Annajane was speechless. For nearly a minute.
“You are unbelievable,” she said, when she could finally gather her thoughts. “Me? Wreck your family? Let me clue you to the real world, Sallie, since you refuse to face it for yourself. Your daughter is furious with you because you let her know you don’t consider her children to be ‘real’ Baylesses. Also, you treat her like shit, always criticizing her clothes, or her weight, or her housekeeping, always letting her know she isn’t quite good enough.”
“I never!” Sallie said. “Pokey knows I love her. And if I’ve given her constructive criticism, she knows it’s because I want her to be the best she can be.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with Davis,” Annajane admitted. “It’s news to me that Pokey and Pete are going to buy him out. But it’s good news. He hasn’t been happy at Quixie in years, and it’s time for him to move on to something else if he doesn’t believe in the company anymore. Besides, if he leaves Passcoe and quits trying to prove what a hotshot he is, maybe he’ll finally grow up and become half the decent, compassionate, loyal man his father was and his brother is.”
“You have no right,” Sallie said, stubbing out her cigarette in the palm. “I want you to leave this house right now.”
“You asked me over here, and I listened to your bullshit, so now it’s my turn,” Annajane said. “Do you want to know why Mason won’t return your calls? Why he avoids coming over here like the plague? It’s because he’s tired of having you tell him how to live his life. You helped destroy our marriage, years ago, and then you came damned close to pushing him into marrying a pathological liar. Earlier this week, you as much as accused him of lying when he finally told you the truth about Sophie. A truth you already knew.”
“How dare you!” Sallie jumped up from her chair and stormed into the house. Annajane found her in the kitchen, unsteadily trying to open a bottle of wine.
“It’s not even noon yet,” Annajane observed, taking the corkscrew from her and applying it to the bottle herself. “But go ahead and have a snort. You’re gonna need it by the time I’ve had my say.” She took a goblet from the cupboard and poured the glass nearly to the brim.
Sallie gulped the wine, spilling some down the front of her blouse, a rare sight. “He had no right to tell those lies, to talk about his father that way,” she said.
“He’s telling the truth and you know it,” Annajane said. “Mason loved his dad, more than you’ll ever know. He loves you, too, which I don’t think you fully appreciate. That’s why he went down to Florida and brought Sophie back here after Glenn died. It’s why he adopted her, rather than let her be raised by strangers, and why he let everybody believe he’d cheated on me. He did it out of respect for you and Glenn, because he couldn’t stand the idea of a scandal. I don’t think he had any idea he’d fall in love with Sophie as quickly or as deeply as he did.”
Sallie took another gulp of wine. “This is unforgivable.”
“You knew all about the cheating, didn’t you?” Annajane asked. “You knew all about the other women, but it was convenient to look the other way, wasn’t it, Sallie?”
“I didn’t know anything,” Sallie said, unconvincingly.
“But you guessed.”
* * *
Sallie stared down into her wineglass. “The first time he cheated, I told myself it was just a slip. The children were so young; Pokey was still in diapers. He went to a ballgame in Chapel Hill for the weekend, and I stayed home with the children. When he came home, I just knew. The phone would ring at night, and if I picked up, she’d hang up.”
She gave Annajane a tremulous smile and fingered the pearls around her neck. “He bought me these, afterwards. And the phone calls stopped, and I told myself all was well. Until the next time. It was years later. He’d gone up to Virginia to visit Mason, when he was in boarding school up there. I think he was actually sleeping with one of the teachers. That went on for three or four years.”
“Why didn’t you have it out with him?” Annajane asked. “Threaten to leave him if he didn’t stop fooling around?”
“I didn’t want to leave him,” Sallie said. “I was in love with him. You knew Glenn. He was a good person. A wonderful father to our children. And so generous. He never denied me anything.”
“Except your self-respect.”
Sallie raised an eyebrow. “A highly overrated commodity, Annajane dear. We had a good marriage for a long time. It worked for us.”
“Until things changed,” Annajane said. “Like that last Christmas. The night of the company party.”
“It was outrageous behavior!” she said, her nostrils flaring. “Even for him. I waited up all night, wondering whether he and Mason were even alive. He came stumbling into our bedroom way after midnight, still drunk. And Glenn rarely got drunk. He stripped down to his underpants and fell into bed. I slept in the guest bedroom. In the morning, I found his clothes on the bathroom floor, where he’d left them. His clothes reeked of her perfume. That was a first. Before, he’d always been very careful to hide his … affairs. And then I went to unpack his overnight bag, to put the rest of his clothes in the laundry. I was emptying his pants pockets before I put them in the wash. He always left loose change and his pocketknife in his pockets, and I’ve ruined more than one load of laundry that way. But this time I found all that and a little bottle of blue pills I’d never seen before.”
“His heart medication?” Annajane asked.
“Sildenafil citrate. Ever hear of it? I hadn’t. I had to look it up on the Internet.” Sallie put the glass carefully down on the counter, then picked up a sponge to wipe down any traces of the spilled wine. “He’d gotten himself a prescription of Viagra so he could perform like the young stud he thought he was. He didn’t care if he couldn’t get it up for his wife,” she said bitterly. “But his girlfriends were a different story.”
