The Sugar Queen (14 page)

"He's right, Margaret," Annabelle said, patting her on the arm. "Come with us. You'll be our chaperone. There's a rumor going around about me and Rawley, you know, because we spend so much time together in his cab."

Margaret watched him walk outside and disappear into the heavy veil of snow. "Yes. I know."

It had ended at a summer party Marco had thrown. Marco threw the best parties. Everyone clamored for an invitation. This particular party was island-themed, complete with a tiki bar in the backyard, paper lanterns hung in the trees and waiters who wore white pants and Hawaiian shirts. Each guest was even given a lei. Marco had taken care of everything. He never let Margaret plan their parties. All she had to do was look beautiful.

Livia Lynley-White wore a god-awful muumuu to the party. Her dark hair was just beginning to go white, and her bouffant looked like a dirty cotton ball. She watched Margaret at the party. She always watched her, and that's how she eventually found out. Margaret had been seeing Rawley secretly for over a year now, and she was getting careless. The time she spent with him was never enough, and she had started making mistakes in her desperation to be with him.

It was dusk and Mrs. Langdon Merry weather was ready to leave, so Margaret went inside to call for a cab. The older guests liked to leave early because Marco's parties grew famously rowdy after dark, when Marco brought out his good liquor.

Margaret knew it was Rawley coming to pick up Mrs. Merryweather, so she made an excuse to stay in the house, near the front windows, to watch for him. She wanted him to see her in her outfit, in her sarong and sandals and her tight sleeveless button-down tied at her waist so that a strip of skin at her stomach showed.

She saw him drive by the house. There wasn't anyplace to park in front of the house because of the party, so he had to park down the block. She left and met him halfway, on the sidewalk by the boxwoods in the Franklins' front yard.

His eyes scraped her body and he smiled as she walked toward him.

"Hello, Rawley," she said in the voice she always used when they saw each other in public.

"Hello, Mrs. Cirrini."

"Hot evening, isn't it?"

"It is indeed." She stopped in front of him on the sidewalk. "You look incredible," he whispered, his hands stiff at his sides, as if fighting an irresistible force to lift them, to touch her.

She looked over her shoulder. No one knew he was here yet. They had a few moments, so she pulled him into the Franklins' yard, behind the boxwoods. The Franklins were at the party. No one would see.

They kissed, his big hands going all over her. She loved this about him, how eager he always was, how he let her guide him to all the right places, where it felt the best. He made her eager. She thought about him all the time. Her body ached from his absence and sang when he was near. Sometimes this was all they had time for, a fast, passionate encounter. Sometimes, though, she would hire him to take her to Asheville to shop, but they'd stop halfway there and have a picnic on the Parkway and they'd talk all day. He was a good man, earnest and smart. He could have stayed in the Army, or gone to college, but he came back to help his family with their business. He was their only son. Their joy and pride surrounded him like a halo. When she thought back, she always lingered on that. She'd never known another man like him. His family loved him, and he gave his love so effortlessly. She wanted that. She wanted that to fill her until she was full. But there was never enough time.

He'd had her shirt unbuttoned, his mouth trailing down her neck, when they suddenly heard, "Well, well, well."

They pulled apart and Margaret's hands went to her blouse, fumbling with her buttons.

"I knew it," Livia said, self-righteousness making her seem ten feet tall, like she could step on them if she wanted to. "I knew if I just waited long enough, I would find out who you really are. Adulterer.
Slut.
You have shamed Marco Cirrini and everything he's done for this town."

Margaret had known she was doing the wrong thing. But she had not then, and still would not, apologize for it. A good person would have regretted having an affair. But she'd never claimed to be a good person. Rawley was, though. And he was better than this.

"Leave, Rawley," Margaret said flatly.

"I'm not leaving you."

"You have no choice." "No."

She whipped her head around and said, "Rawley, for the love of God, just go."

When Rawley left, Margaret very calmly made a deal with Livia behind the boxwoods. Margaret didn't ask Livia not to tell Marco. She just asked that Livia not say it was Rawley. He was young. He deserved to get on with his life. He didn't deserve the wrath of Marco, and neither did his family. Livia had agreed, because she got the best of both worlds: She got to tell Marco
and
hold something over Margaret.

