“I have it cut a certain way just so you’ll do that,” he said. “Anyway, I believe you changed the subject.”

  “If you’ll remember, between the cigarettes, booze, coffee and sleeping pills, I spent my youth encased in a veritable Molotov cocktail. I had to cut something out. It isn’t much of a choice when it comes to deciding to get it together or go live under a bridge.”

  “You’re 26, I hardly think you can put your youth behind you. But God, that couldn't have been easy,”

  “Once you realize why you’re trying to self-destruct it takes a little fun out of the process.”

  Ben had a question in his eyes, but I warned him off with my own. He knew something significant had happened even more recently to cause my rapid career and lifestyle change. But that right there was more than I wanted anyone else to know.

  Tweet from @foralark: Princess Bride’s Wesley: “Rodents of unusual size? I don’t think they exist.” Obviously a time before the financial market meltdown when rats and pirates became easier to spot.

  Chapter 3

  My first job just out of college, in Mergers & Acquisitions at Goldberg, Helms and Micheaux, was considered a plum position among business majors. Finance had not been a passion of mine, but I did love the nerve-wracking highs, having my veins thrum with anxiety while I waited to see if my efforts would result in a win or loss. Of course, I would have been a fool not to consider the staggering paychecks.

  I had a terrible fear of being fired and an inexplicable desire for it as well. I liked the men there. I loved being the wit, the beauty (trust me—I’m not that vain—it is a very dry and masculine world) and “the creative one.” I was working so hard I never had time to think about the elusive childhood dreams I had traded for this gilded cage.

  But one particular day I was on the edge of my seat, ready to jump out of my skin: I couldn’t seem to get my lungs filled and I couldn’t stay still. The acquisition of Morgan-Phillips, a family-owned cash cow was big, and it was, through a set of complex networking maneuvers, all mine.

  If you want to get biblical I was Eve in her Garden, Morgan-Phillips was Adam, and God was nowhere in the picture.

  Hugh was the serpent. A senior partner, he was always trying to get me. On his team, in his bed? I was never quite sure. But the attention was heady, and we were always at our wittiest around each other. We read each other like books, explored one another’s mental topography and excavated portions of our pasts. We knew each other’s favorite novels, movies (his was “Dog Morning,” a film that made Tarantino look like a Disney director), and if he hadn’t been married I believe I would have been forced to turn down stronger overtures.

  The day the verdict on the merger was due he sat me down, asked about the Morgan-Phillips deal and diagnosed my struggle to breathe as an anxiety attack. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a prescription bottle and shook out ten pills. “A gift for Gretchen,” he said grandly.

  “You have anxiety?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Not anymore,” he grinned. “This is exactly what they will give you at Urgent Care and you’ll be more anxious if you have to wait there for your news.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “No cell phone use in urgent care facilities. You’ll go crazy.”

  That was an understatement. I would fly apart like a well-made bomb. I slipped the pills into a mirrored compact in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. By two in the afternoon I had nine left and a laissez faire attitude that would have worried me if I had been capable of worrying.

  The deal went through. The news swept through the office like wildfire. I accepted congratulations coolly. The partners invited me into the Managing Director's office for a stiff drink, and I was “in.” That isn’t delusional thinking. I actually was myself, as I had never been with the partners before. I had stepped into the ladies’ and popped another pill for an anxiety that might rise up again. When I opened the door to their raised glasses it was overwhelming. I was glad I had taken that extra insurance tablet.

  I made them laugh recounting the more humorous side-notes to the corporate courting process. Foolishly, I accepted a drink, and forgetting myself, took a large swallow before realizing what I had done and put it down. Even a sip is a dangerous thing, which is why I avoid any consumer product with even a trace of alcohol. I went over to the mini-bar immediately and got a tonic with ice and lemon to wash away the taste.

  I was briefly aware of Hugh, remaining on the periphery, his dark eyes drinking me in while he nursed his gin. I attributed it to the Xanax later, but it was a hot and almost menacing look. He must have caught the brief alarm in my expression because in an instant it was gone. He smiled broadly and raised his glass to me.

  Afterward, I giddily declined dinner and rides home. It was winter and already dark by the time we left, the partners to their car services and I to my condo in The Franklin. My building, an historic converted fire station just on the border between prosperity and poverty, was one I had chosen for its character as much as the tax break that came with the historic designation.

  I was disoriented, cheery, and beginning to feel the full effects of my Xanax and the accidental swig of liquor when a man came up from behind me, shoving me down on my stomach, pressing my face against the loose grit from the asphalt.

  I am a fighter, and normally cagey as hell, but that wasn't Gretchen lying there like a discarded doll. I felt as though I was watching her dispassionately from a distance as he finished and hissed a warning in an obviously disguised voice that if I got up before he was gone he would “make sure the last thing my right eye took in was my left one rolling away.”

  Afterward I lay in the cold parking lot. It must have been at least fifteen minutes before I managed to struggle up and make my way to my building. Thankfully, we enter via a coded keypad, and I had my condo fob in my skirt pocket.

  Once inside, I didn’t even lock my door. Everything had already been taken.

