Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [50]
“The moment I met you, my dear, the whole world stopped spinning and I knew I was meant to be with you.”
I smiled then, reasonably placated and satisfied. It might have sounded like baloney, but in my heart I knew it actually was true. DuBose and I were meant for each other.
“We even look alike,” I said with obvious pride.
“Yes, yes, we do. Ah, Dorothy. Come now, tell me. What’s bothering you?”
“There’s going to be a drastic change, DuBose. Something or someone is coming. I can feel it in my bones.”
“A storm?”
“I don’t know . . . something . . . someone. I don’t know.”
“Hmmm. And your bones are never wrong.”
Fade to Darkness
Chapter Twelve
The Piano
I slept until past ten o’clock in the morning, which wasn’t a particularly long stretch, considering I had not nodded off until long past the witching hour. There was so much to do today. No. Wait. No, there wasn’t. Beyond seeing about what I could do to help Aunt Daisy and maybe checking on my car, my dance card was empty. This was going to be a problem. If anything was going to happen in my life, to me and for me, I was going to have to plan it and then make it happen. Day two on Folly and it dawned on me that this new existence, if I stayed around here for any length of time, this unexpected second act of my life could turn into a state of withering desolation if I wasn’t careful. Great. Nice thought.
It was a good thing that Aunt Daisy needed my help, because truly, otherwise, what was I going to do with myself? Mourn Addison? Well, I sure wouldn’t find Aunt Daisy or Ella in that camp, would I? I wasn’t surprised at all when she said she never really liked him. Addison’s brand of hauteur bordered on a kind of social terrorism and could be a turnoff to a lot of people who didn’t know him. I always believed his posturing came from his fully loaded buffet of deep-seated insecurities and usually found him funny, because the way he preened and posed was just ridiculous. But no more. Every single thing about him was less funny now. By a lot. Everything.
Under normal circumstances I’m sure I would have mourned him like crazy. If he had died ten years ago I would have worn black for years, but given all the recent revelations, how was I supposed to behave? Maudlin and bereft? But I didn’t exactly feel like throwing on a short red dress either. My Widow Thermometer hovered somewhere between extremely subdued and very sad but I had frequent spikes of fury about the deprivation and poverty in which he had left us, never mind all the mortifying betrayals and the morass of lies. But honey? We were poor now. Like Aunt Daisy used to say, and still would say even if the queen of England was standing in the room, I was so poor I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I don’t care who you are and what kind of luxury you’ve been showered with, what Addison did to all of us was really pretty terrible. Make that very terrible. I gave him the best years of my life and this was how he treated me. No insurance. No nothing. Not even a roof. If I didn’t have family to turn to I would have been homeless. I wondered if I would ever reconcile my feelings enough to forgive him and I thought then that no, no I would never forgive him. I felt like such a fool. And stupid. How could I have not known what was happening?
But when it came to discussing Addison’s life and death with the children, I knew I still had to be a poker player, the standard-bearer of graciousness and forgiveness. They had never and would never hear me speak ill of their father. Wasn’t what I preached the place from where the children would take their lead? No, they were not so young or impressionable anymore. Well, Sara cared what I thought but I was sure that Russ, under the laser focus and Svengali direction of his mental masseuse of a wife, had already drawn his own conclusions. He had yet to return my phone call, too. Maybe he had been out late last night. Maybe his team had a game. He would call eventually. I was sure of that. Boys didn’t call their mothers every five minutes.