"Every time I talk to you, you sound a little better!" he said.

"It's because I'm hearing your voice," I said. "Best medicine in the world!"

"Are you, like, up and around and driving and going to the grocery store?"

"Only if I want to eat," I said.

"Wait a second here; doesn't Charlotte go shopping for you?"

"Only on the first day back," I said.

"Oh, and now she can't because she's too busy showing houses that she never sells?"

"Oh, hell's bells, Harlan, she has her own life, you know? Anyway, you don't have to worry about me. Danette's here all the time, and we're a long way from starving. Believe me."

"Well, I can't be there because I have to work, but if I could, I'd be there and cheer you up. And PS, I don't see why you can't convalesce in Charleston. Lord, here I am in this big old house all by my lonesome, except for my ghosts and my little darling! I'd love to have you here to fuss over!"

Harlan had an adorable little dog, Miss Jo or sometimes he called her Miss JP, named for the aristocrat who had once owned his home. Josephine Pinckney was her name, and Harlan's historic house was as incredible as Josephine Pinckney's life had supposedly been.

"There's nothing to fuss over. I'm fine, really I am."

"Well, we're just going to have to find an excuse for you to come for a visit, and I think I might have just the ticket. Did I tell you about my summer plans?"

"Nope."

"I can't believe I didn't tell you! But then I've been so focused on your accident and all . . ."

"For heaven's sake, Harlan! Tell me!"

"Well, it seems that I have been asked to lead a group of trustees and donors through the ancient art and ruins of Italy for a month."

"A month?"

"Yes. It's a pretty posh trip-we're staying at the Gritti Palace in Venice and the Hassler in Rome-first class everything. I haven't been there since Leonard and I went to Carnival in Venice years ago. I'm superexcited."

"No kidding! Who wouldn't be? It sounds like the experience of a lifetime!"

"It should be. I wish you would come with me. I promise you'd have a better time than you did in Scotland."

"Very funny. Listen, you could take me waterskiing on the river Styx and I'd have a better time than I did in Scotland. Anyway, I can just see me walking out of here for a whole month. Wes would die."

"Oh, please. No, he wouldn't. Seriously, Les, I'm not leaving until the eleventh of June. So I'm thinking of giving myself a bon voyage party. Why don't you come down and spend the weekend? And maybe Miss Jo would like to see her auntie?"

Miss Jo, my niece in question, was a three-year-old female Havanese with more personality and spirit than you would ever expect to find in a dog that was not in the entertainment business. She had an elaborate bed in every room of Harlan's house and a wardrobe to suit every occasion. With accessories. Harlan and Miss Jo went everywhere together. She probably would be desolate with him gone for a month. If I actually went to his party, maybe I could bring her back to Atlanta with me. Holly would adore having a little dog to play with.

"Well, we'll see," I said. "Let me know when your plans are all set."

Harlan and I hung up, and I walked around the house like a zombie. It dawned on me that I hadn't dusted in a while. My conscience was rattled a little by that so I went to the kitchen and took out my bucket of cleaning supplies, even though my arm was still in a cast and a sling. I wondered what Wes would say if I wanted to go to Italy with Harlan? What would he do if I was gone for a month? He could hire a full-time housekeeper, but would she know to rotate his undies? The towels? The dishes? I didn't know whether to laugh imagining Wes's frustration or cry my eyes out because this was my life.

After I gave the living room a straightening up as best I could, I wandered into his study with a dust cloth intending to put a spritz of lemon wax on his bookshelves and desk. I was dusting away when I noticed that one of his lower cabinets was unlocked. They held his personal files, and for whatever his stupid reason was, he kept those cabinets bolted like Fort Knox. Part of me was curious to see what was in there and another part of me-the she-devil who lives in all women-wanted to see if he was hiding anything. I mean, why were the doors always locked?

I pulled out a folder from the crammed drawers. Its contents were articles he had clipped from various magazines and newspapers regarding different golf courses, golf clubs, and golf pros. On the one hand I thought, He really ought to widen his horizons-you know, what about taking a wine-tasting course or something? What about sports cars? And on the other hand I thought, Well, at least he knows what he likes.

I replaced that file and thumbed through another huge one. This one was from our bank where we had various accounts, and it held statements going back to 1988. Boring, I thought, but for some inexplicable reason, I pulled out the most recent one and opened it carefully.

