She would love for Eddy to be totally absorbed with her like that.

She would love for him to be absorbed with her the way Uncle Tate was with Aunt Carole.

Dorothy Rae launched her attack while they were sitting in the limousine waiting for the men to rejoin them. One second she was staring docilely out the window at the red, white, and blue bunting flapping in the wind, the next she was hissing at Avery like a she-cat.

"You loved it, didn't you?"

Mandy's head was resting in Avery's lap. The child had become tired and restless at the outdoor rally, so she had returned to the car with her before the program was over. Mandy was asleep now. Dorothy Rae, who had accompanied them back to the car, had been so quiet that Avery had almost forgotten she was there.

"I'm sorry, what?" she asked vaguely.

"I said you loved it." .

Her meaning escaped Avery completely. She shook her head in confusion. "Loved what?"

"Loved making Jack look like a fool this morning."

Was she drunk? Avery took a closer look at her. On the contrary, she seemed in desperate need of a drink. Her eyes were clear but had the blazing wildness of someone gone mad. She was wringing a damp Kleenex between her hands.

"How did I make Jack look like a fool?" Avery asked.

"By taking Tate's side."

"Tate is my husband."

"And Jack's mine!"

Mandy was roused, but after opening her eyes once, she fell back asleep instantly. Dorothy Rae lowered her voice. "That hasn't stopped you from trying to steal him away from me."

"I haven't tried to steal him."

"Not lately, maybe," she said, taking a swipe at her leaky eyes with the Kleenex, "but before the crash you did."

Avery said nothing.

"The thing that makes it so despicable," Dorothy Rae continued, "is that you really didn't want him. As soon as he became interested, you spurned him. You didn't care that your rejection crushed his ego. You only wanted to get at Tate by flirting with his brother."

Avery couldn't deny the ugly allegations because they were probably true. Carole wouldn't have had any scruples against having an affair with her husband's brother, or, just short of that, making out like she was open to one. Most of her pleasure would be derived from the disharmony and devastation it would cause within the family. Perhaps that was all part of Carole's scheme to destroy Tate.

"I have no designs on Jack, Dorothy Rae."

"Because he's not the one in the limelight." Her hand clenched Avery's arm like a claw. "He never is. Never was. You knew that. Why didn't you just leave him alone? How dare you play with people's lives like that?"

Avery wrenched her arm from the other woman's grip. "Did you fight me for him?"

Dorothy Rae wasn't prepared for a counterattack. She stared at Avery with stupefaction. "Huh?"

"Did you ever fight me for Jack's attention, or did you just drink yourself into a stupor every day and let it happen?"

Dorothy Rae's face began to work convulsively. Her red-rimmed eyes got redder, wetter. "That's not a very kind thing to say."

"People have been kind to you for too long. Everybody in the family turns a blind eye to your disease."

"I don't have aa"

"You've got a disease, Dorothy Rae. Alcoholism is a disease."

"I'm not an alcoholic!" she cried tearfully, echoing the denials that her own mother had used for years. "I have a few drinksa"

"No, you drink to get drunk and you stay drunk. You wallow in self-pity and then wonder why your husband lusts after other women. Look at yourself. You're a mess. Is it any wonder that Jack has lost interest in you?"

Dorothy Rae groped for the door handle. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this."

"Yes, you do." Turning the tables on her, Avery grabbed her arm and refused to let go. "It's time somebody got tough with you, woke you up to a few facts. Your husband wasn'tstolenfrom you. You drove him away."

"That's not true! He swore I wasn't the reason he left."

"Left?"

Dorothy Rae looked at her blankly. "Don't you remember, Carole? It wasn't long after you and Tate got married."

"I. . .of course I remember," Avery stammered. "He stayed gone about. . ."

"Six months," Dorothy Rae said miserably. "The longest six months of my life. I didn't know where he was, what he was doing, if he was ever coming back."

"But he did."

"He said he needed time alone to sort out a few things. He had so many pressures."

"Like what?"

She made a small, helpless gesture. "Oh, Nelson's expectations for the law firm, Tate's campaign, my drinking, Fancy."

"Fancy needs a mother, Dorothy Rae."

She laughed mirthlessly. "But not me. She hates me."

"How do you know? How do you know how she feels about anything? Do you ever talk to her?"

"I try," she whined. "She's impossible."

"She's afraid that no one loves her." Avery drew a quick breath. "And I'm afraid she might be right."

"I love her," Dorothy Rae protested adamantly. "I've given her everything she ever wanted."

"You threw her play-pretties to keep her occupied so that rearing her wouldn't interfere with your drinking. You grieve over the two children you miscarried at the expense of the one you have."

Dorothy Rae had mentioned the babies she had lost the night Carole's abortion had come to light. Later, Avery had gleaned the details from Fancy. So much of Dorothy Rae's unhappiness was now understandable. Avery leaned across the plush car seat, appealing to Dorothy Rae to listen. "Fancy is courting disaster. She needs you. She needs her father. She needs someone to take a firm hand. If Jack weren't so worried about your drinking, maybe he would devote more time and attention to being a parent. I don't know.

"But I do know that unless you do something, and quickly, she'll keep on behaving the way she doesadoing outrageous things just so she'll get noticed. One of these days, she'll go too far and harm herself."

Dorothy Rae pushed back a strand of lank hair and assumed a defensive posture. "Fancy's always been a handfulamore than Jack and I could handle. She's got a willful personality. She's just being a teenager, that's all."

"Oh, really? A teenager? Did you know that she came home the other night after having taken a beating from a guy she picked up in a bar? Yes," Avery emphasized when she saw Dorothy Rae pale with disbelief.

