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  “But surely he’s missed calling her on a Saturday morning before.”

  “Of course! I think Liza’s a little hysterical these days. She recently broke off with her boyfriend.” Queen smiled. “You know how young love is.”

  “Yes, of course. And where did you say Forrest is? Away on business?”

  Queen turned to the sideboard, where Lona was still standing. “Lona, did you forget something?”

  “No’m, I was just straightening this table,” she said, and then evaporated.

  Queen smiled. “Aren’t we forever at the mercy of our help? I swear, I think Lona would quit if she couldn’t snoop into all my business.”

  Sam nodded, wondering what Queen’s business was. “Did you say Forrest was in San Francisco?”

  “Why, yes, he is. He’s been there over a week. Such a lovely city. Do you miss it?”

  “Sometimes.” Determined not to let Queen sidetrack her, she pushed for details. “Lovely hotels, too. What’s Forrest’s favorite?”

  Queen turned to her with wide blue eyes. “Why, I don’t rightly believe I know. Mine is the Stanford Court. Mr. Nassikas there always remembers Forrest and me from when we used to stay with him in New Orleans at the Royal Orleans. We get such grand treatment. But Forrest doesn’t stay there when he’s on business.” She took a long pull on her drink and set it down emphatically on the tabletop. She was about to change the subject again. “Now, tell me,” she said, turning and placing a hand on Sam’s arm, “why you never married and had children.”

  Sam wrote a question in her mental notebook—Why wouldn’t Queen tell her where Ridley was staying?—then answered, “I was married, when I was very young.”

  “Well, it’s still not too late for you to have children. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “I’m sure you’re right—about what I’m missing. But I’m ‘aunt’ to lots of friends’ children. I’m afraid I never would have been very good in the bad times. I like children when they’re dry and cute—and for about an hour. Then I want to give them back.”

  Queen laughed. “No, little girls aren’t all sugar and spice.”

  “Not even Liza?”

  “Oh, goodness no. I mean, we think she’s perfect, of course, because she’s ours, but she always has been a different child.”

  “Difficult?” Then Sam bit her tongue. What the hell was she doing? She knew no mother was going to come clean on her offspring. And implying criticism was no way to find out.

  “Heavens, no! Just toodles along to a different drummer. But she’s doing beautifully at Agnes Scott even though she wanted to go away to school. She’s a painter, you know.”

  “What would have been her first choice?”

  “Of schools? Probably Parsons, or anywhere else in New York. The child is crazy about New York. She even looks like a New Yorker. Have you spent much time there?”

  “I’ve visited it often. But why—”

  Then Queen firmly steered the conversation once again onto travel, where it stayed until they finished lunch.

  After her third drink, Queen excused herself and pushed back from the table. “There’s a powder room down that hall.” She gestured. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  Sam sat stirring her iced tea with a silver spoon. Then she lifted the long-stemmed spoon and turned it over. Tiffany. Of course.

  “May I give you some more?”

  Sam jumped. She hadn’t heard Lona enter the room. She nodded.

  Lona poured the tea from the pitcher she was carrying, then stood motionless. She gave Sam a long look, and in that moment Sam could see a decision being settled upon.

  “Miss Liza is not hysterical.” She spoke so softly Sam could barely hear her. “She is the sanest child I’ve ever known.”

  Sam whispered back, for at any moment Queen might walk back into the room. “Then you think she has reason to be worried about her father?”

  “If she thinks she does, she—” And then her voice rose. “Oglethorpe! Get out!” A rangy Dalmatian bounded in. He ignored Lona’s hissed reprimand and leaned his front paws on Sam’s skirt.

  “Down, boy!” she said, laughing. Oglethorpe gave her a wet kiss, then retreated.

  “That dog’s a mess!” Lona said, but Sam could tell she didn’t really mean it. “He’s always so bad, underfoot every time I turn around, ’specially when Mr. Ridley’s away.”

