There came another silence, one where I could hear the wheels in her head churning with frustration. She knew I didn't think much of her business acumen, and she suspected I didn't think much of her mothering skills either. But she probably inherited the latter from me.

"Mom? Come on. What's going on? Are you having an affair?"

"What? Don't be ridiculous. And remember, missy, just because you think you're an adult doesn't mean you can ask your mother such a rude and personal question."

"Well, stranger things have happened in this world, you know."

"Really?"

We hung up a few minutes later and I thought, So, it would be that strange if I had an affair, would it? Good old Les! Your father thinks it's fine to cavort with whoever strikes his fancy and his friends have new wives who are half their age, but women like me never had affairs? Or worse yet, it would be a modern-day miracle if someone actually wanted a woman like me? Wait a minute! Did I have an expiration date stamped on my forehead? What was that old story about how women had a better chance of being abducted by aliens than they did getting married after forty? Was that it? Hell, I couldn't remember the details, probably due to my age. So shoot me. If Charlotte came to Charleston, I was going to give her a piece of my mind.

I still had only spoken to Wes once, that unfortunate occasion when I hung up on him. There were at least a dozen messages from him the first day and then none after that. I guess he thought it was up to me to call him and it probably was, but to be honest, I didn't feel up to his harangue. He would try to outargue me and convince me I should come home with my tail between my legs. No way. My desire to face him, even on the telephone, was nil. Part of me felt that by day five, he should've been doing some huge soul-searching and then upon his self-realization that he was, in fact, an ass of gargantuan proportions, he should've been sending me flowers-buckets of them. But then an hour later I'd realize if I was going to wait for him to come to me on bended knee with his arms flailing apologies all over the place, I had better find a comfortable spot for my pity party slash self-righteous indignation to camp out. Wes never apologized for anything because in his mind he was never wrong. Ever.

On my stronger days, I was actually enjoying my time alone, listening to classical music, which of course Wes despised. I scanned Harlan's shelves and naturally, in addition to an entire library of books on art history, he owned a signed first edition of everything Josephine Pinckney had ever written. I had begun Three O'Clock Dinner and was enjoying it enormously, surprised by how contemporary it felt even though it was published in 1945. Class struggle still thrived even in 2012.

Walking from room to room, I had to say that Harlan had himself one helluva house. I thought about the burden of living in a historic home, one owned by an ancestor of Governor Thomas Pinckney, one of America's first ambassadors to Great Britain, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who signed the Constitution. Oh la dee da, my inner cynic said. But it was true that being a Pinckney was a far heavier burden to carry than being a Kennedy, Johnny-come-latelies, our mother always said as though our family had hopped off the Mayflower. But Harlan insisted that Jo Pinckney, as she was known to her friends, was a truly modern aristocrat, and always looked forward, not the least bit encumbered by her heritage or by the memories of the Civil War, of which her own father was actually a veteran. If anything, he said, she used her name to great advantage, gaining entree into the most sophisticated literary circles up and down the East Coast when women were generally excluded. She was ambitious and serious minded, beautiful and talented; and any way you shook it up, so far my reading proved that she was a very interesting writer. Perhaps by the time Harlan returned I'd have an answer.

The weather had been gorgeous. The temperatures were still below ninety, and if I walked the Battery Wall, the breezes were saturated with the fragrance of so many different flowers and the salt of the sea, it was enough to get you drunk. In fact, Jo Pinckney's first book, a volume of poems, was named Sea-Drinking Cities, which I thought was a brilliant title. I took long strolls with Miss JP through White Point Gardens and thought about the real Miss Jo, and of course, I thought of Wes and Charlotte and I wondered if my little Holly was missing me. I wondered what Josephine Pinckney would do about Wes if she was in my shoes? Then I had to laugh. As far as I could tell from what I'd read, a man like Wes would've bored her to death. He was far too pedestrian for a woman whose great friends were the likes of Amy Lowell, Laura Bragg, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. No, she'd take all his money and walk.

Harlan said that if I wanted to get an idea what life was really like in the forties and the fifties that I should go across the street to the South Carolina Historical Society and read Josephine's papers. Maybe I would if we got a rainy day. Heaven knows the history of anyone else's life was more exciting than mine.

Apparently Jo Pinckney never married or had children, but she enjoyed the company of two prominent gentlemen for long periods of time, both of whom were married with children. I'd bet the Charleston tongues wagged a gale force wind about that! Harlan quoted her saying, "Few people realize how much courage it takes in a community like ours to ignore the established taboos."

