Fiona Hood-Stewart - Southern Belle

“Right.” Ally, immediately businesslike, took charge. “If you’ll wait here just one second, Mrs. MacBride, I’ll check if she can see you right away. Why don’t you take a seat?” She indicated the group of studded leather sofas and armchairs strategically placed in the inner alcove, overshadowed by a gigantic Christmas tree, that looked out over the secluded garden and served as a waiting room.

“Thanks. But I’ll just wait here.” Elm smiled politely in the poised manner that was a part of her nature, and stayed put.

“Sure. I’ll—” Ally smiled nervously, indicated Meredith’s door, and after the briefest of knocks disappeared.

“Elm!” A booming baritone echoed behind her and a large palm clapped her on the shoulder. “What are you doing here, young lady?” Ross Rollins, senior partner, ex-state supreme court judge, and intimate friend of her father, Senator George Hathaway, shook her hand with delight. “Well, if this isn’t a wonderful surprise. Best get one of those gals in there to find us some coffee.” He gestured to the hall at large.

“Actually, I just popped in to see Meredith.”

“Sure. Now, tell me, Elm—” Ross slipped a broad arm about her slim shoulders “—how’s that handsome husband of yours doing, eh? Getting ready to win another term, I’ll bet. A little bird whispered to me that he has some pretty ambitious aspirations this time round. Particularly now that Jeff Anderson’s gone,” he added, lowering his voice. “Sad he went so young, very sad indeed,” the older man muttered, donning a suitably concerned frown for the recently deceased house minority leader. “Still, might just be Harlan’s lucky break, mightn’t it?”

She was saved from answering by Meredith, who appeared, beige-skirted and white-shirted, on the threshold of her own little empire.

“Hey. This is a surprise.” Meredith pecked Elm on the cheek, registering her friend’s pale, set face. With a quick word she dismissed Ross, linking her arm with Elm’s and sweeping her toward the open office door. “What brought you in here?” she asked, mentally filing the municipal-trash case—it would just have to wait—her bright eyes studying Elm’s fixed smile and controlled posture.

Something was obviously wrong, she reflected uneasily. In all the years they’d been friends—and that went back longer than she cared to remember—and not once since she’d begun practicing law, had Elm ever appeared unannounced. She invariably called first, making sure in that soft, elegant, well-mannered way of hers that it was convenient. “Come in. It’s good to see you.” She smiled more brightly than she felt.

“Sorry not to have called,” Elm murmured, following Meredith into her large, square, high-ceilinged room, a maze of stacked legal files, cardboard boxes with their contents labeled in thick black marker, and piles of miscellaneous documents waiting to be filed and delivered to the document bank. The desk was the one orderly area in the entire room.

“What’s wrong?” Meredith said as soon as the door closed. She pointed authoritatively at a new gray chair bought last week to replace the sagging green one that had finally collapsed. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Elm stared straight at her and remained standing. “Mer, did you know?”

“Know what?” Meredith’s brows met in a dark ridge over the bridge of her straight, thin nose.

“That Harlan was having an affair with Jennifer Ball?” Elm’s voice sounded almost casual, as though the discovery of her husband’s affair with one of Savannah’s most notorious divorcées was an everyday occurrence.

“Oh, Jesus!” Meredith sank behind her desk and pushed her glasses back into position. The day she’d long been dreading had arrived. The shit had finally hit the fan.

“Well? Did you?” Elm’s black shades stared blankly at her.

“I—look…kind of, okay?” She let out a sigh and again gestured for Elm to take a seat.

“And you never said a word.” Elm gripped the back of the chair.

“Look, sit down and I’ll explain.” She’d always known that one day Elm would suffer a rude awakening from the daydream she’d been living for more than a decade. Just hadn’t expected it would happen today.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Elm asked tightly. She sat on the edge of the gray chair and removed her shades. “Why didn’t you warn me, Mer? And by the way,” she added, her tone bitter, “just who else knows that my husband is fucking Jennifer? Everyone except me, I suppose?”

“Pretty much,” Meredith muttered, suddenly wary. Elm never used bad language.

“I repeat, why didn’t you tell me?” Elm pinned her mercilessly, her eyes two huge chestnut pools of pain, anger and crushed pride.

“Hell, Elm, how could I?” Meredith burst out, cringing inwardly. Should she have told her? Would it have been fairer?

“You’re my friend,” Elm bit back, “the only friend I trust in this damn cesspool. But you didn’t see fit to warn me. I don’t understand.”

“Hold it. It’s not quite that simple,” Meredith countered, leaning forward and reverting to the measured tone she used to announce a lost case to a client. “How could I tell you,” she queried deliberately, “what you didn’t want to know?”

“Of course I would have wanted to know,” Elm countered with a scathing laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, hon, but that’s not strictly true.” Meredith leaned farther forward, elbows posed on the desk. “For twelve years—make it thirteen, if you include your engagement—you’ve stuck Harlan so high upon a pedestal that you made sure he was unreachable. Even by you.”

“That’s absurd,” Elm spluttered.

“Oh, yeah? Well, why is it, then, that during the entire course of your marriage I have never once heard you criticize him, or even say a single negative word about him?” Meredith asked, eyes narrowed.

“I don’t approve of criticizing one’s spouse.” She grimaced at her prissy words.

“Right.” Meredith sucked in her cheeks and nodded. “Very laudable, I’m sure, but at times I have to say I found it hard to swallow. Hell, I love my Tom but I’m always bitching about him.”

“That’s different.”

“In what way?” Meredith quirked an interested brow.

“I don’t know—” Elm gestured nervously “—it just is.”

“Bullshit. You made up your mind Harlan was going to be Mr. Perfect, then you stuck to that notion through hell and high water, even though I reckon you knew it wasn’t working out right from the start,” she said shrewdly. “Look, I’m sorry it’s happened this way, Elm, but maybe it’s time to wake up and smell a megadose of double espresso?”

“It would certainly seem so,” Elm murmured dryly, nervously fiddling with the sunglasses on her lap, the bitter truths she’d denied for the better part of her adult life rising in her throat. “I guess I must be plain stupid not to have seen this coming,” she said finally. “I must need fucking bifocals,” she added, her mouth set in a tight line Meredith had never seen before.

“Don’t beat up on yourself.” She reached across the desk and touched Elm’s icy fingers. “You did it because of the way you are. I’ve never known you to take on a cause and do a half-assed job. Take the garden project you’re working on right now. I’ll bet nobody shovels more damn earth than you do, nobody plants more seedlings. Or your exhibitions.” She shrugged and smiled. “It’s all the same, Elm. You throw yourself into everything you do, give every ounce of your being. Only, sometimes others don’t meet your expectations and you’re bitterly disappointed. Problem is,” she added, picking up a pen and doodling speculatively, “not everyone—and that includes your hubby—has your high standards or is as dedicated and sincere as you.”