Gloria glanced over at me from her drawing board and laughed.
“What?” I asked, putting my colored pencil down.
“Your face,” she said. “I wish I had a camera. You were actually scowling down at that sketch you’ve been working on all morning. What’s wrong with it?”
I picked up another pencil and twirled it beween my fingertips. “I guess I’m frustrated. This is just so impossible. But Will wants it so badly, and I don’t want to let him down.”
She got up and walked over to my drawing board, looking over my shoulder at the sketch I’d been working on for the past hour. It was supposed to be the upstairs sitting room at Mulberry Hill. The room looked fine. I had the overstuffed sofas, the Aubusson carpet in soft greens and golds, the built-in bookshelves, and a huge antique Venetian mirror that set the tone for the whole room.
“What’s so impossible? Gloria asked. “It’s a wonderful room. Anybody would love it.”
“Not just anybody,” I corrected her. “Stephanie Scofield. She has to love it. She has to love it enough to want to give up her life in Atlanta and move right in.”
“Isn’t that Will’s department?” Gloria asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be wooing her?”
The old-fashioned word made me feel wistful. I wanted to be wooed. Maybe someday.
“He hasn’t seen her in more than two weeks,” I said. “He’s miserable. He even went so far as to drive over to Atlanta last night to take her to dinner in Buckhead. On a Tuesday night, when he had to be back at the plant for an early morning meeting. And he hates Atlanta. The man is totally smitten.”
Gloria patted my shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do about that,” she reminded me. “Your job is to just design the project and get it done. Period.”
“He expects me to do more than that,” I said. “The poor fool thinks I can make her fall in love with this house, and then him.”
“Well, you can’t.” Gloria went over to the coffeepot and poured herself a mug. The smell of fresh-ground French roast filled the studio. She held up the pot toward me. “Want some?”
“It smells divine,” I said, but I shook my head no. “I wish I could make Stephanie really see the house. Experience it with all her senses. You know, like they tell you in marketing classes. You can’t sell the steak without the sizzle…”
“Maybe you should go over to the Wal-Mart and buy some of those strawberry-scented crayons they sell for the kids,” Gloria said, laughing.
“No strawberries,” I said, but that gave me an idea. I picked up my pencil again and started sketching. I put a beautiful petite blond in a flowing gold robe seated at a vanity in front of the Venetian mirror. Her back was to the room, but it would be clear who she was. Perched on an ottoman in between the sofas I drew a little brown and black dog. I tilted my head and considered, erased, and redrew. Yes. Now the dog was unquestionably a dachshund. A miniature dachshund.
I signed the corner of the sketch with a flourish. Done! I took it over to the photocopier and made two more copies. The original I put in the folder I’d send over to the Loving Cup plant for approval later in the day. I put one of the copies in our office file. The third copy I rolled tightly. I found a piece of gold silk moiré ribbon and tied it with a neat little bow. I slid the sketch into a mailing tube and headed out the door.
“Where are you going?” Gloria asked. “And why so happy?”
“I’m going to the post office to overnight the steak and the sizzle to Stephanie Scofield,” I told her.
It wasn’t even noon yet, but the day was already a scorcher. I could feel the heat of the concrete sidewalks through the thin soles of my shoes. I dodged a couple cars and jaywalked across Washington Street, then cut around the old courthouse to get to the post office. There was only one clerk on duty, and four people in line ahead of me, but the arctic blast of the air conditioning felt heavenly. I bought some more stamps, choosing the Audrey Hepburn ones, and I was walking out the front door when I bumped smack into GiGi Jernigan.
Crap! Why hadn’t I just picked up the phone and called UPS to pick up the sketches for Stephanie? Why had I dawdled over the stamps? I should have just taken the damn flag stamps like everybody else. And why hadn’t I worn my dark sunglasses and a wig that morning?
“Keeley!” GiGi exclaimed, seizing me by both wrists. She looked immaculate, as always, her pale blond hair freshly colored and coiffed, her hot pink linen pantsuit miraculously unwrinkled, her Easy Spirit walking shoes unscuffed by life.
“Uh, hi, GiGi,” I said. “How are you?”
“Devastated,” she said. “Simply devastated. I may never get over this whole awful thing.”
She was devastated? Wasn’t I the one who had been cheated on by her older son? Wasn’t I the one who’d spent weeks repacking and sending gifts back to Jernigan family and friends? Wasn’t my father the one who was out untold thousands of dollars for a wedding dress and sit-down reception with open bar for four hundred people? This was so like GiGi. My life had gone to shit, but she was the one doing all the suffering.
What do you say to something like that?
I had no idea. “I’m sorry,” was the best I could come up with on such short notice.
