ALMOST TWO MONTHS AFTER HE LOST ALL HER MONEY and ran off to parts unknown, Jimmy Lee Motes walked into the Shofar So Good Deli where Nita was working. It was in the middle of the lunch rush on a Friday and the place was crowded, so Nita just nodded at him once and indicated a small, unoccupied table close to the window. She brought him a glass of sweet tea and a menu.

“I'm real busy right now but can you wait thirty minutes?” she said. “We need to talk.”

“Sure,” he said. His face was still tanned from the summer and he'd let his hair grow long over his ears. Across the room a table of office girls smiled and eyed him boldly.

“Can I get you something while you wait?” He shook his head. “I'm not hungry.”

She turned to go and he reached out and took her arm. “You look good, Nita.”

“Thanks.” She smoothed her hair behind her ears and moved off. She couldn't even remember if she had brushed it this morning; she had other things on her mind these days. When she wasn't working, she spent long hours on the Internet or on the telephone, searching for homes for unwed mothers that had existed in the 1950s. She entered the data into a spreadsheet, and although many of the homes had operated illegally and had only kept the first names of the mothers, she didn't lose hope, concentrating on women who had given birth in the first few months of 1951. She followed up these slim leads with telephone calls or e-mails or letters. She gave some of the leads to Lavonne and Eadie, who were desperate to help, but Nita kept most for herself. She felt intuitively that this was something she had to do on her own.

Nita moved mechanically through her lunch routine. She could feel him watching her as she went about her duties, but it didn't make her nervous. She was used to the job by now and was learning to enjoy interacting with the customers, most of whom were tourists down from Atlanta. She had rehearsed what she had to say to him a hundred times but she went over it again in her head, briefly, while she took orders at the counter and walked around to refill drinks. A group of businessmen sat at a big table near the counter and one of them smiled at her as she refilled his sweet tea. “Hey,” he said, “didn't you use to be an actress? Didn't I see you in some Hollywood movie about stewardesses gone bad?”

“Sorry,” she said. “That wasn't me.”

“Maybe it was a soap opera. Don't you play a vixen on daytime TV?”

“Don't tell anyone,” Nita said. “I don't want people knowing what my real job is.”

They left her a twenty-five percent tip. Later, when she went over to sit down with Jimmy Lee, he said, “What did that fat fucker want?”

Nita said, “Why are you here, Jimmy?”

“I don't think this job is such a good idea,” he said. He was clearly agitated. He played with the salt and pepper shakers, tapping them steadily against the table. She rose and went over and got a pitcher of sweet tea and brought it back to the table, pouring each of them a glass. The lunch crowd had thinned considerably. The new girl, Marjorie, had no trouble handling the few tables that were left.

Nita sat down. She crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. “So, where have you been?”

Jimmy Lee stacked the salt and pepper shakers like he was building a wall. “I've been up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, working with my cousin. He's building a house for some couple and I stayed with him just trying to get my head clear.”

Nita picked up a spoon and stirred her tea. “How'd that work out?”

“It didn't.” Jimmy Lee looked like he might take her hand, but then thought better of it. He lowered his voice and said, “All I could think about was you, Nita. All I could think about was how bad I fucked everything up.”

Nita stirred slowly. She took the spoon out of her tea and laid it on the table. “Who told you I was working here?”

“Your mother. When I hadn't heard from you, I got desperate and called her. She told me. Everything.”

“I'm sorry I didn't call you back,” she said. “I just needed some time. I've had a lot on my mind lately.” In between her Internet searches and work schedules, Nita drove around interviewing nurses who might or might not have worked at various underground homes for unwed mothers in the 1950s. She was thankful for the distractions. It kept her from thinking about Whitney, from wondering whether her marriage to Jimmy Lee would ever work out.

“I didn't know anything about the custody thing until Loretta told me yesterday. I didn't know about any of this.”

“I know.”

“Goddamn it, Nita, why didn't you tell me?”

She frowned and counted the ice cubes in her glass. “After you left, I was pretty pissed off.”

