The Mulberry Tree

“I have no idea. James spoke of ‘murders called suicides,’ then said he would be recognized if he went back to wherever it was that he was talking about, and he said that ‘those six shining boys’ ”—she looked at Bailey—“or ‘six golden boys,’ I guess, were a religion and couldn’t be touched. Then he got a nasty look on his face and said that someone had once tried to touch them; ‘Look what happened to her,’ he said. Is any of this making sense to you?”

“Some of it, yes. What about Jimmie’s father?”

“James said, ‘My father was one of them, but he—’ Then he broke off. That’s all he’d say. Bandy asked him to tell more, but James said, ‘I talk too much,’ and that was that. He never said another word about his past to anyone else as far as I know. I even asked one of the girls, that Swedish girl, uh . . . ”

“Ingrid,” Bailey said as she leaned back against the seat. “No, Jimmie wouldn’t confide in any of them.”

“Dear, your hand is bleeding,” Arleen said softly.

Bailey looked down and saw that two of her nails had cut into her palm. Quickly, she put her hands out of sight under the table.

“Are you going to find out about James’s father?” Arleen asked. “If you did, you could write a book about him and make a mint.”

Bailey gave her a look of disgust. “No, I’m not going to write an exposé of my late husband.”

“But, darling, you should. You could tell all about the fabulous parties, about the women, about—” Arleen stopped. “Yes, I could see why you wouldn’t want to do that. So what do you plan to do with this information?”

“Nothing,” Bailey said. “Sitting here with you has made me realize that I don’t owe James Manville anything. I’m sure he had his reasons for leaving everything to people he hates and leaving me nothing but a—” When she saw Arleen’s eager eyes, she stopped. She didn’t want to give away too much about herself, including hints about where she was living. “What I plan to do is make up for lost time.” She leaned across the table so her face was close to Arleen’s. “I want some work out of you. There’ll be no paper contract between us, just word of honor. Ever hear of that concept, Arleen?”

“A time or two,” Arleen said, smiling slightly. “From way back when.”

“You don’t bring us customers, you don’t get paid. Understand?”

“Clearly. I don’t have to eat any of the product, do I?”

“I seem to remember that you rather liked my cherries in brandy.”

“I threw all those awful little red things over the side of the ship,” Arleen said. “Then I drank the brandy.”

Bailey couldn’t help smiling. “Give me your address and your cell number, and I’ll let you know what’s going on. And when we make any money, I’ll send you a check.”

Arleen took the brochure, scribbled some numbers on it and an address in London, then shoved it back across the table. “And who is this ‘we’? The man in your life?”

“No,” Bailey said firmly. “This will be a company run by and for women. No men allowed.” She looked at her watch, and as she did, she could feel Arleen’s derision. It wasn’t an expensive watch. “I have to go,” Bailey said as she stuck the brochure with the address into her handbag. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

“Thanks,” Arleen said softly. “I’m depending on you.”

As Bailey slid out of the booth, she avoided Arleen’s eyes. There was something empty in them that she didn’t want to see. Arleen made Tennessee Williams’s immortal phrase, “I have always depended on the kindess of strangers,” come to life.

With her head held high, Bailey left the restaurant and went to the lot where her car was parked.

Twelve

Her bravado lasted only until she was inside the privacy of her car. She put the key in the engine, but she didn’t turn it. Instead, she put her head down on the wheel and closed her eyes.

While she was married to Jimmie, when he was there in the flesh, she could pretend that those other women didn’t exist. She could tell herself that Jimmie’s “friends” were odious creatures, and she didn’t want to be around them—that way she heard little and saw less. She could hide in the kitchens of all the houses and pretend that she and Jimmie were just an ordinary couple, and that Jimmie was coming home from an office job to her home-cooked meal. In fact, over the years, she’d become brilliant at hiding from the truth.

And now she was doing with Matthew Longacre exactly what she’d done with Jimmie. She was again hiding and letting a man make all her decisions, letting a man decide her life.

She looked up through the windshield to see a woman holding the hand of a little boy and walking toward the stores. She’d very much wanted to have children, but Jimmie had had a vasectomy long before she met him. He never said so, but Bailey figured he’d rendered himself infertile because he was afraid that a child of his would inherit his cleft lip.

But now that she’d had some time away from the physical presence of Jimmie, she thought that maybe he hadn’t wanted children because he knew he would have been jealous. He wanted Bailey all to himself.

“You were a very selfish man, James Manville,” she said out loud as she started the car. “And what is worse, I allowed you to be.”

On the drive home, she hardly looked at the road. Her mind was so full of what she’d heard this morning, and what she was being forced to remember, that she could see little.

Worse than what had been done to her in the past, she thought, was the fact that she was doing it all over again. She had no doubt that soon Matt would ask her to marry him, then they’d have a sweet little wedding in some adorable little church, and she’d probably be pregnant a week later. “A pregnancy waiting to happen,” is what Arleen called her.