Everyone but Chris thought she was insane for filing for divorce—her parents, grandparents, coworkers, her female friends. Chris had held her through her tears of fear over the future, and the grief of having to acknowledge that her marriage had never been what she had thought it would be when she spoke her vows. He had been there to comfort her and had popped open the champagne, the only person in her life who had ever thought Beau was not the perfect man for her. The perfect man, period. Tonight Chris was here to get a sneak preview of her impulsive real estate purchase and to break in her balcony with the wine and a couple of wrought iron chairs. They had been walking down Magazine Street after dinner when Chris had spotted, and promptly bought as her housewarming gift, the heavy scrolling chairs sitting outside an antique shop.
Impulsive. Chris had always been impulsive, and now she had the right, the ability to be that way too. To do what she wanted, when she wanted.
“Produce a professional football player for me that has read The Kite Runner and I’ll take it back,” Chris said, dragging the chairs over to the French doors, making her wince.
Hardwood floors didn’t take kindly to wrought iron chair feet.
But a quick glance reassured her he hadn’t scratched the floors, and she told herself it didn’t matter anyway. No husband to yell about the ruined floors.
“For all you know,” she told Chris, “there’s an NFL book club. And I think I saw some commercial where football players were promoting a literacy-for-adults program. You hate it when people make generalizations about you for being g*y—you shouldn’t do the same to an athlete.”
Though she had to admit, she seriously doubted locker room chatter involved literary fiction, but she could be wrong. She had definitely been wrong before. At least once. She glanced down at her empty ring finger and felt the urge to grin at its nudity.
Chris rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Oprah Pollyanna Winfrey. The trouble with being so damn PC all the time is that there’s nothing left to make fun of, and frankly, everyone needs a good laugh at someone else’s expense once in a while. It keeps people from bottling it up and going all Unabomber.”
Then he waved his hand as he abandoned the chairs in the doorway behind her and walked over to the chest of drawers that had been left in the house by the previous owners. “But it’s too early in the night to debate, it’s not even ten yet, for Chrissake, and the wine is still corked. Can we talk about something else? Like why are there just random pieces of furniture that don’t belong to you in the house you bought? This is the third thing I’ve seen, though it’s not as ugly as that bench downstairs. That waste of wood needs to be taken out back and put down.”
Regan squeezed around the chairs and moved over to stand by Chris, running her fingers over the smooth marble top of the chest of drawers. “Let’s just agree not to invite a football team to hold a book club in my bedroom, and I think we’re good. As for the furniture, these are pieces that have been in the house since it was built. The previous owners told me this bureau must have been brought in through the windows of this room before the glass was put in, because it’s too big to go through the doorway. I think when the movers come with my stuff tomorrow I’ll have them carry the bureau over to the exterior wall and put it between the two windows.”
She thought it was a beautiful piece and had been thrilled when the sellers indicated it had to stay with the house because removing it would risk damage to the chest of the drawers, or the house itself. The marquetry and the use of multiple woods fascinated her, the gilt bronze mounts and brass locks adding a drama to the already elaborate piece. But by far the most interesting feature was that the doors opened to reveal drawers, which pulled out and to the side, exposing mirrors at the back of the opening. There was absolutely no purpose to them, a whimsy added by the cabinetmaker.
Regan was ready for a little whimsy in her life.
Chris started opening the doors and drawers and peeking inside. “Well, you know this thing has to have a secret compartment somewhere.”
“Do you think so?” Regan opened the opposite door and stared at the drawers. They didn’t appear to be hiding anything to her, but she would love to find that the chest of drawers contained a trick, a little bit of mechanical magic. She had to admit that was her private hope, that somewhere in the huge house she’d bought that was way too big for one single woman, she’d find something of intrigue. Letters, old clothing, anything that spoke of the past. It was part of the lure of a two-hundred-year-old house—discovering what secrets its walls contained.
“Of course it has a hidden compartment. All of these antiques in big old Southern houses do. My grandmother Ebbe had one almost exactly like this, and she hid her hooch in the drawer behind a drawer.”
“Why does it not surprise me that your grandmother had a liquor stash?” Regan rubbed her hands on her dark trouser jeans. Secret drawer or not, the bureau was covered in a thick layer of dust. She had paid a service to clean the house after the previous owners had moved out three days earlier, but clearly they had made the decision that their job didn’t include furniture.
Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. The dust could layer up so high she could grow potatoes in it and it didn’t matter because there was no one to criticize.
“Everyone’s grandmother has a liquor stash. It’s the American way.” Chris was opening and closing doors and drawers and feeling along the grain of the wood.
“I know my grandmother doesn’t. You know how uptight she is.” Regan pictured her Chanel suit-wearing, churchgoing, etiquette aficionado grandmother sucking alcohol from a flask, and shook her head. It would never happen. She would at least use a glass.
“That’s exactly why she is wound so tight. She’s jonesing for the next drink whenever she’s with her family and can’t reach the gin bottle. Having to wait for the end of dinner so you all will get the hell out and she can take a swig makes her cranky.”
Regan laughed. “My grandmother would be horrified at such speculation. And our bottle of cheap pink wine.” Yet somehow, it gave her a childish glee to think that her proper, by-the-rules grandmother Henry, would need to hit the hooch to get through family night. Those nights were sometimes interminable—the same conversations, the same politeness, the same avoidance of anything controversial or relevant or emotional.
“I really think it’s ridiculous we had to buy a twenty-five pack of plastic cups just to get two to drink out of,” Chris said, still poking his fingers around the bureau. “We probably could have just bought two wineglasses somewhere in a souvenir shop instead. Then you could have had kitschy Mardi Gras wineglasses on display in the dining room of your eight-bajillion-dollar house.”