Southern Lights: A Novel

“She’s a very good girl,” Eugenie said, looking at him. He had no idea who she meant, and he thought it was the maid, whom she often referred to that way. She also called male employees “boys,” which seemed rude. But it was of her times.

“Who?” Tom said, looking blank.

“Your daughter,” she said with a spark in her eye he hadn’t seen in a while.

“Daisy?”

“Savannah! She came here for a history lesson, about the South. She listens carefully, remembers everything. That’s southern blood in those pretty young veins. She wanted to know everything about our family, and more. She’s a very special girl.”

“I know she is,” he said, looking amazed. “She came here alone?”

“Of course,” his mother snapped at him. “You don’t suppose your wife brought her here? Luisa is going to drive me insane if she doesn’t stop complaining about that child.” His mother looked sour about it and shook her head, which surprised him too.

“Does she call you about it?” Tom looked upset. He knew Luisa had called her once, but not more than that, about Savannah.

“Almost every night. She wanted me to use my influence on you to send her back. That’s not right if her life is in danger, which you say it is, and that’s probably true. Why would you lie about that?”

“I haven’t. There have been some very upsetting letters sent to Savannah, presumably from a man who killed eighteen women. He’s in custody, but he’s got friends on the outside who have been dropping the letters off at their apartment. If it’s him. If it’s not, it’s someone else just as bad. I think Alexa is right to want her out of New York.”

“So do I. There’s no reason to risk that child. Or even frighten her. Eighteen women, my word, how awful …what is Alexa thinking, taking cases like that?” She looked critical as she said it.

“She’s an assistant district attorney,” Tom said quietly. “She has no choice. She has to take what they assign her. That’s her job.”

“Noble of her, but much too dangerous, for a woman,” his mother said, a little more gently. It almost amused Tom that now his mother was protecting her and Savannah, after telling him to banish them in the first place. How soon people forget their own perfidies and crimes. “In any case, Luisa wants Savannah run out of town, and she expected me to do it, and tell you to send her back. She got what she wanted ten years ago. She got you. She has Daisy. She got her boys back, she doesn’t need to hurt Savannah now to prove the point further, or her mother. We all did quite enough ten years ago. I told Luisa to stop hounding me about it. She wasn’t pleased.” Tom imagined that she wasn’t. Her mother-in-law had been her chief ally and partner in crime all those years before and ever since.

“Do you regret it, Mother?” he asked her honestly. He had never dared to ask her before. She hesitated before she answered, sitting in her rocking chair with a shawl over her lap, and looking very old and fragile. He knew she was less frail than she appeared, and strong as iron in her will and opinions.

“Sometimes. It depends how Alexa’s life has turned out. If she’s happy, I suppose it was all right. I don’t know,” she said, looking distressed. “I didn’t want Daisy to be illegitimate, and Luisa was putting a lot of pressure on me then too, but I was younger then.” He had fallen right into Luisa and his mother’s trap for him. She had seduced him and gotten pregnant all in the same night, although he had been courting her secretly for several weeks and would have gotten there on his own. He had never gotten over Luisa leaving him for someone else, it had gnawed at him for all those years. He loved Alexa, but Luisa had been more powerful and more glamorous, and more southern. Alexa had been kind and open and naïve and loving, and trusted him completely. He still felt sick when he thought about it. “Is she happy?” his mother asked him then, and he sighed.

“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen such sad eyes. She’s alone with Savannah, and there’s no one in her life. She’s a wonderful mother.”

“Well, you can’t go back to her now and leave Luisa because Alexa is alone.” She looked panicked at the thought. “I don’t think she’d have me, and she’s right,” he said sadly. The idea had crossed his mind.

“She probably is,” his mother agreed, which shocked him. “If you loved her, you never should have left her for Luisa, no matter what I said. You went right back to her like a little lamb, and sent Alexa to New York.” He nodded. It was true. He had wanted Luisa back, to prove a point, but he loved Alexa. What he didn’t want was the life he had now, with a woman he hated, who hated him more. He had gotten what he deserved in spades, and knew it. “I just want Luisa to stop calling me about Savannah. She needs to be decent to her. She owes Alexa that. She took care of Luisa’s boys.”

“I’ve told her that. She doesn’t want to hear it.”

“She told me Savannah is a brat. She’s no brat, she’s a lovely girl. She came here all on her own, to see me. She said she’d come to visit again. I hope she does.”