The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

  "You know what I mean," I said, chipping off a flake of my pale-pink nail polish. Nervous habit. I could never keep a manicure longer than a day. "It's our last Palmetto High Mardi Gras. Our last Rex Freeman Mardi Gras. Next year, who knows where everyone will be. Things could be totally different." I ran my fingernails up the back of Mike's neck. "Don't you ever feel like this whole year is one long last time?"

  Mike squeezed my thigh. "If Rex heard you talk like this, he'd throw another Mardi Gras party tomorrow. I promise, senior year at Palmetto does not mark the end of things." He looked in the rearview mirror. "Isn't that right Balmer? How you doing back there, Balmer?"

  "Sick," J.B. groaned. "Very sick."

  "Don't you dare throw up back there, Balmer," I turned around to threaten. "Here," I said to Mike. "Pull in up there and let's park."

  "At the church?" Mike asked, looking nervous. Poor guy, he got weirded out enough having to be there once a week.

  "Why not?" I shrugged. "It's not like the minister's doing drunk-driving patrol at one in the morning."

  "I'm not going to church today, Mom," Justin moaned from the back. He was totally out of it.

  "Did he say what I think he said?" Mike asked.

  I started cracking up. I tried to imagine the tone of voice J.B.'s mother might take when she caught him doing something against her strangely lenient rules. Most of the week, Mrs. Balmer was probably too focused on counting the money in her boob-job piggy bank to give much thought to what her children did, but she always did drag her boys to church on Sundays. There was nothing more gauche than being seen at the pews without the arm candy you'd spawned.

  "Well, Justin-honey," I said, channeling his mother's thick molasses drawl, "I think you got some sins that need atonin' for. What better place is there than the house of God?"

  "Nat," Mike warned.

  "I'm just screwing with him," I laughed. "Trust me, he won't remember any of this tomorrow."

  Mike pulled into a spot near the chapel and turned off the car. We got out and opened the door to the backseat.

  "Heave ho," Mike said, and we lifted J.B. up again and carried him to the lawn.

  "Let's park him where they set up the nativity scene around Christmas," I said. "He'll look just like a little baby Jesus."

  "No," J.B. whined, still sounding really loopy. "Mom, I can't go to church dressed like this. I look like Grandma with a hangover."

  By then, Mike was laughing so hard he could hardly carry his end of the load, but I held onto J.B.'s fishnet-covered ankles and was struck by a brilliant beyond brilliant idea.

  He was half-comatose and still totally consumed by the thought of his reputation being on the line because of his slutty costume choice.

  Now whose fault was that?

  I looked at the lipstick, and the feather boa, and the one patent-leather high heel he still had on. And suddenly, I saw them all in a whole new light. Sunlight. It rose pretty early Sunday mornings in the Bible Belt. And everyone who was anyone went to church--including certain Palmetto Court ballot counters. Tracy had said some of them were already questioning J.B.'s candidacy for Prince. And Baxter had said J.B. was asking to get punked showing up at the party dressed in drag.

  "Mike," I said slowly and quietly, "how funny would it be to leave him here?"

  "Uh, not very," Mike said, finally done laughing.

  "Think about it." I sank to the ground beside him and started running my fingers through his hair. "Perfect little Justin Balmer, exposed as a cross dresser?"

  Mike looked unconvinced.

  "Come on," I coaxed. "We haven't pulled one of our pranks in so long. He'll probably wake up when the pastor gets here first thing in the morning, anyway. He'll just have to hitch home in those clothes, that's all."

  "But . . ." Mike started to protest as I kissed along his jawline. "Well, he does live all the way out in West Palmetto," he said.

  "Exactly," I said, feeling the momentum build behind my plan. "And do you really want to drive that far when you've been drinking?"

  Mike shrugged and gave me the smallest twitch of a smile. I had him. I knew it.

  "I guess it'd be sort of funny. As long as we leave him the water and make sure he has our numbers in his phone."

  "Totally," I agreed. "We wouldn't want to take it too far." I looked over to make sure J.B. was still out. Check.

  Back in the car, I grabbed the water bottle and reached into my bag for my lipstick. It wasn't quite as flashy as the color J.B. had been wearing earlier, but I figured it was the least I could do to freshen up his face before we ditched him.

