Where the River Runs

by Patti Callahan Henry

  He sauntered past the tables and waved back over his shoulder. I sat. “God, I’m sorry that happened, Cate. I so wanted this to be our day, catch up, shop. I’ve been looking forward to it forever. Harland is such a—”

  “Asshole.” Cate finished the sentence for me, took a long swallow of her wine. “Such an incredible asshole.” She covered her face, shook her head. “I’m fine. . . . Let’s pretend this didn’t happen.”

  I squeezed her arm. “Okay, do-over.”

  “No such thing,” she said.

  “Yes, there is. . . .”

  “Meridy.” She leaned forward. “Be careful. Watch. Listen. We get lulled into this life where it all just looks so damn good—but isn’t. Like that big ole oak tree that used to be in our backyard. It was so gorgeous, at least until it fell through our roof and into the kitchen and we found out that the roots were rotted all the way through, under the ground where we couldn’t see it.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “No, nothing like that. I guess I’m just trying to tell you how different it all looks from this side. Listen, Meridy, I know you’ve hinted to me that Beau doesn’t know everything about your past. And I don’t believe a woman should always have to tell every ugly thing she’s ever done—a woman needs to have her secrets.” She winked. “But I’m just telling you to watch and listen. The late nights, the not talking—it all adds up.”

  I nodded, then longed to tell her about my dream, about who I used to be before she knew me, before the designer clothes and the coiffed hair, before the husband, house and child. But instead I took a long sip of wine.

  “I don’t know how we get this way . . . so deadened to what is going on—but I do know I don’t want to get there again,” Cate said. “Remember when B.J. was part of that bus incident?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “That was years ago.”

  She nodded. “I know. And you never told Beau.” She leaned forward. “Those are the things that rot the roots.”

  “I was just trying to keep the peace . . . just . . .”

  “I know, girlfriend. So was I.”

  “I think I’m beginning to like this new you . . . the one who says whatever the hell she wants,” I said.

  “Ah, there you go. You cussed. I’m already a bad influence. Maybe I’ll talk you into an outfit that doesn’t match or even a second glass of wine.”

  “I’m not that bad, Cate.”

  “No, you’re that good.”

  I lifted my wineglass and tilted it toward her. “To you.”

  “And you,” she said.

  The woman sitting across from me was my best friend, yet completely different. Almost as though she had removed shackles from her life—ones she’d thought she wanted.

  But I was different and so was Beau. Weren’t we?

  After the full day with Cate, the last thing I wanted to do was go out to dinner with Harland, Alexis and two other couples. But it was Harland’s fiftieth birthday party and we had committed to going. I shook the achy lonely feeling that had settled in my chest and leaned back against my granite kitchen counter with the phone tucked under my chin, stared out at an early-evening sky where a star cuddled up to the underside of the moon. As the night progressed, the star would move farther and farther away from the moon—or maybe it was the other way around, but in any case, the movement gave me a desolate feeling, like a deepening hole. I was preoccupied with the week’s calendar and the party Beau and I were late for as Mother talked of her latest Ladies of Seaboro Society meeting.

  “Mother, I’ve got to go now . . . ,” I said, thinking more about which pair of shoes to wear with my linen suit than what she said.

  “Okay, Meridy,” Mother said. “If you’re too busy for me . . .”

  “That’s not it. I’m just late. . . .”

  “Oh, by the way . . .” Her voice pitched upward in the signal that she had some news of high import about Seaboro, where I was born and reared and which I had spent the last twenty-six years avoiding. “I forgot to tell you—the Seaboro Historical Society is trying to raise the money to finally renovate the Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage.”

  The memory of the Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage came like breath on my skin—so close I thought I could reach out and touch the weathered shingles. I shivered. “I thought they did that a long time ago,” I said, quiet and still as if someone might find me if I moved.

