Secrets of Southern Girls

by Haley Harrigan

  “So, you can do it?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Okay.” She stands up, too quickly. Her chair tips—she catches it just before it clatters to the ground. “Okay, well, thank you. We’ll talk again when I know more.” She blinks, swallows. It always seems to end this way.

  “Hey, Julie, wait,” he calls as she is leaving, but she pretends not to hear.

  • • •

  “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s, um…let’s go to Lawrence Mill.” She says it cautiously, like she might still change her mind.

  But August is at her apartment, and before she knows it, they are on her computer, booking plane tickets. He finds a flight straight through to Mississippi and books it, puts the tickets on his credit card. When Julie calls her bosses, they give her the time off without too much of a fuss. It’s done, just like that.

  “Jules,” August says. “I really want to find that diary.”

  “Me too.” She feels ashamed, though of what it might say about her. She is embarrassed about many of the things she did back then, and she would rather that August not read about them. But someone else is out there, knowing about all of those things. And that thought is unbearable.

  13

  It’s like a strange dream, sitting next to August on the airplane, like they mean something to each other. Like they aren’t strangers.

  Once, when Julie and Reba were teenagers, Reba had asked her this question: If you were a bird, what would you do? Reba’s strange musings were sometimes random and sometimes not, but they always felt like riddles. Julie had given a thoughtless response. I don’t know…just fly around birdlike, I guess. Why? What would you do?

  Reba’s answer was insightful and lovely. I would see everything. The whole world. But from far away, like a blurry painting. One of those that looks beautiful and simple until you get close enough to see all of the imperfections. Julie thinks of that now as the plane ascends and she looks out into the sky, at the distorted world below. Deceptively simple.

  “So…what’s the plan now?” Julie asks August once they are in the air. They were quiet on the cab ride, uneasy alone together and unsure of what was to come. Then there was the bustling airport, the baggage check, the moving, the waiting. Now there is nothing else to distract them.

  “I don’t actually have one,” he confesses. “I didn’t know things would really get this far, this fast.

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, first thing. We know we need to find the diary, but how are we going to figure out who has it?”

  Julie wants that book so badly. It’s tangible proof that Reba existed, that she was there, on the earth, even for a little while. More than that, Julie can’t help but harbor an ambivalent hope that Reba’s diary will give some clue of what really led up to the events of that last night. Why it all happened the way it did.

  Even if she can’t get at those answers, there are the details of August and Reba’s love affair, all of those things Julie can never ask August. How they met, how they fell for each other. She wants to know everything there is to know about Reba’s last year. It’s a tantalizing vision, Julie holding the diary in her hands and knowing Reba the way she always had when they were younger, before August came along. When they shared their secrets freely.

  “Okay…” Julie says. “You said Reba was giving the diary to you?”

  “Yeah, the night at the river. I was supposed to meet her there, but, well…”

  “I know,” Julie says. “I know why you weren’t there.”

  “So the diary should have been found with or near her…her…”

  “It should have been near the river,” Julie finishes when August can’t complete his own sentence. With her body.

  “But I know she wrote all about the two of us,” August continues. “And if the police or investigators or someone else found it, then it would have been news. They would have come for me, probably.”

  “Maybe she didn’t use your name,” Julie says, thinking. “And Reba’s daddy was friends with the police chief, so maybe they didn’t release it, or something. I don’t know. Maybe it washed away…in the river. What made you think I would have it to begin with?”

  August narrows his eyes, studying her. “Because you were there that night. When she jumped. When she…killed herself. I thought you must have ended up with it.”

  “I wasn’t there.” She can tell that he doesn’t believe her.

  “I think you were. I think you followed her again, like the night you caught us together.”

  “August…there wasn’t anyone else at the bridge that night,” she says carefully.

  “I think there was,” he says quickly, too quickly. “I don’t think she was alone.”

