The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

In the Flower Van, I slunk down in my seat as the Dick pulled out of our neighborhood. All together in the Flower Van again.

“Darla’s been very affected by the news at Palmetto,” he said. “She’s been working on an editorial for the school paper. How are you handling it, Nat?”

The Dick’s handlebar ’stache barely fit in the rearview, and I could feel him trying to catch my eye in the mirror. But there was no way I was going to let him see the deer-in-headlights look on my face. I shivered, pulled my sweatshirt tighter around me, and pretended to be absorbed by the traffic outside.

“Oh, it’s awful,” Mom jumped in to say. She wheeled around in the front seat to put her hand on my knee. “Natalie and Justin used to be great friends.”

“You were?” Darla asked, prying her eyes off my mom’s chest brimming over the top of her shirt to look at me. Her own chest was only slightly more contained by the conservative bust of my dress.

Why did Mom have to go and say that? So what if one time, years ago, during a mother/daughter morning gossip session in bed, I’d spilled to Mom that I couldn’t get J.B. out of my head? I’d never go around bringing up all the details of her flings in front of the Dukes. Some confidences were supposed to be a little more sacred than that.

Now I was forced to shrug. “Not really. We just ran in the same circle.”

“Well, have you heard the latest about Baxter Quinn?”

My head darted from the window to look at Darla. What did she know? Was I really going to blow my cool and stoop to asking the Double D for the news?

Wait — just because I was flailing didn’t mean the rest of the world was turning upside down. Here was Darla with her jutting lower lip and lack of chin, with the stringy hair that needed washing and some shine spray. She didn’t know anything. Obviously, she was looking to me.

“To be honest,” I said finally, “I’m pretty tired of talking about it.”

Darla nodded, all apologies.

By then, the Flower Van was turning down an oak-lined avenue toward the Coveted. I knew this area well; we were heading down a ritzy alcove where Rex Freeman and Kate Richards both had weekend homes. I knew if we walked out past the bend to where the Cove dipped into a whisper-thin peninsula of pine trees, I’d be able to see Mike’s house across the bay.

He didn’t like the Dick any more than I did, but he was always really nice to Darla. I think he thought he was doing me a favor, but it really just bugged me to the point where I hadn’t even bothered to tell him I’d be stuck with the Dukes today.

“I think you’re going to like this one, Dotty,” the Dick was saying, running his fingertip along the bra strap that had slid down my mother’s bare upper arm. Again, he looked at me in the rearview, his mustache glinting in the sun. “Are you as picky as your mother, Nat?”

This time, I held his eyes in the mirror. “Let’s just say Mom and I have very different tastes.”

His eyes snapped back to the road as he pulled into a lot in front of a bright-yellow three-story house. Every house I’d ever seen in the Cove was a strict plantation-style mansion, with high white entry columns, a sprawling wraparound porch, and painted wooden shutters. To look at them all lined up along the water, you’d think keeping with that style was some sort of zoning law. But not this house. This hacienda had yellow stucco walls and a purple-and-red Mexican-tiled roof. It was massive. It was heinous. It stuck out worse than a sore thumb. It stuck out the way that only new money can.

But apparently Mom disagreed. When we got out of the car and looked up at the monstrosity, she threw her arms around the Dick, cackling and kicking her legs up in the air. My mother was a buxom Julia Roberts.

“?Ay caramba!” Mom giggled. The Dick’s head virtually dropped into her chest when she murmured playfully, “Mi casa es su casa, senor”?

When they fell into a sloppy kiss, I caught Darla’s eyes. For a second, my instinct was to roll mine sympathetically. After all, she might not be an A-lister at Palmetto, but the Double D was in my same boat of suffering on the shores of parental embarrassment. Why couldn’t we exchange some mutual mortification?

But then, I noticed Darla looking back and forth between my mother and me — as if she were sizing us both up. She cocked her head at me and said, “Huh.”

“What?”

“You have the same mannerisms as your mom. That swinging hug thing — you did that at a pep rally once.”

Before I could respond to my freaky future stepsister, my matching-mannerisms mother linked her elbow through mine and started prancing with me up the path toward the house.

“Richard said,” she whispered in my ear, “if we really like this one, he’ll give it to me as an engagement present.”

My mouth dropped open.

“I know,” she gushed. “Which means. .”

“You’re actually getting married,” I filled in. “Again?”

“Well, yeah.” She shrugged. “But what I’m saying is — his gift, in my name. . a whole house, on the good side of the Cove?” Her voice climbed up a few notes. “Don’t you get it, Natalie?” She faced me and put her hands on my shoulders. “Oh, someday you will. Even if things don’t work out with the Duke —”

She looked up at the Dick who was opening the upstairs balcony door.

“Did you see the swim-up bar out back, Dotty?” he called.

“Oh, Richard!” Mom bounded toward him, leaving me alone at the threshold of Casa de Tacky. The whole I’m-social-climbing-for-your-own-good routine was an old one with Mom. Only this time, I’d been through enough to see through it.

It was strange; Mom seemed so happy. And God knows, there’d been days when I never thought she’d get here. When my dad left town thirty-two days into my seventh-grade year at Cawdor Middle, Mom was even more desperate and lost than me. I spent most of my middle school career helping her through the rough patches in between jobs and boyfriends and bottles of wine. It got to the point where I was holding her hair back so often, I didn’t have time to have problems of my own. She threw up; I grew up. By the time I transferred to Palmetto, I’d already fielded more drama than most of the girls in the senior class.

Now, here she was, four husbands later and going on her second multimillion-dollar property — purely based on her uncanny powers of feminine persuasion. My mother might be a tramp, but she was no idiot. She’d figured out her own golden secret: Security didn’t come from having a man who “loved” her; it came from what those things bought her — in her own name.

I could not end up like this.

“Honey, come see the labyrinth,” Mom called to me from the backyard.

I sighed and started trooping around the side of the house so I wouldn’t have to shudder at the decor inside. But before I got to the labyrinth, I spotted Darla leaning over the balustrade talking to Kate Richards. I’d been so consumed by the god-awful hacienda, I hadn’t even noticed we were just two houses down from her family’s lake house.

I was just about to round the magnolia tree when I heard Darla’s voice.

“It was Nat’s idea that I borrow the dress,” she lied, smoothing over the fabric where it puckered at her heaving chest. “Our parents are together.”

“Nat Hargrove’s mom and your dad?” Kate asked with a tiny throaty laugh. It bugged me that she suddenly sounded so interested. “And you’re moving in next door? Is Nat here with you today?”

Darla nodded. “But don’t bring up Baxter or J.B. or anything. It’s, like, all people are talking to her about,” she said, nodding knowingly. “Since she’s Princess. She’s kind of over it—”

“Oh, hi, Kate,” I said, coming up on them from behind. Her Rapunzel hair was mounted in a messy bun on top of her head. Where her white wifebeater tank top cleared her jeans, I could see the pink heart tattoo on her hip. “Any word from Baxter?” I asked.

Kate raised an eyebrow at Darla, then turned to me.

“Actually,” she breathed. “He finally got in touch.”

Fighting the urge to seize on her for details, I calmly hoisted myself on the balcony and drawled, “Oh yeah?”