She’d slept with Susan, Lara was sure of that.  She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter, it was none of her business, she didn’t care.  But beneath the veneer of indifference she’d fixed to her skin, she did.  Care.  She cared.  About Susan.  In spite of everything that had passed between them, she cared and that burned her very core.

*~*~*~*~*

            Inside, Bette paced, watching Lara’s staff set up the steam table, buffet and bar.  Not even a cash bar.  Everything paid for.  Who was this woman who could drop this kind of money on a dime?  A rich woman, her mind told her, Peggy Peabody’s daughter who, if she lacked her mother’s passion for art, made up for it with the willingness to throw large sums of money at it.  But why?  The question niggled at her, like an itch, scraping the back of her mind with infuriating persistence.

            First of all, it was odd that Peggy had never mentioned her.  Of all the times she and Peggy had spoken of family, Helena was never mentioned.  That bespoke a certain alienation of affection.  Was Helena competing with her mother, or for her mother’s attention?  Was the CAC just a pawn in some family dysfunction? She tried to put it out of mind.  The opportunity to host a 30-year retrospective of Ellen Barnes’ work was sufficient bait, and she’d swallowed it, no matter how many hooks it concealed.

            Candace walked up behind Bette and stopped her motion, stroking away her tension with warm hands on bare skin.  “Shhhh, lover, it’s only for a few hours¼then you’ll have your domain back in your grasp.”

            Bette’s eyes, sad and round, spoke her doubts.  It could be a very long few hours, if anything went wrong.

*~*~*~*~*

            Helena Peabody surveyed the wing of the CAC that was going to be housing her sponsored exhibit.  The space itself looked wonderful, but it seemed to be missing something, an elegance she always sought after.  It was so LA, bland and lacking in character.   Part of her discomfort could be laid at the doorstep of its newness.  She could still smell fresh-sawn wood, drywall dust, and paint.  The new flooring, laid down only a week or two ago, was still virgin and bare of scuffmarks; it was an unblazed trail.  Was that it?  Did she fear failure , ‘suppose I host an exhibit and no one comes’ , and the unstinting scorn of her mother?