Southern Lights Read Free

“You’d better not screw around, there’s no give on those dates.”
    “Then maybe I’ll just have to take a year off from school before college,” Savannah teased her. They had a good time together, and a loving relationship. Savannah wasn’t embarrassed to tell her friends that her mom was her best friend, and they thought her mother was cool too. Alexa had taken several of them to the office with her for Career Day every year. But Savannah had no desire to go to law school. She wanted to be either a journalist or a psychologist, but hadn’t decided yet. She didn’t have to declare her major for the first two years of college.
    “If you take a year off, maybe I’ll do it with you. I’ve had a run of crappy cases for the last month. The holidays bring out the worst in everyone. I think I’ve had every Park Avenue housewife shoplifter in town to prosecute since Thanksgiving,” she complained as they left the apartment together, and got in the elevator. Savannah knew that in October her mother had prosecuted an important rape case, and put the defendant away for good. He had thrown acid in the woman’s face. But since then, work had been slow.
    “Why don’t we take a trip when I graduate in June? By the way, Daddy’s taking me to Vermont for ski week,” Savannah said breezily as the elevator headed down. She avoided her mother’s eyes when she said it. She hated the look on her face whenever she mentioned her father to her. It was still a mixture of hurt and anger, even after all these years—nearly eleven. It was the only time her mother looked bitter, although she never said anything overtly rotten about him to her daughter.
    Savannah didn’t remember much about the divorce, but she knew it had been a bad time for her mother. Her father was from Charleston, South Carolina, and they had lived there until the divorce, and then she and her mother moved back to New York. Savannah hadn’t been to Charleston since, and didn’t really remember it anymore. Her father came to see her in New York two or three times a year, and when he had time, he took her on trips, although his schedule changed a lot. She loved seeing him, and tried not to feel like a traitor to her mother when she did. Her parents communicated by e-mail, and hadn’t spoken or seen each other since the divorce. It was a little Charlie’s Angels for Savannah’s taste, but that was just the way it was, and she knew it wasn’t going to change. It meant her father wouldn’t come to her high school graduation. Savannah was hoping to work on both of them in the four years before she graduated from college. She really wanted both of them there. But her mother was great, in spite of the animosity between her parents.
    “You know he’ll probably cancel at the last minute, don’t you?” Alexa said, looking irritated. She hated it when Tom disappointed their daughter, and he so often did. Savannah always forgave him, but Alexa didn’t. She loathed everything he did and was.
    “Mom,” Savannah scolded her, almost sounding like the mother and not the daughter. “You know I don’t like it when you do that. He can’t help it, he’s busy.” Doing what? Alexa wanted to ask, but didn’t. Going to lunch at his club, or playing golf? Visiting his mother between her United Daughters of the Confederacy meetings? Alexa pressed her lips tightly together, as the elevator stopped in the lobby and they got out.
    “I’m sorry,” Alexa said with a sigh and kissed her. It wasn’t so bad now, at seventeen, but Alexa had been furious when Savannah was little and he didn’t show up and her big blue eyes filled with tears and she tried so hard to be brave. It broke Alexa’s heart to see it, but Savannah could handle it better now. And Savannah excused her father for nearly everything he did. “If his plans change, we can always go to Miami for the weekend, or skiing. We’ll figure something out.”
    “We won’t have to. He promised he’d be