Carolyn McSparren - The Wrong Wife

Back in high school, she’d thought he was the warmest, kindest person she’d ever known because he treated her the same way he treated everybody else.

Now he was asking her to dinner, and she longed to go, but didn’t dare. The only way to avoid becoming as big a slut as her mother had been was to avoid temptation like the plague. From the electrical connection she’d felt when she brushed off his clothes, Ben was a combination bubonic and pneumonic, with a big dash of anthrax thrown in.

Besides, he was Hal Jackson’s son. Grandmere would go crazy. Working for Elizabeth was bad enough.

But how was Annabelle expected to make enough money to support herself, not to mention avoiding the loss of her skills and reputation, when she’d come back to Memphis to look after Grandmere?

Elizabeth’s job offer had been a godsend. It would actually enhance Annabelle’s reputation. And it gave her a place to live while she was here as well.

Annabelle would not live in the mansion with her grandmother. The day Jonas had driven her to the plane for New York and design school, she’d made a solemn vow that she would never live there again.

Elizabeth had offered Annabelle the apartment over what was now a four-car garage, but what had originally been the carriage house. It was furnished—rather charmingly, as a matter of fact. Elizabeth Langley never did anything halfway. It was almost as large as her loft in SoHo. It even had a fireplace.

Now that she had shoved some of the furniture out of the way, set up a trestle table and brought in a sewing machine and serger, she had plenty of room to keep working until all hours of the night.

Better than sleep. Back where it had all happened, her dreams were even more troubled. She would not resort to pills. Reality was bad enough. Altered reality was a horror not to be contemplated.

She began to climb the steps to the workroom once more. What kind of human being marks the day she will finally be free as “when Grandmere dies?” A monster, obviously. But then, once a monster, always a monster. At least here everybody expected her to behave monstrously.

Ben had remembered her instantly; he’d gotten all embarrassed over his remark about killing his mother. In New York no one would have made the connection. In New York she was not Annabelle Langley, the bad seed.

“You all right?” Marian Wadsworth’s callused fingers stopped plying her needle for a moment and let the piece of Venice lace she held lie loose in her lap.

“Fine.” Annabelle shoved her hair out of her face for the fiftieth time since morning. “I am going to shave my head like a Buddhist nun.”

“It would grow back wilder than before.”

Annabelle picked up a foot-long piece of rayon seam binding off the floor and tied her hair into a ponytail at the back of her head. Without a rubber band, the binding would hold for an hour or so before it slid off.

She saw the glint of one of the missing paillettes in the crack between two floorboards and bent to pick it up. Then she saw another and dropped onto her hands and knees. “Funny thing. Ben Jackson nearly fell on me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was up in that big old oak. I didn’t even know he was there, then suddenly, wham, he drops out of nowhere at my feet.”

Marian laughed and picked up the lace. “When he was a child he shinned up that tree whenever he wanted to get away.” She turned serious. “After Judy was killed, I think he practically lived up there all summer. It’s where he did his grieving. Is he all right?”

“Yes, Marian, your darling is all right, and incidentally, so am I.”

“I can see that, Belle, that’s why I asked about Ben.”

“I brushed him off and sent him back inside looking amazingly little the worse for wear. Ah, gotcha!” she added as she found another paillette.

“He was always one of those Teflon children who came from school looking as neat as he did when he left home.” Marian shook her head.

“I, on the other hand, looked as though I’d been through a wrestling match ten seconds after I dressed. Used to drive Grandmere frantic.” She sat back on her heels.

“How is she today?”

“Cross your fingers. I haven’t had a single call from the sitter, or nurse, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days.”

“Caregiver, I think, is the current word.”

“Damn expensive, when all they seem to do is sit around and watch soap operas.”

“Maybe this one will do a bit more.”

“Mrs. Mayhew does seem more conscientious. She keeps Grandmere’s room and bathroom clean, and sees to her own bedroom and bath, but I’ll probably have to get a cleaning team in for the rest of the house before long or the spiders will take over.”

“Well, don’t you try to do it. That place is big as a stadium.” Marian bent to her needle. “And all those knickknacks and sitarounds to dust. Why not ask Jonas to help you out?”

“His hands are already full with Grandmere’s garden. At least the neighbors can’t complain about that. He’s not getting any younger either, you know. He does the marketing and takes her back and forth to the doctor’s.”

“How long can you keep this up?” Marian asked.

Annabelle dug her fingers into the aching muscles along the tops of her shoulders. “As long as I have to. She’s always been terrified of nursing homes. I can’t do that to her.”

Marian mumbled something as she bit off the thread.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Don’t bite the thread that way if you expect to have any teeth left when you’re seventy, and don’t mumble,” Annabelle said. “Tell me what you said.”

Marian picked up the embroidery scissors that hung from a silk cord around her neck and ostentatiously clipped the end of the thread she’d just bitten. She sighed and looked at Annabelle. “I said it would serve the old witch right.”

Annabelle plucked the last paillette from the crack and rose easily to her feet. “I don’t want putting her in a nursing home on my conscience as well.”

“Pooh! Stop it. Get it through your head that you don’t carry any weight or any guilt for what happened to your mother. Your father admitted it and went to jail for it.”

“To save me, you mean. Everybody knows that. Grandmere—”

“Mrs. Langley is a poisonous viper who did everything in her power to destroy anyone and everyone who crossed her path. Lord knows why it gave her so much pleasure, but it did.”

“She took me in and did the best she could with me. She’s a very unhappy woman,” Annabelle answered.

“Oh, no doubt. If there were an object lesson in the Golden Rule, she is it. Not one of the nasty things she has ever done to anybody has made her one bit nicer or one bit happier. She’s like one of those poison toads—the more venom she uses, the more she has.”

“Why, Marian, I knew you didn’t like her, but I never realized you loathed her that way. What’s she done to you?”

“Watching what she’s done to you is bad enough. And laying so much guilt on you that you came home to tend to her after all these years, and your career in New York and all.” Marian sniffled and wiped her hand under her eyes. “I’m glad to have you, but the whole thing makes me sick.”

Annabelle slipped the paillettes into the pocket of her shirt and walked around the table to drop a hand on Marian’s shoulder. “She’s my only family. Besides, I screwed myself up before she got the chance.”

“No, you did not.” Marian covered Annabelle’s hand with hers. “You were a little bitty girl. But all those years in that house with that harpy—well, child, you need about ten years of therapy, is all I’m saying.”

“Oh, thank you very much.” Annabelle laughed. “I’ve had years of therapy. Otherwise I’d probably be dead. This is as good as it gets. I function extremely well in my own milieu, and people leave me alone. And it’s nice to have friends who understand.”