Vivien nodded happily, more than pleased with his delight.

"What is it?" Melanie asked.

"Read it to us!" Shelby demanded.

Trip was still blinking back his surprise. "This ent.i.tles Jordan Jackson the third, or Triple, also known as Trip, to accompany James and Cole Wesley to the January Hawks versus Celtics game at Philips Arena."

His mouth hung open. As did Melanie and Shelby's.

"You're not messing with my head, are you?" He checked the paper again.

Vivien shook her head, no, sending the top of the Santa cap flopping. She couldn't stop smiling, so pleased was she with her surprise. "Angela couldn't go and James and Cole-that's his father the pitcher"-she said as if everyone in the room didn't already know that-"thought it would be fun to have another guy along. You're the guy."

"I'm going to a basketball game with Cole Wesley? Me? Really?" He simply couldn't seem to absorb it. This was by far the most words she'd heard come out of his mouth, c.u.mulatively, since she'd arrived. "Wait till I tell the guys!"

He rushed off, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he went.

"That is so cool!" This was high praise from Shelby. "I think I need to tell a few people myself." She already had her phone to her ear before she'd gotten to the stairs.

Melanie and Vivien exchanged glances.

"Wow!" Melanie said. "You are formidable when you apply yourself, Vivi. Even I'm impressed."

"Why, thank you." Vivien smiled. "But I'm not completely finished. Here." She handed the large envelope to her sister. "This is for you. With thanks." Her smile faltered a bit. "And apologies."

Melanie slipped a fingernail under the flap and pulled it open. Slowly she removed the handwritten card. This ent.i.tles the bearer, that's you, Mel, to the services of Wilda and Carlos, cleaners extraordinaire, every week for the next six months. Date and time to be determined.

Melanie dropped the card into her lap. "Oh, no, Vivi, that's too much. I can't accept . . ."

"You cannot refuse a gift. That would be too awful," Vivi said. "Especially not after everything I've taken from you."

"But . . ."

She held up a hand to silence Melanie's protests. "And especially not after I humbled myself by calling Ruth and begging for a referral. She wasn't even going to give me a name until I told her it was for you."

Vivien smiled. "Otherwise you're going to have me mopping and swabbing, and we both know just how unsatisfactory that would be."

The rest of the morning was completely satisfactory from Vivien's point of view. She and Melanie spent it sipping hot chocolate and munching on cookies in front of the fire while they watched first Miracle on 34th Street and then National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Before they knew it, it was time to shower and dress and clamber into the van for the drive to Magnolia Hall. They backed over the still-rolled-up newspaper at the foot of the driveway, having never even thought about bringing it in, let alone reading it. Which was why they arrived at Magnolia Hall happily festive and unreasonably optimistic. Which turned out to be a rather strategic mistake.

23.

THERE WAS A warm glow in Melanie's chest as she drove the minivan to Magnolia Hall. The morning had been wonderful. Not as wonderful as it would have been if J.J. had been with them, of course, but Vivien's presence and unexpected enthusiasm had allowed the three of them to celebrate without being consumed by J.J.'s absence.

Beside her, Vivien stared out the window lost in thoughts of her own. She wore one of her new maternity outfits, but Melanie suspected this was out of necessity rather than an intentional gambit for opening discussion of her pregnancy. Though it was cowardly and somewhat selfish of her, she hoped Caroline was too distracted to notice Vivi's rounding shape. Or to question the flimsy reasons Vivi had given for the length of her stay. Melanie had spent the last year forging a tentative truce with her mother. She hadn't forgiven Caroline for her disapproval of J.J., and she had repeatedly refused the help that would have never been offered when he was alive, but she'd managed to avoid engaging in any major battles. She was already far too stressed to be at war with her mother.

A glance in the rearview mirror confirmed that the kids had their new iPods plugged into their ears, but today that didn't leave Melanie feeling intentionally excluded. This morning had gone a long way toward smoothing out the jagged edges of their loss, and she wanted desperately to believe that it marked a turning point for all of them. That although life would never be the same without J.J., it might one day be all right.

