Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 (15 page)

“Well, Nat
sure
did a good job convincing everybody.”

“Listen to me. You don’t know what it’s like to be without your children. You don’t want that, Rebecca. And you really don’t want to be the one who put them in harm’s way. Every night I struggle to sleep. All I can see is my beautiful boy Ashley’s face, and I weep for him every single day.”

“
How
did you put your son in harm’s way? It was an
accident,
wasn’t it?”

I took a deep breath and told her the story that even Huey didn’t know. “I was driving the car, Rebecca. I had been drinking some wine. I was yelling at him; it was raining and a sixteen-wheeler blew a tire and skidded into us, and I lost control of the car. If I had been completely sober, or if I hadn’t been yelling at him, maybe I could have controlled the car…”

“Oh, my God, Abigail, I didn’t know. But you
can’t
blame yourself! It was still an accident!”

“Oh, I blame myself plenty. I sat there in the pouring rain, with his head in my hands, begging him to take a breath, his blood all over me and his eyes vacant…He was gone. Just like that. Gone forever.” I began to cry. “What will you tell yourself if something happens to your children because Nat is negligent? Will you blame him? No. You will blame yourself, Rebecca. Believe me, you will blame yourself.”

At that point tears were streaming down my face and hers. There was terrible gulping and gasping as we cried together in separate rocking chairs. We became quiet, sniffed loudly and looked at each other like survivors of a catastrophic event, stunned by the damage but determined to pick up the pieces and go on.

“How am I going to get through this, Abigail?”

“With me and Huey and the family court right by your side.”

“I’m so sorry that I said what I did, Abigail. You must think I’m horrible.”

“Forget it, Rebecca.”

“You’re right. If something ever happened to Sami or Evan I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Every mother has her moments. Lord knows, parenting children is the hardest thing in the world to do. Especially with a hostile spouse. You’ve stood enough. But it’s long past time for somebody here to be the grown-up and make things right.”

“And that’s me, right?”

“Yep. That’s you. I’m sorry.”

I
T
was eight-thirty Monday morning and I heard noises. How had I slept so late? Then I remembered that I had been up until the wee hours, preparing to do battle with Harry Albright. I threw back the bed sheets and stumbled out to the porch. There was Daphne with a broom, sweeping with a vengeance.

“Good morning!” I said, squinting hard in the blaze of the climbing sun.

“Good morning to you too,” she said. “I said to myself, Girl? You’re gonna need every speck of daylight the sun throws on us today to get Miss Abigail’s house clean. And Lord knows, I was sure right about that! When’s the last time these steps got a good sweeping?”

How about never? Sweep the steps? Isn’t that what ocean breezes were for? I must have appeared confused. Daphne shook her head.

“Here’s your delivery,” Daphne said.

“Thanks!” It was the hard drive from Everett.

“Go on and get your coffee,” she said. “I got a million questions for you.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just give me ten minutes.”

“Take your time.” But I heard her mutter under her breath, “Humph, she bess be drinking
two
cups!”

There was another recognition of Byron’s gene pool—his little sister was a wise guy too. Ah well, a dose of dry levity now and then might be good.

I took a fast shower and reemerged with wet hair, shorts, a polo shirt and flip-flops. I hooked up Nat’s computer and did a fast check of his favorite places and screen names at AOL. I was shocked. Nat was a very bad customer.

The coffee was brewing and I was cutting half a banana into my shredded wheat, preparing to begin the day with yet another culinary marvel from my repertoire. Daphne stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

“Want coffee?” I said.

“No, uh uh, too hot for coffee. I’m gonna just get a glass of ice water, if that’s okay.”

“There’s bottled water in the fridge.”

“Humph. That stuff is a waste of money if you ask me.”

Waste of money, indeed. She opened the refrigerator and scrutinized the contents. There were two liters of Evian, several cans of Diet Coke, a half gallon container of skim milk and various bottles of salad dressing and condiments of every description whose freshness dates defied my memory. She poured herself a glass of Evian.

“Just to try it,” she said. “See if it’s different.” She took a sip, then a long drink, draining the glass and refilling it.

Evian had gained another convert and I would be the benefactress of her newly acquired habit. Oh, so what.

“Good, huh?”

“Yeah, um,” and she continued in a very Caucasian Madison Avenue accent, “actually it has a clean finish and it’s light, much like the new Beaujolais.” Then she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand.

“You’re a stitch,” I said. “Just like your crazy brother.”

“Humph! That fool? Listen, Miss Abigail, just to let you know, when I was in college? Every Halloween I would dress up in a pleated skirt and a blazer with pearls and speak very correctly. Guess what I was?”

“God help us! A white girl?”

“Worse. A Tri Delt!”

