The Hideaway

Dot pulled her glasses off the top of her head and settled them onto her nose.

Glory leaned over to take a peek. “Gracious. Is that Mags?”

I kept my eyes on Dot. I wanted to see her reaction. If she was as surprised as I was, she didn’t show it. She just stared at the photo and gave a slow nod. Then she reached up and wiped the corner of her eye. Glory patted her knee.

“Did you ever know Mags to look like this?” I asked.

Dot shook her head. “I moved in here in ’61. By then, she was a little . . . freer. Granted, she was nine months pregnant when I got here, so that might have explained her not wearing nice dresses and expensive jewelry. Even after she had Jenny, though, she never dressed like this. Now, Robert . . .” Dot cleared her throat. “He always dressed as if he could be called away to an important board meeting at any moment—or maybe he just wanted to look that way.” Dot rubbed her thumb over the date along the edge of the photo. “Nineteen fifty-seven,” she murmured.

She handed the photo to me and leaned back in her chair. She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Mags didn’t always dress and act like she did as we knew her. She had a different life before she arrived here—wealthy parents, high society, fancy parties.”

She might as well have been talking about some woman I’d never known. Mags in high society? I would have laughed had I not been so surprised.

“She was mostly quiet about that part of her life—quiet about much of her life, mind you—but she let things slip from time to time.” Dot smiled and tapped her finger on the arm of her chair. “I remember the first time she mentioned anything about her old life. It was my wedding day, about a month after Mags had Jenny. I’d picked out a beautiful orange taffeta number for her to wear as my one bridesmaid, and she was not happy about it. She had a hard time zipping up her dress in the back, so I helped her get it up the last couple of inches. She moved and twisted, trying to get comfortable in the dress. Finally, she flopped down on the bed and said, ‘Lord, I’ve always hated tight dresses.’

“I laughed, thinking she was kidding. I’d never seen her wear anything other than baggy blue jeans, big tops, and wool socks. What in the world would she have to do with tight dresses? So I asked her.

“‘Oh, I used to wear them,’ she said. ‘Formal dresses, pearls, and an embarrassingly large diamond ring.’ You can imagine my shock. Probably much like yours now,” Dot said.

I nodded. I thought of the ring in the box in the attic. It was a diamond, but it wasn’t large or embarrassing.

“She lay on the bed, fiddling with the boned bodice of that frilly orange dress. She said, ‘I thought I was done with these things for good. No offense—it’s a nice dress.’ Then she hopped up off the bed and pulled me out the door, saying I wouldn’t be late to my own wedding on her watch.”

“Did she say anything else?” I wanted to hear more.

“Later that night after everything had died down, she told me it had been a perfect wedding. Now, it wasn’t much—just the other guests in the house, a few friends from the neighborhood, and Bert’s brothers from Florida. I wore a dress from Irene’s Dress Barn on Main Street, and Bert and I exchanged rings we bought at an estate sale. I didn’t need any more than that, but I was a little embarrassed in light of what Mags had said about that large diamond ring of hers. I figured such a ring would have called for a rather large wedding, much fancier than the one we’d just had. I told her as much, but she laughed and said, ‘Dot, you can’t imagine the wedding I had.’ I started to defend our little wedding, but I’ll never forget what she said next. ‘I never knew how much I wanted uncomplicated love and a simple wedding until the chance was gone.’ I don’t know what her wedding was like, but she was so wistful, it made me appreciate what I had with Bert even more.”

I picked up the photo of Mags again. It was hard to imagine her life had ever included fancy parties and an elaborate wedding. The ring from the box would have fit in perfectly with a simple wedding and uncomplicated love. Why didn’t she get what she wanted?

I pulled the postcard out of my pocket and handed it to Dot. “This was in the box too.”

She read the words on the back, her lips barely moving.

“You made the right choice.”

Dot cut her eyes over to Glory, who leaned forward to see. Dot handed the card back to me. “I don’t know what that means,” she said, but her eyes said something else.

Somehow, Mags had gone from wearing fancy dresses and pearls to a bird’s-nest hat and rubber waders. Did it have something to do with her parents? Her mother? I wanted to ask, but Dot stood and called back into the house.

“Bert, I’m coming in and I want to taste a roux that will make Major’s head spin!” She looked at me over her shoulder as she walked through the doorway and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

19

MAGS

MAY 1960

I was out on the dock, staring at the decrepit motorboat suspended by fraying ropes in the boathouse. The hand crank wouldn’t budge, so I was trying to figure out how to lower the thing into the water to see if it would still float. There were no obvious holes in the hull, but I knew even pinpricks could sink it. Years before, Daddy gave me boating lessons on summer mornings. He spent a small fortune on a wooden Chris Craft and stored it in Point Clear. In the absence of a son to teach these things to, I was going to be his sportswoman—only I wasn’t very good. The first time I took a turn at the wheel, I ran straight into a sandbar in Mobile Bay, damaging the motor so badly that Daddy had to jump in and pull the boat back to shore.

“I need rubber boots,” I said under my breath. If I stood in the shallow water right under the boat, I’d get a better look at the bottom, as well as the motor, a rusty Evinrude.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to try your hand at boating again.”

I spun around. Daddy stood on the grass at the edge of the dock, shielding his eyes from the sun. It was as if I had conjured him out of the still Sweet Bay air.

I waited for his image to float away, but he walked down the dock toward me, smiling. “I’ve missed you. Your mother made shrimp cocktail last night. Since you weren’t there to share, I had to finish them off myself.” He patted his round stomach. “I didn’t mind so much.”

“Daddy, I . . .”

“So, this is The Hideaway, huh?” He looked behind him at the house overlooking the bay. “I’ve read about it but never actually seen it. Looks like it could use a paint job—or two—but it’s nice. Can I have a tour?”

He sounded friendly, but there was tension in his casual smile. I had no way to tell what he knew, and I didn’t want to give too much away before I figured that out.

“Sure. Let’s take a walk.” I led him around the house to the front door. When we walked up the front steps, a group of three black-clad women passed through the door on their way out. Daddy turned to watch them climb into a waiting car, driven by yet another woman in black, this one sporting sunglasses and a black-and-white knit scarf. She waved at me and I waved back. Daddy raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment.

Inside was surprisingly quiet, and I was thankful. Gary stood at an easel at the front window, his paintbrush suspended in air, apparently waiting for the muses to tell him what to paint. Starla was in the kitchen humming under her breath, preparing the evening meal.