Fourteen
Edie had just come in from the garden and had removed her gardening hat.
She had paused at the Louis VII console in her grand foyer and the mirror there to give herself the once-over and to rearrange her hair.
She was wearing baggy linen pants, an old T-shirt, and Crocs.
It wasn’t the most fashionable thing in the world, but when it came to deadheading flowers, it was the best thing.
She leaned forward to have a good look at her face.
She’d had a lot of work done over the years, but unfortunately, there was no hiding age, no matter how much money one threw at it.
A line here, a sag there—there was always something to give it away.
She glanced at the roots of her hair around her face.
She could see the gray mixing with the blonde.
It was time to call her hairdresser, Vanya, and schedule color.
She was having to do that with alarming frequency.
It was the universe’s great joke that when nothing else was growing, gray hair was on steroids.
“Nana?”
Edie had been so absorbed in herself that Marcy’s entrance into the foyer startled her. “Marcy!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”
Edie had sent Marcy home to Nashville this morning, but the girl had called her a scant two hours later asking if they could talk.
Well, actually, what she’d asked was if Simon was home.
He was not. He had left out of here this morning with a skip in his step, and Edie assumed he and Linda had gotten over their tiff, and he was now lying in her bed admiring her new fake horse teeth.
Once Marcy was satisfied Simon was not around to butt in, she asked if she could come back to Songbird Hill and talk to Edie. “It’s important,” Marcy said.
“You were just here for two weeks, darling,” Edie had reminded her. She loved her granddaughter dearly, but she was ready for a break from the moping. “Didn’t we talk then?”
“Not … not about everything,” Marcy had said.
Mysterious! Only for a moment, because Edie had figured the girl was going to ask for money. Sometimes, asking Nana instead of Dad was a lot easier. Speaking of her son, Edie said, “You know your father wants you to come home.”
“I know.”
Well, the girl didn’t know that Stephen had called this morning complaining that Edie was interfering with his parenting. “You coddle her, Mom,” he’d said. “She’s never going to learn how to pick herself up if you always pick her up.”
“I just said she needed some rest, Stephen,” Edie complained. “But I sent her home, per your wishes. Is that what you really want? Because she’s going to eat all your food and lie on your couch, too.”
“That’s what I really want,” Stephen had said. “I’m leaving for Panama soon for work, and I want to have a good talk with her before I go.”
“I called Dad after I talked to you and told him I’d be home soon,” Marcy said.
Edie winced. “And how did that go?”
“Not well. I got a pretty fat lecture about taking too much time from work and getting too in my feelings. But something has come up.”
Edie suppressed a groan. “What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
How much was Marcy going to ask for? Ten thousand?
More? Simon might have a thought or two if it was more than ten.
As much as Edie enjoyed spending his money, she had learned a long time ago it was best to do it in increments that didn’t arouse any suspicion or require discussion.
Not to mention, Edie couldn’t very well give Marcy a lot of money without Stephen finding out, too, so her thoughts were already skipping ahead to how to navigate that.
“Are you okay?” Marcy asked her now, looking with concern at Edie’s hand pressed to her chest.
“I’m fine. I’m just … well, nervous, I guess. I think I know what you want, and I don’t know if I can help you. So, okay, let’s talk. Want to go in the kitchen? We can have a snack.”
“I’d rather you come to the gazebo with me.”
“The gazebo!” Edie was shocked by this request. No one in her family showed much interest in her award-winning garden except when there was company, or a fundraiser, or a gardening society coming through that wanted photos of them all.
Certainly no one in her family ever wanted to help with the garden.
She’d tried to instill a love of it in her children, but with each one who came along, they were interested until they were in middle school, and then bam, their attention turned to fancy cars, and the opposite sex, and friends, and God knew what else.
“The gazebo is a quarter of a mile away, Marcy. We can talk here—no one is home except Bernie.”
Just then, the sound of a vacuum somewhere deep in the house reached them.
“I don’t want to get in Bernie’s way, and besides, it’s beautiful today. I’d like to be outside. In nature. Aren’t you always saying that nature is healing?”
“I don’t think I’m always saying that, but yes, I’ve expressed that a time or two.”
“Come on, Nana,” Marcy said, and held out her hand.
Edie was starting to doubt that this conversation was about money after all.
If that’s what Marcy wanted, wouldn’t she have just blurted it out by now?
Was a trip to the gazebo necessary to ask for money?
Lord help her if Marcy wanted to talk about that rat again.
They didn’t need to review how awful he was.
More than anything, Edie wanted Marcy to move on from Rocco Vitali and get on with her life.
She would take care of all revenge on Marcy’s behalf.
But Edie smiled and said, “All right.” She took Marcy’s hand and let her granddaughter lead her out of the house, picking up her gardening hat on the way.
The problem, she decided, was that she was weak when it came to her kids and grandkids.
She could never deny them a thing, even when she knew something was afoot.
Simon always said she was too soft on them.
They strolled down the crushed granite path, past boxes of pansies and violas, past beds of mums, snapdragons, marigolds, and a long line of dusty miller borders.
“You know, I don’t think you ever told me who your best friend was before you married Pappa,” Marcy said.
Her best friend? Edie glanced at Marcy sidelong. “I don’t remember. Why do you ask?”
“Do you really not remember? I just wondered because … I don’t know anything about you. I mean, before you were Nana.”
Aha, so this was about yesterday. Edie wanted to kick those three for handing her another problem she had to deal with.
What exactly was she supposed to say about them?
What explanation did she offer? How did she keep from giving any hint that they used to steal priceless art and artifacts?
“I wish I could remember her name,” Edie said brightly.
That was not a lie—her first best friend had been a girl in the first foster house she could remember.
Wandean, Wanda, Jaunita … something like that.
But Jaunita (for lack of her real name) was the first person Edie could remember being kind to her.
When Edie got sent to her room for some infraction, Jaunita would sneak a biscuit or some dry cereal for her.
“It was so long ago. I have impressions of her, but I can’t recall a name. ”
“What do you remember about her?”
“I remember she was always laughing,” Edie said.
Jaunita never met a situation she didn’t find humor in.
Edie could still see her in her mind’s eye as clearly as if she’d seen her just yesterday.
Three thick pigtails, a broad smile, eyes dark as coal, teeth white as snow.
They shared a lower bunk in that house and held hands at night, as if they were afraid they would lose each other while the other was sleeping.
That turned out to be somewhat prescient—one day when Edie had come back from kindergarten, Jaunita was gone.
It was the tragic truth of foster care—the closest thing you had to a sibling was there one day and gone the next, and many times, you never knew where.
Or why. “That’s about all,” Edie said, because she didn’t really care to remember the pain of that loss.
“What about later? Like high school, or college. Who was your best friend then?”
Edie did not like where this was headed. “I had a lot of friends, Marcy. It’s hard to zero in on a single best friend.”
Marcy clucked her tongue. “Most people can name a best friend, Nana. I don’t know why you won’t tell me. It’s almost like you’re hiding something.”
Edie’s pulse leapt. She was not prepared to have this conversation.
And neither was she prepared to lie about it.
At least not effectively. And not with the words that would shut this questioning down.
“I’m not hiding anything,” Edie said, which was, indeed, a big fat lie.
She hid so much! She’d been hiding all her life.
When she’d had her kids, she’d feared they would love her less, or worse, be embarrassed or appalled if they knew that she’d been unloved and unwanted most of her life, rejected by a faceless mother, moved from foster home to foster home, a runaway at sixteen, only to find love in a band of thieves.
She preferred to let her past lie, along with the crimes she’d committed, in a shallow grave in her head.