The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue (30 page)

“You gonna be long?”

He smiled, and I guess since things come in threes, the final shiver went up my spine. “Not too long.”

And then, suddenly, I didn’t want to dance around the subject anymore. “You don’t have to do this.”

His face grew sober as well. “Yes, I do.”

“It’s just a box.”

“No, it’s not.”

“If I want it back, I’ll dig it up “

For the first time, he looked away. “Maybe I don’t want to wait that long.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I can’t just come back home like nothing happened, Jim.”

I expected him to get a little angry and defensive, and I could tell from the way he took a deep breath and then slowly blew
it out that those emotions were the first to surface. But whereas the Jim of old would have stomped off and found solace in
his work or playing with one of his expensive toys or even turning to Tiffany, the man in front of me at that moment reacted
quite differently than I expected.

“I don’t know if I can make it right.” He said the words to my shoes.

“What do you mean?”

He looked up then, and I could see the vulnerability in his eyes. It had been a long time since he’d let me see that.

“I did a lot of stupid things, Ellie. I don’t know if I can ever make them up to you.”

“So that’s why you’re digging up the box?” I’d thought it was to pressure me into coming back home, to lure me there with
reminders of how safe and insulated my life had once been. Only as I’d learned, I’d never been truly safe at all.

He heaved a sigh. “Seemed like a good place to start.”

Well, maybe he was right. But I still wasn’t sure.

“We can’t go back.”

“No.” He shook his head in agreement. “We can’t.”

“But maybe there’s another option.”

He went really still. “Another option?”

I smiled. My new smile. A real one that had found its own home on my face. “As I said before, you could ask me out. You were
a pretty fun date the other night.”

His smile was a bit wolfish. “Glad to be of service.”

I went scarlet. Because my ex-husband was flirting with me. Who would have ever thought it?

Jim turned back to the hole with his shovel and pulled out another scoop of dirt. With the next stab, though, I heard a dull
thud instead of the crisp slicing of metal through dirt. Jim dropped to his knees and began digging with his hands. A few
moments later, he pulled the memory box from its grave.

He laid it on the ground and brushed the dirt away from its top. The calligraphy lettering was smudged, but it was still there.

Jim & Ellie.

He stood up with the box and held it out to me like an offering. “Here you go.”

I couldn’t take it, though. Not yet.

“Tell you what. Why don’t you hold onto it for me.”

Jim frowned. “I don’t want to play games, Ellie.”

I almost bristled, but as I’d recently learned at Harris-Teeter, sometimes you had to let go of the past if you wanted to
have empty hands to receive whatever the future might bring.

“I’m not playing games.”

He looked confused for a moment, and then a small flame of hope flickered in his eyes. “Hold onto it, huh?”

“Yes. I might want it back someday, though, so take good care of it.”

“Okay.” There was a world of emotions in that single word. Acceptance. Frustration. Regret. And, I believed, love. “Okay,
if that’s what you want.”

By this time, the early summer sun was getting pretty strong, and my own forehead was starting to bead with sweat. “Would
you like to come in and take a shower? I can fix us some lunch.”

“What about the hole?”

I looked over at the poor, beleaguered section of my flower bed. “It can wait.” I said with a smile. “Some things may be fleeting,”
my smile dimmed a little bit at these words, “but some things are here to stay.”

“Which are we?” Jim asked tensely.

My smile returned. “I think I know,” I said. “But I also plan to have a little fun finding out if I’m right.”

I turned to lead him back to my house, but he caught
me by the arm. “Ellie.” His voice was deep and serious. “Don’t get my hopes up just to pay me back.”

I looked up into the eyes of the man I’d loved for more than half my life. Suddenly, my throat was tight and I didn’t feel
so powerful anymore. “I want to forgive you,” I whispered. “But it may take me some time to figure out how. I’ve got to draw
a new line.”

He dropped his hold on my arm, and the tears I saw in his eyes were almost my undoing. The old Ellie would have taken him
in her arms to comfort and reassure him. The new Ellie, though, was a bit wiser. After all, she had to be—now that she was
the Queen of Hearts.

“What are you talking about?”

“In bridge, when someone makes game, you draw a line under the score and start over.”

Jim smiled and shook his head. “I’m not sure I want to understand.”

I returned his smile. “That’s okay. You don’t need to understand it. Not as long as I finally do.” I reached down and took
his hand in mine. “Come on. I’ll make you an omelet.”

And so I held onto Jim’s hand, he held onto the memory box, and we went into the house to have lunch, framed by my heart-shaped
dining room arch.

EPILOGUE

A
toast,” Jane said, lifting her champagne flute and smiling, “to Ellie’s first anniversary.”