  The man who attacked me had my purse, my confidence and a large portion of real estate in my brain. I was afraid that reporting the incident would not only make it more real, it would prompt a look into my bloodstream for things that had no right to be there. Things I still had, by the way, because they were in my jacket. I took another, then another and stared blindly at my khaki colored walls until a distant peace came for me and I closed my eyes.

  The next morning I took half a Xanax to get to work. Another half to summon the courage to report it to police as a mugging, call in my charge cards and visit my doctor during lunch.

  I dully recited the events of the night before. I refused to report the rape, and I left Dr. Chung’s office with a prescription for Xanax, another for Plan B, with the promise of disease test results to filter in at a later date. I also had the name of a counselor and a determination to shut the door on those memories, lock it, and get to the pharmacy as soon as possible.

  Once I had the bottle in hand, even before shaking one of the peach ovals out, I felt a blurred peace fall over me. I crumpled up the counselor’s name, and threw it in a city can a block from The Franklin. I had been molested once as a child. I knew all about the process, and justice had been done there. But I never saw my attacker on this occasion.

  There was something about him, though. Hisfinal words sent a jolt through me almost like déjà vu. I thought about it all a moment longer, and then once again turned the key on that memory door. There was no opening it now, I thought. There would be no revisiting that cold space in my mind’s attic.

  Co-workers remarked on my newly aloof attitude. Some thought the success had gone to my head. A few partners worried I was trying to parlay my peak moment into a better job at a competitor’s firm. Mostly I was just numb with the help of those small pills that insulated me so lovingly. For a while, I only left the office to sleep, and then I always made sure I had safe navigation to that condo, which suddenly felt like a dangerous perch.

  Eventually, I lost the balance with the Xanax. Cool and collected became forgetful and fuzzy. Feeling more sick every day, I tapered off, and then stopped, reading everything possible to help me survive the withdrawal. It was my second time. I had been a teen alcoholic, and I knew what I was in for. Going it alone when detoxing is not something I recommend. It actually can prove fatal. I remember moments when that felt likely, even desirable.

  In the end, I escaped the firm with an indifferent letter of recommendation and a month’s severance salary. I sold the condo at a shocking profit just before real estate in the city went south. I had augmented the gain by selling it myself, having gotten my real estate license one summer during my junior year in college. This had been in anticipation of first dibs and full commission discounts for future investment properties I would acquire during my swift ride to the top. Ironically, it provided me with a bit more security as I slid away in disgrace.

  With a fairly healthy bank account, screaming nerves and a diseased heart, I headed to Union County — a short drive and a whole world away.

  Union County is twelve miles from the heart of downtown Charlotte and the land of the polo pony, steeplechase races, Southern squires and sweet tea. Bridle Springs, the town I chose, encompassed less than fifteen miles, a population of just under five thousand and a restriction of no less than two acres per home.

  I got lucky there, finding a small rental house through a connection in a wildlife organization I had joined in college.

  An acquaintance got in touch immediately when I posted a request for lodging on the Carolina Wildlife Website. Anita gave me the number for a woman who was on the Union County Wildlife Advisory Board. Soon I was ensconced in a guest house on Leslie Nesbit’s land in one of the few neighborhoods in Bridle Springs: the legendary SkyHaven. It was a seven-hundred acre neighborhood of less than a hundred families, half of them private pilots because the centerpiece of the neighborhood is an airstrip for residents.

  Leslie, a widow with macular deterioration, was willing to let me have the beautiful log home for a paltry $300 a month in exchange for taking her on errands and caring for an increasing — and increasingly mystifying — herd of goats and a few hens.

  Leslie was a pleasant enough woman, strong and self-reliant in spite of her professed progressing blindness. She was always willing to give me supplies for the odd wounded animal brought to me. She also had medications that were illegal for us to use, and she distributed them in a pinch if the situations were desperate enough.

  It was ironic that North Carolina laws allowed us everything from IV solutions to antibiotics but nothing to put an animal out of its misery. This was painful for us, as the drive to the closest emergency vet was forty minutes away and some still refuse to treat wildlife. A few of the rehabbers could snap a neck with a twist. I was not among them, but Leslie stocked everything that even a vet might find useful for rehabilitation or euthanasia, so those in her circle were often spared extreme measures. Despite her condition, she had remained connected in every way that mattered to her.

  I chauffeured Leslie, handled her correspondence, picked up her prescriptions, and if I ever bought dinner I got enough for two, dropping off a plate at her house. If I called first, she would invariably talk me into bringing my meal over so we could eat together. But lately she had been too weak and depressed to do any of the smallest things she had enjoyed before.

  The work I did for Leslie certainly wasn't anything close to the hours I was used to putting in on a job, and I knew I would have to find more to do soon. I had planned to use my real estate license to pad my savings, but the owner of a local firm had told me the market was so slow that she had not only started watching reality television, she was taking sides.

  For the time being I decided that it was enough to feel I was doing a small, worthwhile thing well. I lived like a Spartan off my savings, wanting nothing and no one. I knew the day would come when I would have to break surface and ponder what my real future should look like. What I didn't realize was just how quickly that day was approaching.

  Tweet: People have too many gadgets. Who really needs a kitchen timer? I just wait until I smell smoke.

