

DURING THEIR DINNER at Logan's one Indian restaurant, Jonathan was an interesting and charming companion. Mary Anne noticed that he didn't try to run down Graham, nor did he ask about her relationship with Graham or hint again that she should invite him to Aunt Caroline's birthday dinner.
Instead, they talked about the stops they would make that evening at the political headquarters for the various local candidates---usually, this meant a restaurant or bar where the group of candidates felt welcome. In the local election, it wasn't Democrat or Republican that mattered. Rather, for the city council, several candidates seemed to be part of one group wanting particular things for the city, while another group wanted other things.
Jonathan's choices for the city council were like hers, but that was irrelevant to the evening's news. They would go where candidates and voters were, beginning half an hour before the polls closed, quizzing people on the street, the candidates, the people getting out the vote.
Mary Anne swiftly found that she and Jonathan worked well together on the air. They fell into a pattern in which she would describe the scene and then he would interview the people around them. He would hand the mic back to her, so to speak, and she would describe more of what was happening. Every hour, they did a brief check on the polls of the national elections; but in Logan it was the local race that had become hot.
Mary Anne was especially impressed by the fact that Jonathan showed no ill feelings over their earlier contretemps. Granted, if he'd become surly, it probably would have destroyed any affection she did feel for him. But many men would have held it against her, and it didn't seem that Jonathan did.
At nine-thirty, they reached Giuseppi's Italian Bistro, where David Cureux and three other candidates for city council were awaiting the election results. Mary Anne approached the restaurant uneasily, hoping that David Cureux wouldn't be surrounded by his family, those people who knew about the love potion and had been indiscreet with that knowledge.
There'd been no time since her show with Graham to buttonhole Cameron, but Mary Anne intended to call her first thing in the morning.
Cameron, however, was at Giuseppi's, apparently as Paul Cureux's date---or groupie, since Paul was providing live music. Paul and Cameron often used such public occasions to exhibit to all of Logan that they were a couple, even though both, to each other and to their families and closest friends, insisted they weren't. To Mary Anne, it had always seemed a circuitous way of proving that they were unavailable. Part of her had always suspected that they were attracted to each other but unwilling to act on it. She could imagine reasons for this. Cameron's terror of ever becoming pregnant exceeded paranoia. And Paul had an equal fear of commitment.
With dismay, Mary Anne saw that her father was also among those supporting her neighbor. No, that wasn't right---he was "supporting" the bar, flirting with Elinor Sweet, of all people, who sat at a bar stool beside him basking in the attention of a man thirty years her senior. To complete the recipe for a catastrophe, across the room, sitting with David Cureux himself, was Graham.
Mary Anne's father noticed her. She saw the brief flash of guilt, of being found out, like a small boy with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he stood up and wove between tables and other patrons to reach Mary Anne. "Here you are at work," he said, smiling and breathing Jack Daniel's fumes. He planted a kiss on her cheek.
Paul returned to the microphone, picked up his guitar and sat down on a stool. "Can't perform," he said, "without mentioning my day job. Had a little trouble at the zoo today. We have acquired two primates, which is a lot for a small facility like ours."
Mary Anne's father told her, "I'll probably sit in on a set with Paul a little later on. I mentioned the possibility, and he was all for it."
Right.
As Paul began a version of Simon and Garfunkel's "At the Zoo," with highly customized lyrics detailing his trouble with young monkeys, Mary Anne accepted the fact that she must introduce her father and her colleague. "Jonathan, this is my dad, Jon Clive Drew. Dad, this is Jonathan Hale."
"Glad to know you," her father said. He told Jonathan, "I'm proud of her. I always knew she'd do things with herself. Newspaper editor and radio reporter, and she was a New York magazine editor, too. For a fashion magazine. Like one of those beautiful girls in The Devil Wears Padma."
My God. Prada! she wanted to shriek.
"No surprise she turned out so pretty. My mother was Miss McDowell County."
Shut up, Mary Anne thought. Go away. Please go away.
Jonathan said, "I think she's very special, too."
Mary Anne did not relax.
