Chapter 5
Present Day
I’ve been standing in my closet for ten minutes, waffling on an outfit. I’ve only had a day to prepare since my mother practically
demanded the meeting over the phone. It’s so hard to know with her if she’ll accuse me of overdressing—for attention’s sake—or
of putting in too little effort. All for a lunch I’d rather not attend.
“Mommy?” Hallie appears in the bedroom behind me. She woke up groggy and complaining of a sore throat, so I decided to keep
her home from school. After breakfast she started turning cartwheels in the living room, and I realized we may have called
her day off too soon.
I turn, crouch, and take the end of her skirt in my hands. “Look at the sparkle on that thing! How’re you feeling?”
“Back to normal.” She looks down, then steps back and twirls. “Think Grandmama will like it?”
“There’s nothing in the world you could wear that she wouldn’t adore.”
Truly, as frigid as Magnolia may be, Hallie has been a soft spot for her ever since she was born. If nothing else, it’s given
me hope that maybe there are more layers to the Dragon.
My own grandparents, Magnolia’s folks, weren’t really around when I was growing up. Sure, we saw them for holiday formalities and at the church we went to occasionally, but Mother never went out of her way to involve them in our day-to-day. They didn’t seem to push for it either. Mother never uttered a word about it—she couldn’t abide poor manners—but I don’t think she liked them much. I don’t remember her crying when they died, back when I was in middle school, but then again, she’s never been one for public emotional displays.
Mother had me young, barely out of high school, and I’m sure it caused a kerfuffle—especially back then. My father didn’t
stick around. Enough fodder to cause a family rift. Likely it explains why Magnolia’s folks bought her that gorgeous house;
she was in need. And likely it explains just as much why the house was on the other side of town—out of their hair. I’m surprised
Magnolia never sold it, and the best reason I’ve been able to come up with is some misguided sort of gratitude to her folks.
I guess they did afford her a life of luxury and comfort.
Hallie ducks into my closet and begins slipping her feet into various sets of high heels. She teeters around like a baby giraffe,
and I can already hear the sound of an ankle snapping.
“ Hal ,” I say.
She groans. “I know, I know. ‘Chunky heels or flats only. I’ll snap my ankle and never dance again.’”
Hallie added the “never dance again” part after a friend arrived at school with a cast on her leg and a rather melodramatic
story about how her destiny to become a prima ballerina had been cut short.
I kiss the top of her head. “And we certainly can’t have any of that.”
Hallie laughs and takes off—barefoot—for the playroom.
“We leave in ten,” I call behind her in a singsong voice.
***
It isn’t long before Hallie and I arrive at the restaurant and are seated at a table draped with a heavy cream tablecloth.
Magnolia’s favorite steak house is decked out with enough oak and dim lighting for a gentlemen’s smoking room. It also boasts
linen napkins, a requirement for Magnolia as she refuses paper napkins at any and all establishments. She’s even been known
to travel with her own linen napkin and a small laundry bag to contain it post-use.
A black town car pulls up outside the window and Magnolia climbs out slowly onto the sidewalk. Her steely-gray hair is styled
into a voluminous bouffant to her shoulders. It doesn’t move on account of it being doused in half a can’s worth of hair spray.
She’s dressed in a navy-blue cap-sleeve dress, expensive and new, one she pats flat as she prepares to enter. Despite the
full face of makeup, her skin is lined with age.
She looks back at the car behind her and raises a hand in farewell. The vehicle is ridiculous and driven by her chauffeur-slash-errand-runner,
Victor, whose canonization should be immediate upon his death. He will circle and find parking, then wait until she’s ready
to make the hour-and-a-half trip back to Beaufort.
A suited waiter escorts Magnolia to the table. I rise and offer my mother a gentle side hug.
“Afternoon,” Magnolia says.
“Will anyone else be joining you?” the waiter asks.
I shake my head. Magnolia has been single for my entire existence and prefers to pretend I was an immaculate conception. She
travels alone—besides Victor, of course.
Magnolia slides a miniature lollipop over to Hallie. “Hello, sweetheart.”
Hallie is the only good thing I’ve done, by Magnolia’s standards. It doesn’t hurt that Hallie’s a perfect child by all traditional measures. While we speak, she quietly unpacks her coloring book and baggie of crayons from her backpack; she sits upright, elbows off the table. Mother and I pull out our chairs and settle beside her.
