“Every time I see Norma’s place I’m impressed,” PJ said as he pulled the car up behind a guest’s minivan. “I’m dying to get the landscaping contract. The gardens are the only thing subpar about the estate.”
“I don’t know what a woman living alone needs with all this house,” Mary Bernadette replied. “And I do agree that her gardens could use a more professional finish.”
“Look,” Alexis said. “Over there. A media van. Who asked for a TV crew?”
Mary Bernadette smoothed an invisible wrinkle on her dress and straightened her already straight shoulders. “I don’t know,” she admitted, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Meadows is responsible.”
Norma Campbell had hired a staff of parking attendants, and PJ surrendered the keys to one of the white-shirted young men who were scurrying to and from the field behind the house that was serving as a parking lot. Mary Bernadette was of two minds about this. On one hand, she considered hired parking attendants an unnecessary expense. On the other, she admitted that it did probably cut down on confusion when people wanted to leave at the end of the night. And there was the matter of women’s heels getting dirtied in that field, what with the horses and those large hairy dogs Norma was known to keep.
Mary Bernadette looked up at the façade of the house, complete with a rather grand staircase leading up to a rather grand porch with whitewashed columns. Right out of Gone with the Wind, Mary Bernadette thought. How theatrical, considering the house had been built only in the 1950s. Certainly not a candidate for the Historical Register.
The four Fitzgibbons made their way into the house. The ceiling of the front hall had to be almost twenty feet high. There was a suitably sweeping staircase. Massive urns held massive arrangements of flowers. The floor was marble. Mary Bernadette peered into a room off the hall. It was dense with detailed moldings and heavy draperies.
“It’s a gorgeous house, isn’t it?” Alexis said.
Mary Bernadette frowned. “I find it too grandiose, myself. And the décor is too ostentatious for my taste. Can you imagine the expense of keeping all those intricate carvings and silk draperies clean? But if it’s what suits Norma . . .”
The four of them went through to the ballroom, Mary Bernadette leading the way with an air of deliberate nonchalance. It would never do to give Norma—or Wynston Meadows, for that matter—the erroneous idea that she was impressed by a display of mere things.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room this big,” Paddy whispered. “Outside of a museum, that is.”
“It’s probably shut up for all but one day of the year,” Mary Bernadette said dismissively. Conspicuous consumption, she thought. Money is the root of all evil. And Greed is yet another of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Three large, ornate chandeliers, sparkling with drops of faceted crystal, hung in a row down the center of the room. Tall, rectangular windows were evenly spaced along the right-hand wall. Along the left-hand wall was a series of enormous landscape paintings in a distinctly nineteenth-century style, each in an elaborate gilt frame. Mary Bernadette wondered if the paintings were copies or originals. Not that it mattered.
Waiters dressed in white shirts and black pants wove their way through the gathering guests with trays of appetizers and glasses of champagne. A very long table of more substantial fare sat beside an equally long table of desserts, featuring everything from cakes to tartlets, from fresh fruit to an ornate chocolate fountain. There was also a full bar. “Norma is running a risk serving so much alcohol,” Mary Bernadette proclaimed.
Alexis laughed. “I don’t think this is a crowd likely to get rowdy!”
“You never know,” Mary Bernadette replied darkly. “I’ve known the drink to fell even the most upright man.”
Alexis shrugged. Mary Bernadette resisted the urge to reprimand her. A shrug, in her opinion, was a gesture of disrespect. Her grandson’s wife might as well have said, “Whatever,” in that obnoxious tone people employed when using the word dismissively. But this was supposed to be a festive occasion, so Mary Bernadette let the slight go without comment.
A live band, its members wearing classic tuxedos, was playing selections from the American Songbook. “I must say the music is tasteful,” Mary Bernadette noted.
Paddy nodded. “The woman doesn’t stint, I’ll say that for her. Look at the size of those shrimp!”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” PJ said, already moving off. “I want a word with Leonard.”