Sallie opened the cupboard under the sink and brought out a bottle of spray cleaner. She sprayed the already-immaculate formica countertop, then wiped it briskly, using nearly half a roll of paper towels, while Annajane stood, transfixed, waiting to hear the rest of the story.
“You think I’m a bitch,” she told Annajane. “A mean, withered-up, spiteful old bitch.”
Annajane shrugged. “Mean and spiteful, yes. But not so withered up.”
That made Sallie laugh. “I spend a lot of money to look this good. I had a face-lift last year, did you know?”
“I wondered,” Annajane admitted. “You had it done down in Florida?”
“Yes. There’s a surgeon down there who does amazing work. I’m thinking of having a tummy tuck next. In fact, I’ve put in a contract on a little bungalow down in Palm Beach, and that’s where I’ll be wintering next year. I’m going to sell the Wrightsville Beach cottage. I never cared for it there anyway. It’s much nicer in Highlands, and most of my friends have places there. A much more interesting social scene.”
“Sounds like you won’t be spending much time in Passcoe,” Annajane said. “How long has this been in the works?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. And now, since I don’t have any ties to Quixie, well, there’s really no reason to stay around here. This house is beyond depressing. I’m only sixty-six, did you know that, Annajane? Glenn left me very well-fixed, so I intend to go out and live my life for myself now. Maybe even date. Who knows? I might even decide to remarry.”
“Go for it,” Annajane said. “But you were telling me about Glenn. About the day he died.”
“I put the Viagra bottle on the bathroom counter, right beside his shaving kit, and then I waited for him to wake up and find it,” Sallie said. “He came downstairs, still in his bathrobe. Glenn never left the bedroom unless he was fully dressed. It was a pet peeve of his.”
“I remember, Pokey always had to get dressed before she came downstairs, even on Saturday mornings,” Annajane said.
“I should have known he wasn’t feeling well,” Sallie said. “But I was
so angry!”
“Did you confront him about the Viagra? About the woman he’d been with?”
“Eva. Her name was Eva,” Sallie said. “He said it was just a … mild flirtation. We had a fight. I told him I wouldn’t stand for being humiliated anymore. I asked him if he wanted a divorce, and he said no, of course not. He apologized, and I left shortly after that, to go to the country club for my bridge date. And when I got home,” she said, biting her lip. “He was on the floor, unconscious.” She opened a cookie jar on the counter and brought out yet another pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit a cigarette with trembling hands and blinked back tears.
“That’s a nice story,” Annajane said. “Too bad it’s not true.”
“You’re calling me a liar?” Sallie asked, her face deadpan.
“I guess I am,” Annajane said.
54
Sallie flicked her cigarette into the sink, then turned on the tap to wash away the telltale ashes. She regarded Annajane as she might have regarded a cockroach who’d had the bad luck to wander into her immaculate kitchen.
“Why don’t you tell me what you think happened?”
“I know for a fact that Glenn was having chest pains that morning,” Annajane said. “Voncile called him on his cell phone, because she was concerned that he’d missed the company Christmas party.”
“Did she now?” Sallie asked.
“Even she could tell, just from his voice on the phone, that he was having problems breathing. He admitted that he wasn’t feeling well. Voncile begged him to call his cardiologist or to go to the emergency room, but he told her you were right there, taking good care of him.”
“Cardiologist?” Sallie said. “I wasn’t aware at the time that he had a cardiologist. Just one of the many secrets Glenn kept from me.”
“You’re a liar,” Annajane said. “You knew he was on heart medication. Blood pressure meds, too. You had to know. If he was having … whatever, that he couldn’t perform in bed…”
“Who said he was having problems in bed?” Sallie asked. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to have respect for your elders?” She tsk-tsked. “This is really not a topic for polite conversation, Annajane dear.”
“I’m tired of polite conversation,” Annajane said. “So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”
“Oh, please do,” Sallie said.
“Voncile talked to Glenn at around ten o’clock that morning. He was having chest pains, which you had to have known. But you did nothing. I ran into you at the country club when you were arriving around noon. You knew he was probably having a heart attack. Did you hide his meds from him? Did you watch him gasping for breath, Sallie?”
“Absurd,” Sallie said. “Glenn was fine when I left the house. He was watching the Carolina game and cussing a blue streak about the defense.”
“The Carolina game? At noon? Really?” Annajane said mockingly. “That’s interesting, because Mason was watching the game much later that afternoon. You know, it would be easy to look it up on the Internet, what time that game started. Are you sure that’s right?”
“It was some football game,” Sallie said. “I was so mad; I was distracted. But I do know that Glenn was fine when I left that house. He was alert and watching the game. And that’s all that matters.”
“Voncile told me she tried to call Glenn’s cell again before noon,” Annajane said. “But the call went right to voice mail. So she called the house and she talked to you. Don’t you remember that, Sallie?”
“It was an awful day. My husband died that day, remember?”
“Voncile remembers it, because she was so worried about Glenn. You told her he was fine, but he was taking a nap.”
