But it did matter. On Saturday morning when she awakened to discover he’d already left the house, she grabbed her precious report card—that magic passport to her father’s love—and sneaked out of the house. She could still see herself flying across the yard to her pink banana-seat bicycle and tossing her report card in the basket. She jumped on her bike and took off down Mockingbird Lane, sneakers pumping, her lucky horseshoe barrettes warm against her scalp, her heart singing.
Finally, my daddy’s going to love me!
She no longer remembered how she’d known where to find the house he sometimes stayed in with the other lady, or why she’d thought he’d be there that morning, but she remembered the tidiness of the brick bungalow, the way it sat back from the street with the curtains drawn over the front windows. She’d left her bike in the driveway behind his car, taken her report card from the basket, and raced for the front steps.
The faint sound of his voice coming from the back of the house stopped her. She turned toward the stockade fence that surrounded the tree-shaded yard and approached the partially opened gate, the report card clenched in her sweaty hands, a giddy smile taking over her face.
As she peeked through the gate, she saw him sitting in a big lawn chair in the middle of a flagstone patio. His yellow shirt was open at the collar, revealing the shiny tuft of dark hair there that she was never, ever allowed to pull. Her smile faded, and a creepy feeling came over her, like she had big spiders crawling up her legs, because he wasn’t alone. A second grader named Winnie Davis lay curled in his lap, her head against his shoulder, legs dangling, looking like she sat that way every day. He was reading a book to her, using funny voices, just like Diddie did when she read to Sugar Beth.
Spiders were crawling all over her now, even in her stomach, and she felt like she was going to throw up. Winnie laughed at one of his silly voices, and he kissed the top of her head. Without being asked.
The magic report card slipped from her fingers. She must have made some sort of sound because his head shot up and he saw her. He set Winnie aside and leaped to his feet. His heavy black eyebrows collided as he glowered at Sugar Beth. “What are you doing here?”
The words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t explain about the magic report card, about how proud he was supposed to be.
He stalked toward her, a short-legged, barrel-chested banty rooster of a man. “What do you think you’re doing? Go home right now.” He stepped on the report card, lying unseen on the ground. “You aren’t ever to come here, do you understand me?” He grabbed her arm and dragged her back toward the driveway.
Winnie followed, stopping just outside the fence. Sugar Beth started to cry. “W-why was she sitting in your lap?”
“Because she’s a good girl, that’s why. Because she doesn’t go places where she’s not invited. Now get on your bike and go home.”
“Daddy?” Winnie said from the fence.
“It’s all right, punkin’.”
Sugar Beth’s stomach hurt so much she couldn’t bear it, and she gazed up at him through an ocean of tears. “Why’s she calling you that?”
He didn’t bother looking at her as he pulled her farther away from the house. “Don’t you worry about it.”
Sobbing, she turned back toward Winnie. “He’s—he’s not your daddy! Don’t call him that!”
A swift, silencing shake. “That’s enough, Sugar Beth.”
“Tell her not to call you that ever again!”
“Settle down right now, or you’ll get a spanking.”
She’d pulled away from him then and hurled her small body down the drive, running past her pink banana-seat bicycle, out onto the sidewalk, sneakers thudding, her little girl’s heart exploding in her chest.
He didn’t come after her.
The years passed. Sometimes Sugar Beth caught glimpses of Griffin in town with Winnie, doing all the things he never had time to do with her. Bit by bit, she began to understand how he could favor one daughter over the other. Winnie was quiet. She got good grades and loved history the same way he did. Winnie didn’t throw temper tantrums because he wouldn’t take her to Dairy Queen, or get dragged to the front door by the chief of police for underage drinking. And Winnie had certainly never given him heart failure her senior year because she’d skipped her period and thought she was pregnant with Ryan’s baby. No, perfect Winnie had waited until after Griffin died to do that. Most important of all, Winnie wasn’t Diddie’s daughter.
Sugar Beth hadn’t been able to punish Griffin for not loving her, so she’d punished Winnie instead.