“I’ve tried and tried to talk to you,” GiGi went on. “But you never return my calls. And I’ve called for weeks. Didn’t you get my messages? Or the notes?”
In fact, I’d been dodging GiGi’s calls, and I’d tossed the handwritten notes she’d sent, unread, in the trash. And up until now, I’d managed to avoid seeing her, or any other members of her immediate family, through a combination of luck and planning. I never walked past Madison Mutual anymore. I took detours so I didn’t have to go near The Oaks, and I’d steered clear of the local shops or restaurants I knew GiGi haunted. The trip out to the shack had been my one foray into Jernigan country, and look how that had ended up. I’d had a case of the sniffles for three days after my swim in the lake.
“I’ve been pretty busy,” I said, wishing she would let go of my arms. “In fact, I’m on deadline on a big project right now.”
Tears welled up in her large blue-green eyes. They were A.J.’s eyes, down to the thick black lashes. “Too busy for me? Keeley, you’ve been like a daughter to me. I thought…I thought, since your own mother hasn’t been around…I remember the first time A.J. brought you home for dinner. You were wearing the prettiest flowered dress. So suitable. Keeley, my son brought home dozens of girls over the years. Beautiful girls, from fine families. But that night, when we were in bed, I turned to Drew, and I said, ‘She is the one. She is the one I want to see sitting in my parlor, opening presents on Christmas morning with the rest of the family.’ I said, ‘Drew, tomorrow, first thing, you open up the safe deposit box. Bring home the blue velvet box. The one with Grandmother Jernigan’s pearls in it. For our Keeley. She is the one who will bear our grandchildren.’ ”
“Grandchildren?” I yelped. She had probably picked out their gender and names too. If it hadn’t been for that one little hiccup of A.J.’s I might even be incubating little Andrew Jackson III right this minute.
“GiGi,” I started. But she cut me off again.
“Maybe I was fooling myself, to think we had a special bond.”
I had thought our special bond was that she had plenty of money and liked to spend it on redecorating her houses. And yes, I’d been fond of GiGi. But there had never, ever, been a time when I’d thought of her as anything more than A.J.’s mother. I had a mother, thank you.
“GiGi, I’m not mad at you,” I started again.
“Well, why would you be?” She looked startled at the very notion. “This has all been a horrible, unbelievable misunderstanding. But as I told Drew, sometimes bad things happen for a reason. Now that things have settled down, we can look ahead. Sort things out.” She squeezed my hand. “Have a time for healing. Don’t you agree?”
“Healing what? You don’t seriously think I would ever take A.J. back—do you?”
She dropped my wrists and took a step backward. “Keeley, you need to look deep within yourself and think about things. A.J. has apologized to you. He told me so himself. The least you can do is meet him halfway. The boy has been half crazed with grief. It’s time, Keeley.”
Despite the sun beating down on my head, I suddenly felt icy cold. I had to laugh at the complete absurdity of this scene. This was downtown Madison. The middle of the day. People were peeking out of shop windows at the two of us. Two old ladies were hiding on the other side of the World War I doughboy monument, waiting to see what happened next, to see if that crazy Keeley Murdock was going to throw another hissy fit like the one they’d all heard about.
I didn’t intend to give them the satisfaction. But I also didn’t intend to let GiGi go on deluding herself about the possibility of my joining the family at The Oaks on Christmas morning, or of wearing Grandmother Jernigan’s pearls, or of breeding yet another generation of selfish, self-absorbed, two-timing, double-dealing brats with big blue-green eyes.
“GiGi,” I said. “Just so there are no further misunderstandings, let me fill you in on all the sordid details of the breakup between your son and me. I saw him, your son, my fiance, with my own eyes, that night at our rehearsal dinner. In the boardroom at the country club. He had his pants down around his ankles. My former best friend and maid of honor, Paige Plummer, was with him. Her dress was hiked up around her waist. Her panties were off, and the two of them were going at it like a pair of barnyard animals.”
“OH!” She held her hand up to her cheek as though she’d just been slapped. “How dare you! I don’t believe it. A.J. would never.” She scuttled backward. She couldn’t get away from me fast enough now. “How dare you spread such filth about my son?”
Suddenly GiGi wasn’t as crazy to have me in the family anymore. She was halfway down the block. “Liar!” she screamed. “Liar, liar, liar!”
The old ladies behind the doughboy monument froze, goggle-eyed with a mixture of horror and amazement. What the hell? I decided to really give them their money’s worth.
“It’s all true,” I hollered after GiGi. “Sad but true. And if I were you, I’d have the backseat of that Escalade of yours steam-cleaned next time you go through the JiffyWash.”