Southern Belle

Elm shifted gears, sat straighter and peered to her left before turning onto I-16 and heading toward Savannah, reflecting as she gripped the wheel tighter that perhaps if she’d done something about the situation sooner, she might have—

The harsh, urgent honking of an oncoming car made her sit up and swallow as she wrenched the Cherokee back apologetically into her own lane. She must stop being so distraught and take action. After all, things weren’t going to fall conveniently back into place simply because she wanted them to. It was too late for that.

A clear stretch in traffic allowed her to put her foot on the accelerator. Glancing down, she glimpsed her old beige Gucci loafers and her smooth feet—still tanned, even though it was early December. That she should notice something as trivial and insignificant as a tan when her life was spinning out of control seemed almost funny. It was also superficial and ridiculous, she reflected, pinning her attention back on the road, a knot in her throat. Typical of the person she’d allowed herself to become.

She let out a small sound of repressed frustration. She didn’t smoke, drank only moderately and didn’t chew gum—that was unladylike. But right now, Elm felt like driving straight to the beautiful mansion featured in Southern Living that she’d shared so dutifully with Harlan for the past twelve goddamn years and getting rip-roaring drunk.

Instead, habit won and she drove carefully into town and made her way sedately through the squares and streets she’d frequented all her life. Waving her manicured hand at Mrs. Finchely on the corner of Abercorn, she parked neatly in front of her own garage, turned off the ignition and took a quick peek in the rearview mirror.

What she saw was a brutal reminder of all that had changed since she’d last been home. Her dark eyes, such a contrast with her hair, had rings under them; her usually healthy skin looked dull. For once she actually looked her age, she reflected, making a feeble attempt to right the offending hair that fell lank on her shoulders. Not that it mattered, she argued, glancing at her hands—well tended despite the daily contact with the earth and all her work gardening. Sliding them over the thighs of her beige chinos, she tried to think. She must talk to someone or she’d go crazy.

But whom?

Aunt Frances, her mother’s sister and her lifelong confidante, was out of town. Anyway, she was an elderly lady and shouldn’t be worried by her niece’s problems.

Elm alighted absently from the car, but instead of entering the house began walking. A passing acquaintance nodded, and automatically she plastered on the practiced, obligatory smile of a senator’s daughter and congressman’s wife, still wondering who, in the whole of Savannah, she could talk to.

Really talk to.

Of course there was Meredith, but Elm recalled her friend mentioning that she was working on a big case, so she’d be too busy right now. But after several steps and a quick review of her long list of acquaintances, she realized, shocked, that there was no one else, simply no one, whom she trusted enough not to broadcast her private hurt, her status as betrayed wife, to the world.

Crossing the road into Forsythe Park, Elm shuddered at the spectacle she would afford. The mere thought of her private life being relayed in murmured confidential whispers at the gym or over chardonnay-drenched lunches at the tennis league was too appalling to contemplate.

Oh, God. Down the street, approaching rapidly, was General Mortimer. He would want to stop for a chat, tell her the weather forecast. Usually she listened, smiled, nodded at the same remarks she’d heard, day in, day out, for years. But not today. Right now she simply couldn’t face it. Dipping her chin, Elm hid behind the curtain of long hair, hoping her black designer shades would disguise her sufficiently, and swerved up the nearest path, realizing as she did so that she’d instinctively walked in the direction of Meredith’s law offices. For a moment she hesitated, then stopped on the curb and closed her eyes tight shut. She simply had to let loose or she’d explode. However busy Meredith might be, she was the one and only person Elm needed right now.

Opening her eyes once more, she stared past the old-fashioned street trolley packed with eager tourists, necks craning as they hung on to their guide’s practiced description of precise locations where Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was filmed, and walked determinedly across the street. She’d witnessed this scene countless times, typically with good humor, sometimes laced with a mild flash of irritation for the notoriety Savannah had achieved.

But not today.

Today she couldn’t have cared less how many tourists invaded the city. She felt strangely detached from her surroundings, could visualize herself—tall, well dressed despite the casual nature of her clothes, waiting to cross the street—like an out-of-body experience.

How many affairs had Harlan had, she wondered suddenly, stepping absently into the street. It was as though, all at once, so much of what she hadn’t understood—hadn’t wanted to see—made perfect sense. It must have been obvious to all those surrounding her. Yet she’d refused to get the message, refused to face reality inching its way insidiously into her world, had remained trapped like a rabbit in headlights, dazed by Harlan’s charisma, her father’s ambitious plans for his son-in-law, and her own dogged determination that the marriage shouldn’t fail, couldn’t fail.

The panicked blast of a horn and the screeching of tires made her jerk up, aghast. She’d wandered into the street and hadn’t noticed.

Sending the outraged driver of the enormous SUV an apologetic smile, she hurried to the opposite pavement. Shit. That was the second time in under an hour she’d lost all sense of reality. But the pang of—not pain—that was something you endured, something you went through for a worthy cause, and this certainly didn’t qualify—but the strange, angry torment she was experiencing, directed as much at her own obtuse need to go on believing in the dream she’d so carefully constructed as at Harlan, wasn’t allowing her to think straight. Perhaps she was being ridiculous and this happened to most marriages at some point. But deep inside she knew that, too, was a lie.

By the time she took stock of her whereabouts, Elm realized she was opposite the Oglethorpe Club and Meredith’s office. Rollins, Hunter & Mills, attorneys at law, practiced in the magnificent mansion standing on the corner. She crossed the road, carefully this time, and rang the buzzer at the ornate wrought-iron gate, feeling as though someone had pressed the button on a stopwatch and put her life on hold.

