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Deadly Southern Charm

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That’s the thing about stoic people. You never really know what they’re thinking.

* * * *

It’s been several months since the trial, and I’ve become stoic, too. So I’m glad to have the chance to sit by the pool at my parents’ country club tonight, watching the sun set without anyone lounging beside me, peppering me with questions about my day or telling me funny stories, trying to lighten my mood. Mother and Daddy are out ensuring everything’s ready for Daddy’s seventieth birthday party tomorrow. The kids are at a movie. And the other club members are the smile-and-wave kind—with me, at least. Not chatty, which I appreciate. I’m glad to have time to think.

I’ve spent a lot of time since the trial thinking about my life, and I realize that my marriage was doomed from the moment Aaron and I met. I pushed him to the brink. And I do take the blame for that.

But not all of it.

During his ranting and raving the day he died, Aaron revealed some things I hadn’t known. He had pursued me our junior year in college because he’d thought I was the one for him. I checked all his boxes. Attractive, smart, determined. I’d make the perfect corporate wife, helping him raise the perfect family, he’d said. We were more alike than I’d ever imagined.

Except it turned out I had bigger dreams than he did. I wanted the beach house, trips to Europe, expensive private school for the kids, and fine clothes and jewelry for me. All Aaron wanted was a good little wife, a solid management position, and a little something on the side. I guess he thought having a mistress would make him a real man.

To add insult to injury, he didn’t cheat with some random woman. He did it with my sister. They’d been at it for years. Danielle liked him for who he was, he said. They had fun together. And he’d finally decided he wanted to be with her all the time. No more harping from me. Just lots of fun with her. He didn’t care how it looked. So after an appropriate mourning period, he was going to marry Danielle, without all the hassle and expense of divorce and alimony.

I hadn’t mentioned this to anyone. Not my attorney or my family or my friends or the jury. I hadn’t even mentioned it to Danielle, whom I tripped down the stairs at my parents’ house an hour ago, right before I left for the club. She’d flailed as she began to tumble, her ever-present glass of gin crashing down the carpeted steps. A happy thunk sounded when Danielle’s head hit the wood floor in the entryway, her neck as twisted as the staircase, with blood seeping out of her ear. I was glad I didn’t need to slam her skull against the floor myself, though I’d been prepared to do it if necessary.

Mother and Daddy should be calling any time now, having found my poor dead drunk of a sister. I’m sorry to put them through this, but there really was no other way. I couldn’t be the one to find the little home-wrecker, not after what happened with Aaron. Besides, Mother and Daddy are strong. They proved that during my trial. They can handle this.

As for me, I’m not sure what’s next. With Seth and Lucy on track for the Ivy League, and Aaron’s life insurance payout more than enough to cover their educations and keep me in the lifestyle I deserve, my future’s wide open. I’ve already shown the world I can be a successful wife and mother—the ultimate power behind the throne. Now I’m going to take that power out for a spin, promoting the one person I’ve been neglecting all these years—me.

I don’t know how I didn’t realize it until now. This is how life is supposed to be.

STEWING, Libby Hall

They say taking down your neighbor won’t bring you any higher, but the day I, Stella Dole, took down my ex-husband Scraper Dole, my level of happiness was through the roof. Our little town of Sloe in the foothills of Virginia talked for months about how Scraper had died. It was all over social media. Lordy, I still can’t believe that man has a meme about him.

Before I tell you what happened, there are a couple of things you need to know. The Doles were the royalty of the poor in Sloe. When old Mayor Pritchard died, Scraper put his name down for giggles and ran against Mayor Pritchard’s racist son, Dick. Of course, the old Sloe families couldn’t vote for Dick because they didn’t want reporters turning our town into a media circus. That’s never good for business, and even worse for a town that’s just starting to recover from the textile factory exodus. I don’t think it surprised anyone, except Dick and Scraper, when Scraper won.

Scraper and I never had much to do with each other growing up. He started working for the county’s Department of Transportation right out of high school. My parents sent me to college, and afterward I made some money selling real estate in Richmond. When my folks passed, I came back to Sloe and used family money to develop two new retirement communities along the river.

After Scraper settled into the mayor’s office, I called on him for a special building permit, bringing him a shepherd’s pie to seal the deal. I’m known for my shepherd’s pies—I bring them to every potluck and funeral. I use steak, not just stew meat, or venison when I can get it. Scraper loved my pies. Long story short, between my flattering him and giving him the pie, the permit was a done deal.

Scraper was annoying, and tons smarter than he acted, and the man had a sex appeal that I still don’t understand. I usually like my men young, easy to manage, and temporary. Scraper was none of those things. Somehow three dinners, two more pies, one permit, and lots of dirty sex later, we got married.

Oh, we fought more than two cats in a bag. The man infuriated me from the start. Several times he brought home roadkill from work, always claimed it was “fresh” and I could use it in one of my pies. I don’t care how “fresh” it was—I never cooked roadkill.

