“Of course I did. You were nicer and more interesting than any of them.”
I touched her hand. “You can do more than answer phones, Tina. You’re not stuck here.”
She sighed and popped open the button on her shirt that Crystal had closed. “Well,” she said after gazing out at the harbor for a moment, “now that you mention it … there is an accounting assistant job open at work.”
I perked up. “And you do have some connections there,” I said with a wink.
She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “I guess I could ask Daddy.”
I jumped out of my seat before she could change her mind. She hid her ashtray behind the curtain and I dashed into the hall and headed for the staircase, where Mr. Brandt was walking up the steps and loosening his tie. “Tina wants to ask you something,” I said.
He gave me a skeptical glance as he followed me into the bedroom, where he sniffed the air and frowned. “You better not be smoking again, Tina Mae Brandt.”
She stared at him. I didn’t mind him getting on her back about the cigarettes, but she couldn’t stand up to him no matter what. She’d mouth off to anybody except him.
“No, sir,” she replied.
“Mr. Brandt,” I said, and he turned his head toward me. There wasn’t a line on his face except for the wrinkles that creased into the corners of his eyes whenever he smiled. He wasn’t smiling now, though. He rarely did when I was around. I’d always gotten the feeling that he’d rather Tina be best friends with a shrinking violet who shared her zip code. “Tina mentioned there’s an accounting assistant position open at your firm, and we were wondering if you’d consider her.”
He squinted in my direction. “We were wondering?” he said. “You’re usually the one who’s wondering. You’ve got quite a talent for pushing my daughter into places she doesn’t belong. Do you think I’ve forgotten the time you pressured her into applying for the editor-in-chief position at the school newspaper?”
“That was nine years ago,” I reminded him. “And she would’ve been brilliant if she’d been given a chance. People were just too ignorant to see her as anything but a cheerleader.”
He slid off his tie. “And as I predicted, that endeavor ended in disappointment. You’re always putting crazy ideas in Tina’s head.”
I stared at the carpet. “You won’t let her have any ideas.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said indignantly, like I was a sassy teenager.
“Daddy,” Tina broke in, “this isn’t a crazy idea. I want a better job so I can make enough money to get my own place.”
He scratched his head. “And why would you want to do that?”
“Because,” Tina said, “I’m twenty-four … and I can’t deal with your wife anymore.”
Mr. Brandt stared at her as he wrapped his tie around his hand. Then he strode across the room and sat on the window seat. “Bunny,” he said gently, and it worried me. Sugar and bunny always preceded bad things. “You’re much better off at home than out on your own. This is one of the best houses in Mount Pleasant. I bought you a new car. I take good care of you, don’t I?”
She nodded. “But I should take care of myself.”
“Why? Because Savannah says so?” he said, stuffing his tie into his pocket. “Now I know you don’t really want to be an accounting assistant. You’d be hidden away in the back of the office, buried in facts and figures. The job is for a dull, serious, meticulous type who’s good with math. That’s not you, bunny. You belong right out front where you can shine. I want everybody to see what a pretty daughter I have.” He leaned across the space between them and kissed her forehead. “Now forget this foolishness before you carve worry lines into that gorgeous face.”
I couldn’t stand it. Ever since Tina came home from Davidson, it seemed like Mr. Brandt had lost all faith in her. The Dean let you into that school as a favor to me, he’d said that summer. Do you know what an embarrassment this is?
I supposed he thought that keeping her chained to the reception desk would prevent any more embarrassment. But I wanted her to argue. I wanted her to tell him to give her another chance. I wanted her to show him that she could do more than manage a multiline phone system and frost cupcakes. Instead she just twisted her mouth into a pout and stared at the sparkling water in the distance.
*
Tina was quiet while she drove me home. The top was down, our hair swirled around our heads, and I didn’t speak up until she tuned the radio to a country music station. “Your father’s wrong,” I finally said.
