by Sofia Grant
“Okay, Mother, you’re right. I was accepted. But—”
“Accepted? Accepted, with a scholarship!” Margaret interrupted. “Do you understand what that means? You can save some of your college money for something else. For when you get married.”
“Huh,” Georgina said in a bored voice. “That money’s mine now, to do whatever I want with. Grandpa never said I had to use it for school. All I have to do is walk down to the bank and ask for it, that’s what Grandma said.”
Oh, the perfidy. Margaret had thought she’d convinced her mother to collude with her, to help ensure that her headstrong daughter didn’t throw away her future.
“Georgina! Your grandfather intended for you to use that money for your education. He believed very strongly that you should attend college.”
“Why? You went, and it didn’t help you at all. I bet I could marry a drunk and get knocked up without taking a single class.”
Margaret slapped her.
She hadn’t meant to—she was standing above her daughter and she’d started out intending to shake her by the shoulder, to force her to listen to reason—and then her palm had bounced off Georgina’s smooth, freckled cheek.
Immediately she thought of that day almost two decades ago back in the Vandeveer Hotel, her own mother staring at her in horror but also a strange kind of satisfaction after hitting her. She wondered if this moment had been inevitable, passed down in the blood, along with the propensity to fall vastly short of one’s potential.
“I wanted better for you,” she said hollowly. “I wanted you to get to do the things I never did.”
Georgina laughed. “Oh, you can count on that, Mother. I plan to do everything you never did.”
Then she stretched, taking her time to get up from the table—it was as if she was made of melting caramel, she moved so languidly—and picked up her bag and pushed past Margaret to the back screen door, letting it slam behind her, and leaving her mother holding the envelope in the empty kitchen.
THE NEXT MORNING she was gone. Margaret realized, standing in the door of the apartment that had finally been restored to a sort of order, the clothes Georgina had left behind stuffed into the dresser and nearly everything else mounded in a trash heap in the middle of the room, that in her heart of hearts she had seen this coming.
Georgina, who’d come into the world on the crest of the wave of her parents’ tumultuous union, had now slipped out to the vast sea of her future, leaving Margaret forgotten and emptied on the shore.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Katie woke with the sun warming her back, a lovely sensation that was distinctly at odds with the cottony feeling of her mouth.
A hangover! The more ambitious part of her brain announced. She blinked several times, her eyelids feeling dry and sandy, and saw that she’d made it into bed—but not alone. Scarlett was curled up with her back to Katie, cradling the covers bunched in her arms like a teddy bear.
The end of the evening came back to Katie: they’d eaten their freezer-burned supper at the dining room table by the flickering glow of several candle stubs stuck in tarnished silver candlesticks, drinking a fresh round of vodka and ginger ale, and Scarlett had tried to explain a promise that Merritt had extracted from her concerning the inheritance, which Katie did her best to reassure her she was not obligated to keep. Then Scarlett had told Katie a story about Jam that was hard to follow, involving Scarlett getting her period for the very first time at school while her mother was pulling a double shift at the restaurant where she waited tables, and Jam being the only person who could pick her up and go to the drugstore for her and then sit in the living room watching Jeopardy and calling out encouragement while Scarlett wrestled with a maxi pad in the bathroom.
“It’s funny,” Scarlett had said. “He knew exactly where the tampons were in the store. I mean, not that it’s important, but . . . what if it’s, you know, important?”
Katie let her eyelids drift closed. Maybe she could manage to fall asleep again and spend the morning drifting in and out of dreams, and then they could wake up and go for more of those delicious breakfast burritos.
Something crinkled underneath her. She leaned up on her elbow and pulled a small piece of paper from the sheets, and it came back to her: searching for a cookie sheet on which to bake the fish sticks, she’d discovered a cigar box behind a Bundt pan in the pantry. Inside, bound with a rubber band that snapped in her hands, was a stack of mourning cards for the children who had perished in the school explosion.
