Queen of Broken Hearts (28 page)

Back home, I luxuriate in the long hot shower I promised myself, washing off the salt and sand and suntan lotion. In my rattiest nightgown, I prop up on a stack of pillows in bed, a pile of reading material on the table beside me, and sigh with pleasure. Why does nothing on earth feel better than turning in early, all alone, with a whole evening to lie in bed and read? It's been way too long since I've allowed myself the luxury of doing absolutely nothing. After listening to my messages from the usual suspects, Dory, Rye, and Lex, I turn off the ringer on the phone. Any problems that arise tonight will have to wait until tomorrow. My relaxing evening of reading doesn't last nearly as long as I'd hoped, however. After an hour, I can no longer stay awake, so I turn off the light and fall into a heavy sleep.

I'm not sure what wakes me, but I jump up, heart pounding and mouth dry. Was it a dream, or did I hear a noise? I fall back on my pillow and look around the shadowy room, illuminated by the eerie whiteness of the moon. My bedroom overlooks the backyard, so I never draw the curtains. Tonight a half-moon appears to have been placed by a benevolent god on a leafy branch of the spreading magnolia outside my window. I remain still, listening. Is that scraping noise a limb brushing against a window screen? How can that be, when there is no wind? I look again at the magnolia, etched boldly against the sky, and not a leaf stirs.

There it is again, like the rustling of leaves. It's coming from downstairs, but I'm not sure where. Could it be a mouse in the kitchen? Or—what?—someone trying to break in the back door, cutting into the screen, knowing I live alone? Maybe a deranged husband of one of my clients, Helen Murray's, perhaps, seeking vengeance, intent on slitting my throat as I sleep. Had I not been forced awake by the noise, I'd never have known what hit me. Did I lock the back door? Half the time I don't, and I shouldn't be so careless. Fairhope is as safe a place as possible, but still.

Throwing off the crumpled sheet, I put my legs over the side of the bed and move to the door. Then I creep down the unlit stairs, pausing each time one of the old steps squeaks. The streetlamps in the front of the house light my way, although it's still dark and shadowy, with pieces of furniture looming large and ominous like the monsters of childhood nightmares. Peering around the kitchen door, I see that everything is in its rightful place, and no mice scurry away. I glide across the cool tile of the kitchen floor and check the back door: locked.

Back on the stairs, I hear the sound again. This time there's no question where it's coming from, and my breath catches in my throat. Mack's room. Retracing my steps down the stairs, I turn to the hallway and walk through the shadows to a small room at the back. It stays closed off, used occasionally for storage but not entered otherwise, although my cleaning woman, Carlita, keeps it in pristine condition.

From the time we moved into the house, this room belonged to Mack. He claimed it as his study the first day we planned the renovation. I push open the door and walk in, sighing in relief. The mystery is solved. The same thing happened one other time, but I'd forgotten. I'd heard the noise in the daytime then, with none of the uncertainties and fears that nightfall brings. Ghosts show themselves only in the dark of night, and if Mack were going to haunt any room in the house, it'd be this one. Smiling at my foolish fancies, I walk over and pull the chain on the ceiling fan, which whirls with a rasping sound, the noise that penetrated my sleep and woke me. Carlita was cleaning in here today and, as she did on one other occasion, forgot to turn off the fan. Once I pull the chain, the room is silent as a tomb.

But for the furniture, the room is bare, because when Mack died, I packed away all his stuff. Except for one thing—the gun rack he had specially made for his collection of hunting rifles and shotguns. The day after the accident, I asked Rye to take it away. I didn't care what he did with it as long as he got it out of my sight forever. Moving through the cold moonlight, I cross the room and sit down in the brown leather chair that belonged to Mack's father. Although Papa Mack gave him a desk when we first moved in, Mack brought the chair from his father's house many years later. Right after his father died, Aileen, Mack's stepmother, told him and his stepbrothers to come get what they wanted. Afterward, she sold the house on the bay and moved to Miami with the considerable fortune Papa Mack had left her, most of which was supposed to have been Mack's inheritance. Minus occasional visits to her sons and grandchildren who still live in this area, Aileen stays away from Fairhope. In poor health, she didn't even come to Mack's funeral.

