Slightly South of Simple Read online

  TWELVE

  inhumane

  caroline

  The worst part about your husband leaving you when you’re pregnant is that there is no alcohol of any kind involved. I mean, how are you supposed to heal when you can’t drink your troubles away? It’s really quite inhumane, if you ask me. I had just put Vivi to bed and was in the kitchen making a sparkling water with a splash of pineapple juice for myself and plain sparkling water for Emerson to take back out onto the front porch to enjoy the crisp evening and bright stars with my sisters. As you can imagine, wine was not part of Emerson’s cleanse. If it had been, she would have been incoherent after three sips.

  My phone beeped on the counter, which is when I realized it was 9:08. Ladies Who Lunch had officially premiered for the season. The text was from James.

  I’m sorry, Car. I really, truly am. Can you ever forgive me?

  I didn’t respond, because I was pretty sure I couldn’t.

  My friend Lucinda texted: Hang in there, lady. I’ve got your back.

  Then Sarah Peters: Love you! It’s not that bad. It’s really not. They look ridiculous, don’t you think?

  I could feel that queasiness developing in the pit of my ever-protruding belly. I wasn’t sure which was worse, not watching or just watching and getting it over with. Fortunately for me, Mom’s lack of a TV made it a choice I didn’t get to make.

  My phone chimed. Jenna Franklin. Gag. You hold your head up high, Caroline. She may be a supermodel, but she doesn’t have your class.

  Jenna was the queen of the backhanded compliment. I was glad she reminded me that Edie was a supermodel, lest I forget for a mere moment.

  I screwed the top back onto the fresh pineapple juice that Emerson had made for me. So this was it. The secret was out. The last few people in the United States who didn’t know that my husband was screwing a supermodel and not his pregnant wife now knew it for a fact. I leaned over on the counter for a second, feeling like I couldn’t breathe.

  The phone dinged again. James. Again. Can we talk?

  I laughed out loud. No. No, we could not talk. I liked giving him the silent treatment, because I knew the uncertainty of it all would drive him bananas. But I couldn’t help texting back: You have Edie to talk to now. You don’t need me.

  Don’t be like that.

  Was he serious? Wow. That was just like a man. While he is smearing you all over the papers and TV and Internet making you look like a fool, making the entire life you led look like nothing more than a farce, he wants you to call him and reassure him that it’s OK.

  “Well, guess what?” I said out loud. “It’s not OK.”

  I heard footsteps and turned to see Mom walking into the kitchen, clad in the robe and slippers we had sent her for Christmas. I had felt terrible about not coming home. We all had. But I think it was fair to say that we were making up for it now with this visit.

  “You talking to yourself?” Mom asked. She smiled and rubbed her hand up and down my back. “How you holding up?”

  I dropped my chin to my chest, trying to stretch my neck, which always got very tight when I was stressed. “My husband is currently canoodling with a supermodel, and millions of people are watching it.” I took a sip of my mocktail. “But, you know, considering the circumstances, it could be worse.”

  And it could be worse. I’d lived through worse. We both had. In some ways, we still lived through it every day.

  “Let’s go on the porch,” I said.

  Mom nodded. “Let’s. It’s such a beautiful night.” She handed me a throw from the back of a club chair on the way out. “Just in case.”

  I opened the door, but Sloane and Emmy were nowhere to be found. The sky took my breath away. What seemed like millions of stars twinkled over the water. I didn’t know if it was the lights or the buildings, but star sightings in Manhattan were not quite as brilliant.

  “Where did they go?” I asked.

  Mom shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s get comfy and wait for them to come back.”

  I cut my eyes at her. “Where are they, Mom?”

  She was the world’s worst liar. She took a sip of her real wine, which was another tip-off, because Mom basically never drank unless it was someone’s wedding.

  “Moooommmm,” I said.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Let’s talk about baby names.”

  I opened the door again and walked upstairs.

  “Caroline,” she hissed, so as not to wake the children. “Get back down here this instant.”