“I didn't know,” he said stubbornly, shaking his head. “I didn't know anything about her taking Whitney.”

“Yeah, but you didn't stay around long enough to find out, did you?” she said, glancing up at him and then back down at her glass.

He leaned forward and took her hands in his. She let him hold her hands but she kept her fingers curled into tight little fists. “I figured you hated me. After I lost the money I figured you'd never want to see me again.”

“It's not about the money, is it?” she said. “It never was, for me anyway.”

He took a deep breath, looking down at her balled fists. “I was crazy,” he admitted, “getting caught up in all of that.”

“I wasn't angry at you about the money,” she said, slowly letting her fingers uncurl. “I was angry at me. I should have asked more questions. I should have kept the money out of our marriage. I wouldn't have even had the money if Lavonne and Eadie hadn't made me take it from Charles when I got the chance.”

“You deserved it.”

“Yes, I deserved it but that's not the point.” She frowned, trying to re member her rehearsed speech. It was hard saying what she had to say when he sat across from her looking tanned and handsome and contrite. “All my life I've been passive. I've let others push me into making decisions I should have been making for myself.”

Jimmy Lee frowned and tugged at her fingers. “I've been sending you checks to pay you back but you haven't been cashing them.”

She wasn't going to let him distract her. Nita felt for the first time in her life she was seeing things clearly. She pulled her hands away, gently, and folded them on the table in front of her. “I went from my father's house to Charles's house and then to yours, and now for the first time, I'm alone. I'm learning to stand on my own two feet and take responsibility for myself.”

Jimmy Lee didn't like the way this was going. “It wasn't my house,” he reminded her. “It was ours.”

“You know what I'm saying,” she said. “Don't pretend like you don't.”

“Just tell me what I can do to make things right, Nita.”

“You can pay the utilities. At least until I get this custody fight settled. And help me with the car insurance.”

“And you can cash the checks I already sent you,” he said sullenly.

“All right, I will. As long as you know this isn't about the six hundred thousand dollars. I don't expect you to try and pay that back.”

An awkward silence fell between them. Across the room, Marjorie bused her last table, glancing at them from time to time. The table of office girls got up and left, giggling loudly.

“Can I move back in?” he asked finally. She looked at him and he sighed and leaned back in his chair stretching one leg out in front with the other resting against the table leg. “Okay,” he said. “I'll call one of my high school buddies and see if I can stay with him a while.”

“Right now I have to concentrate on getting my daughter back. That's all I can think about.” Whatever was wrong with her marriage would have to wait until after she brought Whitney home. She had made up her mind and there was no turning back.

He turned his face to the window and cocked his head as if listening to distant music. When he turned back to face her, his eyes were steady. “I love you, Nita,” he said. “I just want it to be the way it used to be.”

She stood up. Outside the window, a group of schoolchildren passed, swinging their backpacks like weapons. “It won't ever be that way again,” she said, and reaching out to touch his shoulder lightly, she left.

————

AFEW WEEKS AFTER LOGAN MOVED IN, VIRGINIA HAD HAD ABOUT all she could take. If she made it through to the next custody hearing without having a stroke or a heart attack, it would be a miracle. In all of her careful scheming, Virginia had failed to foresee this clever trick; it had never occurred to her that Nita would dump both grandchildren on her. And with her high-priced lawyer's tender outpourings in court, his assurances that Virginia cared only about the welfare of her grandchildren, Virginia's hands were tied as far as kicking her juvenile delinquent grandson out of the house. Unless he got arrested or stole something from the house, which was always a definite possibility, she was stuck.

It seemed she had underestimated her meek ex-daughter-in-law.

Sometimes it felt like her whole life was closing in around her like a thick black cloud of billowing smoke, and in those moments Virginia had to wonder if revenge was all it was cracked up to be. She had to wonder if it wasn't more trouble than it was worth. She had been surprised, leaving Judge Drucker's courtroom, that she hadn't felt more of a feeling of triumph and joy. Instead, a vacuous emptiness had spread through her like an oil slick. She had rushed home and tried, unsuccessfully, to fill the void with a pitcher of martinis. Even the memory of Loretta James being dragged out of the courtroom by a thick-necked deputy did little to raise her spirits.

