The Will of Wisteria

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  “I don’t have anything to wear to a swanky affair.”

  “Another reason to get you out. And you can spend money on you.”

  She shifted her weight on her bare feet. “Okay, but it’s not a date.” She pursed her lips and shook her finger at him.

  Jeffrey grinned. “Of course not. I don’t even really like you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, good-bye.” She pushed him toward the door, laughing.

  “See you Thursday.”

  “I’m crazy,” she said as she closed the door behind him.

  If being crazy meant she was coming, he would be grateful for crazy.

  “You look like crap.”

  “Good morning to you too,” Mary Catherine retorted as Mr. McClain held the front door open for her. She stalked toward her classroom, head down, trying to stifle her sniffles. He followed.

  “You have more to say?”

  “Just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “Things bad at home?”

  She turned toward him abruptly. “How do you know things are bad at home? Maybe I spilled coffee all over myself on the way to work and burned the tar out of myself and I’m crying from the pain.”

  He scanned her denim skirt and brown wool V-neck sweater. “I see no coffee stains.”

  “Well, maybe I slammed my hand in the car door and I’m still recovering.”

  “Your hand is fine. I saw you pull up.”

  “Well . . . well . . .” Tears rushed to the surface. “How do you know it’s something at home?”

  “Listen, Mary Catherine, I’m sorry. I’m probably way out of line, anyway.”

  “Too late for that,” she retorted. “You’ve already inserted your nosy self.”

  He gave a brief half smile. “Yes, you’re right. I deserve that. It’s just—well, that one time I met him—ah, your husband, that is—when he came by to bring you some new throw pillows, I think it was. Well, I just didn’t have a good feeling about him.”

  “A good feeling? You met him for all of two seconds. How do you have any feeling at all about a person in two seconds?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry I asked. Please forgive me.” He began to walk past her.

  “He cheated on me.” She said it quietly, but in the hallway of metal lockers and tile floors, it carried straight to him.

  Mr. McClain turned back around. “Why don’t we go to my office for a minute?”

  Mary Catherine followed him down the hall and through the door to his office. She didn’t wait for an invitation to sit.

  She fumbled with the strap of her brown handbag. “How did you know?”

  “I was married before. To a woman with the same look and the same smooth way of talking. I just sensed in my gut he was up to no good.” Mr. McClain sat down behind his desk. “You know, Mary Catherine, I still don’t know the real reason why you’re here at all.”

  “Money.” The word flew out of her mouth before she could catch it.

  Mr. McClain laughed. “Honey, I know you’re not here for the money. You’re not making any. I’ve never understood that either, why you came to work for us for free.”

  She changed the subject quickly as she turned her gaze out the window. “Never mind. It’s just—well, I never expected to be the betrayed wife.”

  “You’re a lucky woman to discover this so early.”

  She turned her eyes back in his direction. “You call this lucky?”

  He got up from his desk and walked around to sit in front of her on the desk’s edge. “You know, the day I found out my first wife was not what she had pretended to be, I thought my world was over. Everything I had ever believed seemed like a lie.”

  She watched him, her tears falling freely. She swiped at them and motioned for him to continue.

  “But when I met the amazing woman I’m married to now, I realized our paths would have never crossed if I had not gone through that pain.”

  “Where did you meet her? In therapy?”

  He laughed. “No, in church, actually. Amazing where a little heartbreak can drive you. Mine drove me to my knees.”

  She glanced his way. “My mother was religious. I really enjoyed that when I was little. But I just found it’s never worked for me. You know, since I’ve grown up.”

  “I’m not talking about religion, Mary Catherine. I’m talking about faith. Believing in something that can change your life.”

  She brushed at her tears again.

  “And when my life changed, I was able to become the man I was meant to be. So, who is Mary Catherine meant to be? Separate from her stuff?”

  He had apparently pegged her pretty well. She sat silent for what seemed like a minute. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you can be sure Nate would never have been able to answer that question for you. There is only one who can do that.”

