CHAPTER SEVEN
Carrie
The weeks and months rolled by, and nothing much changed between Thatcher and me.
It didn’t get better, but it hadn’t gotten worse.
I could be grateful for that, at least. It was the only thing I was grateful for at the moment.
I was about to have to attend my mother-in-law’s birthday bash in Atlanta.
I hated dinners and parties at the Caldwell estate.
Besides Thatcher, only his brother Bryce and his sister Celia treated me like a normal person.
Olive always acted as if Thatcher pitied me.
That would be the only explanation as to why he married me.
And then there was Karen Caldwell. Thatcher’s mom was hard to take—and that was putting it mildly.
Every time we came to one of her many, many required dinner parties, she acted surprised that Thatcher and I weren’t divorced yet.
She and all her friends also treated me like I was some sort of charity case Thatcher had rescued from a cave dwelling or something.
They were always whispering about how it was ‘so good’ of Thatcher to have married someone so far outside of their circle.
It was obvious none of them actually thought it was good.
I wasn’t an idiot. I just smiled and took it, though.
Because I loved Thatcher and he loved me. A few—okay, several—dinner parties a year where they looked at me like I was a swamp creature was worth it in the long run. Did I drink more heavily than normal at these functions? Yes. Yes, I did. But I put up with it for Thatcher’s sake.
None of it even really made sense. I came from one of the founding families of Indigo Falls, and my family was among the wealthiest in town.
My dad was the mayor. My mom was president of the school board.
And those were just elected positions. Neither of them needed to work because they’d inherited family money.
Dad still did, though. He was the lead doctor at a family practice clinic in between Indigo Falls and Halliwell, Georgia.
While Mom didn’t work, per se, she did more than any other human I’d ever met. She chaired every board and club and committee in town. When I’d decided to marry Thatcher instead of using my degree in education, she’d recruited me to sit on every single one of those boards.
Foolishly, I’d thought that sort of thing would impress my mother-in-law. Instead, Karen liked to pick apart whatever clubs I was in by topping them with something so far superior to mine that it couldn’t compete.
So, I had low expectations as Thatcher and I walked into Karen’s birthday soiree.
It was formal, so Thatcher was looking insanely good in his tuxedo.
He’d barely noticed my new gown, but that was just him lately.
Always distracted. Thatch had been quiet on the drive from Indigo Falls to Buckhead.
But then he’d been quiet a lot lately. Taking over as CEO had changed him, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the man I’d fallen in love with back.
I didn’t stop to wonder if something in particular was bothering him that night since I was so nervous about walking into the viper’s nest that was my mother-in-law’s garden parties.
We were about to enter the almost palatial Caldwell home on West Paces Ferry in Buckhead.
It was only a few houses down from the Governor’s Mansion.
If you could even call the residences on this road ‘houses.’ They were at least mansions if not estates.
As we were walking up to the massive front door, his phone buzzed.
He glanced at it quickly, turning it where I couldn’t possibly see it.
I narrowed my eyes, unable to tell for sure if he was doing that on purpose.
“Fuck!” he cursed under his breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The look on his face let me know it was definitely something.
Thatcher rang the bell and then turned to me quickly. “You mean a lot to me, Carrie. No matter what happens in there, I want you to know that.”
“My God. If there’s something I need to know before we walk in there…”
“No, no. It’s, um, nothing like that.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll do my best to stay close to you.”
I frowned, nonplussed. He had sounded almost desperate. What was he talking about? I didn’t have a chance to ask, though, because Jesper, the Caldwell’s butler, opened the door.
He looked at me as if I’d crawled out of the garbage. He always did. He addressed us in his snooty British accent, “Ah, yes. Mr. Thatcher and… I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name of your latest young woman.”
I flashed him a fake smile.
“Jesper, I’ve been married to Carrie for five years,” Thatcher said in his genteel Southern drawl. “You do know that when Mom passes away, I’ll be inheriting the estate and it’s likely Carrie will be making all staffing decisions, right?”
Jesper suddenly beamed at me, his demeanor completely changing. “Miss Carrie, so nice to see you again. May I take your coat?”