  The car was humming. Mike turned around from the driver's seat.

  "Babe, I'm getting freaked out," he said. "Hanging out alone, drunk, at church. It's spooky. Hurry up, okay? I'll pull the car around."

  "Sure." I nodded, all sympathetic girlfriend. "Be right back."

  I was about to shut the door when something else caught my eye. It was a reel of the woven white rope that the Kings used to keep their boats tied up at the marina. Hmm, I didn't see why it couldn't be used to tie up other things. Even though Mike had agreed to this because he thought J.B. would wake up and run away before the first church bells rang, it might be funnier to give the kid just a little bit of a handicap. Everybody knew: What goes around comes around, and it was long past J.B.'s turn to feel powerless. I slipped the rope in my pocket and jogged back to the lawn.

  He was still sprawled where we'd left him, his head resting on the base of a Palmetto. I always thought the creche looked so ridiculous in this little grove of palm trees imported from south Florida. Now I was about to add another eyesore to the church grounds.

  I looked back to make sure Mike really had pulled the car around. The taillights glowed from around the corner. Good. Odds were he would not be cool with the whole bondage thing. It was funny; if J.B. were awake, he might have been exactly the kind of guy who could get into being tied up. As I looped the rope around his wrists--which was kind of hard to do wearing these gloves--his eyes flicked open again.

  A slight smirk spread across his face.

  "What are you up to, girl?" he whispered.

  I leaned in, so my lips were right up against his.

  "No good," I said, tightening the knot around the base of the tree. "Now be a good boy and go back to sleep."

  "Okay," he nodded woozily, closing his eyes again.

  I stifled a laugh. That might have been the first time J.B. ever obeyed me so blindly. I dashed another coat of lipstick on his mouth. What else did he need to complete his look? Another strand of beads? A well-placed condom? Before I knew it, I was rifling through his pockets for a piece de resistance.

  Jackpot.

  My hand closed around an orange prescription bottle, which I wrestled from his jeans. Hmmm . . . J.B.'s secret fun pills strewn strategically around his passed-out body on the grass? Okay, maybe that was going too far.

  I weighed the pill bottle in my hand and glanced down at his face. His eyes looked so peaceful shut. But he wasn't at peace at all; he was just so far gone that he wasn't going to remember any of this in the morning.

  The weird thing was, I realized, I wanted him to remember. I wanted him to feel the embarrassment of knowing I was behind all this. He may have started the feud, but I was going to have the last laugh. I slipped the pill bottle into the pocket of Mike's tuxedo jacket.

  "Maybe this will help jog your memory in the morning," I said, patting the top of his head. "Sweet dreams."

  CHAPTER Seven

  NOTHING IN HIS LIFE BECAME HIM LIKE THE LEAVING OF IT

  At the edge of sleep, I am waiting in my coronation tiara and floor-length backless ecru gown. I am standing at the threshold of the Scot's Glen Golf and Country Club, waiting for the clop of horses' hooves to round the corner and take me to my Prince.

  The moment comes so quickly, so easily, I can hardly remember the announcement of our win. None of this bothers me. It's going to be this moment in the carriage where everything
begins.

  When the horse-drawn buggy finally appears around the corner, it is even grander and glitzier than I imagined. The carriage itself is opulent, shaped like a giant silver Easter egg, and decorated with white roses and loops of twinkling lights. Even the jockey wears a white riding costume, and when he hops down from his perch, he bows at me and opens the carriage door.

  Surprising myself, I begin to run. And in the dream, my white stiletto heels don't sink into the green of the golf course. My ladies-in-waiting don't disdain my public display of emotion. I run toward Mike, toward the celebration of our future. This carriage ride will be the one on which all future Palmetto Court carriage rides are based.

  "M'lady." The jockey beams at me, kissing my white-gloved hand.

  "Thank you." I smile demurely, nod my head, and let him hoist me up to my seat.

  Poof.

  A waft of smoke obscures my vision of the carriage's interior. And then I hear a voice:

  "Change of plans, Princess."

  Coughing, I wave my hands through the mist, and when the air inside the carriage clears, my jaw drops. Justin Balmer is sitting next to me where Mike is supposed to be.

  Oh, it had been such a good dream until now. His black tux and emerald-green bowtie feel like they're filling up the bulk of the carriage, making me choke and making him seem bigger than life.