How are we doing, Wes? I thought.

For decades Wes had been tucking away money for our retirement, even though his company offered generous retirement benefits. Every year his company gave him stock options and he'd been exercising them and then telling me he wouldn't sell any stock, not one share, because you never knew what horrors we might find in old age. It was true that 80 percent of the average person's health-care expenses were spent in the last eighteen months of the individual's life. At least that was what Wes said and I believed him. Back in the eighties, every now and then he would say to me, Oh, by the way, I took my bonus money and bought Apple in the IPO for practically nothing a share. Or he'd mention, I snagged a huge block of Microsoft today in a killing! Or Motorola, or Nokia, or Pfizer.

Whatever, I'd think, and I'd diaper a baby or drag a garbage can to the curb or defrost a pot roast. He may as well have been speaking Chinese.

Wes was always very prudent, and not that I had much of a choice, I supported it. Who could argue with prudence? Besides, until I had my accident, I could not have cared less what he did with his money, even though there was barely enough to go around. I recognized that he had some primal need to have control of the family finances, which I thought was ridiculous but not worth fighting about. Now suddenly, post-Edinburgh, I was feeling that his control was maniacal, and I resented his secrecy.

I decided to open the envelope. I wanted to see for myself how our little nest egg was doing. Then I had the breath knocked out of me. To my utter and complete astonishment, it showed a portfolio balance of over twenty-two million dollars at current market value. What? That couldn't be right. I felt my blood pressure drop and thought I might faint. At first I was positive I was reading it wrong, so I took my reading glasses and planted them on my nose, clucking to myself about losing my eyesight and my mind at the same time. I sat down at his desk and counted the zeros and rechecked the decimal point at least ten times. I was no math whiz, but I began to understand what I was reading. It read two two comma zero zero seven comma three one six point two four. What in the world? How could this be? Why didn't I know this? I knew he was buying stocks and putting money in a fund now and then but twenty-two million dollars?

On that day and in that very moment, the compliant little lamb I used to be died.

It dawned on me like an atomic blast. I didn't know about it because Wes didn't want me to know about it. And why wouldn't he want me to know? The immediate answer to that, one that made any sense at all, was that Wes was a miserly bastard who didn't even trust his wife of thirty years to know what he was worth. I was pissed, like my momma used to say, in purple, paisley, and puce. Pissed big-time. Here I was, dusting his office with my arm in a sling because he would only let me have a housekeeper once a month. Here I was driving used cars and watching every penny and worrying about money my whole married life while he was sitting on an insane fortune.

But wait. My heart started to race. How had he come to acquire such an enormous amount of money? Was it stolen? Was Wes in trouble? I could tell no one. I didn't want to be an accessory to a crime. It was obvious to me that Wesley had committed some kind of terrible robbery and eventually he was going to be found out and have to go to jail. Decent people didn't come by that kind of money honestly. It just wasn't possible. Was he selling drugs? Was he an arms trader? Suddenly I was ashamed. How powerful was his need to hoard and why? Why would he risk his reputation and his freedom this way? It was a sickness; that much was certain. Keeping a secret of this magnitude was surely going to eat me alive. I didn't know what to do. I stuck the envelope in my sling and closed his cabinet door. It automatically locked.

Then I looked around his office and our living room and the dining room. The wall-to-wall carpets had been cleaned so many times they barely had any nap left. The dining room furniture was cheap looking. Our living room sofa was from another century, and our mattress was at least twenty years old. The curtains were faded. The only room in the house that looked halfway decent was the kitchen, and Wes had raised so much hell about the cost of the renovation it wasn't worth it to ask to redecorate anything else. But if that money was legitimately ours, why were we living this way? It had to be stolen.

The next day I went to Bloomingdale's and bought a dress to wear to the spring dance that weekend. I was still so confused and nervous that I bought the darn dress at full price, something I had not done in years, and I put it on the credit card I was to use only in case of an emergency. It was a black knit tank dress and a little jacket with pretty buttons. I was so upset that I had spent so much money that I bought shoes and a handbag. Then to top it all off, I made an appointment for a facial and a blowout. Wes was going to kill me. Too bad, Wes, resourceful as I was, I couldn't blow my hair out with one arm.