“There’s Mayor Rogers.” Mary Bernadette frowned. “What in the world is his wife wearing? Sheila has more money than God and yet absolutely no taste in clothing.”
“I didn’t know there was so much wealth in Oliver’s Well,” Alexis said.
“It’s here and there, some old some new,” Paddy explained. “Norma’s one of the more recent imports. When did she come here, Mary? Ten, twelve years ago?”
“Eleven years and three months ago, to be precise.” She had a phenomenal memory for names and dates concerned in any way with Oliver’s Well. Besides, Norma’s arrival was not something she was likely to forget. It wasn’t every day that a middle-aged woman with no discernable familial attachments and no employment set up house down the road.
“And there she is now,” Alexis said. Norma, bedecked in a bronze lamé gown more suitable for a Met gala than a welcoming reception, got up on a platform at the far end of the room, and when the crowd went silent she introduced the guest of honor.
“Thank you,” she said, “for coming here tonight on this very special occasion. I’m pleased to see the cream of the crop of Oliver’s Well in my home.”
“She speaks well enough,” Paddy commented.
Mary Bernadette shook her head. “Her enunciation needs work.”
“And now,” Norma went on, “without further delay, I would like to introduce our guest of honor, a man many of you know about but, at the same time, a newcomer to our little town and to the Oliver’s Well Historical Association, Wynston Meadows. Mr. Meadows grew up in nearby Smithstown, where he was steeped in the tradition of our rich regional architectural and cultural history. He serves on the boards of no fewer than three major companies and holds a position on the D.C. Landmarks Commission. We are excited and honored to welcome Wynston Meadows to our fold. Mr. Meadows?”
With reporters hovering and television crews filming, Wynston Meadows took the stage. He was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie. He put his hand up to request the applause to stop, and when it did, he spoke. Mary Bernadette listened attentively.
“Thank you, Norma, for that lovely introduction, and thank you all for coming this evening to welcome me to Oliver’s Well.”
Sporadic applause broke out, and again Wynston Meadows raised his hand.
“I’m delighted to have been accepted to the board of the Oliver’s Well Historical Association,” he went on. “As Norma mentioned, I have a very personal and long-standing connection with the historic lands and buildings of this region. My grandfather, Dennis Meadows, was the curator of the Smithstown historical society’s museum. I passed many a pleasant hour with him, both in the museum and on visits to historic sites in our region, and so became passionate about the need to honor, protect, and preserve our heritage in these assets. I’ve been fortunate in business”—he paused for the expected chuckles—“so with the resources given to me I am happy to support the OWHA and other organizations committed to similar goals.”
Wynston Meadows paused again and looked thoughtfully at the floor.
“Isn’t he wonderful?” Mary Bernadette turned to find that Jeannette and Danny had joined them.
“He is indeed,” Mary Bernadette whispered back.
“Tonight,” Meadows went on, “I would like to announce that I will be working with the OWHA to explore the possibility of acquiring and restoring the famous Branley Estate.” This was met with a general murmur of satisfaction. “To this end, I am pledging a total gift of twenty-five million dollars to the OWHA.”
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br /> This time, the applause went on without Wynston Meadows attempting to stop it. Mary Bernadette’s palms stung with the force of her own clapping. When it had finally died down of its own accord, Wynston Meadows continued.
“This gift,” he said, “will be made in five installments of five million dollars over the next five years, with the first installment available immediately toward the acquisition of the property that the incomparable Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon and her colleagues have worked so hard to position us to purchase.”
Again, the room resounded with applause. Mary Bernadette was brimming with pride. Jeannette squeezed her friend’s arm in her excitement, and Paddy, beaming, cleared his throat.
Wynston Meadows again held up a hand to quiet the crowd. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you all. I’m happy to be able to make this contribution to my new hometown, and I hope the addition of my energy and experience to the management of the OWHA will help guide us along the new path ahead. Now, I’ll let everyone get back to enjoying Norma’s wonderful hospitality.”
Wynston Meadows left the platform to more thunderous applause.