  Of course, all that did was make me walk faster. Now I knew for sure that they were up to something. I poked my head into Sloane’s room. Lights off. Beds made. Empty. I knew the boys were asleep in the room next to hers. So I went to the end of the hall to the guest room, flung the door open, and there were Emerson and Sloane sitting on the bed. Emerson slammed her laptop shut.

  I crossed my arms. “My own two sisters. Seriously? You are such traitors. Could you not even wait until I went back to the guesthouse?”

  Emerson looked sheepish. “Honestly, no.”

  “We were coming from a good place,” Sloane said. “We thought we could be like the pass-through. You wouldn’t have to actually watch it, but we could tell you what you need to know.”

  I was seething. “How could you do this to me? Tonight of all nights? I’m down here with my phone about to vibrate off the kitchen island from all the Ladies Who Lunch texts, and I need my sisters to sit on the porch with me and talk about old times. Instead, you’re up here reveling in my disgrace.”

  “Caroline,” Sloane said pleadingly.

  I thought about dramatically stomping out and slamming the door. But, even as worked up as I was, I wasn’t going to wake Sloane’s kids like that. That was like a whole other level of meanness.

  And yeah, that was dramatic. None of this was about my sisters, in reality. It was about James and the show and my feeling like my life was a volcano that wouldn’t quit erupting. I knew they weren’t reveling in my disgrace. Although I wondered if maybe they weren’t a tiny bit happy that I had finally gotten what was coming to me. Because I had, hadn’t I? I always thought in the back of my mind that it had all gone too well for me. The life I wanted had fallen into place a little too easily. It had to blow up sometime, didn’t it?

  It had blown up badly. And I didn’t have the courage to face it head-on. Instead, I had run away to my mom’s house, had kidnapped my daughter, of all things, and hadn’t even had the nerve to tell my cheating husband that we were moving, she was finishing the school year here, and that was on him.

  Mom appeared in the doorway and whispered, “They meant well.”

  “We really were trying to help,” Sloane said.

  “And?”

  Emerson grimaced. The look on her face said it all. It was as bad in real life as it was in my head. “But we absolutely were not reveling in your sadness,” she said. “We were trying to protect you in some weird way.”

  I nodded. “I know that. I need someone to yell at, and I’m not ready to yell at James quite yet. So I yelled at you instead.”

  “You can yell at me anytime,” Sloane said, squeezing my hand.

  “Not me,” Emmy said. “Get it together.”

  We all laughed.

  “Do you ever wish you could do it all differently?” I asked. “I mean, do you ever wish that you could rewind and take so many things back and add so many others in their place? I keep replaying it.” I paused. “I mean, obviously, I wouldn’t take back meeting James, because then I wouldn’t have Vivi.” I looked down at my stomach. “And this little one. But I question every move I’ve ever made.”

  Everyone was silent. Emerson and Sloane didn’t say anything, but we all looked at Mom. And you didn’t have to know her as well as we did to realize that she was thinking about all the things she would change if she could.

  THIRTEEN

  the high priestess of teak stain

  ansley

  It was a hallowed morning i
n Peachtree Bluff. Peachtree High had just won the football game against its major rival. And that could only mean one thing: A parade!

  Peachtree has a parade for every occasion. Every occasion. Of course, there are the usuals: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Fourth of July. We also celebrate Arbor Day, Biker Week, Teacher Appreciation Day, every mayor in history’s inauguration anniversary, Pirate Invasion. (Yes, pirates invade. And they camp out in authentic pirate-era tents and eat food off fires and drink grog.) Oh, and Dr. Seuss’s birthday—that one is actually my favorite. Anyway, you get the idea.

  After the parade, every dock owner in town has to have fireworks on his or her dock. I am terrified of fireworks, so Hal sees to it that my dock is appropriately lit—in more ways than one, I can assure you.

  And today we would get to do all of that. I knew the kids were going to love the parade, and I was excited for the opportunity to show off my family. The entire town attends every parade, of course. You would think it was mandatory, considering how many of us show up. As I looked in the mirror, applying my mascara, I briefly wondered if Jack would be there. But I pushed the thought away. It was one of many, many thoughts about Jack I had pushed away ever since that night on his boat.

