advertising. It’s like adding fuel to the fire. Nothing sells print quite as well as a scandal." She turned around and surveyed me for another moment. When she spoke again, her voice was impatient. "But you don’t need to worry about Kari or pry into her life. Your job is to be her when you’re needed. That’s all. And don’t go over to Kari's house again unless I okay it. If you find out anything else you think she needs to know, you tell me first. Understood?”
I felt the sting of her reprimand. "All right."
But after she left, I kept reading about gambling addiction. The prognosis for people who didn’t get help seemed bleak. They faced financial ruin, estrangement from their families, thoughts of hopelessness and despair. A lot of them ended up in jail or committed suicide.
Then again, maybe Maren was right and I was worrying about nothing. Maybe four hundred eighty thousand wasn’t a big deal to people who spent eight hundred dollars for a pair of shoes and broke lamps when they were angry.
The image of the glass shards on the floor stayed in my mind, bothering me. Maybe because it reminded me of the way I’d pushed books onto the floor in the library, the way I'd stormed out on my mother. Perhaps besides our mannerisms, our love of horses, and weaknesses for Almond Joys, we also shared a temper.
Seeing it in Kari made me realize for the first time that I didn't like it in myself.
I did an Internet search on Sun Ridge Children’s Hospital. They’d already had the fund-raising concert. Dozens of pictures from the event dotted their website. I found myself staring extra long at the ones of Grant. They didn’t do him justice. They couldn't capture the energy of his movements or the way his gaze sliced through you. Next I noticed the pictures of the children. There was a girl who couldn't have been more than ten—completely bald, but still smiling. I wondered if I would be able to smile like that after chemotherapy. I looked from face to face, my heart squeezing tighter with each set of eyes I looked into.
How could Kari have turned them down?
How could she get requests like this every day and not go crazy with grief?
I finally turned off the computer and went to bed, but the faces stayed in my mind long after I'd shut my eyes.