these things. She wasn’t trying to keep track of him. She was trying to figure out what to order for dinner.
As annoying as those interactions were, there were other things that really mattered. Will didn’t lie so much as find clever ways to not tell her the truth—whether it had to do with a dangerous work situation or some awful detail about his childhood or, worse, a recent atrocity committed by his nasty, narcissistic bitch of an ex-wife.
Logically, Sara understood the genesis of Will’s behavior. He had spent his childhood in the foster care system, where, if he wasn’t being neglected, he was being abused. His ex-wife had weaponized his emotions against him. He had never really been in a healthy relationship. There were some truly heinous skeletons lurking in his past. Maybe Will felt like he was protecting Sara. Maybe he felt like he was protecting himself. The point was that she had no fucking idea which one it was because he wouldn’t acknowledge the problem existed.
“Sara, honey,” Bella said. “I meant to tell you—the other day, I was thinking about when you lived here back when you were in school. Do you remember that, sugar?”
Sara smiled at the memory of her college years, but then the edges of her lips started to give when she caught the look that was exchanged between her aunt and mother.
A hammer was about to drop.
They had lured her here with the promise of fried chicken.
Bella said, “Baby, I’m gonna be honest. This old place is too much house for your sweet Aunt Bella to handle. What do you think of moving back in?”
Sara laughed, but then she saw that her aunt was serious.
Bella said, “Y’all could fix up the place, make it your own.”
Sara felt her mouth moving, but she had no words.
“Honey.” Bella held on to Sara’s hand. “I always meant to leave it to you in my will, but my accountant says the tax situation would be better if I transferred it to you now through a trust. I’ve already put down a deposit on a condo downtown. You and Will can move in by Christmas. That foyer takes a twenty-foot tree, and there’s plenty of room for—”
Sara experienced a momentary loss of hearing.
She had always loved the grand old Georgian, which was built just before the Great Depression. Six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a two-bedroom carriage house, a tricked-out garden shed, three acres of grounds in one of the state’s most affluent zip codes. A ten-minute drive would take you downtown. A ten-minute stroll would have you at the center of the Emory University campus. The neighborhood was one of the last commissions Frederick Law Olmstead took before his death, and parks and trees blended beautifully into the Fernbank Forest.
It was an enticing offer until the numbers started scrolling through her head.
Bella hadn’t replaced anything since the 1980s. Central heating and air. Plumbing. Electrical. Plaster repairs. New windows. New roof. New gutters. Wrangling with the Historical Society over minute architectural details. Not to mention the time they would lose because Will would want to do all the work himself and Sara’s scant free evenings and long, lazy weekends would turn into arguments about paint colors and money.
Money.
That was the real obstacle. Sara had a lot more money than Will. The same had been true of her marriage. She would never forget the look on Jeffrey’s face the first time he’d seen the balance in her trading account. Sara had actually heard the squeaking groan of his testicles retracting into his body. It had taken a hell of a lot of suction to get them back out again.
Bella was saying, “And of course I can help with any taxes, but—”
“Thank you.” Sara tried to dive in. “That’s very generous, but—”
“It could be a wedding present.” Cathy smiled sweetly as she sat down at the table. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
Sara shook her head, but not at her mother. What was wrong with her? Why was she worrying about Will’s reaction? She had no idea how much money he had. He paid cash for everything. Whether this was because he didn’t believe in credit cards or because his credit was screwed up was another conversation that they were not having.
“What was that?” Bella had her head tilted to the side. “Did y’all hear something? Like firecrackers? Or something?”
Cathy ignored her. “You and Will can make this your home. And your sister can take the apartment over the garage.”
Sara saw the hammer make its final blow. Her mother wasn’t merely trying to control Sara’s life. She wanted to throw in Tessa for good measure.
Sara said, “I don’t think Tess wants to live over another garage.”
Bella asked, “Isn’t she living in a mud hut now?”
“Sissy, hush.” Cathy asked Sara, “Have you talked to Tessa about moving home?”
“Not really,” Sara lied. Her baby sister’s marriage was falling apart. She Skyped with her at least twice a day, even though Tessa was living in South Africa. “Mama, you have to let this go. This isn’t the 1950s. I can pay my own bills. My retirement is taken care of. I don’t need to be legally bound to a man. I can take care of myself.”
Cathy’s expression lowered the temperature in the room. “If that’s what you think marriage is, then I have nothing else to say on the matter.” She pushed herself up from the table and returned to the stove. “Tell Will to wash up for dinner.”
Sara closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t roll them.
She stood up and left the kitchen.
Her footsteps echoed through the cavernous living room as she skirted the periphery of the ancient Oriental rug. She stopped at the first set of French doors. She pressed her forehead against the glass. Will was happily pushing the lawn mower into the shed. The yard looked spectacular. He had even trimmed the boxwoods into neat rectangles. The edging showed a surgical precision.
What would he say to a 2.5 million-dollar fixer-upper?
Sara wasn’t even sure she wanted such a huge responsibility. She had spent the first few years of her marriage remodeling her tiny craftsman bungalow with Jeffrey. Sara keenly recalled the physical exhaustion from stripping wallpaper and painting stair spindles, and the excruciating agony of knowing that she could just write a check and let someone else do it, but her husband was a stubborn, stubborn man.
Her husband.
That was the third rail her mother had been reaching for in the kitchen: Did Sara love Will the same way she had loved Jeffrey, and if she did, why wasn’t she marrying him, and if she didn’t, why was she wasting her time?
All good questions, but Sara found herself caught in a Scarlett O’Hara loop of promising herself that she would think about it tomorrow.
She shouldered open the door and was met by a wall of heat. Thick humidity made the air feel like it was sweating. Still, she reached up and took the band out of her hair. The added layer on the back of her neck was like a heated oven mitt. Except for the smell of fresh grass, she might as well be walking into a steam room. She trudged up the
