“I’m almost finished,” Sallie said. “Sit down, please.”

Annajane glanced at her wristwatch. “Five minutes. That’s how much more of my time you’ve got.”

Mason was right again. She shouldn’t have come. Despite all her best intentions, Sallie was getting to her yet again, needling, criticizing, and, yes, pushing her around. Annajane felt all the years of long-simmering resentment coming to a boil.

Sallie took a deep drag on her cigarette and flicked the ashes into the nearest potted palm. “All I wanted to do … all I wanted to say, is this: if you’re going to become a part of this family … again, I want you to stop trying to tear us apart. That’s it. In a nutshell.”

“I’m tearing your family apart?”

“You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to?” Sallie asked. “Pokey is furious with me over this mess with Celia, which she somehow thinks is my fault. Mason won’t return my phone calls. He actually has Voncile running interference for him. And just last night, Davis came over here and announced that he was selling his share of the business to Pokey and possibly moving away.” Sallie blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. Her voice cracked. “This is all your doing.”

Annajane was speechless. For nearly a minute.

“You are unbelievable,” she said, when she could finally gather her thoughts. “Me? Wreck your family? Let me clue you to the real world, Sallie, since you refuse to face it for yourself. Your daughter is furious with you because you let her know you don’t consider her children to be ‘real’ Baylesses. Also, you treat her like shit, always criticizing her clothes, or her weight, or her housekeeping, always letting her know she isn’t quite good enough.”

“I never!” Sallie said. “Pokey knows I love her. And if I’ve given her constructive criticism, she knows it’s because I want her to be the best she can be.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with Davis,” Annajane admitted. “It’s news to me that Pokey and Pete are going to buy him out. But it’s good news. He hasn’t been happy at Quixie in years, and it’s time for him to move on to something else if he doesn’t believe in the company anymore. Besides, if he leaves Passcoe and quits trying to prove what a hotshot he is, maybe he’ll finally grow up and become half the decent, compassionate, loyal man his father was and his brother is.”

“You have no right,” Sallie said, stubbing out her cigarette in the palm. “I want you to leave this house right now.”

“You asked me over here, and I listened to your bullshit, so now it’s my turn,” Annajane said. “Do you want to know why Mason won’t return your calls? Why he avoids coming over here like the plague? It’s because he’s tired of having you tell him how to live his life. You helped destroy our marriage, years ago, and then you came damned close to pushing him into marrying a pathological liar. Earlier this week, you as much as accused him of lying when he finally told you the truth about Sophie. A truth you already knew.”

“How dare you!” Sallie jumped up from her chair and stormed into the house. Annajane found her in the kitchen, unsteadily trying to open a bottle of wine.

“It’s not even noon yet,” Annajane observed, taking the corkscrew from her and applying it to the bottle herself. “But go ahead and have a snort. You’re gonna need it by the time I’ve had my say.” She took a goblet from the cupboard and poured the glass nearly to the brim.

Sallie gulped the wine, spilling some down the front of her blouse, a rare sight. “He had no right to tell those lies, to talk about his father that way,” she said.

“He’s telling the truth and you know it,” Annajane said. “Mason loved his dad, more than you’ll ever know. He loves you, too, which I don’t think you fully appreciate. That’s why he went down to Florida and brought Sophie back here after Glenn died. It’s why he adopted her, rather than let her be raised by strangers, and why he let everybody believe he’d cheated on me. He did it out of respect for you and Glenn, because he couldn’t stand the idea of a scandal. I don’t think he had any idea he’d fall in love with Sophie as quickly or as deeply as he did.”

Sallie took another gulp of wine. “This is unforgivable.”

“You knew all about the cheating, didn’t you?” Annajane asked. “You knew all about the other women, but it was convenient to look the other way, wasn’t it, Sallie?”

“I didn’t know anything,” Sallie said, unconvincingly.

“But you guessed.”

*   *   *

Sallie stared down into her wineglass. “The first time he cheated, I told myself it was just a slip. The children were so young; Pokey was still in diapers. He went to a ballgame in Chapel Hill for the weekend, and I stayed home with the children. When he came home, I just knew. The phone would ring at night, and if I picked up, she’d hang up.”

She gave Annajane a tremulous smile and fingered the pearls around her neck. “He bought me these, afterwards. And the phone calls stopped, and I told myself all was well. Until the next time. It was years later. He’d gone up to Virginia to visit Mason, when he was in boarding school up there. I think he was actually sleeping with one of the teachers. That went on for three or four years.”

“Why didn’t you have it out with him?” Annajane asked. “Threaten to leave him if he didn’t stop fooling around?”

“I didn’t want to leave him,” Sallie said. “I was in love with him. You knew Glenn. He was a good person. A wonderful father to our children. And so generous. He never denied me anything.”

“Except your self-respect.”

Sallie raised an eyebrow. “A highly overrated commodity, Annajane dear. We had a good marriage for a long time. It worked for us.”

“Until things changed,” Annajane said. “Like that last Christmas. The night of the company party.”

“It was outrageous behavior!” she said, her nostrils flaring. “Even for him. I waited up all night, wondering whether he and Mason were even alive. He came stumbling into our bedroom way after midnight, still drunk. And Glenn rarely got drunk. He stripped down to his underpants and fell into bed. I slept in the guest bedroom. In the morning, I found his clothes on the bathroom floor, where he’d left them. His clothes reeked of her perfume. That was a first. Before, he’d always been very careful to hide his … affairs. And then I went to unpack his overnight bag, to put the rest of his clothes in the laundry. I was emptying his pants pockets before I put them in the wash. He always left loose change and his pocketknife in his pockets, and I’ve ruined more than one load of laundry that way. But this time I found all that and a little bottle of blue pills I’d never seen before.”

“His heart medication?” Annajane asked.

“Sildenafil citrate. Ever hear of it? I hadn’t. I had to look it up on the Internet.” Sallie put the glass carefully down on the counter, then picked up a sponge to wipe down any traces of the spilled wine. “He’d gotten himself a prescription of Viagra so he could perform like the young stud he thought he was. He didn’t care if he couldn’t get it up for his wife,” she said bitterly. “But his girlfriends were a different story.”

Sallie opened the cupboard under the sink and brought out a bottle of spray cleaner. She sprayed the already-immaculate formica countertop, then wiped it briskly, using nearly half a roll of paper towels, while Annajane stood, transfixed, waiting to hear the rest of the story.

“You think I’m a bitch,” she told Annajane. “A mean, withered-up, spiteful old bitch.”

Annajane shrugged. “Mean and spiteful, yes. But not so withered up.”

That made Sallie laugh. “I spend a lot of money to look this good. I had a face-lift last year, did you know?”

“I wondered,” Annajane admitted. “You had it done down in Florida?”

“Yes. There’s a surgeon down there who does amazing work. I’m thinking of having a tummy tuck next. In fact, I’ve put in a contract on a little bungalow down in Palm Beach, and that’s where I’ll be wintering next year. I’m going to sell the Wrightsville Beach cottage. I never cared for it there anyway. It’s much nicer in Highlands, and most of my friends have places there. A much more interesting social scene.”