Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (26 page)

To Georgia the house was just another two-story example of Greek Revival architecture, although it did seem likely that in the recent past a fair bit of renovation had been done, because the more she looked at it, the more she could see that the house really was pristine.

“Maybe it’s a long shot,” Cristy said, “but what do we have to lose by asking?”

“Not one thing,” Georgia said. “And if this isn’t the house, then maybe somebody will recognize the one on the bracelet.”

The house had a circular brick driveway lined on one side with shrubs and magnolias ready to burst into bloom. In fact, some clearly had, because the air was already scented with their delicious lemony fragrance.

As they drew closer, Georgia heard music from inside, and glancing up she saw an open window. A girl with light brown hair and long tanned legs came out to the porch dressed in shorts and a T-shirt that said Zeta Chi over a fully blooming rose.

She stopped when they approached. “Are you here to visit somebody?”

Lucas answered first. “We wanted to know a little about Zeta Chi’s history. Is there somebody who might have time to talk to us?”

The girl glanced at Cristy, and her smile widened. “Are you going to be a student here next year?”

Right away Georgia could imagine the scenario in the girl’s mind. Here were a mom, dad and daughter, visiting some of the sorority houses so that over the summer the daughter could decide which ones she might want to rush in the fall.

“It’s unlikely,” Cristy said with a perfectly straight face. “But we just love this gorgeous house.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you come see us.” The girl nodded and continued down the steps, then she turned, realizing she hadn’t answered Lucas. “I’m sorry, our house mother’s inside. Mrs. M. She can tell you anything you want to know. Just knock and somebody will answer.”

They did, and when they asked for Mrs. M., the girl who let them in went to find her. They waited in the hallway under soaring ceilings, just in front of a wide staircase rising to the second floor.

The hall was lined with informal photos of smiling girls, each marked with a year. Georgia saw that the photos went back as far as the 1950s, but she couldn’t make herself examine them.

A silver-haired woman who looked to be in her mid- to late sixties came from the direction of the back of the house, wearing a cordial smile and a raspberry dress that stopped just short of her ankles.

“I’m Phyllis Martin, but the girls call me Mrs. M.” She held out her hand to Lucas, who was standing closest, and said the words with a drawl that made it clear she was very close to home.

He introduced Georgia and Cristy, and they shook hands. She led them to a small unoccupied room to the right of the stairwell and gestured to comfortable chairs, clearly expecting them to sit.

Georgia knew how much she chose to explain was up to her, but she decided to begin with the least of it, until she had a reason to explain more.

“This may seem strange to you,” she said, taking the charm bracelet out of her purse and handing it to Mrs. M. “But we’re trying to find this building. And while from the front the house doesn’t look exactly like the one on the bracelet, it seems to have enough of the same features that we thought we ought to ask. Would you happen to know if Zeta Chi ever gave out this charm?”

Mrs. M. didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. That charm was issued to girls who pledged the sorority between 1960 and 1965. It’s something of a—what do they call it...?” She stopped and pondered. “A collector’s item. I haven’t seen many, other than in photos. How lucky for you to have one.”

Georgia was stumped for what to say next. This had been such a long shot, she wasn’t prepared. Lucas smoothly stepped into the breach.

“We couldn’t help but notice it doesn’t exactly match the front of the house as it is now.”

“Oh, no, of course not. And that’s why I happen to remember the dates. In 1965 we had a terrible fire here. Or I should say
they
did, because I wasn’t the house mother then, of course. I was raising my own family. Two boys and a girl. Later she was a Zeta Chi right here in this very house.”

“What a terrible thing,” Lucas said. “The fire, I mean. Was anyone badly hurt?”

Georgia admired the way he hadn’t asked directly if anyone had died.

“No, it happened during the summer, and luckily nobody was living here at the time. The house had been closed for minor repairs and painting before the school year began. Much of the front was destroyed, and of course, the whole house was in shambles. It took a nationwide alumni fundraiser to make up the gap between what the insurance covered and what needed to be repaired. But there’d been talk for years about restoring the house to its antebellum origins, and the fire became the catalyst. So, in a small way, the fire had a silver lining.”

“I noticed the photos in the hallway,” Georgia said. “They survived the fire. Did other photos survive, too? And historical records?”

“Luckily everything had been packed up and moved into the back of the house so it wouldn’t be damaged by painters, and almost everything back there was untouched.”