Gordon stirred at the foot of the bed. Sugar Beth rolled to her side and tried to will herself back to sleep before the memories took her any farther down that dark path, but her mind refused to cooperate.
Senior year. The after-school poetry showcase Mr. Byrne had required his classes to attend…
At the end of the performance, the stage had fallen into darkness, and two figures smeared with yellow fluorescent paint stepped into a dim puddle of black light. Stuart Sherman and Winnie Davis. Sugar Beth no longer remembered anything about the poem they’d dramatized. She only remembered that something made her turn toward the back of the auditorium, and there she saw Griffin standing under the exit sign. The father who’d been too busy last October to spend five minutes waiting on the courthouse steps so he could watch her ride through town on the back of Jimmie Caldwell’s vintage Mustang convertible with the homecoming crown on her head hadn’t been too busy to come see his other daughter recite poetry. She knew what she was going to do.
She lingered after the showcase with Ryan and some of his friends in the parking lot until enough time had passed, then she announced that she needed to get the eyelash curler she’d left in her gym locker. The sound of the shower greeted her as she’d made her way inside the almost empty locker room. Winnie, with her yellow fluorescent face and neck, her painted arms and feet, was the only girl in the showcase who’d needed to clean up before she could go home. Sugar Beth worked quickly, and as she left the locker room, she envisioned the yellow paint washing down the drain and taking her father’s illegitimate daughter right along with it.
“Guess what,” she’d announced to the boys as she returned to the parking lot. “The girls’ locker room’s empty. Y’all’ve been threatening since sophomore year to go in there. This’ll be your last chance before we graduate.”
It hadn’t taken any persuading to get them to follow her: Deke Jasper, Bobby Jarrow, Woody Newhouse, and Ryan, of course, the most important person in her plan. Woody and Deke started scrambling for paper so they could slip notes through the vents in their girlfriends’ gym lockers. They were making too much noise, and she shushed them. “Some of the teachers might still be around.”
It happened just as she’d imagined it. Winnie stood naked by the lockers as they came in, hair plastered to her head, water still glistening on her skin, a bewildered expression on her face as she looked for the clothes and towel she’d left on the bench. But they were gone, hidden in Sugar Beth’s locker. Even the stack of towels that normally sat in the corner had disappeared, stuffed behind the equipment bin.
The boys froze. All the blood drained from Winnie’s face.
“Holy shit,” Woody whispered.
Winnie could have laughed and run back into the shower room—the whole thing would have been over. But she didn’t. Instead, she stood there, paralyzed by the poisoned arrow she hadn’t seen coming.
She wasn’t long-boned like Sugar Beth. She had short arms and legs. Her hips and thighs were a little plump for her narrow shoulders. Not fat, just fleshy enough to make her ever so slightly bottom heavy. A dab of white caught Sugar Beth’s attention, and something unpleasant quivered in the bottom of her stomach. A string poked through the damp patch of pubic hair between Winnie’s thighs. She was having her period.
Winnie’s eyes went to Ryan. Only Ryan. All the boys saw the string, but Ryan was the only one who mattered. This was exactly what Sugar Beth
had anticipated, but now she felt sick, as if she were the one standing there, naked and humiliated.
Winnie let out a low, keening wail and stood in front of them, arms at her sides, the white cotton string poking through her pubic hair.
The door of the shower room burst open, and Mr. Byrne came in. “What’s going on in—”
He uttered a low curse as he saw Winnie. His hands flew to the buttons of his old black shirt. Within seconds, he’d peeled it off and wrapped it around her.
He shot the rest of them a furious look. “Get out of here! Wait for me in the hall.”
The expression in those green eyes chilled Sugar Beth. He knew this was no accident, and he also knew who was responsible.
She fled from the locker room, from the building, feeling as naked as Winnie. Her stomach cramped, just as if she were the one having her period.
Ryan called out from behind her, “Don’t run, Sugar Beth! You’re only going to make it worse.”
