Page 99 of The Night the Lights Went Out
That brings me to this edition’s Southernism: “One day you’re the peacock, and the next you’re the feather duster.” It’s natural to have a turn of fortune—people change jobs, move towns, lose at poker. It happens to everybody. We’ve all been the peacock or the feather duster at different points in our lives. The good thing about bad times is that’s when you’re able to tell who the good people in your life are. Those are the people who will stick by your side even when you lose your looks or your bank account dips into the red.
Which is why our recent tragedy made me think of this particular Southernism. Because I would bet my last dollar that I know who’s responsible. And to that person, let me say this: Right now you’re the peacock, strutting about allowing people to admire you in all your perfection. You think you’re untouchable, but you’re not. Your days as a feather duster are coming, and there’s no avoiding it, and I don’t think you’re going to have any friends left who will be willing to stick by your side, because they’ll be afraid that whatever it is you’ve got is catching. You think you’ve covered your tracks, allowed someone else to take the blame. You think you’ve gotten away with murder. But you haven’t.
And you and I both know who you are.
Thirty-three
MERILEE
Merilee kept her eyes focused on Bob Van Dillen and the HLN weather report on her television set, watching the rotating hurricane symbol in the Atlantic as it approached the southeast coast. As of two days before, the Category 4 storm was supposed to head north toward New England before veering east and dissipating out over the ocean. Except it hadn’t. In typical hurricane fashion, it had made landfall in the coastal Carolinas the previous evening and was slowly traveling inland, creating havoc through rain, sleet, hail, and the occasional tornado.
She never watched morning television, and definitely not the weather, but Sugar had insisted that she do both while Sugar made breakfast. The scent of frying bacon and fresh biscuits came from the kitchen, saturating the house, reminding Merilee of what a home should smell like. Sugar had opened the freezer door the previous evening to store leftovers and had seen the boxes of frozen waffles Merilee usually fed Lily and Colin for breakfast on school mornings. Merilee shouldn’t have been surprised to find Sugar on her doorstep the next day with supplies for a home-cooked meal.
Merilee had been too distracted to protest. Ever since the police search and the discovery of the shoe, she’d been unable to focus. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, and even the smells from the kitchen weren’t enough to convince her to make herself a plate of food. She’d managed to dress for work but wasn’t sure if she should even bother. She hated the way people watched her and how the conversations in the break room seemed to stop as soon as she walked in. Merilee especially hated the smug look on Gayla Adamson’s face whenever Merilee saw her at the store. This couldn’t possibly be her life. Not the independent life she’d worked so hard at and carefully cultivated for herself and her children. A life to be proud of. Not the train wreck it had become.
She became aware of her children laughing as Sugar came into the room and placed a heaping plate of eggs, bacon, and two biscuits on the coffee table in front of her. “You’d better eat something, Merilee. You’re nothing but skin and bones.”
Merilee managed a smile. “Some people would think that’s a compliment.”
Sugar didn’t reciprocate and kept her lips in a firm, straight line. “It’s not. And I’m going to stand right here and watch you take a bite before I go back to the kitchen and make sure your children aren’t fighting with sharp knives over the last biscuit.”
From the look in the old woman’s eyes, Merilee wasn’t sure if she was joking. She picked up the fork and stabbed it into the eggs, then stopped as she heard more laughter from the kitchen. “What are they doing in there?”
“Take a bite and I’ll tell you.”
Merilee did as she was told, hardly tasting the food in her mouth.
“They’re looking at your yearbook. I’m afraid it was left on the kitchen table and nobody thought to put it away.” Sugar didn’t even look sheepish at her admission, even though they both knew that it had been Sugar and Wade who’d looked at it last when digging into the rumors about Merilee’s past. When Merilee had seen it, she’d been angry at the intrusion. At least until Lily had pointed out that they’d been trying to help her.
She swallowed. “What are they finding so funny?”
“The hairdos and fashion choices, mostly. But some of the people have funny things written beneath their pictures, apparently. I don’t have my reading glasses on, so I can’t tell you which ones. They found one especially funny because they thought it looked like someone they know.”
Merilee put down her fork at the approach of a car in the drive and stood. “That’s Michael. Please go tell the children their dad is here to take them to school.”
Sugar pressed her lips together even more tightly, leaving Merilee to wonder what she was more disappointed about—the fact that Merilee had barely eaten two bites or the fact that Merilee had chickened out completely and refused to show her face at the school and had asked Michael to take over the morning school drive at least until Christmas break. After which she had no idea what would happen.
He was walking toward the porch when she stepped out to join him. “How are you, Meri?”
“I’ve been better. Thanks for driving the kids this morning and picking them up this afternoon. Their after-school activities have been canceled because of the weather, so if you could just bring them straight home, that would be great.” Friday was a teacher workday, and although technically Michael was supposed to have them only for the weekend, he’d happily agreed to take them Friday, too. She needed time and space to figure out what she was supposed to do next.
As if on cue, a few fat drops of rain plopped down in the dirt in front of them, followed by a rapid-fire pattern of splats. “Come on up to the porch,” she said, stepping back into the shelter of the slanted roof just as the leaden skies opened up to a deluge. “I’d invite you in, but Sugar’s here.”
He nodded in understanding. “Are you going to be all right?” She’d called him the night before to tell him about John before he heard the rumors, assuming he hadn’t already. There had been no recrimination or pointing fingers, just an understanding that he knew what it was like to make mistakes. It was an odd thing to be grateful for, but she was.
She looked in his face and for the first time didn’t feel the hurt of his betrayal. She saw instead the face of the friend he’d been for so much of their marriage, the friend she wished she still had. She shook her head. “Not really.”
“You have someone to stay with you over the weekend? You shouldn’t be alone, for many reasons, but especially with this storm coming. It looks like we’re in for a bad one.”
“I’ll be fine here—I have a cellar and it’s stocked with flashlights, batteries, and water. And Wade got me a weather emergency radio.”
“Good. Don’t forget to keep your phone charged, just in case you lose power.” He smiled softly. “For the record, I like Wade. I like that he thought to get you an emergency radio.”
She smiled awkwardly, not sure how to respond. “You have a basement in your new house?”
“Yeah. We have a safe place for all of us—and I’ve stocked it with survival supplies, so don’t worry about Lily and Colin.”
“Thanks—I will probably still worry, but I’ll at least know that I don’t need to.”