  “He’s especially attached to his master?”

  “He’s attached to anybody who’ll put up with him. But Mr. Ridley, he takes Ogle for a long walk every night, walks with this big galoof running along beside.” Lona laughed. “They are a sight!”

  “Nobody else walks him?”

  “I do, but he goes too fast for me. And he wants to go too far, always in the same direction Mr. Ridley walks him.” She gestured over her shoulder in the vicinity of Piedmont Park. “I can’t be every night walking all over hill and dale. I’ve got other things to study than that dog.”

  “Like bringing us some of your delicious lime sherbet for dessert,” Queen said as she glided back into the room, placed one hand lightly on Lona’s shoulder, and turned her heading out so that she had no choice but to go. Sam had seen less graceful moves on the dance floor. Queen might not have a career, Sam thought, but she was a pro.

  A quarter hour more of polite chitchat followed. Queen poured coffee from an antique silver service (most definitely the kind hidden from the Yankees) then managed to squeeze Sam’s hand as she handed her the cup. “There now. Haven’t we had the loveliest visit?”

  Which meant, Sam knew, Enough of this tête à tête. Drink up and get out.

  Sam smiled and muttered all the right things: enjoyed it…how nice…beautiful house…have you over soon. Then the two women brushed cheeks, and Sam went home.

  She couldn’t remember ever having been patted and touched so much by another human being and yet left so cold.

  Three

  “That’s bullshit,” Liza Ridley said flatly.

  “Then you wouldn’t characterize your parents’ relationship as ideal?”

  “I would characterize it as miserable.” Liza gestured with both hands, her small, stubby fingers stuck straight out on the Formica tabletop.

  Samantha and Liza Ridley were sharing an order of ketchup-doused french fries and sipping fountain cherry colas at Horton’s, the coffee shop cum department/drug/bookstore on Oxford Road just across the street from Emory.

  Sam had smiled when Liza suggested the meeting place, for she’d spent many happy hours in Horton’s during her own youth, browsing through the jumble of merchandise that ranged from notebooks to mops to makeup, gossiping with friends, writing papers in between hamburgers and Cokes, perhaps in this very booth.

  When Uncle George had suggested the night before that Sam might want to give Liza a call, she’d protested that she wasn’t spending her entire day on a young girl’s imaginary problem. But after talking with Queen, she’d found herself stopping in a phone booth on Juniper and dialing Liza’s number at Agnes Scott.

  Damn you, George, she thought. He knew that between her sense of obligation (even if it were his obligation) and her curiosity, she’d make that phone call. Liza had been eager. She was at Horton’s in fifteen minutes.

  Sam inspected the petite young woman on the other side of the booth. Liza Ridley at twenty-one was a beauty—not an orthodox burst of Southern blondness, but small, with long dark hair, a pale complexion, blue eyes, and a heart-shaped face. Her mother was right about one thing: dressed from head to toe in black, Liza did look as if she’d be more at home on the streets of New York’s punk East Village.

  When Sam asked about her work, Liza had pulled a plastic envelope of slides from her voluminous black leather bag. The pieces they showed were collages of photographs of frogs, whales, and huge fish cut from magazines and pieced together with heroic swirls of paint. The themes were birth, death, sex, transfiguration. There was a lot more than met the eye to this little brunette, Sa
m thought.

  “They’re absolutely miserable with one another,” Liza was saying. “I know why Queen hangs in there. She’d be nowhere without my father.”

  “Money?”

  “Everything. She’d be nothing without him.”

  “Well, she’d keep the house, wouldn’t she, and her friends?” But Sam knew she was playing the devil’s advocate. She knew what Liza was going to say. She just wanted to hear her say it.

  Liza laughed. “You’ve forgotten how it works in Atlanta. She is who my dad is. And if she doesn’t have him, forget it. I’ve seen it happen with her friends. I’ve heard her talk about it. And it doesn’t even have to be divorce. Her friend Marjorie—nine months after her husband’s heart attack, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  “From grief?”