  She studies him. “If I were there, wouldn’t I have stopped her?” She can see—in his face, in his eyes—this fervent need to believe that Reba wasn’t on her own out there, in the dark, in the night.

  They are silent for a moment, before August speaks again. “Her boss at the flower shop found her, right?”

  “Yes. Nell.”

  “I don’t think the diary washed away. Reba wanted me to see it. She would have left it for me, when she… Well, you know. Do you think that Nell might have picked up the diary, before the paramedics got there? I don’t really know how it went, exactly.”

  “Maybe. She could have done that, if she thought she was protecting Reba.”

  “Okay. So, what do we do?”

  Julie sighs. “Sounds like we’re going to see Nell.”

  14

  Lawrence Mill doesn’t have its own hotel, even after all of these years, so August and Julie booked rooms at The Inn in Opal, the somewhat charming city that serves as a miniature getaway for the tiny, less charming neighboring towns. From the heart of Opal, it’s a ten-minute drive, off the highway onto country roads and right into Lawrence Mill. Compared to Lawrence Mill and those other nearby towns, Opal is a thriving metropolis, with a movie theater and a string of chain restaurants lining each side of the main road like gaudy jewels on a necklace, and even an old-fashioned downtown square in the heart of the city. Three hotels, but The Inn was Julie’s suggestion. Fitting, she thought, since as teenagers, she and Reba spent so much time there—or rather, at the adjoining bar.

  The Inn is a stucco three-level box that sits off the main road. The parking lot is nearly empty when they pull in, August behind the wheel of the rental car. Black Honda, though Julie wasn’t really paying attention when they picked it up. Being back in Mississippi makes her feel off-balance, wrong. She is already fighting the urge to run.

  “Well, here we are,” August says.

  Fickle rain poured and then drizzled and then poured again during the hour-long drive from Jackson, but it has finally stopped, at least for the moment. It is evening, but the four oversize streetlights make the parking lot as bright as daytime. Julie expected the Mississippi weather to be warm and springlike, but it is cool here too, only slightly warmer than when they were standing outside JFK before they left the city. She hasn’t bothered to button her jacket, but now she pulls it together tightly at her waist with one hand while she grabs her overnight bag with the other.

  “Let me,” August offers, reaching for the bag, but she shakes her head.

  “I’ve got it.”

  The glass doors of The Inn don’t open automatically, even though for some reason Julie expects them to. She has to release her grip on her jacket, and the left side blows away from her body like a page turning in the wind. She grabs on to the fabric as soon as she is inside, even though once the door is closed, she can no longer feel the chill.

  Julie looks around. When she left Lawrence Mill, the renovations on The Inn had just been completed, but viewed with fresh eyes, the decor looks dated—or maybe this look was already out of style when they chose it. Then she realizes she hasn’t set foot in this
place for ten years, or even eleven. These renovations are dated now. The walls are papered, covered with forest-green vines sprouting burgundy roses perpetually in bloom.

  August lingers out by the car. Does he know, somehow, that she needs to take in this scene on her own? The reception desk is to her left. To her right is a long hallway that she knows connects to Southern Saddle, the country version of a hotel bar—a run-down place with mediocre food and drinks, and sometimes a honky-tonk band playing in a corner.

  “Hi,” Julie says to the receptionist, a young woman with alert brown eyes that are shiny behind thick glasses. “I have a reservation.”

  “Your name, ma’am?” the receptionist asks with the same Southern drawl that Julie has worked so hard to suppress. College drama classes taught her how. The receptionist’s fingers hover above a keyboard as she awaits an answer.

  “Portland,” she says. “Jules. Julie.” She’s been back for only moments, and her childhood nickname is already on her lips. Is it so simple, then? Does being here cause to her to automatically revert back to Jules? Jules, who seems like a separate person now. She glances toward the door. It’s raining again. August finally walks through, carrying his bag. Stray raindrops dampen his shirt.

