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When she got to her car, she saw that someone had tried to rip off her windshield wipers. The seat covers burned the backs of her thighs as she slid behind the wheel. Thanks to her jewelry sales, she had enough money to get back to L.A., so why did she care about this shitty job?
Because she liked her shitty job, and she liked her church with its shitty, makeshift furnishings. And she liked this shitty town with its big problems and weird people. Ted was right because, most of all, she liked being forced to live on her own hard work and wits.
She drove home, took a shower, and pulled on jeans, a white boho top, and her pink canvas platform sandals. Fifteen minutes later, she passed through the stone pillars of the Beaudine compound, but she didn’t head for Ted’s house. Instead she pulled the Rustmobile into the circular drive in front of the sprawling limestone and stucco home where his parents lived.
Dallie answered the door. “Meg?”
“Is your wife home?”
“She’s in her office.” He didn’t seem too surprised to see her, and he stepped back to let her in. “Easiest way to get there is to follow the hallway to the end, go out the door, and cross the courtyard. Big set of arches in the wing on the right.”
“Thanks.”
The house had roughly plastered walls, beamed ceilings, and cool, tile floors. A fountain splashed in the courtyard, and the faint scent of charcoal suggested someone had fired up the grill for dinner. An arched portico shaded Francesca’s office. Through the door panes, Meg saw her sitting at her desk, reading glasses perched on her small nose as she perused the paper in front of her. Meg knocked. Francesca looked up. When she saw who’d come to call, she leaned back in her chair to think it over.
Despite the Oriental rugs on the tile floors, the carved wooden furniture, folk art, and framed photographs, this was a working office with two computers, a flat-screen TV, and bookcases piled with papers, folders, and binders. Francesca finally rose and crossed the floor in rainbow flip-flops. She’d pulled her hair away from her face with a pair of small silver heart barrettes that counterbalanced the more mature half-glasses. Her fitted T-shirt announced her loyalty to the Texas Aggies, and her denim shorts displayed still-trim legs. But the informal wear hadn’t made her give up her diamonds. They sparkled at her earlobes, around a slender wrist, and on her fingers.
She opened the door. “Yes?”
“I understand why you did it,” Meg said. “I’m asking you to undo it.”
Francesca pulled off the half-glasses but didn’t budge. Meg had briefly entertained the notion that Sunny had been responsible, but this was an emotional act, not a calculated one. “I have work to do,” Francesca said.
“Thanks to you, I don’t.” She stared down the green icicles shooting from Francesca’s eyes. “I like my job. Embarrassing to admit, since it’s hardly a big-time career, but I’m good at it.”
“Interesting, but as I said, I’m busy.”
Meg refused to move. “Here’s the thing. I want my job back. In exchange, I won’t rat you out to your son.”
Francesca displayed her first trace of wariness. After a short pause, she stepped aside just far enough to let Meg in. “You want to deal? All right, let’s do that.”
Family photos filled the office. One of the most prominent showed a younger Dallie Beaudine celebrating a tournament win by lifting Francesca off her feet. She hung above him, a lock of her hair tumbling over her cheek, a silver earring brushing her jaw, her feet bare, and one very feminine red sandal balanced on the top of his golf shoe. There were also photos of Francesca with Dallie’s first wife, the actress Holly Grace Jaffe. But most of the pictures were of a young Ted. They showed a skinny, homely boy with oversize glasses, pants pulled up nearly to his armpits, and a solemn, studious expression as he posed with model rockets, science fair projects, and his father.
“Lucy loved those pictures.” Francesca settled behind her desk.
“I’ll bet.” Meg decided on a little shock treatment. “I got her permission before I slept with your son. And her blessing. She’s my best friend. I’d never have done something like that behind her back.”
Francesca hadn’t expected that. For a moment, her face seemed to collapse, and then her chin came up.
Meg plunged on. “I’ll spare you any more details about your son’s sex life except to say he’s safe with me. I have no illusions about marriage, babies, or settling into Wynette forever.”
Francesca scowled, not as relieved by that statement as she should have been. “Of course you don’t. You’re a live-for-the-moment person, aren’t you?”
“In a way. I don’t know. Not so much as I used to be.”
“Ted’s been through enough. He doesn’t need you messing up his life right now.”
“I’ve noticed a lot of people in this town have strong ideas about what they think Ted needs and doesn’t need.”
“I’m his mother. I’m fairly clear on the subject.”
Here came the tricky part, not that it had been exactly smooth sailing so far. “I guess an outsider, someone without preconceived notions, sees a person a little differently from those who’ve known him for a long time.” She picked up a photo of a very young Ted with the Statue of Liberty in the background. “Ted is brilliant,” she went on. “Everybody knows that. And he’s wily. A lot of people know that, too. He has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. He can’t help that. But here’s what most people, especially the women who fall for him, don’t seem to notice. Ted intellectualizes what most people process emotionally.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She set down the photo. “He doesn’t get swept away in romantic relationships like other people do. He adds up the pros and cons in some kind of mental ledger and acts accordingly. That’s what happened with Lucy. They fit together in his ledger.”
Outrage propelled Francesca from her chair. “Are you saying that Ted didn’t love Lucy? That he doesn’t feel things deeply?”
