Leeann slipped her hand inside her dipping neckline to tug at her bra strap. Of all the Seawillows, she had the best breasts, and she liked to show them off. “Not for long, I’ll bet. God, we were such little bitches.”
Silence fell over the kitchen. Amy broke it by saying what all of them were thinking. “Winnie wasn’t.”
Because Winnie hadn’t been one of them. She alone hadn’t been a Seawillow. Ironic, since she was now their leader.
Sugar Beth had come up with the idea for the Seawillows when she was eleven. She’d chosen the name from a dream she’d had, although none of them could remember what it was about. The Seawillows would be a private club, she’d announced, the funnest club ever, for the most popular girls in school, all chosen by her, of course. For the most part, she’d done a good job, and more than twenty years later, the Seawillows were still the funnest club in town.
At its peak, there’d been twelve members, but some had moved away, and Dreama Shephard had died. Now, only the four women standing with Winnie in the kitchen were left. They’d become her dearest friends.
Heidi’s husband, Phil, poked his head in the kitchen. He handed over the empty Crock-Pot that held the Rotel dip the men insisted on having at every gathering, a spicy tomato and Velveeta concoction for dunking their Tostitos. “Clint’s making us watch golf. When are we eating?”
“Soon. And you’ll never guess what we just heard.” Heidi’s teddy bear earrings bobbled. “Sugar Beth’s back.”
“No kidding. When?”
“This afternoon. Leeann just got the news.”
Phil stared at them for a moment, then shook his head and disappeared to pass the word to the other men.
The women set to work, and for a few minutes silence reigned as each fell victim to her own thoughts. Winnie’s were bitter. When they were growing up, Sugar Beth Carey had possessed everything Winnie wanted: beauty, popularity, self-confidence, and Ryan Galantine. Winnie, on the other hand, had only one thing Sugar Beth wanted. Still, it was a big thing, and in the end, it had been all that mattered.
Amy pulled a ham from one oven, along with a dish of her mother’s famous Drambuie yams. From the other oven, Leeann removed garlic cheese grits and a spinach-artichoke casserole. Winnie’s roomy kitchen, with its warm cherry cabinets and vast center island, made her house the most convenient place to gather for their potlucks. Tonight they’d parked the kids with Amy’s niece. Winnie had asked her own daughter to baby-sit, but she’d turned difficult lately and refused.
As born and bred Southerners, the Seawillows dressed up for one another, which meant they spent the first part of every get-together discussing what they were wearing. This was the heritage passed on to them by mothers who’d donned nylons and high heels to walk to the mailbox. But Winnie wasn’t a Seawillow, and despite her mother’s nagging, it had taken her longer than the rest to figure out how to pull herself together.
Leeann licked a dab of cheese grits from her index finger. “I wonder if Colin knows.”
“Did you get hold of him, Winnie?” Amy asked. “We got so distracted by the news, nobody asked.”
Winnie nodded. “Yes, but he’s working.”
“He’s always working.” Merylinn reached for a paper towel. “You’d think he was a Yankee.”
“Remember how scared we used to be of him in high school,” Leeann said.
“Except for Sugar Beth,” Amy pointed out. “And Winnie, of course, because she was teacher’s pet.” They grinned at her.
“God, I wanted him,” Heidi said. “He might have been weird, but he sure was hot. Not as hot as he is now, though.”
This was a familiar topic. Five years had passed since Colin had come back to Parrish, and they’d only just gotten used to having a man who’d once been the teacher they most feared as part of their adult peer group.
“We all wanted him. Except for Winnie.”
“I wanted him a little,” Winnie said, to redeem herself. But it wasn’t really true. She might have sighed over Colin’s brooding romantic aloofness, but she’d never really fantasized about him like the other girls. For her, it had always been Ryan. Ryan Galantine, the boy who’d loved Sugar Beth Carey with all his heart.
“What did I do with the oven mitts?”
Winnie handed them over. “Colin knows she’s back. He saw lights at the carriage house.”
“I wonder what he’ll do?”
Amy stuck a serving fork on the ham platter. “Well, I for one don’t intend to speak to her.”
“If you get the chance, you know you will,” Leeann retorted. “We all will because we’re dying of curiosity. I wonder how she looks.”
Blond and perfect, Winnie thought. She fought the urge to run to the mirror so she could remind herself that she was no longer lumpy, awkward Winnie Davis. Although her cheeks would never lose their roundness, and she couldn’t do anything about the small stature she’d inherited from her father, she was slim and toned by five grueling sessions a week at Workouts. Like the other women’s, her makeup was skillfully applied and her jewelry tasteful, although more expensive than theirs. Her dark hair shone in a short, fashionable bob, the work of the best stylist in Memphis. Tonight she wore a beaded T, a pair of periwinkle pants, and matching slides. Everything she owned was fashionable, so different from her high school days when she’d plodded down the hallway in baggy clothes, terrified someone would speak to her.
Colin, who’d been such a misfit himself, had understood. He’d been kind to her from the beginning, kinder than he’d been to her classmates, who were frequently the target of his sharp, cynical tongue. Still, the girls had daydreamed about him. Heidi, with her passion for historical romances, was the one who’d come up with his nickname.
“He reminds me of this tortured young English duke who wears a big black cape that snaps in the wind, and every time there’s a thunderstorm, he paces the ramparts of his castle because he’s still mourning the death of his beautiful young bride.”
Colin had become the Duke, although not to his face. He wasn’t the kind of teacher who inspired that sort of familiarity.
The men began to wander in, drawn by the smell of food and a desire to hear their wives’ reactions to the news of Sugar Beth’s return.
Merylinn flapped her arms at them. “Y’all are in the way.”
The men ignored her, just as they always did when it was time to eat, and the women began their familiar dance around them, carrying the food from the kitchen to the late-eighteenth-century sideboard that occupied one wall of Winnie’s graceful formal dining room.
“Does Colin know Sugar Beth’s back?” Merylinn’s husband, Deke, asked.
“He’s the one who told Winnie.” Merylinn shoved a salad bowl in his hands.
“And you sweet thangs complain because nothing ever happens in Parrish.” Amy’s husband, Clint, had grown up in Meridian, but he knew the old stories so well they sometimes forgot he wasn’t one of them.
Brad Simmons, who sold home appliances, chuckled. He was Leeann’s date for the evening. Leeann didn’t really like him, but since her divorce, she’d been working her way through every eligible bachelor in Parrish, along with a few who weren’t eligible, but none of them talked about that because Leeann had it hard. With two kids, one of them handicapped, and an ex-husband who was always behind on child support, she deserved whatever diversion she could find.
Winnie’s husband was the last to appear. He was the tallest of the men, lean and fine featured, with wheat-colored hair, caramel eyes, and one of those perfectly symmetrical male faces that had, on several occasions, prompted Merylinn to tell him he needed to fulfill his God-given mission and sign up to be a regular sperm donor. The Seawillows were too polite to stop what they were doing and cross-examine him the way they wanted to, but they watched from the corners of their eyes as he picked up the corkscrew and began to open the wine Winnie had set out.
Winnie felt the old ache in her chest. They’d been married a little over thirteen years. They had a beautiful child, a lovely house, a life that was almost perfect. Almost . . . because no matter how hard Winnie tried, she would always be second best in Ryan Galantine’s heart.