Southern Lights: A Novel

“I’ll try” was all Savannah would commit to, and promised herself to stick it out till her mother came to visit. And if it didn’t get any better, she was going back to New York with her, or she’d run away. She wasn’t going to live like this for three months, for anyone.

“I’m sorry, baby. I can’t come down this weekend, but I’ll be down the following one. I promise. Just keep your head down and ignore her.”

“Yeah, right,” Savannah said, and hung up. She was mad at her mother now too, for sending her here to live with this witch. She was worse than the evil stepmother in any fairy tale or bad movie. Cinderella’s life was a snap compared to this. As she thought it, Daisy slipped into the room with a worried look. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Savannah said, looking discouraged, and then smiled at her. “I’m not used to this. I wish I were home,” she said honestly, and Daisy nodded.

“I know. She can be pretty mean. She’s like that to my dad a lot.”

“That must be hard for you,” Savannah said sympathetically, as Daisy shrugged.

“My dad is always nice to me, and my brothers.” She smiled at Savannah and gave her a hug. “I hope you stay.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” Savannah said noncommittally, but she couldn’t imagine it for the next three months until after the trial, or even four, if the trial took a long time, which it probably would. It sounded like a complicated trial to her.

As the two girls sat talking in Savannah’s room, Tom and Luisa were in a pitched battle in theirs.

“What the hell are you thinking?” he raged at her. “Saying those things, in front of Daisy, and Savannah. How can you be so threatened by a seventeen-year-old girl?”

“I don’t want her here!” Luisa shouted back at him. “She’s the result of a mistake you made, and I don’t want her in my face, or my home.” She looked righteous about it, and he stared at her in astonishment.

“Are you crazy? You can’t rewrite history with me, Luisa. I was there. You walked out on me and our boys, you dumped me, divorced me, abandoned them, and married someone else who had more money than I did. I married Alexa while you were married to him, happily spending his money in Dallas, and you didn’t give a flying fuck about us, me, or your boys. You didn’t give a damn about me until he died, and you decided you wanted your old life back, God knows why. Lonely maybe, because you sure didn’t need the money. And then you conned me into an affair with you, and I was stupid enough to fall for it, while you saw to it that you got pregnant and cried to my mother that I couldn’t let you have an illegitimate baby, and I actually felt sorry for you, and left the woman I loved for you. Savannah is the result of a respectable marriage with a terrific woman who was wonderful to your boys, and whom I was dumb enough to give up for you, in order to be ‘honorable.’ What a crock of shit that was, and this marriage is. And I’ve allowed you to force me to keep Savannah away from here for ten years, to make you happy. I pushed out my own daughter. It’s a wonder she even talks to me. And now when her life is at stake, and I bring her here for three months, you’re rotten to her, and beat me up, and act as though she’s a ‘mistake’ I made with some hooker while I cheated on you. You abandoned us, Luisa, flat and simple. And I’m not going to abandon my daughter again to make you happy. What I did to her mother was bad enough.”

“If you’re so sorry about it, go back to her,” Luisa said coldly.

“That isn’t the point. I may have been honorable to you, but I was anything but to her. We all know that, and so do you, so lay off, and be civil to Savannah, or you’re going to have some very serious trouble with me.” And without another word, and before Luisa could respond, he stormed out of the room and slammed the door. Both girls heard it from Savannah’s room, but didn’t comment. They could both guess what it was, and why. It was the first time in a long time, if ever, that Tom had stood up to Luisa like that, and she was in a rage, but she didn’t pursue it, or him, any further and stayed in her room.