Saturday night arrived before I had a chance to think about it and there we were at the Piedmont Driving Club sitting at a table for ten. There were Cornelia and Harold, Lisette and Paolo, Wes and me, and two other couples about whom the casual observer might say, "Oh! Aren't those men nice to take their granddaughters to the club?" These were not granddaughters but man-eaters.

Cornelia and Lisette were carefully avoiding any direct conversation with me. Ever since our ladies' room chat, they were less congenial.

After dinner, all the boys went outside to smoke cigars, Cornelia and Lisette were drinking their third cosmos, and I was still sipping my first glass of wine. The other two were sipping their second dirty martinis, comparing their diamonds and how they spent their new husband's money on lingerie, day spas, and shopping sprees in New York. And it seemed that everyone had a Brazilian bikini wax except me. When did pubic hair go out of fashion? I missed that memo.

Lisette said too loudly, "Paolo said he had the best time in Atlantic City!"

"Don't you worry about all those hookers?" Cornelia said.

"Nah. Paolo said he would never, ever sleep with a hooker."

He didn't need to, I wanted to say, he had one in-house.

"Yeah, right. And you believe him? What about you, Les?"

"Wes hasn't been to Atlantic City in years."

"That's what you think." Cornelia giggled, leaned into Lisette, and said over the music, "Shhh! See that girl at our table? That Tamara whatever her name is? She used to work for an escort service."

"No!" said Lisette. "No way!"

"Word!" said a very indiscreet Cornelia and fist bumped Lisette. "Saw her on the Internet."

Never mind why Cornelia was surfing escort services on the Internet-probably visiting old friends.

The winds suddenly shifted, and I could smell trouble. I saw Tamara's expression change as she stared a hole through Cornelia. Her friend, Sasha, perked up as well.

"What about the other one?" Lisette said.

"Girls!" I said, knowing these other two were about to explode.

"Big ho," Cornelia said and burst out laughing.

Well, that was it. All hell broke loose. Never mind the club rules, a loud catfight-albeit a brief one-ensued. Cornelia and Lisette were on their feet and the other girls took off their shoes. Tamara and Sasha began to come at Lisette and Cornelia with the obvious intention of trying to stab them in the eyes with their spike heels. Cornelia, who was all muscle, grabbed Sasha with the long hair and yanked on it for all she was worth, coming away with a handful of extensions. Lisette threw her drink in Tamara's eyes, and then Tamara slapped Lisette across the face. Sasha kicked Cornelia in the stomach, which was quite the acrobatic feat given the confines of her outfit. I was so shocked and it all seemed to be happening so fast, all I could do was inhale! Finally, I jumped up and got the attention of the captain of our table and said, "Get my husband! He's on the terrace with Mr. Stovall and Mr. Ferretti!"

There was hair on the floor; vodka, olives, and glasses of iced water were flying through the air; chairs were overturned; and a lot of mascara was running down all their faces. The next thing I knew they had pulled the tablecloth from the table, sending plates and flowers and glasses all over the floor. Cornelia was doubled over in pain, and Lisette was still at it, giving Sasha a solid punch in her jaw. Shrieking and well-composed guests recoiled, gasping in horror and scurrying away like mice.

"In my life, I've never seen anything so disgraceful!" said Lynn Bagnal, notorious for her gorgeous pearls and perfect thank-you notes.

Her husband, Scott, the president of the Board of Trustees, was heard to exclaim, "Why, this is the most disturbing thing I know of since McIntosh called Button Gwinnett out to the Field of Honor in 1777!"

"Ladies! Please!" someone said.

"Please! Let's stop this right now!" another man said.

There would be fines levied, memberships would be placed in jeopardy, and Lord only knows what other kinds of consequences would arise. I could see Paolo and Harold's names on the Wall of Shame bulletin board. This club meant everything to them. Despite the influx of Barbies, the club itself was very conservative. In my peripheral vision, I saw Harold swoop in and grab Cornelia by the arm just as Paolo grabbed Lisette. Wes was huffing and puffing, bringing up the rear, picking up the overturned chairs in his path.

"What happened here? I demand to know what happened here!" he said to me.

"Why don't you ask them?" I said, pointing to Cornelia and Lisette with my good arm.

"You know I hate this kind of thing, Les. It's deplorable."

"It's also deplorable for you to go to Atlantic City and cavort with God knows who and not tell me!" I said this quietly and evenly. I was pretty certain no one heard me but him.

