Southern By Design

Prologue

The Suffolk family’s heirloom china plummets to the hardwood floor and shatters. Shards skate across the room. Mama prowls

through the mahogany cabinet like an uncaged jungle cat as she methodically removes one priceless item at a time, examines

it, and lets it fall.

Delta Suffolk shrinks into the corner of the room, head bowed, and jumps at each porcelain explosion.

“Magnolia, I-I’m—” Delta shuffles her feet. “I didn’t—I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Mama makes a sound somewhere between a grunt and a growl, then grabs a stack of dishes.

“Quite the armory you’ve got here,” she says.

Smash. Smash.

“ Please , Magnolia. Stop. That china is generations old,” Delta says. “It can’t be replaced.”

“Exactly like what you took from me!” Mama whirls around and sets her gaze on the woman. “Unless you have a way for us to

go back in time and change it.”

Never had I imagined my mama and my mother-in-law in such a showdown. They were childhood best friends. Mags and Dee.

Delta sat in the front row at my wedding, dabbing happy tears from the corners of her eyes as her son and I made marriage vows we’ve since broken. Delta swept into my labor-and-delivery room, cooing and doting and oozing delight over my baby girl. Delta patted my hand and reassured me so many times. Delta had a free pass to come and go in my life.

Smash.

But what she took from my mama, she took from me too.

Smash.

What’s one more broken thing?

“How dare you!” Mama roars. “I know it was you.”

Ned Suffolk bustles into the room and looks between the women. “Dee? Magnolia? What’s going on?”

In that flash he looks so much like his son, my ex, and I wonder what would’ve happened if we’d never met a Suffolk. Now the

secret that’s lived within this family is being dragged into the light. This man tried for so long to be the father I never

had, and the new irony of it slaps me.

“Yes, Dee ,” Mama chimes in. “Care to explain how you’re the one to blame?”

Smash.

I don’t even blink this time.

Smash, smash, smash.

Mama is relentless, and for the first time in my life I look at her with pride bubbling in my chest. I’ve spent all thirtysomething

years of my life despising my mother, and now for the first time, I see her for who she really is. She’s unimaginably like

me, and finally, who she is makes sense.

“All right, all right!” Delta holds her hands up as she presses the words out. “ Fine .”

There’s quiet.

Mama’s footsteps crunch over the dinnerware fragments as she crosses the room to where the rest of us stand. She slows, and her hands shake almost unnoticeably. Mama’s not a young woman, even if she does harness a youthful rage. My heart squeezes. Now I know what she’s lived and what she’s lost. She drops into an armchair.

Delta walks over and perches on the love seat across from her. “I’ll tell you everything I know. Where do you want me to start?”

“Right at the very beginning. And you’ll tell me everything,” Mama says firmly.

Delta nods curtly. “Ok.”

Magnolia meets her eyes. “You’re the only living person with the whole story.”