Southern Lights

by Danielle Steel

  “I just want to be home with you,” Savannah said sadly. The scenic and historical aspects of Charleston didn’t interest her at all, or even the school. She wanted to be with her old friends in New York to finish senior year, and now she couldn’t because of a bunch of stupid letters written by some freak. It wasn’t fair. “I guess I’d better organize my stuff. Did you pack my music?”

  “Of course.” Alexa was glad she had thought to do it.

  There was no sign of a stereo in the room, but her mother said she had packed her Discman and iPod too. She was all set. And she wouldn’t disturb anyone, which seemed like a good thing.

  They ended the call, and Savannah slowly unzipped her bags and started hanging her clothes. It was all there, all her favorite clothes, and her mother’s. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw the two pink sweaters, her mother’s brand-new favorite black high heels, and a leopard sweater she hadn’t asked for but loved, also new. She saw the two teddy bears and set them on the bed with a smile and was glad to see them for the first time in years. They looked like old friends, her only ones here for now. And she set her stack of CDs on the dresser with the Discman and iPod, and as she turned around to go back to the suitcase for more, she sensed someone in the room, and almost jumped a foot when she saw a little girl in a nightgown standing next to the bed and staring at her. She had long blond hair too and huge green eyes.

  “Hi” was all she said. She had a serious expression, and the nightgown had bows and teddy bears all over it. She looked like a little doll. “I know who you are,” she said solemnly.

  “Hello,” Savannah said softly, still startled by her, but not wanting to frighten her away. “We’re sisters.” It felt odd to say it.

  “I didn’t know about you till today. My mom told me. She said my dad was married to your mom a long time ago, for a few months, or something like that, when you were born.”

  “More like seven years,” Savannah said, defending her history and her turf, and feeling more like ten than seventeen herself.

  “My mom tells lies,” Daisy said simply. It was a tough thing for a ten-year-old to say about her own mother, but it was true. “She does it a lot. She never told me about you. She said Daddy was embarrassed to tell me about you, so he never did. And you’re here now because your mother is in trouble with the law.” It was exactly what Luisa had said, and Savannah laughed out loud. It was an outrageous thing to say, and gave her a preview of who her stepmother was. “Is she in jail?”

  “No.” Savannah was still laughing as she walked over to the four-poster and sat down, and patted a space next to her for Daisy to hop up beside her, which she did. “My mom’s a prosecutor, and she’s trying to put someone in jail, a very bad person.”

  “Is prosecutor a bad word?” Daisy looked worried, and Savannah laughed again. She knew what Daisy thought it was, and it wouldn’t have surprised Savannah now if Luisa said she was that too.

  “No, it means lawyer. She’s an assistant district attorney. She puts criminals in jail. She’s going to be the lawyer in a trial, and put a very bad man in prison, who did a lot of nasty stuff.” She knew enough not to frighten Daisy by telling her he had probably killed seventeen women and maybe more. “Probably one of his friends wrote me some creepy letters, so my mom wanted me to go away until after the trial so he wouldn’t write to me anymore, so here I am.”

  “Does he know you’re here?” Daisy looked worried, and Savannah shook her head.

  “No, and he won’t find out. That’s why our dad brought me here, so no one knows where I am.”

  “Does your mom know you’re here?” Daisy was interested in everything she said and took it all in. She believed her. She knew better than to believe her mother, as sad as that was. She had lied to her before, about people she didn’t like, or to make herself look good. She had fired a nanny Daisy loved because she thought Daisy liked her too much and was too attached to her. So she told Daisy that she had quit and run away and didn’t care about her. But the cook told her the truth. Daisy had never heard from the nanny again.

  “My mom and our dad agreed that I should come here.”

  “I don’t think my mom is too happy about it,” Daisy warned her with huge eyes, and Savannah nodded.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “I heard her yell at my dad. She does that a lot. They fight,” she announced, as though it was a sport they played, like golf. She was giving her new sister a rundown on the situation in the first five minutes. But none of it surprised Savannah. She pretty much knew what to expect. And so far it was right on track, with no welcome from Luisa. “She can be pretty mean when she gets mad, so watch out. I like your bears,” she said as she turned to look at them. “I have one too. I sleep with him.” She smiled shyly at Savannah.

  “Do you want to listen to my music while I unpack?” Savannah offered, and Daisy responded with a grin. Savannah went to get it and put her iPod on her, turned it on, and Daisy smiled broadly and started to sing, and then sang more softly so no one would hear them. She didn’t want her mother to hear her in Savannah’s room. She liked it here, and she liked her. She was still listening to the iPod when Savannah finished putting her things away. There was tons of room, more than she needed. There was a gigantic walk-in closet and built-in racks for her shoes.

  Daisy was still sitting on the bed and took the iPod off so she could talk to Savannah again. “I like your music. It’s cool.” She had the same soft southern drawl their father did, and it sounded cute on her. It was eleven o’clock by then. “Do you like your mom being a lawyer? Mine doesn’t do anything. She plays bridge and goes to lunch, and shops a lot.”

