brought a young man in for a drink, and he had the grossest ring in his nostril. I kept wanting to lead him around by it. And he sat right here in our home and told us he is a great admirer of Lenin. I thought Wrens would die.”
Katharine suspected that Wrens’s blood pressure hadn’t gone up a single point. He was accustomed to Hollis’s need to shock her parents. She also suspected the young man had been talking about Lennon, the deceased Beatle, not the Russian politician. Most of all, she suspected Hollis was once again jerking Posey’s chain, as Katharine had jerked her Aunt Sara Claire’s chain back when Sara Claire considered herself one of Buckhead’s foremost aristocrats. Hollis could count on the fact that her mother would have a spasm every time she brought home another strange young man.
“So far Hollis has shown the good sense not to get seriously involved with any of them,” Katharine pointed out. One of the reasons Posey complained to her about Hollis was to be reassured that the child wasn’t fit to be locked up.
“Thank the good Lord for that. Do you want me to call her to the phone?”
“No, I’ll call on her cell phone. You go on to class. And thanks again for the use of the cottage. You may have saved my sanity.”
Hollis was, indeed, working on Katharine’s dining room drapery. “Are you out shopping for lamps?” she demanded.
“Careful,” Katharine warned, “or you are going to start sounding like Aunt Sara Claire. Remember how bossy she was?” She laughed to show she was teasing. She was very fond of Posey’s small, dark daughter, who looked far more like her uncle, Tom, and her cousin, Susan, than she did her large blond sisters. Molly and Lolly were traditional products of Buckhead: beautifully groomed young women who devoted their lives to good works, exercise, and reproducing themselves in their own image. Hollis—who since college had refused to be the Holly in that trio of names—accepted no social barriers and few social conventions, and knew every trick in the book to irritate her mother. Katharine found her insightful comments on society and her wide range of interests and friends refreshing. Posey found them infuriating. Of course, as Posey kept pointing out, nobody would ever blame Katharine for the way Hollis turned out.
“I’m not at all like Mrs. Everanes,” Hollis objected. “I wasn’t trying to boss you. I thought you might be calling to ask my advice about a lampshade or something.”
“No, I’m calling to tell you I’m going out of town tomorrow for a few days, so you can take time off. We’ll look for stuff for Susan’s room later.”
“I could look while you’re gone.”
“You’re a glutton for punishment, but I’d be delighted. Go ahead and buy whatever you think will work. But remember, nothing too girly.”
“I don’t do girly,” Hollis informed her with offended dignity.
Katharine was immediately contrite. “Of course you don’t. You’ve done a marvelous job on everything else, and you probably know Susan’s tastes better than I do.”
“It’s not Susan’s room anymore,” Hollis reminded her with the bluntness that Posey found so mortifying. “We ought to fix it up as a guest room.”
Katharine felt like she’d been hit between the shoulder blades. “I guess so,” she managed. “Surprise me.” She hung up glad she’d be in the ocean by the next day. She needed one thing in her life that hadn’t changed.
Chapter 3
The red Jeep in her driveway later that afternoon meant nothing but trouble, so why did Katharine’s foot relax on the gas pedal and a little bubble of happiness well up inside her when she turned in her drive and found it there? As soon as she realized her SUV was slowing down, she pressed on the gas to shoot up the hill to the garage.
She had just stopped the car when she heard a shout. “Hey! Just because you drive a Cadillac doesn’t mean you have to be rude.”
She let out a huff that was