Tina’s eyes were hidden behind sunglasses with rhinestone frames. She tapped her French manicure against the steering wheel as she stopped in front of my house, which was in a neighborhood without a harbor view or curving driveways. The homes were small and one-story, with chipped paint and carports and broken-down Buicks on concrete blocks.
“My father’s a smart man, Savannah. He graduated from Duke.”
She’d told me this a thousand times. “That doesn’t mean he can’t make a mistake.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re always criticizing him, and he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Tina,” I said tiredly, “I know your father’s been generous to you … but he also wants to keep you locked up. The accounting assistant job is for somebody who’s good with math? You could be good with math if you tried. That’s not you, bunny. He treats you like you’re twelve years old. He’s holding you back, and you’re letting him. What he’s doing isn’t right.”
She drew in her lower lip. “Well,” she said, “how would you know how a father’s supposed to act? You’ve never had one.”
I swallowed. “Don’t change the subject. And it’s just deliberately mean of you to bring that up. It has nothing to do with this.”
She yanked off her sunglasses and flung them onto the dashboard. “It has everything to do with this. Maybe you wish you didn’t have to worry about paying bills and finding a job. Maybe you’re jealous.”
I winced, staring at the only flaw on her face—a chicken-pox scar at the edge of her left eye. I’d heard the same sort of thing before from Mount Pleasant girls, but never from her. That made it hurt so much more, especially because it was partly true. Still, it wasn’t the reason I’d pushed her to stop being so helpless.
I tossed my hair. “What a petty way to get back at me for telling you the truth.”
“If I’m so petty,” she said, “then maybe you should get the hell out of my car.”
I faked a gasp as I opened the door, slid off the seat, and stepped onto the sidewalk. “Oh, my,” I said, slamming the door shut. “Tina Brandt said the h word. What’s next? Are you going to replace fudge and shoot and b with the real thing? But don’t worry … if you start talking with a grown-up’s mouth, I promise not to tell your daddy.”
Tina hit the gas. The BMW screeched and left tire tracks on the road as she drove toward the setting sun. I watched until I couldn’t see the car anymore, and then I turned and walked a few feet from the curb to the house I shared with Mom. It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an American flag out front.
I stepped across creaky wooden slats on the front porch, passing my old bicycle propped up in the corner. It was pink with a personalized license plate—Savannah in iridescent letters—and I’d worn out its tires from riding around town all through junior high. It was rusty now and I kept telling Mom to get rid of it, but she was sentimental about that thing. I supposed this was because it had come from her aunt Primrose—an eccentric widow with money whom I’d never met. She’d moved way out to Arizona before I was born, but she never failed to send me a gift each Christmas when I was a kid. Aunt Primrose has a good heart, Mom always said with a smile as she watched me unwrap those presents every year.
“Savannah?” Mom called from inside.
I opened the screen door and walked into the living room. The whole house smelled like a perm. Our plaid furniture was battered and the paint on the walls was faded, but we kept the place
neat and clean and there were fresh flowers in a vase on the coffee table. Mom grew them in the backyard.
“Hi, darlin’,” she said as I passed the room where she was styling a woman’s hair.
It was a small spare bedroom that Mom had begun using as a beauty salon when I was a baby so she could keep one eye on her customers and the other on me. Her business had supported us for years without help from anyone—including my father, whoever he was. Mom had said she didn’t know—that when she was young she’d done things she wasn’t proud of—and the paternal possibilities weren’t worth thinking about. But that hadn’t stopped me from wondering.
I gave her a listless wave. Mom was forty-five and in phenomenal shape from Pilates and Zumba DVDs. Her body was taller and curvier than mine. She’d passed her honey-brown eyes along to me, and she spent a half hour every morning turning her long auburn hair into a mass of spiral curls. She was also diligent about her skin. She stayed out of the sun and moisturized daily, and the only wrinkles on her face were three thin horizontal lines across her forehead that creased deeper as she stared at me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Everything, I thought. But I was too worn-out to explain. “I had a fight with Tina.”