"She always has guys after her," her father went on. "Always been that way. It's because she's a real lady, like her mother. Really ladylike. That's how we raised her."
Mary Anne murmured to Jonathan, "Let me dash to the ladies' room before we start."
"Sure," he said, continuing to look askance at her father.
Just don't let him get started on mining. Yes, her father had left West Virginia and become a movie star. But he still loved to expand the one summer he'd spent working in the coal mines to make it sound like a lifetime of danger. After hinting at extreme risks and gory accidents, he would recount the practical jokes he and the other miners had played on each other, jokes of profound insipidity, none of which Mary Anne found funny. Replacing the filling of someone's sandwich with axle grease...gluing someone's boot to the ceiling of the dry room. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then he would demand the attention of the room, borrow the nearest guitar---even if someone had to run half a mile to get it---and perform "Dark as a Dungeon." He would follow this up with a maudlin story about a man he'd barely known being crushed in a mine. And then he'd cry.
In the bathroom Mary Anne lingered, hoping that her father would return to Elinor Sweet's side. And she thought about what a terrible and selfish hope that was, that he would be lecherous toward a young woman and unfaithful to her mother---that she would have him do that rather than embarrass her with Jonathan. Inevitably, her disloyalty to her mother made her hate herself.
And loathe her father.
As she emerged at last from the ladies' room, she collided with Graham, who was leaving the men's. "Hi, there," he said.
There was a look of concern in his eyes.
Though Jonathan had been polite to her father, here, suddenly, she saw rationality; saw the serious reaction that her father's behavior merited. Here, she suddenly knew, was someone who could understand how she felt at this moment.
The knowledge shocked her. It was like an electric current, this sudden understanding of Graham Corbett's maturity and insight.
"Hi," she answered.
She thought she could hear her father's voice from the bar. She and Jonathan wouldn't be here long, and that was the only bright spot. By the time her father pushed his way to Paul's microphone, she would be elsewhere.
Graham gazed into her eyes for a long moment, looking as if he wanted to ask what he could do to help. "We had the radio on," he said at last. "You sound good."
"Thank you."
"Man, I've seen waves higher than that building across the street," came her dad's voice from the next room, louder than Paul's singing.
Mary Anne drew a slight breath of relief. Her father was onto his favorite hobby, deep-sea fishing. She found the fishing stories marginally better than mining tales. Giving Graham a small wave, she turned back toward the bar. And now she found herself face-to-face with Elinor Sweet.
Elinor said, "Nice lie on the radio, Mary Anne." She lifted her eyebrows at Graham. "She bought a love potion to give to Jonathan Hale. Well, no one has said who it was for, but she definitely bought one. Bridget Cureux told me."
Mary Anne was shocked at Bridget's indiscretion. She'd suspected something of the kind, suspected Paul because of his teasing. But suspicion was somehow so different from discovering that one's suspicions were true.
"I didn't lie," Mary Anne said, because she hadn't. She'd deliberately misled everyone, which was different.
"You've wanted him for years. He used to joke about it to Angie."
Mary Anne felt her face flood with color. Jonathan had known? And joked to his fiancée about her crush on him?
"Well, now he knows how he got interested in you. I just told him, and, believe me, he knows I'm not lying. I told him he could ask Paul Cureux if he didn't believe me."
Mary Anne's opinion of Angie Workman sank. How could she be friends with this horrible woman?
She tried to summon something resembling poise. "Whatever, Elinor. I need to get back to work." She couldn't stand to look at Graham, and only stepped around Elinor and walked back into the bar.
WITH PAUL'S MUSIC in the background, Jonathan and Mary Anne conducted their broadcast. Jonathan said, "Dr. Cureux, we're hearing from voters that their first interest is fiscal responsibility. A number of them think you can offer that, but some are concerned about past actions of members of the city council. What do you plan to do to prevent the things we've seen happen this fall?"
"You're referring to unauthorized spending on the part of individual council members," David Cureux remarked. "Jonathan, I think the democratic process is taking care of that problem. The council member involved in the problem was asked to step down and did so. The people of Logan do know what they want."
