"Saw a new movie. Nothing special."

She was probably lying too. But what were we supposed to say? Oh, my wife left me. And she'd say, Oh, I got my heart broken by my twentieth boyfriend. No way. That's why I liked Gina. She kept her personal business to herself.

"Oh! Danette Stovall called. Should I get her on the line for you?"

"No, that's okay. I'll call her later. Thanks."

I went into my office and closed the door behind me.

I was going to suck it up and call Harlan. He needed to know that his sister was missing, and if she is there, I needed to know that too. Surely he would tell me if he knew. I looked his number up in my files, took a deep breath, and dialed it.

Just when I thought my call was going to go to voice mail, he answered.

"Harlan? It's Wes."

"Yes, I saw that on my caller ID. How are you, Wes?"

"Well, I've been better. Listen, Harlan, steel yourself, man, I've got some very disturbing news to tell you."

"What?"

"Les is missing. You haven't heard from her, have you?"

"Yes. She's right here. She's fine."

"Well, can you put her on the phone?"

"I'll ask her if she'd like to speak to you. Hold on." I knew he covered the phone with his hand, because I could hear muffled conversation in the background. Then he came back on the line. "Wes? Leslie is very upset right now and feels like it might be better if y'all spoke another time."

"What? Did she say that? You listen to me, you little weasel, you put my wife on the phone with me this very instant! Do you hear me?"

"Or what? There's no reason to resort to vulgarity and threats, Wesley. Sticks and stones, you know. Hold on."

There was another muffled pause, and then I heard Les say, "I said I don't want to talk to you now, Wesley." And then she hung up.

She disconnected the call! Was she insane? I am her husband of almost thirty years and she hangs up on me? Just what the hell was going on here? What did I do? Did I walk out on her? No! I was the abandoned one and this is how she treats me? I sat there looking at the phone, feeling my blood pressure rise until my ears were pounding.

My phone rang again and it was my secretary.

"Your daughter's on line two."

"Thanks," I said and pressed the flashing light. "Charlotte?"

"Yep. Did you find Mom?"

"Yeah, it seems that your mother decided to take a little trip to visit your uncle and decided not to tell anyone."

"Wow. That's not like her at all. Did you talk to her?"

"Nooooo. It seems she doesn't want to talk to me right now."

There was silence from my daughter's end of the phone. Then she spoke.

"Dad? Did you two have a fight?"

"We don't fight, Charlotte. But sometimes we don't agree on everything."

"Yeah, that's sort of how it is with me and Mom too." There was a pause and then she said, "Do you want me to call her and talk to her?"

"Right now? I don't really care. I'm plenty pissed, if you must know."

"Oh, great. Maybe you should go to Charleston and see what's going on, Dad. Don't you want to know?"

"Are you kidding? Right now I'm thinking about cutting off all her credit cards and closing her bank accounts. And you think I should go see what's wrong with her?"

"Oh! Dad! That's terrible! Look, we both know that ever since the Edinburgh fiasco she ain't been the same."

"Like that was my fault? I waited all my life to play St. Andrews and she almost ruined the whole thing!"

"Yeah, well, I think Mom has a different point of view on that one."

"It seems like all of a sudden she's got an opinion about everything! Since when did I ask for all these opinions?"

"Daddy. You know I love you, right?"

"Of course. You're my daughter." What kind of a question was that?

"Look, sometimes? Well, you can be a little rough, you know?"

"No, I don't know. In this particular instance, your mother is dead wrong. Just because we disagree about a couple of things doesn't give her the right to spend money to waltz herself down to Charleston without telling anybody where she's going. It's not nice. She could've been dead in a ditch for all I know."

"Yeah, and you, Harold, and Cornelia would already be back at the hotel."

"What's that got to do with this?" Oh, she was a smarty-pants today, this one.

"Nothing, Daddy, just that you aren't exactly Mr. Sensitive all the time."

"Maybe. But being all gooey inside didn't get me where I am today either. I've worked hard all my life to give your mother and me and you kids everything I never had. This is how she thanks me? With this kind of disrespect?"

"All I'm saying, Daddy, is that she must've felt pushed pretty far for her to break out and do something like this."

"Pushed? Your mother? You gotta be kidding me! You can't push that woman one inch!"

"Really? Okay, you're a cupcake and I'm the Queen of England. I love you, Daddy, but sometimes . . . ?"

"Sometimes what?"

"Sometimes you just don't get it."

CHAPTER 9.

Les Steps Out The morning after his party, as he promised he would, Harlan tried to make sense of Wes's bank statement. A lot of low whistles and Holy Mothers came out of his mouth as he read and reread what was in front of him. Finally, he turned on his computer and went to the bank's website and this was all before we even had breakfast. I rewarmed his coffee several times and asked him if there was anything I could get for him and he shook his head, shooing me away.