  “Well, when they relocated the foundation away from the sea after the fire all those years ago, there was this talk of rebuilding and renovating. Then the place just kind of . . . sat there. Now there’s a new movement to renovate. It all started when the historical society tried to figure out how to draw more tourists here from Beaufort. That Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage is just full of so much interesting history. So now they are trying to raise money . . . well, not raise it, but obtain the funds from Tim Oliver. He’ll finally have to pay his dues.”

  My numbness transformed to nausea. Mother hadn’t mentioned the Keeper’s Cottage since the fire twenty-six years ago.

  “What? Why Tim?”

  “Well.” She spoke slowly, as if I were a small child who didn’t comprehend her words. “They need a large amount of money and the city doesn’t have it. The easiest thing to do is have Tim pay for what he did.”

  “God, Mother, you sound like Beau. Pay for what he did? There’s no way Seaboro can make him donate that kind of money for an accident that long ago.”

  “Accident or not . . . someone has to pay and it was determined to be his fault all those years ago, Meridy. Just a little pressure from the town and—”

  “Surely Seaboro can raise that kind of money.” I wasn’t even sure Mother heard me, my voice small and fading. “Tim didn’t do anything to the cottage.”

  “I know you’d like to believe that about an old friend, but you know the truth and he did give the party.” Her tone of voice filled the lines with haughty righteousness.

  “The truth,” I said. A gap—larger than the distance between past and present—opened before me.

  “Meridy, are you there?” Mother’s voice came from far away.

  “Yes, I’m here.” My body slithered down against the cabinet until I was sitting on the travertine floor. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I pressed the END button and dropped the phone to the floor without saying good-bye to Mother—one of the deadlier sins.

  Tim.

  I had never, not even once in all these years, thought this shattered fragment of my past would return to me. I had spent too long building this life I dwelled in, this life in which I’d proved my worthiness.

  Not now.

  From across the space in time that Mother’s words had awakened, I heard our old Gullah housekeeper’s voice spilling one of her many proverbs. “No matter how you try to cover up smoke, it must come out.”

  The dream. The Keeper’s Cottage.

  Not now.

  The doorbell rang and I jumped up from the floor, shook my head. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Beau called out, “I’ve got it.”

  I moved toward the front door as Beau crossed the foyer, buttoning his baby blue oxford. He opened the door; Ashley stood on our front step. I came up next to Beau as she moved into our home. She didn’t glance at me, but gazed up at Beau, held out a pile of folders. “Here are the files you forgot.”

  “Files?” I asked.

  Beau didn’t answer me. “Ashley, thank you so much. I really needed these. I’m glad you noticed them and called.”

  “You’re welcome. Anytime. That’s why I’m here—to take care of things.” Her eyes flitted across the foyer to the living room on the left. “You have a beautiful home.”

  “Thank you,” Beau said, wrapped his arm around me. “Meridy’s the one with all the good taste.”

  Watch.

  Listen.

  I smiled. “Why do you need files tonight? We’re going out. . . .”

  Beau squeezed me. “I have to read these before tomorrow morni
ng. New info on the case.”

  He nodded at Ashley. “Thank you.”

  She hesitated before leaving, glanced at me, then turned on her heels and walked down my front steps. I tapped the pile of papers in Beau’s hand as I shut the door. “Couldn’t you have stopped by the office and picked them up on the way to the club tonight?”

  “I could’ve, but the last thing I wanted to do was go back there. I’m there too much as it is. Ashley said she drove this way going home.” He tilted his head at me. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, no problem at all. Just need to go get shoes on.” I looked into his face. Beau had been and still was the most beautiful man I’d ever known. His black hair was a blank night sky, his eyes the dark blue of the deeper parts of the sea behind my childhood home in the Lowcountry. I’d once imagined—since I’d vowed never to swim in the ocean again—that Beau’s eyes were the sea I could immerse myself in.

  If he found out about the Keeper’s Cottage, the knowledge would widen the space between moon and star, too far to draw them together again the next night. I grabbed some strappy sandals from my closet, then met Beau in the car and tried to swallow the fear rising in the back of my throat.

