“I don’t know. But I have a feeling I’ll find out before too long.”
Bolt took both her hands in his and stared down at them. He was silent, lost in thought for a long time. Finally, he looked up at her, trying to smile reassuringly. “Mary Scarlett, you’ve been under a lot of stress these past months. Losing your husband that way, traipsing all over while you tried to decide what to do. And coming back to Savannah can’t have been easy for you, not after all these years, all that’s happened.”
“You don’t believe me,” she said in a stony voice. “You think I’m imagining things. Well, come with me. I’ll show you. I have proof that it’s all real.”
She jumped up from the couch and ran toward the bathroom. When Bolt didn’t follow, she turned and demanded, “Well? Aren’t you coming? I want you to see this.”
He rose slowly, with a slight shake of his head. Mary Scarlett stopped him outside the bathroom door. Before she let him see what she wanted to show him, she told him about Elisabeth and Sean. Every detail, everything she remembered. How she’d felt, how the riverfront outside the window had looked, even the smell of the old cotton warehouse. Then she motioned him into the room and led him to the ballast stone with its carved heart and initials.
Bolt looked only half-convinced.
“Don’t you see? It’s real!” she insisted. “Remember my odd reaction when you brought me to your front door this morning? I didn’t want to come in. I was terrified. In some part of my mind or heart I knew already what Elisabeth’s father was going to do to Sean. I didn’t want it to happen.” Her voice dropped and she cast her gaze sadly on the heart. “But it did. It happened long ago to my own father’s great-grandmother. There was no earthly way I could have stopped it. And there was certainly no way I could have known about it. My family wasn’t the sort to pass down stories of unwed mothers and their murdering fathers. Sean’s disappearance was probably never even noted in the newspaper of the day. He was Irish, after all. What difference would one dead potato-eater make to the upstanding families of Savannah?”
The bitterness in her tone alarmed Bolt. He took her into his arms to try to soothe her. “Hush now, honey. That was a long, long time ago. It has nothing to do with you now.”
She pulled away, her eyes blazing vivid blue. “It has everything to do with me! Don’t you see? Part of everything they were is in me. I’m made up of all those who went before me, just like Savannah is made up of bits and pieces of all the English debtors, Irish laborers, slaves, murderers, saints, and sinners who ever walked her streets.”
“That’s true of all of us, Mary Scarlett. But that doesn’t mean we have to be burdened by our ancestors’ sins or saddened by their failed love affairs. It’s now that counts for both of us. The past doesn’t matter. We can’t let it.”
“Can’t we, Bolt?” she asked softly. “Can you honestly say that what I did to you doesn’t matter? That you were able to forgive and forget? That the past is dead and everything is just the same between us after eight long years?”
The deep, smoldering hurt in his dark eyes made Mary Scarlett’s heart sink. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. He might be trying his best to forgive her, but he would never, ever forget what she had done to him. Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe this was her punishment for the pain she had inflicted on the man who loved her.
“Give me time,” Bolt whispered. “I’m trying, Mary Scarlett.”
She touched his wonderful face with her fingertips. “Time is something I have plenty of—present, future, and past, so it seems. I still care for you very deeply, Bolton Conrad. I always have and I always will. But I’ll understand if you can’t bring yourself to love me again. I don’t deserve you. I never have.”
Before he could answer, she whirled away and headed for the door. She couldn’t bear that look in his eyes a minute longer. She had to get out, be alone to think.
“Mary Scarlett? Where are you going?”
“To the beauty shop,” she called over her shoulder. “My mama always said that when the whole world’s going wrong, it’s time to get your hair done. Makes all the difference.”
She said it with a laugh in her voice so Bolt wouldn’t know she had tears in her eyes.
Four
Lime-and-lavender? Mirrors and chrome?
Mary Scarlett knew she had made a mistake the minute she walked through the door. The new, redecorated Broughton Street beauty salon—the same shop she and her mother had visited regularly years ago—transported her through another kind of time warp. She remembered the place as being fashionably antiquated like most of the rest of Savannah. The sedate cream-colored walls, burgundy chairs, and flowered chintz curtains had provided a quiet backdrop for the styling of hair and the swapping of gossip in and about the best circles of Garden City society. The two sisters who had owned the shop, both widows after their husbands were killed in the Korean War, had started their business in the back parlor of their parents’ Victorian home on East Park Avenue, before Mary Scarlett’s time. Eventually, the shop had moved to the Broughton Street location. Somehow, Mary Scarlett had expected to find the widows still there at this “new” shop they had opened back in the sixties.