She and Scarlett had pored over the cards, examining the photographs and reading the names aloud. There were almost three dozen of them. Had Margaret’s parents gone to all of those funerals? There was no card for Ruby in the stack; could they not bear to keep one, to see their daughter’s name engraved above the dates of her birth and death? It was almost impossible to imagine, all those children buried in the space of days or weeks, an entire generation simply vanished.
Had Caroline gotten the box down from the shelf from time to time, remembering the children who’d once run gaily through the halls of the school, who’d squirmed on the church pews and played baseball in the park and gone door to door to collect metal for the war? The card she had taken upstairs to bed was for a little girl named Tabitha Coates, who’d been eleven, just like Ruby, with a shy smile and a smattering of freckles across her nose.
Had Tabitha and Ruby been friends? Had she played in this very house? Sipped lemonade in the backyard?
How had Tabitha’s parents endured without her?
Someone was knocking on the front door. Was that what had woken her? Whoever it was paused, and then started up again, an annoyingly insistent rapping.
Maybe it was Jam. Katie’s heart quickened at the thought, and she extricated herself from the tangle of blankets and got out of bed, Scarlett sighing in her sleep and tugging the sheets up under her chin.
Katie padded down the stairs. She was still in the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday, and the shorts hadn’t gotten any longer overnight. Giving them a hard yank, she opened the door.
A man was standing there, holding a bouquet of flowers. Maybe Liam had come through after all—a thought that wasn’t entirely welcome.
“They’re lovely,” she said perfunctorily. “I’m so sorry I didn’t hear you. I was, uh, upstairs.”
But what was she going to do for a tip? All she had was the thick stack of twenties from Lolly. Though, what the heck, why not? After all, she’d made the guy stand there for who knows how long.
She accepted the flowers and inhaled their scent, which was disappointingly like the inside of a refrigerator. “Stay right here,” she said, “I just need to grab my purse.”
“Hey, whoa, hold on. Those flowers aren’t for you,” the man said. “They’re for Scarlett. She’s here, right?”
Katie took another look and realized that he wasn’t a deliveryman at all. He was dressed in brown polyester pants and a shirt with a Chem-Kleen logo stitched on the pocket . . . right above his name.
Which was “Merritt.”
She thrust the flowers back at him like they were on fire. “She doesn’t want these. She doesn’t want to see you. You’d better go.”
The friendly smile disappeared from his face like a light turned off. Now that she took a good look, she realized that Merritt wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. He was clean-cut and handsome, with nice teeth and an expensive pair of Ray-Bans.
“You’re her cousin from Boston,” he said accusatorily. “I know about you. You never gave a shit about her until your grandmother left her the house. Scarlett told me you weren’t getting any of it, so why don’t you go the fuck back there, hey?”
Katie felt her face color with rage and embarrassment. “Leave, or I’m calling the cops.”
Merritt raised his eyebrows and then burst into laughter. “Yeah, huh, good idea. They’ll love that. What exactly are you going to tell them? That I brought my girlfriend flowers? Listen, tell Scarlett
to call me. Or don’t—she will anyway.”
He turned and sauntered back to his truck, a white van with the Chem-Kleen logo on the side and the words “No Mess Is Too Big For US!” emblazoned in purple letters. He got in and peeled away from the curb, tapping the horn and flipping her off.
Katie’s heart was pounding as she went back inside. She dropped the flowers into the garbage and washed her hands. Then she twisted her hair into a knot, grabbed a trash bag, and got to work.
“MORNING,” SCARLETT SAID from the doorway of the parlor half an hour later.
Katie hadn’t heard her come downstairs. She was kneeling in front of a built-in cupboard in the dining room, feeling around in back. After she’d taken out a tureen and a cake stand and a few other items that likely hadn’t seen any use in years, she’d discovered a small wooden box carved with Greek letters of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority. Inside were a little gold pin shaped like a harp studded with tiny pearls and enameled with the same tiny Greek letters, a larger gold pin in the shape of a leaf set with red stones, and a folded page torn from the February 1968 issue of Vanity Fair with a photograph of guests at a black-tie gathering hosted by a Dallas socialite, a couple identified as Mr. and Mrs. Robert Withnall III.