Mary Anne's father crowded toward the group around the microphones, leaning in around Paul Cureux's shoulder. "And we want David Cureux!" he shouted and followed this with a West Virginia University football cheer that was taken up by a few other drunks in the bar but no one else as it was entirely irrelevant to the election.
Save this, Mary Anne, she thought. You can rescue this situation; you can avert total disaster.
All the panicked thoughts of her youth bombarded her, telling her she could not afford to freeze now, that she must divert attention from her father. She said, "Dr. Cureux, I've been noticing the symbol on all your campaign posters, the family. Can you tell us about that?"
"My daughter Bridget did that. She chose to make the family out of PlaySkool figures to reinforce our belief that Logan is a good place to raise children---that it's child-friendly and that we care about kids here. Most every decision in government can be boiled down to, 'What is good for our kids?'"
"That's right, kids are everything," Jon Clive Drew said, butting in.
Mary Anne hadn't known that Bridget designed the logo. She hadn't known Bridget was capable of anything but shooting off her mouth to people like Elinor Sweet.
She saw Graham put his hand on Jon Clive's shoulder, lean close and say something to him.
Jon Clive looked up distractedly. "Progressive Rummy?"
"I met your wife and sister-in-law walking a short time ago," Graham told him. "They mentioned it. We're counting on you."
Mary Anne was fascinated by this assertion of Graham's. Could it be true? Had he gone home after his show and met her mother and aunt? How else would he know about their obsession with that card game?
Yet she couldn't help wondering if drawing her father toward home was Graham's own impulse. She wanted to know more, and she saw with disbelief and pleasure that her father was following the younger man's lead.
Her eyes suddenly streamed. Gratitude, pure and deep, shot through her. She felt that no one in her life had ever shown her more mercy than Graham Corbett had in that moment.
Outside later, as she and Jonathan put their equipment into Jonathan's car, he said, "So. Elinor gave me the lowdown on the love potion."
Mary Anne had almost missed many of her cues in Giuseppi's because she'd been planning for this conversation. She found she cared little about Jonathan's opinion at the moment, and this helped her care less about her pride. As he shut the tailgate of his Subaru station wagon, she looked at him.
She managed a small smile. "You believe that I dosed you with a love potion and that you are attracted to me because of it," she said, as if to clarify his point of view.
"Elinor encouraged me to ask Paul Cureux for the facts."
"And did you?"
"Didn't have a chance."
Mary Anne nodded. "Well, I can promise you one thing, Jonathan. I have no knowledge of you drinking any love potion."
He looked as if he didn't quite believe her.
"Do you believe yourself to be under the spell of a love potion?" she asked, taking care to sound properly amused.
Suddenly, he grinned. "Very nearly. How did Elinor come up with this story?"
"Why didn't you ask her?"
"She said it was from Bridget Cureux and that Bridget's mother made the potions."
"Yes, well, Elinor also told me that you used to tell your fiancée all about the crush I had on you." Mary Anne made it sound as though she found this unbelievable. The thing was...she didn't.
"There's some truth in that," Jonathan admitted. "I thought you liked me. I apologize if that assumption was wrong."
His honesty disarmed her. She felt it deserved an equal show of probity.
He unlocked the passenger door for her, and Mary Anne climbed in. When he had slid behind the steering wheel, she said, "I did buy a love potion. But I didn't give it to you."
"You gave it to someone else?" He gazed at her in amazement.
She nodded pleasantly, trying to look unconcerned.
"Did it work?" he asked. "Why did you do this?"
"For experimental purposes. And I don't believe it had any effect at all."
"Was the person supposed to fall in love with you?"
Mary Anne thought of Cameron, reminded herself that Cameron seemed to have told no one that Graham actually drank the love potion. But wasn't it Cameron's fault that Paul had found out about the potion? Cameron had explained that it was Clare who'd let the cat out of the bag to her son---or something like that. Tomorrow I'll find out everything from her, she told herself again.
She told Jonathan, "No. Definitely not." Because Graham Corbett had drunk the love potion. She hadn't wanted Graham to fall in love with her. She'd wanted Jonathan.
And she supposed she had him---or could if she wanted.