Had she been thinking straight and calculating the years, she should have guessed that the sisters would be dead now or at the very least retired. But the once-familiar salon took her totally by surprise with its chrome, mirrors, lavender walls, and lime-colored trim. An even greater shock came when she found out that “Frankie”—as in “Frankie can do you at two,” was a balding, ponytailed man in black leather pants and a purple silk shirt open to expose a tanned, hairless chest with a tattoo over his heart that read “Donny.” Donny, a blonde dressed all in tight-white, worked at the next chair, snipping, curling, frosting, and combing out, humming show tunes all the while.
Of course, neither of the men knew Mary Scarlett. She’d given her name as “Mrs. Miguel.” But both Frankie and Donny knew from the paper and their earlier customers that “Mary Scarlett’s back.” Apparently, she was the topic dujour.
“Ah, my favorite kind of customer!” Frankie enthused, inviting Mary Scarlett into his chair with a sweep of his arm and a flash of movie star teeth.
“What kind is that?” she asked.
“New!” Frankie said emphatically. “Let us do you once and we’ll have you forever. That’s our motto. Right, Donny?”
“Betcha!” Donny said with a toss of his magnificent head of hair.
“So what’ll it be, Miz Miguel? Cut? Wash? Tint?”
“Dye!”
“Oh, please, no! I’m too young!” Frankie covered his tattooed breast with his fist and cowered dramatically, bringing a round of applause from Donny and the blue-haired matron he was combing out.
“This isn’t my natural color,” Mary Scarlett explained, completely unmoved by Frankie’s shenanigans.
He fingered a lock and sighed. “Well, it isn’t Donny’s natural color either, but doesn’t it look fantastic on him? It suits you, too, Miz Miguel. Are you sure you want to change?”
“It doesn’t suit me at all. I’m walking around with a brunette soul in a blonde disguise.”
Frankie pressed his metal comb to his chin and stared thoughtfully at the mirrored ceiling. “That’s very profound. A brunette soul in a blonde disguise. I never thought of it that way. I wonder what color my soul is. Hm-m-m.”
“Passionate pink,” Donny supplied sotto voce.
While Frankie was still trying to picture his soul, Mary Scarlett brought an old snapshot out of her purse. “This is my natural color. Very dark. Almost black.”
“Midnight,” Frankie pronounced her natural color. “Or perhaps Raven’s Wing.”
Donny peered over at the picture. “Won’t do. Too blue. The color in that photo is Irish-dark, with bronze highlights.”
“Donny’s right, of course. He’s always right about his colors. He designed all this.” With a wave of his wris
t Frankie indicated the lavender-and-lime decor. “You do have Irish blood, don’t you, Miz Miguel? Why, you’re not Spanish at all.”
Mary Scarlett felt a sudden stab of guilt. It was as if they knew about Elisabeth’s long-ago assignation with Sean Mahone, about their half-Irish child born out of wedlock. She caught herself quickly before she blushed. What was the big deal anyway? She laughed at her own foolishness. “Doesn’t everyone in Savannah have a touch of Irish blood? At least on St. Patrick’s Day.”
Frankie nodded with enthusiasm. “Ah, you should have seen the heads we turned green last week. Fantastic! The Parade Marshal’s wife has a lovely head of perfect white hair. I tried everything to convince her to surprise her husband. Her hair would have taken the green beautifully. She would have made my holiday. But, alas…”
Mary Scarlett couldn’t help smiling. She could just imagine the genteel matron’s horror when Frankie came at her with his bottle of green goop. Even more amusing was the thought of the woman’s husband if she had allowed herself to be talked into a shamrock-do.
