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Maybe it was because she still had not fully exorcised the demons that had followed her from Elias-Clarke in the wake of her departure from Runway a year previously, but Andy Sachs had taken to Starbucks as her default workspace of choice on the weekends. This outlet being by the Mirror had been chosen specifically not only for its convenience, however, but also the unlikelihood that she would see any of said demons. Unfortunately, as the hair on the back of her neck stood up, it appeared that two very specific demons had found her.
“Hello, Andy.”
It was a miracle she avoided spilling coffee on herself with the force of her jerk. Her bag, dictaphone and laptop shook. She glanced up to meet the deceptively innocent smiles of the Priestly twins.
“Christ! Give a girl some warning, will you?”
“Sorry,” said Caroline, not sounding at all apologetic.
“We need to talk to you, you see.” Cassidy plonked herself down on the seat next to Andy with a lack of grace Miranda would definitely not approve of.
“And the Mirror security wouldn’t let us in, even when we threatened to have Mom buy out the paper.”
Andy groaned. “Oh, God. Please don’t tell me you mentioned my name.”
“We didn’t get to that part.”
“Thank God.”
“Yet.”
“Ugh.”
“Just hear us out, Andy, okay? Don't comment until we're finished.”
Andy privately surmised she had little choice, and so resigned herself to hearing the twin terrors out. She placed her hands in her lap and tilted her head expectantly at them.
“Okay. Shoot.”
Caroline pulled out a laptop and loaded up a PowerPoint presentation. With a flourish, she hit the space bar and the title flashed up on screen:
“Why Andy should date the keeper of the Book and not the sorry excuse for a fry cook.”
Andy's left eyelid reflexively twitched. Oh, dear Lord…
“Girls…”
“Shh!” Caroline raised a finger in her direction - a very Miranda-like gesture. “No talking, remember? You promised!”
Andy sighed. The sound of her reluctant capitulation seemed to be all the twins needed for a go-ahead.
“One,” Cassidy proclaimed solemnly. “Starting off quick and easy. The best. 401k. Of all time. Mom doesn’t date bums. And before you get all guilty about it, she’d help you because she wants to, as well as making sure you don’t embarrass her.”
Charming, Andy thought. She dutifully kept silent.
“Two. You’d be on our healthcare plan, too.”
Cassidy flipped the presentation displaying a photograph of a heap of gold that Andy recognised as a screengrab from the first Harry Potter film onto another seamless slide.
“Three,” Caroline announced. “Not only will the bathroom be way more hygienic, you'll get your own. No shedding like the cook probably does. Or, at least, the only shedding would be from Patricia.”
“Speaking of,” - Cassidy clicked the button, sending the picture of (is that Miranda's personal bathroom? God -) spiralling into a snapshot of the twins hugging Patricia in Central Park.
“It's a buy one get four deal! You'd get a dog, no additional paperwork or vet bills to deal with. She likes you. And she doesn't like anybody.”
“We're talking about Patricia here, not Mom, to be clear. Although it works the other way around too.”
“But yeah, not only do you get a dog for free, but two kids too. No men, pregnancy or birth involved. No pregnancy scares, either. No school fees, just an occasional - fine, Caro, frequent - ice cream tax.”
“And on food,” Caroline grinned - a veritable feast flickered to life onscreen - “a private chef is included! Not that Mom isn't great at making pancakes for brunch, even she'll deny it to her grave and back. Though if you want greasy takeout we will so back you up on that.”
“But,” Cassidy said, “it'd have to be delivered to the house, because-”
The food vanished, replaced by a picture of a subway station clearly taken from Getty Images. Microsoft Paint had obviously been used to draw a large red ‘X’ over it.
“- we don't take the subway. You wouldn’t have to, either. Mom says it's full of diseased sewer rats, and we’re only ninety percent sure she was talking about actual animals.”
“Hey!” Andy spluttered. “Do I look like a diseased sewer rat to you?”
They huffed, deciding to let her unsanctioned interruption go.
“Obviously not. Even in - those ripped trousers. Is it deliberate? Anyway, that's why you shouldn't have to take it.”
“Besides,” - flick, up pops an artful shot of the interior of Smith & Wollensky - “think of how much nicer your dates would be! The restaurants would actually be hygienic, and-”
Flick. The steakhouse interior slid away, replaced by a view of Miranda’s objectively impressive liquor cabinet.
“- you’d never have to put up with bad beer again! Quality alcohol. On tap.”
“Please don't tell me you're speaking from experience.”
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Of course not. But you seriously think Mom drinks anything but the best?”
“Fair point.”
“Moving on - we're getting to the good stuff, now-”
The screen lit up with a cartoon gavel. Andy furrowed her brow.
“Think of all the extra discrimination protections at work! No one can question you because you can call them a homophobe and sue! Mom has great lawyers.”
“Girls,” Andy groaned, her head falling to her hands, “please, whatever you do, do not become lawyers.”
