Read The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue Online
Authors: Regina Hale Sutherland
The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue
Dear Readers,
The Red Hat Society embraces women from all walks of life. Most have been homemakers, wives, and mothers. Many have also pursued
busy careers outside the home. Some are married; some are divorced or widowed. But even though each of us has been dealt a
different hand, we have all played in the same game of life.
As the Red Hat Society has grown, its members have come to realize that, as different as we are, we do share one special personal
quality. Each of us has come through the years with our optimism and sense of humor intact. Rather than gritting our teeth
and fearing whatever comes next, we march out to meet life with smiles on our faces and hope in our hearts.
Yet even the strongest woman occasionally falters. That’s when the value of having “sisters” becomes most important. This
new official Red Hat Society romance takes us into the mind and heart of a divorcee whose own resources have run dry. As her
story progresses, she is the beneficiary of a great deal of love and support from her new neighbors—the red-hatted Queens
of Woodlawn Avenue. As they plop a hat on her head and teach her to play the game of bridge, they also deepen her understanding
of how to play the hand now dealt to her. From these generous women, she learns how to accept the things that she must, and
how to change the things that she can. And she finds that she
is far
from being “done.”
Is there magic in a red hat? You betcha!
In friendship,
Sve Ellen Cooper
The Red Hat Society®’s
Acting Their Age
“Four and a half stars! Top pick! Alternately amusing and emotional, Sutherland’s novel is quintessential women’s fiction,
full of good humor and deep relationships. With seamless plotting and entrancing characters, this book is certain to appeal
to readers of all ages.”
—
Romantic Times BOOKclub Magazine
“Lots of humor fills the pages of this heartwarming novel. With characters so familiar you feel as though you know them and
a small town so real you feel as though you’ve been there, Sutherland’s book is a bang-up tale about women over fifty, and
the men who love them.”
—
Booklist
(starred review)
“The best thing about any Red Hat Society book is the relationships and emotions these women share with each other. Everyone
will enjoy this very entertaining book…Be sure to add this one to your reading list.”
—BestsellersWorld.com
Copyright © 2006 by The Red Hat Society,® Inc.
Excerpt from
Domestic Goddess
copyright © 2006 by The Red Hat Society,® Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: November 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-57001-5
Contents
Chapter One: Fifty-Two Card Pick-Up
Chapter Two: The Declarer and the Dummy
Chapter Five: The Power of the Trump Suit
Chapter Seven: Length, Not Strength
Chapter Nine: Don’t Send a Boy To Do a Man’s Job
Chapter Ten: An Unmarked Knave
Chapter Twelve: Doubling and Hedouolmg
Chapter Fourteen: A Novice Opponement
Chapter Fifteen: Finessing a Queen
Chapter Sixteen: Becoming a Captain
Chapter Seventeen: Asking for Aces
Chapter Eighteen: Making a Slam
Chapter Nineteen: Don’t Send a Boy To Do a Man’s Job, Part 2
Chapter Twenty: The Partnership Desk
Chapter Twenty-One: Drawing a New Line
CHAPTER ONEFifty-Two Card Pick-Up
I
could smell the pound cake through my closed front door. Vanilla, sugar, butter—luscious scents mingling in a heavenly aroma
that promised rapture. Of all things, why did it have to be pound cake—my sugar-addicted Achilles’ heel?
“Mrs. Johnston? Ellie? Are you in there?”
The nasal voice reminded me of Gladys Kravitz, the nosy neighbor on
Bewitched.
Unfortunately, I didn’t possess Samantha’s supernatural powers to rid myself of this unwanted visitor. Which meant that the
only way I was going to get the cake and/or make my neighbor go away was to open the door.
Honestly, I’d have had no dilemma at all if it weren’t for the pound cake. For the past two weeks, I’d been closeted in the
house, safely hidden from the outside world. All I wanted was to lick my wounds, marinate in endless bubble baths of grief
and regret, and eat whatever
was handy. I had consumed the entire contents of my kitchen. Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Krispy Kreme donuts. Butter
pecan Häagen Daz. Betty Crocker brownie mix. No saturated fat or carbohydrate had escaped me, because for the first time in
my adult life, I was eating whatever I wanted. Two weeks, though, of consuming my way through the kitchen had yielded a predictable
result. Like Old Mother Hubbard, my cupboard was now as bare as my bottom was wide.
I wanted to be left alone to grow old and die in solitude, cut off from the outside world in this tumbledown 1920s Tudor,
the symbol of my wretched post-divorce existence. I could keep drifting from room to room, looking glassy-eyed out the windows
at my overgrown backyard with a cup of cold coffee in my hand. The drone of late-night infomercials would keep me company
during the long, sleepless nights I spent flipping through photo albums of the life I had lost. I could depend on the stray
tabby cat that pawed through my garbage can for my social interaction. But if I didn’t replenish my food supply soon, I was
going to grow old and die much more quickly than I’d planned.