I sit on the edge of the leather chair and look around the room, which remains vibrant with Mack's presence even though it's been swept clean of his things. God, I can still see him sitting at the desk, his back to the door. Sometimes I'd come in, tiptoe across the room, and stand behind his chair, poised to put my hands over his eyes. “Tea rose,” he'd say without turning around. “If you're going to sneak up on me, baby, change your perfume.” But I couldn't because tea rose was his favorite, the scent he gave me every year. I'd lean over him, my arms wrapped around his shoulders, and bury my face in the sweet skin of his neck, inhaling hungrily.

If tea rose was my signature aroma, Mack's was pine and cypress and mudflats and marsh grass and wood smoke, the smells of the outdoors that he loved so much. I appeared calm and collected throughout the whole ordeal of Mack's funeral because I was dazed with shock. But I had one bad moment. At the funeral home, the family had to be there a few minutes before the visitation; Zoe, Haley, Austin, and I held one another up as we walked into the visitation room, with its muted lighting and hymns playing solemnly in the background. Because of his head injury, Mack's casket would remain closed, a photograph of him in his baseball uniform on an easel beside it. Haley and Zoe had dissolved at the sight of the photo, but I'd sought out the funeral home director, standing discreetly to one side.

“Would you open the casket?” I said, my voice rising to a wail as I pulled frantically on his arms, and Rye came to take me away, looking apologetically at the poor guy. “All I wanted was to put my face on Mack's neck,” I sobbed into Rye's shoulder. “I wanted the smell of him one last time.”

Tucking my feet under, I lean back in the chair and allow myself to remember the way it was before Mack left me forever. We'd been so crazy in love, consumed by a fire that never really died out. In spite of everything, I loved Mack Ballenger in a way I'll never love anyone again. I'm sure of that now, these long lonely years after his death. After all this time, my grief is still as raw as a fresh wound. I've survived by channeling it in other directions, as a trench dug out from a stream of water will direct the water's flow elsewhere. Dig enough trenches, and the stream will become a trickle.

My eyes fall on the small sofa in the corner. I remember when Mack brought it home, a year after we married. I'd complained long and loud about his buying it because our budget was so tight. Mack had been determined not to work in his father's bank, so he was renovating old houses, and I was working at a therapy practice in Mobile, in addition to driving back and forth to LSU for my doctorate. Even if we could've afforded it, I thought the sofa was hideously ugly, squat and plaid and cumbersome. But Mack had loved it and lugged it into his study. When I remember the way we ended up using the cushions, I lower my face into my hands.

The following year the renovation was finished, and we had a housewarming party to celebrate Mack's long hard year of fixing up our house. Exactly two weeks later, Hurricane Frederick slammed into the Gulf Coast, hitting the Fairhope area particularly hard. Mack could do nothing but watch the damage to our beloved house in horror and disbelief. We grabbed the cushions off the ugly sofa and barricaded ourselves with them as we huddled under the staircase. From there, we watched the new shingles of his roof, which had caused Mack the most difficulty and inflamed his old shoulder injury, fly by the windows like little missiles. I wept in Mack's arms and tried not to see the hurricane as symbolic of the outside forces that are always out there, waiting to sweep in and bring destruction to whatever it is we spend our lives building.

I raise my head, wishing I hadn't come down here and resurrected the ghosts of the past, yet unable to get up and go back to my lonely bed. I packed up Mack's things and closed off his study in an attempt to put my loss behind me. And most of the time, it worked. But tonight it won't let me go, release me so I can return to the life I've made without him. Start out by putting your feet on the floor, I tell myself. That's easy enough, isn't it? Just put your feet on the floor and get out of this damned chair that Mack's presence still occupies. Don't dare lean your head back and close your eyes, because it will come back to you, that awful day when Mack went into the swamps and never came back. Worst of all, you'll be forced to face what you haven't been able to all these years—what really happened that day and what it was that drove Mack to the woods in the first place.

