A Done Deal Read online

  “There’s no sense in it. We can’t live here.”

  “Kylie?”

  “Whatever Aislynn wants,” Kylie said.

  I hesitated, looking at the pristine front of the two-story brick townhouse. It was immaculate, but it was, perhaps, a little lacking in personality. “I know the two of you said you would prefer to stay on the south side of town. But have you considered looking in other areas? I can think of a few neighborhoods you might like better than this. You’d have a longer commute to work, but you might enjoy living there more.”

  The two of them looked at one another. “Kyle?” Aislynn said.

  Kylie shrugged. “I’m game. Never hurts to look. Did you have something in mind, Savannah?”

  “I’m hosting an open house for my broker this afternoon,” I said. “It’s in East Nashville, so on the east side of downtown instead of the south. But it’s right off Interstate 24, so you’d be in Brentwood in twenty minutes. And it’s more of a non-traditional neighborhood.”

  In fact, when the rejuvenation of East Nashville started some twenty years ago, it was the bachelors who first moved across the river and started renovating the old Victorian houses. And by ‘bachelors’ I mean the gay men. East Nashville still has a higher population of people living alternative lifestyles than any other part of town. There are restaurants and bars, organic grocery stores and home-made ice cream parlors, coffee shops and scooter stores there, and I thought Aislynn and Kylie would feel at home.

  “What kind of house is it?” Kylie wanted to know.

  I told her it was a Victorian cottage. “Ten foot ceilings, three fireplaces—including one in the master bedroom—updated kitchen and baths, city lot...”

  “What’s that?” Aislynn interrupted.

  “A city lot? Usually 50 feet by 150. Sometimes 45x150. Grid pattern. Numbered streets running north to south, named streets and avenues running east to west.”

  “Smaller than that monster yard at the other house?”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s go,” Aislynn said.

  I glanced at Kylie, who nodded. “We’ll follow you, Savannah.”

  “Sure,” I said, and headed for the Volvo. It wasn’t until I had my hand on the door handle that I realized I was standing next to Kylie’s car and not my own. “Oops.”

  She smiled. “No worries. Last time we got together, I started for yours before I realized it wasn’t mine.”

  “I’d rather have a different kind of car,” I confessed, passing her on my way to my own blue Volvo, “but I can’t afford to replace it right now.”

  “Why did you buy it if you didn’t like it?” Aislynn wanted to know, from the other side of the car.

  I slowed down to answer. “I didn’t. My ex-husband did.”

  And it wasn’t that I didn’t like it, exactly. It’s a nice car. But looking at it reminded me of Bradley, and I could do without the reminder of my failed marriage.

  “Must be a husband-thing,” Kylie said, opening her own door. “My ex bought this one, too.”

  “You’ve been married?”

  I must have sounded as surprised as I felt, because she grinned. “Youthful stupidity. I was twenty three and thought it was what I was supposed to do.”

  She closed the door and cranked the key in the ignition. I had more questions—how could she have been married? She was gay!—but the conversation was obviously over for now, so I hotfooted it over to my own Volvo and got in. As we rolled sedately out of the subdivision and headed up Nolensville Road towards town, I couldn’t help but remember my own reasons for marrying Bradley. Namely, I’d been twenty three and thought it was what I was supposed to do, too.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” I said when we were back in East Nashville, a mile or so from my apartment, standing in front of the Victorian cottage with Tim’s LB&A For Sale sign in the yard, “but why would you choose to get married? Didn’t you know that you were... um...”

  “Gay?” Kylie said. “To be honest, no. I knew I wasn’t getting a whole lot out of sex with guys, but I figured that was just because they were the wrong guys, you know?”

  I nodded. I hadn’t gotten a whole lot out of sex with Bradley, either.

  “Once I found my true love and married him, I thought it would be different.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  Kylie shook her head. “I loved him. I really did. But the sex wasn’t good and there was just no passion there, you know?”

  I nodded. I knew. There hadn’t been any passion between me and Bradley, either. And I’d thought I loved him, too.