“I made pound cake. To welcome you to the neighborhood.” Her temptress’s voice, along with the scent of vanilla, slid through
the cracks around the edge of the door. My new neighbor was scarily persistent. I had simply ignored her earlier visits, but
now I didn’t have the luxury. Who would ever have believed it would come to this?
Once, I’d been Mrs. Eleanor Johnston, wife of a successful surgeon and pillar of the Junior League. Now I
was nothing but another high-end Nashville divorcée who’d been banished from her 37205 life by her husband’s wandering eye.
I had become nothing but a cliché, and not a very interesting one at that.
“I think you’ll feel better if you eat some of this,” the voice said through the door. God, but this woman was not going to
give up, was she?
And she did have pound cake.
My hand shook as I reached for the doorknob. The warped wood stuck tight, and I had to give it a strong yank before it gave
way, revealing the perky middle-aged woman standing on my front porch.
“There you are.” The woman’s bright blond hair competed with her paper-white teeth for brilliance. With a start, I recognized
her from her advertisements on bus stops all over town. She owned one of the big real estate firms and I had probably even
met her at one fund-raiser or another, but I couldn’t remember her name.
“I was beginning to worry about you.” Uninvited, she stepped across the threshold and into my inner sanctum with the same
determination that must have gotten her to the top of the Nashville real estate market. I had the grace to blush at the state
of the living room. Twinkie wrappers and empty Coke cans littered the scarred coffee table. The sagging couch that once had
done duty in our bonus room—I’d considered it fit only for small children and teenagers—was now the centerpiece of my living
room suite. Sadly, it classed up the joint, a strong indication of the general condition of the house.
“I knew you’d open the door eventually,” the woman trilled as she brushed past me and headed toward the
kitchen as unerringly as if she’d traipsed through the house a million times before. “My pound cake never fails.”
I stood rooted to the spot, mouth gaping for several long moments, before I realized I was supposed to follow her size-2 frame.
By the time I caught up with her in the kitchen, she had placed the cake on my cutting board, unwrapped the cloth like a priest
preparing the host for the congregation, and was using a lethal-looking knife to slice off a wedge of the promised ambrosia.
“Got milk?” she chirped.
My mouth watered so heavily I had to swallow twice before I could form a reply.
“Urn, no. I’m out.”
“That’s okay. We can have coffee instead.”
I paused and cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t actually have any coffee either.”
Her eyebrow arched. “You’ve gone through it all, then?”
My stomach twisted. I feigned ignorance. And hauteur. “What do you mean, I’ve gone through it all?”
Her laugh was like silverware clanking in a drawer. “Honey, I know how it goes when you’re newly on your own. Eating your
way through the refrigerator is practically a rite of passage.”
“I haven’t—” A flush crept up my neck.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, honey.” She placed a hunk of cake on a paper napkin from the stack on the counter and thrust
it toward me. “And you look like you need this.”
My hand froze, fingertips an eyelash away from the cake. For a moment, I saw myself through my nosy neigh
bor’s eyes. Greasy hair that hadn’t seen shampoo in a week. Dressed in my son’s cast-off sweat pants and a paint-stained
Vanderbilt sweatshirt. Had I even brushed my teeth that morning?
With a laugh that was two parts humor and ten parts shame, I ran a hand over my hair to smooth down the inevitable bed head.
“I don’t really…That is, I’m sure…”
The other woman smiled, this time with no condescension at all. “It’s okay, honey. We’ve all been there.”
That got my back up. Because,
pardon me,
not everyone had been where I was now. Not everyone was eating off Chinet while a DD-cup tramp ate off her Haviland china
and drank from her Waterford crystal.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Indignation kept me from reaching for the cake.
“It’s no secret, sugar. News travels fast on the Wood-lawn Avenue grapevine. We’re practically psychic.”
Years of good Southern upbringing kept me from making a sharp retort. I didn’t need the final humiliation of a public airing
of my dirty laundry in my new neighborhood. Wasn’t it enough that I could never hold my head up again in Belle Meade? I’d
lost everything. My husband. My beautiful home. My place in society. And now I was nothing more than fodder for gossip over
the backyard fences of Woodlawn Avenue?
My neighbor remained undaunted by my silence. “I’m Jane, by the way. Jane Mansfield.” She laughed, showing off her blinding
teeth again. “I know, I know. But you can’t pick the last name of the man you fall in love with. Or out of love with, for
that matter.”
Jane Mansfield. Now I remembered. Her publicity photo on the bus stop ads showed her dressed in fifties attire with a matching
bouffant hairdo. She was ten years or so older than me, but at the moment, she looked a decade younger. She probably felt
that way, too. Because right then, I must have looked at least a hundred and five.
“It’s my birthday,” I said, the words falling from my lips of their own volition.
The woman nodded. “Good thing I showed up. Every woman deserves a cake on her birthday.”
I nodded, my throat too tight for speech. When was the last time I’d had a birthday cake I hadn’t made with my own two hands?
Jim had been good with presents but bad with remembering to order something from Becker’s Bakery, and none of my children
had inherited my home-making gene. As I’d learned over the years, there was something inherently sad about providing one’s
own cake.