But all she could think about was Graham getting her father out of Giuseppi's before he could "sit in on a set" with Paul.
She thought no one had ever done anything nicer for her.
"WHAT WAS BRIDGET DOING telling Elinor Sweet all of that?" Mary Anne demanded of Cameron the next morning. She had called her cousin at nine, as early as seemed reasonable on a weekend morning.
"I think she's mad at Paul."
"Who?" Mary Anne demanded. "And what does that have to do with anything?"
"Bridget's sometimes a little passive-aggressive. She and Paul had a problem at the zoo. At least, he thinks that's what she got mad about. And it's just like her to get mad at Paul and accidentally let slip something that would be a problem for him."
"It didn't have anything to do with Paul! Or with Bridget."
"Well, it was supposed to get me angry at Paul, I think. I know it's all a little convoluted."
"What was the fight at the zoo about?" Mary Anne asked, accepting that Bridget's excuse for indiscretion was no excuse at all.
"She was there with the preschool group on Halloween, and Nicky, that's her son, was beside the duck pond, and she was twenty feet away talking to another mother."
"That's dangerous," Mary Anne agreed.
"Well, exactly," Cameron said. "I mean, he's just three, and the pond's four feet deep, and even if it wasn't...But Paul wasn't very tactful, I guess. He said something about her needing to stop trying to be the Mother Goddess and just try to be an adequate mother."
Mary Anne made a small sound, indicating that indeed Paul had not been tactful. "Well, at least you haven't told anybody about Graham getting the potion."
"Would I?" Cameron demanded.
"No," Mary Anne admitted. "I'm sorry."
"You're falling for him, aren't you?" said Cameron.
"For who?"
"For Graham."
Honesty warred with tact. Finally, Mary Anne said, "You know what he did last night?" And she described Graham getting her drunken father out of the restaurant.
"So Jonathan's lost his charm," Cameron said, in a tone that implied that Mary Anne was fickle, childish, impulsive, casually shifting her affections from one man to another.
"You said it was okay if I went out with Graham," Mary Anne told her.
"After you'd already told him you'd go out with him."
Mary Anne tried to remember if this was true and she thought it might be. "I'm sorry if I've hurt you, Cameron."
"You haven't," Cameron said, a bit coolly. "Anyhow, I'll see you tonight at the birthday party."
Which Graham would be attending---as Mary Anne's guest.
MARY ANNE'S FATHER was remorseful about his night out, and she didn't want to hear it. At the breakfast table, where he arrived at eleven, he said, "Hope I didn't embarrass you last night, Mary Anne."
She was grabbing a quick cup of coffee before heading off to a D.A.R. luncheon she was covering for the newspaper. She said nothing. There was nothing to say. Of course, he'd embarrassed her. Of course, she wished he wouldn't drink. She burst out, "I thought you were going to AA."
"Not anymore." He shook his head. "Those are career alcoholics there. Career recovered alcoholics I should say. Can't go on with their lives, those folks. No, I face up to God with my mistakes."
And keep making them, Mary Anne thought bitterly. She said, "It seems to me that people who go to AA are trying to do something difficult and they recognize they need help. And, yes, you embarrassed me."
"Damn," he said, gazing into his own cup of milky coffee. "If the Lord would only forgive me..."
Mary Anne wanted to tell him he shouldn't doubt anyone's forgiveness except the humans he'd offended.
"Where's Mom?" she asked.
"She's upstairs with your aunt, making some changes to Nanna's bedroom."
"No, she's not. She and your aunt are right here, chicken," said Aunt Caroline, from the foot of the staircase. "Pretty suit, Mary Anne," she added, admiring the earth-toned shantung silk Mary Anne had put on for the luncheon. "I like that!" she enthused.
Thank God for Aunt Caroline. Talking of clothes, so Mary Anne wouldn't have to listen to her father's mawkish expressions of regret. Soon, he would start saying he hadn't been much of a father to her. He might even weep.
"Heard you and your Graham on the radio yesterday," Aunt Caroline said. "You two do a good job together."