“How are things going with the separation?” Magnolia asks.
The paperwork is proceeding toward a fully official split, despite Magnolia having poured every ounce of her effort into welding
Grady and me together. I was prepared that whatever offer regarding a design project she’d come with today, nothing would be forthcoming without a last grasp at sticking us back together.
“Well...” I’m not sure what the benchmark is for a good versus bad divorce. “It’s going ahead as expected, I guess.”
“I haven’t heard the end of it back home.”
From the church ladies, from the tennis ladies, from the club ladies who all have nothing better to do than gossip about the
misfortunes of others under the guise of concern.
“Such a shame y’all just throwing in the towel like that.” Magnolia’s thick gold bangle catches the light, and she keeps her
eyes trained on the leather-bound menu. “Any chance you could give it another shot?”
I mash my hands into each other under the table. “Mother, I’ve told you a dozen times—this was not my doing.” I flick my eyes
to Hallie. “And now is not the time to rehash it.”
Magnolia lays her eyes on Hallie. “Fine.”
I adjust myself upward in my seat. “You said on the phone you had a lead for me.”
Magnolia nods slowly. “Well, yes, there’s that too.” She turns to the waiter who’s arrived at her side and orders a vodka
soda, extra lemon and lime, and a beef tartare appetizer.
“I was really hoping to have the city’s work coming my way with the fellowship,” I say after I’ve ordered drinks for Hallie and me and the waiter has left. “We were so close, and it would’ve been such a big win for us. We would’ve been set—”
“Yes, and we all know that ship’s sailed—or should I say sunk?” Magnolia runs a finger along the silver handle of the fork
to her right. “Maybe what you’re missing here, the solution to all your problems, would be to get back with Grady. He’s always
been very business savvy. I’d imagine especially so for his wife .”
“Not if my hair was on fire and he had the only bucket of water in town,” I say.
“I did try to invite him.”
“To lunch?”
The waiter arrives with the appetizer and takes our entrée orders. I’m grateful for the pause it allows for my rising anger
to cool. Magnolia spoons the beef tartare delicately onto her small white dish, takes a bite and chews, then dabs at the corners
of her mouth.
“Of course, he declined. But I guess what else can we expect, Magnolia?”
“It’s Mack, Mother. There wasn’t a drop of your name left even on the day you tried to give it to me.”
“You might be right.” Magnolia swats at the air with a smug smile. “But Mack ? Gosh, doesn’t it sound like the name of some eight-year-old boy who loves to fish and dig worms in the mud?”
I feel my cheeks grow red. She could’ve said, “Let me make room inside this name for you too.” She could’ve said, “Eight letters is plenty of room for two.” She could’ve made a shred of a case about me belonging to her.
I stand and take my mother by the arm. I pull her out of her seat as she chirps indignantly. I won’t have my Hallie hear the
rest of what I have to say to her.
Off to the side I whisper, “Do you think I wanted to end up divorced? Don’t you think I wanted a long, happy marriage too? This isn’t easy for me. But after that picture? I still hate going to the grocery store without a hat on. I still feel people looking and whispering when there’s an event at Hallie’s school. How could you possibly not understand?”
She tuts. “Men just can’t help themselves—it’s the urges .”
I resist my own urge in that moment to knock the old bat upside the head.
“We women just have to learn to let it go,” she continues. “You and Grady were born for each other.”
My mother, the very woman who prides herself on propriety, turning an efficient blind eye to my husband trashing our marriage
via amateur porn. If only I were afforded the same leniency.
“Mother, you don’t know the half of how he’s let me down,” I whisper. She’s so emotionally paralyzed she’d never understand
anyway. “Not another word about the divorce in front of Hallie.”
“And what about your work for the firm?”
I watch the power she feels creep across her face, deepening the valleys of age and twisting her smile. Perhaps that’s what
built the landscape of her to begin with—spite. “You haven’t even said what it is. You called me here under the guise of work,
and now all I’m hearing about is Grady. Is there even a real project?”
Magnolia sighs. “Fine. I guess keeping you both working together is my best bet for getting my way, and yes , I do have something for you.”