She ignored him and raced for her car, but she couldn’t find her keys. She sank to her knees, pulled open her purse with both hands, and dug inside, plowing through wadded tissues, makeup, pens, and a field trip permission slip she’d forgotten to turn in. A tampon that had come unwrapped lay in the bottom of her purse. She bit her lip.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Byrne coming toward her. He was bare-chested, his dark hair long and loose. “Get back in here now.”
Ryan’s eyes were pleading. “Come on, Sugar Beth. Do what he says.”
She fumbled with her purse. Tried to think what she should do. She’d lie and say she hadn’t known Winnie was in there. Their principal was a friend of Diddie’s. How much trouble could she get into?
Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal. There was no reason to be so upset. She grabbed her purse, shoved the contents back inside, and stood up. “What’s the big deal? The whole thing was an accident, Mr. Byrne. We didn’t know she was there.”
“You knew, all right.”
God, she hated him. The first day of school she’d thought he was cute—weird, but so sophisticated that he even made Ryan seem immature. But when she’d gone up to him after class to flirt a little, he’d been a jerk, completely unfriendly.
Deke, Bobby, and Woody were waiting inside the gym door. Ryan wouldn’t narc on her, and Deke and Bobby were tough, but Woody was afraid of his dad, so she shot him a hard look that told him he’d better keep his big fat mouth shut or she’d do something ten times worse than anything his dad could dream up.
“Would anyone care to explain?” Byrne had a skinny chest, and he looked stupid standing there without his shirt, but he didn’t seem self-conscious about it.
Sugar Beth told herself she hadn’t done anything that terrible. Winnie should have just run back into the shower room. God, she was such a dweeb. She should have laughed it off. That’s what Sugar Beth would have done.
She wondered if Winnie would tell Griffin. In Sugar Beth’s entire life, Griffin had never once mentioned his other daughter’s name to her.
“We didn’t know she was in there,” Deke said. “We thought the room was empty.”
Byrne had this little zit on the side of his chin. Sugar Beth focused on it because it made her feel better knowing he still got zits. “Is that right?” he said.
“Yes, sir.” They nodded.
Byrne’s gaze went from one face to the next, looking for the weak link and finding it when he came to Woody. “All of you?”
Woody gulped. His eyes went to Sugar Beth. “Uh-huh.”
“Then what happened to her clothes?”
Nobody had an answer for that.
“Sugar Beth, come with me. The rest of you can go.”
The boys scrambled away, all except Ryan, who stayed by her side.
“You, too, Galantine.”
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll stay here with Sugar Beth.”
“It’s not all the same. I wish to speak with her alone.”
Ryan got this stubborn look on his face that said he intended to stay right where he was. But he had a scholarship to worry about, and Sugar Beth was afraid Byrne might try to screw it up. Besides, she didn’t want Byrne thinking she needed her boyfriend to protect her. “Go on,” she said.
The locker room door opened just then and Winnie came out. She was wearing her gym clothes and carrying Byrne’s shirt. Her hair hung in a wet tangle, the ends dripping on her gym shirt with its bulldog mascot. She didn’t look at Sugar Beth but at Ryan, and her expression was so full of anguish that Sugar Beth wanted to shake her. Didn’t she have any pride?
“We didn’t mean anything,” Ryan said softly.
Winnie ducked her head and walked away toward the front of the building. She was still carrying Byrne’s shirt, as if she’d forgotten she had it in her hand.
Ryan gazed at Sugar Beth, his troubled expression filling her with shame. She didn’t want him here, didn’t want him to see any more. She rose on her toes and gave him a light kiss. “Call me when you get home from work.”
He didn’t look happy about it, but he finally turned away and headed for the parking lot.
Byrne opened the locker room door. “In here.”
She realized she was a little afraid of him, and she hated him even more for that.
“Open your locker,” he said as soon as they were inside.
Shit. She hadn’t thought far enough ahead. “My locker?”
He waited.
She tried a counterattack. “You shouldn’t be in here, you know. It’s the girls’ locker room.”
“Open the bloody thing, or I’ll get the janitor to cut off the lock.”