2

The buzzer buzzed.

Elm pushed the gate open and walked up the shallow steps to the law office’s imposing front door.

As soon as she stepped inside, she was plunged into the high-powered, hectic world of Savannah’s most prominent law firm, of successful attorneys barking sharp orders to Mylanta-popping paralegals in high heels and T.J. Maxx power suits. She stood for a moment and studied the pleasant face of the pregnant receptionist sitting unfazed in a bright pink smock behind a large antique desk as wide as she, trilling out the firm’s well-established name every few seconds, juggling calls, while anxious, six-hundred-dollar-an-hour clients were put on hold, waiting impatiently to be connected.

“Mrs. MacBride?” Ally, Meredith’s rake-thin secretary, halted her sprint down the hallway and stopped, surprise evident on her pallid face. “Were we expecting you?” she asked, an anxious frown appearing as she mentally reviewed the day’s agenda.

“No. I don’t have an appointment,” Elm replied. And for the first time in memory she did not apologize or add if it’s not convenient I’ll return another time, or don’t bother Meredith if she’s in an important meeting. Right now—to use Meredith’s language, rather than her own—she didn’t give a flying fuck how busy her friend was, she needed to speak with her. Now.

“Right.” Ally, immediately businesslike, took charge. “If you’ll wait here just one second, Mrs. MacBride, I’ll check if she can see you right away. Why don’t you take a seat?” She indicated the group of studded leather sofas and armchairs strategically placed in the inner alcove, overshadowed by a gigantic Christmas tree, that looked out over the secluded garden and served as a waiting room.

“Thanks. But I’ll just wait here.” Elm smiled politely in the poised manner that was a part of her nature, and stayed put.

“Sure. I’ll—” Ally smiled nervously, indicated Meredith’s door, and after the briefest of knocks disappeared.

“Elm!” A booming baritone echoed behind her and a large palm clapped her on the shoulder. “What are you doing here, young lady?” Ross Rollins, senior partner, ex-state supreme court judge, and intimate friend of her father, Senator George Hathaway, shook her hand with delight. “Well, if this isn’t a wonderful surprise. Best get one of those gals in there to find us some coffee.” He gestured to the hall at large.

“Actually, I just popped in to see Meredith.”

“Sure. Now, tell me, Elm—” Ross slipped a broad arm about her slim shoulders “—how’s that handsome husband of yours doing, eh? Getting ready to win another term, I’ll bet. A little bird whispered to me that he has some pretty ambitious aspirations this time round. Particularly now that Jeff Anderson’s gone,” he added, lowering his voice. “Sad he went so young, very sad indeed,” the older man muttered, donning a suitably concerned frown for the recently deceased house minority leader. “Still, might just be Harlan’s lucky break, mightn’t it?”

She was saved from answering by Meredith, who appeared, beige-skirted and white-shirted, on the threshold of her own little empire.

“Hey. This is a surprise.” Meredith pecked Elm on the cheek, registering her friend’s pale, set face. With a quick word she dismissed Ross, linking her arm with Elm’s and sweeping her toward the open office door. “What brought you in here?” she asked, mentally filing the municipal-trash case—it would just have to wait—her bright eyes studying Elm’s fixed smile and controlled posture.

Something was obviously wrong, she reflected uneasily. In all the years they’d been friends—and that went back longer than she cared to remember—and not once since she’d begun practicing law, had Elm ever appeared unannounced. She invariably called first, making sure in that soft, elegant, well-mannered way of hers that it was convenient. “Come in. It’s good to see you.” She smiled more brightly than she felt.

“Sorry not to have called,” Elm murmured, following Meredith into her large, square, high-ceilinged room, a maze of stacked legal files, cardboard boxes with their contents labeled in thick black marker, and piles of miscellaneous documents waiting to be filed and delivered to the document bank. The desk was the one orderly area in the entire room.

“What’s wrong?” Meredith said as soon as the door closed. She pointed authoritatively at a new gray chair bought last week to replace the sagging green one that had finally collapsed. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Elm stared straight at her and remained standing. “Mer, did you know?”

“Know what?” Meredith’s brows met in a dark ridge over the bridge of her straight, thin nose.

“That Harlan was having an affair with Jennifer Ball?” Elm’s voice sounded almost casual, as though the discovery of her husband’s affair with one of Savannah’s most notorious divorcées was an everyday occurrence.

“Oh, Jesus!” Meredith sank behind her desk and pushed her glasses back into position. The day she’d long been dreading had arrived. The shit had finally hit the fan.

“Well? Did you?” Elm’s black shades stared blankly at her.

“I—look…kind of, okay?” She let out a sigh and again gestured for Elm to take a seat.

“And you never said a word.” Elm gripped the back of the chair.

“Look, sit down and I’ll explain.” She’d always known that one day Elm would suffer a rude awakening from the daydream she’d been living for more than a decade. Just hadn’t expected it would happen today.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Elm asked tightly. She sat on the edge of the gray chair and removed her shades. “Why didn’t you warn me, Mer? And by the way,” she added, her tone bitter, “just who else knows that my husband is fucking Jennifer? Everyone except me, I suppose?”

“Pretty much,” Meredith muttered, suddenly wary. Elm never used bad language.

“I repeat, why didn’t you tell me?” Elm pinned her mercilessly, her eyes two huge chestnut pools of pain, anger and crushed pride.

“Hell, Elm, how could I?” Meredith burst out, cringing inwardly. Should she have told her? Would it have been fairer?

“You’re my friend,” Elm bit back, “the only friend I trust in this damn cesspool. But you didn’t see fit to warn me. I don’t understand.”