  When he smiles at me, his green eyes bore into mine.

  "Didn't I leave you at the church?" I ask, gripping the seat.

  "Oh, you'll find me there again." J.B. smiles cryptically. "But I was too tied up to be much fun, and I wanted to give you some advice."

  I shake my head. "News flash: We won Palmetto, and you lost. Try offering up your words of wisdom to those more pitiful than you--if you can find anyone."

  "Nope," he says. "This message is for you."

  His tone makes me look up at him. His mouth is set in a straight line, but his eyes are lighter, almost laughing. In a strange way, they seem to be the only thing alive about his face. They're mesmerizing and familiar at the same time.

  "What are you doing? " I ask.

  "Smiling," he says, "with my eyes. Remember?"

  Even in the dream, my mind rolls back in time. Something about his face jars an early memory: J.B. lining up all the freshman girls before our first cotillion. He was flirtatious, trying to get everyone's eyes to "pop" seductively while our mouths were closed politely. As he moved along the row, all the other girls were giggling. I was sweating through my high-necked oxford dress. Justin stopped in front of me, and then he was the one who froze. You look familiar. Have we met?

  "You still need to learn how to do it," J.B. says, holding my stare. His green eyes are potent, even as his skin goes pale and his lips turn blue.

  "You can't be here," I say finally, pulling aside the white drape curtain to look out the carriage window. I am getting claustrophobic in my carriage. "You have to go. Mike's going to show up any minute."

  J.B. shakes his head, looking tired all of a sudden. And then I feel another draft of air--this time, it's freezing cold--when Justin breaks our gaze. I shiver and my skin breaks out in goose bumps.

  "Like I said," he almost whispers, "there's been a change of plans."

  Then he leans back in his seat and slowly closes his eyes.

  "Natalie Carolina Hargrove!"

  My own eyes shot open at the sound of my mom hollering up from the kitchen the next morning. I shook my head to loosen--no, to banish--the dream from my mind, but I was alarmed to find my skin still flecked with goose bumps. I pulled the covers up over my head and burrowed back into the pillow, just as my mom yelled:

  "The Dukes are here. Get downstairs and eat breakfast with your future family."

  Kill me now. My future family? That was a stretch, even for Mom. Maybe she was going to insist on going through with this unfortunate engagement, but there was no way I was ever going to consider Richard Duke or his porcine daughter Darla any kin of mine.

  "Not hungry," I hollered back at my mom. If I had to be dragged to church with the Dukes and held under Palmetto-wide scrutiny, there was a limit to the additional amount of QT that I could sanely agree to spend with them. I knew breakfast with Mom's latest capital venture would mentally bankrupt me, and I needed to be on today when we pulled up to the church.

  "Not good enough," my mom answered. She'd cracked open my bedroom door and poked her curler-set auburn head inside. "Can't you make the littlest effort?" she asked. "For me? " Mom turned down her bottom lip, an overdone pout made worse by the mauve matte lipstick she'd slathered on.

  "I thought you said we were going to church," I said, taking in the rest of my mom's costume. Her highlighted bangs had been swept up, up, and up a little more in a bouffant that displayed her mastery of the tease 'n' spray, a favorite style technique among Mom's white-zin-drinking circle. Her blue eyes were lined with a silvery shadow that extended into graceful--if gaudy--cat eyes. And her red-and-white polka-dot dress hugged her curves so snugly that I could see her doing that special breathing (short quick puffs of air, a la days of corset-wearing) that she thought no one could notice. She looked great--for a Vaudeville number. But poor, sweet, trailer-transplanted Mom was still worlds away from being Palmetto pew-appropriate.

  "Of course, we're going to church, honey," Mom drawled, not surprisingly oblivious. "Right after you drag your hungover self down to a nice healthy breakfast with the Dukes."

  I groaned. Since I hadn't yet moved from the bed, I wasn't sure about the degree to which my hangover was going to debilitate me--and I did not want my mother to witness that dreaded roll out of bed. After we tucked J.B. into his own rendition of a nativity scene at the church last night, Mike and I had swung by the Pitch 'n' Putt to pick up one more bottle of bubbly on the ride home. The image of J.B. waking up smothered by his boa was just too toast-worthy to go uncelebrated. But now, with Mom hovering over me, I got the feeling I was about to pay a high price for ending the night with such low-cost champagne.