  She dabbed at her cheeks with the back of her hand and stood up from her chair. “I better get to class.”

  “You’re doing a great job, you know,” he said as she was walking out the door.

  “I’m surviving.”

  But even amid the present turmoil, she knew she was doing far more than that.

  Elizabeth pulled up to the small house on the outskirts of Savannah. She had never liked Savannah. It tried to flaunt itself as the consummate Southern city, but to her it was a weak imitation of Charleston.

  Hazel’s cousin sat in one of four lawn chairs—but which one, Elizabeth didn’t know. Apparently three of his friends had joined him to check out the “Charleston attorney.” The four of them were bundled up in trench coats and hats reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart.

  Wrapping her thick shawl around her, she got out of the car and left her briefcase lying in the seat.

  “Mr. Wilson?”

  Four pairs of coal-black eyes bore down on her as if they’d never seen a white woman in their lives. She waited, trying not to fidget under their stares.

  “I’m George Wilson,” the frailest of the gentlemen said at last. She noticed a hint of gold in his mouth as he spoke.

  “Mr. Wilson, I’m Elizabeth Wilcott, Hazel Moses’s attorney. Is there somewhere you and I can speak privately?”

  “Ain’t no need for privacy. These here’s my brothers. They knows everything needs to be knowed ’bout me. So Hazel tryin’ to go and take what ain’t rightfully hers, huh?”

  Elizabeth shifted her stance to get more comfortable. Obviously this meeting was going to transpire right here, whether she liked it or not. “Well, I don’t think that—”

  “Don’t go tryin’ to defend her. She’s always acted so high and mighty, like because she was a teacher she got somethin’ to teach the rest of us. Well, I don’t need to be taught nothin’. And she ain’t got nothin’ I need to learn anyway.”

  Much to Elizabeth’s surprise, his accusation against Hazel seemed to ignite some deeply buried indignation inside of her. She tried to stifle it. She wasn’t supposed to care what happened to Hazel. This was about helping her business. She had come here hoping he would refuse to sign the papers.

  That was the plan anyway.

  “I think we might be talking about two different Hazels.”

  “Don’t try to get me all flustered with your legal mumbo jumbo. That’s what my friends told me you was gonna try and do. Ain’t got no time for that.” He stood up, and his faithful followers followed.

  She was being dismissed. Elizabeth hated being dismissed.

  “Mr. Wilson, have you ever even been to Hazel Moses’s house?”

  “Humph,” he said. Elizabeth hated being “humphed” at even more than she hated being dismissed. In a flash she passed all four men and made her way to the top step of the porch before they got there.

  Everything she did was in perfect control—in perfect control for an incensed woman, that is. Fifteen minutes later she was back in her car with her documents signed. Hazel had permission from every necessary member of the family, granting the rights
to the property to her alone.

  Elizabeth had won. And she had also hammered the final nail into her own coffin and effectively buried her career.

  chapter thirty-two

  Elizabeth’s new Nike running shoes hit the pavement in a perfect rhythm. With her early trip to Savannah, she hadn’t had time to run this morning, so she forced herself to make time this evening. The February air ripped through her lungs as she made her way to the Battery and stopped to catch her breath.

  The abduction over six months ago still had her looking over her shoulder. She ran a gloved hand along the cannon, feeling the deep cold that permeated from the iron.

  The Battery was part of her own personal history. She used to play here as a child with her best friend, Bernadette. Bernie, as everyone called her, lived in one of the condos of the Fort Sumter House, which until 1974 was the Fort Sumter Hotel. The Battery was Bernie’s front yard, and Elizabeth, so in love with Charleston, wanted it to be hers as well.

  She wanted her daddy to move away from Edisto, get them off that island and into the city. She wanted to get away from the country, away from the memories. He told her that Wisteria Plantation was and would always be their family home. It made her want to spend even more time at Bernie’s.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps—a dark figure was coming down the walk, headed in her direction with deliberate intent. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Lizzy.” Aaron’s face came into view underneath the street lamp.

