I looked down at the envelope in my hand. “I don’t think I have that talent. Maybe I’d be better off if I did.”
“It’s time for it all to come out, I think,” Ransom said. “I don’t know why the time is now, but it is. Whatever you find, Shea, do me a favor and don’t tell me a damn thing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
May 1973
BETH
Six weeks after Julian died, Beth did something she’d almost never done: She spent the day shopping with her mother.
Mariana had always been a shopper. It was her job: Buy nice things, then buy more nice things. Sometimes, like at Christmas, she’d be briefly excited about what she bought, but the rest of the time she shopped with a curious blankness, often forgetting about her purchases and leaving them piled in a corner, still in the shopping bags. Shopping certainly wasn’t a joyous mother-daughter activity, and as soon as Beth could drive she would take one of the family cars and go shopping for herself.
Since Julian’s death, things had spun out of control. Mariana drank nonstop; Beth drank almost as much. The two women wandered the house like ghosts, sometimes sleeping until noon, sometimes awake at four in the morning. Beth alternated between telling herself Lily hadn’t really killed Julian and freezing, mind-numbing fear. She wanted so badly to fix things for her mother, to make things right again. But already Beth knew that she wasn’t the one who made things right in bad situations; she was the one who somehow made things worse.
She had finished high school, which was meaningless. Why had she bothered? She wasn’t going to college. She wasn’t going to be a teacher or a nurse or a normal person. Her father’s business partners would take over his company, Greer Pharmaceuticals, though Beth would get a share of the profits for life.
She was supposed to marry Gray and be a society wife, but that was over, too. For six weeks, Beth stared at the nothingness of her future with helpless numbness, tempered with flashes of anger that only eased when she raided Mariana’s liquor cabinet again.
I should do something, Beth thought to herself over and over. But she couldn’t make herself do anything.
And then one day in May, the sun was shining and Mariana was temporarily sober. She put her hair up, put her makeup on, and said to Beth, “Let’s go shopping!”
Beth said yes.
They drove to the Edengate Plaza, a brand-new shopping center on the outskirts of Claire Lake. Mariana wore a long, draped dress and had tied a paisley scarf into her blond hair. Beth wore a ringer tee and high-waisted jeans, flip-flops, her hair down. The air was tinged with the first promise of summer, warmth edging into the cool dampness, almost hot under the direct sun and in the enclosed car. Beth felt her hangover drain away in the sunshine. Neil Diamond played on the radio as they drove.
“This is going to be so fun!” Mariana said, her voice bright.
Beth smiled tentatively at her mother, and she thought maybe it would be fun. The Edengate Plaza was new, still an exciting place to go. It was a long building of dusty brown brick, with a colonnade along one side roofed by dark brown siding. It was built for Claire Lake’s richer clientele, with fashion shoe stores, dress stores, and jewelry stores lining the colonnade. The sign in front showed a drawing of three hourglass women, in Chanel dresses and pillbox hats, strolling the colonnade in high heels, with the slogan the only shopping experience you need!
“Look, honey,” Mariana said, pointing at the sign as they parked. “It’s the only shopping experience we need!”
Beth laughed, more excited that Mariana had used the term of endearment than about the joke. She couldn’t remember the last time Mariana had called her that.
They joined the shoppers on the colonnade. They tried on shoes, dresses. Mariana bought a lipstick in deep, vibrant red, the kind of color you’d see on Marilyn Monroe or Hedy Lamarr. When Beth found a silk shawl that was the same red, Mariana cried out in excitement.