I’m surprised Delta hasn’t broken the news about Grady’s departure from the firm, but perhaps he and Ned have been keeping
it quiet. Delta is firmly in Magnolia’s camp, rallying for our reconciliation.
Still, I won’t be the one to break the news either. And especially not in this moment.
“Great,” I say. “Let’s sit.”
We arrive back at the table, and before I sit, I lean over and squeeze Hallie, glancing at her coloring. “Wow, look how beautiful
the purple is on that one.”
Hallie twists out of my grip and holds up the coloring book. “Thanks, Mama.” She turns it to Magnolia, who gives her an approving
nod.
I settle into my seat, and Hallie flips the page to start a new picture.
“All right, child. Here it is,” Magnolia says. “I’ve been tasked with hiring the team to renovate a gorgeous estate here in
downtown, the Daniel House, for the Carolina Historic Society. I’m willing to give you the work, even if we were all mortified
about y’all flunking the fellowship tour.”
I bite my tongue and wait for her to go on. Anything she gives me comes with a healthy dose of disparagement.
“It’ll be best to run through it in person, to show you the work needed, but it’s large scale. Every room in the house will
need something, and then they’ll want it fully furnished and decorated. We might even be able to have it shot for a magazine,
but that’d only be if you rise to the occasion and really knock it out. I’ll need to be kept in the loop on all the work.
I’ll visit the site and expect frequent updates. I will by no means be hands off .”
“I wouldn’t imagine you would be, Mother.”
“Precisely. That isn’t my style.” Magnolia takes a slow sip of her drink. “So, what do you say? I can have our admin set up
a walk-through later this week. Friday, most likely. We don’t want to be seen dragging our feet.”
It’s work, good work by the sound of it, but it’s also two steps back—right under Magnolia’s thumb. That was another thing about the fellowship: It was supposed to be a ticket out of her web. Now, I’m not sure I have any choice but to take the job, given the bleak outlook before the firm. We don’t have fellowship projects, and Grady won’t be working his connections.
“Well, it sounds like a fabulous opportunity. I’d love to take it on,” I say, forcing a smile.
“Yes, I figured you would.” Magnolia doesn’t raise her eyes to look at me.
The waiter arrives with our food and we dive into our entrées. Magnolia lets out the occasional sigh, like she’s suffering
an inconvenience being here. It’s her favorite way to act when she does anything for me—like the time she insisted on bringing
Hallie’s first birthday cake to the party. I tried to talk her out of it three times, but she refused. Predictably, she complained
every step of the way, from placing the order, to going to the bakery (where Victor picked up the cake), to carrying it into
our home—even Delta had tried to step in and help. But the kicker is that even if, hypothetically, I were to politely decline
this offer, she would be flat out on the ground at the offense, calling for smelling salts.
She can’t help but be offended and inconvenienced.
Before long, we’ve picked over our plates, and the waiter asks about boxes.
“Oh, never.” Magnolia frowns in disgust. “I don’t want my car stinking to high heaven all the way home.”
I smile at him warmly. “I’ll take two boxes for ours, please.” I point to Hallie’s three chicken fingers. “Those will make
a great dinner with some veggies tossed in.”
“And maybe a scoop of mac and cheese too,” Hallie suggests.
I run a gentle hand over her curls, the ones she got from me. I love that the auburn is all her own—just as her life will
be. “I think we could make that work.”
Magnolia takes the check and completes the ticket, and soon we’re out the door, standing beside the town car. Magnolia pops open her car door.
Hallie pokes her head in to chat with Victor, and I give him a quick wave.
“Thanks for lunch,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” Magnolia says. We kiss briefly on the cheeks. “I’m looking forward to designing this Daniel House together.”
I smile and call for Hallie. Magnolia slides in after squeezing Hallie in a warm hug, and we wave as the car slowly pulls
away.
Magnolia may think she’ll have a say in the design of this new project, but that will certainly not be the case under my watch.
If my name, the Bishop Builds name, is on a project, it will be to our standards—not Magnolia’s. I’ll likely have to push
down the irritation she’ll cause me, play her game a bit, and get sneaky if she really gives me a hard time.
But when we hand over the keys at the end of the renovation, by my word, there will not be even a hint of a suggestion of
Magnolia Bishop.