  “From loneliness. From being frozen out. For women like Queen—”

  Sam couldn’t help but interrupt. “Do you always call your mother Queen?”

  “Ever since she asked me to, when I was three years old.” Liza smiled an odd smile, leaned her head back, and dropped a ketchup-covered french fry into her mouth from above. “Anyway, nobody ever invited Marjorie anywhere again, except to lunch. But never to dinner parties with the men, or to house parties in the summer up at Tate or at the lake. And never on couples trips.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she didn’t have a husband anymore who was part of the group.”

  “So she’d lost her passport.”

  Liza nodded.

  “And no one offered to fix her up with another man?”

  “They were too afraid she was going to steal one of theirs.”

  “What about someone new, from the outside?” Sam knew the answer to that, too. There was no new blood in the old circle. You could buy yourself the biggest house in Atlanta with new money, but that wouldn’t get you into the club.

  Liza gave her an incredulous look. “What planet are you from?”

  Samantha laughed. “I do know what you’re talking about. I think that, subconsciously, that’s one of the reasons I left Atlanta—or at least, why I stayed away so long.”

  Liza looked at her. “I’m leaving, too, when I finish school. I can’t believe you came back.”

  “Well, it’s a long story. But let’s get back to your mother’s friend Marjorie.”

  “She could do whatever she wanted to. No one cared anymore, see? That’s the point. But she wouldn’t want to. She’d been inside, and you don’t get more inside in this city than being married to a partner at Simmons and Lee. After that, it’s all downhill.”

  “A doctor wouldn’t do—a banker?”

  “Nope. Might as well be black.” Liza said that last word in an ironic way that told Sam about her liberal posture.

  “Okay. So we know why Queen wouldn’t divorce your father. But what about him? And what makes you think they’re so miserable in the first place?”

  “Which one do you want answered?”

  Sam shrugged. “Both.”

  “I have to tell you about him. Forrest Ridley is the most wonderful man in the world.”

  Sam laughed a little. “Lots of daughters think that, Liza, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

  “But he is! He’s funny, and he’s kind. He’s always there when I need him.” Her face clouded. She looked up at Sam, and suddenly her eyes were glistening with the threat of tears.

  For the first time, Sam saw the little girl within the young woman. She reached over and patted Liza’s hand. “Go on.”

  “My friends tease me about being a daddy’s girl, and they say I’m spoiled. But I’m not. Daddy’s never spoiled me. He’s given me lots of advantages, I know that. And I’m grateful for them. But he’s always talked with me as if I’m a real person, not just his child. He taught me to respect people, to look for the good in them, and then to allow them their differences—just like he’s allowed me mine.”

  “You’re a little different from the other girls you know?”

  Liza smiled at the understatement. “You might say so. But Daddy didn’t stand in the way of my doing what I wanted, of my becoming a painter instead of a debutante.”

  “Ah-ha! I knew we had something in common.”

  “You paint, too?”

  “No, I told them to take all that coming-out routine and shove it.”

  “You did? Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  Liza leaned forward as if they were the closest of girlfriends sharing a confidence sweet as a chocolate ice cream sundae. “While the other girls in my group were going to New York to buy their dresses for their balls, I flew to New York too and stayed for a month with Daddy’s sister, my Aunt Jean, who’s in advertising, and we did all the galleries. And then she took me for another month abroad. I saw everything!” She burbled on. “The Louvre, Giverny, the Prado, the Sistine Chapel, the chateaux.”

  “Some dad to let you do that. And Queen?”

  “Shit a brick. Said I’d ruined my life and that Daddy had helped me. She didn’t speak to either of us for months.” She paused. “They don’t talk much at home anyway. They’ve slept in separate bedrooms for years.”

  Samantha thought about the house tour Queen had taken her on. They’d skipped the family quarters on the second floor. Was Queen touchy about the number of occupied bedrooms?