I liked the idea that she had the courage to thumb her nose at the social conventions of the day and find a port in the storm. Charleston's genteel citizens must have believed that her extreme creative bent combined with her undeniable pedigree allowed them to overlook her passions of the flesh. Still, she must've been a very brave woman, I thought.

Ah, Wesley! Why are you such a Neanderthal? I know him so well and I could see him in my mind's eye, standing in front of his sink in the morning while he shaved and saying something like She'd better apologize for this! Well, I wasn't apologizing. And the longer I didn't hear from him, the more I was convinced that my absence was only a frustrating inconvenience. He obviously didn't miss me one bit except for the duties I performed that facilitated his everyday life. He probably had our housekeeper there every day. Let's be honest, if I could be replaced by my own housekeeper, what did that tell me?

On other days, I wept. I would torture myself over every detail I could remember from all the years of our marriage and how I might have steered things in another direction for our children if I'd only had the courage. But Wes was always so volatile. He argued with me over every single thing! The least little thing would cause him to bellow. Go bellow in hell, I thought. Go bellow in hell. Look at the two fine messes we have for children. I did everything your way, Wes, and look at them. Look at us. I hope you're happy.

And then Jonathan called. Just as I'm daydreaming about the lovely prospect of Wes yelping, dodging Satan's pitchforks, Jonathan calls. Hello, Trouble?

"Hey! How are you?" He sounded so warm and nice.

"I'm good," I said, completely surprised. "How are you?"

"Well, if I waited around for you to call me, Christmas might come and go!"

"Was I supposed to call you?" I said and remembered he had given me his card.

"If you want to spend the rest of your life with your arm in a cast, that's your prerogative."

"Ah, yes. My arm is still in that dastardly cast. It sure is. Well, how do you like that?"

"So why don't you come around to the office about four tomorrow and let me have a look at it. I mean, you have instant access to the greatest sports medicine in the country. You may as well exercise that privilege."

I thought about this quickly and decided that there was absolutely no reason to believe that his call was anything more than a friendly gesture to help out an old friend in need. But, Lord, he sure did have a big head.

"Well, thanks. I'm getting pretty tired of this business."

"You probably don't even need that sling anymore, but let's see."

I wrote down his office address and said, "Thanks, Jonathan. I'm in such a fog over here, I hadn't even thought about it."

"Well, let me do the thinking on this one. See you tomorrow."

"Great. Thanks."

It was true that I had spent the week sort of wandering around in my head, befuddled, and definitely not making any forward progress. The only conversation I'd had of any real satisfaction was with Danette, who called to say she didn't see a single thing wrong with coming to Charleston for a while. This was before Harlan verified the money situation and when I was thinking that leaving Wes would mean I'd most certainly spend my old age in poverty.

She said, "Shoot. Wes and Harold go on business trips all the time. So maybe you need a little time away for the business of your life! What's wrong with that?"

"Exactly!"

It was more than just a little time away and we both knew it, but I wasn't sure how to articulate it. Besides, Danette had never been the kind of friend who would try to push me into saying things I wasn't fully ready to discuss. I was grateful for her patience and to know she was in my corner.

When I had told her the story of Cornelia and Lisette getting into a brawl at the golf club, she sighed deeply.

"I have to say, I view these reports as validation that Harold is certifiable."

"The whole world has gone mad," I said. "It was like some tawdry reality show."

"I don't blame you for walking out," she said. "Wes called me, you know."

"No, but that's okay. I didn't call you because I didn't want to put you in the middle of it."

"I appreciate that. Damn it, Les! Do I have to buy a beach house down there so I can still have my best friend around?"

"Maybe? I don't know."

Now I wished she was next door so I could tell her about Jonathan and my arm and get her opinion.

So I called her.

"Got a minute?" I said.

"Sure! What's going on?"

"Get comfortable. This is kind of a long one."

I told her all about Jonathan and what we had meant to each other all through high school. I was a student at Ashley Hall and he went to Porter-Gaud. He came to my class plays and I went to his football games. We spent so many lazy summer days on Sullivans Island at his grandmother's house at Station 22, eating egg salad sandwiches, drinking iced tea, walking the beach, waterskiing on the Intracoastal Waterway all the way up to Capers Island. We had the classic, idyllic teenage love affair. And then I went away to college in Atlanta. And he went to Duke undergrad and then medical school. Unlike everyone's expectations, we drifted apart and married other people. Then I saw him at Harlan's party.

"Good Lord, Les. Get your hair blown out, put on some lipstick, and go see him. What could be more benign? He sounds darling!"

"He's way beyond darling, which makes me think he'd never take a second look at me-especially now. I'm sure he's just being nice."

"Okay, so he's being nice. What's wrong with that?"

"You're right. It's just that what could be worse than being rejected by your first boyfriend?"