The truth of the matter was, she missed Leota Quarles. The woman had been more of a mother to her than her own mother, and Virginia missed going out to see her every week. Never mind that Leota's mind had begun to go there, at the end. She slipped in and out of the past as easily as a car switching gears on a mountain slope. She would begin some story with “the young Mrs. Broadwell came to see me and asked me about the island,” and Virginia, thinking she was talking about herself as a young matron, would discreetly change the subject. Leota's mind would wander alone down dusty corridors, along secret passageways hung with cobwebs while Virginia twittered on about the weather or the price of tomatoes or today's lunch menu. Still, despite the decline of those last few months, Virginia missed her. She missed the only mother-daughter relationship she had ever known. Leota's death had left a big hole in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.

And in the weeks following her grandson's arrival, Virginia's depression had only deepened. He stayed up all hours of the night, had table manners like a field hand, dressed and talked like a reality-show drug addict, and humiliated Virginia every chance he got. Just yesterday he had crashed her bridge group, coming downstairs wearing nothing but black eye liner, a metal lip ring, and a pair of obviously soiled boxer shorts pulled down so low in front you could see the beginnings of his dark thatch of pubic hair.

“My grandson is home sick from school today,” Virginia had explained nervously to the stunned bridge group. She hadn't even realized he was in the house. “Y'all know Logan, don't you?” she said in a bright, hopeless voice. Over by the window, Worland Pendergrass and Lee Anne Bales snorted and giggled into their hands.

“How y'all doing?” Logan said, waving from the doorway. He grinned in a friendly manner and put his hands on his narrow naked hips. “Is this what y'all do when your husbands are off at work? Gamble and drink and talk about everybody who's not here?”

Virginia rose and walked over to where he stood, putting herself between him and the room of slack-jawed women. She put her tiny hand on his chest and said tersely, under her breath, “In the kitchen. Now.” Over her shoulder, she smiled at the bridge group and said loudly enough for them to hear, “Honey, would you like some breakfast?”

Logan grinned his wide, lopsided grin. “Sure, Grandma,” he said, and Virginia winced. She hated being called that. She preferred Grandmother, or Miss Virginia. “Breakfast would be swell,” Logan said, showing her that he could act as well as she could.

He followed her into the kitchen. She swung around on her heel and hissed in a voice just above a whisper, “How dare you embarrass me in front of my friends? How dare you skip school and show up half-naked in front of my entire bridge group?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the breakfast bar. “I guess you're getting a little more than you bargained for, huh, Grandma?” He wasn't grinning now.

Her face went rigid. She pointed at him with her index finger. “You will go upstairs and get into bed this minute,” she said, “and you will not come downstairs undressed again. Not while you're under my roof.”

He said, “Your roof?”

It was the first real exchange they had ever had. They stood facing each other over the new breakfast bar, and there was something in his sullen, stubborn expression that reminded Virginia suddenly of her dead husband. The boy had inherited his grandfather's bold temperament and, realizing this, Virginia felt a chill come over her.

He leaned toward her, his palms leaving damp marks on the new granite countertop. “You can stop this anytime you want,” he said in a reasonable voice. “You know how.” He swung around, and padded out of the kitchen on his bare feet, waving at the women in the living room as he passed. Lee Anne Bales waved back. “Y'all don't drink too much!” he shouted, disappearing up the stairwell.

Since then, Virginia had been unable to dispel the chilling sense that things were spiraling quickly out of control. She had avoided Logan as much as possible since the incident in the kitchen, and had been glad to see his car leaving this morning as he pulled out of the driveway and headed for school. She had decided that, in the future, she would avoid being alone with him, and in public she would put on her brave cheerful face and go about her business as usual. If Logan and his mother thought they could intimidate her into showing her hand, into allowing her carefully constructed façade to crack, then they had another think coming. Virginia had been wearing a mask all her life. She was good at it.

