Son of Destruction by Kit Reed Page B

never said a word, and whatever she suffered, tonight is our big chance to make it up to her. We’re damn well helping Brad do right by their daughter, so she can look at the pictures years later and be proud.
    It was an odd day. Sallie put down her checklist. ‘Wow,’ she said, and I still don’t know if she was sorry. ‘Lucy died. My nephew saw it in the New London
Day
. It’s not like it’ll be in the Fort Jude
Star
,’ and then she said, because Sallie is that kind of awful, ‘Turn your back on Fort Jude and Fort Jude turns its back on you.’
    We weren’t close, but she was prom queen in our year! That’s too close. I saw the grave yawning and it scared me because to tell the truth, it didn’t look all that bad to me.
    Sallie picked up her clipboard. ‘Moving right along.’
    Jessie sailed in before she could start; she looked amazing. ‘Big news.’
    ‘You’re late!’ Sallie hates being interrupted and she hates women attractive to Chape. Lucy was one, back in the day. ‘We were just . . .’
    ‘You’ll never guess who just checked in at the hotel.’
    I guess Jessie made two. Sallie stepped on her hard enough to squash her flat. ‘Shhh. We’re mourning,’ she said, although it wasn’t exactly true. ‘Lucy died.’
    ‘Oh!’ Jessie said, and the ones of us that don’t like Sallie all that much listened hard. She looked shaken. ‘I hadn’t heard.’
    ‘Of course not.’ Sallie stuck it to her, the bitch. ‘You were never close.’
    ‘No.’ In fact, Jessie was a parade of different faces. There are things we don’t ask now that she’s one of us, and with friends, you don’t really want to know about their sordid past. She got it together, but it cost her. ‘As a matter of fact, this guy . . .’
    Sallie struck back. ‘We were deciding on the centerpiece.’
    ‘Shut up and listen!’ Jessie pre-empted, take
that
. ‘It’s her son.’
    Of course all Fort Jude will know by the time the party starts, but thanks to Jessie, we were the first.
    Sallie was like steel. ‘What makes you so sure?’
    ‘Name on the credit card. Dan Carteret
.
’
    ‘That doesn’t mean . . .’
    Then Jessie shut her up for sure. ‘I saw Lucy in his face.’
    Now, Jessie grew up over on Pierce Point along with the Pike brothers and other people we don’t know, but even then she was sharp, didn’t study, never raised her hand, but you knew. What if she did leave town under a cloud? She came back a different person. The boys used to call her ‘anybody’s,’ but Jessie Vukovich is
somebody
now. High-end car, designer clothes, bought the Flordana outright, started in with United Fund and Meals on Wheels, months and months of selfless volunteering and now she’s practically one of us.
    ‘Green eyes, I wonder where that comes from. I looked at him and I swear I saw Lucy Carteret, he must be here because she’s . . .’ She sort of choked. ‘Now, Carteret. That’s not a common name.’ If there’s more, Jessie wasn’t saying it.
    Betsy said, in that flat tone that means the opposite, ‘Isn’t it wonderful Lucy has a child.’
    ‘Had.’
    And one of us said what we were all thinking, ‘I wonder who the father is.’
    Even Sallie realized we were on Jessie’s side in whatever war she thought they were having. She said, ‘Poor Lucy,’ and we knew we were done talking about Jessie’s news. Then,
wham
! She got me in her sights. ‘Nenna, what were you doing, risking death out on 38th Street last Thursday, what’s going on?’
    ‘Who, me? That wasn’t me.’ I thought fast. ‘Listen. We should do something for poor Lucy.’
    ‘Why? She never did anything for us.’
    I saved Betsy from Sallie a dozen times back when we were little. She owes me, so she jumped in. ‘Don’t blame Lucy, blame her grandmother,’ she said, and we were off.
    Even Cathy Rhue lined up with me. ‘We could have a little memorial down at Trinity, you know, since she died so far away from home.’
    Sallie said, ‘What