The Mulberry Tree

“What do you think?” Matt had asked Bailey.

She was in the kitchen, and she was in a very bad mood. Janice and Patsy had given out on her. She’d wanted to spend today with them planning the new business, but instead, Patsy was trying to copy a tiger from a coloring book onto one of her son’s shirts, and Janice was deep into Scott’s finances from eight years ago.

Bailey barely glanced at the sketch that Matt held out to her. “Hate the kitchen,” she said, then gave a brutal stir to the pot of soupe au pistou that was simmering on the stove.

“Yeah? What’s wrong with it? It’s called a ‘gourmet kitchen.’ I thought you’d like that.”

“Why is it that when it comes to kitchens you men think that ‘big’ equals ‘gourmet’?”

“What have I done to deserve this ‘you men’?”

Bailey knew she wasn’t being fair, but it was the men who’d taken Janice and Patsy away from the project that the three women wanted to do.

When Bailey didn’t answer him, Matt said, “You think you could design a better kitchen?”

“With my eyes closed,” she said, her lips tight, and that’s when Matt thrust a grid-lined pad of paper in front of her, and ten minutes later they were bent over the blueprint, and Bailey was redesigning the kitchen in Matt’s house plan.

And that’s where they were now. Matt was considering doing an entire book of house plans, and creating his own Web site. If he could get hooked up with a big company like Home Planners, he could earn a living and remain in Calburn. He’d already asked Bailey to go into business with him as the kitchen designer.

“Lillian?”

“Yes?” Bailey said absently, her eyes still on the brochure.

“It is you, isn’t it? When I first walked in, I knew I’d seen you before, but it took me a while to figure out who you were. Are you like me and here for a spa treatment? Ask for Andre. He’s marvelous.”

In openmouthed horror, Bailey watched a woman from her past, Arleen Browne-Thompson, aka Baroness von Lindensale, slide into the bench on the other side of the booth.

“I’m sorry,” Bailey said, “you must have the wrong person. I’m not—”

“Sure, sure,” Arleen said, looking hard at Bailey. “You look great. Really, you do. How much did you lose? A hundred? More? And your nose! Removing that thing must have taken half a dozen procedures.”

Bailey just glared at the woman, her head reeling with what the consequences of this meeting could be. Arleen could sell what she’d found out to a tabloid, and tomorrow Bailey’s front yard would be full of reporters. Or she could—

“Would you stop looking at me like that?” Arleen said. “I have no intention of giving away your little secret. If you wa

nt to go about the country dressed like . . . that”—she didn’t seem to have words to describe Bailey’s cotton trousers and T-shirt—“it’s none of my business. Besides, you know a few secrets on me too.”

At that Arleen gave a naughty little laugh, and Bailey was tempted to say, Not any secrets that anyone would pay to read about. Twice, Bailey had found Arleen in a compromising position with young men who worked for Jimmie. When Bailey told Jimmie, he’d howled with laughter. “The old bag must be a hundred and twelve at least. Good for her!”

Arleen tossed a Gucci bag onto the table and began rummaging inside it. Bailey knew she was searching for a cigarette; this was the longest that she’d seen the woman without one. It used to be a joke whether or not Arleen had ever eaten anything in her life, as she seemed to live on booze and cigarettes. Her skin was dried-out, her body emaciated.

“So tell me everything,” Arleen said once she had her cigarette lit.

“This is a nonsmoking section.”

“I just had sex with the owner, so he won’t throw us out,” she said, then laughed at Bailey’s expression. “Darling, you always were so easy to shock. No, I haven’t had sex with the owner. But it’s three in the afternoon, and you know how these Americans are, they’re finished with lunch by one, then they go back to the dreary little offices.”

Bailey happened to know that Arleen had grown up in Texas, but she loved to pretend that she was a “citizen of the world,” as she called herself.

“Everything,” Arleen said again. “Tell it all.”

“I have no intention of telling you anything,” Bailey said, then had the satisfaction of seeing Arleen’s thin eyebrows lift slightly.

“Then maybe you want me to tell you what’s happened to all your friends.”

“The ones who called me after Jimmie died and said how sorry they were for my loss? Are those the friends you mean?”

“My goodness,” Arleen said, drawing deeply on her cigarette and looking at Bailey through a haze of smoke. “When did you gain a tongue? You used to sit in a corner and say nothing. You just hung your head and waited for James.”