She would continue in her portrayal of naive grandmotherly goodwill and concern, at least until the final custody hearing, until Nita's life came crashing down around her the way Virginia's had when Boone & Broadwell folded. She had made her plans and she would not be swayed from her course.

Still, it was hard, at dinner the following evening, to keep her cheerful façade intact. She sat at the dining room table with Redmon and Whitney waiting for Logan to join them. He was downstairs, practicing with his rock- and-roll band in the basement.

“Them boys are getting good,” Redmon said, cocking his head to listen.

Virginia thumped the table irritably with her fingers. “Della,” she called, repeatedly, until the black woman stuck her head through the kitchen door. “Did you tell Logan to join us at five-thirty?”

“I told him,” she said. “He says he won't eat if his friends can't eat, too.”

“Them boys are welcome,” Redmon said. He'd taken a special interest in Logan and his friends, spending large amounts of time with them down in the basement. Virginia suspected he was providing them with beer and regaling them with tales of his happy boyhood in the Alabama swamplands. Redmon waved his hand at his step-granddaughter. “Sugar, run on down stairs and tell your brother and his friends they can come on up for supper.”

“Whitney, stay where you are,” Virginia said sharply.

Whitney snapped her gum and rolled her eyes at the injustice of being used as a pawn. She slid back into her chair.

Virginia slowly regained her composure. “Really,” she said, unclenching her teeth and smiling at Redmon. “Della has only made enough dinner for four. We can't just ask her at the last minute to provide for two additional guests. Two uninvited guests.”

Della called amicably from the kitchen, “I can fix another couple of plates.” She stepped through the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked at Virginia and grinned. “That won't be no trouble at all,” she said.

Virginia glared at her above the floral centerpiece. Della stood there wiping her hands and humming something that sounded suspiciously like “We Shall Overcome.” A tinny, thumping sound filled the room and Whitney leaned over quickly to answer her cell phone. Virginia's eyes left Della and swung over to her granddaughter, where they rested like a load of steel girders.

“I'll call you back,” Whitney said sullenly, and hung up.

Virginia set her teeth and smiled in a pleasant manner. “What have I told you, darling, about talking on the phone at the table?”

Whitney rolled her eyes toward heaven as if calling upon God to witness what she was made to suffer on a daily basis. “Oh, who cares?” she said. “Logan's not here anyway. We're just sitting around waiting on him so what difference does it make if I talk on the phone?”

Whitney often behaved like a spoiled brat, which was something Virginia had not picked up on when she only saw the girl a few times a week. “It's not polite to talk on the phone at the table,” Virginia repeated, for what might have been the twentieth time.

Whitney yawned and plucked at her hair. “Oh, who cares?” she repeated in a tired voice.

Virginia's hand slapped the table so hard the silverware jumped. “Go and get your brother,” she said sharply. She lifted her glass and sipped her water, struggling to regain her composure. Whitney stared at her and then stood up, threw her napkin on the table, and slouched toward the basement door, swinging her hips in an exaggerated, insolent manner.

Watching her leave the room, the unfortunate Redmon chuckled.

“What are you laughing at?” Virginia said. Her sharp eyes pierced him like arrow points.

He recovered quickly. His face went slack. He had, after all, been married to Virginia for close to nine months and he was an expert now at defensive strategies. “Nothing, honey,” he said mildly.

After dinner, Virginia and Redmon sat in the living room drinking coffee and watching CNN on the big-screen TV. Charles was supposed to join them later for dessert. Whitney had gone upstairs to study for an English test and Logan and his posse had retreated to the testosterone charged confines of the basement where they were putting the finishing touches on “Kill Me.” Redmon wanted to be down there, Virginia could tell, watching the way he listened to them tuning their guitars, his head turned expectantly toward the basement door. He loved having male company in the house. Despite Virginia's admonitions to the contrary, Logan had brought his friends to the dinner table. Redmon had thoroughly enjoyed himself, joining in the teenagers' noisy banter and grinning from the end of the table like a doting mafia don gazing upon his dangerously dysfunctional family.