In the open doorway of Magnolia Hall, Evangeline waited. Dressed in her everyday uniform, she wasted no time on affectations or "Mammyisms." "Merry Christmas, y'all," she said as she hugged them each in turn, careful not to smash the gaily wrapped gifts they carried. She held Vivien the longest and when she took the gifts into her own arms so that she could look her up and down more thoroughly, she sighed. "Oh, Lordy. I hope to h.e.l.l you're prepared because your mama . . ."

Whatever warning Evangeline had intended was swallowed up in Caroline's arrival. "Darlings!" she said, scooping Shelby and Trip into delicate hugs that wouldn't damage the gifts or mess up her hair or makeup.

Evangeline's eyes went very wide as if she were trying to communicate something silently, not exactly her forte. She handed the stack of gifts back to Vivien, positioning them directly in front of her stomach and chest.

"Santa left a ton of things for you two under the tree," Caroline went on. "I swear we'll have to rent a U-Haul to get all that loot back to your house.

"Isn't that right, Evangeline?" Caroline said much too sweetly.

"Oh, yes'm," Evangeline replied with an exaggerated curtsy and bob of her head even while she tried to send yet another wide-eyed warning. "Santa came all right. And so did the morning newspaper." Again, she widened her eyes and shot them a look.

Melanie glanced at Vivien to see if she'd gotten the intended message, but she shrugged back, equally baffled. If she ever had to choose up sides for charades, Evangeline was going to be her very last pick.

"Why don't we go ahead into the library?" Caroline asked, though as usual it was more of a command than a request. "Please tell Cook we'll be ready to eat at two, Evangeline."

Evangeline stood rooted in the doorway, uncharacteristically uncertain. The fact that she wasn't performing or trading barbs with Caroline was a surer sign of trouble than any of her attempted communicative looks, but Melanie still had no idea what she was trying to tell them. Evangeline finally took herself off to the kitchen, muttering to herself.

"Now then," Caroline took the gifts out of Vivien's arms and gave her a slow once-over that made them both squirm. "I see you have on a new outfit," she said pleasantly, though her expression was pained. "And you've got such a . . . rosy glow about you." An eyebrow arched upward. "The holidays certainly seem to be agreeing with you."

Melanie braced herself for the dawning of understanding to wash across their mother's perfectly made-up face. For Vivien to come out and tell her she was going to be a grandmother again. For Caroline to gasp in horror as she confronted the fact that her unmarried daughter was going to have a baby. But Caroline simply handed the gifts back to Vivien, turned on her heel, and led them back to the library.

Melanie and Vivien exchanged glances. "That was really weird," Vivien said.

"Yeah, in a really scary way. I'm not having a good feeling," Melanie said, trying to still the flutter of unease. "But if she's not in complete denial and the subject of your pregnancy should come up, this would be the perfect day to plead immaculate conception."

For a while the pandemonium of their arrival and the gift exchanging covered the odd undercurrent. There were, in fact, a ton of gifts for both Trip and Shelby and everyone else present. A lack of material generosity had never been an issue in the Gray household, and there was a good deal of smiling and laughing during the allotted hour.

But when they moved en ma.s.se into the dining room, the veneer of frivolity disappeared. Granted it was difficult to be completely carefree and unguarded in this most formal of rooms under the best of circ.u.mstances, but as they took their seats Melanie felt a distinct change in the atmosphere. And as they ate she saw the same change reflected in Caroline's face.

Melanie had come prepared to make sure Vivien's Christmas dinner wasn't a vegetarian affair; she'd promised that she'd even slip her food from her own plate if necessary. But Evangeline continued to be distracted and off her game, barely bothering to censor what Vivien ate. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Evangeline's food policing was nothing compared to whatever was brewing with their mother. Caroline's face flushed as she watched her eldest daughter eat, and Melanie didn't think it was a result of the amount of wine Caroline consumed or the quant.i.ty of food that Vivi inhaled.

The main course had been cleared and coffee poured when Caroline clanged a spoon against her water goblet and called for their attention. The skin on the back of Melanie's neck p.r.i.c.kled as her mother stood at her place. The table grew quiet as everyone watched Caroline, but Caroline's gaze never left Vivien.

"I'd like to propose a toast to our daughter Vivien," Caroline said, her jaw set and her tone hard. "Who has once again found a way to embarra.s.s and humiliate this family."