Lucas glanced at Georgia. She wasn’t sure what to say next. Mrs. M. seemed delighted to talk about Zeta Chi, but how would she feel about a more sordid side of sorority life, a girl who had gotten pregnant, given birth and left her baby in a hospital sink?

She decided to go for broke. “I want to be honest with you,” she said, with the warmest smile she could manage. “I came by this bracelet in a very strange way. And I’m afraid the story may be connected to Zeta Chi. The problem is, I won’t know unless I have some help from you, or from someone familiar with life here in the early 1960s.”

She watched Mrs. M., and she knew she’d struck just the right note. The woman was more interested in hearing her story than in protecting the honor of Zeta Chi.

“Go on,” Mrs. M. said. “I’m all ears.”

“Your daughter was a Zeta Chi, so that makes me think you might be from Georgia?”

“As if you couldn’t tell by my accent,” Mrs. M. said.

“I lost my own some years ago after I moved north, but I’m from Georgia, too. I wonder, do you have any memory of a newspaper story about the Sweatshirt Baby, close to forty years ago?”

Mrs. M.’s eyes widened in acknowledgment.

A few minutes later she was nodding as Georgia finished her explanation. “And that was
you,
and here you are. Plus the bracelet and the way it was left on your desk? What a story all the way around.”

Georgia was delighted Mrs. M. hadn’t added “you poor thing,” because she had been sure that was coming.

“There’s a bulldog on the bracelet, and now we know this house is on the bracelet, too. I think it’s a good possibility my mother was a Zeta Chi. I would like to know who she is.”

“You’re certain about that?”

Georgia thought Mrs. M. had been a good choice for house mother here. “I’ll have to decide what to do if I find out. But I wonder if you would be willing to let me look through photos of that time?”

“Do you think photos will do the trick? How will you know what to look for?”

“I don’t know. But maybe I’ll see a resemblance. It seems worth a try.”

Mrs. M. considered, then she shrugged. “I see no reason not to let you. They aren’t secret or sacred, like names and addresses. They’re photos. Tell me the years you’re interested in. I’ll haul out the albums.”

Ten minutes later they were seated at a round table in the corner ready to begin going through bulging photo albums from 1963 to 1965, the year that Georgia had been born. Mrs. M. went to make tea because she insisted they would need it.

“Were you in a sorority?” Cristy asked Georgia.

“I went to community college for two years, then I finished the next two in Pennsylvania at a small girl’s college. No sororities, and if we’d had them, I could never have afforded one on my scholarship.”

“Imagine living here in this house with all these women. Mrs. M. said, what, ninety? It’s like NCCIW, only there probably aren’t any murderers sleeping in the same room with you.”

Georgia didn’t say what was right on the tip of her tongue. Her own mother nearly fit that description.

“Here’s what I think,” Lucas said. “Georgia, you were born in ’65 in early spring. If your mother really was a Zeta Chi, then hiding a pregnancy, in a house surrounded by dozens of women, would have been tough. I would guess that she might have been here the fall term of ’64, but not after that. Because the pregnancy would have begun to show by then.”

Georgia was doing the math in her head. “That’s about right.”

“Then we should look for women who were here in ’64, but not in ’65,” Cristy said. “That doesn’t sound so hard.”

Sadly it was. There were photos galore, but many of them weren’t dated. Photos of parties, photos of dinners, photos of women studying or gathered around a grand piano. Georgia was struck by how much the women all looked alike. Girls in pretty, pale suits, bouffant hair. Girls in strapless formals, long white gloves, tiaras with hair flipping out at the edges. Peter Pan collars and pleated skirts. The flower children hadn’t yet made their way to Zeta Chi, and losing boyfriends in Vietnam was still, for the most part, in the future.

An hour later Georgia’s head was whirling. “There
must
be lists of the girls who were here during those years. Maybe we could just compare them to see who left in ’65. These photos are impossible.”

“We can try,” Lucas said, “but Mrs. M. made it pretty clear she isn’t going to be as helpful when it comes to names. And I’m sure she’s not going to give us contact information.”

Cristy looked up from the album she had been going through. She had asked Lucas for help reading captions several times, and Georgia had been happy to see the kindness and patience he’d shown.

“I might have something.”

Georgia closed her own album, which had been a confusing mixture of party photos and invitations.

“What did you find?” Lucas asked Cristy.

