body drifting out the window, lifting up into the air then plunging through the warm Carolina sunshine, like a bird in flight. I felt the air on my face, the breeze fanning my ankles as I leaned out farther.
Suddenly I knew I could not smash myself on the ground. However, I remained by the window until the sky was silvery and sugar-strewn with moonlight.
After Father had gone to bed, Mama came to see me. Her face was drawn, her mouth tight. Her fingers touched my hairline, smoothed it back from my temples. She spoke softly, claiming that it would be much easier on all of us if I accepted my fate. Father was doing what was best for me, and I needed to trust in him and the Lord.
I seized her hand and asked if she could do what I had to do, marry someone she wasn’t sure she loved, someone she hardly knew. She tried to laugh, then breathed in deeply, brought her hand to her throat.
“Charlotte, don’t make yourself weak trying to be happy. If you do not hate Mr. Alexander, you might love him one day, like I do your father.”
I do admire Mr. Alexander. We became acquainted a year ago, a month after he moved to Greensville. He always has a kind look about him. He told me he likes to read history books, then he smiled a nice smile. And his laughter brought to mind the large church bell ringing across Greensville on a Sunday morning.
Yet my heart never pounds hard in my chest like I heard other girls say their hearts do when they are around someone they are fond of. I know I do not love him.
Will I ever love him? I do not know. Mama told me not to worry about married love, it will surely find me. And as long as I’m a good wife to Mr. Alexander, that is all that matters.
In the past few weeks, Mama has schooled me on how to handle the servants, how to plan meals and tell the cook what to prepare. All the general ways to keep a home. She also whispered in my ear there are certain other obligations I will have as a wife. Then suddenly she pulled back, her round face pale as a magnolia blossom, her lips flat against each other. She fanned herself with her hand.
“You’ll find out soon enough, oh, Heavenly Father!”
Soon she left my side, marched down the stairs and called in a high-pitched voice for her servant, Isabell. I know the obligations she whispered are what the other, more sophisticated girls giggle about—the duty of a wife. Some say these duties are very uncomfortable.
Night after night, I sit by my window and wonder how I will feel when my life as a—
Mama came in and I hid this book in the folds of my skirt. She would be very upset to know I’ve been writing before my wedding. Many, along with Father, believe writing leads to worry for young ladies.
I would think she would be desolate that Mr. Alexander is building a home miles from town and I will live so far away. When I hint at these fears, Mama shakes her head and claims I am a true Southern girl, one who is too attached to her family and someday I will be happy and not want to come home.
This morning Mama found me sitting by the window, tears dried upon my cheeks. She said very sternly that I must grow up and start a family of my own because it will soon be time to have babies. I feel like cloth being torn and readied for a wedding dress. I pray James Alexander is a patient man, for he will have to be with his new bride. He will need years of tolerance, because it is difficult for me to imagine myself old and stooped over and still his wife with adult children, if the Lord sees fit to give us their souls.
I do not understand fate, my life, and said so to Mama. She told me I think too much for a young woman. I should trust in Father’s decision. The Lord’s purpose is to make me a wife—what I was born for. Try as hard as I might, I do not believe this. Yet, I am now resolved that in three days, Mr. Alexander will be my lord and master for eternity. Tonight as I contemplate giving up everything that is familiar, I do not believe eighteen is so very old.
CHAPTER 3
Magnolia Hall
Greensville, NC
June 2000
Clay climbs in his white utility truck, starts the almost soundless engine and rolls up the window. Then he leans over and fiddles with the air-conditioning. He looks back, doesn’t smile. Why couldn’t he have just signed off on the inspection? My life would be a lot easier.
I walk back into the house. Late-afternoon sunlight races down the hallway before I close the door, turning the scratched oak floor, for a moment, into a gleaming lake.
Two summers ago, four weeks after we met, Bill and I spent a July week on Lake Mead, right outside Las Vegas. We rented a houseboat at the marina, packed the boat’s kitchen with sliced ham, soft wheat bread, Swiss cheese, medium-priced merlot, three six-packs of Coors, bottled water and my new CD player.
I have to admit we were in a sexual frenzy, and this trip only increased it. Lake Mead, a man-made lake, is a breathtaking lie, and in the summer the air is hot, dry—like another planet that’s closer to the sun.
That week Bill drank all the beer and most of the wine. The idea I’d found the perfect person made me drunk with happiness—who needed booze? What I didn’t know then was I should have drunk myself into a stupor, jumped overboard and swum to shore. But of course I fooled myself into believing the relationship was just right. I was blind to the truth. Bill shoved signs in my face that he was a shit-heel right from the beginning. In the houseboat-rental office, he claimed he’d forgotten his credit card and I let myself overlook that tired old excuse! I paid for the entire trip, as if I were some rich broad with a gigolo. I knew he was a con artist. I really did, but I lied to myself.
I walk into Magnolia Hall’s living room and drag my toe across one of the carpet dents where a piece of furniture used to rest. I pull the white sheer curtain back, yank on the roll-up window shade and expect a cloud of dust.
There isn’t any. The fading sunlight showers the room in pink hues, accenting the emptiness. I turn the old window locks out, lift the window. Moist, cooler air floats in, bellows the curtains around my legs.
Two brocade chairs sit in the middle of the room and look like old ladies who have forgotten to leave. I must have been in this room when I was little, but I don’t remember.
After Ron left, before the inspection from hell took place, I walked around the house, and I’m still astounded that there is hardly any furniture in the house. Magnolia Hall is shaped like a two-story box with a hallway running down the middle. Downstairs there are two front rooms, this one and the one across the hall. That room only contains a sagging green couch.
Behind it is a library or office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases where five tired books stand on one shelf. There’s a rocking chair in the corner by one of the windows. Across the hall a dining-room table and three chairs stand polished, ready, lonely except for a small hutch.
Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two of them completely bare. The huge bathroom has a claw-foot bathtub, no shower. A blue towel and three bars of Ivory soap, still in their wrappers, are stacked neatly on the back of the toilet.
And there’s no trace of Grey Alexander.
I looked in the medicine chest and the old white chest by the door. Nothing. What happened to the man’s razor, comb, shampoo? And his clothes? It’s as if he never lived here. I expected piles of things, or at least some pictures, something to prove he was alive.
The living room curtain fans against my