It took three years, more fighting and an affair before we divorced. The day I signed the papers, I sent one of my employees over to his office with another shepherd’s pie to say goodbye. The marriage might have ended, but we couldn’t stop poking at each other like kids at a hornet nest.

I look pretty good for forty. My blond hair, long legs, good tan, and flat stomach mean I never have to work too hard to get a date. I like my freedom, but in a small town, there are reminders of your mistakes everywhere. And right now, the biggest reminder of all was leaning against my new Cadillac when I closed up my office.

“Get off my car, Scraper. I can smell you from here.”

Scraper stayed where he was and tilted his head up. “I don’t see how. Your perfume would knock a man over at fifty feet.”

“You can’t smell anything.” It was true, and it was why he was also the DOT’s go-to man for scraping dead animals off the roads. I tried to shove him away from the car. “I don’t have time for this.”

He stayed put, smiling. “I was just thinking about you, lovey. You know that big stand of trees on the slope by the stream? I’m going to cut ’em down. I can’t really see the river all that well.”

After our divorce, Scraper started renting the house on the slope above mine, to get back at me, I’m sure, but since we didn’t see much of each other, it was easy to ignore him.

“You know damn well my Daddy planted those trees,” I said. “I’ll have you fined for destroying a… a… environmental habitat or something!”

Scraper laughed. “That’s rich, coming from the chief developer of—what is it? Sleepy Hollow Hills or some suburban crap like that? Nothing you file will hold any water here. Too many folks hate you for bringing in all those outsiders.” He paused. “You hear Dallas Chirp is back in town? I hired him, you know—figured nobody else would, after everything that happened between you two. Every good deed deserves another, don’t you think?”

Dallas Chirp had slunk out of Sloe ten years ago after brawling with my lover, Tom Slaughter. Tom and I were “visiting” the motel where Dallas worked and he spotted us. They got into a fight and it spilled into the street. Tom wound up with a broken arm and thirty-five stitches in his head. Dallas got fired, and I had to explain in court why I was at the Stars & Stripes Motel with someone other than Scraper. For months afterward, my life was nothing but gossip and “Bless he

r heart” comments. I laid low, moved out, and started fixing up the old family home outside of town until things blew over.

“That boy deserves better than he got,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see what I can do for him too. Now get off my car, or I’ll run you over.”

Scraper slowly stretched and stepped away. I gunned the engine as I left, hoping some of the smaller rocks would hit him.

The next evening, I tracked Dallas Chirp down in the Shook Nook, a local crab shack on the river. It wasn’t hard—his truck’s license plate read “CHIRP 1.” After convincing him there weren’t any hard feelings and that I just wanted to help him get a fresh start, he agreed to come do some work for me until he could find something permanent. What I didn’t count on was how much he’d grown up in ten years. The gangly, pimply-faced kid from the motel had turned into a man with scruffy hair, arms like Popeye, and a chest you just wanted to run your hands down for fun. And he met all my criteria—handsome, dumb, and temporary. Many drinks later, I found myself with a new yardman and an energetic lover.

I don’t know whether Scraper saw Dallas’ truck in my driveway that night or not, but I know he saw Dallas come over the next day to start work. I could see the sun glinting off Scraper’s binoculars. Pervert.

When Dallas had gone, I did what I always do in the summer afternoons. I carried a towel and a book across the lawn to my tanning chair. Sure enough, those binoculars were busy again. Minutes later, a golf ball landed in my yard. I heard the thump and looked up, but it had settled in the grass, so I went back to my book. Scraper put another ball on the ground and swung again, softer this time. I looked up as the ball hooked to the right. Scraper waved.

You have to ignore childish behavior to take the fun out of it, so I went back to my book.

Thwack!

When the next golf ball landed three feet away, I jumped out of my chair.

“Dammit, Scraper! My yard is not your private golf course!”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he called back. “Didn’t see you. I was just practicing for my meeting with the county planners next week.”

“What meeting?” County planners were the key to the next step of my development.

“To decide whether or not the county can afford all the schools and roads those new houses of yours are going to require. You know, all that zoning crap you developers hate so much?”

“Scraper Dole, I swear to God if you try and stop me from—”

“Relax, hon. I ain’t telling them nothing yet. But maybe your new lawn boy can help you. I hear he’s the owner of some prime real estate. It sure would be awfully convenient to have him sell you that property.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Of course, I did. I needed the acreage from Dallas’ grandparents’ place for the development. Believe me, I wasn’t hiring him or sleeping with him just to be nice. That acreage was the only thing standing in the way of the zoning restrictions already in place. Dallas’ grandparents were old school and wouldn’t sell at any price. My only other move was to get the zoning changed. I’d spent the last two years promising the zoning board the moon, but they kept stalling, and Scraper was at the bottom of it. If the zoning board didn’t vote my way, I wouldn’t be able to create the family neighborhood that Sloe needed to feed into the new hospital system being built in Verna, five miles down the highway. I needed Dallas to sell me that land he’d inherited.



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