The Sweet Gum Tree (18 page)

In the master bedroom we found they had disobeyed us in one respect. A large bedroom suite now occupied the space that had been empty the last time we were there, the bed neatly made. There was a note on the pillow and Hugh picked it up.

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It’s better than sleeping on the floor, and if you don’t like it, you can bring it back when you
buy a new one.

Love,

Mother

“What do you think?” Hugh asked me. “It was my grandparents’.”

“I love it, Hugh.” I ran a hand over the knotty pine headboard. “It fits the space perfectly.”

“Then we’ll keep it.”

The next few weeks flew by even faster than our honeymoon had. We went a little wild buying things for the house, but Hugh told me not to worry about the money. His grandparents had left him independently wealthy. Both of our families were constant visitors, helping, inspecting and generally offering opinions on everything we did.

My father was first. He showed up at the door bright and early the day after we got back. Hugh took one look at him and excused himself, claiming he had to take a shower. I refrained from mentioning that his hair was still wet from the one he’d just taken.

“Come in, Daddy.” I headed for the kitchen. “I don’t have anything to cook with yet, but we’ve got donuts and instant coffee.”

“I don’t want anything.” He leaned against the counter. “Alix, what’s going on?

How could you marry Hugh when we both know it’s Nick you love?” I braced myself and took a deep breath. “Nick is gone, Daddy, and I’m pregnant.”

“What?” The blood drained from his face.

I faced him. “I’m pregnant.”

“Christ.” He ran a shaky hand over his face. “Does Hugh know?”

“He knows. It was his idea for us to get married. He wants the baby, Daddy.”

“But Nick—”

“Nick didn’t want me,” I interrupted. “He made that pretty clear. He even refused to write.”

“Maybe if he knew about the baby…”

Angrily, I shook my head. “Do you think I’d want to spend the rest of my life knowing he was only with me because I got pregnant?”

“He has the right to know.”

I went to him and put my arms around him. “Don’t equate this with what happened to you, Daddy. It’s not the same situation. I did what I had to do, what was right for me and the baby. Hugh has been wonderful to me, and I really do care about him. Nick is gone and he’s never coming back.”

With a sigh, he rested his chin on the top of my head and hugged me. “I think you’re making a big mistake, Baby, but I guess the decision has to be yours. I will say 100

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this. Hugh is a hell of a man, taking on something like this. I hope for both your sakes it doesn’t blow up in your faces.”

“It won’t,” I promised. “Everything will work out fine.” He left shortly after that, and Hugh came out of the bedroom. If he’d heard the conversation with my father, and I didn’t see how he could have missed it, he never mentioned it.

By the day of our party, the house was finished except for the bright corner room.

We had reserved that one for a nursery. It was early that afternoon when Jenna paid us a visit.

I was in the dinning room with Hugh, unwrapping the last of the china we had bought and placing it in the cherry cabinet, when the doorbell chimed.

“I’ll get it.” He vanished into the living room.

I heard the door open and then the low murmur of voices. It seemed to go on for a long time. Curious, I was about to join him when he reappeared.

“Look who’s here.”

One glimpse of that red hair was enough to have my spine stiffening and my chin going up. Hugh crossed the room, kissed me, and then stuffed his wallet in his back pocket. “I told Dad I’d run by the office for a while today.” I nodded. “Don’t stay too long. We have to get ready for tonight.” I turned back to the china, pretending to ignore Jenna. She had hurt me and I wasn’t going to let it go easily.

She hovered in the doorway until Hugh was gone, then hesitantly crossed the room. “Alix, I’m sorry. I’ve been miserable these last few weeks. Hate me if you want to, but at least talk to me.”

“Why? So you can call my baby a bastard again?”

“I didn’t mean it. You know I could never feel that way. I was hurt and upset and it just slipped out. That whole day was terrible for me. Scott was leaving, my father acted like he couldn’t care less that I’d graduated with honors, and then you and Hugh sprang the news that you’d gotten married and hadn’t bothered to tell me. I overreacted. You don’t have to beat me up, because I’ve been doing it myself every single day since then.”