“Here’s a photo of the pledge class for 1964.” She turned the album so Georgia and Lucas could see it. “Twenty girls. Fourteen brunettes and six blondes. Maybe some of the brunettes actually have red hair, but since the photo’s in black-and-white, we can’t tell.”

The photo was an informal pose, girls at several tables, perhaps doing homework. Pledge Class 1964.

“Go on,” he said.

Cristy pulled the album back, flipped half a dozen pages, then turned it around so they could see another photo. “And here’s a photo after they were initiated. Or that’s what you told me?”

“That’s right. It says, ‘Welcome to our brand-new sisters.’”

“Nineteen. Thirteen brunettes and six blondes. Someone is missing here.”

“Do you know who?” Lucas pulled his chair around so he could see the photos at a better angle.

“I think it might be her.” Cristy pointed to the photo.

Georgia couldn’t resist. She pulled her chair around, too. The girl Cristy had singled out was lovely, with an ethereal face and a cloud of dark hair teased at the top to add at least four inches to her height. Georgia stared at the picture, searching for a resemblance to herself, and found none.

She committed the girl’s face to memory and scanned the second photo. It was hard to be certain, but she thought Cristy was right. This
was
the girl who was missing.

“Good eye,” Lucas said. “Great eye.”

Mrs. M. chose that moment to come back into the room. “I wanted to warn you we have a small party at seven, and pretty soon girls are going to descend on this room to start decorating.”

Lucas got to his feet. “We did find something interesting in the pledge class of ’64. It looks like one of the girls didn’t make it to initiation. And we wondered...” He let his voice drop off slowly.

“I know what you’re wondering.”

“Can you give us a name? And maybe somebody who might remember this young woman?”

Georgia couldn’t imagine how anyone could deny Lucas anything. She would bet he hadn’t gotten to the top of his profession by badgering sources, but by charming them into submission.

“I can’t give you names or addresses
or
phone numbers. That’s a breach of confidentiality.”

“A good reason,” Lucas agreed with a wistful smile.

Mrs. M. was thinking. “But I
can
call the class presidents myself. Will that help? And if they feel like it, they can contact you on their own.”

Georgia answered, since this was her life they were talking about. “That would be the most wonderful help.”

Mrs. M. squinted at the first photo, then at the other when Lucas flipped the page for her.

“I don’t see how you caught that. Not with everything else you’ve looked at.”

Georgia glanced at Cristy; then she reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “We have someone who’s both perceptive and able to put facts together. I’d say we were lucky to have her with us.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

MOST DAYS GEORGIA
took her lunch into the teachers’ lounge, where she could socialize with faculty and keep her ear to the ground on important issues. During her months as principal she had picked up more good information there than at any faculty meeting—including, on Monday, a rumor that Jon Farrell had asked to be reassigned to a desk job at the school board. As a solution to her own problem with him, that couldn’t be beat.

On Tuesday, though, she skipped the lounge and ate a cheese and pickle sandwich at her desk while she stacked paperwork in order from “past due” to “urgent,” and set aside a fair amount for Marianne to take care of. The office manager grew more valuable every day.

She managed to do a first pass before her cell phone rang. As she answered, she started thumbing through the pile again, just to be sure.

The woman on the other end gave her name, and Georgia was afraid a student’s mother had somehow gained access to her private number. But as the introduction lengthened, she realized the call was long distance.

“...and Phyllis Martin thought I might want to talk to you.”

Georgia dropped all pretense of working, got up and walked to the window. “I’m sorry, but I missed your name.”

“Bunny Galveston. Of course, I was Bunny Higgins back in my Zeta Chi days.”

“Thank you so much for calling,” Georgia said. “Did you say you were a pledge class president?”

“That’s right. In 1964. Phyllis called and said you had an intriguing story to share with me.”

Georgia silently blessed the Zeta Chi house mother. Who could resist a teaser like that?

“It
is
an intriguing story,” she said, infusing warmth into her voice. She repeated the tale of the Sweatshirt Baby, the charm bracelet and the weekend trip to UGA.

“Then we noticed that one girl was in the pledge class photo in the fall of ’64, but she wasn’t in the photo after initiation. And we couldn’t help but wonder....” She let her voice trail off.

“My...my, what a story.”

Georgia could almost see Bunny shaking her head.

“I’m thinking back,” Bunny said. “I really am, so don’t hang up. But it’s been a long time. Luckily the past is easier to remember than what happened yesterday, although I remember that pretty clearly, too, since it involved a new dress and dinner at my favorite restaurant.”