She thought about choosing another locker, Amy’s or Leeann’s, but he’d figure that out pretty fast.
Screw it. If he wanted to make a big deal out of this, that was his problem. She walked around two banks of lockers until she came to her own and twirled the combination. Her fingers were clumsy, and it took her three attempts to get it right. Finally, it clicked, but she didn’t open it.
His bare arm brushed her shoulder as he reached past her. He pulled open the small metal door.
Winnie’s clothes lay in a crumpled pile on top.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. He simply gazed at her, and she got this awful feeling that he could see right through her skin.
“Is this the kind of human being you want to be?”
She felt small and ugly. She bit off the urge to tell him how her father loved Winnie and not her, how she’d tried to be pretty enough, sweet enough, special enough, to make him notice her, but nothing had worked.
“Please inform your mother that I’ll stop by to see her this evening.”
Relief swept through Sugar Beth. Diddie would chop him into little pieces. She wanted to laugh in his face, but she couldn’t find a laugh anyplace inside her.
By the time he arrived at Frenchman’s Bride that night, Sugar Beth had done her work, not accusing him of attacking her—it would be another few weeks before she thought of that—just complaining about him to Diddie. How he put her down in class, embarrassed her in front of her friends. How his attitude had upset her so much that she’d done something really stupid. Something involving Winnie Davis.
Diddie wasn’t predisposed to feel sympathetic toward her husband’s illegitimate child, and as she met Colin Byrne, steely politeness undercut her gossamer blond beauty. “I don’t see the need to make such a fuss about a silly prank. I’m sure Sugar Beth meant no harm.”
Since Byrne wasn’t Southern, he didn’t understand how much power a softly spoken woman could wield, and unlike so many other people, he wasn’t rattled by Diddie. “She did mean harm, though. She’s been systematically persecuting Winnie Davis all year.”
His bluntness set Diddie’s teeth on edge, not to mention the fact that he had long hair, something she’d disapproved of from the beginning. “You’re an educator. I expect you to understand that the roots of this difficult situation lie not
with Sugar Beth but with my husband’s lamentable bohemian lifestyle. My daughter is every bit as much a victim as…that girl.”
“What happened today was cruel.”
“Cruel?” Icicles dripped from the magnolia petals. “The lateness of the hour must have fatigued you, Mr. Byrne. I can think of no other reason a teacher would say something so unprofessional about one of the finest young women to ever attend Parrish High.”
“Perhaps it’s a cultural barrier, Mrs. Carey, but in England fine young women don’t subject others to humiliation.”
“I’ll see you out.”
In the end, Sugar Beth received nothing more than a mild reprimand from the principal, a man who owed his position to her mother’s influence. Winnie, in the meantime, let her hair grow longer and ducked to stay behind it.
Gordon raised his head from the bottom of the bed. Sugar Beth got up and went into the bathroom for a glass of water. Winnie had done well for herself. The best part of Sugar Beth—the part that believed in cheering on anyone who fought the odds and came out a winner—tried to feel good for her. But the old ghosts loomed too large, and she couldn’t manage it. One more item to add to the long list of things she still needed to do penance for.
She headed back to the bedroom, hoping for sleep. Tomorrow stood a chance of being one of the most miserable days of her life, and she needed to be ready.
“No doubt you thought I was sadly lacking in manners. You may sit down. At my feet.”
GEORGETTE HEYER, These Old Shades
CHAPTER SIX
Sugar Beth didn’t like the butterfly rumpus going on in her stomach as she crossed the damp lawn toward Frenchman’s Bride. Unfortunately, she was already an hour late. After her uncomfortable trip down memory lane last night, she’d slept so badly that she’d turned off her alarm without thinking. Byrne wouldn’t be happy. Tough. Neither was she.
Gordon stopped to sniff a patch of grass, and a mockingbird called out. She had no intention of slinking in the back door, regardless of what he’d said, and she climbed the front steps, but when she got to the top, she saw a note stuck to the knocker. Door locked. Come in the back.