"What?" He was clearly surprised. "That has nothing to do with this! This is our club and you're supposed to set a good example!"

"Wesley? Number one, I am not a babysitter; two, I'm not stooping to their level; and three, I had and want nothing to do with it. It's not my problem! Take it up with them."

I turned to get my bag with every intention of leaving.

"Where are you going?" he said.

"I think I've had enough, Wes. Enough of you, your friends, their asinine wives and their infantile behavior. I've had enough of this whole circus to last me for a long, long while."

"We're not leaving yet," he said. "I can't abandon my friends with this mess!"

"Well, you sure didn't have a problem abandoning me in Edinburgh, did you?"

"That was different, Les."

I got very close to his face and said, "Really? Shove it up your ass, Wesley Albert Carter IV. I'm leaving."

And I did. I could feel Wes's fury burning holes in my back as I walked away. I had defied him and I had defied him in the club with his friends theoretically looking on. The truth was that Paolo and Harold were definitely going to be occupied with restoring order and dignity to the remainder of the evening. Maybe they'd take their silly wives in hand and punish them with a big time-out between them and their black American Express cards.

It would never occur to Paolo or Harold that I might walk out on Wes. Not in a million years. I had never done anything like that before. I was Leslie, the Good Wife. The one who never complained too much. The one who let Wesley do exactly what he wanted, no questions asked. The one who seemed happy with what little tokens Wes threw her way. Good old Leslie. We were Wesley and Leslie-wasn't that precious? Well, I wasn't feeling precious then and might never feel precious again.

Did Wes follow me? No, he did not. This fact did not make me angry. It made me deeply sad. It was another affirmation that it was more important to Wes that he call the shots than it was to explain to me how he wound up in Atlantic City without my knowledge or to understand the depth of my fury for once in our married life. Because I left, Wesley would say I had some nerve, that just because the other girls didn't know how to behave themselves, I shouldn't give into my emotions and throw a hissy fit in public. Well, I'd be ready for him if he did say that. I had not thrown a hissy fit or any kind of fit at all. I had just let him know calmly and politely that I knew he was a liar and that I wasn't going to be held responsible for the juvenile behavior of his friends' wives. It was absurd.

I stood on the portico of the club and waited in the night air, which was blessedly cool and not too terribly humid. The doorman had called for a taxi for me. I smiled at him and he said, "Nice night, isn't it, Mrs. Carter?" I think I said something like, "Yes, you can feel summer in the air!"

Strangely enough, I was composed. I felt like a gracious adult woman, sophisticated enough and savvy enough to know when it was time to say Stop! No More! So what if I was wearing St. John with Ferragamos with a lowish heel instead of some skintight strapless tube with spike heels that looked like it all came from a catalog for pole dancers? My whole outfit was beautiful. To me and to other women who wanted to look like a lady it was elegant and beautiful.

I was sick to death with feeling bad about not being some hot number with a fake tan, straight hair, and a bald you-know-what. (I still don't understand that last one.) Honestly! Going forward, this world of Barbie wives would only be my life if I allowed it to be my life and I already knew I was done. The door on that entire part of my life was closing, and for no good reason and every good reason it was suddenly fine with me.

I rolled down the window and let the night air play havoc with my fifty-dollar blowout. I felt liberated. It felt very, very good. The taxi driver must have seen me smiling in his rearview mirror.

He said, "Fresh air feels good, huh?"

"Sure does," I said.

"Dull party at the club?" he said.

"Anything but!" I said. "Just not for me, that's all."

"I see," he said.

"Well, it used to be, but not anymore."

"I see," he said again.

My driver was smart enough to know some kind of foolishness was afoot and polite enough not to pry. Sometimes taxi drivers loved to regale you with stories demonstrating the accumulation of their lifelong gathering of wisdom, wisdom gained by hearing and seeing every imaginable thing in the world come to pass right there in their cab. In their minds, all humanity winds up in a taxi at one point or another. Maybe it did.

"Yeah, things change," I said.

He said, "My momma used to say the more things change, the more they stay the same."

I had absolutely no idea how that philosophical nugget applied to my situation.

Then he added, "Me? I'd rather stay home with the wife and watch Dancing with the Stars."

Now that made perfect sense. In the strangest and most humorous way, it actually did.

CHAPTER 7.