Mary Anne's mother said, "I wish you wouldn't take part in those shows, Mary Anne. All those talk shows are so tawdry, with all those people calling up and talking about their problems. And all those questions about sex. I don't care to hear them."
"Then, you should turn off the radio," Mary Anne said matter-of-factly.
"And what was that silliness about a love potion?"
"No idea," Mary Anne answered, but was startled by the speculative look in Aunt Caroline's eyes. Cameron had visited alone with Aunt Caroline, but surely Cameron wouldn't have said...Cameron had denied mentioning it to anyone. "Happy birthday, Aunt Caroline," Mary Anne finally said. "Graham's going to join us for dinner."
"Wonderful," her aunt replied. "That will be such fun. Now, what shall we have? Lucille's coming to cook, and she has a few options planned. What does Graham like?"
"It's not Graham's birthday," Mary Anne replied with a smile.
"He stayed till eleven last night," her father said, "but he wouldn't stay till the end of the game."
So they had played Progressive Rummy.
"Very nice of him," Aunt Caroline said, and Mary Anne knew that her aunt had recognized Graham's chivalry in getting Jon Clive Drew out of the public eye.
"I wish Mother could be here with us," her aunt added. "We'll all have to go in a crowd to visiting hours and celebrate with her there."
"Now, Mary Anne," her mother said, "you know Nanna wouldn't want you being on a show like that."
Mary Anne wanted to scream. But being a lady meant not screaming even when people made you feel insane. It meant not shaking people you wanted to shake. She said, "I'm off to the luncheon. See you this afternoon. You and Mom can decide on the food with Lucille," she told Aunt Caroline.
And fled.
GRAHAM WAS LOOKING forward to the birthday party for Mary Anne's aunt. He'd observed her misery the night before and was glad, for her sake, that her father had agreed to go home to a card game. Graham spent a good part of every day now thinking about Mary Anne. She was distracting him from his professional project, that first self-help book.
Had he ever not thought her pretty? No. He'd always admired her prominent cheekbones, her incredibly lush eyelashes and eyebrows, and those green eyes. For a while, he had told himself she was a little heavy. But that was before he'd started admiring her posture and the natural grace with which she moved.
That had been quite a scene in the corridor outside the bathrooms the night before, with Elinor Sweet accusing Mary Anne of trying to entrap Hale with a love potion. Once he'd heard Elinor's accusation at Giuseppi's, he seemed to remember something about a local woman making love potions---love potions some people said worked. But he'd never put it together, that the witch in question was David Cureux's ex-wife. It would be interesting to quiz David about it sometime. His neighbor, who had retained his city council seat, was a rational man, and Graham was sure that David Cureux would feel as he himself did about love potions. That they were a lot of nonsense.
Anyhow, though Jonathan Hale certainly seemed to be pursuing Mary Anne, Graham didn't suspect the station manager of being in love with her. But he was beginning to suspect himself of having certain feelings. Not in love. No. He was just attracted, very attracted. And, he told himself, he was more interested in her depth, in her personal qualities, than Hale was.
At five twenty-five in the afternoon, he left the house and walked to Mary Anne's bearing a potted begonia, wrapped in cellophane as protection from the cold. He also had a bag of dog treats that had been baked locally. The plant was for Caroline and the treats were for her dog. He'd considered bringing a bottle of wine, but then he'd thought of Mary Anne's father and decided not to.
He had only just rung the doorbell when Lucille opened the front door. She beamed her usual welcoming smile. "Well, hello, Mr. Graham. How nice you look."
"Thank you, Lucille."
Caroline called from the living room, "Hi, Graham! We're all in here."
Mary Anne, however, came to the arch that led into the living room. She wore a gold-colored dress that hugged her shape nicely.
"You're beautiful," he said appreciatively.
"Thank you. You, too."
He sensed a tension beneath the words, a tension that stiffened her face even as she smiled at him.
He came into the living room, where Paris lay at Caroline's feet. Approaching Mary Anne's aunt, he said, "Happy birthday."
"Why, thank you! How nice. Isn't this pretty, and you remembered Paris, too."
