Part 14 (1/2)
”Do you need help?” Vivien felt compelled to ask, though eating, not baking, was foremost in her mind.
”Not really,” Melanie said clearly surprised at Vivien's offer. ”All I have left to make is the sweet potato ca.s.serole.” Already dressed and ready for the day, she smiled and said, ”Don't you just love Thanksgiving?”
”Apparently not as much as you do,” Vivien replied as she began opening tins and sampling the wares. What she did love was that Trip and Shelby were still asleep, which meant she hadn't had to wake up or drive anyone anywhere. The house was quiet and there was no rush. The only place they had to get to today was Magnolia Hall.
For so many years Thanksgiving for Vivien had been about booking flights, flying down, staying long enough to put in an appearance, but not long enough for Caroline to really get to her. Stone usually went home, too, but they'd always come back to the city in time to have a couple of days together before going back to work. Up till now, Thanksgiving in Atlanta had been something she did because she was expected to and she could hardly wait to get home to her ”real life.” But now this was home. And she had no other life to get back to. This was not a cheering thought.
”Hey, stop that.” Melanie removed the tin of fudge from Vivien's hands and snapped the lid back on. ”We're going to have a feast in about two hours. You know, roast turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce?”
”I just need a little something to tide me over.”
Melanie shot her an a.s.sessing look but nonetheless reached under the counter and pulled out a small tin. From it she selected an a.s.sortment of misshapen pieces of fudge, broken cookies, and a large handful of sugared pecans, which she arranged on a small paper plate for Vivien.
Slipping a pecan into her mouth, she savored the sugar as it dissolved slowly on her tongue, then began to work her way through the plate of sweets while Melanie poured the sweet potato mixture into a greased ca.s.serole pan. Vivi had sent a case of wine to her parents as her contribution to the meal. She tried not to think about the fact that she wouldn't get to drink any of it. It was one of the great ironies of pregnancy that things that had only seemed mildly interesting when she could have them whenever she felt like it had become incredibly tempting now that she could not.
The oven beeped to signal it had reached the correct temperature, and Melanie slid the ca.s.serole dish in and set the timer. ”Tea?”
”Thanks,” Vivien said as she watched her sister puttering happily in her kitchen. Since she was contemplating irony, she noted that so many of the things Vivi considered ”ch.o.r.es” seemed just the opposite to Melanie.
After her first sip of tea, which she sincerely wished were highly caffeinated coffee, Vivien asked, ”So what does Clay Alexander do for Thanksgiving?”
Melanie opened the oven door to peek at her ca.s.serole. Apparently satisfied, she carried her cup of tea back to the counter. ”Clay goes to his mother in Asheville for the holiday. They're very close; his dad left when he was a toddler and she raised him by herself.” She c.o.c.ked her head to one side to consider Vivien. ”Why?”
Vivien kept her tone casual. ”Oh, I don't know. He just seems so much a part of the family I wondered . . .” She let her voice trail off as she sometimes did in an interview to camouflage the importance of the question.
Melanie shrugged. ”He and J.J. were so close it just seems natural to have him around,” she said. ”I mean in some ways he probably knew J.J. even better than I did.”
”Why is that?”
”Well, they were already friends when I met them during my freshman year at Georgia. You'd already left for your senior year abroad then, remember? They were fraternity brothers and really tight. They both pretty much lived and breathed politics. Just like at home only from the other side of the fence. Clay ran J.J.'s campaign for student body president.”
Vivien thought back, trying to pinpoint when she'd first become aware of Clay Alexander. ”But he wasn't at your wedding. I don't remember meeting him until Shelby's christening, when you named him and me her G.o.dparents.” Vivien felt a quick stab of guilt as she realized how little time and thought she'd given to the honorary position. Could Clay's presence now be a simple matter of Clay taking this obligation seriously when she, who was Shelby's blood relative, hadn't?
”They had some big falling-out in the middle of their senior year,” Melanie said, taking another sip of tea. ”Clay dropped out of Sigma Sigma over it and he just sort of disappeared from our lives. He was still on campus; I'd spot him occasionally at the student union or at some activity or other. But they didn't speak, and J.J. never would talk about it.”
”And then one day he was back?” Vivi asked, making a mental note to find out what had happened between the two men at UGA.
”In a way. When J.J. decided to run for his first local office, you remember he ran for a seat on the county commission, he said there was no way he could get where he was planning to go without the right campaign manager. Clay had already run a couple of campaigns in the Asheville area by then, and J.J. went there and hired him away. That was almost eighteen years ago.”
”So J.J. never talked about what had happened between them? Even after Clay moved here to work with J.J.?”
Melanie laughed. ”It just wasn't that big a thing, Vivi. They had a falling-out in college. They made up. And Clay's been a good friend to all of us ever since. End of story.”
Vivi's gut, and her years of investigative experience, rejected Melanie's too-easy explanation. Human relations.h.i.+ps were never that uncomplicated. ”So, what's his current story? Is he divorced? Does he have kids?”
Melanie shot her a look of amus.e.m.e.nt. ”Are you looking to be fixed up? Maybe I should warn Stone that he's got compet.i.tion.”
”I don't think I'm the one Clay Alexander is interested in,” Vivi said, eager to test Melanie's reaction.
