Chapter Eleven
With Hugh and Jenna’s support, I made it through the party that night. Jenna had been right about the whole town knowing where Lindsey had gone. Gossip and speculation flew in every direction, fueling my anger with every word.
“I don’t know why everyone is so surprised,” Gretchen Treece commented to Helena. “They were two of a kind. Peggy told me she saw them at the drive-in quite a few times in that old truck of his, and the windows were always fogged up. It’s disgusting the way some people carry on.”
I ground my teeth together, smiled, and moved away, but I never doubted the truth of her statement. Why should I? Nick himself had told me he wanted everyone to think he was dating Lindsey. I was simply so stupid and trusting that I believed his reasons were innocent.
The next afternoon, I went to the beauty shop and had my hair cut off. I told Hugh it was because it would be easier to care for during my pregnancy, but the real reason was because every time I went by a mirror, I remembered how much Nick had loved my long hair. Sometimes revenge takes simple outlets.
Surprisingly, the new, shorter style suited me. I had topped out at a whopping five feet, two inches, and with my small bone structure, the feathery cut gave me a pixyish appearance that made my eyes seem huge and mysterious.
There was one last chore I had to take care of before I could I get on with my life.
The pendant Nick had given me had to be disposed of. I sat in my bedroom for a long time that afternoon, staring at it. And in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Instead, I put it carefully into a box and drove out to the farm.
Once there, I went to the barn, to Nick’s room. It was the first time I’d been back in weeks, and it was as if all traces of Nick had been erased from the earth. His clothes were gone and the sheets and blankets on the narrow bed had been washed and replaced, leaving no trace of his scent.
For the last time I allowed myself to cry, and even as my tears fell I cursed Nick with every breath. When it was over, I put the box containing the pendant into the linen closet, shoving it all the way to the back on the top shelf. Then I shut the door, on the closet and on Nick.
After that, life settled into a routine I welcomed. Hugh joined his father fulltime at the mill and I took on the role of wife with a vengeance. Even Aunt Darla could find no speck of dirt in my house, and she did look.
The Judge found an excuse to come by almost every day, and I welcomed his visits.
Together, we planted my first vegetable garden, each row laid out with mathematical 104
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precision. The once empty flower beds around the house now bloomed with shrubs and flowers; Azaleas, Japanese Holly, and Spirea backed geraniums, petunias, sweet peas, and hosta, with several colors of crepe myrtle thrown in for height and contrast.
When Hugh and I judged the time was right, we gathered our families and broke the news about the baby. Everyone was ecstatic, and I entered an entire new world I’d never paid much attention to before; the southern tradition of educating first-time mothers by passing on bits of wisdom gathered from the generations of women who’d gone before.
“Alix!” My mother yelped when she caught me reaching for a bowl on the top shelf of the cabinets. “Stop that this instant. Don’t you know you’ll wrap the cord around the baby’s neck?”
When I was plagued with heartburn, Aunt Darla told me that it meant the baby would have a lot of hair.
Helena got into the act by warning me not to let anything frighten me because it would “mark” the baby. It seemed everyone had examples of this type of phenomena, and they regaled me with them at every opportunity. I laughed the stories off, but my poor obstetrician, a transplanted New Yorker, was horrified when I repeated the tales to her, and ordered me not to listen to a thing my family said. I don’t think she ever quite grasped the concept of southern tradition, and a few years later she moved her practice back to “civilization”.
Everything seemed rosy and perfect on the surface, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. In spite of the act I was putting on, I was in more pain than I’d ever experienced before. You can’t turn love on and off like a light switch, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is wall it off, one brick at a time, until you’ve created an impenetrable fortress around your emotions. And once that fortress is built, you camouflage it so well that even you can’t see it anymore. That’s what I did with my love for Nick, and hate became my camouflage. It affected everything in my life. For the first time, I lost sight of the core of the sweet gum tree and now saw only the pale fibrous wood, warped and untrustworthy.
One major consequence of this change was my sudden inability to trust Hugh. I’d been stupid once and believed everything Nick told me. It wasn’t going to happen again, and if Hugh seemed too good to be true, then he must have an ulterior motive.
