The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(67)

She walked down the hall, into the dining room. The overhead chandelier was on but it only seemed to make the room darker. Grace sat at one end of the table in slacks and a navy turtleneck beneath a gray sweater. The table was covered in trash.

“Patricia,” Grace said. “I’m not up to seeing visitors.”

She had strawberry jam clotted in the corner of her mouth, and as Patricia came closer she saw it was a scab crusted around a split lip.

“What happened?” she asked, raising her fingers to the same place on the corner of her own mouth.

“Oh,” Grace said, and made her face look happy. “The silliest thing. I was in a car accident.”

“A what?” Patricia asked. “Are you all right?”

She’d just seen Grace last night. When had she had time to get in a car accident?

“I ran to Harris Teeter this morning,” Grace said, smiling. It cracked the scab and Patricia saw wet blood gleaming in the wound. “I was backing out of my space and backed right into a man in a Jeep.”

“Who was it?” Patricia asked. “Did you get his insurance?”

Grace was already dismissing her before she finished.

“No need,” she said. “It was just a silly thing. He was more shaken up than me.”

She gave Patricia another enthusiastic smile. It made Patricia feel ill, so she looked down at the table to gather her thoughts. A cardboard box sat at one end, and its dark wood surface was covered in jagged, white shards of broken porcelain. A delicate handle protruded from a ceramic curve and Patricia recognized an orange and yellow butterfly, and then her vision widened and took in the entire table.

“The wedding china,” she said.

She couldn’t help it. The words just fell out of her mouth. The entire set had been smashed. Shards were spread across the table like bone fragments. She felt horrified, as if she were seeing a mutilated corpse.

“It was an accident,” Grace began.

“Did James Harris do this?” Patricia asked. “Did he try to intimidate you? Did he come here and threaten you?”

She tore her eyes away from the carnage and saw Grace’s face. It was pinched with fury.

“Do not ever say that man’s name again,” Grace said. “Not to me, not to anyone. Not if you want our relations to remain cordial.”

“It was him,” Patricia said.

“No,” Grace snapped. “You are not listening to what I am saying. I shook his hand and apologized because you made fools of us all. You humiliated us in front of our husbands, in front of a stranger, in front of your children. I tried to tell you before and you wouldn’t listen, but I am telling you now. As soon as I’ve cleared up this…mess”—her voice cracked—“I am phoning every member of the book club and telling them in no uncertain language that this matter is at an end and will never, ever be mentioned again. And we will welcome this man into book club and do whatever it takes to put this behind us.”

“What did he do to you?” Patricia asked.

“You did this to me,” Grace said. “You made me trust you. And I looked like a fool. You humiliated me in front of my husband.”

“I didn’t—” Patricia tried.

“You caught me up in your playacting,” Grace said. “You arranged this amateur theatrical event in your living room and somehow convinced me to participate—I must have been out of my mind.”

The morning flowed into Patricia’s limbs like black sludge, filling her up as Grace talked.

“This tawdry soap opera you’ve imagined between yourself and James Harris,” Grace said. “I’d almost suspect you were…sexually frustrated.”

Patricia couldn’t stop herself. The anger wasn’t hers. She was only a channel. It came from someplace else, it had to, because there was so much of it.

“What do you do all day, Grace?” she asked, and heard her voice echoing off the dining room walls. “Ben is off to college. Bennett is at work. All you do is look down your nose at the rest of us, hide in this house, and clean.”

“Do you ever think how lucky you are?” Grace asked. “Your husband works himself to the bone providing for you and the children. He’s kind, he doesn’t raise his voice in anger. All your needs are catered to, yet you weave these lurid fantasies out of boredom.”

“I’m the only person who sees reality,” Patricia said. “Something is wrong here, something bigger than your grandmother’s china, and your silver polish, and your manners, and next month’s book, and you’re too scared to face it. So you just sit in your house and scrub away like a good little wife.”

“You say that like it’s nothing,” Grace wailed. “I am a good person, and I am a good wife, and a good mother. And, yes, I clean my house, because that is my job. It is my place in this world. It is what I am here to do. And I am satisfied with that. And I don’t need to fantasize that I’m…I’m Nancy Drew to be happy. I can be happy with what I do and who I am.”

“Clean all you want,” Patricia said. “But whenever Bennett has a drink, he’s still going to smack you in the mouth.”

Grace stood, frozen in shock. Patricia couldn’t believe she had said that. They stayed like that in the freezing cold dining room for a long moment, and Patricia knew their friendship would never recover. She turned and left the room.