“It’s not too late, you know.” Frankie’s voice broke into Mary Scarlett’s thoughts. “You might start a new fad—green tresses after St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve got plenty of dye left, and Easter’s not far away. You’d look stunning in a flowered chapeau with lovely, long green hair.” He shrugged. “If you don’t like it, we could go to brunette. Brunette from green is easy.”
“No, thank you,” she answered. “I believe I’ll go straight to brunette.”
“Don’t forget the bronze highlights,” Donny put in.
“You don’t have to remind me,” Frankie snapped back. “When have you ever known me to forget the bronze highlights? What? Am I a novice? Did I start doing hair yesterday?”
“Sorry,” Donny muttered.
“Well, you should be! Tell me about bronze highlights!” Frankie mumbled. “Why, I taught you your bronzes from your coppers. You didn’t know a frizz from a flip before you met me!”
“Sor-ry!” Donny repeated more emphatically.
All this while, Frankie was covering Mary Scarlett with a shiny purple plastic apron, arranging his combs and brushes, checking his bottles of dye. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he said to Mary Scarlett, “Have you heard the latest? God, everybody’s talking about it today! I’m all but sick of the name Mary Scarlett.”
When Frankie said her name, she stiffened before she realized he had no idea she was Mary Scarlett.
“She’s come back, you know,” he went on in a hushed tone. “After eight years. I wonder why.” He trilled a laugh. “I wonder where she got a name like that—right out of Gone with the Wind.”
Donny ventured an explanation. “Nowadays girls are all Tiffanys and Tylers and Taras, named for soap opera stars. Maybe her mother was nuts about Gone with the Wind.”
“I suppose that could be,” Frankie mused, fluffing his customer’s hair to test its texture.
Mary Scarlett couldn’t resist. Without letting them know who she was, she was determined to let them know how she got her name. If all Savannah was talking about her, they might as well spread the truth for a change.
“I’ve heard about this Mary Scarlett,” she confided in such a secretive tone that Frankie, Donny, and even the blue-haired matron drew nearer. “They say her mother’s grandmother was charmingly insane. You know the type— never stopped fighting the War, flew a Confederate flag out of the attic window, believed in magic mirrors, that sort of thing. Her name was Beulah Robillard, and when she read Gone with the Wind, she swore that every word of it was true. She thought it was about her own family.”
Frankie clucked his tongue. “Balmy, the poor dear.”
“Bonkers!” Donny added.
“That’s not the half of it,” Mary Scarlett continued. “She was convinced that she was related to Ellen Robillard, Scarlett O’Hara’s mother. So when her great-granddaughter was born, she insisted she be named for ‘dear Cousin Scarlett.’ If not, she swore she would never come out of the attic again. She said she would refuse food and water until she withered away to nothing. She assured Mary Scarlett’s parents that her death would be on their heads.”
Frankie gasped. “Can you believe such a cruel old woman?”
Donny kept combing as he mused, “What about Mary Scarlett’s mother? Keeping her own grandmother locked away in the attic. Sounds like a weird streak runs in that family. Sick-o! The whole lot of them.”
For the first time the woman in Donny’s chair broke her silence. She turned slightly to glare up at the tall blonde teasing her hair. “Young man, I happen to have known Lucy Lamar, Mary Scarlett’s mother. She was the sweetest, dearest soul on the face of the earth. She spent a good portion of her life tending to that outrageous old woman, who, by the way, chose to live in the attic. Then, shortly after she finally passed at the age of one hundred and three, poor Lucy’s husband ran off with another woman. A cocktail waitress, no less! Can you imagine the scandal? Lucy, God rest her, never recovered.”
This statement jolted Mary Scarlett. She and her mother had both known of her father’s affairs, of course. But as far as she knew, Big Dick’s disappearance had been accepted generally as a boating accident. Did all of Savannah know the truth? Was Mary Scarlett the last to find out? She couldn’t let this pass.
“Pardon me, but I thought Mr. Lamar lost his life in an accident. Seems I remember something about a fishing trip and a storm.”
The woman arched a well-plucked eyebrow at Mary Scarlett. “That was the official story, the one in all the papers. Everyone pretended to accept it for Lucy’s sake. But we all knew,” she whispered. “If Dick Lamar was fishing that weekend, it certainly wasn’t for marlin. And as for that daughter of theirs, well, I could say a few choice words about her, but I won’t sully Lucy’s memory by even mentioning her name.”
