The Mulberry Tree Read online

  “He probably gave her the diamonds out of guilt,” Patsy said.

  “As a matter of fact, he did,” Bailey said, and the three of them laughed.

  The idea of their buying the little shop in the tourist town seemed to grow with every minute. They were three women with too much time on their hands. Janice had two young daughters, but Bailey had found out that her husband’s mother lived with them, and the girls would just as soon be with their grandmother as with their mother. When Janice said this, Bailey saw something in her eyes, something she’d seen when she’d toured Patsy’s house, but Bailey wasn’t sure what it was. Anger, maybe. Or perhaps it was a sense of having surrendered.

  By the time they’d finished lunch, the women were talking money. They walked back to the shop, went inside, then began to rearrange it in their minds. At the moment the shop was one of many in Welborn that sold a little bit of several things but specialized in nothing. There were T-shirts that said “Welborn, Virginia,” on them, a couple of shelves full of candles, some cheap toys for the kids. The owner came out from the back and showed them around. There was the pretty little glassed-front showroom, and in the back was a three-room area that could be used for storage and work. “It used to be a florist’s shop,” the woman said.

  When she opened the back door and let them out into a big parking lot, for a moment the three women just stood there blinking in the sunlight, not quite sure what to do next. They knew that this was the turning point. Did they go home and forget about this, or did they pursue it?

  It was Janice who made the decision. “First we need to find out about the competition. Are there any other gift basket shops in Welborn? I’m not sure this area is big enough to handle two of the same business. And somebody needs to talk to the realtor about money. And we need a researcher to find out just how we go about running a gift basket shop—and even if that’s what we want to do.”

  Now, thinking about that afternoon, Bailey smiled. Janice was like a drill sergeant. Instantly, Bailey and Patsy had snapped to attention, and each woman had instinctively known what her job was. Patsy ran off to find out about other shops in the area, and Bailey went to the local library to see what she could find out, while Janice went to the real estate office to talk about money.

  By the time the women met again, it was six P.M., and they had a thousand things to report to each other. Patsy drove them back to Calburn, stopping on the way to go to the grocery, the women pushing their three baskets down the aisles while talking nonstop.

  And when they got home, they talked the same way to the men they lived with. Janice told Scott how she was going to keep the books for their new company, Patsy told Rick that she was going to be the creative director, and Bailey told Matt that she was going to look into renting a commercial kitchen so she could start producing her best-tasting products on a larger scale.

  “We don’t know what to call the business,” all three women said to their men. “Do you have any ideas?”

  Now, sitting in the same booth where she and Janice and Patsy had first talked about opening the business, Bailey looked at the brochure again. Yesterday the shop had been sold. But it hadn’t been sold to the three of them.

  So what had happened? Bailey wondered. When they’d driven home that day, they’d been on top of the world. Bailey, laughing, truly laughing for the first time in a long time, had said, “We are three very bored women.”

  That night, they’d been on the phone to each other, with Bailey receiving twice as many calls as Janice or Patsy because they would not get on the phone to each other, so Bailey had to tell Janice what Patsy said, and vice versa.

  And throughout those first days, all three of the men had been wonderful. Matt volunteered to renovate the shop. Scott said he’d donate two vans, each only two years old. Rick, who owned three service stations and who, according to Patsy, could fix anything in the world, was going to provide free gasoline for the vans, plus maintenance. Patsy said her sons—and the word volunteered was not used—were going to do the driving to deliver the baskets that were ordered.

  For an entire week, Bailey’s life had been very exciting, with constant phone calls and arrangements to be made, books to read, and Web sites to consult. With Matt’s help, she figured out how to use the Internet in record time. She had no idea how to use anything else on a computer, but Matt said he’d never seen anyone master the Web faster.

  But after the first week, things had begun to change. Janice had called Bailey on Monday morning to say that Scott was in trouble with the IRS, and he desperately needed her help in straightening out a few things. She was sorry, but Scott said that she was the only person on earth he really trusted, so she hoped Bailey would understand. Two days later, Rick had thrown Patsy a birthday party and given her a sewing machine that could be hooked up to a computer and programmed to sew pictures. Patsy started spending so much time with the new machine that she didn’t have time to talk about the shop.

  It was on Saturday morning that Matt told her his big news. He’d been asked by his old architectural firm to draw some house plans that could be sold on their Web site. In the past, plans sold through catalogs had had to be fairly bland, but with the introduction of the Internet to the world, people could have a wider selection.

  “What do you think?” Matt had asked Bailey.

  She was in the kitchen, and she was in a very bad mood. Janice and Patsy had given out on her. She’d wanted to spend today with them planning the new business, but instead, Patsy was trying to copy a tiger from a coloring book onto one of her son’s shirts, and Janice was deep into Scott’s finances from eight years ago.

  Bailey barely glanced at the sketch that Matt held out to her. “Hate the kitchen,” she said, then gave a brutal stir to the pot of soupe au pistou that was simmering on the stove.

  “Yeah? What’s wrong with it? It’s called a ‘gourmet kitchen.’ I thought you’d like that.”

  “Why is it that when it comes to kitchens you men think that ‘big’ equals ‘gourmet’?”

  “What have I done to deserve this ‘you men’?”

  Bailey knew she wasn’t being fair, but it was the men who’d taken Janice and Patsy away from the project that the three women wanted to do.

  When Bailey didn’t answer him, Matt said, “You think you could design a better kitchen?”

  “With my eyes closed,” she said, her lips tight, and that’s when Matt thrust a grid-lined pad of paper in front of her, and ten minutes later they were bent over the blueprint, and Bailey was redesigning the kitchen in Matt’s house plan.

  And that’s where they were now. Matt was considering doing an entire book of house plans, and creating his own Web site. If he could get hooked up with a big company like Home Planners, he could earn a living and remain in Calburn. He’d already asked Bailey to go into business with him as the kitchen designer.

  “Lillian?”

  “Yes?” Bailey said absently, her eyes still on the brochure.

  “It is you, isn’t it? When I first walked in, I knew I’d seen you before, but it took me a while to figure out who you were. Are you like me and here for a spa treatment? Ask for Andre. He’s marvelous.”

  In openmouthed horror, Bailey watched a woman from her past, Arleen Browne-Thompson, aka Baroness von Lindensale, slide into the bench on the other side of the booth.

  “I’m sorry,” Bailey said, “you must have the wrong person. I’m not—”

  “Sure, sure,” Arleen said, looking hard at Bailey. “You look great. Really, you do. How much did you lose? A hundred? More? And your nose! Removing that thing must have taken half a dozen procedures.”

  Bailey just glared at the woman, her head reeling with what the consequences of this meeting could be. Arleen could sell what she’d found out to a tabloid, and tomorrow Bailey’s front yard would be full of reporters. Or she could—

  “Would you stop looking at me like that?” Arleen said. “I have no intention of giving away your little secret. If you wa