“I just told her that to get her off the phone. He was watching the game!” Sallie repeated. “Glenn hated to be disturbed when he was watching football. The whole house could have burned down around him, and he wouldn’t have noticed.”
Annajane shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think he was in full-blown cardiac distress. I think you knew it, and you were so pissed at him, you deliberately left him there to die.”
She stood inches away from Sallie, whose back was to the sink. “Did he ask you to get his heart meds, Sallie?”
“No!”
“Did he ask you to call 911?”
“No!”
“Did you stand there and watch him dying? Was he already unconscious when you left to go play bridge at the country club? Were you surprised to come home that afternoon and find him still alive? Is that why you called 911 when you did? Because you knew it was already too late?”
Sallie stubbed her cigarette out in the sink and turned on the tap and then the garbage disposal. The metallic rattling filled the room until she switched it off. She washed her hands, dried them, then carefully applied moisturizing cream to each of her elegantly manicured hands.
“I loved my husband,” she said calmly. “I took care of him until the very end. And you can’t prove otherwise.”
“You’re right. I can’t prove a thing,” Annajane said. “But I don’t have to. Mason and Pokey are already asking themselves the same things I just asked you. They don’t want to believe what you’re capable of. But I know. And you know. And that’s good enough for me.”
Annajane left Sallie standing in the kitchen. She let herself out the front door and didn’t look back. It was, she’d already decided, her last trip to Cherry Hill.
55
Mason pulled around to the front of the Pinecone Motor Lodge and parked in front of Annajane’s unit. It was Friday night, the week before Memorial Day, and she was still putting the wedding off, still refusing to move out of the damned Pinecone Motor Lodge. It was a nice enough place, he guessed, but he was tired of playing this cat-and-mouse game. He honked the horn twice. Nothing. He was going to have to do this the hard way. Her way. He strolled up to the door and knocked.
“Who is it?” she called.
“It’s the big bad wolf,” Mason answered. “Open up, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff…”
The door swung open. Annajane was barefoot, dressed in a pair of white shorts and a beat-up Braves jersey. His lucky jersey. “And then what?” she asked carelessly.
He smiled and tugged her by the hand. “Come on,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see.”
“Right now?” she protested. “Mason, I’ve got stuff to do. I told you that earlier today. I’ll come over in the morning, and we’ll fix bacon and pancakes for Sophie, but right now…”
“Right now, you’re coming with me,” he said. “Please?”
“Just let me change,” Annajane said. “I’m a mess. I was going to wash my hair.”
“You’re fine the way you are. In fact, perfect. Now let’s go.”
She finally managed to talk him into letting her put on a pair of sneakers and grab her phone, but five minutes later they were rolling through town in the Chevelle with the roof down, Journey blasting on the tape player.
“Are you going to tell me what the surprise is?” she asked.
“Wait and see,” he said.
When they approached the gates to Cherry Hill, the sight of the discreet FOR SALE sign gave her pause. It had been six weeks since Sallie had announced she was putting the estate on the market and abruptly decamped for her new house in Highlands, North Carolina.
The rusted wrought-iron gates were open, and Mason easily swung the car down the driveway.
“Mason,” Annajane said uneasily. “Look, I know it’s your childhood home and all, but I really don’t want to go up to the house tonight.”
“Relax,” he said, pulling her across the bench seat toward him. “I have no interest in going there, either.”
“Ever?”
His jaw muscle did that twitchy thing. “Mama offered to sell it to me. I told her no thanks. Pokey doesn’t want it either.”
“What about Davis?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t talked to him. But I doubt Sallie would
sell it to him. They might be thick as thieves, but she has to know that if Davis did get the house, he’d tear it down in a minute, probably build mini-warehouses or something. Sallie’s funny about the place. She doesn’t want to live there anymore, but she doesn’t want it torn down, either.”
“I’m still shocked she put it on the market,” Annajane said.
“Yeah, well, she knows nobody around here has got three point two million to buy Cherry Hill. Listing it, that’s her way of thumbing her nose at everybody in Passcoe.”
“Especially me,” Annajane said.
He turned the car onto the dirt road leading to the lake house, but, to Annajane’s surprise, the road wasn’t dirt anymore. It had been paved so recently she could still smell asphalt and tar. The underbrush had been cleared, too; the huge old oaks picked clean of their coatings of kudzu; the shoulders stripped of the privet and weeds, with sod laid down; and ribbons of new shrubbery planted. She could see islands of azaleas and rhododendrons and camellias.
“Hey,” Annajane said, craning her neck to see the new landscaping. “What’s going on here?”
“The new owner made some improvements,” Mason said.
“Sallie sold off the lake house?” Annajane didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in her voice.
“She never came down here anyway,” Mason said, a bitter edge to his voice. “It was too primitive for her taste.”
“You were the only one in the family who ever really cared about the lake or the lake house,” Annajane said. “I wish you’d told me before it closed. It would have been nice to come back and look around again, for old time’s sake.”
“That’s what we’re doing now,” Mason said. “Once more, for old time’s sake.”
She caught a glimpse of something bright blue through the treetops as they got closer to the caretaker’s cottage.
“What’s happened here?” she asked, half-standing in her seat.
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