Only Virginia had sat quietly, putting in a cheerful word here and there, trying to ignore the fact that Whitney sat at the table with her knee up or that Logan's table manners seemed deliberately bad. He kept smiling and glancing at her as if daring her to say anything as he speared his pork chop with his fork and tore off large chunks of flesh like a heavily mascaraed Henry VIII wolfing down a leg of lamb.

Virginia ignored him.

After a while she stopped paying attention to the table and its ill- mannered occupants. Instead she focused on the room around her. She noted all the changes she had been able to accomplish through desire and careful planning. She looked proudly around the dining room that had been redone in a sand-and-taupe color scheme, complete with plantation shutters on the windows and new furniture in an English Chippendale style. It had taken several months of pleading and sexual fantasy to bring the transformation about, but it was worth it now, she thought, looking around. It would showcase nicely in a television spread. She felt a little tremor of excitement, remembering.

She had tried for years to get the Gracious Southern Living television show to come and do a segment on her home and they had steadfastly, but politely, declined. She had watched jealously over the years as homes less spectacular than her own, as hostesses less accomplished than she, were showcased in the entertainment segments. It was not until she married Redmon, and he, upon hearing of her unsuccessful attempts to lure them, had made a few phone calls, that the news had come that Gracious Southern Living would be happy to photograph a holiday gathering at the Redmon house.

Redmon's exact words had been, “Honey, them snotty Gracious Southern Living people will be happy to do a spread on a family throw-down at Casa Redmon!”

Virginia looked at him in horror. “Oh, for heaven's sake, you didn't call the house that, did you?”

“Why not?” he said, slapping her fondly on the rear end. “That's what it is. Casa Redmon.”

Remembering, Virginia shuddered. They were coming two weeks before Thanksgiving to film a show that would air Thanksgiving weekend. She had decided to host a buffet and she would invite not only family members but also various society guests as well (at least those who looked presentable on film). She frowned, wondering how she would be able to pull it off with Logan here. Perhaps she could bribe him. Perhaps she could offer to send him and his bandmates down to the Florida condo for the weekend. She would get Redmon to offer him a thousand dollars, in cash, to go. Logan would, no doubt, up the ante but she would pay him whatever he wanted. She would allow nothing to spoil her triumphant Gracious Southern Living segment. It was the one thing in Virginia's life, besides her laborious crawl to the top of Ithaca society, that made up for the childhood humiliations she had suffered at the hands of her small-minded provincial classmates. It was a joyous affirmation that she had lived her life the way she was meant to live it.

The only thing that had come even remotely close to giving her the same sense of joy and accomplishment had been the look on Maureen Boone's face the day Virginia married the old Judge.

That, too, had been priceless.

CHARLES WAS LATE, AND WHEN HE FINALLY ARRIVED HIS FACE was flushed and he spoke in a breathless, agitated manner that made Virginia suspect antianxiety medication.

“I'd offer you a bourbon, son, but Queenie's got me off the hard stuff,” Redmon said. He was leaning back in one of the reclining parts of the sectional with his booted feet up on the footrest, clicking through the channels with his oversized remote control shaped like a bikini-clad female torso. It was next on Virginia's list of things to go, right behind the reclining sectional sofa with the built-in beer cooler.

She slid her eyes over to Redmon. “I'm sure the boys in the basement could offer you a beer,” she said archly to Charles.

Redmon tightened his hold on the bikini-clad remote but other than that betrayed no sign of nervousness. Charles appeared not to have heard her. He sat down on a chair and then rose and went to stand at the windows overlooking the back lawn. A high-flying gaggle of geese passed slowly overhead. Charles had just come from a meeting with Nita and he was so excited he couldn't sit down. They had met for coffee and Nita had pleaded with him again to help her get the children back. She had also let him know, in a casual, offhand way, that the redneck carpenter had moved out of the house. Charles had felt an immediate sense of relief and optimism wash over him. He had barely been able to keep himself from wrapping his arms around Nita and picking her up in an exuberant bear hug. Caught up in the ecstasy of the moment, he had promised her he would talk to his mother about dropping the custody case.

Looking at his hulking shape reflected in the window glass, Virginia said suspiciously, “Charles, what is it?”