I hid a real smile. “Coat? I don’t have one.” Yes, it was October, but the temperature was still hitting eighty degrees most days. We hadn’t experienced the seasonal cooling down yet this year.
“Of course.” He bowed obsequiously, and I couldn’t look at Thatcher for fear he’d give me a look that would make me laugh. “Please do come inside. Everyone’s in the back gardens for cocktail hour.”
I wondered how many of Atlanta’s luminaries would be here tonight.
Bitsy Moreland, the wife of the Mayor of Atlanta, was Karen’s best friend and always here.
But the rest of the attendees could be as eclectic and varied as some of the Real Housewives of Atlanta stars, sports figures, musical stars, political up and comers, senators and their wives, and other very, very rich people.
I doubted any of the more interesting people would be here tonight.
It would more than likely just be Karen’s extensive army of close friends and their families.
Her birthday party was considered an exclusive event, and an invitation was hard to come by.
As we headed into the fray, armed with alcohol we’d grabbed off a passing waiter’s tray, I saw that I was right. The attendees were all friends, or frenemies, of Karen’s. There wasn’t a friendly face in the bunch. They knew how Karen felt about me, and they treated me just like she did.
I didn’t circulate much, choosing to stay near Celia and her date, Bryce and his date, and Thatcher when he wasn’t pulled into conversations by his mother or youngest sister.
Things were tolerable to start with. I’d been to much worse parties at the Caldwell estate, anyway.
So far, Karen and Olive had left me alone.
That was fabulous, so I wouldn’t complain.
Then I saw them heading my way, and I had to fight back the urge to run and hide.
Karen was surrounded by her entourage of women who were on the upper rungs of Atlanta’s social ladder.
It wasn’t that I knew who many of them were.
It was just that I knew Karen. She wouldn’t surround herself with anyone who wasn’t extremely important in Atlanta society.
“Carrie, there you are,” Karen said with a smile on her face. She almost sounded glad to see me, but I recognized the gleam in her eyes. Her friends all stared at me as they sipped their wine. I braced myself for what was coming.
“We haven’t seen you around much,” Olive said in her weird, nasally, valley girl accent.
“Not that I’ve missed you,” she said under her breath but just loud enough for me to hear.
Her pack of twenty-something friends all giggled quietly.
Olive looked like a younger version of her mother.
Same tall, regal bearing. Same champagne blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
Same perfect clothes and makeup. She was pretty, but she would have been beautiful if she didn’t have a perpetually bored expression on her face.
She was definitely her mother’s daughter, and, besides Thatcher, she was Karen’s favorite child.
I forced a smile. “I’ve been busy,” I said.
“I don’t know if Thatcher’s told you, but I’ve been chosen to plan the Orchid Ball this year in Indigo Falls.
” Some of Olive’s friends snorted, trying to hide their laughter, and I glanced at them quickly.
I knew Karen and Olive thought the town I grew up in wasn’t worthy of even talking about.
But I was so sick of them treating it like it was the punchline to some inside joke they had.
“The Orchid Ball,” Karen said, sounding impressed. For a moment, I thought it was real. I was excited that maybe, finally, my mother-in-law and I could bond over something. I knew she led a lot of committees. Maybe with me starting to do the same we could…
“Tell me about that, dear,” Karen said exchanging a look with the ever-present Bitsy Moreland.
“Well,” I started a bit nervously, “my mother is the president of the Indigo Falls Garden Club. She’s planned and hosted the ball for the past twenty years, but she thought we should try to appeal to a younger crowd this year. That’s why I’m in charge.”
“How nice,” Karen said. “Tell me more about it.”
I was feeling more confident now. “The proceeds go to raise funds for both the garden club and general town improvements. This year we want to raise enough to remodel a room in the town library.”
“That’s nice,” Bitsy said in her most imperious voice. “Karen, didn’t you host the annual fundraiser for the Atlanta Botanical Gardens last year?”
My heart sank. Too late, I remembered Karen sat on the board of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The gardens were world class and made my club’s garden look like a patch of weeds in comparison. Damn. I wished I could take back everything I’d said. I felt heat starting to rise up the back of my neck.