She put her hand on my arm. “I’ve missed you. You’re the only real friend I’ve ever had and I don’t want to lose you. We always promised each other that if one of us had kids, the other one would be their aunt. Please, Alix. Don’t shut me out because of one mistake. Let me be the baby’s aunt.”

Tears filled my eyes and clogged my throat. It couldn’t have been easy for her to come to me and apologize, and the truth was, I’d missed her too. Badly.

“Okay,” I choked. Then we were both crying, hugging each other while we tried to wipe the tears away. She kept apologizing until I finally threatened to hurt her if she didn’t stop, and that brought on the laughter. After we calmed down, I showed her 101

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around the house and she oohed and ahhed over everything and promised to help me with the nursery.

But something else was bothering her, and I knew her well enough to sense she wanted to tell me but was reluctant to bring it up.

“You might as well get it off your chest,” I told her when we got back to the kitchen.

She sighed and took the glasses of tea from my hands.

“I’ll carry these. You better sit down.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes, I think it’s going to be.”

“Okay, I’m sitting.” I plunked myself down on a chair and she took the one across from me.

“If there was any way I could keep you from finding this out, I wouldn’t tell you.

But everyone will know soon and I’d rather you heard it now, from me.” My heart quivered. “Jenna, you’re scaring me.”

She toyed with the condensation on her glass for a second. “You know Sheriff McAbee plays poker with my dad occasionally?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he was there last night and I heard them talking.” She looked up and met my gaze. “Liz Swanner reported Lindsey missing yesterday morning. The sheriff told Dad it took him about an hour to discover what had happened to her. Lindsey caught a bus out of town.” Jenna took a deep breath. “Alix, she went to join Nick.” I stared at her as nausea roiled in my stomach. “He’s positive?”

“As much as he can be without talking to Lindsey. She went to the same town, and Liz said she didn’t have any money. The only way she could have gotten a ticket was if Nick sent it to her.”

I barely made it to the bathroom before my stomach emptied.

“Oh, God. I knew you were going to be upset.” Jenna rushed around frantically, wetting a washcloth and putting it on the back of my neck. “Maybe I better call Hugh and tell him to come home.”

“No.” I sank weakly to the floor and rested my head against the cold tub. “There’s nothing he can do.”

She lowered herself to the floor in front of me and rubbed my wrist. “I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. I’ve never been good at this kind of thing.”

“It isn’t your fault.” A hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. “I told him he couldn’t have me and Lindsey both, that he had to choose. Looks like he finally did.”

“Maybe there’s a good reason. We have no way of knowing what’s going on.”

“Oh, there’s a reason all right. He loves Lindsey. God, Jenna, I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.”

“You love him.”

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I shifted enough to see her. “Not anymore. I’m not wasting another second of my time on him.”

“What are you going to do?”

By sheer determination I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m going to forget that Nick Anderson ever lived. I’m going to that party tonight and I’m never looking back. And I’m going to be the best damn wife in Morganville.”

“But the baby is Nick’s.”

“No,” I told her, my voice cold. “The baby is mine. Mine and Hugh’s. Nick will never touch it.”

And so my simmering anger began its slow journey toward hatred. That day at the cemetery I had told Frank Anderson that Nick would never be like him. Now I knew the truth. Nick was worse.

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With Hugh and Jenna’s support, I made it through the party that night. Jenna had been right about the whole town knowing where Lindsey had gone. Gossip and speculation flew in every direction, fueling my anger with every word.

“I don’t know why everyone is so surprised,” Gretchen Treece commented to Helena. “They were two of a kind. Peggy told me she saw them at the drive-in quite a few times in that old truck of his, and the windows were always fogged up. It’s disgusting the way some people carry on.”

I ground my teeth together, smiled, and moved away, but I never doubted the truth of her statement. Why should I? Nick himself had told me he wanted everyone to think he was dating Lindsey. I was simply so stupid and trusting that I believed his reasons were innocent.

