The Mulberry Tree Read online

  He handed me a passport, and I opened it. There was no photo inside, but there was a name. “Bailey James,” I read aloud, then looked up at Phillip.

  “It was Carol’s idea. She took your maiden name and James’s first name and— You don’t like it.”

  The problem was that I did like the idea. A new name; maybe a new life.

  “Carol thought that with your weight loss, and if you got your hair cut and lightened, and if you . . . Well, if you . . . ”

  I looked at him. What was he having such a hard time saying? But then I saw that he had his eyes fixed on my nose. I’d gone down headfirst on a playground slide in the first grade and had managed to knock my nose permanently to the right. “No wonder,” sixth-grade Johnnie Miller had said as I stood there gushing blood. “Her nose is so big that it hit the ground half an hour before she did.” I still remember the teacher holding me and oozing sympathy even as she tried hard not to laugh, even as she made Johnnie apologize for his remark.

  “You want me to get a nose job,” I said flatly.

  Phillip gave a curt nod.

  Turning, I looked at myself in the mirror. If Jimmie had left me his billions, I could have made a prison with high fences and locked myself away from all the gigolos and hangers-on that orbit around money. I didn’t have the billions, but I did have the notoriety. I knew that, eventually, in ten years or so, Jimmie would fade in people’s memories and I’d be left alone, but during those ten years . . .

  I looked back at Phillip. “It’s my guess that you have a surgeon all set up.”

  “Tonight.” He looked at his watch, the twenty-thousand-dollar one that Jimmie had given him; Atlanta was now wearing mine. “If you’re ready, that is.”

  I took a deep breath. “As ready as I can be, I guess,” I said, then stood up.

  That was two weeks ago. My nose had healed enough that I knew it was time to step outside Phillip and Carol’s big house. It wasn’t Lillian Manville who was to greet the world, but someone I didn’t even recognize in the mirror, someone named Bailey James.

  During the time I was recovering from surgery, I’d come to know Carol somewhat better. In the past she’d attended the parties that Jimmie liked to give, but he had always warned me that it was better not to get too chummy with employees, so I was courteous, but there were no secrets shared between us. I didn’t share secrets with anyone other than Jimmie.

  The surgery had been done in the doctor’s office, and a few hours later I was driven back to Carol and Phillip’s house. The first night a nurse stayed with me, but the second night I was alone when Carol tapped on my door. When I answered, she tiptoed in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you angry?” she asked.

  “No, the doctor did a fine job. Nothing to be angry about,” I answered, pretending that I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  She didn’t fall for it; she stared hard at me.

  “You mean, am I angry that I spent sixteen years giving my entire life to a man, only to be cut out of his will?”

  Carol smiled at my sarcasm. “Men are slime,” she said, then we smiled together, and when I touched my sore nose in pain, we laughed. It was my first genuine feeling of humor since I’d last talked to Jimmie.

  “So what are you going to wear?” Carol asked, folding her legs and sitting on the corner of the bed. She was about ten years older than me, and I’d be willing to bet that she was no stranger to the surgeon’s knife. She was blonde and pretty, and extremely well cared for. I knew what that meant because I, too, used to spend a lot of my time looking after myself. I may have been plump, but I was a well-coiffed, well-tended plump.

  “Wear where?” I asked, and felt my heart jump a bit. Please, I silently prayed, someone tell me that I wasn’t going to have to go again to some courtroom and hear Atlanta and Ray accuse me of “controlling” Jimmie.

  “On your new body,” Carol said. “You can’t keep on wearing my sweats, you know.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I guess I haven’t thought much about clothes lately. I—” Damnation, but tears were coming to my eyes. I wanted to be the brave little soldier and believe that, whatever Jimmie had done had been done out of love. But when I was confronted with issues such as the fact that the only clothing I now owned was what I’d put on the night Jimmie died, and the black shroud that Phillip had given me, I didn’t feel very brave.

  Carol reached out to touch my hand, but then she pulled back and moved off the bed. “I’ll be back in just a minute,” she said as she left the room. In seconds she returned with a foot-high stack of what looked like catalogs. She’d taken so little time to get them, I knew she must have had them piled outside.

  She spread them across the bottom of the bed, and I looked at them in wonder. “What are these?”

  “Phillip owes me five bucks!” she said in triumph. “I bet him you’d never seen a catalog. In nor—uh, most households, catalogs come through the mail at the rate of about six a day.”

  I knew she’d been about to say “in normal households,” but she’d stopped herself. In Jimmie’s houses, a servant brought me my few pieces of mail on a silver dish.

  I picked up one of the catalogs. Norm Thompson. Inside were the kind of clothes that appeared in my closet now and then, especially in the two island houses. Jimmie had someone he called a “shopper” who made sure that we had whatever clothes we needed in every house.

  Carol picked up a catalog and flipped through it. The cover read “Coldwater Creek.” “You know, I used to feel sorry for you. You always looked so alone and lost. I told Phillip that—” Breaking off, she bent down toward the catalog.

  “You told him what?”

  “That you were like a lightbulb, and you were only on when James was around.”

  I didn’t like what she’d said. Not one bit. It made me sound so . . . so nothing, as though I weren’t a person at all. “So what did you have in mind with these?” I asked, making my voice sound as cool as possible.

  She understood my tone. “It’s my opinion that we owe you for the wedding gift that you gave Phillip and me, so I thought we might order you some new clothes and whatever else you might need in your new life. We’ll charge it all to Phillip; he can afford it.” She lowered her voice. “He’s going to be one of the attorneys for Atlanta and Ray.”

  At that my mouth dropped open, then I winced because my new, smaller nose hurt at the movement. I wanted to scream, “The traitor!” but I didn’t. “Remind me. What did Jimmie and I give you for your wedding?”

  “This house,” Carol said.

  For a moment I couldn’t speak, and I had to look away so she wouldn’t see my eyes. He gave a house to his attorney, a man he thought was his friend, but now that so-called friend was going to work for the enemy. I picked up a catalog. “Do you have one of these things for jewelry? I need a new watch.”

  Carol smiled at me; I smiled back; a friendship was formed.

  Two

  Phillip watched Lillian get out of the car and walk slowly toward the house. For all that she’d had a quick burst of tears when she first saw the place, he thought she was holding up well. Considering what she’d been through, she was holding up extremely well. Shaking his head in disbelief, he remembered all he’d done to prevent this moment. He and three of his associates had spent two afternoons and one morning trying to persuade her to fight James Manville’s will—a will Phillip had come to see as immoral and possibly illegal.

  But he hadn’t always felt that way. When James had told Phillip what he wanted to put in the will, Phillip had raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t dared let James know what he was thinking—that, obviously, James had found out that his young wife didn’t deserve his money; that she was probably having an affair. But instead of speaking his mind, Phillip had tried to talk James out of causing what would surely be years of court battles. It never crossed his mind that James’s widow wouldn’t contest the will. Phillip told James that if he wanted to leave his brother and sister money, then he sho