Identical smirks.
“Okay then we'll try a different angle.”
In spite of herself, Andy cackled at the next slide. It showed a picture of Irv Ravitz with two long blue streaks on either side of his face, clearly supposed to mimic tears.
“Mom's Boss will be so annoyed. He'll hate it.”
“Maybe he'll have a heart attack and die,” Cassidy said gleefully. Andy couldn't bring herself to chastise the girl.
“Because he can't do anything about it! You don't work for Elias-Clarke anymore.”
Against her better judgement, Andy let her lips quirk up.
Cassidy giggled. Caroline elbowed her. Andy got a bad feeling about what's coming next. She was shortly proven right, when:
“Now for the penultimate reason why Mom is a better choice than the fry-cook. With him, you don't have, um, variety. Same old, same old. But if you're in a gay relationship, you can pick and choose on the daily.”
“Pick and choose?” Andy winced. The screen had not changed, then Cassidy leant forward and hit the space bar.
Andy had seen many sights she wished to erase from her memory in her life. None of which so much as the dissolving of Irv’s face into a photograph of the interior of an adult store - specifically, of shelves filled with rows upon rows of silicone in a dazzling array of shapes and sizes.
“Girls!” Andy all but shrieked. “Do you not have internet controls?”
Caroline flushed bright red. Cassidy rolled her eyes.
“In theory. But there’s no internet controls on how to search ‘how to bypass internet controls’”.
“Oh my God. Please. Just change the slide.”
“Okay, okay. Last one.”
The image blessedly changed to the front cover of a leather-bound journal.
“The last- and most important reason - is that unlike cook boy, Mom likes you. Like really, really likes you.”
As much as she wished the girls to be telling the truth, Andy tried not to look sceptical.
“What’s this supposed to be, then?” She pointed at the screen.
Twin expressions of guilt.
“Cassidy, Caroline…”
“Um. Her diary. It said so in there. You feature quite a lot, actually.”
“You read her diary?”
“Just a little!” Caroline said defensively. “Only enough to confirm what we suspected anyway.”
“It’s Ahn-drey-ah this, Ahn-drey-ah that, all the time,” Cassidy commented. “We tried saying bad stuff about you, only as a test, we didn’t really mean it - and got grounded! We never get grounded. That’s when we knew.”
“Knew what?”
A fourth voice, twice as quiet and utterly terrifying, cut through the air over them. Three heads swivelled upwards to meet the inscrutable gaze of La Priestly.
“Oh, fuck,” Cassidy muttered.
“Language, Cassidy!”
Andy and Miranda’s voices rang out in unison. For the first time in a year, they made direct eye contact.
“Knew what, Cassidy?” Miranda’s tone was gentle and dangerous.
Cassidy squirmed in her seat. Caroline swallowed.
“Um.”
“Well? I’m waiting. You know how I love to wait.” She crossed her arms expectantly.
Andy threw her hands up. “For once, I’m innocent here, Miranda. This is an ambush.”
Lips pressed together in what could have either been exasperation or faintly suppressed amusement. Perhaps both. Simultaneously. Then she looked down and frowned.
“While I have no doubt you are telling the truth - you were never a good liar, Andrea - given the reluctance of my daughters to explain themselves, might you enlighten me as to why you’re recording your conversation?”
Andy followed her line of sight, and gasped in horror. The startle and subsequent jerk of the table on account of the twins’ sudden arrival had knocked the ‘on’ button of her dictaphone.
“Oh my God, Miranda, that wasn’t deliberate! They just - appeared, and I jumped and shook the table. It must have clicked on by mistake. I’m so sorry!”
Caroline shrugged. “She’s right, Mom. She hasn't touched that since we arrived.”
Miranda raised an eyebrow questioningly.
“If that is the case, and as I see you have pluggable headphones, I don’t imagine anyone here would object to me listening to it, then? If no one has anything to hide?”
Three faces paled.
“Mom -”
“- that’s not necessary -”
“- Miranda -”
“- excellent.”
With a slight smirk bordering on the feral, Miranda gracefully leaned in, plucked the dictaphone and headphones off the table, put them on, then clicked the ‘stop’ and ‘playback’ buttons.
Cassidy and Caroline reflexively reached for each others’ hands under the table. Andy crossed her legs tightly together and bit the inside of her cheek.
The next five minutes were undoubtedly the most entertaining and yet most terrifying of all three of their lives. Miranda’s face cycled through scarlet, crimson, maroon, ivory and finally ghostly white. Her lips pressed iron-straight against one another. At one point, she all but fell into the free seat. As the recording drew towards the end, her eyes firstly bugged and then narrowed into near-slits. With a trembling hand, she turned the recorder off and removed the headphones, dropping them onto the table with a smack.
Andy had never been so grateful in her life to not be on the receiving end of Miranda's ire. The same could not be said for the twins, who appeared on the brink of having very public accidents.