  “Good morning, good morning,” I sang as I walked down the steps. It was certainly nice to have this house filled with little voices and even smaller feet. So sure, there were wet towels on the floors and toothpaste stuck to the sinks and diapers filling the garbage and crumbs everywhere. But it was wonderful all the same. Taylor and Adam were chasing each other around the kitchen island, giggling. I couldn’t wait to watch their towheads get even whiter in the summer, just like Emerson’s hair had. Emerson was throwing a bunch of inedible-looking plants into the blender. I was glad to see that she was blending whole foods this morning, not extracting their juice. This was progress, sadly.

  Caroline was texting, brow furrowed.

  “Where’s Vivi?” I asked.

  “Sleeping.” Caroline smiled, but I could tell it was fake.

  “Don’t torture yourself.”

  “Oh, I’m not.” She looked back down. “Well, I mean, I am. But I’m torturing myself because I have to do my hospital tour.”

  Caroline was a bit of a germophobe. Maybe not a bit. More like someone should medicate that child. I was hoping that her midwife would calm her. I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire but figured giving her something else to think about would help.

  “Have you given any thought to whether James will be there for the delivery?”

  She scrunched her nose. “I may not have told him that Vivi’s going to school here yet.”

  My eyes widened. I couldn’t imagine that she still hadn’t told him. But my job here was to keep my daughter as calm as possible. “Well, darling, I am sure he will understand.”

  He most definitely would not understand.

  “All right, crew,” I said. “I’m heading down to the store. If anyone needs anything, holler. Or send a carrier pigeon.” I don’t know why I thought that was funny, but I laughed. No one else did. Just like old times.

  Sloane hugged me. “Thanks so much for letting us stay, Mom.”

  I patted her back, wondering if Caroline was going to mention that she was spreading cream cheese on a bagel.

  As I turned to walk out the front door, I heard Caroline say, “Oh, my gosh. That’s so funny. I had forgotten that people even ate gluten.”

  Yup. There it was.

  As my feet hit the sidewalk, I looked back and forth between the rolling water on the right and the white clapboard homes on the left. As I was beginning to feel calm and free and meditative, my phone rang. I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t going to answer it. But it was Scott. And he never called. We were rarely in the same time zone.

  “Scott!” I said.

  “Ans!” he said back.

  Every time I heard his voice, I wished I talked to him more.

  “Where in the world are you?”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m actually hopping on a plane to Florida.”

  “Oh, please go see Mom,” I said. I waved to a couple of people on the street.

  “That’s what I’m doing,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in a few weeks, so I thought I’d go check things out.” He paused, and my stomach sank. “Do you think she’s doing OK?” he asked.

  I thought back. She had seemed like her usual self to me. Although truth be told, I’d been so preoccupied with the girls lately, I hadn’t talked to her as much. When I did, she always seemed to be flitting off to one place or another. She and Scott had always been closer. “I haven’t noticed anything off, but I haven’t seen her in six months. She seems happy and busy to me. What’s up?”

  “Maybe nothing,” he said. “I’m probably overreacting. She has seemed confused to me sometimes lately.”

  I laughed. “Well, Scott. She’s eighty-three. Some confusion might begin to set in at some point.”

  “I guess,” he said. “How are four of my five favorite girls?”

  “Is that like the four out of five dentists that prefer Trident?” I smiled. “Well, your favorite sister is doing really well. She is ecstatic to have all her grandchildren home at once. And your nieces are hanging in there.”

  “Do you know what’s cool?” Scott asked.

  “What’s cool?”

  “How it used to drive me nuts when we were kids that you had to be my favorite sister but I wasn’t necessarily your favorite brother, but now . . .”

  I laughed. “Scott! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Oh, I knew this whole time that if I just waited long enough John would screw it up, and favorite-brother status would be mine.” He laughed a villain-in-a-superhero-movie laugh.