  “If you saw them in public, you’d never guess,” Liza continued. “They’re all lovey-dovey, or at least Queen is, and Daddy doesn’t do anything to change that impression and embarrass her.”

  “Do you like your mother?”

  The young woman didn’t miss a beat. “No, not very much. She’s not very likable. Did you think so?”

  Sam hesitated. She was notorious for her directness, but in this case, she wondered, shouldn’t she try…

  Liza laughed at her hesitation. “Your Uncle George told me I’d like you. He said we’re a lot alike.”

  “He’s right. No, I don’t like Queen, Liza. I think she’s one cold customer.”

  Liza said softly, as if she were talking to herself, “I’ve always thought of her as the Ice Queen.”

  “So why does your father stick?”

  “I’ve asked him that very thing.”

  Samantha looked into the blue of Liza’s direct gaze. She wouldn’t want it trained on her when coupled with such a question.

  “He always just shakes his head and says that promises like ‘till death do us part’ are promises not lightly undertaken.”

  “Tell me why you’re so worried about him now,” Sam said.

  Once again Sam heard about how Liza and her father had a standing date to bet the ball games every weekend.

  “Queen says he’s missed dates with you before,” she said when Liza paused.

  “Never.”

  “And that you’ve forgotten that fact because you’re upset about breaking up with your boyfriend.”

  “Really? Now, isn’t that interesting. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve never had a serious boyfriend in my whole life.”

  Four

  “What’s for supper?” Sam asked, walking through the kitchen.

  Peaches was standing at the butcher-block worktable in the middle of the room, stirring cornmeal batter. “Nothing for you. Horace and I are having some hot tamale pie, but George said you all are eating out, going to a party.”

  “George!” Sam called down the hall as she wheeled out of the kitchen and headed toward his private quarters. She stalked through the open door of his sitting room.

  “I waste my whole day talking with your friends about their problems, and then I come home to have Peaches inform me I’m going to a party! What the hell is going on here?”

  George looked at her with perfect equanimity. “It’s nearly dusk. You must have enjoyed yourself if you stayed so long.” He reached over and turned down the volume on the recording of a book he was listening to on his new state-of-the-art sound system. “This new Le Carré is something. Have you read it?�
�

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I like it almost better than the Smileys.”

  She was exasperated. “Yes, I loved the book. And yes, I enjoyed talking to Liza, and Queen Ridley is some piece of work. No, I did not spend the entire day with them; I did manage to scratch out two or three cents’ worth of a livelihood by meeting with Hoke, and after seeing Liza I went back to the morgue and read background on sheriffs for a couple of hours. Though there’s been precious little in the news. I think I’ve already exhausted it. These boys aren’t much for publicity.”

  “That’s probably why you’re so cranky. Not that I didn’t warn you. And they’re not going to be any more welcoming when you come snooping around, either.”

  “That is not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about this damned party you think I’m going to. You know I don’t do parties.”

  “And Peaches and Horace don’t do windows. Never did. I have to bring in a service.”

  “What does that have to do with the price of radicchio at Cloudt’s Market?”

  George grinned. “I thought you might want to meet some of Forrest Ridley’s friends. Edison Kay, one of the partners, is giving a cocktail party tonight. I didn’t mention it before because you’re such a stick-in-the-mud about social gatherings, but since it’s a perfect opportunity…” He trailed off.

  Sam spoke to the ceiling. “Why do I take this abuse? Is it because when I got sober I discovered that no one ever says anything interesting after ten o’clock—and that nobody says anything interesting at cocktail parties before ten o’clock either?” She shifted her focus to George. “Why do you think I want to meet Ridley’s friends?”

  “Because you’re curious about the man.” George twinkled. “We don’t have to stay long. Maybe Ridley will even be back from wherever he’s been by then and will show up at the party, and Liza’s worries will all be for naught. We’ll have a handful of fabulous hors d’oeuvres and come home.”