She paused dramatically as everyone else froze. Out of the corner of her eye Melanie watched Vivien's face drain of color, but other than the chalky whiteness of her skin and her complete stillness she gave no other outward sign of distress.

"When are you due, sweetheart?" The endearment was both chiding and chilling. "And did you really have to p.i.s.s off Matthew Glazer to the extent that he had to expose your unmarried pregnancy in his column on Christmas morning?"

"It was in the paper?" Vivi asked through lips that had gone as white as her face. "He actually wrote that?"

"And ran a picture, too. Perhaps you should start wearing the hat and dark gla.s.ses on your stomach!"

Caroline removed a folded section of newspaper from the pocket of her sweater. In the silence that had descended, the rustle of the paper might have been a thunderclap. She read, "What former investigative reporter from a prominent and politically connected Atlanta family is apparently pregnant despite the lengths she's gone to to try to hide it? This shot of Vivien Armstrong Gray was snapped as she snuck out of a recent ob-gyn appointment. Ms. Gray, of Magnolia Hall in Buckhead and more recently of New York City, seems a bit long in the tooth to be having a baby. The big question would be who and where is the baby's father?" Caroline paused and drew a deep breath. "He then goes on about some column in the Weekly Encounter that has suburban soccer moms all in a twitter, but you were his lead story. And this picture . . . honestly!" She grimaced as she wadded the paper into a ball and dropped it on the table.

"I guess Christmas is the slowest news day of the year," was Vivien's only comment. She took a bite of food and chewed nonchalantly, but her body was rigid as if the fierceness with which she'd clamped down on her emotions precluded any movement at all.

Their father harrumphed. Hamilton and Judy looked away, making it clear they'd already known. Ham's kids were watching the proceedings with real interest, no doubt eager for a story worth repeating to their friends. Only Shelby and Trip looked as uncomfortable as Melanie felt; she hated seeing the easy comfort of the morning and what should have been the true focus of the holiday s.n.a.t.c.hed so meanly away. Her anger built; there was no reason on earth for her mother to bring this up in front of the children.

"This is no joking matter," Caroline said, her tone knifelike and deadly. "Wasn't it bad enough that you ended Harley Jenkins's career, then spent your life lifting up rocks to see what crawled out from under them? What kind of woman has a job that allows her to get shot in the b.u.t.t while the country watches? And what kind of daughter gets herself pregnant and then doesn't even have the common courtesy to warn her family?"

"Now, Caro," their father said. "She hardly got herself pregnant. Why don't we just discuss this calmly in private? I'm sure if pressure were brought to bear, Stone would do the right thing." He looked at Vivien. "It is Stone's baby, isn't it?"

"This is why New Yorkers think that southerners live in the Dark Ages," Vivien bit out. "What are you suggesting, Daddy? That you'll get out your shotgun and run on over to Afghanistan so you can march Stone down the aisle?" Vivi laughed, and it was a bitter, ugly thing. "You could live with that, I suppose. It certainly wouldn't be the first shotgun wedding in this family."

Judy blanched, though Melanie was certain the taunt wasn't aimed at her. Melanie had the bizarre urge to tell her children to cover their ears. She wanted to sweep them out of here and never bring them back. More than anything she wanted the arguing to stop. Conflict made her stomach churn and her heart pound, a result, according to some long-ago therapist, of a childhood spent as witness to her sister and mother's constant combat. At the moment she was not actually conflicted, but she was angry. She wanted to shout at her mother to just shut the h.e.l.l up. The urge was shocking in its intensity.

"What if it's not Stone's?" Vivien taunted. "What if it came out of a test tube? What if I have no idea whose baby it is? What if I've been sleeping with half of New York and . . ." Her words were sharp and cutting, forged with the same heat as Caroline's. But Melanie saw the way her sister's hands shook, the way Vivi clutched them into fists in her lap in an effort to hold them still.

The kids' eyes were wide, much wider than Evangeline had managed earlier. Evangeline stood in the corner of the room, slightly behind Vivien. Melanie had the sense that she was waiting to see whether her services would be needed.

"Vivi," Melanie reached out a hand and laid it on her sister's shoulder. "Don't. It's not worth . . ."