  Beau stared out the windshield while driving us to the club. His mouth moved to the words of a song on the radio, but I could guess where his mind was—on the case he was prosecuting. Beau had been with the same law firm for twenty years now, and if this case went right, he’d be promoted to senior partner, on an equal footing with Harland. Beau had followed the perfect path—new hire to partner in less than five years.

  I stared out the car window at the traffic on Peachtree Road, which was at a complete standstill, the cars like blood clots. But what I saw was Ashley standing at my front door, surveying my house and husband. I reached over and grabbed Beau’s hand. These were the nights when I was the angriest at Harland Finnegan. I needed Cate, not Harland’s substitute wife, to be at that dinner table tonight. I wanted a stabilizing force against the off-kilter feeling.

  Beau’s cell phone rang; he grabbed it from the cradle.

  “Beaumont Dresden.”

  I leaned my head on the windowpane as he mumbled agreements into the phone. I discerned it was another call from the press about the negligence case that had devoured every minute of his time the past year. I longed to grab the BlackBerry and throw it out the window. A part of me could not stand to hear one more word about the food poisoning that had cost the life of a small child.

  “We will make them pay—they can’t get away with this.” Beau sighed after he spoke the words I’d heard him say a thousand times. “Once again, I’ll repeat what I’ve said before. At first this negligence was probably an accident, a mistake. But then the company hid their mistake, covered up their incredible carelessness. They didn’t tell the truth after the child got sick. This was their fatal error. The deceit is what will cost them the most. They must pay for the pain and suffering of my client. A child died.”

  And that was his job—the work of my husband, whose sense of integrity was ingrained as deep as the furrows in his forehead from staring at legal documents into the wee hours of the morning. I’d heard it as many times as I’d ever heard anything in my life—if you caused pain and suffering, you paid.

  Beau hung up and looked over at me as we pulled into the valet parking at the club. “You okay, honey?” He touched my leg.

  I nodded. “Just fine, you?”

  “You look . . . I don’t know, like you don’t really want to go tonight.”

  I forced the best smile I could from below the quivering in my chest. “I do want to go.”

  “I know you don’t like Alexis . . . but can’t you just . . . try? She’s here to stay.”

  “Just because Harland traded Cate in for a new wife doesn’t mean I’ll trade her in for a new best friend.” Then a hidden idea whispered across my mind, Or maybe you’d like to trade me in for a new wife. I closed my eyes and mind to the thought.

  “Okay, then . . .”

  “Sorry,” I said, unsure what I was actually apologizing for. “I’m just a little tired.”

  “Talking to your mother would make me tired too.”

  This time my smile was real. “You got it.” I glanced out the window. “How far away are you from closing this case?”

  “It should go to trial in the next couple weeks.”

  The car pulled up to the curb, and I climbed out and nodded to the valet.

  “Hello, Mrs. Dresden, you look beautiful tonight,” he said.

  “Thanks, Jack.” I looked down at my outfit—an off-white Tahari suit and high-heeled sandals that matched the shade of the pearl buttons down the front of the jacket. I walked through the double front doors of the club; Beau came up behind me and grabbed my arm. For the first time I felt as though I was trespassing on a life meant for someone else.

  Six people sat at a white linen-covered table waiting for us. Shouts of hello, backslapping and cheek kisses greeted us. I sat, placed the swan-formed napkin in my lap. I picked up the sterling silver and rolled it over and over in my hand as I stared out the window to the immaculate golf course spread like a carpet to the horizon.

  Across from me sat Penni and Harvey. We’d known them since B.J. went to preschool with their oldest daughter, McKenzie. We’d plotted for our children to get married to each other, but McKenzie’s experimentation in the world of Goth nixed that entire idea for B.J. Penni and Harvey had come to a place, as had most of the parents I knew, of complete apathy in the midst of the noise and chaos of their children’s adolescence. Their opinion seemed to be that they’d given their children everything they could possibly want; now the kids had to figure it out for themselves.

