The Mulberry Tree

Phillip took his time in answering. His natural reticence, mixed with what he’d learned as a lawyer, made it difficult for him to reveal anything to anyone—it was a characteristic that James had truly loved about him. “Trust me,” he said at last. “That’s all I ask of you: trust me.”

For a moment, the two of them stood there glaring at each other, neither of them giving in, but then Phillip gave a bit of a smile. “Now, about that idea of setting up a harem with you as my favored concubine . . . ”

For a moment, all Bailey could do was stare at him in openmouthed astonishment. Was he saying this for real? It was a full minute before she r

ealized that he was teasing her—and teasing her in a sexual way! In her entire life, only Jimmie had done that, and even he hadn’t done it much. She wasn’t sure what to say, but then she thought, Why not? “I get to be second wife, after Carol, or it’s no deal. And if I bear you a son, then he’s to be made sultan. Are we clear on that?”

Phillip laughed, then looked at her in silence for a moment. “I’m sorry that I didn’t make an effort to get to know you.”

“Me too,” she said quietly, smiling at him.

“Sorry that you didn’t get to know me or get to know yourself?”

“Both,” she said, then leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

Phillip’s eyes twinkled. “About that son . . . ,” he said. “I have a low sperm count, so it will take lots and lots of trying before—”

“Get out of here!” she said, laughing.

Reluctantly, after giving Bailey a list of half a dozen telephone numbers where she could reach him, Phillip got in the car behind the waiting driver. “Anything,” he called out the window. “You need me for anything at all, let me know,” he said as the car backed over the weed-infested gravel of what had once been the driveway.

“Dinner,” she called out as he backed onto the dirt road that ran in front of her property, but he didn’t hear her. “Or a grocery store,” she said into the silence.

She stood where she was until she could no longer hear the sound of his car, then she let out her breath and let her shoulders relax. Around her were tall weeds, trees with great hanging branches, and vines with thorns that could tear a person’s skin. What was lurking behind the trees? There was a sound like slithering. A snake? Or was it a person? Someone who had been watching and waiting?

She closed her eyes and swallowed, then offered up a prayer. “Dear God,” she whispered, “please continue to take care of me in the way that You have in the past.” She wanted to add more, but that seemed to cover it. So far in her life, she’d been quite fortunate, and now all she asked was for the good to continue.

Turning slowly, she looked toward the slithering sound and saw that it was just two branches rubbing against each other. But finding the source of one noise didn’t alleviate her fears. Around her were more noises and more places where people and animals could hide.

She did her best to put some steel into her backbone, then turned and ran toward the barn.

Four

When Bailey awoke the next morning, she didn’t at first know where she was. As she’d done for half of her life, she reached out for Jimmie. When she didn’t touch some warm part of him, she didn’t worry. He was often away on a business trip, away making all that money—and spending it, he liked to tell her.

It was the sound of a truck that brought her more fully awake. Turning over, she looked up and saw the window high above, and slowly her memory came back to her. Jimmie was gone, and she was alone. Absolutely and totally alone.

Outside, she could hear birds calling, the wind in the trees, and that truck in the distance, its wheels heavy on gravel. It had been a long time since she’d heard any of those sounds. The houses Jimmie bought tended to have acres of lawns surrounding them, or many hundreds of feet of stone terrace, or the ocean. Gravel roads weren’t something that Jimmie tolerated.

The movers had set up a bed for her. Incongruously, looking like an ad for linens, her pretty new bed—white-painted wood, artificially aged to look as though it had been used for many years—rested smack in the middle of the big front room of the barn. She’d had to look inside six boxes before she found the linens; then Phillip had helped her dress the bed in white cotton sheets, a fluffy white duvet on top, and half a dozen pillows at the head. When it was finished, they’d all laughed; it did look like a setting for a commercial, with the white-on-white bed in the midst of the hay bales.

After the men and Phillip left, Bailey had gone back to the barn and climbed into the bed. What have I done? she asked herself, and at that moment, if she’d had a cell phone, she would have called Phillip and asked him to come and get her. And she would have said yes, she would fight Atlanta and Ray for a share of the money. She’d buy herself a nice house somewhere and—

Bailey stopped her thoughts. The truck seemed to be getting closer. In the next minute, she heard the unmistakable sound of air brakes. Had the movers returned? she wondered as she threw back the covers and slipped her feet into her shoes.

It took a few moments to get the big barn door to slide open, and she thought, Oil can, putting it on her mental list of things she’d need to buy. She ran down what was now a wide path between the house and the barn, then stood in front of the house to watch a big white truck pull into the driveway. Viking Industrial Cleaners was written on the side of the truck, beside a picture of a muscular man wearing a horned headdress and holding a mop.

The truck door opened, and a man wearing navy blue overalls and carrying a clipboard jumped down to the ground. “You Bailey James?” he asked.

It took her a moment to remember that that was now her name. “Yes,” she said, rubbing at her eyes, “but I didn’t order any cleaning.” Two more men got out of the truck on the other side.

The first man looked at the house. The door was flat on its back inside; there were several broken panes of glass in the windows and through them could be seen rooms full of dirt-encrusted cobwebs. “Maybe you just wished so hard, your fairy godmother sent us,” the man said.

She wasn’t used to such flippancy from service people, so Bailey stared at him in disbelief. Then she saw a twinkle in his eye, something that she’d been seeing rather often in men’s eyes lately. Like Phillip, this man was teasing her. “Does this mean that you believe you’re Prince Charming?” she asked, deadpan.

Had she said this to a man a month ago, she knew that he would have frowned and walked away, but now the three men behind him guffawed in laughter, and this man seemed to think that whatever Bailey said was okay by him.

“Whatever you want, we Viking men deliver,” he said, then held out his clipboard to her.