“I think he did a very nice job,” Mary Bernadette noted to her companions when the applause had finally come to an end and the crowd began to move off around the room. She was determined to act as if the gift of a vast sum of money to her beloved organization was not something out of the ordinary. Keep a calm head and a placid demeanor, her mother had often said. And no one will be the wiser.
Alexis smiled vaguely. Jeannette wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. Danny patted her shoulder.
“It was good of him to mention you specifically, Mary,” Paddy said to his wife.
Mary Bernadette laughed. “Well, why wouldn’t he have?”
“I just hope things at the OWHA don’t change too drastically.”
“What do you mean?” Jeannette asked.
“A new man will have new ideas. It’s only natural.”
“Nonsense,” Mary Bernadette said. “A smart man knows to leave well enough alone.”
“I hope so,” her husband murmured. “But a new broom sweeps clean.”
CHAPTER 34
Alexis watched as Mary Bernadette chatted with a woman in a truly awful green gown. PJ’s grandmother really was the proverbial social butterfly, flitting from one person to the next, landing delicately, charming the person with her dazzling smile, and then fluttering off to the next. Well, maybe not a butterfly. More like a very impressive archangel descending with a flaming sword.
Mary Bernadette always made a striking appearance, but for this event she had outdone herself. Her dress was a shimmering shade of lilac, simple and elegant, accented by a thin silver belt at the waist. Around her shoulders she had draped a silvery shawl. She looked, Alexis thought, as if she had stepped out of a 1930s period drama, a woman of great wealth and dignity and graciousness. Next to her, even her handsome husband became a mere prop to her magnificence. PJ had paid his grandmother the grandest of compliments. They would have made any other woman blush with embarrassment, but Mary Bernadette had taken them in stride, as if they were only her due.
Alexis sighed and looked around at the mill of chattering people gathered to celebrate Wynston Meadows’s arrival in Oliver’s Well. She had almost been looking forward to the party after her chat with Maureen, but so far she had detected no interestingly odd behavior, and except for a few of the waiters there seemed to be no one even remotely her own age. And maybe the most disappointing of all, no one had complimented her on her appearance. She had spent some time assembling the outfit with the help of Mary Bernadette’s friend Anne at The Sophisticated Lady. (Luckily, Anne’s shop sold some clothing in colors other than neutrals!) Her dress was a very pale ice blue, form fitting without being clingy or revealing. Her heels and clutch were beaded silver, and in her ears she wore the diamond and platinum studs her parents had given her for college graduation. Alexis knew that she looked pretty spectacular, but not even her own supposedly besotted husband had paid her a compliment.
She spotted PJ across the room now, in conversation with a group of three middle-aged women. He seemed to be having a grand time. He was at his best in a crowd, able to chat with ease about anything from someone’s ailing parent to the local softball team’s latest win or loss. Alexis had always admired his remarkable social abilities (clearly, he had taken a lesson from his grandmother), but at that moment, as she stood alone watching him laughing with the ladies of Oliver’s Well, she felt resentful and left out. She was only vaguely aware that she was reacting childishly.
“Oh, great,” Alexis murmured. Mary Bernadette was heading her way, and Alexis wondered wildly if there was some way she might escape before she descended. But there was none, short of melting into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West. A convenient trick, that.
“Are you enjoying yourself, dear?” Mary Bernadette asked, with a darting glance at the half-empty glass of champagne Alexis held in her right hand.
“Yes,” Alexis said. “It’s a fantastic party.”
Her husband’s grandmother briefly laid a hand on her arm. “Because it doesn’t look as if you are. You might try to smile a bit more. You do represent Fitzgibbon Landscaping. We all do.” Mary Bernadette now looked at Alexis critically, as if seeing her for the first time that evening. “Well, I must say that your dress is very pretty.”
At last, Alexis thought. A compliment—and from Mary Bernadette!
“Thank you,” she said.
“Anne is a marvel, isn’t she? She has impeccable taste.”
“Yes, she’s very stylish.”