“Here, here,” Linda and Grace echoed. AH four of us clinked our glasses, and I took a sip of the ice cold champagne. It fizzed
its way happily down my throat.

Had it really been a year since I’d moved into the house on Woodlawn Avenue? I beamed at the other three women as we guzzled
our champagne.

“Don’t let me forget,” Jane said, setting her flute down on the table. “I’ve got a couple more business cards to pass on to
you. Both of them sounded really interested in Your Better Half.”

“Thanks. But if you keep sending me clients at this pace, I’m going to have to hire more people.” I was learning every day
how enjoyable—and how difficult—it was to run your own business. Besides myself, I now had three other divorced women on the
payroll, all of
whom I’d met through Red Hat functions. Most months it was nip and tuck, but Jane had assured me it would take a good five
years to get myself firmly established. In the meantime, I was working very, very hard and loving every exhausting minute.

“I have good news, too,” Linda said. “Well, not good news, exactly, but a good opportunity.”

“For me?”

Linda nodded. “Adele Greenway’s husband just got transferred to Raleigh.”

My breath caught in my throat. Adele was Linda’s co-chair for the Cannon Ball and heir apparent to chair the following year.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I am, too,” Linda said. “Adele’s great. So I’ll need someone just as wonderful to fill her shoes.” She paused. “What do you
think, Ellie? Would you be willing to do it?”

Linda’s offer was every social aspiration I’d ever dreamed of, wrapped up in ribbon and handed to me on a platter. But one
thing I’d learned in the last year was that it was okay to say no.

“Would it be all right if I gave it some thought?” I didn’t want to offend my friend, but I knew since she was truly my friend,
she’d understand.

“Okay. But only a few days. If you don’t think you can do it, I need to find someone else.”

I leaned over to give her a hug. “Thank you, Linda. You know that just being asked means the world to me.”

She returned my hug and then we both sat back with a laugh. “Champagne makes me maudlin,” she said, wiping back a few stray
tears.

Grace tapped her spoon against her water glass. “I have an announcement to make, too.”

My breath caught in my throat. Grace’s lawyer had been meeting with the DA off and on for several months, trying to convince
the powers-that-be not to press charges.

“As of today, I’m a free woman,” Grace said. “The District Attorney has decided to be merciful.”

Relief flooded through me, and I leaned the other way, this time to hug Grace. “I’m so glad.” I suddenly felt lighter than
air.

“It was never your fault, Ellie.” She patted my back reassuringly. “Oops.”

The brims of our hats had bumped against one another. I reached up to straighten the enormous conflagration of ribbon and
feathers on my head. I now had enough hats of my own to make a claim at being a true Red Hatter. Not as many as the others,
of course, but given time, I’d give them a run for their money.

“Okay, ladies,” Linda said. “Enough of the mushy-gushy stuff. Let’s play cards.”

“Now, Ellie,” Grace said, leaning toward me. “Tonight, we’re going to teach you how to respond to a takeout double if your
opponent passes.”

I laughed. “Wait a minute, Grace. I have something to say, too.”

The other three leaned toward me in eager anticipation. “You’re getting remarried?” Grace asked with excitement

“No, no. Jim and I are doing fine, but we’re not that far along yet.” I smiled, though, thinking of the weekend before when
Connor and Courtney had both been home from college. Connor had stayed with Jim at the house
in Belle Meade, and Courtney had bunked with me on Woodlawn Avenue. The kids’ happiness at seeing Jim and I together once
again, even if we hadn’t made any commitments for the future, had been an extra blessing.

“Then what is it?” Jane asked.

“Look, I don’t want to seem ungrateful.” I stopped, took a deep breath for courage, and then continued. “But I think it’s
time for the lessons to stop. I think it’s time for me to take responsibility for my own hand.”

The other three exchanged looks, and for a moment I was concerned. Then they all three burst into laughter.

Linda began to deal the cards. “Of course, Ellie. All you had to do was ask.”

And it was true. Since the day Jane had arrived on my doorstep with that heavenly pound cake, these three women had responded
to my every request. And that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

“You open the bidding,” Grace said, nodding at me.

My fingers trembled a little as I scooped up my hand, fanned it out, and began to count my high card points. Three. Seven.
Eleven. Fifteen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. It was all I could do not to hyperventilate. Balanced distribution. An obnoxiously
large number of high card points. It was the hand of a lifetime, and one for which they’d been preparing me for a year.

“Two clubs,” I said calmly without inflection, struggling to keep a straight face while my pulse raced through my veins. It
was an opening bid that meant I’d hit the jackpot.

And I had, thanks to the Queens of Woodlawn Avenue.

The Red Hat Society®

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Domestic Goddess

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“I hate the word housewife; I don’t like the word home-maker either. I want to he called Domestic Goddess.”