“About what?” she asked as she finished blow-drying her customer’s hair.
I couldn’t tell her. The father issue always lingered like an ugly wart on somebody’s nose that nobody dared to mention. So I just shrugged.
Mom unplugged the blow-dryer. “Well,” she said, “whatever it is … I’m sure you two will work it out. You always do.”
That was true. I’d had lots of arguments and estrangements with Tina, but they’d never lasted long. I wasn’t sure about this one, though. She’d never said anything that had cut so deep.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, and Mom nodded while she combed and teased.
I went into the bathroom, which had weak water pressure and chipped tiles the color of pistachio ice cream. When I came out in my robe with wet hair hanging down my back, Mom’s customer was gone and she was sitting on our porch swing.
“The mailman brought you something,” she called through the screen door. “It’s on the kitchen table. It has to be good news … we’re due for some.”
I rushed to the kitchen and tore open a manila envelope from a literary magazine. A few months ago, I sent in a short story that I’d worked on for weeks, and I was sure it could make me a published author. I hoped it would be the start of something big. But when I tore open the envelope, I felt so incredibly small. The magazine had returned my story with I’m afraid this simply isn’t something we’d like to pursue written in red ink.
“Are they going to publish your story?” Mom shouted from the porch.
I shoved it in the trash. Then I lugged myself outside and sat beside her on the swing. The sun was nearly gone, and the sky looked like it was on fire above the houses across the street.
“Not exactly,” I said. My voice was as raw as it had been when I was staring at Eva Lee, and I couldn’t have been more depressed. “They didn’t want it … just like all the other stories I’ve sent in.”
She scoffed. “Is that so? Well, if brains were leather, those people couldn’t saddle a flea.”
A weak smile spread across my lips. Mom had a collection of hokey southern-style insults and an accent as thick as Paula Deen’s. She always did her best to cheer me up, even though it was hopeless right now.
“Mom,” I said, deciding to spit out my bad news quickly, “I quit my job.”
She turned her head toward me. I’d thought my impulsive decision might flare her temper, but she kept a straight face and pushed a wisp of damp hair away from my eyes.
“Why’d you do that?” she asked, and after I explained she nodded and stared at the orange sky. “I’m proud of you for quitting. Like I’ve always told you … you should never stay anyplace where you don’t feel comfortable and you aren’t appreciated. You’re better than that.”
“Thanks,” I said, relieved. “But what about the bills? It might take me a while to find an equally boring, dead-end, soul-killing job.”
Mom laughed and set her eyes on mine. “We’ll get by. We always have.”
That was yet another truth. I tried to relax and think of positive things, but my mind was crammed with negativity. “Mom,” I said after a while, “Jamie’s getting married soon.”
She nodded again. “I’ve heard.”
So she’d kept it a secret, too. “Do you think I should’ve accepted his proposal?”
“Of course I don’t, Savannah. Why do you ask that?”
“Because,” I said, “I thought that if I married him, I’d be giving everything up. But since I made that decision, I haven’t gotten a single thing I want. I don’t think I’ll ever be a writer. Maybe I should’ve been more realistic.”
Mom shook her head. “What you’re saying is that you should’ve settled. But you wouldn’t be happy if you had. And your dreams aren’t unrealistic. Maybe they just aren’t in Charleston.”
I knew what was coming next. She was going to say that I was intelligent, attractive, and talented and I deserved so much more than anything I could find around here. I loved her for thinking so, but I was tired of hearing it.
“I know there might be better jobs and more opportunities in other places, Mom … but I’m not going. I can’t leave you here alone.”
She raised an auburn eyebrow. “Is that really why you can’t go?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “What else would it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know … maybe you’re afraid the world is filled with people like the ones at those magazines.”