  “I like shopping too,” Savannah admitted. “So does my mom, but she works hard. Her work is really interesting, except when something stupid happens, like the letters I got. That never happened before. My grandma was a lawyer too,” she added. “Now she’s a judge.”

  “I thought judges were men.” Daisy looked puzzled.

  “Nope,” Savannah informed her. “They can be women too. She runs the family court, they do divorces and stuff, custody cases, a lot of stuff about kids.”

  “She must be smart.” Daisy looked impressed.

  “She is, and nice. I love her a lot.”

  “My grandma is the president general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.” It was a mouthful for a ten-year-old, but she whipped through it, never realizing that she was Savannah’s grandmother too. “And I have two brothers, Henry and Travis.” Savannah laughed at that.

  “Me too.”

  “That’s odd.” Daisy looked surprised.

  “Same brothers, because we have the same dad,” Savannah explained.

  “That is soooo weird,” she said, smiling. “I always wanted a sister.”

  “Me too.”

  “Did you know about me?” Daisy asked, as she lay back against the pillows and looked at Savannah.

  “Yes, I did,” Savannah said gently. “My mom told me a long time ago.” And then she had an idea. “Do you want to sleep in here with me tonight?” There was room for ten of them in the huge bed, and Savannah thought it might form a bond between them that was already off to a good start. Daisy considered the offer, and then nodded. “Do you want to go get your bear?” Savannah asked, since Daisy had said she slept with him.

  “I better not. Mama might hear me and not let me come back.” She was smart, and right. “I can sleep with yours.”

  Savannah pulled the covers down for her, and Daisy slipped between the sheets with a grin. Savannah went to put her own nightgown on then, and was back in a few minutes while Daisy waited for her wide awake. And Savannah turned off the lights and got into bed too.

  “Are you scared to be here?” Daisy asked her in a whisper after a few minutes. They were both lying on their backs in the dark, looking up at the blue silk canopy on the bed. The question made Savannah think of her mother and how much she missed her, and how strange it was to be here.

  “A litt
le,” she answered in a whisper. “That’s why I asked you to sleep with me tonight.” In answer, Daisy slipped her small hand into Savannah’s and held tight.

  “You’ll be okay,” she reassured her. “Daddy won’t let anything happen to you, and the bad man won’t write to you anymore, and then your mama will put him in jail. And we have each other now,” she said with the sweetness and innocence of childhood. What she said, and the little hand in hers, brought tears to Savannah’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, and leaned over to kiss Daisy on the cheek. It was soft and felt like a baby’s skin to her. Daisy smiled and closed her eyes, and kept her hand in Savannah’s. Her grip relaxed eventually, and they both fell asleep side by side.

  It was after midnight when their father knocked gently on the door. When there was no answer, he opened it a crack to peek in. He saw that Savannah was in bed, and tiptoed into the room in the darkness, and then noticed two shapes side by side in the moonlight. He saw both his daughters there, sound asleep and holding hands. He stood looking at them for a minute with a tender smile, as tears ran down his cheeks. And then he left the room as silently as he had come in and closed the door.

  Chapter 8

  When Savannah woke up in the morning, sunlight was streaming into the room, and Daisy was gone. She was shocked to see that it was ten o’clock and she had slept like a rock. She hadn’t heard Daisy steal out of the room in the morning, and there was no evidence that she’d been there. She had left the room at dawn so no one would find her in Savannah’s bed, or there would have been hell to pay with her mother.

  Savannah showered, brushed her hair and teeth and dressed, and made her way to the kitchen, where two women were sitting at the kitchen table. They smiled when she walked in.

  “Good morning,” Savannah said cautiously, wondering where her stepmother was.

  “We’ve been waiting for you to get up. We didn’t want to wake you,” the older of the two said. “Mr. Beaumont said he’d be back at eleven to pick you up. He had to do some things at the office. And Mrs. Beaumont is at the hairdresser and has a luncheon in town after that.” That meant her father would be back in half an hour for the sightseeing he’d promised. The two women introduced themselves as Tallulah and Jane. Tallulah was Jed’s wife, and Jane was from Memphis, and had an accent but a different one. Savannah was fascinated by how they spoke.

  They asked her what she’d like for breakfast, and she said cereal would be fine and she could help herself, but they insisted on serving her on flowered china, which they set on a delicately embroidered linen mat. Everything was fancy here. Nothing was simple or plain or practical, like at home. She felt totally out of her depth. She and her mother lived nicely, but nothing even remotely like this. This was another world. She realized now too what a shock it must have been for her mother to come back from all this after being banished. She must have felt like Cinderella after the ball, when the coach turned into a pumpkin, and the white horses into mice, and in her case Prince Charming into a rat. Savannah felt sorry for her.

  She was just finishing her cereal when her father returned and strode into the kitchen looking handsome as ever in an immaculately tailored tweed jacket and gray slacks.

  “Hi, Savannah,” he said breezily. “How did you sleep?”

  “Like a baby.”

  “Ready for the grand tour?” She nodded, thanked the two ladies in their white uniforms with starched lace aprons, and followed him into the front hall. She went to get a jacket and her bag, since it was cool but not cold and there was a breeze off the ocean, as there often was in Charleston, which translated to crushing humidity in summer. And five minutes later they were in his car, a Jaguar, and heading toward the heart of town.