  “There was this girlfriend I had,” Kylie said, “that I spent a lot of time with. I’d rather spend time with her than with Damian. I didn’t think anything of it, until one day he accused me of liking her better than I liked him. I told him it wasn’t true, but...” She shrugged.

  But it had been. “And that’s when you knew?”

  Kylie nodded. “That was the beginning. I thought about it for a while, and I realized he had a point. At first I tried telling myself I just liked her better. Personalities, you know. She never made me feel guilty the way Damian did. She was just easier to be with. But finally I had to admit that there was more to it than that. I felt more...” She hesitated, “alive when I was with her.”

  It was my turn to nod. I felt more alive when I was with Rafe, too. I felt more of everything, really, even the bad feelings. Like jealousy. Fear. Pain. And while I didn’t like the way I was feeling right now, whenever I thought of him and that woman he’d been with on Friday night, I knew I’d rather feel something—anything—than go through life like the sleepwalker I’d been with Bradley.

  “So I left him,” Kylie said. “It’s three years ago now. Last year I met Aislynn.” She reached for Aislynn’s hand, and the two of them smiled at each other. I smiled, too. It’s nice to see people in love.

  As long as they weren’t Rafe and his new girlfriend, anyway.

  “So this is it?” Aislynn said, looking at the house.

  I nodded. “This is it.” A circa 1900 Folk Victorian cottage, pale ochre with white and navy accents. Transom above the front door, side porch with gingerbread trim, tall, skinny windows with rounded tops.

  “I like it,” Aislynn said. “Can we go in?”

  “Of course.” I opened the lockbox and got the key. “Knock yourselves out.”

  Since I had to set up for the open house anyway, I figured I might as well start. So while they wandered and looked at everything, I started emptying the trunk of cookie trays and napkins and candles and fliers, all the while pondering what we’d just talked about.

  Kylie had been married. At twenty three, like me. Because she thought it was expected of her, like me. And it had been bad, like my marriage. So she’d left him, like me. And she’d gone on to shack up with Aislynn.

  See, I told myself, there were worse things I could have done than take up with Rafe Collier. I could have left Bradley and decided I was gay.

  I tried to picture taking Aislynn home to meet mother, but came up short. There was just no way to imagine the ensuing scene. Perhaps because I couldn’t think of Aislynn that way. Or someone else with her internal plumbing.

  I tried to picture taking Rafe home to meet mother, and I had no problems. I could see the scene in detail. It involved mother’s nostrils quivering as if she’d smelled something rancid, and Rafe being excruciatingly polite, with just a hint of that amusement that showed me he didn’t take it seriously, whatever it was.

  I pictured taking him upstairs to show him my old room in the mansion after the meeting with mother, and I pictured tumbling onto the bed with him. And then I remembered that the scenario I was imagining would never happen, and I put it out of my mind.

  “We like it,” Aislynn announced when they came back into the living room.

  I looked up from arranging chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies in a pleasing pattern on a round platter. “You do?”

  She nodded. “It’s great.”<
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  “We’d like to have a look at the neighborhood before we make any decisions, though,” Kylie added.

  “Of course. If you go four blocks in that direction—” I pointed through the wall, towards ten o’clock, “you’ll get to Five Points. There are restaurants and bars and an organic grocery store there. And a couple of art galleries and the post office. I live six or seven blocks that way.” I pointed at seven o’clock. “Due east is a park, two golf courses, a greenway, and a dog park.” Twelve o’clock. “Due west is downtown and the interstate.”

  They were both looking around, heads swiveling. “Wow,” Aislynn said. I shrugged. “So are you going to stay here, Savannah?”

  I nodded. “My open house starts in thirty minutes. I’ll just get ready and then wait for people to show up.”

  They exchanged a glance. “Are you expecting a lot of people?” Kylie asked.