"Give me ten more minutes," he said three times. "What's Wes's birthday?"

"Why?"

"I need a password."

"March sixteenth."

Click! Click! Click! Click!

"And his social security number?"

I recited it to him.

Click! Click! Click! Click!

"That was too easy. I'm in! Wish me luck!"

"Happy hacking!" I said.

I busied myself with the Post and Courier, browsing my horoscope, the obituaries, and the arts section. I opened the French doors to the garden and stepped outside, thinking I'd work the crossword puzzle in the fresh air. The old Kennedy rocker looked like the perfect place to ponder the name of the northernmost tributary of the Ohio River-six letters-so I rocked back and forth on the uneven ancient bricks, clacking in a broken rhythm. The tiny Carolina wrens were chirping their morning song and I was completely charmed by them as they darted in and around the branches of Harlan's beautiful pink crape myrtles. But I was not fooled into believing that this slice of paradise would last for very long. The weather was getting warmer by the moment and soon Charleston's sweltering summer would be here. I hated to think about it. Finally, after the paper was read, I went back inside and exhausted every morning talk show. At last Harlan appeared at the kitchen table, collapsed in a chair, folded his hands in front of himself, and smiled as though he had discovered the true meaning of life.

"More coffee?" I asked.

"No, I think it might just be time for a little something stronger. Is there any champagne left over from last night?"

"Really? I can look."

"No. I'm kidding. I'm already caffeinated up to my ears. You'd better put that paper down for a moment."

"Oh, God, Harlan. Is Wes going to jail?"

"No. He might go to hell but he's not going to jail."

"So what's the deal?"

"The deal is that it all looks perfectly legitimate to me, but here's what baffles me. This statement is in your name too. Didn't you realize that?"

"What? How could that be? I mean, am I liable too?"

"You need to get all that criminal stuff out of your pretty head right this minute. It's very frustrating to me. You do not comprehend what this means."

"Give me that," I said and took the papers from him. "Okay, it's legitimate, you say?"

"Yes, I found a website that says one share of Coca-Cola stock bought in 1920 would be worth almost five million dollars today."

"No kidding? Wow. Five million dollars? That's ridiculous!"

"Isn't it? Now, he inherited that, so there might be some legal quibble about whether half should be yours or not."

"But half of the rest of it is actually mine? For sure? Definitely?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm no lawyer but I can tell you, should you decide to make a new life for yourself without Wes, you are worth either eleven million dollars or eight and one-half million dollars. And then there's the value of your home and its contents and whatever else he might have stashed in the Cayman Islands that you'd have to discover, of course."

"Holy smoke, Harlan. Either way, it's a darn fortune."

"And either way, cupcake, it's a fortune that you had no idea even existed."

"Yeah, that's pretty screwed up, isn't it?"

"Screwed up in a very major way, if you ask me and you did. You, my dear, are a very wealthy woman."

I started getting angry. "A wealthy woman who has never owned a new car. Who cleans her own house. Who rarely buys anything at regular price. Even chicken. I mean, I've been clipping coupons for ages. Well, now I get them on the Internet."

"It makes me like him even less," Harlan said. "If that's humanly possible. Not that there's anything wrong with getting a bargain."

"Agreed. Harlan, can you help me think of any reason in the world he's been keeping our bank statements behind a locked cabinet door?"

"Well, in my experience, when people lock things up, it's because they don't want anyone to see them."

"Of course. That's the logical answer. It's so strange."

"And because they have control issues. I think it's always been important to Wes to believe he's in charge of the world. You know, the Atlanta Mastah of the Universe? To me? It's tiresome, really, because if you decided to pull the plug on him, it wouldn't take the worst lawyer in Atlanta five seconds to figure out you are entitled to half. Almost thirty years of marriage? Two children? No, baby, you're entitled to half of everything."

"Jeezaree."

"And right about now? He's got that fact in his very odd meerschaum pipe, the one that's an old dude's head, and he's smoking it. Does he really still smoke that thing?"

"Not really. Harlan, my head is just spinning."

"I'll bet. Tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking that for the last three decades I've scrimped and saved for everything I wanted outside the puny household allowance he gives me. And about how demoralizing it was to ask him to give me a little more now and then. I mean, if I needed an extra two hundred dollars, he'd practically have a breakdown."

"Sugar, I mean this in the most respectful way, you could've gone to work. Even Momma went out and got a job."

"Oh, please! Doing the most inappropriate thing she could find. She embarrassed me all my life."