"What does that mean?"

"You know. What if he thinks I'm an old cow?"

"He didn't reject you the other night, did he?"

"No. But it was dark, and alcohol was involved. Isn't this kind of the ultimate litmus test for whether or not to crawl into a cave and gnaw on your arm until you stop living?"

There. I'd said it, more or less. Jonathan was the one that got away. But was I his one that got away?

"Girl? Please don't be so insecure. Put a smile on your face, get yourself moving, and call me afterward, okay?"

The next day I arrived at Jonathan's office on the stroke of four and announced myself to the receptionist, who was well into her seventies, had a perm tight enough to hold a dozen Bic pens, and was quite plump. The name tag on her bow blouse read CAROL ANNE, a double name I actually liked.

"I gonna take you right in, Mrs. Carter." She all but jumped from her seat to open the door for me. "You must be a very important patient."

"Why's that?" I said and followed her down the long hallway.

"Because you can't find neither hide nor hair of Dr. Ray on Fridays after four!"

"Oh, well, I'm just an old friend from a million years ago."

"That's so nice!" She stopped and turned back to me, whispering behind her hand. "He could use a friend, old or new, if you know what I mean?"

"I'll remember that," I said. Good Lord. Some people sure like to work their jaws, I thought.

I went into the examining room and put my purse on the chair next to the examining table and concluded it made absolutely no sense for me to perch myself up there like I was here for a Pap smear. Perish the thought! Almost immediately, the door opened and there stood Jonathan, in his white coat over his blue-and-white seersucker suit, white shirt, and adorable red foulard bow tie. The sight of him was so cute and wholesome, all the way down to his white bucks, that I laughed in delight.

"What's funny?" he said with a huge smile.

"Nothing! You just look so, so . . ."

"Madam, have you forgotten that this is the standard that sets the gentlemen of Charleston apart from the rest of the world?" He pulled back his jacket and snapped his skull-and-crossbones braces against his chest. "I wore these just for you."

"Wonderful!" I said and laughed, shaking my head. "Dr. Killer! You are too much!"

"Hmmm," he mused. "Now let's see that arm."

I held it out, and he carefully undid the Velcro fasteners and removed the cast. My arm was as white as a fish belly.

"I remember these freckles," he said.

"You do?" Now, why that remark sent my thermometer up is anybody's guess, but it had been a really long time since anyone said anything remotely personal to me. "I need a tan."

He smiled. "And I want an X-ray of this pretty little arm of yours. Let me call our tech." He picked up the phone and asked for Betty. "I'm pretty sure, just by the way you're moving, that you don't need the cast, but I want to be sure. Any discomfort?"

"Zero."

"Good sign."

Twenty minutes later the X-ray of my arm was on a light box and we were looking at it together.

"Clean break, no displacement . . . looks very good to me. I'd say you can safely dump the cast and sling. Just take it easy for a week or two-no handsprings, okay?"

"Gee, just when Cirque de Soleil called me back for a second audition? Rats."

He looked at me and chuckled. Unlike Wes, who rarely got my sense of humor.

"Want to go to the rooftop bar on East Bay and get a martini?"

"Why not?"

So just like that, I walked out of Jonathan's office with him, slingless and castless, deciding on the spot that there was nothing wrong with having one drink. Even if there was, I was doing it anyway.

CHAPTER 10.

Wes Isn't Happy So it was Sunday morning and I had a late tee time. I was relaxing, listening to my boy Sinatra and reading the paper, drinking my second cup of coffee, and the phone rings. Was it my lovely absentee wife? No, it was my daughter.

"Daddy? I need a huge favor! Please say yes!"

"Whaddya need, princess?"

"I need you to take Holly for a couple of hours. There's a huge open house this morning, and if I can sell this house, it could totally change my life."

I thought about it for a minute. First, I'd have to cancel my golf game, but so what? I probably play enough golf. Second, nobody understands the value of work more than I do. If she's got a chance to make some money, she should do it. Third, it would give me a chance to spend some time with my granddaughter, who's finally old enough now to talk to like a real person.

"Daddy? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm just thinking, that's all."

"Oh . . ."

"Okay, I'll cancel my golf game. You bring her over. I'll take her out to lunch or something."

Well, she must've been calling me from the car because as soon as I hung up with Harold, I heard her coming through the door.

"Pops!"

"Holly Doodle!" I called back and squatted to catch her. She broke into a tear, flying down the hall, and threw herself into my arms. I swung her around and planted her little feet back on the ground.

"Upside down!" she squealed, grabbing my hands and starting to walk up my legs in her sneakers-they had blinking lights in them-so she could do a backflip.