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and exactly the right amount of tasteful jewelry, all real. She drove a Mercedes, had a rich cache of famous acquaintances, and Barbara Ann met her at about the time she’d landed the biggest agent in New York and was beginning to sign contracts for a series of movies.
    Not that Sable was shallow or superficial. She was entirely earnest. And her devotion to Gabby was one of the things she was most serious about. But they did make an odd couple—Gabby in her oldish Chevy, Sable in her Mercedes. Gabby in her blue jeans and Birken-stocks, raising two kids alone in an average-size four-bedroom house; Sable hiring servants, secretaries and publicists from her Hidden Valley manse. Gabby going to PTA meetings, soccer games, orthodontists’ appointments and block meetings; Sable dashing off to New York for a book-release party, then on tour, starting with Good Morning America and The Today Show.
    If the two of them were not an odd enough combination, Barbara Ann was introduced to their closest crony, Eleanor. A professor. A critic. A dour, drab, intellectual spinster. The three of them together looked perfectly ridiculous, and yet they were clearly thick as thieves. After a while, Barbara Ann began to see how timeless their relationship to each other was. She found out that the connection went deeper and had lasted longer than it even appeared, but they were, all three, protective of the details. That was the only thing that made Barbara Ann continually feel like a newcomer, but it was a significant thing. Apparently Sable had been a college freshman when Gabby was starting her master’s program and Elly was teaching comparative literature when they met and became friends for the first time. They were aged nineteen, twenty-nine and thirty-six. (They must havelooked even stranger then!) Sable moved to Los Angeles to finish studying and begin making her fortune while Gabby and Elly remained close and, of course, welcomed Sable home with open arms as a successful, bestselling writer. But there always seemed more to the story than they were telling, like they were all arrested for murder together or something.
    Barbara immediately recognized the understated power of this trio. Gabby seemed to know everyone in the writing industry—the agents, the editors, the romance writers, the mystery writers, the president of the authors’ guild. She’d collected these acquaintances through years of traveling as a correspondent, teaching, conferences, publishing and various writers’ groups. Sable held the celebrity achievement award for fame and making money. And Elly provided the collegiate connection, the credibility, the brainpower. She had authored many little-known academic papers, but she also had written copious reviews of popular literature and articles for artsy-fartsy publications.
    These women were the movers and shakers.
    But they hadn’t helped her. She was not so far from where she’d started, actually. More books under her belt, sure, but she wasn’t exactly meteoring to fame and fortune. She was still a pudgy housewife who suffered under the constant stress of family obligations and found solace in Twinkies.
    And now Gabby was dead. Gone. Gabby was the one she had truly grown to love and depend on. Of the three of them, only Gabby really consoled her, tried to encourage her, kept her going. Barbara Ann wept as much for Gabby as she wept for the fact that their group would now surely fall apart. Though she had lost patience with the way every goddamn thing had gone Sable’s way,though she felt simpleminded in the face of Elly’s brilliance, though Beth seemed more a child in need of nurturing than an equal, she loved them. She needed them.
    I love them and need them, but do they need me? Of course not! What could I possibly give any one of them?
    It would be too much to say that Barbara Ann was going to give up or live in a vacuum. No, she was going to keep writing, keep in touch with Elly, Sable and Beth, and maintain her