“She really knows what works for a woman.” Mary Bernadette gave Alexis the once-over again. “She’s very good at hiding a figure’s flaws and emphasizing its good points.”
Alexis, who hadn’t been aware that her figure had any flaws, simply nodded.
“Ah, there’s Father Robert and Reverend McMeans. I should say hello.” Mary Bernadette sailed off, nodding to partygoers as if, Alexis thought, she were Catherine the Great at an affair of state.
Alexis drained the last of the champagne. Well, so much for compliments. And how, she wondered, had she become an ambassador for her husband’s business? It wasn’t a position she relished, unlike Mary Bernadette, who seemed to thrive on attention. Were all eyes in Oliver’s Well really on her every movement? She didn’t know how those society wives did it, or the wives of politicians, forcing seemly and proper behavior even when they wanted to scream and stomp and make a scene—or to be left alone.
“Well, hello, young Mrs. Fitzgibbon.”
Alexis turned to see Leonard DeWitt at her side. She had met him a few times in the past year and thought him a genuinely nice person. “Hello, Mr. DeWitt,” she said.
“Leonard, please. Otherwise I feel like an old man!”
Alexis laughed. “Leonard, then. Are you enjoying the party?”
“Magnificent party! Magnificent occasion! You know, I’m convinced it was Mary Bernadette’s leadership of the OWHA that brought Mr. Meadows to our organization. Yes, she’s the one who’s really responsible for this great gift we’ve been given. She’s a remarkable woman.”
Leonard looked expectantly at Alexis, and dutifully she replied, “Yes, remarkable.”
“Oh, there go the cheese puffs!” Leonard hurried off after the waiter, and Alexis contemplated going over to the bar.
“Alexis.” The voice came from just behind her, close enough to make her jump.
She turned to find another member of the OWHA’s board. “Hello, Mr. Chadbourne,” she said, moving away an inch or two from the tiny man.
“Fine speech Meadows gave, wasn’t it?” he asked.
Alexis nodded. In truth, she had hardly heard a word, except, of course, for the mention of twenty-five million dollars. That had gotten her attention.
“Meadows was absolutely right,” Mr. Chadbourne was saying. “The board is now on a new path. And it does need a breath of fresh air. Things get
stale, don’t they, everything from bread to people. Yes, it’s definitely time for a change.”
Alexis wondered what she had missed by tuning out when the illustrious Wynston Meadows had taken the microphone. “Well, I—” she began.
“Yes, a change is long overdue, that’s what I say.”
Before Alexis could attempt another thwarted response, Wallace Chadbourne wandered off without a farewell.
Alexis spotted her husband again, this time talking to a man she recognized as the chief of police, and made her way over to him. By the time she reached him, the man had moved off.
“There you are,” PJ said. He put his arm around her waist and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?”
“No,” Alexis said. “You didn’t.”
“Well, you look beautiful. Are you having a good time?”
“Yes. It’s—fun. But can we go home now?” she asked.
PJ took his arm from around her and looked at his watch. “I’ll have to check with Grandmother,” he said. “She might need to stick around for a bit longer. It’s only nine o’clock.”
Alexis sighed. “I told you we should have taken two cars so we could leave when we want to.”
PJ frowned. “You know my grandparents don’t like to drive after dark.”
Alexis immediately felt chastened. “Right,” she said. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“Look, I’ll go have a chat with Grandmother and see what she wants to do. Why don’t you find my grandfather?”
Alexis nodded and watched as PJ, incredibly handsome in his navy suit, made his way through the throng of chattering guests.
CHAPTER 35
Alexis was sitting on the little step outside the cottage when she spotted David, a soccer ball under his arm, making his way toward her from the house.
“I saw your mom’s car,” Alexis called. “But I didn’t know that you were with her.”
Megan and her family had been visiting Oliver’s Well more frequently lately. Alexis certainly didn’t mind. Nine times out of ten she would take PJ’s mother over his grandmother. Well, to be honest, ten times out of ten. And the twins were always fun.
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