Vivi shook her off without even looking at her, her gaze still locked with Caroline's. "Don't what? Don't defend myself? Don't talk back? Don't tell her what a self-centered, manipulating b.i.t.c.h she is?"

Caroline's gasp of outrage sliced across the room. "How dare you? How dare you come back here to sully our reputation and then talk to me like I have no right to call you on it? I'm your mother! You will not speak to me that way!"

Melanie's stomach churned away. Bile actually rose in her throat. She wished with all her heart that J.J. were there with his gentle, calming air.

"A cat is a better mother than you!" Vivien stood, still trembling at her place at the table. "I believe your hero Rhett Butler said that to your idol Scarlett O'Hara and the line certainly applies. I pray to G.o.d I'll be a better mother than you are because in all my forty-one years I have never actually seen you put any one of your children before yourself. Not once!" She turned to Melanie. "Mellie is a real mother to her children. I don't know how in the world she figured out how to do that given the example she had to follow, but she did. I have to believe I can do it, too."

Melanie would have liked to disappear beneath the table; she wished desperately that they had never come. Her legs trembled, but somehow she managed to rise and stand on them. She moved so that she stood next to her sister, so close that their shoulders brushed. She could feel Vivien drawing breath into her lungs.

Melanie didn't know what was supposed to happen next. She would never have chosen this time or this place to confront her mother. Nor would she have chosen to do it in front of her children. But she was sick to death of pretending that she was any less angry and disappointed than Vivien; she could no longer bear that every choice that either of them had made, every action they'd taken over the years, had been evaluated through the prism of what reflected best on Caroline. And all too often those choices and actions had been found wanting. As had Vivien and Melanie.

"Melanie, are you going to let your sister talk to me that way?" Caroline asked.

Vivien turned to her and there was nothing in her eyes but understanding. "It's not your fight," she said quietly.

"Just give me your keys and let me go. Ham or Daddy will drive you all home."

Melanie took Vivien's hand and squeezed it. She looked briefly to Shelby and Trip to make sure they were hanging in there and was relieved to see that although they appeared understandably shaken, neither of them looked as if they were in danger of falling apart. Underneath all the teenaged angst and the devastating loss, they were strong. The thought pleased her.

She looked at her father, who generally meant well but who ceded almost all family issues to Caroline. He was studying the alignments at the table, possibly trying to determine whether all the dynamite had been detonated or if there were more shock waves to come.

Because she could see no other course, Melanie looked her mother in the eye. Words she'd never thought to utter began to spill out. "Vivien's not the only one who's tired of your judgments and disapproval, Mama. You say you love us; I even think you believe you do. But it's all so . . . conditional. And we never really know when you're going to s.n.a.t.c.h it back. Or come up with new hoops we need to jump through to earn your affection."

She nodded to Shelby and Trip. "Go get your things, please. We're leaving." She watched for a moment while her children stood and then did as she'd asked. Evangeline went with them and she heard them in the library, Evangeline insisting they take their gifts with them when it was clear they preferred to leave them behind.

"So, you choose your sister over me."

"It should never be a choice, Mama. But if you mean, am I leaving with Vivi right now or staying with you, then, yes, I choose her."

The room was perfectly quiet. Only the hushed conversation between Evangeline and the kids and the occasional clank of dishware in the kitchen broke the silence.

"So," Melanie said, knowing that the time had come to make her stand. "When and if you're ready to support us rather than judge and dictate to us. When you're ready to try to make things between us different, you know where to find us." She waited several long moments, her mouth unbearably dry, her heart pounding, hoping that Caroline would respond, but her mother's gaze was unwavering; she didn't move or speak.

Ham and Judy refused to meet her eye. Her father's gaze expressed regret, but he, too, remained silent.

"Fine," Melanie said, commanding her still-trembling limbs to move. "We'll show ourselves out." And then she walked carefully out of the dining room with her sister, her shoulders squared and her chin up. As if every part of her wasn't wobbling like Jell-O.

THAT NIGHT VIVIEN watched Stone's six P.M. live report from "a cave somewhere on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan" where the abducted aid worker had been found, his head separated from his body. She heard his somber recounting of what the dead man had apparently been put through, and her heart went out to the man's family. As she had when she and Melanie had huddled together to conduct a postmortem of their Christmas dinner at Magnolia Hall, Vivien reminded herself that in comparison to so many others, she was incredibly lucky.