  Chapter 4

  On the first day I had the morning free from Leslie’s errands, I had fed the livestock and was halfway through a dog-eared Agatha Christie when the phone rang. It startled me a little. It was extremely early for any mundane phone call. I saw from the caller ID it was Leslie. “Thank God,” I thought. She had been worrying me of late, becoming even more snappish and withdrawn.

  “Leslie!” I exclaimed. “I was just going to come see you — one of the goats—”

  “Hold up, Gretchen. It’s Lucy.”

  Leslie’s daughter Lucy was one of the few new friends I had in town.

  Now she spoke with uncharacteristic firmness. “This will be upsetting for you, OK?”

  “Just say it,” I insisted, because my first thought was that I had done something wrong and might lose my home. Although what that infraction would be I had no idea.

  “Mother died during the night.”

  I was dumbfounded. “I didn’t hear a siren.”

  “I asked them not to use it. She was most decidedly dead.”

  My heart stammered in a late reaction to the news.

  Now I was shaken from my reverie by Lucy’s voice, which was matter-of-fact.

  “I found her around 9:30 last night. I had stopped by to borrow her Burberry. Anyway, I’m calling you first. Well, sort of first. The Sheriff just left, so the news was probably out before I hung up from 911.”

  “The Sheriff?” I asked, aghast.

  “No, it’s nothing like that. The Sheriff's department always comes for anything outside Monroe city limits. It's not like they have a lot to do here. The police handle Monroe and the rest of these podunk towns don't have police.”

  “How...?”

  “Evidently she was getting out of bed, got dizzy, cracked her head and fell. It may have been a stroke — she had quite a medical history. They just called her primary care doctor and that’s probably what it will say on the certificate.”

  “We just had lunch yesterday.”

  “Sometimes people eat lunch, and dinner, too, and they are perfectly capable of giving up the ghost anyway,” she said curtly.

  “Of course,” I murmured. “How stupid of me.”

  “No, I’m sorry, it’s just going to be bizarre when Barb comes in and we hear the will read. Mother was not known for fairness. None of us were exactly close.”

  “Barb — your sister, right?”

  “Yeah, and she is a terrific cunt,” she said in a tone most people would use to describe someone’s hair color.

  I drew in my breath, trying not to be judgmental, but Lucy has a mouth that would make a merchant marine blush.

  “And you don’t have any idea how fair the will was this time?”

  “Ah, so you must have been driving her to the attorney’s office too.”

  “Once,” I admitted.

  “Were you a witness?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a little surprising isn’t it? I mean, you were already there.”

  “I just sat in the car reading Dave Eggers’ book.”

  “Ah, now that’s a heartbreaking work.” I could hear a slightest inflection of mischief in her voice. “Wait,” she said, now positively gleeful. “Not to get your hopes up, but maybe you couldn’t witness because you are a beneficiary?”

  “You are absurd.” I said dismissively. “More likely she left me in the car because she was such a private person. Anyway, if your sister stays here, I’ll keep out of her way, but Leslie was in her right mind. Surely Barb knows that. And you are blood, no matter how rocky the relationship was. This may be a chance for you to reconnect.”

  “Ah, Pollyanna! Can you channel Gretchen again? Seriously, she could have left everything to the goats for all I know. As a matter of fact, I hope she left the goats to me. We’ll invite all the Jamaicans and let them feast.”

  “Yes,” I said dryly. “We should invite all our Jamaican friends from this 99 percent Caucasian town.”

  “Smartass. Anyway, I hate goats. They are skittish, smelly and scary at the same time.”

  “Preachin’ to the choir here,” I said, “except for the scary part. The kids are cute.”

  “Yep,” Lucy agreed. “I have a few pairs of kid gloves that are just adorable.”

  Lucy Nesbit Cornwall had introduced herself to me at a town meeting I had attended on Leslie’s behalf. I am wary of the overly friendly, and it takes a true Southerner to know where that line between friendliness and forwardness is with a Carolina girl. But Lucy was so persistent I had given in to half of her invitations out of baffled psychological exhaustion and Southern courtesy.

  Now, still in shock over the demise of my benefactress, I numbly cast around for death protocol, food, drinks and flowers. I’m not much in the kitchen with ordinary baked goods. I like to think it is because they are too easy to keep my full attention.

  I like to think a lot of things.

  I managed a coffee cake. I wasn’t sure if I used the right flour, but flour is flour, right? The finished product was burned a little on top and seemed to weigh a ton, but I grabbed it and an 8-pack of LaCroix and headed over after calling my favorite Charlotte florist. I know from experience that drinks are an overlooked requirement. Death has a way of withering the living, turning the bereaved into versions of Lot’s wife, commemorative statues to salt, tears, backward looks and regret.

  I wasn’t sure where Lucy would be by now, but it made sense to try Leslie’s first. Leslie’s home is on a sixty-acre parcel, forty of them pastured, which could never be subdivided without The SkyHaven Homeowners’ Association’s permission. Lucy, who had a lake lot in the same neighborhood, answered Leslie’s door herself with a polite smile before the mask slipped and crumpled briefly.

 

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