  She tried to steady her weak knees. “Lord have mercy, Aaron, you almost scared me to death.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But you seem to be hard to catch by telephone.

  I figured I might as well track you down.”

  “Did something happen at the office?”

  “No, this has nothing to do with the business and everything to do with the fact that you’ve been ignoring me for three months, and it’s time you quit acting like a child.”

  “It’s time for you to quit acting like you’re my father.”

  “I only wish I was half the man your father was.”

  “You don’t know everything there is to know, Aaron, despite what you might think.”

  “I know enough about you, Lizzy. I know you’re angry about something that happened a long time ago. I know that you won’t let anyone into your little shell. If you were being honest, you’d admit you like it that way, because then you stay in control. And I know that your father loved you very much, but you obviously can’t forgive him for whatever he did or didn’t do when you were younger. How am I doing so far?”

  “You should just go, Aaron.” She tried to push past him, but he grabbed her by the arm and swung her around.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I say what needs to be said.”

  “Do you enjoy airing your feelings in public?”

  “At least I have feelings, Lizzy. You’ve kept yours bottled up for so long you don’t even know how to feel anything—except anger. Oh, you love to be angry. The problem is, you’re mostly angry with yourself, and that’s the one person you can’t push away.”

  She tugged her arm out of his grasp. She’d never disliked him more than she did at this moment. “You don’t know everything about me.”

  He stepped closer to her. “I know you’re a woman who won’t let anyone love her. Even your dad tried to love you, Elizabeth. I know he pushed you, but especially those last years, he so tried to love you.”

  She felt her jaw beginning to pulse and fought to control her anger.

  He stepped in closer again.

  “And you know what else? I’ve tried to love you, Lizzy. I’ve tried to love you for the last ten years. I’ve been so stupid, thinking I could break through that hard exterior and get in there and find a way to get you to love me back. But I’m letting you go, Lizzy. I’m letting you go so I can figure out how to have someone in my life who can love me in return.”

  His words registered like a brick to the gut. She tried to laugh it off. “Aaron, you’re not serious.”

  “I’ve never been more serious. I’m letting you go, Lizzy. I’m letting you go to be bitter, to be angry, and to be whatever else it is you want to be. I can’t spend another day aching over you, or praying that you will come to your senses and realize you don’t need to throw away any more of your life feeling sorry for yourself.”

  She opened her mouth to reply. Nothing came out. Absolutely nothing.

  “I don’t know what happened to you, Lizzy, but I didn’t do it. And if you were being honest, you’d know that you love me too. You’re just too blinded by yourself to admit you need anyone. I don’t mean someone to run your business; I mean someone to love you.”

  He ran his hands across the bill of his baseball cap. “I’m tired, Lizzy. I’ll finish running your office until the year is over, and after that our relationship—if you want to call it that—can remain strictly business.”

  The expression in his eyes made it clear that he meant every word he said. “No more midnight phone calls, Lizzy. No more crying on my shoulder or bending my ear. I have to get on with my life and see if there is someone out there for me to love. Because the woman I’ve longed to love has worn me out.”

  And with that he left her standing in the middle of the Battery, where wars hadn’t been fought in years, but where the cries of desperate souls could still be heard.

  Elizabeth never got drunk, even when she did drink. It was her brothers’ weakness, not hers. And she wasn’t weak.

  She misjudged the distance to the table, and the empty wine bottle toppled to the floor. She picked up the phone. “You sleep?” she slurred.

  “You drunk?” Ainsley’s voice came from the other end.

  “Does a bottle of wine make you drunk?” She rubbed at her bloodshot eyes.

  “Just tell me you’re not driving.”

  “I’m not driving.”

  “Tell me you’re at home.”

  “I’m at home.”

  “Tell me . . .”