“Always memorable,” Georgia agreed, and filled in the pause by wondering if she ought to shop for a new dress, too. Now that she was seeing so much of Lucas, she was suddenly conscious of how little attention she paid to the way she looked.

“Trish,” Bunny said at last.

“Trish?”

“That was her name, but whether it’s short for Patricia or Tricia or something else, I can’t remember. I just remember what we called her. See, she dropped out right after she pledged, which really surprised everybody because, let’s face it, we were one of the best sororities and very, very picky. In those days, if you got an invitation to pledge Zeta Chi that was really something, and
not
something girls said no to. So many girls wanted in who had to settle for less.”

Georgia, egalitarian to the bone, tried not to think about all those broken hearts. “So she pledged, then she left?”

“I’m trying to remember when exactly. Before the Christmas holiday, for sure. She just cleared out. I think she said she had a family emergency. I’m sure we tried to fix things so she could come back when the family thing, whatever it was, got taken care of. But I never heard another word about her. She disappeared. Poof. And suddenly our class was one pledge smaller.”

It was so little, and so much. Georgia didn’t know what to say.

“The
family
emergency could have been you,” Bunny added, as if Georgia might not see that. “She could have been in the
family
way.”

“Did anybody suspect she was pregnant? Do you remember?”

“We weren’t friends. I think she more or less kept to herself, one of those Southern belles who’s all marshmallow fluff with nothing much at the center. I hate characterizing anybody that way, since I’m Georgia born and bred, but it fits. Trish could talk about anything and say absolutely nothing. She was gorgeous, though, which is probably why she was invited to join us. One of those girls who turned heads no matter what she wore. Sometimes that’s a curse, you know. You don’t have to be anything, think anything. You just have to pose.”

“So you don’t remember if any of the other girls were closer to her?”

“I can find out.”

Georgia thought that was promising. “You’re still in touch with your sorority sisters?”

“As hard as it is to believe, with most of them, yes. Those who dropped away came back when we put up a Facebook page. We’ve lost two of our number over the years, but the rest of us are alive and kicking.”

Georgia couldn’t believe her luck.

Bunny continued. “She—Trish, I mean—never went through initiation. It’s possible no one will remember her, not even her big sister, although I’ll see if I can find out who that might have been. There
is
one little silly thing I do remember, and it probably means nothing. But for some reason that year a lot of pledges were music majors. I majored in chemistry, but a surprising number were in the music school together. I don’t know why, but I think Trish was one of them.”

Georgia pictured all the music charms on the bracelet. “Did she play the French horn?”

“I promise I’ll ask. I realize this is your life and absolutely serious, but it’s quite an interesting mystery. And I’m delighted to help.”

Georgia couldn’t let Bunny go without asking one final question. “Is there any possibility one of the other girls in your class or maybe in the sorority could be my mother? Any secret pregnancies you heard about later? Any suspicious absences or withdrawals?”

“I can’t speak for the whole sorority, but except for Trish, everybody in our pledge class graduated on time and together, or nearly so. And those who didn’t were in complicated majors that required extra course work. Nobody took a term off that I remember. And you know, in a house like ours, we saw each other in all stages of undress. Eventually somebody would have noticed a pregnancy, although girdles and those awful shifts and tent dresses
were
in fashion. But it’s unlikely your mother was somebody who stayed in school, disappeared for a few days to have you and came right back.”

“You’ve been so much help. If you remember anything else or learn anything else, you’ll let me know?”

“You deserve some answers after everything. I’d have to be the most insensitive woman in the world not to see that.”

Bunny was anything but. She might be enjoying this, but compassion was definitely part of the equation, too.

They said their goodbyes, and after they hung up Georgia continued to stare out the window. Of course the possibility that she’d found a real link to her mother was still remote; yet so far, what she was learning about Trish fit. Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Unfortunately the puzzle had two thousand pieces, and she had assembled maybe half a dozen.

She wanted to call Lucas and tell him what she’d just learned, but she wasn’t sure how good an idea that was. They were at a crossroads in their relationship, and she would have to be emotionally tone-deaf not to sense it. Lucas was waiting for a sign that she wanted something more intimate than discussions of dinner menus or her family history.