  Penni looked tired, as if the race she ran would never end. She was a fragile-appearing woman, but anyone who knew her well would never use the word fragile to describe her. Standing at only four eleven, she didn’t command attention—but she garnered it nonetheless. Her beauty was that of the well-bred women whose mothers had warned them of the perils of the sun; her wavy brown hair fell to her shoulders in a bob of Jackie O. distinction. Harvey’s hair had whitened with age, but he was a handsome, broad-built man with a gentle voice that belied his size. They had been our friends for at least fifteen years now—a companionship that I’d often thought was built only on the commonality in life’s circumstances: children and job.

  Betsy and Mike sat to my right, rigid and still. Their marriage—always tottering on the verge of collapse—was not holding up well under the strain of building their new “dream house” in Brookhaven. Betsy’s lips were white with a bloodless grimace. Mike was already on his second glass of bourbon and the waiter hadn’t taken our order yet.

  Mike and Harvey both worked with Harland, and the underlying knowledge of Beau’s probable promotion shimmered over the table in unspoken tension.

  The couples were all talking, and no one, as yet, had turned to me. So I watched them with an odd fascination at my membership in their ranks. Mother’s phone call became the reminder of how I didn’t belong here, in this world, with these people. It was as if, at a very young age, they’d known their place in life and never once wavered from it. I had once had that confidence about where I belonged, but that had been shattered long ago.

  My vague discontent morphed into agitation—something was amiss or off-balance, and I didn’t know what. I had reasons and explanations for everything; I even had lists for everything. Then in the middle of Penni’s complaints about the ladies’ locker room running out of mints, I found a need to run away—a feeling no more or no less than that when I was eight years old and had packed my Barbie suitcase and made it as far as Mrs. Foster’s house at the corner of our street.

  “So, Beau, what are your plans for the summer?” Harland bellowed across the table, because that’s what Harland did, bellowed. He’d played college football for Georgia and I imagined he always thought he was calling out plays to a huddle.

  Alexis took his hand a
nd made a shushing noise with her forefinger over her pursed lips.

  Beau glanced at me. “We haven’t really talked about it yet.”

  I offered a close-mouthed smile. No, we hadn’t really talked about it, but we really hadn’t talked about anything lately. B.J. had left early for Vanderbilt, to play baseball, and we shared only the case that ate Beau’s time like a starving, clawing animal.

  Beau continued. “I’ll be working . . . I assume.” He lifted his glass and nodded at Harland, then squeezed my hand and laughed.

  “Well,” Harland said, “I’m sure Meridy knows how to hold down the fort while you’re working.”

  Alexis giggled, “Yes, I’m sure she does, perfectly.”

  Beau smiled at me. “Yep.” He patted my knee. “She’s the one who keeps it all together.”

  I needed to get away from the table, from the inane talk and Alexis. I stood; all four men at the table stood. I nodded and turned to walk to the ladies’ dressing room. The loneliness, which had been only a nagging feeling of emptiness the past few months, now covered me. I had once vowed never to feel this vacant ache again—but it nestled underneath my ribs, beckoned by the combination of a dream, lunch with Cate and Mother’s mention of the Keeper’s Cottage.

  I pushed open the door to the ladies’ room, plopped down on the couch that looked like it had been covered in a Lilly Pulitzer sundress. I put my head down, let it rest in the palms of my hands and stared at the striped pink-and-lime-green carpet. I knew how this feeling went—eventually the swinging sameness of my full days would numb the ache.

  The squeak of door hinges startled me. I looked up—a smile already in place. Penni stood in the entranceway with a martini in one hand, her Prada purse dangling from the crook of her other arm. Her hair was pulled behind her neck so her face appeared as if it were poking out from behind a closed door—neck out, face eager.

  “You okay, Mare?” she asked.

  “Just perfect, Penni. Just perfect.”

  Penni sat down on the couch, offered her martini glass to me. “Want some? You look a little . . . tired.”

  I looked at the glass—an olive danced at the bottom.