I started laughing, and she started laughing, and then she became suddenly serious.

“What?”

“Okay, I been thinking about this here house all weekend and this is what I came to decide. That bedroom? The front bedroom? If that’s gonna be your office, it can’t have no bed in it. I’m calling Byron to get his bony behind over here and we’re moving it all to the back room. And I’m thinking that you got all kinda things going on and you needed an office last week, so here’s what I want you to do.” Her emphatic words came flying from her mouth without so much as a breath in between sentences.

“What?”

“Go shopping. Go down to Charleston and buy a desk. And a chair—no, two chairs and a sofa and some bookcases too. If you need to work, you can use the dining room table for today, but if you want people to come here and respect you, you can’t take them in the bedroom that belonged to your parents a hundred years ago with that beat-up old bed and them faded-out chairs.”

“But, Daphne! I’m not opening a law office here!”

“By and by, we gone see what we see. Meanwhile, either you are a professional woman or you ain’t. Now, go do something to fix yourself up and then git! I got a lot of work to do! What color you want this room to be?”

“Color? Shoot! I don’t know. Paint it beige. My mother always said,
When in doubt, do something neutral
.”

She rolled her eyes at me for the first of what I knew would be a million rolls.

There had been no discussion, really. She had simply arrived and decided that my life was a sham waiting to be discovered. There was a lot of truth to be said about appearances. I had been arrogantly shabby long enough. That was fine for the house, but not for an office. Feeling something between dread of what she would do and the eager anticipation of a child promised a birthday party, I called Rebecca.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m going down to Charleston to deliver a ton of subpoenas and to shop for furniture. Wanna come? We can have lunch at Rue de Jean or something. And we can go over all the stuff that’s coming back from my first round of subpoenas. Not to mention all the ugly evidence I found on Nat’s computer.” I had uncovered lots of evidence there and in the bank statements—some of it expected but one particular item had my attention. I wasn’t sure how to tell Rebecca what I suspected.

“Sure, fine. That sounds good. Hey, guess what? You know my friend Claudia? She’s coming to Litchfield this week to see me. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

“Well, and I can’t wait to meet her either!”

On the road to Charleston, Rebecca and I chatted like only two gals off for a day of shopping can do: incessantly. And, thankfully, not too much about Nat beyond the contents of his hard drive, which was disgusting. But,
disgusting
was eclipsed by
need to discuss,
which I decided was healthy for Rebecca, particularly in this case. Anything I could do to strengthen her resolve to take back her children was positive.

“He really said that?” she said.

“Yep! He was talking to some teenage girl from Austin, Texas, and told her she was awesome and he would love to see what she looked like in a bathing suit.”

“Nasty!”

“He must have used the word
awesome
a hundred times. And
cool
.”

“What’s the definition of
cool
anyway?”

I started to laugh. “Interesting question!
Tell me, oh, sage! What is the meaning of cool?
Well, I used to think I
was
and then I was sure I
wasn’t
and now I think it’s stupid to want to
be
it.”

“You can say that again! But how do you explain your overcoordinated style of dress? Isn’t that an attempt at cool?”

“Ah! She’s thinks she’s got me! Look, Yul Brynner once said he wore black all the time because he never had to worry about things matching. I’m cool with Yul.”

“Who in the world is Yul Brynner?”

“Never mind.”

So, we stayed on course by talking about what a sleaze Nat was, the size of her possible settlement and old movie stars that were decades away from her frame of reference. Which, of course, only reinforced that fact that I was not cool.

We talked about everything except our Saturday night crying jag. I was glad she didn’t ask me for any more details of Ashley’s death. I was still raw, and Saturday night had made me so miserable that all I did was wind up reliving the whole experience. What possible good did that do? No, feelings were not for me anymore. The few times in my life I had indulged my feelings, disaster struck. So it was a relief to talk about shopping.

Where to start the retail blitz? We decided to go to Morris Sokol in the city and GDC in Mount Pleasant. Both had furniture and accessories for immediate delivery. GDC was our first stop.

“This used to be a grocery store,” I said. “I think it was called the Colonial? And Krispy Kreme had a shop down on the end there.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rebecca said. “It’s been GDC since I can remember.”

“I should get
ancient and decrepit
tattooed across my forehead.”

“Honey, if I look half as good as you do when I’m as old as you are, I’ll throw a party!”

“Right. Thanks.”

I got out of the car and my momentary thought of an emergency call to Dr. Kevorkian was overwritten by the window displays. I wondered when the last time was that I had actually bought something for my house on Pawleys or my house in Columbia. Ages. I had no intention of changing the porch, the living area or my bedroom and even though I knew that crazy little Daphne was right, changing even one room made me very nervous. But I decided to set up the back bedroom with my parent’s belongings and give away the old relics that had furnished it since the Roosevelt era. If I could make it look close to how it had when they occupied it, maybe it would assuage my discomfort.