Marco had been livid, of course. He'd yelled at her, even pushed her against a wall in their bedroom while guests laughed and got drunk outside. It was the first and only time he'd ever hit her. He wanted to know who it was. Livia had been vague. She said she'd seen Margaret with someone, but she couldn't make out who. But Marco couldn't break Margaret, no matter how angry he got. Ice queens didn't break, after all. They melted. And Marco didn't have enough warmth for that.

He left her to go back to his guests, demanding she fix her cut lip and join him. He would never trust her again, he said. He would have her followed. He would always know what she was doing. He would not be made to look bad.

And he
would
find out who she had been with.

Then he would ruin him.

Rawley came to the door late that night, banging on it. He was going to declare his love for her and he didn't care who knew it. He was going to take on the great Marco Cirrini. Thank God Marco was already passed out upstairs after hard sex she'd taken Valium to get through. She could remember fragments of what came next. She remembered telling Rawley that she didn't love him, that she didn't know how to love. She remembered the feel of the ice forming inside again. She told him she was older. She was married. She'd taken advantage of him. He needed to move on.

She remembered him begging. She remembered trying not to cry, desperate for him to just go away. She'd found how to give love from somewhere deep inside her, a place she never knew existed. She'd been mad at Rawley for making her capable of feeling this way. If he hadn't shown her how, she wouldn't be hurting so much.

And finally, she remembered watching him walk away. The words
please don't leave
stuck in her throat.

And to this day, Rawley had never said another word directly to her.

"Hi, Julian, this is Chloe. I'm so sorry about Monday."

"You have some crazy friends," he said, even his censure a seduction, the way it made her feel sorry for him, want to be with him. "My jaw still hurts."

"Why does your jaw hurt?" she asked.

"The big blond guy hit me."

"Adam hit you?" She remembered Adam being there, and Josey had told her it was because Chloe had done some drunk-dialing and called him. But Adam, good-natured Adam, had 
hit
 him?

"You don't remember?" "No."

"You were pretty hammered," he said, and that seemed to make him feel better. "All is forgiven, sweetheart. Why don't you come over to my place this afternoon? We can spend the holiday together. I'll tell you all about this other woman. I'll even show you where she lives."

But once again, he wouldn't tell Chloe her name over the phone. It was a way to get her to come to him, and she wanted to believe it was because he didn't want to be alone. He was probably depressed about the holiday too. And what better way for two broken hearts to spend a holiday than spying on one of the people responsible for their heartbreak? Right?

Later, when Chloe walked outside, the snow was coming down heavier than it had a few hours ago, when she closed her shop at noon. She was surprised to see how much of it was on the sidewalk and street. It was a wet, heavy snow and it already reached her ankles. When she got to her VW Beetle in the parking lot beside the building, she sighed. Cars had come and gone in the lot, pushing snow up against her tires. She tried kicking it out of the way, then she bent and pushed it away with her gloved hands. As she was digging in the snow, she noticed something strange. There, at her back tire, under the snow, was a book. She brushed more snow away and picked it up.

Madame Bovary.

She rolled her eyes and threw the book into a snowbank. Books thought she was going to cheat on Jake. That was rich.

Traffic was mad, the heaviest snow falling just as people were getting off from work early for the holiday and skiers were on the road to the slopes to take advantage of the first big snowfall. The secondary roads were quieter, so Chloe cut through Summertime Road. She had to take the highway to get to the address Julian had given her, but there was a wreck and traffic got backed up on the ramp. That's when her little car got stuck. Some people behind her helped her push her Beetle to the shoulder, and she was offered the warm sanctuary of many cars waiting on the ramp, but she declined.

The tea hadn't made her decision easier, and the snow had taken away the choice altogether.

She felt strangely relieved.

Now all she wanted to do was go home.

It took Chloe nearly an hour and a half to walk back to Summertime Road. She was shivering with cold and the snow on the ground was so high now she was forced to adopt a high step that made her thigh muscles burn. Her cheeks were like holly berries, her pink down coat was nearly white with snow, and her favorite Ugg boots were thoroughly wet. She finally let herself stop for a breather when she reached the yellow house that had captured her imagination since the day it had gone on the market.

She stood there and stared at it, stared at it so long that her footprints were covered with snow and it looked like she'd grown there, right out of the sidewalk.