  “Hmm…Julie Portland…Julie Portland…” The receptionist’s fingers move across the keyboard. Then she stops, looks up. “Jules Portland?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Jules Portland!” An exclamation this time. “From Lawrence High School? No, it can’t be!”

  Julie looks at the woman again, carefully.

  “Um, no,” she mumbles. “I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

  In the moment before the woman speaks again, Julie hopes fiercely that she won’t speak at all, will simply accept Julie’s lie, give her the keys, and send her on her way.

  “No, it’s got to be! I’m Maggie Harris.” The woman smiles, a huge smile with two front teeth that slip inward toward each other, left tooth tucked slightly beneath the right. Her smile is too big, too happy. “You dated my brother in high school! Jake, he went to Woodbrooke, remember? Probably not. I guess you dated a lot of boys. Well, you know what I mean. It was a long time ago, about the time your friend… That was your friend, right? So tragic. Suicide is so rare around here, you know. I don’t think we’ve had another one since.”

  She clasps a hand to her mouth and then lets it fall. “I’m sorry, that was just so rude of me,” she says in a voice that doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Anyway, Jake used to sneak out to meet you, used to get into some big trouble with our parents.” She laughs, then notices August. “Hi, sir,” she says. “I’ll be right with you.” It’s clear that she doesn’t realize Julie and August are there together. Which they really aren’t. Together is a word that grossly misrepresents the relationship Julie has with the man behind her. She barely knows him.

  “I really think you’ve got the wrong person,” she says to Maggie Harris. “Can I please get my key? I’m in a hurry.” The woman stands there, still looking at her with that big smile. Julie has to fight the urge to slap her. “The key,” she says again.

  The girl’s smile retreats as she finally, slowly, reaches under the counter. “Well, yes, your room key…” She trails off. “But Jake, he sure talked a lot about you, well, back then… You sure did a number on his heart. He’s a doctor now, you know, graduated med school and all that.” She hands Julie the key. “I’ll be sure to tell him you said hello!”

  “Hey there, you have a reservation?” Julie hears Maggie Harris say as she finally turns her attention to August. Julie walks down the hall, around the corner near the elevators, where she knows the woman can’t see her anymore.

  “Sorry,” Julie says to August, when he finally rounds the corner himself, key in hand. “I had to get away.”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t believe the first person we ran into knew who you were. This really is a small town.”

  “Now you know why I never visit.”

  August reaches out to touch her arm, but pulls it back before his skin actually makes contact. “Do you want to…I don’t know…get dinner?” he asks as they step off the elevator.

  Julie shakes her head. “Later, okay?” She’s upset about the interaction with Maggie Harris, and there’s not much he can do to comfort her.

  He nods. “Okay. Dinner down here in maybe an hour? Does that sound good?”

  “I’ll meet you at Southern Saddle.”

  Her room is dark and cold, but she doesn’t turn on lights or shut off the air conditioner. Instead, she abandons her small bag by the door and falls into the too-firm coils of the double bed, feeling the wash of anger that always comes when someone mentions Reba’s death in an offhand way, or as a way of telling time. She hasn’t been around anyone else who knew Reba in so long that she’d forgotten the feeling. “You know, it was the winter that the girl…” Always an unfinished statement.

  “I want to go home,” she says aloud, the words sinking into the thin comforter, where she lies, facedown. The pain is real, but her voice, even muffled, sounds pouty. She sounds less like a grown-up and more like her daughter.

  Julie has been away from Beck before, of course—but she never likes it. Evan is a good father, though, and when he’s around, he’ll have Tara around to help out. Beck adores her sitter. The woman is twenty-three, four years younger than Julie, and yet she holds Julie’s child as a grandmother might. She is a friend of Evan’s family, which is how they found her in the first place. Or, how Evan found her, because he didn’t actually consult Julie. Though she is grateful now to have Tara around.