"I'm being an armchair psychologist, but I believe Fancy thinks she deserves no better than that. She thinks she's unworthy of being loved because no one has ever loved her, though she's tried every means she knows to get your attention."

"That's not true," Dorothy Rae said, shaking her head in obstinate denial.

"I'm afraid it is. And there's more." Avery decided to throw caution to the wind. She was, after all, pleading for a young woman's life. "She's sleeping with Eddy Paschal."

"I don't believe you," Dorothy Rae wheezed. "He's old enough to be her father."

"I saw her coming out of his hotel room in Houston weeks ago."

"That doesn't meana"

"It was dawn, Dorothy Rae. You could tell by looking at her what she'd been doing all night. I have every reason to believe the affair is still going on."

"He wouldn't."

It was a sad commentary that Dorothy Rae didn't question her daughter's morality, only that of the family friend. "He is."

Dorothy Rae took several moments to assimilate this information, then her eyes narrowed on Avery. "You're a fine one to cast stones at my daughter."

"You miss my point," Avery said. "I'm not judging Fancy's morals. I'm worried about her. Do you think a man like Eddy is interested in her except for one reason? In light of his friendship with Tate, do you think he'll continue this relationship for any length of time or let it develop into something more meaningful? No.

"What really concerns me is that Fancy considers herself in love with him. If he dumps her, the rejection would only reinforce her low opinion of herself."

Dorothy Rae laughed scornfully. "If anything, my daughter has a high opinion of herself."

"Is that why she picks up strangers and lets them work her over? Is that why she hops from man to man and lets them use her any way they like? Is that why she has set her cap for a man she can't possible have?" Avery shook her head no. "Fancy doesn't like herself at all. She's punishing herself for being unlovable."

Dorothy Rae picked at the shredding tissue. Softly, she said, "I never had much control over her."

"Because you don't have control over yourself."

"You're cruel, Carole."

Avery wanted to take the woman in her arms and hold her. She wanted to say, "No, I'm not cruel. I'm not. I'm telling you this for your own good."

Instead, she responded as Carole might. "I'm just tired of being blamed for the lousy state of your marriage. Be a wife to Jack, not a sniveler."

"What would be the use?" she sighed dejectedly. aJack hates me."

"Why do you say that?"

"You know why. Because he thinks I tricked him into marrying me. I really did think I was pregnant. Iwaslate."

"If Jack hated you," Avery argued, "would he have stayed married to you all these years? Would he have come back after a six-month separation?"

"If Nelson told him to," she said sadly.

Ah. Jack always did what his father told him to. He was bound to his wife by duty, not love. He was the workhorse; Tate was the Thoroughbred. The imbalance could breed a lot of contempt. Maybe Jack had figured out a way to get back at his brother and the parents who favored him.

Avery looked at Dorothy Rae from a different perspective and admitted that she might drink, too, if she were caught in a loveless marriage that was held together only by patriarchic decree. The situation was especially demoralizing to Dorothy Rae, who obviously loved Jack very much.

"Here," Avery said, taking a fresh tissue from her purse and passing it to Dorothy Rae, "blot your eyes. Put on fresh lipstick."

Just as she was finishing, Fancy pulled open the car door and got in. She sat on one of the fold-down stools facing them. "God, this campaigning shit really sucks. Look what that frigging wind did to my hair."

Dorothy Rae glanced at Avery with uncertainty. Avery kept her expression impassive. Dorothy Rae took courage and turned to her daughter. "You shouldn't use that kind of language, Fancy."

"How come?"

"Because it's unbecoming to a lady, that's how come."

"A lady? Right, Mom," she said with an audacious wink. "You just go on deluding yourself. Have a drink while you're at it." She unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit and folded it into her mouth. "How much longer is this going to take? Where's the radio in this thing?"

"I'd rather you left it off, Fancy," Avery said. "It will wake up Mandy."

She swore softly and tapped the toes of her red boots together.

"You'll need to wear something more appropriate to the rally tonight," Dorothy Rae said, glancing down at her daughter's shapely bare thighs.

Fancy stretched her arms out on the seat behind her. "Oh, yeah? Well I don't own anythingappropriate.Thank God."

"When we get back to the hotel, I'll go through the things you brought and seea"

"Like hell, you will!" Fancy exclaimed. "I'll wear whatever I damn well please. Besides, I already told you I don't have anythinga"

"How about going shopping this afternoon to buy something?" The two of them looked at Avery, clearly astonished by her sudden proposal. "I'm sure you could find a dress that is suitable but still funky. I can't go, of course, but the two of you could take a cab out to one of the malls while Tate's doing that TV interview. In fact," she added, sensing their hesitation, "I have a list of things you could pick up for me as long as you're going."

"Who said I was going?" Fancy asked crossly.

"Would you like to, Fancy?"

Fancy looked quickly at her mother, who had spoken quietly, almost shyly. She was clearly astonished. Her eyes were mistrustful, but curious as well. Avery detected a speck of vulnerability behind the worldly facade.

"Why don't we?" Dorothy Rae urged in a wavering voice. "It's been ages since we've done something like that together. I might even buy a new dress, too, if you'll help me pick it out."

Fancy's lips parted, as though she was about to nix the idea. After a moment's hesitation, however, she resumed her I-don't-give-a-damn smirk. "Sure, if you want to, I'll go along. Why not?"

She glanced out the window and spotted Eddy as he led the group back toward the waiting limousines. "There sure as hell isn't anything better to do."

FORTY.

"Hello, Mr. Lovejoy." Van was bent over, diddling with his camera. He raised his head and shook his long hair out of his face. "Oh, hi, Av. . .uh, Mrs. Rutledge."