“Hi there. Do you have any idea who these people are?”
Scarlett took the page and squinted, then turned it over. “Nope. But there’s a Hoover vacuum cleaner ad on the back. Maybe Gomma was thinking of buying one.”
She handed back the page and Katie carefully folded it and put it back in the wooden box. She stood up slowly, her legs cramping from being on her knees so long, and set the box on the dining room table.
“Wow, look at you!”
Katie glanced down at her outfit, a lavender polyester skort and matching floral top that she had taken from her grandmother’s closet. They fit surprisingly well, and the elastic waist was a bonus, given all the bending and reaching she’d been doing.
“Oh God, I know. Please don’t ever tell anyone. No offense, but I was getting chafing on my inner thighs from those shorts.”
Scarlett made a zipping-her-lips gesture. “Is there anything left to eat? I’m starving.”
“I think we cleaned the place out last night. I thought we could go get some groceries. My treat. Only before we go . . . um, Merritt came by about an hour ago.”
“He did?” The change in Scarlett was instantaneous, all humor vanishing from her eyes. “What did he say?”
“He, uh, he wanted to talk to you and I told him you didn’t want to see him.”
“You really told him that?”
“He brought flowers, as if that was going to change—I mean, Scarlett, you aren’t seriously doubting you did the right thing, are you? By coming here last night?”
“I mean, he needed some time to cool off,” Scarlett said, twisting her hands anxiously. “But I never said— I mean, the thing is, he cools off almost as quick as he heats up. He just overreacts, is all. He doesn’t mean any of the things he says when he’s stirred up.”
“But last night you said—”
“Last night we were drinking, Katie. I said a lot of things—you did too. But this is a relationship we’re talking about here. I’ve been with Merritt for almost three years. He got me through when my mom died and I didn’t have anyone else. I mean, he wants me to be his business partner. I can’t just—”
As much as Katie wanted to grab her cousin and shake some sense into her, she knew that anything more she said against Merritt was just going to make Scarlett dig her heels in further.
“Look, Scarlett, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first. It’s just that you were sleeping and—and he said some things to me—but that doesn’t matter, I know we were all . . . that you’re hoping to work things out. I just—please don’t go back there alone, okay? Let me come with you.”
“He isn’t going to want to see you,” Scarlett said. “Not after you sent him off like that.”
“Okay, I’ll stay in the car. He doesn’t even have to know I’m there. And if, I mean, after you talk to him, and you don’t need me, I’ll go.”
Scarlett took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. “Okay,” she finally said. “You really don’t have to, though, because I mean, I live there. And I know how to handle him. But if you feel like you have to or whatever . . .”
“Good,” Katie said, relief flooding through her. At least she’d bought some time. “He won’t even be back from work until tonight, right? So we can, you know, get something to eat, work on the house a little—I haven’t even seen the apartment yet! You can show me.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Just let me go get changed. My standards may have fallen quite a bit, but I don’t think I can stand for anyone to see me in this.”
“There was a cute sundress in the clothes I brought you,” Scarlett said, softening. “It’s a real pretty pale yellow, it’ll look great with your hair.”
“Perfect. And do you mind if I rinse off real quick? I’ve stirred up so much dust I feel like I’ve been rolling in it.”
“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll keep going through this stuff.”
Katie hurried through her shower, combing out her wet hair to let it dry naturally and picking through the cosmetics Scarlett had brought her. A bit of coppery eye shadow, navy-blue mascara, an intense fuchsia lip gloss that softened to a flattering shade once she’d applied it—when she was done, Katie was surprised at how good she looked. She put on the sundress and tried to adjust the straps over her bra for a few moments before giving up.