“So,” Miranda hissed. Andy had never heard that tone directed at her daughters and shivered.
“You thought you would read my journal?”
Caroline whimpered. Cassidy looked like she was going to be sick.
“My private journal? And then make the contents of said private journal public?”
“We’re sorry, Mom!” Cassidy whispered. “We were just trying to help!”
“Help,” Miranda replied. “You were trying to help me. How exactly does grossly violating my privacy and then publicly humiliating me constitute helping? Do explain. I would be very interested to know your thought process here.” She folded her arms and stared at her daughters.
Andy was horrified to detect a thread of what in anyone else would be described as ‘choked-up’ in her former boss’ voice.
Caroline’s lips twisted, and then:
“Because you would never have told her! You would have just kept on writing in your diary about how much you miss her and never done anything about it! You’re miserable, Mom! We just want you to be happy.”
Miranda blinked. Rapidly.
“Happy,” she repeated. “Have you stopped to consider that all you have done is embarrass me? That a young woman like Andrea would almost certainly run for the hills from a perimenopausal thrice-divorceé?”
Her hands clutched the edges of the table so tightly the veins protruded out and the knuckles were white. Such an uncharacteristic physical reaction was all Andy needed to confirm that somehow, miraculously, the twins had been telling the truth.
“Almost.” She spoke quietly, but it was enough to catch the entire table's attention.
“What?”
“Almost certainly - it leaves room for a margin of error.”
“Is there - a margin of error?”
Andy’s head was spinning so much that she couldn’t even place which of the Priestly women the whisper had come from.
“Yes, actually. Firstly, I’ve been broken up with Nate for over a year, so the comparisons are moot. Not wrong, though.”
She took a deep breath, and looked up from the entirely too-interesting point on the table that had caught her fixation for the prior thirty seconds. Caroline’s mouth was slightly open, Cassidy was practically vibrating in nervous anticipation, and Miranda appeared to be doing her very best impression of a statue - and her worst impression was uncanny.
She swallowed and straightened her posture.
“Secondly, and more importantly, there’s not just a margin of error, but just an error, flat out. While I would be even more disturbed than your mother if you had somehow managed to get your hands on my own diary - well.”
She shifted her gaze from the twins to directly look Miranda in the eye.
“The last reason - that you missed - is that you would have read pretty much exactly the same sentiment, at length, just with the names reversed.”
The statue cracked. Miranda’s pupils dilated, and it became apparent that she had been holding her breath, if the heavy, ragged exhale was anything to go by.
The twins, however, were once again far more emotionally demonstrative than their mother. Cassidy beamed, and Caroline directed a quick glance to her right, before:
“Andy,” she giggled. “You broke Mom!”
It took less than a second for Miranda to elegantly whack her on the arm.
“Bobbsey!”
She turned back to face Andy.
“Do you,” Miranda breathed, “mean that?”
Andy offered a clumsy, lopsided smile. “Like you say, Miranda, I’ve never been a good liar. I certainly don’t intend to start now.”
The smile she received in return was neither clumsy or lopsided. It was blinding.
“Yes!” Cassidy pumped a fist in the air, then quailed as Miranda glared at her - even if the glare had almost all of the sting taken out of it.
“Don’t think you two are getting off this easily. You are facing a battery of punishments for your escapades with my journal.”
“Mo-om!”
“While I appreciate - my God, do I appreciate - the intentions behind it, I’ve got to agree with your mom here, girls.”
The twin pouts were more than compensated for by the grateful, if smug, smirk she received in return.
“Although - “ she added, “I do want to validate some of your claims.”
“Oh?” Miranda asked.
“I hear someone has a secret pancake-making talent.”
“That is classified information.”
Andy snorted.
“Thing is, I think your girls are about as good liars as I am.”
“They try harder. To varied success.”
“Are you insulting their powerpoint making skills?”
“Ah, yes. This powerpoint. I feel like it is important for me to see it. Particularly as you both look horrified at the prospect. And it contains evidence of you bypassing my internet restrictions, apparently.”
Giggles long gone, Andy cackled.
“No!”
“No!”
“Oh, yes. Hand it over.”
Caroline made to reluctantly push the laptop across the table. Cassidy clapped a hand over her arm.
“We’ll hand it over when you’ve set a date, time, activity and location for your first date.”
The lip-press was definitely one of amusement and not exasperation this time.
“You drive a hard bargain, Bobbsey. Today, thirty minutes from now, brunch at the townhouse. I appear to be obligated to defend my pancake making abilities.”
“Deal.”
As they left the Starbucks and approached Roy’s waiting car across the street, Andy faintly heard a whisper of “we are so dead. Like Saddam Hussein level dead.”
But Miranda’s fingers had migrated from lightly touching the small of her back to inquisitively brushing against her own hand, and she couldn’t focus on anything else but gently clasping them together.
The twins may have been ‘so dead’, but Andy had never felt more alive.