She smoothed out the edges of the Just Peachy article she'd cut from the paper and studied the horribly unflattering and obviously rounded side view of her leaving Dr. Gilbert's building. She'd been holding it in her lap since they'd gotten home.

So now Matt Glazer's readers knew she was pregnant; she'd just have to hope his readership didn't extend beyond Atlanta. So she and Melanie were now personae non gratae at their parents' home and, presumably, in their lives, something she regretted more for Melanie, whose defense of her had been so surprising, than for herself. So, she had no job she was prepared to admit to and a ton of suspicions about the man her sister considered, at the very least, a valued friend.

Fingering the silver amulet of the necklace Stone had given her, Vivien felt his absence so keenly she imagined her heart pulsing not with blood but with emptiness. She wanted to curl up in a ball and hide under the covers until he came home. Even more than that, she wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice, to tell him everything and hope like h.e.l.l that he would understand.

Knowing how unlikely it was that she would reach him, she nonetheless dialed his cell phone, holding her breath while it rang alien-toned rings that were just one more reminder of how far away he was.

When she was about to give up, his voice sounded in her ear and the flood of relief nearly swamped her. She'd already opened her mouth to speak when his "Hi," was followed by the "Sorry I can't answer" of a recorded message.

Vivien closed her eyes as a potent mixture of regret and despair washed over her. At the beep, she searched deep inside herself for a suitably upbeat tone with which she said, "Hey. Just calling to wish you a Merry Christmas and to thank you for the beautiful necklace. I love it." She swallowed. "And you." She swallowed. "I hope you got the package I sent."

She touched one of the stones as she worried her lip between her teeth. "I saw your report tonight, and I, um, hope you're okay. I can't tell you how much I wish you were here." Oh, G.o.d, she was getting maudlin. She needed to hang up before she dissolved into tears or announced his impending fatherhood via voice mail. "So." She swallowed again, appalled by the quiver in her voice, then cleared her throat for good measure, as if she'd simply had something other than her heart lodged in it. "Call me when you can, okay? I'd, um, really like to talk to you."

For a long time after she hung up, Vivien simply sat there, struggling to get herself and her emotions under control. This whacked-out neediness was as foreign as it was unnerving. She'd always been proud of her independence and self-reliance; they were the qualities she prized most in herself. And she knew Stone did, too.

As she readied herself for bed, she told herself she should be glad she hadn't reached him, glad she hadn't been able to dump her ill-defined worries and fears all over him. Stone was in a foreign and dangerous place, reporting on people who would just as soon slice off his head as talk to him. He did not need to be worrying about her. Or wrestling with what to do about a child he'd never intended to conceive.

24.

WHAT'S WRONG, LUV? Didn't expect to see you here till after the holidays."

Angela looked up from the computer screen she'd been staring into and conjured a smile for Brian. She'd pulled up the photos she was considering for her next gallery show but had ended up poring over the images from her original outsider series instead; the stark image of a lone child watching a group of others at play, a television screen filled with the images of bathing-suit-clad beauty contestants shot over the shadowed shoulder of a lumpy teenage girl on a couch, twentysomethings on the dance floor of a nightclub watched by a lone female figure who stands on its edge. Dark and dramatically lit, the images were both beautiful and painful. In each, she had focused on the figure left out. All of them, in their own way, were her.

It was only when she'd allowed them to be hung and shared that she had discovered that all but the most relentlessly confident could relate. They had been meant to put her past behind her. But no matter what front she presented to the world and to James, she hadn't been able to let go of who she'd been. She couldn't get rid of Fangie; nor could she bring herself to introduce her to the man she loved.

Angela shook her head, mute, afraid if she tried to speak, she'd end up crying.

Brian sat beside her and slung an arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. "Tell Uncle Brian what's wrong. If that fiance of yours is acting up, I'll . . . call him out. Challenge him to a duel."

Angela buried her head in the crook of his shoulder. Her partner was more Monty Python than Sir Galahad, but he always had her best interests at heart.

"Really, you know I'd do anything for you, Ang. Except let you blow your nose on my shirt." He reached for the tissue box on the worktable. "Here. Blow. And tell Uncle Brian all."