Lowcountry Summer Read Free Page B

her true colors. I know it doesn’t sound nice for me to take any kind of delight in the weakness of others, but you don’t know what a detestable witch of a sister-in-law she has been to me. So, in the cosmic sense, I had my cake and ate it, too.
    Eventually Frances Mae sobered up, and Amelia, who was beside herself with embarrassment, drove her and Chloe home to Walterboro and then she and Eric continued on back to school. All glibness aside, the whole incident was deeply upsetting because of what happened to Chloe. But instead of raising hell in the moment, I took a cool step back because number one, it was Trip’s place to do the hell-raising. And second, I didn’t want to rile Matthew and have him feel an urgent obligation to arrest Frances Mae. But unfortunately Trip did not step in except to soothe Chloe. Maybe he was so shocked that he didn’t react. Maybe he would react later.
    There would be an aftermath because there was always an aftermath. It began when Mr. Jenkins had Frances Mae’s SUV hauled out of the ditch and sent it off to the body shop. He said it had a dozen empty water bottles, apparently thrown in the back along with assorted fast-food wrappers and old magazines. And in an uncharacteristic piece of criticism, he remarked that the interior of the car had a rank smell. If Mr. Jenkins was reporting this, then her SUV must have been absolutely disgusting. Then he said that Trip, whose veins occasionally pumped the holy blood of saints, had rented a veritable tank for her to drive in the meanwhile.
    It was expensive for Trip to have an estranged wife like Frances Mae because you could neither rent her a tuna-can car nor could you rent a car based on some algorithm that determined her worth as a citizen of the world. According to Mr. Jenkins, Trip kept saying that she was still the mother of his children and drove three of their four daughters all over the place and that their safety was paramount to him. I couldn’t have agreed more on that point.
    But any way you shake it up, the fact that Chloe had been hurt while in the car with her mother was a huge warning sign to all of us, gnawing away at my normal reserve and desire to mind my own business. Okay, maybe I didn’t always mind my own business and Chloe’s precarious situation was way over the limit of what I was willing to silently endure as the child’s aunt. Frances Mae was flat-out dangerous.
    On Monday, Millie and I discussed the situation all morning while sitting in the kitchen, going over invoices and considering some new labels for Sweetie’s . Every time I bumped into her during the day, the discussion continued, growing into a simmering stew. Well into the afternoon she brought me a pile of checks to sign that one of Miss Sweetie’s minions had delivered to Rosario, our housekeeper. By then we were in agreement that something had to be done. She stood by the sink, rinsing a glass and talking to me in that tone of voice that all family members knew meant “you had better listen to what I’m saying.”
    “All I did last night was fret over that child, ’eah? I couldn’t sleep for beans! And all day long I can’t even eat. This is a terrible thing going on and it’s gotta be stopped. Frances Mae’s getting drunk up and running the road can’t continue.”
    “Oh, Millie. You’re right. I’m sick with worry, too. But you know, this is Pandora’s box. If we get involved, I can smell huge drama.”
    Millie looked at me with her most serious Mount Rushmore expression.
    “Gone be worse drama iffin we find ourselves standing over that baby’s grave. That chile was all kinda shook up and so was I. So wrong. Jenkins was so mad I thought he was gonna bust. What you gone do?”
    “Me?”
    “Yes, ma’am! You! What? You think if Miss Lavinia was alive she wouldn’t do something?”
    “Oh Lord, Millie. I know, but I’m not Trip’s mother.”
    “You the eldest? You need to have a little ‘come-to-Jesus meeting’ with