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Back Ladies of the House Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Praise
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. January
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. February
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. March
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. April
  26. Seventeen
  27. Eighteen
  28. Nineteen
  29. Twenty
  30. Twenty-One
  31. Twenty-Two
  32. Twenty-Three
  33. Twenty-Four
  34. Twenty-Five
  35. May
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. June
  43. Thirty-Two
  44. Thirty-Three
  45. Thirty-Four
  46. Thirty-Five
  47. Thirty-Six
  48. Thirty-Seven
  49. Thirty-Eight
  50. Thirty-Nine
  51. Forty
  52. July
  53. Forty-One
  54. Epilogue
  55. Acknowledgments
  56. Author’s Note
  57. Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide
  58. Questions For Discussion
  59. Excerpt

Yes, I thought. These damn people. Earlier that evening, I’d caught Wallis standing alone in a corner, next to a drop-leaf table with tortoiseshell inlay, topped with a crystal vase of tulips and a saucer of mints. Engrossed in her phone with these damn people, this Blake Darley—potential senator—with whom she’d rather have been spending her night.

“Melinda Darley was right there,” continued Judge Reed. “Right there peering over the tables making sure everyone got the right salad, God only knows. And do you know what Blake did? What he said to this nasty, anti-Semitic Scottie boy?”

Now this I could see coming. “Nothing,” I said.

“He laughed!” She slapped her palm against the marble of the island. “He laughed and didn’t say a damn thing. But then again, neither did Jessica.” She took a sip of her Pimm’s. “So many years James and I preached the importance of speaking truth to power. One fancy dinner in some old-money Charleston house and those lessons were all but forgotten.” Another sip, this time sucked through her teeth. “Ah, but maybe I’m being too hard on Jess. God, she felt guilty afterward. Wrote this long letter to her friend apologizing.”

“And what happened later, to Jessica and Blake?” I asked.

Judge Reed lifted a shoulder. “Blake went to some college around here with the rest of his shaggy-haired friends, looking to get some ‘gentleman’s Cs,’ like they call it. Jessica went to Harvard.”

My Pimm’s was finished. Judge Reed topped me up, and I was grateful.

“I never told you this?” Judge Reed asked her sister. Aunt Jane shook her head. “Well, maybe I was embarrassed.”

“You did great with Jessica,” Aunt Jane said. “Bo, too.”

“Both of them, spoiled down to the tips of their toes.” Judge Reed looked toward the kitchen door, as though expecting one of her children to appear. I wondered if Cricket did the same when she talked about us. “God love ’em. You see, Daisy, even when Robert and I weren’t as close as we are now...” She flinched—the pinch of a painful memory, it seemed—but it was soon replaced by a peal of laughter. She pushed her glass away. “Enough with this drinking. Let’s turn on some music, right, Janie?” the Judge said, but she made no move to rise. “Daisy, what do you think?”