Seducing Savannah
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Gina Wilkins
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19,5K
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13
Prologue
“ARE WE REALLY sure this is such a good idea?”
Kneeling beside a freshly dug hole in the springdamp, rich Georgia dirt, Savannah McBride looked up at her cousins as she asked the question. Inside the hole rested a mud-encrusted cypress chest that had once belonged to their grandfather, Josiah McBride.
Fifteen years earlier the cousins had filled the chest with personal treasures and buried it in this spot in the woods with the solemn promise to dig up their “time capsule” on Savannah’s thirtieth birthday. They were still several weeks shy of that occasion, but they’d impulsively decided to excavate the chest today to take their minds off the reason they were together—the funeral of Savannah’s uncle, Josiah McBride Jr.
Now Savannah was having second thoughts about revisiting the past. She winced as she thought of that childish letter, filled with grandiose plans that were so completely different from the way her life had actually turned out.
“Maybe we should wait,” twenty-eight-year-old Tara said after a moment. “It has been only fifteen years. Time capsule contents are much more interesting after more time has passed, don’t you think?”
Emily McBride, the youngest at twenty-six, firmly shook her head. “We’ve already trekked out here and dug it up,” she said. “We might as well open it.”
It was Emily’s father who had been buried that morning, after a long, miserable illness through which she had unselfishly taken care of him. And it had been Emily who’d talked Savannah and Tara into changing into jeans and sneakers and following the old path into the woods behind Emily’s house to this huge oak tree where they’d spent so many childhood hours, munching candy bars and sharing secrets.
“Besides,” Emily added, “wouldn’t you rather be doing this than hanging around in the house with all those other people?”
That clinched it, as far as Savannah was concerned. She’d rather wrestle an alligator than go back to that house full of chattering townspeople and cold greenbean casseroles, where she was constantly aware of the surreptitious glances slanted her way, the avid murmurs that stopped as soon as she approached, the carefully veiled comments that let her know the old scandals hadn’t been forgotten by the residents of tiny Honoria, Georgia.
“Your children aren’t with you today?” several had politely inquired, even knowing that Savannah rarely brought her twins to this place where they would be eagerly studied for family resemblances, where they were likely to overhear gossip that would only hurt them.
Go back to the house? Not until she absolutely had to, Savannah thought flatly.
“Okay, cousins. Let’s see what’s in here,” she said, dragging the old chest out of the hole.
Mud had seeped through the cracks and seams of the wooden trunk. Her hands protected by gardening gloves, Savannah plunged in and pulled out the filthy contents, while her cousins leaned close to watch.
The three shoe-box-sized plastic containers protected within the bags still looked almost new. Each box had a name written on the lid in faded permanent marker. Savannah picked up the first one. “Tara” she said, reading the childishly formed letters.
Looking uncertain, Tara reached out to take the box from Savannah. She held it as gingerly as if she’d packed it with explosives all those years ago, Savannah thought with wry amusement.
“Where’s mine?” Emily asked.
Savannah handed her the appropriate container and Emily moved away, staring at the box with a mixture of anticipation and fear.
The final container in the chest had Savannah’s name written on it with a flourish of curlicues and squiggles. She hesitated a moment before picking it up. Waves of memories flooded her mind, whirling, crashing, almost overwhelming her.
The first ten years of her life had been almost fairytale perfect. “Daddy’s little princess,” she’d been. She could almost see him now, coming home from a hard day’s work with sweat on his brow and a gift for her in his shirt pocket—gum, candy, a pretty ribbon, an inexpensive bracelet. It didn’t matter. She’d loved them all, because she’d adored him. How he’d spoiled her, telling her she was pretty, she was smart, she was talented, that she could be and do anything she wanted.
And then he’d died.
Savannah’s mother had continued to spoil her, though in her own odd, almost prosaic way. Ernestine, who’d grown up on the wrong side of the social tracks, had urged her pretty, popular daughter to be everything—head cheerleader, homecoming queen, soughtafter date.
Savannah winced in response to memories that were almost too painful to contemplate.
“Savannah?” Emily prodded. “Aren’t you going to open your box?”
Savannah wanted to refuse. Wanted to shove the box and the trunk right back into that hole and cover them with dirt, to stomp it down and pretend she could do the same with the memories. But then she looked up at Emily and saw the rather lost expression in her younger cousin’s wide blue eyes, and Savannah’s heart twisted in sympathy.
“Yes,” Savannah said gently. “I’m going to open it.”
By unspoken agreement, they moved apart. Savannah had packed the contents in layers of newspaper. The Honoria Gazette. She was tempted to look through the old pages, but her attention was drawn, instead, to the objects they had protected.
There was a small tiara, studded with rhinestones that spelled out Junior Miss Honoria. A miniature royal-blue-and-white pom-pom to represent her envied position as head junior-high cheerleader. A program from a school play, in which Savannah had played the lead. A dried-up corsage. A photograph enclosed in a clear plastic sleeve—herself as freshman prom queen, wearing a formfitting, shimmering blue gown and standing beside her date, Vince Hankins, captain of the football team. Every girl in town had wanted to date him. Savannah had felt like the luckiest girl in the world when he’d turned his frequently fickle attentions her way.
She stared blankly at that photograph, remembering….
Remembering the time he’d hit her for smiling at another boy. He’d left a bruise on her cheek. She’d told everyone she’d fallen.
Remembering the way he’d made her cry by telling her that she would be nobody if he dumped her. That the girls who envied her and emulated her would turn on her if he declared her “uncool.” She’d believed him. Rightly so, it had later turned out.
Remembering the night of her sixteenth birthday, when he’d made her prove her love for him in the back seat of his father’s Cadillac. She’d cried all night, then had to wear extra makeup to school the next day to hide the evidence. That was the day he’d given her his class ring to wear. The envious looks she’d gotten from the other girls had almost made her forget the humiliation of the night before.
She’d been an idiot. Blind. Gullible. Shallow. Needy. And when she’d become more trouble than she was worth to Vince—when she had become pregnant less than six months after that first clumsy bout of experimentation—he’d dropped her like a hot coal. And so had all those “friends” who’d formerly surrounded her.
She’d been so young when she’d packed this box. Fifteen. Shallow and materialistic, obsessed with her looks, with possessions and popularity. And yet she’d been so eager and hopeful, so certain that everything she wanted would come to her in time. Vince Hankins had stolen that optimism from her along with her innocence.
She forced her thoughts back to the earlier memories, those precious times with her father. She’d been so blissful then. Even when she’d buried this box, she’d been happy, thriving on the attention she’d received, naively unaware of how quickly envy could turn ugly.
She shouldn’t have let Vince take her happy memories along with everything else, she realized with a renewed surge of anger.
Thoughtfully, she looked at her cousins, wondering if the memories their treasures had evoked were any more pleasant than her own. Tara’s expression was unreadable, but it wasn’t hard to tell that she wasn’t happy. Emily looked stricken, her face pale as she stared down at something she held in her hand. Savannah didn’t know which of her cousins needed comforting most. She hardly felt in a position to help either of them.
She looked down at the box in her hand, at the unopened letter lying among the other mementos. And she knew she couldn’t open it, at least not just then.
First, she had to look long and hard at what her life had become. And then, she had to decide if she wanted it to remain that way.