A few feet from her sister on the sofa sat Mary Anne's mother, her mouth slightly pinched, while Jon Clive Drew stood by the sideboard. "We're having cocktails. What can I get you, Graham?"
A swift survey of the room showed that only Caroline and Jon Clive were having cocktails---a glass of wine in her case and something mixed in his. Mary Anne and her mother were drinking ice water, each with a slice of lemon.
"I'd love a glass of water," Graham said. "Some days I just don't drink enough."
Mary Anne said, "I'll get it," but Lucille shook her head and hurried toward the kitchen.
Graham asked, "How is your grandmother?"
"Fit as a fiddle," Mary Anne's father replied on her behalf. "Ready to come home and tell everyone what to do. She must know the dog's lying on the living-room carpet."
"She does know," Mary Anne's mother said. "She says she has asked Caroline not to bring Paris onto the carpeted areas."
"And Caroline has told her," Caroline replied placidly, "that Paris's little paws are cleaner than the soles of her shoes." She changed the subject. "Graham, I enjoyed listening to you and Mary Anne on your show."
For some reason, Mary Anne looked apprehensive.
"Yes, well," said Mary Anne's mother. "I think we should talk about something else."
Graham wondered why she thought so. He certainly had no intention of sitting around discussing his own radio show, but it seemed a strange remark for Mrs. Drew to make.
He had wanted to tell Caroline that Mary Anne was a great guest and that her presence filled out many discussions, but after Mrs. Drew's comment all he felt he could do was tell Caroline, "Thank you. It was nice of you to listen."
Mrs. Drew offered an explanation for which no one had asked. "I just don't like hearing all those people talk about all sorts of things. I'd rather not know."
What a telling statement, he thought, unable to keep from wondering if it extended to her own life.
Mortified by her mother's rudeness, though she knew Katie Drew would be upset to think that she'd been rude, Mary Anne said, "I'm not sure any of us is ever that lucky. What some people manage to do is to pretend that they don't know, which isn't the same thing."
A puzzled look briefly crossed her mother's face. Then, she said, "Well, Mary Anne, it's just not necessary to talk about everything in our lives."
It occurred to Graham that Mrs. Drew's response seemed almost generational---but of her mother's generation. Because once no one had discussed uncomfortable things---or so he sometimes thought.
Caroline rose from the couch. "I need a cigarette. I'm going to take Paris around the block. Anyone want to come?"
"I do," Mary Anne said quickly. "Graham?"
"Wonderful," he agreed.
"Now, don't drop your cigarette butts in the neighborhood," Mrs. Drew said.
Graham couldn't imagine Mary Anne's aunt doing such a thing. In any case, she completely ignored the admonition and merely went to retrieve the Maltese's lead.
"I wonder if we should go, too," Mrs. Drew said softly to her husband.
"We'd love the company," Graham said, which was a lie. He knew that Mary Anne's eagerness to walk the dog was connected to the fact that it offered escape from her parents.
"Sure. Why not?" said Mary Anne's father.
"Well, let me see if Lucille needs my help first," said Mrs. Drew.
"Oh, hell," Mary Anne said suddenly. "I forgot. Cameron and Aunt Louise are coming. I should stay."
"I'll stay with you," Graham said. Maybe Mary Anne's parents would go with Caroline.
"Well, I'm going with Caroline and the dog," Jon Clive Drew announced, downing the remainder of whatever had been in his glass.
"Mom, you go, too," Mary Anne urged.
"Oh---shouldn't I be here for Louise?"
"Graham and I will entertain them till you get back."
"All right, then."
The dog walkers began pulling on coats, Katie Drew saying, "I wish you'd quit those things, Caroline. They're so bad for you."
Graham followed Mary Anne into the kitchen and asked Lucille, "How can we help? Set the table?"
"You absolutely may not set the table, Mr. Graham, or do one other little thing."
Graham grinned.
"And that counts for you, too, Miss Mary Anne," added Lucille. "You two go sit in the living room so you hear Miss Cameron when she arrives."
As they wandered back toward the living room, Mary Anne said, "As if she isn't going to insist on getting the door, too."
"She's a lovely person," Graham said.