  Julie often wonders idly if Evan has slept with Tara. They don’t spend an unreasonable amount of time together—not that Julie knows of, at least—but enough, when Evan has Beck on weekends or vacations. It isn’t impossible. Evan is a beautiful man, even without the New York notoriety he now possesses. Julie should know. And Tara is young and lovely. Julie tries not to think about it. She doesn’t want Evan for herself anyway, not anymore. Still, it stings to think of him with anyone else, and she can’t help but resent the younger woman for the possibility. For the maybe.

  When Julie finally moves from the bed, the comforter, with its ugly green pattern, has rumpled and one pillow is turned sideways. She doesn’t fix it. Who really cares?

  She showers with the hot water faucet turned on all the way, but only lukewarm water comes out of the sputtering showerhead. She reaches, dripping wet and freezing, for a stiff hotel towel from the rack above the toilet, avoiding her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She knows well enough what she looks like. Not so different from when she was in high school, physically, still tall for a woman. Mostly legs. She towered over the boys when she was younger. Skinny, small-breasted. Her dark hair was long once, but now it is cropped into a stylish, choppy bob that stops just below her chin. Eyes the same brown. Boring brown, she said more than once, when she was young and comparing her features to Reba’s. “No,” Reba would say. “They are yummy eyes, like chocolate!” and they’d dissolve into a fit of giggles.

  The photos in her portfolio are striking. A dark beauty, someone once said at an audition. But Reba was angelic.

  Julie doesn’t want to leave the room, but there is only one thing she wants more than to stay hidden in this freezing-cold, heavy-curtained cave until she can get back to New York. That diary. She has decided she isn’t leaving Mississippi without it, so she might as well have dinner.

  She dresses in a black sweater and jeans, and even though she wants to leave her face bare, she forces herself to swipe on mascara and blush before leaving the room. Is it for August? She doesn’t know, doesn’t want to think too hard about it.

  There’s no one behind the reception desk when Julie exits the elevator and rounds the corner into the lobby, so she makes her way unhindered down the hallway to Southern Saddle. When she pushes open the t
hick wooden doors, the dim light and the shock of memories are so overwhelming that she steps backward, afraid.

  The hostess, a young girl with brassy red hair, leads her to a small booth in the back corner of the restaurant and sets down two menus. Tonight, there is a man in a cowboy hat and boots playing a guitar on the makeshift stage. When the waitress comes, Julie orders whiskey, then waits impatiently for it to arrive while she tries to take it all in.

  15

  REBA’S DIARY, 1997

  There was this one night, back when summer had just started, when I remember thinking that nothing exciting would ever happen to me. It was my own fault if it didn’t, but still.

  The day was turning into night as we walked into Southern Saddle. It was crowded inside, and hazy. There’s hardly anywhere else to go for people who crave that kind of rowdy nightlife. Smoke formed these wispy halos over the heads of the patrons around the bar, and the air was heated and heavy.

  Before I met August, this was the kind of “fun” I’d get up to most weekends.

  Jules gets restless in the summer, says that things need to happen. That things are begging to happen. It’s enough, she says, to make a teenaged girl go crazy. (I get bored sometimes too, but I’m usually happy enough at home with a book.)

  So, we lie to my parents and Aunt Molly, and plead for a ride to the mall (where the good kids go to hang around outside the movie theater or in the food court). Occasionally, we do go inside to buy some small trinket—a new CD or a pair of earrings, something to provide as proof that we were just where we promised we’d be. As if we need it. Most nights we just stand there, waving good-bye and waiting and watching until the car pulls out of sight, and then we cross the street to The Inn and its adjoining bar.

  Of course it’s Jules’s idea. The dangerous plans always are. The only one who knows the truth is Jules’s cousin, Toby, who hates us both and doesn’t give a damn what we do anyway (his words, not mine). He only threatens to tell Jules’s aunt Molly when he gets sent to pick us up and we dare to keep him waiting.