  They chatted easily about the city, and the first place he took her was Fort Sumter for a lesson in local history. It was where the first shot had been fired in the War Between the States. Savannah found it fascinating when they took the tour, particularly the totally southern slant they had on everything. It was all about the Confederacy, and never the North, which for them didn’t seem to exist, except as the enemy they had loathed a hundred fifty years before, and in some cases still did.

  From there he took her to the French Quarter to look around, and then to lunch at a quaint restaurant with a back garden. The food was spicy local fare, with crab soup and crab cakes, shrimp and rice, all in delicate sauces with aromatic spices. It was delicious, and they laughed together at lunch, and afterward he took her on a horse-drawn carriage ride down cobblestone streets, where they saw more historic sights, and he pointed out several popular coffeehouses to her, where young people hung out.

  Afterward he drove her past several shops he said she might like to check out later, and past the spectacular beaches of Sullivan Island on the way home.

  They got back to the house at four-thirty after a wonderful day together. And her father had told her over lunch that she was starting school the next day. It was all arranged. She would be a senior, of course, and she was welcome to attend their graduation and walk with the other students, although her official diploma would come from her school in New York. He had had her transcript faxed by her school, and the one in Charleston was impressed by her grades. He was going to drive her there in the morning himself, and pick her up on her first day, and after that he said she could drive herself. He had had the car detailed for her that day. He had left nothing out, and had taken care of everything, and she was touched.

  They were both smiling and chatting easily as they walked into the house, and both of them were startled to find themselves face-to-face with Luisa, who had just come in too, from her lunch. And when she saw them, it was too late for her to avoid them or hide. The dreaded meeting between Savannah and her stepmother could no longer be put off.

  “Hello,” Savannah said shyly. She was the first to speak, as Luisa glared at her without a word. She was wearing a royal blue suit with satin lapels, and sapphires on her ears. Her hairdo looked like a helmet, and there was not a hair out of place. Her manicure was perfect, and her eyes looked into Savannah’s like knives.

  “This is Savannah,” Tom said gently, to break the ice, as though Luisa didn’t know. “And Savannah, this is Luisa, your stepmother.” He knew instantly that it was a mistake, as his wife turned on him with a vicious look and ignored Savannah.

  “I am not her stepmother,” she said fiercely. “She may be your daughter, but she’s not mine, in any way or form. And don’t forget who your real daughter is in this house.”

  “They’re both my real daughters,” Tom said firmly, as Savannah wished she could melt into the floor and disappear. This wasn’t fun. Daisy was right. Luisa was livid that she was there and made no attempt to conceal it. In fact, she wanted to be sure that Savannah knew just how unwelcome she was.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Luisa said, as she walked past them to the kitchen to speak to the cook about dinner. Savannah wondered if she was going to be allowed to eat with them. It didn’t seem likely, or appealing if she was.

  Tom looked at her apologetically and shrugged. “She’ll calm down. This is hard for her,” he said lamely, unable to explain his wife’s appalling conduct and embarrassed by it. Savannah was trying to reassure him as Daisy bounded down the stairs, and threw her arms around Savannah’s waist. She was still hugging her when Luisa came back into the hall, and looked like she was going to have apoplexy when she saw Daisy wrapped around Savannah.

  “Have you all lost your minds?” she said to her husband and daughter. “This girl is a stranger to us. She’s a guest here, brought by your father. She is not part of our family, and surely not of mine. I’d like you both to remember that, and to keep in mind just who I am here. I’m your mother and your wife, and whatever mistakes your father made in his past are not my business or my problem, or yours,” she said, looking straight at Daisy, who took her arms from around her sister’s waist, so as not to upset her mother further. “We’ll get through this, since
we have to, but there is no need to act as though you’ve found some long-lost relative and brought her home. This is our home, not hers. And she is not my relative, or yours,” she said to Daisy again, and with that she glared at her husband, ignored Savannah, and stomped up the stairs at full speed. And an instant later they heard the door of her room slam with a vengeance, as they stood looking at each other, embarrassed and confused. Tom glanced apologetically at his older daughter, who was shaken and near tears. Luisa had hit them with the force of a tornado, and had left them like rubble in her wake.

  “Daddy, maybe I should go,” she whispered to her father. “I’ll be fine in New York. Mom was just being nervous. I don’t want to cause any trouble here.” Nor be treated like a pariah, or abused by a woman who clearly hated her.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” her father said firmly and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry. Luisa has a terrible temper. She’ll calm down.” He glanced down at Daisy then, who looked crestfallen.

  “Are you going?” Daisy asked Savannah.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I think I should. I don’t want to upset your mom.”

  “She’s being mean,” Daisy said, looking angry. “I like having you here. I want a sister. Don’t go,” she said pleadingly, and put her arms around Savannah’s waist again. She was hard to resist.

  Tom led them both up the stairs, with an arm around each of them. He liked having Savannah there too. He had always wanted her to visit, but Luisa would never allow it. Now the matter had been taken out of her hands by fate, and he was glad. He agreed with Daisy, and didn’t want her to leave.