She was startled when the door to the house suddenly flew open and a bald man ran outside to the tiny porch. He was wearing oven mitts and carrying a turkey pan, the turkey inside charred and smoky. He threw the turkey, pan and all, into the snow, where it made a smoke-filled hole.

A short woman in her sixties, wearing overalls and bright purple leather high-tops, stood at the door, shaking her head. "I told you I smelled something burning," she said to the man.

"I followed the directions!" he insisted.

"You put it on broil! I told you we shouldn't have cooked."

Almost simultaneously, they turned, both becoming aware of the person watching them from the sidewalk.

"Hello!" the man called, waving an oven mitt at her. "Are you all right?"

She snapped out of it. "Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stare."

"You look like you've been out here awhile," the man said. "I thought you were a snowman."

"My car got stuck on the highway. I was walking back home. Sorry about your turkey," she said, and started to trudge toward downtown. Her legs had grown stiff standing there. It hurt to move them.

"You've walked all the way from the highway?" the woman said. "George, help her in here."

George immediately walked down the front steps and into the snow, even though he was wearing Birkenstocks and black socks. "No, I'm fine." She waved to get him to go back. "It's just another couple of blocks."

"You'll get frostbite," the woman called. "And look how heavy the snow is now. George actually looks like he has hair."

By the time he reached her, George's bald pate had a fine layer of snow on it. She was too tired and cold to argue, so she let him lead her inside.

"I'm Zelda Cramdon and this is my husband, George," Zelda said when she closed the door behind them and they all stood in the small foyer.

"I know," Chloe said, trying to smile, but her face was frozen. "I've met you at your open houses."

"You know, you do look familiar, now that I see you up close," Zelda said, taking off Chloe's wet crocheted cap, then helping her out of her coat. "I remember your red hair."

George took off his Birkenstocks and peeled off his socks. "What's your name?"

"C-Chloe Finley," she said, trying to get her boots off herself, but Zelda had to help her.

"Come with me, Chloe, and I'll get you some dry clothes," Zelda said, leading her down the hallway. "George, for God's sake, open a window. The smoke is so thick in here you could eat it."

"Ungrateful woman. You should applaud my budding culinary endeavors," George said, walking barefoot to the kitchen.

"I'll applaud when you cook something edible."

"Am I interrupting your Thanksgiving preparations?" Chloe asked.

"No, no. Our daughter, her husband and the grandkids were coming in, but they got as far as Asheville and the snow stopped them," Zelda said, showing Chloe into one of the bedrooms that had obviously been made up for her incoming family. There were small touches like a water pitcher and glasses on the nightstand, and a jar of soft peppermints and a stack of folded towels on the bureau. Zelda took one of the towels and handed it to Chloe. "I thought there was no sense in cooking, since it was just going to be the two of us, and I put my feet up to read and watch the snow. Sounds nice, huh? Well, that's when George decided to cook his first Thanksgiving dinner ever—hence the black bird in the yard. We're going to miss our daughter entirely this year. They probably won't be able to get out of Asheville until the day after tomorrow, and that's when they have to leave to go back home." Zelda went through the drawers and brought out a pair of socks, pink sweatpants and a Yale sweatshirt. This, Chloe guessed, had been their daughter's room.

"I'm sorry your family can't be here," Chloe said as Zelda put the clothes on the bed.

Zelda shrugged, though Chloe could tell it really did bother her. "They're staying in a hotel with an indoor pool. The grandkids are in heaven." Zelda focused on Chloe with her sharp bird eyes. "Can I share something with you?"

"Of course," Chloe said, rubbing the towel vigorously over her hair.

"Our daughter bought us a house last year, near her home in Orlando. She bought it and put it in our names and said, 'When you're ready, come down and live close to your grandkids.' When George and I visited and saw what a lovely house it was, how wonderful the weather was, we thought it was a great idea. We were going to do it. We're retired, and these snows take a toll on us. So we put this house on the market, but we priced it so high that we knew no one would be interested. We thought, if it doesn't sell in a year, it's a sign. We would stay. We weren't really ready to leave, you see. Now a year has gone by and we've missed the birth of another grandchild, and now Thanksgiving. We need to be closer to them. George and I decided just this afternoon that we have to move. We're lowering the price on the house."

Chloe stopped drying her hair at that startling news. She forced herself to say something, not to just stare at Zelda. "That must have been a hard decision to make."

