Four
Sixty-some-odd years ago, when Edith Smith was a twelve-year old in foster care, she would watch old Hollywood movies.
The grand homes and genteel people who inhabited those black-and-white films made her yearn for a family.
She wanted to be the woman who swept in with a vase of flowers to put on the coffee table, who was adored by her husband and children, who was a paragon of charity and virtue.
Life never turns out like in the movies, as everyone knows. But still, Edith had learned a few things from those old films. Like how to sweep into a room with a vase of flowers.
She was Edie Kessler now, and she was dressed to the nines and carrying a massive floral arrangement from her award-winning garden at her award-winning house, Songbird Hill.
The Kesslers were kind of a Big Deal in and around Hunterville, Tennessee. They were rich and leaned into scandal, mostly because of Edie’s husband, Simon. People in this part of the world liked to talk, and Simon liked to give people something to talk about.
Edie was wearing a designer tea dress that matched her arrangement.
She had styled her hair with the hot rollers so that it lay in soft waves around her shoulders.
Her new hair color (“buttered toast,” according to her hairdresser) looked good on her.
In her humble opinion, she looked much younger than her seventy-three years.
More like a healthy sixty-five-year-old.
Edie was proud of her figure, forged by strength training and a Peloton bike. She’d gotten a little plump after the birth of her children, but she’d decided she was going to look fantastic in the last stretch of her life. She was vain that way.
Plus, her husband was a philandering dick, and spending his money made her feel good.
Simon Kessler, suave, sophisticated, and possessing an irresistible English accent, had swept her off her feet forty-five years ago.
Edie had been so in love that she’d given up everything to be with him, which included the only people who’d ever mattered to her.
She’d gone on to give birth to four wonderful children.
But by the time the fourth one came along, Simon had turned out to be not the love of her life after all, but a dumbass.
She discovered in her forties that he’d been cheating on her since the beginning.
And when confronted, he told her that cheating was just who he was.
He didn’t mean to do it—it just happened.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” he’d said, with exasperation.
What an idiot she’d been.
Frances Delafield, once her dearest friend, had been right about him. “He’s not going to live up to your expectations, Edie.” They’d been standing in a garage. Frances was about to embark on a run for her life. Her literal life, as the FBI was looking for someone who matched her description.
“You’re jealous,” Edie had said. “You’re jealous of what we have.”
Frances had stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “I wish I could put blinders on like you do and wear them just as effectively.”
That had made Edie furious because even then, when she was flush with young love and convinced by Simon she was doing the right thing, deep down, she’d feared Frances was right. But it was too late—she’d already betrayed Frances, Irene, and Joan.
Once, Edie’s daughter, Samantha, had asked her why she’d stayed married to a blatant cheater for all these years.
That was not an easy question to answer.
Edie wasn’t sure she had an answer, other than the embarrassingly asinine reason that in spite of everything, she still loved him.
She loved a dumbass, which made her the bigger dumbass.
“He’s your father,” Edie had said. “You need us both.” That was a damn lie, and Samantha knew it.
She’d even argued that she and her siblings were all grown and didn’t need their parents to be together.
“Maybe you don’t, but your siblings do,” Edie had insisted.
That wasn’t true, either—she truly didn’t know what her kids needed anymore.
As they’d grown out of needing a nap, or snacks, or a hug, she’d been less and less sure.
They had their own busy lives now, some of them far-flung.
Samantha was in Dubai. Chris and his wife were in New York.
Stephen and his family were in Nashville, and the youngest, Betty, lived in Chattanooga and had very little time for her mother.
No matter. Edie would not break up her family.
As a child, she’d shifted from one foster home to another, never knowing what happened to her younger brother, never knowing any blood kin.
Family was something she’d always longed for, and once she had it, she was not letting it go.
Mental illness, physical illness, a desire for something different—nothing would get in the way of keeping intact as a family her four children, six grandchildren, and one old and fat philanderer who made good money.
She would not make her offspring decide whose house they wanted to visit for holidays, or how to split time between grandparents.