  I hobbled over to my mirror to survey the damage.

  Ohhh, it hurt. My hair carried the distant memory of last night's ringlets, but now they were splayed in tangled chunks around my head. The glue from my fake eyelashes had left sticky blobs along my eyelids, and my lips were puffy and cracking.

  "Well, you certainly smell like you had a good time last night," my mom said, holding her nose faux daintily. She sighed. "Guess your momma taught you something right."

  Mom was a former Cawdor County beauty queen and a real-life beauty-school dropout. When she finally got the nerve to quit her waitressing job, Mom started working part-time at the Charleston morgue, where she made up corpses whose families were too despondent to put up a fight. But in the past few weeks, her man-du-month had filled her head with the idea to expand her market to the living. She'd even gone as far as running business cards bearing her maiden name with the ingenious, and likely unintentionally, backhanded slogan:

  Dotty Perch: You'll never look better.

  Suffice it to say, Mom's little entrepreneurship had yet to really take off, but after seventeen years of being the only living recipient of her advice on how to doll-yourself-up-proper-so-you-can-get-a-man, I fully supported Mom's quest for a more receptive clientele.

  Life with my kind of single mother--that is, the kind who's never actually single for long--is one unending flip-flop between parent/child and BFF. When I got my first kiss--age twelve, back corner of the bait-and-tackle shop, and yes, right next to the worms--Mom wanted to hear more dirty details than any of my friends at school.

  Unfortunately, she assumed my interest in her sex life was mutual. There was a stretch of time when Mom never failed to climb into bed with me when she got dropped off the morning after a date. She'd snuggle close and fall asleep, saying she was so glad we were besties. Smoothing out the eye shadow gathered in a wet crease above her eye, I never had the heart to groan audibly enough to wake her up.

  This is all to say that whenever Mom ac
tually shifted into stern parent mode and tried, for example, to slave-drive me down to breakfast, it was hard for me to take her seriously. Sometimes I wished she could follow my philosophy about interacting with Binky. Just pick what side of the line you're on and stick with it.

  Now Mom picked up a brush from my vanity and ran it through the rat's nest on top of my head. "You want a spray 'n' tease, baby? I always find that the smell of aerosol just zips the hangover right out of me."

  "That's okay, Mom. I'm just going to jump in the shower."

  "Okay, babylove," she kissed my forehead. "But don't forget--"

  "Family breakfast, I know," I finished.

  Mom gave me her relieved double blink and started for the door.

  "Before you go," I said, flipping through the hangers in my closet. "I think I've got a cardigan in here that will match your dress perfectly." I pulled out the white sweater that I'd worn to dinner with the Kings and slipped it around my mother's bare shoulders. "Perfect," I said, "for church."

  A half hour later, I slumped down the stairs in my variation of church attire. I was still hungover, still grouchy about being dragged to a meal with the Dukes, but at least I knew that unlike Mom, I was dressed the part of Charleston's churchgo ing elite. Today I'd chosen a navy oxford shirtdress, peep-toe flats, pearls (obviously), and patterned stockings. I made a mental note to remind Mom to slip on a pair of stockings, too--even though I knew she'd resist because Richard "liked her legs unfettered."

  Richard Duke. Best known in Charleston as the moneybags behind the successful florist shop, the Duke of Jessamines. Lesser known as the Dick, which Mike and I called him behind his back . . . and sometimes under our breath to his face.

  I could smell the overpowering fragrance of the lilies he always brought my mother (not as chivalrous when they're free, Dick). I could hear the soulless box set jazz collection that he always insisted on playing.

  "Dotty," he was saying to my mother, "you've outdone yourself with these cheese grits. Can I help myself to thirds?"

  I could see Mom beaming when I stepped into the kitchen.

  "You know, Natalie's father never liked them," she said. Her eyes met mine. "May he rest in peace."

  I blanched at the phrase, thinking back to Dad's unwelcome--and still unanswered--text. Even though my mother said it every time she mentioned my poor, deceased father, this time it sounded strangely foreboding. I squinted at her. Did she know Dad was out of jail? Had he reached out to her, too?