My fantasy ended with a resounding crash as I tore the blinders from my eyes.
I spent a lot of time watching Hugh, wondering why a man would seem so happy about a baby that wasn’t his. If he’d ever exhibited the slightest interest in children before, I might have understood. But he hadn’t. Now he was suddenly playing the expectant father to the hilt and my suspicions were running rampant.
There was only one conclusion I could reach. I’d been right about Hugh from the beginning. He didn’t love me. He had pursued me only because it was what his family wanted and expected. And while he had plenty of money, if he kept his parents happy he stood to inherit an industry that controlled an entire town and the area surrounding 105
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it. Maybe he did care about me in a way, but our relationship was more like that of a brother and sister than husband and wife. I was his trophy, the most suitable candidate to help him get what he really wanted, respectability and power, both precious commodities in our small southern town. The baby was simply window dressing, something that would complete the picture of a happy family he was trying to project.
I knew deep inside that his happiness, like mine, was merely an act, albeit a convincing one. He helped Jenna and me with the nursery, doing most of the manual labor. We teased him unmercifully when he put the rails of the crib on upside down and had to redo them. And as my girth expanded he became more solicitous, insisting I stop working so hard around the house, making sure I had something to prop my swollen ankles on. He would rest his hand on my stomach, laughing when the baby kicked vigorously. Toward the end of the pregnancy, he even attended Lamaze classes with me.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that these warm exhibitions occurred for the most part when others were around. Not that Hugh was ever anything but kind. But as my pregnancy progressed, he seemed to lapse into brooding silences more often when we were alone, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d reached the same conclusion I had. Because I finally realized just how big a mistake we had made in marrying for the wrong reasons. A mistake I now had to live with and handle alone. Jenna thought Hugh had wings and a halo, and my family had their own small crisis to deal with.
A week before Christmas my mother came over to help me decorate our tree. My normally effusive mother remained silent as we strung lights, her brow furrowed. I waited, knowing she’d get around to what was on her mind sooner or later. Finally, with a sigh, she sank onto the couch.
“Your father asked me to marry him.”
This news came as no surprise to me and I smiled. I’d wondered how long it would take him to get up the nerve.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I had to think about it.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “It would mean moving to Jonesboro and leaving the Judge.”
“Mama, it’s not like the Judge will be alone. Aunt Darla and Aunt Jane will still be there to take care of him, and Jonesboro is only twenty minutes away.” She looked up at me, her eyes pleading. “What would Jane think, Alix? I can’t hurt her again.”
I sat down and took her hand. “Do you love him, Mama?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think I always have.”
“Then marry him. Aunt Jane will understand. She wants you to be happy.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Talk to her.”
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I guess Daddy wasn’t taking any chances on her backing out once she said yes. The wedding took place on Christmas day, and my mother was as giddy as a teenager. If Aunt Jane felt any lingering sadness, she hid it well, and the day was wonderful for all of us. The next week was spent in a flurry of getting Mama moved to Daddy’s house in Jonesboro, although for the most part I was relegated to sitting in a chair, watching.
A few days later, on a cold January night, I went into labor. We hadn’t been in bed long, maybe a few hours, when a nightmare woke me. Drenched in sweat, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, pulled on a robe, and waddled into the kitchen to warm a cup of milk. The first pain hit as I finished pouring milk from the pan. Gripping the edge of the counter, I held my breath until it ended, then dumped the milk down the drain and rinsed out the pan and cup.
Some deep, instinctive need to be alone kept me from waking Hugh. I sat in the dimly lit room at the table, keeping an eye on the clock as the pains came closer together, each one lasting a little longer than the one before. I was still there four hours later when Hugh stumbled sleepily from the bedroom, his hair rumpled and his eyes partially closed.
“Alix? What are you doing?”
“Having a baby,” I told him calmly.
His eyes flew open. “Now?”
“Pretty much.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“There wasn’t much sense in both of us staying awake this early in the labor.” I couldn’t tell him the real reason. At the time, I don’t think I understood it myself. Hugh wasn’t the father of my baby, and way down inside I didn’t trust him, didn’t trust any male anymore.