Unfortunately she didn’t know exactly what she wanted. She needed to be cautious in spite of her attraction to him. What did she really know about Lucas Ramsey? He liked her and liked being with her, but he was a temporary resident. He talked about looking at real estate, but so far she hadn’t seen any real plans to do so. His family, his newspaper, were in metropolitan Atlanta. At some point wouldn’t he realize that was where he needed to be, as well? And even if he wanted her to move there, would she be willing to give up her dream job? BCAS was a work in progress, and
work
was the key word, but she loved putting her own stamp on the school and helping shape its destiny. She had no intention of leaving.

Then there was her commitment to the other goddesses, and to Cristy. And, of course, her daughter and granddaughter.

She found herself smiling. How quickly her thoughts had flown from telling him about Bunny’s call to telling him she wasn’t going to move to Atlanta. When he had never asked her to. When they hadn’t even spent a night together in the same bed.

More’s the pity.

She was still smiling when somebody knocked on her office door. Marianne opened it and poked her head inside.

“Dawson Nedley wants to speak with you.” Marianne didn’t roll her eyes, but she might as well have.

“Send him in.”

She put Lucas out of her mind and prepared herself for Dawson’s latest crisis, settling on the love seat so they could pretend to talk person-to-person and perhaps shortcut Dawson’s inclination to challenge authority.

When he entered, she pointed to the comfortable chair in front of her. “I’ve got five minutes, then I have to send you on your way.”

“Nothing like being organized.” He plopped down in the chair. He was wearing slightly nicer jeans than usual. Today, apparently, he wasn’t making a statement about his farm-boy roots.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I was thinking, like, I might be able to help Cristy learn to read.”

She had expected any number of things, but certainly not that. “Really?”

“Well, you know, I
can
read myself. I just thought maybe I could pass that on to her.”

“I imagine you were reading before you hit kindergarten. Am I correct?”

He shrugged.

“I think it’s great you want to help, don’t get me wrong, but everybody who’s tried to teach her to read could read themselves, just like you. That’s kind of a prerequisite. The trick is how to teach what came easily to you. She’s very bright, but her brain works differently than yours does when it comes to words and sounds. It’s challenging to work around that.”

“I like a good challenge.”

She waited for an argument, but seconds passed, and he was silent.

“Then you’d like to
learn
how to help her? Because that’s what it’ll take.”

“It’s kind of intriguing. I mean, we think people are smart or they’re stupid—not a lot of middle ground. I guess I never thought much about people just being different and learning differently. My brother...”

She waited, remembering that his brother had died in Iraq.

Dawson shrugged again. “Ricky was mechanical. He could fix anything, didn’t matter what. Tractors, computers, air conditioners. And he could grow anything. He built a greenhouse one winter just for fun and planted citrus trees, just to see what that would be like. He could read, no problem, but he hated to. He read just enough to get himself through high school, but all he really wanted was to see a little of the world with the marines before he settled down to help my father run the farm.”

Georgia wasn’t the school guidance counselor, but she knew when a student needed to talk. “It sounds like the two of you were very different.”

“I guess I never thought he was smart, but now I guess he was.”

“That’s a good insight.”

“What would I have to do to help Cristy?”

“Well, you gave me an idea. The way she’s learning to read is very clear about rules and the order things are introduced. But she’s hungry to work on the skills she’s developing. I wrote a little story for her, using the principles we’re learning, and she loved reading it. If I make a list of what you need to look for in any words you use, then maybe you could write a few stories, too. This method is very specific, and I’ll have to check whatever you do and maybe edit a little, just to make sure your story’s not going to frustrate her. But would you be willing? It might be fun.”

He nodded. “I could do that.”

“Are the two of you turning into friends?”

“We have more in common than I thought.”

She waited, but nothing more came. Instead Dawson got up. It was just about the five-minute mark. “When would you have that list?”

“I can give it to you tomorrow. See if Mrs. Granger will put you on my schedule in the afternoon to go over it with me if you have a free period.” She got to her feet and walked him to the door. “I’m glad you’re doing this.”

“Reading opens up a whole new world. The problem is, sometimes you have to view it through barred windows.”

Georgia knew he wasn’t talking about Cristy’s time in prison, but about his own imprisonment in a life he didn’t want, the very life his brother had yearned for.

“Dawson, I have faith you’ll find ways to do whatever you need to make yourself happy, but it’ll help a lot if you don’t burn any bridges first. The better you do at BCAS, the fewer barred windows.”

“It always comes back to that with you.”

She smiled a little and rested her hand on his shoulder for a moment. “You can count on me.”

He almost smiled back. In fact, his expression was close enough that after he left, her own smile lingered.