Melanie blushed, but Vivi wasn't certain it was with pleasure. She looked down into her mug and then back up at Vivien. ”He's just a friend, Vivien, one of my oldest friends. And I, for one, appreciate that friends.h.i.+p.”
”Fine. Just answer the question. Was he married? Does he date? I'm just trying to get a sense of things.” Trying to keep the questioning casual, Vivien got up to put more water to boil. ”More?” She pointed to Melanie's mug and, at her nod, emptied what remained in the sink.
”Clay was married briefly after college. He was in the process of getting divorced when he moved here to work with J.J. He doesn't have any kids, which is really a shame because family is huge to him. I think he'd make a great father.”
”Any idea why his marriage ended?”
”Not really,” Melanie said.
Vivien continued her tea preparation.
”As to dating,” Melanie continued, ”I've never seen him at a political function or fund-raiser or even a dinner party without a good-looking woman on his arm. There've always been women, but no one he ever got really serious about. Every once in a while he'd start seeing someone who really seemed perfect for him, and they'd last for a time. But then the woman would be looking for a commitment, you know. And he just never seemed to be able to do that. I think there must have been someone he never got over . . .”
Vivien looked closely at Melanie to see if she noticed how odd that sounded. ”So he's over forty now and has never been in a serious relations.h.i.+p since his divorce seventeen-eighteen years ago?”
”Why do you have that weird look on your face?” Melanie asked. ”Maybe he just never met the right woman.” She shrugged. ”You're forty-one and you've never been married. What difference does it make?”
”No difference,” Vivien said. ”I'm just curious as usual.” She smiled then and changed the subject, but she was even more certain now that something about Clay Alexander simply didn't add up. And more determined than ever to search J.J.'s office for some clue as to why.
EVANGELINE MET THEM on the porch of Magnolia Hall in what might have been a historically correct copy of a Civil War-era house slave's uniform. The gray homespun dress, with its white Peter Pan collar, nipped in at the waist and fell to Evangeline's trim ankles. A white lawn ap.r.o.n was pinned at the shoulders and tied around her waist. A white cotton turban hid her Buckhead salon haircut. She wore black leather dance shoes like the kind Melanie sold at her studio. She was in top reenactment form.
”Oh, Lawsy!” she proclaimed as she kissed and hugged Shelby and Trip with all her might then prepared to do the same to Vivien and Melanie. ”Y'all do look fine!”
”Amen, sister,” Vivien said as the housekeeper enveloped her in a rib-crunching hug that almost dislodged the tins of goodies in her arms. She flashed Evangeline a smile and a wink, but Evangeline returned neither as she stared at Vivien's bust and b.u.mp. A worried look spread over her face. ”Oh, Lordy,” she said more quietly. ”I thought maybe I was imagining things, but you sure enough have a bun in your-”
Vivien freed up a finger and put it to Evangeline's lips and shook her head slightly. She would announce her pregnancy when she absolutely had to and that was definitely not today. Not here in the middle of a Gray family Thanksgiving, with everyone primed and ready to pounce. She spotted Caroline coming down the hall from the kitchen and locked gazes with Evangeline to make sure she'd made herself clear. ”We didn't bring any buns or rolls,” she said pointedly. ”Maybe next time. Not today.”
Melanie leaned in for Evangeline's kiss and Vivien shot Evangeline one last warning look; there was no such thing as overkill with Evangeline. Skipping her usual verbal duel, the housekeeper retreated to the kitchen as they greeted Caroline, who wore pencil-straight black pants and a body-hugging cream cashmere sweater. Caroline was a tough act to follow under the best of circ.u.mstances; today she made Vivien feel like King Kong lumbering along after Fay Wray.
The kitchen was a hotbed of activity with Cook directing two helpers who'd been brought in for the day as well as Yolanda and Ben, who would plate up and stage the meal and then help Evangeline serve.
In the study, Vivien greeted Ham and Judy, who were already slurping up martinis. Melanie took one from their father and sank down into the overstuffed sofa beside Judy. Vivien, who was completely dreading the Just Peachy conversation and the long meal to come, hesitated beside the drinks cart, eyeing the pitcher of martinis like a diabetic trapped in a candy store. She knew it was off-limits, but could one tiny drink actually do damage?
She was contemplating this question when her father put a drink in her hand. Before she could blink, Evangeline, who'd just arrived with a tray of hors d'oeuvres, removed it.
”Evangeline,” Caroline said, ”why don't you pa.s.s those hors d' oeuvres and . . .”
Evangeline ignored Caroline completely. While this was not unusual, the speed with which she dropped the hors d'oeuvres in Caroline's lap then poured and shoved a c.o.ke into Vivien's hand and a gla.s.s bowl of nuts in the other, was.
In the silence that descended, Vivien carried Evangeline's offerings to the sofa and lowered herself into it.
”Evangeline . . .” Caroline began, but Evangeline had already tsked at Vivien and flounced out of the room.
”Now then,” Caroline said as the study door closed behind the housekeeper. ”What's all this business in Just Peachy?”
Vivien wished desperately for a shot of rum to go in her c.o.ke, but knew that Evangeline would never allow that to happen.