Her maternal radar was precise. She could always find what I was trying to hide. She seemed to know I didn’t want to jet off somewhere, only to fail and come crawling back to Charleston, where I’d have to paste a smile on my face whenever I ran into Jamie and Eva Lee walking arm in arm with their stunning children and say, Oh, things just didn’t work out and it’s all for the best.
The phone rang. I grabbed the excuse to escape. I sprang from the swing, pushed open the screen door, and plucked the receiver off the kitchen wall. “Morgan residence,” I said in a hoity-toity voice, thinking Tina was at the other end with the most sincere apology ever.
“Is this Savannah Morgan, Joan Morgan’s daughter?”
That wasn’t Tina. There was no southern drawl. This lady spoke with an upper-crusty lilt.
“Yes,” I said, clearing my throat.
“I’m Mercedes Rawlings Stark. I’m an attorney in New York, and I’m calling about Edward Stone.”
Edward Stone. That name sounded familiar. I was sure I’d heard it on TV. “You must have the wrong number. Nobody here knows an Edward Stone,” I said, and then the screen door slammed. I looked up to find Mom standing against it. Her body was stiff, and all the color had drained from her face.
I stared at her. What was the matter? And what was that Yankee saying?
“… to fly you up here. I have some important things to discuss with you.”
It had been such a rough, hideous, endless day, and now I had to concoct a polite way to get this misguided woman off the phone so I could find out what was going on with Mom.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. You’ve got the wrong person.”
“No, I don’t. You’re the right person, Savannah. And Edward Stone was your father,” she said quickly. “I apologize for telling you this way … but you have to understand why I’m contacting you. He was in a fatal car accident, and there are matters relating to his death that we need to discuss face-to-face.”
Father. Accident. Death. Was I really hearing this? My ears were ringing. My eyes shot toward Mom. “Edward Stone was my father,” I said slowly, like that would help it make sense, but it didn’t. “He was in a fatal car accident.”
“Correct,” said Mercedes Rawlings Stark as Mom clutched one hand to her heart and clamped the other over her mouth. “I k
now this is quite a shock, so I’ll give you my phone number and time to think. But as I said … I need you to come to New York as soon as possible.”
I grabbed a pen and scribbled a number with a 212 area code on the back of a Sally Beauty Supply receipt. Then I hung up the phone and looked at Mom, who was crossing the room. She plunked herself down on the couch and stared at her flowers. And then I knew. She was so limp and dazed that everything I’d heard on the phone had to be true.
I repeated it all as she kept her focus on a yellow jessamine. “Mom,” I said, and she finally looked at me. The lines in her forehead had gone even deeper. “This is for real, isn’t it?”
She exhaled a ragged sigh and leaned into the plaid cushions. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”
I wasn’t sure whether to scream or cry or throw something that would shatter against the wall. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you pretend you didn’t know who my father was?”
Mom rubbed her temples. “It’s a long and complicated story, Savannah.”
The receipt with the phone number was in my hand, and it crinkled as I clenched my fist. “Is it so long and complicated that you had to hide it? I thought we told each other everything. I thought there were no secrets between us.”
Tears sprang into her eyes. That was rare. I was really hurting her. I almost apologized, but I couldn’t because she’d hurt me, too. I’d been deprived of so many things because of her—like someone to put me on his strong shoulders at the local carnival when I was little, father-daughter dances at Charleston High, and a man to shake Jamie’s hand when he used to come to my door. Not having a father had made me believe I’d been born with some flaw that deemed me unworthy of the T-shirts that girls like Eva Lee had proudly worn—the ones with Daddy’s Girl printed between two glittery hearts.
But I did have a father. He’d been in New York all along. And now he was gone.
“There aren’t any secrets between us,” Mom said, her voice soft and raspy, “except this.”
I let out a harsh laugh. She was about to cry and so was I, but I held it back. “Well … it’s a pretty big one, don’t you think?” I said sarcastically.
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