  I switched two cookies around on the platter. “I’m sure there’ll be a few. This is a desirable area, and a nice house. And besides, the weather’s good. That always helps. People don’t like to go out in bad weather.” So yes, to answer the question they hadn’t asked, someone might stop by who’d fall in love with the house. If they were serious about it, it would be better not to drag their feet.

  They exchanged another glance. “We’ll call you,” Kylie said, towing Aislynn toward the front door.

  “I’ll be here.” I turned back to the cookies as the door closed behind them.

  As expected, I stayed busy after they left. The weather was nice, and so was the house. People came and went for two hours, traipsing through the rooms, asking questions about square footage and taxes, and making small-talk. I made everyone sign the visitor registry, both so I could tell Tim on Monday how many people had seen his listing, and because it’s sometimes possible to turn some of those visitors into clients. Gary Lee and Charlene Hodges, my first clients, had come from an open house. I’d spend the first part of Monday, after the weekly sales meeting, hand-writing notes to everyone who attended the open house, inviting them to call on me if I could be of further assistance. Email would have been a lot quicker, but mother always told me a hand-written note makes an impression, and I hoped mine would.

  At four twenty, I locked the door after the last stragglers—there are always a few—and by four forty, I had packed up all my stuff, made sure all the windows and doors were locked and all the lights were off, and I was in the Volvo on my way to Madison to see Carolyn Driscoll.

  Madison is one of the suburban areas that exploded in the 1950s, as people left the inner cities in droves. It’s a lovely, shady neighborhood full of winding roads and big properties with low-slung ranches, populated by older people who bought their houses new fifty years ago and younger people who inherited them from their parents. In fact, it looked a whole lot like Crieve Hall, except it’s on the north side of town instead of on the south.

  It wasn’t hard to find the Driscoll house, and not only because I’d seen a picture of it, but because Alexandra’s fire engine red Mazda Miata was parked outside. It’s an eye-catching car—Alexandra’s Sweet Sixteen birthday present from her mother just before Brenda died—and in this sedate neighborhood of well-maintained ranch houses and equally well-maintained Chryslers, it stood out like a beacon. I pulled the Volvo in behind it and got out.

  Alexandra didn’t, and when I took at closer look at the Miata, I saw that it was empty. She must have gotten here early and knocked on Carolyn’s door on her own. Hopefully Carolyn wasn’t some rabid axe-murderer who had Alexandra tied to a chair inside at this very moment.

  I hesitated for a moment between going to the front door—half a mile away, through the grass—or going up the driveway to the back door, where Carolyn surely did her own entering and exiting. The front door is usually reserved for company, so I should probably use that, but it would mean slogging through the yard in my pumps, and I didn’t feel like it. And besides, mother wasn’t here and would never know. I went to the back door and knocked.

  It took a minute, and then the door opened. I found myself face to face with a woman my mother’s age, with cropped gray hair and a handsome, if not precisely pretty, face.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Savannah Martin. I’m looking for Alexandra Puckett.” I tried a smile.

  She stepped back. “Come in.”

  I moved across the threshold, into a kitchen that was an almost exact replica of the one in the house on Winding Way. White glass fronted cabinets, granite counters, tile floor. In fact, the whole house had a similar look to it. Maybelle’s house was older by a few years, a 1940s cottage rather than a 1950s ranch, but Carolyn’s home was also built mostly from stone, with a parking area around back and a view of mature trees and a winding road through the front windows. I had assumed Maybelle had decorated the house on Winding Way, and maybe she had put her stamp on some of it, but it seemed the kitchen had been left over from when Carolyn was Harold’s wife.

  Alexandra was perched on a chair in the dining room, looking out of place in her black clothes with her raccoon makeup. “Hi, Savannah.”

  “Hi,” I said. “I thought you’d wait for me outside.”

  Alexandra shrugged. “Mrs. Driscoll came out when she saw the car. We got to talking.”

  “Have a seat,” Carolyn said, indicating the chair beside Alexandra. She walked around to the other side of the table while I sat. “Alexandra tells me you’re friends.”

  I glanced at Alexandra, who glanced back. “I guess we are.”