The next afternoon, I went to the beauty shop and had my hair cut off. I told Hugh it was because it would be easier to care for during my pregnancy, but the real reason was because every time I went by a mirror, I remembered how much Nick had loved my long hair. Sometimes revenge takes simple outlets.

Surprisingly, the new, shorter style suited me. I had topped out at a whopping five feet, two inches, and with my small bone structure, the feathery cut gave me a pixyish appearance that made my eyes seem huge and mysterious.

There was one last chore I had to take care of before I could I get on with my life.

The pendant Nick had given me had to be disposed of. I sat in my bedroom for a long time that afternoon, staring at it. And in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Instead, I put it carefully into a box and drove out to the farm.

Once there, I went to the barn, to Nick’s room. It was the first time I’d been back in weeks, and it was as if all traces of Nick had been erased from the earth. His clothes were gone and the sheets and blankets on the narrow bed had been washed and replaced, leaving no trace of his scent.

For the last time I allowed myself to cry, and even as my tears fell I cursed Nick with every breath. When it was over, I put the box containing the pendant into the linen closet, shoving it all the way to the back on the top shelf. Then I shut the door, on the closet and on Nick.

After that, life settled into a routine I welcomed. Hugh joined his father fulltime at the mill and I took on the role of wife with a vengeance. Even Aunt Darla could find no speck of dirt in my house, and she did look.

The Judge found an excuse to come by almost every day, and I welcomed his visits.

Together, we planted my first vegetable garden, each row laid out with mathematical 104

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precision. The once empty flower beds around the house now bloomed with shrubs and flowers; Azaleas, Japanese Holly, and Spirea backed geraniums, petunias, sweet peas, and hosta, with several colors of crepe myrtle thrown in for height and contrast.

When Hugh and I judged the time was right, we gathered our families and broke the news about the baby. Everyone was ecstatic, and I entered an entire new world I’d never paid much attention to before; the southern tradition of educating first-time mothers by passing on bits of wisdom gathered from the generations of women who’d gone before.

“Alix!” My mother yelped when she caught me reaching for a bowl on the top shelf of the cabinets. “Stop that this instant. Don’t you know you’ll wrap the cord around the baby’s neck?”

When I was plagued with heartburn, Aunt Darla told me that it meant the baby would have a lot of hair.

Helena got into the act by warning me not to let anything frighten me because it would “mark” the baby. It seemed everyone had examples of this type of phenomena, and they regaled me with them at every opportunity. I laughed the stories off, but my poor obstetrician, a transplanted New Yorker, was horrified when I repeated the tales to her, and ordered me not to listen to a thing my family said. I don’t think she ever quite grasped the concept of southern tradition, and a few years later she moved her practice back to “civilization”.

Everything seemed rosy and perfect on the surface, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. In spite of the act I was putting on, I was in more pain than I’d ever experienced before. You can’t turn love on and off like a light switch, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is wall it off, one brick at a time, until you’ve created an impenetrable fortress around your emotions. And once that fortress is built, you camouflage it so well that even you can’t see it anymore. That’s what I did with my love for Nick, and hate became my camouflage. It affected everything in my life. For the first time, I lost sight of the core of the sweet gum tree and now saw only the pale fibrous wood, warped and untrustworthy.

One major consequence of this change was my sudden inability to trust Hugh. I’d been stupid once and believed everything Nick told me. It wasn’t going to happen again, and if Hugh seemed too good to be true, then he must have an ulterior motive.

My fantasy ended with a resounding crash as I tore the blinders from my eyes.

I spent a lot of time watching Hugh, wondering why a man would seem so happy about a baby that wasn’t his. If he’d ever exhibited the slightest interest in children before, I might have understood. But he hadn’t. Now he was suddenly playing the expectant father to the hilt and my suspicions were running rampant.

There was only one conclusion I could reach. I’d been right about Hugh from the beginning. He didn’t love me. He had pursued me only because it was what his family wanted and expected. And while he had plenty of money, if he kept his parents happy he stood to inherit an industry that controlled an entire town and the area surrounding 105