Carolina Moon

lawyer, if you’re dissatisfied with Cade’s performance at Beaux Reves?”
    “I am dissatisfied with my son, and I believe he needs to put his mind and energies back into his inheritance without having it diverted into less worthy channels. Simply,” she said, as she buttered a scone, “I want Victoria Bodeen out of the Marsh House, out of Progress. At the moment Faith is being difficult, but she will come around. She’s always been a creature of the moment. I believe I can persuade her to sell me her interest in the properties. That would give me a two-thirds control. I would assume that the Bodeen girl has a year’s lease on the house, and on the building on Market. I want those leases broken.”
    “Margaret.” He patted her hand. “You would be wise to let this lay.”
    “I will not tolerate her association with my son. I will do whatever is necessary to end it. I want you to draw up a new will for me, cutting both Cade and Faith off.”
    He thought of the scandal, the legal tangles, the vicious amount of work. “Margaret, please don’t be rash.”
    “I won’t implement the will unless I have no choice, but I will use it to show Faith just how serious I am.” Margaret’s mouth thinned. “I have no doubt that when she realizes she stands to lose such a large sum of money, she will become very cooperative. I want my house back in order, Gerald. It would be a great favor to me if you looked over those leases and found the simplest way to break them.”
    “You risk turning your son against you.”
    “Better that than watching him drag down the family name.”

24
    I have not, since childhood, kept a diary or a journal, or written down my secret thoughts. It seems appropriate, since my childhood is so on my mind, to do so now. And to do so here, where Hope lost her life. Her childhood.
    My papa, our papa, made this place for her with its pretty statue and its sweet-smelling flowers. It is more hers than the grave where he buried her on that steamy and sick-skied summer morning. I never shared this place with her. I chose not to, out of spite, certainly, but it gave me great satisfaction at the time.
    What did I want with her silly games and her odd and unkempt friend?
    I wanted them so desperately I refused to take them when they were offered. I am a difficult person. Sometimes I like myself that way. In any case, it is my nature to be contrary, so I of all people must live with it.
    It might have been different for me, for all of us, if that night had never happened. If when I’d awoken in the morning, Hope had been in the next room. I would still have been sulking over my disgrace the night before. That had been a minor combat over peas, which I despised then and despise now.
    I would have sulked because I found some pleasure in that activity, particularly when someone put in the effort to win me out of my pouts. I enjoyed the attention. Most any kind of attention I could manage.
    I knew, even then, that in the pecking order of siblings, I came in a lowly third out of three. Cade was the heir apparent. He, after all, possessed a penis, and I did not. This, I suppose, was no fault of his, but I did indeed envy him that member for a short time in my youth. Until, of course, I learned that it was more than possible for a woman to possess as many of those interesting appendages as she liked, and in such a pleasant variety of ways.
    I discovered sex early, and have enjoyed it without apology.
    In any case, at eight, the sexual connotations of men and women were still a foggy area for me. I only knew that Cade was the master-in-training of Beaux Reves because he was a boy, and this did not sit well with me. He was afforded privileges I was denied, again because of his gender. And, I suppose to be fair, the four-year difference in our ages.
    My father looked on him with such pride. Certainly he demanded quite a bit from Cade, but the look in Papa’s eyes, the tone of his voice, the very posture of his body, was a study in pride. Father for son. I could never be his son.
    Nor could I be, as Hope was, his angel. He adored her. He had love for me, and he was a fair man. But it was painfully obvious that it was Hope who held his heart even as Cade held, well, his hopes. I was a kind of bonus, I imagine, the twin who came in tow with his angel.
    With my mother Cade was also, I think, a source of pride. She had produced the son, as was expected of her. The Lavelle name would carry on because she had