"I think so, too. I just love her. When I was little, she would put extra butter in the brownies. It's been hard talking her out of that in the interest of remaining halfway svelte."
Graham teased, "I like how she manages you. I'm watching carefully and taking notes."
Mary Anne glanced at him in surprise. How could he want anything to do with her after her family's displays of the past twenty-four hours? She said, "You mean you're not scared off by a dysfunctional family of origin?"
He smiled at her and said, "They're very nice, Mary Anne."
What manners, was all she could think.
Taking advantage of a breather before the next bit of drama, she sank down on the couch and exhaled, relaxing every muscle in her body.
Ruefully, Mary Anne recalled the one time a man had asked her to marry him. A man who had never met her parents, her aunt or her grandmother. When Mary Anne had learned of dubious behavior on his part, regarding his parents' finances, she had broken the engagement. The incident had left her wondering if she was only capable of securing someone defective; if men could somehow sense that she came from a screwy family and if they gave her what they thought she deserved.
She tried to make a joke. "Did he sing 'Dark as a Dungeon' on the way home last night?"
Graham shook his head, smiling fondly and, he hoped, sympathetically.
"How did he get there, anyway?" she asked.
"What I picked up when we got back here," he said, "is that he set out for a solo walk and didn't return and everyone guessed he'd gone to a bar."
Mary Anne stirred at the sound of an automobile on the street. She peered out the window to see the taillights of a large sedan that was pulling up to the curb. "That will be Cameron and Aunt Louise."
And Cameron was mad at her. And she was a little mad at Cameron for involving her with the Cureux family.
Mary Anne beat Lucille to the door by two steps. She welcomed Cameron and her mother into the foyer, helping her aunt off with her coat as Cameron brandished a rolled-up magazine. "A present for you, Mary Anne. From Paul. He says he's going to recommend his mother use it for advertising."
Mary Anne held a finger to her lips and mouthed, "No! No!"
A look of incredulity crossed Cameron's face. Casually, she glanced into the living room and waved to Graham.
To Mary Anne, it all seemed dreadfully obvious and damning.
"Well, here." Cameron thrust the magazine into Mary Anne's hands.
It was the weekly entertainment news magazine Fly. "Why is it called that?" she asked Cameron.
"Fly," Cameron said. "You know, like they used to say in England during the Napoleonic Wars. It means, like, really good in every way. I dog-eared the page. Graham can see it, too."
Mary Anne opened the magazine and saw the photo the Logan Standard junior reporter had snapped of her and Graham on their evening out.
Horror washed over her. Graham looked handsome, like a movie star. Her hips looked like something that should be labeled Wide Load. The worst thing was the caption. Dr. Graham Corbett steps out with Jon Clive Drew's daughter, Mary Anne.
She wanted to sit down.
Cameron grabbed the magazine from her hand and took it into the living room.
Mary Anne felt as if she'd been photographed walking down the street in her nightgown. It was in no sense a rational reaction and had everything to do with the tabloid features involving her father she'd come across when she was young.
She followed her cousin into the living room, walked to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of wine.
Graham said, "You're photogenic, Mary Anne."
"You want some wine?" she answered without enthusiasm.
"I'm fine."
Lucille popped into the living room and said she was brewing "a nice pot of tea," then continued to offer various refreshments.
Aunt Louise said, "Is Caroline out smoking?"
"Walking Paris with my parents." Mary Anne looked uneasily at Cameron, who was prowling the living room looking irritable.
Soon Aunt Louise and Graham were talking about Graham's mother's books, a discussion that continued as the others returned from dog-walking. Aunt Louise called out, "Caroline, did you know Graham's mother is Evelyn Corbett?"
"Yes, I told him Sultry Southern Custom is my favorite!" Aunt Caroline exclaimed.
Mary Anne's mother looked shocked. "It sounds terrible," she murmured audibly.
Louise, falling into family step, said, "Well, our mother won't read anything like that."
Mary Anne was certain that Aunt Caroline had mentioned that very title so as to provoke a reaction from her sisters. She seemed to sometimes enjoy making them appear gauche.
