Page 100 of Filthy Twisted Devil

“Are you twerking?” Brinley asks, pointing at Pippa with a horrified expression.

“I’m trying to twerk. Don’t think I’m succeeding, though,” Pippa says, rotating her butt a little more. “There, is that better?”

“No!” Brinley, Maura, and I scream in unison. Cat, who passed tipsy a while ago, slurs a delayed, “Noooooo.”

“Don’t listen to them!” Mom declares, and grabs the arms of her wheelchair to hoist herself up to standing. “Don’t stop. I’ll join you.”

“You don’t have to, Mrs. Locke,” Brinley says.

Mom just waves her hand dismissively. “I’m fine. I’ve still got a few moves left in me.”

Thankfully, my mother doesn’t attempt twerking. She does shimmy a little, which makes us all whoop.

If it weren’t Brinley’s bachelorette party, I might worry about Mom having a flare-up from dancing. In the moment, though, with a glass of champagne and a pint of cookie dough ice cream in my system, I can’t bring myself to care. I join in with the cheering as I watch as Pippa and my mother perform the world’s most awkward version of “Pony” by Ginuwine for us.

The bachelorette party I planned doesn’t have strippers or penis-shaped anything. It started with a florist coming over and helping us make wildflower crowns. That was followed with wine and a luxurious picnic spread, prepared by Beau. Then, the girls and I watched the sun set over the fields while we sat in rocking chairs on the porch and shared our favorite memories of Brinley.

I’m not sure exactly when things took a turn. Maybe when Cat opened her own personal champagne bottle, celebrating drinking for the first time in over a year. Maybe when Maura shocked everyone by gifting Brinley a remote-control vibrator. All I know is, by the time Pippa put on her playlist of the filthiest songs ever written, we were all more than ready to let loose.

Mom wasn’t supposed to join us, but when she went down to the kitchen to make tea, Brinley insisted on dragging her into the celebration, at least for a while. Now, I’m watching Pippa put her flower crown on Mom while Mom does the hand jive.

“I can’t believe you remember that dance!” I laugh.

“How could I not?” Mom says. “You only made me watch Grease about a thousand times as a kid.”

“Ugh, I wanted to be bad Sandy so bad.” Pippa sighs. “When she comes out in the leather leggings and says ‘Tell me about it, stud.’”

“Me too!” Cat says. “I never got up the courage to buy the leather leggings, though.”

“Me neither,” says Pippa.

Mom raises her brows. “I did. Eden’s father loved them.”

The entire group shrieks, and I press my hands over my ears to protect myself from both the sound and the mental image.

“Please tell me there are pictures!” Brinley says.

“There might be some in one of my albums,” Mom says. “They’re on the bookshelf in the living room. It would be before the kids were born. Eden can get it.”

“No,” Pippa says as she helps Mom back into her wheelchair. “I’ll get it. I have a feeling Eden would conveniently be unable to find it.”

“You must have been really in love with Mr. Locke if you pulled out the leggings,” Brinley says.

Mom smiles. “He was the love of my life. He would have hated all this—the party, the people in his house, the sportscars in the driveway. He was a quiet, simple man, and all these city folks would have driven him insane. But he would have loved watching Edie make her dreams come true.”

She beams at me, and the image of it warms me from the inside—of Dad seeing what I’ve made for myself and celebrating me for it. I like to think that’s exactly how he would have felt.

For a second, I let myself build the picture the way I’d build an event: Dad at the edge of the porch light, arms crossed, saying nothing—because he never needed to say anything. Just there. Just proud. It’s the one guest list I can’t fix, and tonight, for once, that feels less like a hole and more like a hand on my shoulder.

Maura wipes a tear from the bottom of her eye, and I know she’s thinking about love and loss. The initial results of her clinical trial have been promising, but they’re far from a guarantee. Despite the tears, she’s still grinning, her face glowing with happiness. That’s the incredible thing about Maura. She spends far less time worrying about the future than being thrilled that she made it this long.

Before anyone can get too maudlin, Pippa bursts outside, photo album in hand.

“Avert your eyes, Eden,” she says. “This is a pretty hot photo.”

She flips open the album to several photos of Mom, thirty years ago, dressed in tight leather leggings and a Nirvana T-shirt she clearly cropped herself with a pair of scissors.

“Damn!” Brinley says. “You look incredible!”