He squatted beside me. “How far apart are the pains?” I glanced at the clock. “Every fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll call the doctor and then we’ll get you dressed.” I offered no objection as he took over. Another pain hit and all my energy focused inward. And that’s where it stayed for the next eight hours as I worked to give birth to my daughter.
Katie came into the world with a loud protest, her tiny face screwed into a mask of fury as she screamed her displeasure at being shoved from her warm nest, only quieting when they wrapped her in a blanket and put her in my arms. Tears filled my eyes as I inspected her. She looked so much like Nick that I didn’t see how anyone could miss it. Her small head was covered in thick black hair that showed an immediate tendency to curl on the ends, and even when she was finally quiet, the indication of dimples showed clearly on her plump baby cheeks.
Hugh stayed with me through the whole thing, coaching me, rubbing my back and stomach when the pains became intense, happily cutting the cord when the doctor 107
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handed him the scissors, and later, filling my room with pink flowers and handing out cigars.
But by then I didn’t care if it was all an act. I had Katie, and in the space of a single instant my life changed. She was my world, the reason I lived and breathed, and nothing else mattered to me.
Katie wasn’t what people call a “good” child. From the beginning she was bright and intelligent and constantly moving. Her smiles and laughter lit up our lives, and her gray eyes always sparkled with joy. We all spoiled her shamelessly, and she soaked it up like it was her right, then demanded more.
Even Hugh wasn’t immune to her charms. One afternoon, when she was three months old, I caught him in the nursery. Katie’s chubby fists were buried in his hair, and she was laughing hysterically while Hugh blew raspberries on her tummy. I slipped away quietly before they saw me, and at that moment I really and truly loved Hugh. It was destined to be both the first and last time I harbored any real emotion toward him.
Three months later, when Katie was six months old, she died. The doctors said it was SIDS, but I only knew that one second I had my beautiful, warm child in my arms, and the next she was gone and I had nothing. When they buried her, they should have buried me too. The only thing left was an empty shell that breathed in and out, that ate because she was forced into it, and refused to talk to anyone. I locked myself in the nursery and stayed there until my family, sick with grief and worry, threw me out and packed all of Katie’s things into boxes before forcing me to go to the doctor. But there was no pill known to man that could help me get through the trauma of losing my child.
I would wake in the middle of the night, Katie’s desolate cries echoing in my ears, and drive to the cemetery, staying there in the dark with one hand on her grave, singing lullabies until Hugh would show up and take me home.
And somehow, in my pain and anguish, it was Nick I blamed. Nick I raged at during those lonely, empty hours by Katie’s grave. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t left us. If it had been me he sent for instead of Lindsey, Katie would be alive now. He should have been there, should have found a way to keep her safe. But he hadn’t, and I hated him even more because of it.
Strangely enough, it was Ian, Hugh’s father, who brought me back to some semblance of life. One morning he showed up at our house, marched into our room, and ordered me out of bed.
“Get dressed,” he told me. “You’re going to work.” He gave me a job as his “assistant”, a position obviously created to keep me busy. I only went along with his tyranny because it was easier to comply than to resist. But gradually, the work caught my interest and I began pouring myself into the lumber industry. After two years, I knew more about the business than Hugh did. A year after that I went to the bank and used the Morgan name to secure a loan. When I got it, I 108
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opened my own building supply company, Morganville’s first. I deliberately made it as big as the chain stores in Jonesboro, and every minute of my time, night and day, went into making it a success. Southern Supply became my life, the only thing I cared about.
And so, the first time I became aware that Hugh was having an affair, I ignored it.
In a way, it was almost a relief. For a while I didn’t have to deal with him myself. I never knew who the woman was and didn’t want to know. The only thing I wanted was to bury my head in the sand and forget the past, forget that my arms and heart still ached for the daughter I’d had such a short time. And I was succeeding admirably. As time went on, I became numb inside, a condition I welcomed and struggled to maintain.
I felt nothing, not anger, or joy, or sadness. Life was easier that way.
Then, fifteen years after he left, Nick came home.
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