"It was. But we made it, then we said we would wait for a sign that it was the right decision. That's when the smoke alarm went off. Then we opened the door, and there you were." Zelda turned to the door. "I'll leave you to change. Just drape your wet clothes over the radiator."

^When Zelda left, Chloe peeled off her clothes. Her skin was icy. She felt shivery inside, too, but she wasn't so sure that had to do with the cold.

They were lowering the price on this house. Her house.

After she'd put on the dry clothes, she left the room. She found George and Zelda speaking in serious tones in the kitchen, which looked like a grocery store had exploded in it. There were packages half open and vegetables half cut all over the countertops. Flour coated the floor. Pots and pans were everywhere.

They stopped talking when she entered. "I'm going to try to salvage what's left in here," Zelda said. "George, show her around."

George led her out of the kitchen. "You said you've been to our open houses. Do you go to a lot of others?"

"No, just this one. Just this house."

"Do you have a favorite room?" George asked.

"Yes."

"So quickly she answers. Which one?"

"The library," she said softly.

George smiled. "My wife's favorite too. Lead the way."

There was a fire in the fireplace and it made the dark wood of the ceiling-high built-in bookcases glow. There wasn't an inch of wall space that didn't have a shelf occupied by books. The room felt so complete, so warm. She'd dreamed of this room for weeks after she saw it at their first open house.

George sat in the window seat by the bay window and crossed his legs, resting one ankle on the opposite knee. He was now wearing bunny slippers. "What would you do with this room, if it was yours?"

"Nothing," Chloe said as she walked around. "It's perfect as it is. I have books. Hundreds of boxes of them. They would all go here."

"You're a reader, hmm?"

She stopped, her back to him. She smoothed her hand over the spines of a row of books. "I have a . . . special relationship with books."

"Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course. Here, come here. I want to show you something." He stood and led her to the hallway and opened the coat closet.

It was packed, absolutely crammed, with books. "Look at this. Howard, our realtor, told us that we had to move all the stacks of books out of the bedrooms and hallway in order to stage the house. He said clutter distracted potential buyers. He called books 
clutter."

Zelda came out of the kitchen, the warm scent of charred Thanksgiving trailing behind her. She handed Chloe a cup of coffee. "George, Howard said not to deliberately show people that."

"We've got ourselves a reader, Zelda."

"Really," Zelda said, looking at Chloe thoughtfully. "Well, you didn't manage to ruin everything in the kitchen, George. Dinner will be ready in a little while. We can talk books, Chloe. How would you like that?"

"I'd like that very much."

"When I first heard your name, I knew it sounded familiar," Zelda said. "I finally remember why. I remember there being a Finley farm off the highway."

"Yes! That was where I grew up."

"Whatever happened to it?"

"My great-grandparents raised me. When they got sick, I had to sell it to pay their medical bills."

"That must have been hard for you."

"Giving up a house you love is always hard."

"That," Zelda said, "was the perfect answer."

Josey had turned off
 all the lamps in her bedroom so she could stand at her window and watch the snow fall in the darkness, but Della Lee wanted the light on in the closet so she could see to cut photos from Josey's travel magazines. She was going to make a collage. It was her new thing. Josey had given up trying to make sense of Della Lee, but she figured it really didn't matter now. As soon as Mr. Lamar's letter came, she would be leaving anyway.

It wasn't as comforting a thought as she wanted it to be, mostly because when Della Lee left, Josey wouldn't even have Adam anymore. He said he didn't want things to change, but they already had. She could feel it.

Well, at least with no more distractions, Josey would be able to focus solely on her mother again, and that would make Margaret happy. Margaret had come in after Rawley had walked her to the door in the snow, and had gone directly to her bedroom. She hadn't said a word to Josey, and she'd only talked to Helena once, to tell her she would take her dinner in her room.

Josey could feel her censure like a slap. She didn't like displeasing her mother, but at the same time she didn't understand how Margaret could blame her for the weather. She wondered how long it would take to live this down. She could imagine, for years to come, every time it snowed, Margaret would bring up the time Josey had left her at the salon with no way home.

Good times, good times.

"You have a message on your cell phone from Chloe," Della Lee said from the closet.

Josey turned to her, sitting in a pool of light in the otherwise dark room. "How do you know that?"

Della Lee shrugged as she carefully cut out a photo of the Eiffel Tower with the scissors she'd filched from Josey's desk drawer.