  “What is this, Jeopardy? I’m drunk, not illiterate. So, is your husband home?”

  “Elizabeth, are you wanting me to come over because you’re drunk and sad? If so, forget it. Besides, you told me you weren’t a drinker. And if you’re starting now, then apparently sunshine’s got some problems.”

  “I hate you; you know that.”

  “Yes, I know. You’ve confirmed that more often than is actually necessary. Now, go get a cup of coffee. Put on a CD of somebody singing something happy, and then sleep it off. I don’t want to see you until noon, if at all. Now, hang up the phone, and quit terrorizing tired people.”

  “Ainsley, I love you.”

  “Yes, I know, Elizabeth. Go get sober, and we’ll deal with your multiple personality issues tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth slobbered into the phone.

  “You’re welcome.”

  When the line went dead, Elizabeth stumbled into the kitchen, fixed a pot of coffee, and drank it all. By the time she was finished, she was buzzed on caffeine, so wired there was no hope of sleep. She put on Bette Midler’s CD of Rosemary Clooney classics, proving she was wasted, and spent the next three hours cleaning her house, until she finally collapsed on the sofa, not to awaken until two the following afternoon.

  At three thirty on Wednesday she walked into the office, sat down in her chair, and stared at the computer screen through the darkest sunglasses she could find.

  Hazel’s deposition was tomorrow.

  “Death becomes her,” Ainsley said as she passed by Elizabeth’s desk.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Everyone left her alone. When only she and Ainsley were left in the office, she went to the door and pushed it ajar. “Did I make a complete horse’s behind of myself last night?”

  Ainsley’s red spikes shifted as she raised her head. “Complete? Is there such a thing as a partial horse’s behind?”

  “Did I call you last night wanting you to be my friend
?”

  “I’m not sure. Do you usually seek out friends only during drunken stupors?”

  She walked over and plopped down into the chair in front of Ainsley’s desk.

  Ainsley raised an eyebrow. “How rude of me. Please, do sit down.”

  Elizabeth ignored her. “I’ve never called a woman before.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Called a woman. You know, like I did last night. I’ve never called a woman before when I needed something. I always call men.” She paused. “Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I always call Aaron.”

  “Oh, yeah, the guy you’re madly in love with and that you remain in complete denial over.”

  Elizabeth shot a darting look at Ainsley.

  “Oh my word, you’re acting as if this is something new?” Ainsley shook her head. “Is there anything in your life you’re actually willing to admit?”

  “I know myself very well, thank you.” Elizabeth turned in her seat.

  “So having no friends, having no life, refusing to admit you’re in love with this guy—you’ve admitted all that to yourself. And the fact that you’re an angry little snit too.”

  “I am not angry!”

  Ainsley rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not—” She stopped herself. “I’m completely angry, aren’t I?”

  “Well, thank the Lord. There is officially a God in heaven if Elizabeth Wilcott is willing to admit she’s angry.”

  “You shouldn’t gloat.”

  “I’m not gloating, I’m rejoicing. Honestly. Someone should be singing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus. ’”

  Despite herself, Elizabeth smiled. “Why am I angry though? Why do I live so much of my life angry?”

  Ainsley left her desk and seated herself in the leather chair opposite Elizabeth. “Only you can figure that out, sunshine. You might not like the journey getting there, but once you get past it, you might find the trip has changed your life.”

  “What do you know about anger?”

  “A woman who has been falsely accused of embezzlement has every right to be angry.”

  Her candor surprised Elizabeth.

  “But far worse than that, a woman who has had three miscarriages knows a lot about anger. She blames whoever is willing to stay in the room long enough to be blamed. Shoot, I probably blamed you at some point.” She laughed. “But one day I realized that the rage that was inside of me was destroying the life that wanted to be lived. And I finally admitted it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my husband’s fault, and it wasn’t God’s fault. I was left with the realization that if I was willing, the experience could make me into a different person—a better person, if that’s possible.”