The Grand Hotel in Point Clear is exactly that—grand. Nestled in some of the most magnificent oaks on the Eastern Shore, it's a place of such elegance and splendor that it takes my breath away. As if the hotel and grounds weren't glorious enough, it has a dazzling and panoramic view of Mobile Bay. Even I have to admit that it's the perfect setting for an anniversary party, especially if you've got big bucks like Son Rodgers and can afford to rent the entire dining room, which seats over two hundred, and hire a world-class jazz band. While waiting for the happy couple to appear, I look around in amazement, trying to keep from gaping. The buffet tables border on the obscene. Heavy silver bowls as big as washtubs are piled high with boiled shrimp or lump crabmeat; there's a reddish-pink prime rib that's the size of a whale; in the center is an ice sculpture of a soaring swan with the wingspan of an albatross. Rye nudges me and mutters, “Guess the Son King is trying to recapture the good old days of his reign at Versailles.”

“Shhh,” I say, poking him back. There's a flurry of excitement at the door, and Son and Dory appear. I can't get tickled just as the happy couple walk in, or the tears I held back during the ceremony might come pouring out. But it's Dory who bursts into tears as she enters the expansive dining room to the cheers of the well-wishers gathered under a ceiling of silver balloons and streamers. Even Son is touched, and when he pulls out a handkerchief to dab at his eyes, I move out of reach of Rye's elbow.

Jackson and Shaw, looking handsome and sophisticated in white dinner jackets, step up to stand by their parents, and Jackson taps on the microphone to quiet the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says with a tremulous smile, “allow me to present my mom and dad.” After a round of applause and waves from Son and Dory, Jackson leans in to the microphone to ask Father Gibbs to say a blessing. Afterward, the distinguished, silver-haired priest links arms with Dory and Son and poses for one of many pictures that will be taken that night. My heart sinks when Dory catches my eye and motions for me to join them. I dare not look Rye's way as Son plants himself between Dory and me with a big grin, his arms around both of us while flashbulbs go off. Dory's tears have vanished, and her bubbling laughter floats over the dining room like the streamers twirling from the ceiling. Jackson reminds everyone that the buffet is ready, and I make my way through the crowd, seeking out Rye.

It would've been a much more difficult evening to get through had not something occurred that dissipated any remaining tension between Dory and me and lightened my mood considerably. When Dory asked if I still had my bridemaid's dress, I admitted it was in the attic, but no way in hell would I wear it. She'd engaged a seamstress to update her wedding gown, and I let her have a look at the bridesmaid's dress after realizing the only other thing I had was the cocktail dress I wore to every dressy event I attended. But showing up in black at Dory's renewal ceremony, even if appropriate, would've been seen as a contradiction to my avowed support. I'd either have to find time to go shopping in Mobile, or get something from Elinor's shop, neither of which was appealing. So I stood in front of the mirror in Dory's bedroom as the seamstress struggled to squeeze my middle-aged body into a size-four bridesmaid's dress. When I met Dory's eyes in the mirror, I snickered. Bad move. The zipper popped open, and a seam split with a sickening sound. Dory tried to keep a straight face, but soon we were both howling while the poor seamstress sat back on her heels helplessly. Dory insisted I wear a dress she'd bought in France, which she tactfully described as loosely fitted. It was a lovely thing of hand-loomed champagne lace, and Dory was right, sort of. Except for a daring neckline and snug bodice, it fit me perfectly.

“I'm not wearing this,” I said, red-faced. “I've never worn anything cut this low, even a swimsuit.”

Dory said of course I hadn't worn anything like it, and that was my problem. The seamstress chimed in and said it was très chic; she was probably afraid she'd have to repair the bridemaid's dress if I turned it down. Dory added, “If you've got it, flaunt it. Elinor's flat as a fried egg; think how jealous she'll be when you stroll by with Lex on your arm.” At my bemused expression, she asked sharply, “You
are
going with Lex, aren't you? That's what he told me when I asked him to the renewal ceremony.” It was a relief when Dory had overruled Son and declared the ceremony should be limited to a small group of family and close friends. Otherwise, Son would've invited half of Fairhope.