It took Rebecca and me exactly thirty minutes to choose a partner’s desk and a leather wing chair on wheels, two upholstered club chairs and a small sofa, a coffee table, two end tables and a large rug to anchor the whole room. They agreed to deliver it all the very next day. I was thrilled, not by what I had bought but by the efficency of the venture. I still needed bookcases and some kind of a file drawer. I just wanted to get the job done. And I was ravenous.

Rue de Jean was able to give us a table because we had the good fortune to arrive before the lunch crowd crush.

“I love this place,” Rebecca said as we looked over the menus. “Nat would never bring me here.”

“Too chic for his blood?”

“Yeah. If they didn’t have a television monitor hanging from the ceiling with ball games blasting, he wouldn’t go.”

“Lovely. Well, you won’t miss that part of your former life. By the way, do you know someone at Nat’s office who could confirm Charlene’s cell phone number?”

“Sure. I can call one of the girls. Why?”

“Well, I’ve got statements from SunCom for Nat’s bills since last February, and there are approximately forty calls every day—incoming and outgoing—from the same number. I’m pretty sure it’s Charlene, but this helps us further establish his infidelity.”

“It’s not like we need all that much help in that department, but I’ll make the phone call anyway. Why in the world would they call each other that many times a day? They work together!”

“Yeah, I know. Seems idiotic, but it fits a pattern of compulsive behavior. Most of the phone calls are under a minute during the day, but the ones at night get quite lengthy. And I have MasterCard statements that show almost daily visits to a motel on Highway 17 for a period of almost eighteen months, and the occasional shopping spree at an adult novelty store.”

“That is unbelievable.” She paused for a moment. “God, he is such a pig.”

“No argument there. Anyway, when we have gathered all the information we need I can tell you the chief administrative judge is going to ask us to go to mediation. They hate these things going to court because court is so expensive.”

“Do we have a judge for our hearing yet?”

“Nope. I should hear this week. There are four of them. One’s a reasonable woman, one stinks—that’s Campbell—the other one’s okay, I hear, and then there’s a new guy. But as soon as I know, you’ll know. Getting the right judge is critical.”

“Getting fed is more critical right now. I’m having the French onion soup and the croque monsieur.”

“Yum! I think I want the roasted chicken.”

We ordered and ate and at the end of lunch I gave her the real discovery I had found.

“Okay, I have one more thing to tell you, and this is just a curiosity at the moment. If we can confirm this, there could be criminal action taken against Nat and Charlene.”

Rebecca’s face shot up from her plate and she leaned in toward me.

“
What
did you say?”

“Well, according to Nat’s tax returns, he earned one hundred and eighty thousand dollars last year.”

“Yeah, and he also owns twenty-five percent of the business.”

“Which we will have audited. But he spent two hundred and seventy thousand dollars last year.”

“What?” Rebecca shook her head for a moment trying to make sense of what I had said. “Two hundred seventy thousand? And on what? Where’d he get the extra money? That’s a difference of what?”

“Ninety thousand.”

“Holy crow! Where’d he get it?”

“That’s the question, Watson. Maybe he took out a loan we don’t know about, but I don’t think so because there’s nothing in his canceled checks to show repayment. I think he’s skimming Daddy’s business with the help of Charlene. Maybe.”

“Oh, my God! His daddy will kick his behind from here to
China
!”

I smiled like a cat. “Acquiring money in this unseemly manner and spending undeclared income is a felony, and if it’s true that this is what they were doing, the IRS will be very interested in having a chat with old Nat and Charlene.”

“You don’t know Tisdale Simms! By the time he’s done with Nat there won’t be any Nat left for the IRS! How do you think they did it?”

“Do you want dessert?”

“God, yes.”

“I think that when people would want to secure a car deal they might have given Nat a check for five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars. The business is called Simms Autoworld, right?”

“Right.”

“So, Nat gets a buying customer, they make the deposit check out to Simms without the corporate title and he gives the check to Charlene. Only Charlene deposits it in a special account that pays for hotel rooms, vacations, plastic surgery, et cetera.”

Rebecca’s eyes sparkled with surprise. “Maybe I’ll have pie.”

The rest of the meal was littered with comments like,
Do you really think Nat’s a crook?
And,
Just what do you think they were doing in an adult novelty store?
And, most important, Rebecca said over and over,
I can’t wait to see the look on Nat’s face when he sees that everyone knows he’s a pathological, narcissistic liar and an abusive son of a bitch
. To that I would reply,
Don’t be surprised if he thinks the whole world is wrong
.