Diana giggled and rolled her eyes; then she said very seriously, “For starters, you have an adventurous side that I don’t have.”
“One of my ‘adventures’ will probably land me in jail before I’m eighteen.”
“It will not!” Diana said. “What I mean is, when you decide to do something—like take pictures from the top of that scaffolding on that new high-rise—you ignore the danger and just do it!”
“You went up there with me.”
“But I didn’t want to. I was so scared my legs were shaking.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“That’s what I mean. I never would have done that before. I wish I could be more like you.”
Corey considered that for a long moment; then her eyes began to sparkle with mischief. “Well, if you want to be more like me, we should start with this bedroom.” She reached behind her head before Diana knew what she was up to.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever had a pillow fight?”
“No, wh—” The rest of her question was cut off by a fat pillow stuffed with goose down that landed on her head. Corey swiveled to the foot of the bed and ducked, expecting retribution, but Diana sat very quietly, munching on her pretzel, the pillow lying on her knees. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said, studying Corey with fascination.
Caught off-guard by her tranquil tone, Corey said, “Why not?”
“Because it makes me have to—retaliate!”
Diana lunged so swiftly, and her aim was so good, that Corey didn’t have time to duck. Laughing, she dived for another one of the pillows, and so did Diana. Five minutes later, when their concerned parents threw open the bedroom door, they had to peer through a blizzard of drifting feathers to locate the two teenage girls, who were lying on their backs in the middle of the bedroom, shrieking with laughter.
“What in the world is going on in here?” Mr. Foster said, sounding more alarmed than annoyed.
“Pillow fight,” Diana provided breathlessly. A feather was stuck to her lips, and she started to remove it with her thumb and forefinger.
“No, just spit it out,” Corey laughingly instructed her, and then demonstrated, forcing the feathers away from her lips with her breath and the tip of her tongue.
Diana followed suit, then dissolved into giggles at the expression on her father’s face. While feathers floated around his head and settled onto his shoulders, he stood stock-still in his robe and pajamas, gaping at them beside Diana’s new mom, who was trying to look stern and hide her laughter at the same time. “We’ll clean this mess up before we go to bed,” Diana promised.
“No we won’t,” Corey stated implacably. “First you have to sleep in this mess. If you can do that, then there’s a slim chance that with more practice you could become a marvelous slob like me!”
Still lying on the floor, Diana turned her head toward Corey and choked back another giggle. “Oh, do you really think so?”
“There’s a chance,” Corey declared solemnly. “If you truly, truly work at it.”
Robert Foster looked taken aback at the plan, but his wife put her hand on his sleeve and drew him out of the room, closing the door behind them. In the hallway, he looked at his new wife with a baffled expression. “The girls made that mess, don’t you think they should clean it up tonight?”
“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Mary Foster said.
“Those pillows are expensive. Diana should have thought of that ahead of time. It’s reckless and irresponsible to have destroyed them, honey.”
“Bob,” she said softly, tucking her arm in his and marching him down the hall and into their bedroom suite. “Diana is the most responsible girl I’ve ever met.”
“I’ve taught her to be that way. It’s important for an adult to be conscious of the consequences of their actions and to act accordingly.”
“Darling,” she whispered. “She isn’t an adult.”
He considered that while a mischievous grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “You’re right about that, but do you really think it’s important that she also learn how to spit?”
“It’s imperative,” his wife said with a laugh.
Leaning down, he kissed the smile off her face. “I love you,” he whispered.
She kissed him back. “I love Diana,” she answered.
“I know, and that makes me love you even more.” He got into bed and pulled her on top of him, his hands shifting over her silk negligee. “You know I love Corey, don’t you?”
She nodded, her right hand reaching stealthily for the feather pillow on the headboard.
“You’ve changed our lives,” he continued.
“Thank you,” she whispered, lifting off his chest into a sitting position beside his hip. “Now let me change your attitude.”
“About what?”
“Pillow fights,” she said, laughing as she smacked him with her pillow.
Down the hall, in Diana’s room, the sisters heard a loud thud. Both girls jumped to their feet in alarm and ran down the hall. “Mom, Dad—” Diana called, knocking on the door. “Is everything okay? We heard a noise!”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Mary Foster called, “but I could use a little help in here.”
Diana and Corey exchanged puzzled looks; then Diana turned the knob and opened the door. They stopped dead. Openmouthed, they gaped at their parents, then at each other.
And they burst into shrieks of laughter.
On the floor, amid another blizzard of feathers, their father had pinned their mother beneath him and was holding her forearms against the carpet. “Say uncle,” he ordered.
His wife laughed harder.
“Say uncle, or I won’t let you up.”
In response to that arrogant masculine command, Mary Foster looked at her daughters, struggled for breath, and
managed to say between laughs, “I think women have to . . . to stick together . . . at times like . . . this.”
The girls stuck together. The score that night was 12 to 2; twelve feather pillows that met their demise against two foam-rubber pillows that survived.
Chapter 5
BRIMMING WITH GOOD NEWS, DIANA snatched her schoolbooks from the leather seat of the new BMW her father had given her last month for her sixteenth birthday and raced up the steps of the stately Georgian mansion that had been her first and only home. In the two years since her stepmother, and then her stepgrandparents, had come to live with them in River Oaks, the house and grounds had changed in atmosphere and appearance. Laughter and conversation had filled the empty silences; wonderful smells emanated from the kitchen; flowers bloomed in rampant splendor in the gardens and splashed their colors in beautiful arrangements all over the house.
Everyone was happy with the new look, the new atmosphere, and the new family arrangements—everyone except Glenna, the housekeeper who’d helped raise Diana after her mother died. It was Glenna who was in the foyer when Diana ran into the house. “Glenna, is Corey home?”
“I think she’s out in back with everyone else, talking about tomorrow night’s party.” Glenna finished dusting a walnut console table and straightened, giving it a close look. “When your mama was alive, she called in caterers and florists when she wanted to give a party. She used to let them do all the work,” she added pointedly. “That’s the way most rich folks entertain each other, but not us.”
“Nope, not us,” Diana said with a quick smile. “Now we’re trendsetters.” She headed down the hall, toward the back of the house, with Glenna walking beside her, irritably swiping her dustcloth at nonexistent specks of dust on tables and chairs as they passed.
“Used to be, when we gave a party,” Glenna continued doggedly, “that everything only had to look pretty and taste good. But now, that’s not good enough. Now everything has to be fresh and everything has to be natural and everything has to be homegrown and homemade. Homegrown and homemade is for country folks. I realize your grandparents are country folks, and they don’t understand that . . .”