He continued to face the window. He cleared his throat several times. “Mother, I've been thinking. This custody battle might not be the right thing.”

“Let me guess,” she said flatly. “You've been talking to your ex-wife.” Virginia made a scornful sound, but before she could say anything else, Redmon spoke.

“I think your boy might be right, honey,” he said, watching her peripherally, the way a cautious man might watch a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. “She's a sweet, pretty little thing that never meant a bit of harm to anybody.”

Virginia shifted her steely gaze to Redmon. “What does being sweet and pretty have to do with anything?” she asked icily.

Redmon's left eye flickered like a bad circuit. “Nothing of course,” he stammered. “Only she's a good mama, too.”

“Good enough to take her children and run off with a man thirteen years her junior just because she felt like it. Good enough to destroy a sixteen- year marriage.” There was a flapping sound in Virginia's head like a flock of startled bats. Her face felt warm.

“She wasn't in her right mind,” Charles said stubbornly, still not turning around. “He enticed her to leave. That carpenter made her leave.”

“Oh for heaven's sake, Charles, don't be such a fool.” It was hard, sometimes, believing he was her child. It was enough to make Virginia question genetic probabilities and long-established theories on nurture versus nature.

Redmon swung his grizzled head around and looked at her with a strange expression on his face. His eye stopped fluttering. His defiant cowlick stuck out behind his head like a bird-dog's tail. “If I didn't know better, Queenie, I'd say you had a hard streak the size of Alabama running through you,” he said gruffly. “I'd say you was coldhearted as an ex-wife's lawyer.”

The sound in her head was a roaring clamor of flapping, black-winged creatures. Virginia ducked and scurried back inside herself. She wasn't ready to reveal that much of her true nature to Redmon. At least not yet. She decided on a different tact. “What choice did I have?” she asked, raising her little hands helplessly. She turned her pleading eyes on her husband. “I told you before. Once the deal with Mr. Motes fell through she would have taken the child and I would never have seen her again. She would have blamed me for what happened with the State of Georgia,” she noticed him looking at her curiously and she hurried on, “although, of course, it wasn't my fault. She would have blamed me anyway. She always blamed me for everything.”

Redmon set his jaw obstinately. “She's a sweet girl,” he said, shaking his head. “I don't think she would have done something like that. Keep the grandkids away from you, I mean.”

Virginia stared at him with a look of utter disdain. She appeared to be on the verge of a full-blown seizure. “Sweet girl?” she said scornfully. “Have you forgotten what that sweet girl and her sweet friends did to you and Charles and that idiot Zibolsky out in Montana?”

That shut him up.

“That was more Eadie Boone's and Lavonne Zibolsky's doing,” Charles said, swinging around from the window. “Nita would never have done any of that on her own.”

Virginia snorted. “Well, if you want to believe that, go ahead.”

“You never liked her,” he said.

“I knew she wasn't the right girl for you.”

“She was the right girl then, and she's the right girl now,” Charles said, scowling.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she cried. “Nita's not going to come back to you just because you retrieve her children. Any idiot can see she's not in love with you.”

Charles chose to ignore this comment. He thought it best not to tell his mother he had invited Nita to Virginia's televised pre-Thanksgiving buffet and she had accepted.

Redmon picked up the shapely remote and turned the sound up on the TV. “Damn, Queenie, why don't you just drive a stake through the poor bastard's heart? Why don't you just cut off his legs at the knee and feed him to the hogs?”

Virginia took a long series of deep breaths. A commercial for Fast Eddie's Auto Sales came on the TV. “No credit, no problem,” Fast Eddie promised. Virginia panted like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her bosom rose and fell until it gradually grew still. Her top lip quivered and then lay flat. “I know it seems cruel, darling.” She let her eyes mist over for effect. The flapping in her head had subsided now to a mild fluttering. “But sometimes a mother's got to do what a mother's got to do.” She smiled gently at Charles. “Like a badger. She protects her young at all costs.”

“I thought badgers ate their young,” Charles said sullenly, but his mother had already turned away, and apparently didn't hear him.