The Mulberry Tree

“So why didn’t you divorce her right away?”

“Pride,” Matt said. “I’d bragged to every man I knew that I was going to get her. And I’ll go to my grave seeing the smirk on her father’s face when Cassandra told him we were married. That look made me push to achieve, to make more and more money, because money was the only way I could stand up to my illustrious father-in-law.

“I—” Matt paused for a moment. “I hadn’t been consciously aware of it, but all the time I’d been pursuing Cassandra, I’d imagined myself with her at her father’s dining table. You see—” Matt looked at Bailey and gave her a smile of irony. “Because of my mother’s background, I knew certain things, like which fork is for oysters, and which knife is for fish, that sort of thing. I had this fantasy running through my head that her father would say—” Matt smiled. “I don’t know how I could have been this naive, but I imagined her father saying something like, ‘I thought my daughter had married beneath her, but now I see that you’re one of us.’ ”

Bailey knew he meant for her to smile, but she couldn’t. She’d too often been on the receiving end of being snubbed. Jimmie treated garbagemen and kings all the same—and because they were all after his money, they didn’t dare snub him. But Bailey had often caught them looking down their noses at her. Why did a man like Jimmie Manville have a dumpy little wife like Lillian?

“But you know what happened?” Matt asked. “The night we went to their house to inform them we’d eloped, they were at dinner—no accident on my part—and I looked behind the old man, and there was Carter sitting at the dining table. He was in; I was out; nothing had changed.”

“But weren’t they even upset that their only child had eloped?”

Matt shrugged. “I couldn’t tell that they were. When I look back on it, I think they thought we’d be divorced in a few weeks, then everyone could pretend it had never happened. I was as temporary as a shadow to them.”

“But you wanted to prove them wrong,” Bailey said.

“More or less. I think I wanted to prove to myself that I hadn’t been a complete and total fool. And if I couldn’t beat them at class, I’d try to beat them at work. I started calling companies I’d turned down for jobs, and I asked. And if that didn’t work, I begged.”

He went on to tell how he’d worked for years, nonstop, just to make money. He’d had no home life, nothing but work. But he’d been able to give Cassandra her country club, her big house, her life of ease, while he got the bills and the stress.

“So what made you finally come to your senses and divorce her?”

“I had a heart attack,” Matt said, smiling. “At least that’s what I thought it was. At the hospital they told me it was just indigestion and to go home and stop wasting their time. But it’d been enough of a scare to make me want a second chance at life. I went home in the early afternoon, something I never did, and—”

“And what?”

“Cassandra was in the hot tub, naked. With Carter. I stood there looking at the two of them together, and all I could think was, I paid for that tub, but I’ve never had time to get into it. And it was then that I started laughing. I was so relieved. Now I could get rid of her without guilt. I said, ‘Isn’t this where we began?’ then Carter said, ‘Listen, Longacre—’

“ ‘No, please, don’t get up,’ I told him. ‘Continue what you were doing. Be my guest.’ Then, as I turned around and walked out, behind me, I heard Cassandra say, ‘Don’t worry. He’ll be back. He adores me.’ And that’s when I was really and truly free.”

Matt told Bailey how he quit his high-powered architectural firm, sold everything he owned, paid off his considerable debts, gave his ex-wife half of what was left, then returned to Calburn.

“And now what?” she asked softly.

“Now I want to find out who I am. It’s taken some soul-searching, but I realized that part of why I was drawn to Cassandra was the sense of family. I was raised without a father during a time when living in a single-parent household made my brother and me objects of pity.”

“And now that you’re here?” Bailey asked softly.

“I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to get some ideas,” he said, his eyes locked with hers.

For the second time in one day, Bailey didn’t know why she pulled back, but she did. “How about another slice of Dutch baby?” she said as she got up from the table. What is wrong with me? she wondered. Why don’t I take what this beautiful man is offering? Or is it that Jimmie will always stand in my way?

“So what do you want to do today?” Matt asked. “It’s Sunday, no work, so what’s your pleasure?”

“Fly over to India and see the Taj again,” Bailey said, trying to make a joke, but Matt didn’t laugh. Instead, he just looked at her, and Bailey turned her face away. “I want to work on the porch more,” she said. “And I want to get this kitchen into decent shape.”

“Can do,” Matt said, but he was still looking at her hard.

Eleven

SIX WEEKS LATER

Bailey moved the salad around in the big wooden bowl and frowned at it. Not that it wasn’t good. It had mandarin orange segments from a can, and hard little slivered almonds, but the lettuce was fresh. Her drink was iced tea with a squirt of bottled raspberry juice added. All in all, it wasn’t a bad lunch, but she wasn’t interested in it.

Instead, she kept looking at the real estate brochure on the table beside her. “That place sold two days ago,” the realtor told her when she’d inquired an hour ago.

She was sitting alone in a booth in a cute little restaurant in Welborn, having a late lunch by herself and trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Jimmie used to say, “You’re restless again, aren’t you, Frecks?” then he’d sweep her away to somewhere wonderful. But now Jimmie was gone, and there was no money to go sweeping away to anywhere.

She looked again at the brochure. Actually, it was just a single piece of paper, but it had a nice color photo of the shop that was three doors down from this restaurant. It wasn’t a big shop or especially impressive, but she and Janice and Patsy had liked the place. In fact, they’d liked it very much. So what had happened? she wondered, picking up the paper and looking at it.