Mary Anne managed to say, "I'm sure we all agree that it's an amazing feat to have become such a well-known and much-loved author."
Her mother took her cue at once and said, "It certainly is."
"Graham's working on a book, too," Mary Anne said, though he had only spoken of it once in her presence---to Jonathan. "It's sort of like his show, I guess. Self-help. And he helps a lot of people," she added with a meaningful look at her mother.
Which was the cue for her father, who'd been hanging up his coat, to enter the room and say, "Cameron McAllister, look at you. My niece is a fox."
Mary Anne considered simply walking out of the house and never returning.
Jon Clive waved to Louise, saying, "No Skip?"
"He's got a meeting tonight."
Mary Anne's father helped himself to another drink, saying, "Graham, can I tempt you?"
"Not just now, thanks."
Cameron leaped up from the couch. "Ready to open a present, Aunt Caroline?"
"I'm always ready for that, chicken." Aunt Caroline laughed. "I don't want to interfere with Lucille's plans, though."
Mary Anne said, "I'll ask when we're eating." While she was in the kitchen, maybe she could put her head in the oven. She ducked through the dining room to the kitchen, where she let out a long breath.
Lucille saw her face and said, "Miss Mary Anne, nothing any other person on earth does can reflect on you. You're the only one who can do that."
Mary Anne came over to the black woman and clung to her for a moment. Lucille was almost as tall as she was. Mary Anne was so grateful for her voice of sanity in this time of chaos.
Lucille said, "Now, your aunt's going to want a bottle of wine on the table. She already said so."
Mary Anne had overheard Aunt Caroline saying so. Lucille, I'm not going to let that man's bad behavior ruin my birthday. Nobody will keep him away from the side board anyhow.
"When shall we eat?" Mary Anne asked.
"Fifteen minutes, if that works for everyone."
"Thank you so much, Lucille. Won't you let me do anything?"
"You know better than to ask that, Miss Mary Anne."
Mary Anne returned to the living room, where Aunt Caroline sat unwrapping the gift Cameron and Aunt Louise had brought. It turned out to be a gorgeous silver bowl. "How beautiful!" Aunt Caroline exclaimed. "You shouldn't have, but I am so glad you did."
Mary Anne smiled, thinking of her own gift for her aunt, the scarf that had been gift-wrapped by Angie Workman, sitting in its box on a side table in the dining room.
Mary Anne told everyone when dinner would be served and Aunt Caroline opened another present, this one from Mary Anne's parents. It was a white cotton sweater, very nice, well-suited to Caroline's style. Lucille came out to announce dinner, and Mary Anne and the others trailed into the dining room, where an extra leaf had been added to the table to accommodate the crowd. Her father brought his whiskey glass with him, and Mary Anne wondered why Lucille had bothered to mention the wine, which was now breathing on the table. As Lucille served the ham, Louise said, "Caroline, you know who I saw yesterday? Dean Milligan! Remember that night we all went to the drive-in to see Jaws?"
"I remember that," said Mary Anne's father. "You were wearing that green sweater, Caroline, and hip-huggers, the first time they came around, and, boy, did you have the hips for them."
"You weren't there, Jon Clive," said Louise, frowning. "Were you?"
Mary Anne realized this was probably a date her father had gone on with her aunt before he switched to her mother. She barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes.
"I never saw that movie," Katherine Drew said. "Mother didn't approve of it. I remember that."
Aunt Caroline said, "Graham, are you going to pour that wine for us?"
"I am," Graham said swiftly, standing up to do so.
Louise said, "I'm so silly, Caroline. It was Sue Lane who went with us. I don't know why I thought it was you."
"Probably," Mary Anne said, "because she went out with my father before my mother did." She smiled at Graham as she said this.
"Well, I'm surprised Louise went to that movie!" her mother exclaimed. "Knowing how Mother felt about it."
Across the table, Cameron uncapped a small vial and added the clear contents to her own wineglass, then picked up the glass and drank.
Mary Anne's mouth fell open, and it was all she could do not to shout out, "What are you doing?"
Because the vial was identical to the one Clare Cureux had given her, the vial containing the love potion.