  “And you’re the one who found Brenda.”

  I nodded and swallowed. The memory of Brenda, lying there on the floor with her throat cut from ear to ear, still had the power to turn my stomach four months later.

  “And you want to ask me about Maybelle?” Her voice was calm, perfectly even, giving me no clue as to how she felt about her replacement.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, trying to feel my way forward.

  Carolyn grinned. “I don’t mind at all. The little tart stole my husband; I’ll tell you everything I know. Where do you want me to start?”

  I shot another look at Alexandra, and said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning? You were married to Harold Driscoll.”

  Carolyn nodded. “We married in our mid-twenties. It was just the two of us. We never had children—Harold had lazy swimmers—but we enjoyed being together. We saw the world, traveled a lot, experienced things we wouldn’t have been able to see and do if we’d had a couple of kids in tow. We had a good life.”

  “And then Maybelle showed up?”

  “Basically,” Carolyn said, her face darkening. “I guess it’s eight or nine years ago now. He met her at work. She needed help balancing her checkbook.” She snorted.

  “Maybelle?” She hadn’t struck me as someone who couldn’t add and subtract.

  “Oh, yes.” Carolyn nodded. “I thought Harold was smarter than that, but apparently not. In the end, he told me she was everything I wasn’t and he liked that she made him feel like he was in charge.”

  “I see.” And I did. Carolyn came across as a strong woman, someone who knew what she wanted and went after it, no questions asked. She and Harold had probably been equals in the relationship. Maybelle was a strong woman, who knew what she wanted and went after it... but she did it the classically female way. By subterfuge and fluttering eyelashes and a presumption of weakness. She had known exactly how to balance her checkbook, but she’d known that the way to a man’s heart isn’t through his stomach, it’s through the parts further south. His manhood. Appeal to a man’s vanity, and you’ll get him every time. Make him feel like a stud, and he’s yours.

  Yes, they teach that in finishing school, too. If not precisely in those terms.

  It was the same thing Shelby had done for Bradley, I realized, if in a slightly different way. Bradley’s and my sex life had been, for lack of a better word, poor. Bradley had blamed me, but it was certainly possible that he had blamed himself too, without
articulating it. If Shelby came along and had multiple orgasms every time they made love, it was no wonder he preferred her to me.

  For a second my thoughts slipped sideways to Rafe and the new girlfriend. What did she have that I didn’t? I’d certainly never made him feel inadequate in bed.

  And then I remembered what I’d done, or at least what he thought I’d done: I had kept it to myself that I was pregnant and he’d believed I didn’t want his baby. Talk about making a guy feel emasculated.

  But thinking about that right at the moment wasn’t helpful to the discussion. I shook off the distraction and focused back on Carolyn. “What did you think of her?”

  “What did I think?” She had gray eyes, and they were the color and consistency of rock right at that moment. “I thought my husband was too smart to fall for such a scheming little witch. I thought I didn’t have to worry, that he’d see right through her. But in the end, it turned out that he was ruled by his gonads, same as every other man. I wanted to rip her face off.”

  Naturally. But I was more interested in her impressions beyond the obvious.

  “So you thought she was playing him?”

  “Hell, yes!” Carolyn said, “Whoever heard of a thirty-three year old woman who couldn’t balance a checkbook, for God’s sake? Of course she was playing him.”

  “Why?”

  My question brought her up short for a second, and she stopped, almost mid-rant, to stare at me.

  “Did he have money? Influence? Something else she wanted?”

  Carolyn blinked. “He was a middle-aged accountant with thinning hair and a liking for Indian food. Nothing special.”

  Except to Carolyn, I assumed. “What about the life insurance policy?”

  “What life insurance policy?” Carolyn said.

  “The million dollar policy that paid out after he died.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that. He had a policy while we were married, just like I did. Two hundred and fifty thousand. But when we split up, I cancelled mine, and obviously he cancelled his too. Or, if you’re right, he changed the beneficiary to his new wife and upped the payout to a million dollars.”