  We said our good-byes, and I was still smiling as I entered the store.

  But the light feeling floated away, and I began feeling heavy. And stressed. I had no idea what we would do when we got to the point where Mom needed help. But you didn’t have to be a genius to realize that it would fall to me. It was a Southern daughter’s life purpose to care for her mother. Which was the highest form of irony, since she hadn’t helped me one bit when I needed her the most. As Mom (and Scarlett O’Hara) would say, I’d think about that tomorrow.

  When I got to the front door of the store, Kimmy was waiting for me. She had a huge basket filled with delicious-looking produce.

  “Oh, thanks, Kimmy,” I said, as I slid the key into the lock. I pushed harder than usual. It had rained late the night before, and rain always made the door swell.

  “Word on the street is that you’re feeding more than one these days.”

  I laughed gleefully, realizing that I truly felt as happy as I sounded—today, anyway. “I am, indeed,” I said. “In fact, could you head down to the house? Emerson consumes the amount of produce in that basket hourly, and I’m sure she’d be glad to see you.”

  Kimmy’s eyes lit up, a bit of a rare sight. “Sounds great.”

  I reached into my bag and handed her a hundred-dollar bill. “Just keep a tab going, if you don’t mind.”

  “Kale yeah, I will.”

  We both laughed. I elbowed her lightly. “Maybe we could make you ‘Kale Yeah Kimmy.’ ”

  She rolled her eyes. And I had enough of that to deal with, didn’t I?

  The door had barely closed behind me when the bell tinkled its happy sound. “She’s an odd bird, isn’t she?”

  I couldn’t help but smile, and I so hoped I wasn’t blushing. But he had that effect on me. “She is that.”

  I turned to smile at him, and he smiled right back. Jack motioned with his head toward the waterfront. “Some guys are here today replacing the teak on the deck. Would you mind giving me a hand with the stain color?”

  I looked down at my watch. “Now?”

  I was a little disappointed. This wasn’t a social call.

  Just then, Leah breezed in. “I’m here. All is right with the world. I’m going to finish putting together the mood
boards for Jack’s boat today. And then I’ll sort that new shipment of accessories from Barbara Cosgrove and arrange them—so that you can rearrange them.”

  “Well, then,” Jack said. “Seems like you’re nothing more than a fixture in this store.” He pointed up. “Like the pretty light. How much is that?”

  I pulled his hand down and shook my head. “You can’t afford it.”

  He laughed and held his arm out to me, and I took it. “A beautiful fixture,” he whispered, as we crossed the threshold, making me blush in earnest now.

  I wondered what my daughters would think if they saw me on the arm of a very handsome man—who wasn’t the one who raised them. But a few minutes of pretending wasn’t going to hurt anyone. Nope. Not a bit.

  “Thanks for coming by the other night,” Jack said. “Sorry if I was a downer.”

  I smiled. “A downer? No, not at all. You were wonderful.”

  “Good. How is life at the Murphy mansion?” Jack quipped.

  “It is hectic and lovely.” I smiled at him.

  It was such a beautiful morning. The sun was shining, and the trees were blowing in the breeze. My dress and light sweater were perfect. There was no doubt about it, spring was around the corner. But I couldn’t focus on any of it, because all I could think about was my arm and Jack’s arm and his eyes and those dimples and the way he made my stomach feel like it was flip-flopping around in my insides. I was too old to be acting and feeling this way. And he would be gone in a matter of weeks when his boat was seaworthy again. But maybe that was what made it so good. I didn’t have to feel that urge to run away, because it couldn’t go anywhere.

  I let go of Jack’s arm reluctantly, knowing that I would only put mine back around his if he offered and not knowing whether he would. It was like being a teenager again in a lot of ways. You weren’t even considering sex. Not even kissing, really. Just flirting a little, testing the waters, wondering when your hand would brush his again. When he would say that thing that made you feel special and beautiful all at once. And hoping it wouldn’t be too long.

  “I would love to meet your girls,” Jack said. “And I made a gift for little Adam.”