Simon was a dick, but he was a generous one. Their odd arrangement meant that Edie could do whatever she wanted. The only problem was that Edie didn’t know what she wanted. Except today. Today, she wanted to knock Linda Sampson off her gilded pedestal.
Linda Sampson was sleeping with her husband (presumably—if he hadn’t let his Viagra prescription lapse), but her most egregious crime was stealing first place at the Hunterville, Tennessee, garden show.
Edie had held that position for the last four years.
That bitch could have Simon if she could stand him, but Edie was not relinquishing her gardening crown.
And she was going to make sure Linda understood it.
She’d put on her one-of-a-kind Alice + Olivia dress.
It was a lovely shade of pink with tiny yellow and white flowers dotting the soft fabric.
The dress matched the ranunculus and dinner-plate dahlias she had personally arranged in the large vase.
She would be noticed when she entered the fundraiser.
Linda was the president of Children Deserve a Bright Future!
, a nonprofit organization that did not know what the hell it was.
Of course children deserved a bright future—but what did that mean in practice?
And really, what was Linda doing with all that dough?
Fortunately, Edie had some skills, honed over the course of several years when she’d been part of a thieving girl gang.
She knew how to get information. She knew how to charm the pants off people in exchange for it.
She knew how to turn heads so that others could sneak in behind her and lift whatever they needed to lift.
She also knew how to crack safes, which was, in her opinion, a dying skill.
Anyway, someday, when she was bored, she would do a little digging on Ms. Linda Sampson. Maybe she’d be that bored tomorrow. Who knew?
Linda’s fundraiser, to which Edie had not been invited, was being held at the Hunterville sculpture gardens.
Edie got out of her car, hoisted the arrangement into her arms, and blew one bloom out of her line of vision.
There were uniformed attendants to take her car, and a young woman to escort her to the specific garden where the fundraiser was being held.
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin as the Queen of the Uninvited and walked to the entrance.
“Ticket?” the attendant asked pleasantly.
“Oh, hon, I left my purse in the car,” Edie said. “I can only carry so much.”
“Of course, Mrs. …?”
“Sampson,” she said.
“This way,” the attendant said. And Edie swept into the event with her arrangement, like right out of an old Hollywood movie.
“Hello, Barbara,” she called, nodding to one of her book club friends helping herself to iced tea.
“Edie?” Barbara eyes went very wide.
“Natalie! Hello!” Edie called to the high school principal.
They played golf together sometimes. “Belinda, did you get highlights? They’re marvelous!
” She carried on, greeting people, walking straight up to the podium like she intended to add her voice to those who thought children deserved a bright future.
Linda was at the front, of course, making sure everything was proceeding as planned.
The program had not yet started, and she had the misfortune to be standing on the audience side of the podium.
Which meant she could not escape an advancing Edie.
Her expression went from pleasant impatience to a dark frown.
“Edie. I wasn’t expecting you,” she said coolly.
“Oh, honey, I don’t think anyone in town was expecting me.
” Edie smiled. “I wanted to bring you some flowers from my award-winning garden for your event. You’ve seen my garden at Songbird Hill, haven’t you?
Oh, that’s right. You haven’t been up to my magnificent house.
But I’m sure you saw it in Architectural Digest along with the rest of the world, didn’t you? ”
Linda visibly stiffened. “You didn’t have to bring flowers. We have more than enough, donated by Edwards Florist. They donate to all my charitable work.”
“Do you mean to say there are more groups that deserve bright futures? Let me guess. Dogs? Cats? Married men?”
Linda blanched. Her eyes darted past Edie, checking to see if anyone could hear them.
Of course people could hear them. Everyone in the garden was stealthily shifting closer and closer, trying to hear the conversation in this unprecedented meeting between wife and mistress.
And Edie was on a roll. “You look good, Linda! Ozempic? I’m glad you finally found a way to get rid of those last few belly pounds. ”
Linda’s blue eyes suddenly looked like they were on fire. “Thank you. You look good, too, Edie. I’m just so sorry you couldn’t find time for that facelift after all.”