“Ready or not,” she called as she came down the stairs. “Here I . . .”
But Scarlett wasn’t in the dining room. Puzzled, Katie made the circuit of the downstairs, through the dining room to the parlor, the front hall, the den, the morning room, and back to the kitchen. She raced back upstairs and checked every bedroom. She leaned out the windows and scanned the street, then ran to the back of the house and checked the backyard.
“No, no, no,” she mumbled.
But it was no use. Scarlett was gone.
KATIE POUNDED ON Jam’s front door, which was painted a moody sea blue and adorned with a brass knocker in the shape of a dog’s head. When Jam didn’t answer, she tried the knob, but it was locked. She was about to go when she heard a chorus of barking . . . from the backyard.
She let herself through the side gate and around the side of the house. On her right was the overgrown hedge separating Jam’s house from Margaret’s; on the other side of it would be the broken-down fence through which he’d made his escape last night. On this side, the hedge was trimmed neatly and restrained by white pickets and a flower bed filled with asters and snapdragons.
Katie rounded the corner and nearly ran into a lineup of dogs, nearly a dozen of them, each with a child holding its leash. The dogs were small and large and in between, and the children ranged from a little boy of six or seven holding on to a fat, panting pug to a girl in her early teens who was having a tug-of-war with what looked like a cross between a beagle and a dachshund.
Standing on the other side of the circle, toward the back of the yard, was Jam. He was wearing a baseball cap and a wrinkled Hawaiian shirt, over an even more decrepit and baggy pair of shorts than usual.
“Hey kids, look—a stranger has somehow broken into my backyard,” Jam called. “I think she’s about to approach your dogs. Quick, what do you do?”
All the children but the owner of the beagle mix, who had somehow managed to trip over the leash and ended up on the ground in a tangle with the dog, stepped between Katie and their dogs. “Please stay where you are,” they all chorused in unison, before ordering their dogs to sit. Only two of the dogs sat right away; the rest required pleading and cajoling and, in one case, a little boy trying to sit on his spaniel. During the commotion, Jam watched Katie with his arms folded and the hint of a smile at his lips.
“May I have a word?” Katie asked. Something in her tone must have alerted him, because his smile disap
peared.
“Good job, kids, see how long you can maintain the sit. This stranger looks like she doesn’t know much about dogs, so I’m going to go teach her about the safe way to approach unfamiliar animals for a few minutes.”
He jogged over and took Katie’s arm, guiding her out of earshot on the side of the house.
“I need a ride,” Katie said. “Scarlett’s boyfriend is way out of line. I don’t think she’s safe with him. He came by the house this morning and I sent him away and I went to take a shower and—and I just know she went back there. I’m worried about her. What if he does something?”
Jam raised an eyebrow. “What would you do to stop him?”
“I—I don’t know, call the cops! Or just get her to come with me. Help her pack up her stuff—”
“Katie,” Jam said patiently. “Does Scarlett look like a child to you?”
“No, but—”
“And do you have any proof that she’s in danger? Or that she was forced to go with him?”
“No! But what do you want me to do, just stand by and let him hurt her?”
Jam looked off in the distance, his expression grim. When he spoke again, he sounded tired. “Scarlett’s been dating that asshole for three years. I’ve gone to talk to him twice. He’s no idiot, Katie. He knows his rights and he stops short of anything that would get him in trouble. Buddy of mine looked him up for me—he’s got a track record. Last girl he was with, she had him arrested, but she ended up dropping the charges.”
“He beat her?”
“Not clear. Hear me out. Merritt King can be very charming. He’ll probably roll out the red carpet today, just to prove you wrong. My guess is he’ll be careful for a few months. And I’ll tell you something else—my bet is he is genuinely sorry. He’s probably convinced himself he’ll never threaten her again—that’s how he’s able to convince her.”
“Oh my God,” Katie said, outraged. “So he could be pounding the crap out of her for all you know, but you want to do nothing? You almost sound like you’re on his side!”