“Meow!” said Frankie.
“It seems to me,” Mary Scarlett said, “that a child growing up in a family like that would have to have problems.”
Donny showered the perfect blue hair with super-hold spray, then said, “I think you’re finished, Mrs. Thorndyke.”
“That’s your opinion,” she answered, casting a cold look at her beautician. “I haven’t even gotten started good on the subject of Mary Scarlett Lamar! Can you imagine a girl, given every advantage, putting her ailing mother through all the trouble of planning a huge wedding, then running off the way she did? Poor Lucy suffered terribly from the blow. She was purely traumatized. It was the biggest scandal to hit Savannah since the murder at Mercer House. Lucy never recovered. It just broke the poor dear’s heart. And in my opinion, Mary Scarlett has her nerve coming back to Savannah after all she did.”
Mary Scarlett was seething. She remembered this woman suddenly. Hattie Thorndyke, not quite high-born or well-married enough to be in the circle of Lucy Lamar’s friends, but always hovering about the fringes, spreading gossip, giving parties, hoping to be accepted.
“Maybe there’s a side to Mary Scarlett’s story nobody knows,” she said sweetly to the social-climbing busybody.
“All one needs to know about that girl is that she was spoiled rotten, disgraced the family name, and broke her dear mother’s heart. Not to mention what she did to that sweet man, Bolton Conrad. Why, he’s never gotten over her.” Hattie smiled primly into the mirror, patting her lacquered hair. “Thank goodness he’s finally found someone good enough for him.”
This came as an even bigger shock to Mary Scarlett. “Who?” she demanded.
Mrs. Thorndyke smirked. “Just never you mind. I’m not one to spread tales. All of Savannah will know soon enough, when Bolton and his ladylove announce their engagement.” She turned toward Mary Scarlett. “And I have it on good authority that will be very soon.”
Mary Scarlett was reeling. Bolt? About to be married? But how could that be?
Before she could collect her wits, the woman dashed on, adding insult to injury. “She wrecked Allen Overman�
�s life as well. He was such a lovely young man. I was intimate with his parents, you know. To their dying days, they blamed Mary Scarlett for the way Allen turned out. All those wives, all those divorces. And he’s still carrying a torch. Why, can you believe he’s giving a party this Saturday night to welcome the little witch back to Savannah?”
“I forgot to tell you, Donny,” said Frankie, while Mary Scarlett still sat there with her mouth open. “Allen called a little while ago. Saturday night, eight sharp, black tie.”
“Great!” Donny enthused. “I guess we’ll see you there, Mrs. Thorndyke.”
The overdressed, oversprayed matron bustled out of her chair, her face livid. Obviously, she was not among the invited guests. She paid her bill and left without another word—off with her new hairdo to spread more venom about town, Mary Scarlett was sure.
“Beastly woman!” Frankie exclaimed once the door closed after Hattie Thorndyke’s ample backside. “Why do you put up with her, Donny?”
“She tips good.” He pocketed the ten she’d given him.
“Well, if I had any hair on the top of my head, I can tell you it would be standing on end right now. The woman lives only to make others’ lives miserable with her constantly flapping mouth.”
“She’s not the only one talking today,” Donny reminded him. “I’m anxious to meet this Mary Scarlett person. Sounds like she sure left her mark on Savannah.”
Mary Scarlett remained silent, still numb from Hattie Thorndyke’s news about Bolt. Who could the woman be? Why hadn’t he said anything? She realized, miserably, that she hadn’t given him a chance. She had been so sure that she could come back and just pick up where she left off.
“Do you know Bolton Conrad, Miz Miguel?” Frankie asked.
“Slightly.” Her answer was no lie. She certainly didn’t know him as well as she had thought.
“Nice fellow, Bolt,” Frankie went on. “He handled the closing when I bought this place. We had a few drinks together. I knew from the start that there was some dark secret in his past—-something he kept bottled up inside and didn’t want to talk about. I figured it must be woman-trouble. Now I know the woman’s name. Mary Scarlett.” He finished with a deep sigh.
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