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Chapter One

The last time I gave a big party we were hit with a tornado.

This time it was a flood. At some point people will ask me not to give any more parties.

The rains had started three days earlier, and by now much of the town was underwater. One small neighborhood had been evacuated and the residents were at a temporary shelter in the high school gym.

However I couldn't call off this particular reception because it was to honor two people I considered the most special in Purple Sage. The first was Dr. Bill Marchak, who was retiring from the local hospital. Dr. Bill has only been in Purple Sage for two years, but he deserved more of a send-off than just a cake in the staff lounge. I haven't met many saints in my life, but to my mind, Dr. Bill, qualifies.

The other honoree was Beverly Kendall, who'd come back to town after several years' absence. Bev was one of the initial members of my writer's group and a woman who has given more, and received less in return, than anyone I knew.

The reception was to be held at my best friend, Diane Atwood's house, since both she and it are equipped for large crowds. We had announced it in the local paper.

Then the rains came.

Now the governor was coming.

As I stepped from my car onto Diane's wide circular drive I was acutely aware that at that very moment the governor and his wife were touring the water ravaged downtown square, to be followed by the inspection of several other areas that had been hardest hit by the deluge. Once the tour was over, the couple would be arriving here for a brief respite and coffee before hurrying back to Austin for a formal dinner.

We'd planned that the governor would be gone before the party actually started, but Purple Sage is a small town, and word of the governor's attendance had spread faster than the floodwater. Instead of the fifty to seventy-five people we'd initially planned for, we were now expecting the number to swell into the hundreds.

We were prepared. I had walked out of Diane's front door barely an hour earlier to race home and change, then to pick up flowers. The house was ready for the party. En fete as the French might say. Her home was immaculate, the silver set out and the coffee ready to brew.

I hurried toward her house carrying an enormous floral arrangement, one of the last things we had to put in place.

That's when I saw the water gushing over the front door sill. All my forward momentum ended.

"Diane?" The door was already open and I could see a sheen of water that spread across the foyer tile and back onto the living room carpet. "Diane!" I placed the flowers on the porch, watching as water from the house ran across my shoes.

"Need a life preserver?" Diane appeared in the doorway, wearing a very wet sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, and a pair of jeans that were soaked to the knees. Not usual attire for my very elegant friend.

"This can't be happening," I said. "Why didn't you call me? And what did happen?"

"I think it's a pipe. I turned off the valve at the main, and it seems to have helped. At least it's clean water. The ground must have shifted." It was the overload of rainwater causing pipes all over town to stress and break. "By the way, nice flowers; where do you think we should put them?"

"Who cares?" I sank against the doorjamb; I couldn't take it in. "What's happening to your furniture?"

"The track team ran by here and they moved almost everything upstairs or into the garage."

"So, what are we going to do?"

"You could try a nervous breakdown. I've already had one, but it didn't do a damn bit of good. The water just kept coming, time refused to stop and Trey still didn't answer his cell phone." Trey was her husband, who was also the current Mayor of Purple Sage. It was he who was shepherding the governor and his wife.

"You've lost it," I said.

"It drowned."

A deep blue pickup truck pulled into the circular drive and my sixteen-year-old son Jeremy jumped out. "Mom, the cake is in the back and we didn't get it wrapped very well. It's going to get --" He stopped on the porch, much as I had, and stared at both Diane and the water rolling over the front door sill. "Oh, wow."

"Succinctly put," Diane said.

Jeremy shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the water. "The water is, I mean…"

"It's the newest in Feng Shui decorating -- water flowing through the house."

Diane's nonchalance was a sham. While she is not given to panic, this behavior was much too cool even for her.

"I can't take any more calm," I said. "It's time to panic. If your furniture is safely upstairs then we have to handle the reception. Where in the hell are we going to have it?"

"I have no fuc - frigging idea." She gestured toward the pick up. "First things first. Let's at least get the cake in here, then we'll worry about where to put the people."

The drizzle was gathering forces to form droplets and I knew from recent experience that soon the gray skies would send another downpour.

"Okay," I said, my mind racing in a million directions at once. Better to focus on the next right action. "Jeremy, do you need any help?"

"A lot," he said. "The cake is in the bed."

"Jeremy! You knew it was going to rain."

"You haven't seen the size of this thing. It's huge."

Diane and I followed him to his pickup and as I peered into the back of it, I saw what he was talking about. IdaMae Dorfman had made a sheet cake, beautiful, white, and massive. Actually it was comprised of several sheet cakes. When I had called The Bakery that morning to say we might have hundreds of people attending, she had volunteered to put all the flat cakes she had side by side. I'd agreed, without realizing how immense the result would be.

"Oh my God..."

Diane asked, "Can we just slide this out?"

"Well, a, could we lift it just a little?" Jeremy asked. "I'd rather not scratch the paint, if you know what I mean."

"Of course; what was I thinking?"

This wasn't just a pickup truck to Jeremy. It was a gleaming chariot, or a passkey to a world he had never known before. Its official name was the Midnight Blue Beast, and usually it lived up to it, gleaming in every direction, only now it had streaks of a sticky, white coating of caliche mud.

Gently, so as not to damage the cake, the three of us lifted it just enough to get it to the end of the pickup bed, but once there we stopped. The board was too flimsy for the weight it was bearing; we needed one person on each corner and without that additional person the cake was going to land on the ground.

"Now what?" Jeremy asked. He set the edge of the board on the tailgate and slithered to the driveway, careful not to bounce the truck. He looked around, as I was doing, as if help might drop from the sky along with rain.

It didn't happen quite that way, but help did arrive. Diane's next-door neighbor, Tom Greer, drove up and climbed out of his car.

"Tom," Diane called. "Could you give us a hand?"

He looked up, saw our predicament, and hurried over. "That's the biggest thing I've ever seen," he said, getting a grip on the board that held it.

Slowly, carefully, we shuffled toward the front door. I was mentally going over optional locations for the reception, but I couldn't come up with any. The high school gym was being used as a shelter, the community center was underwater, and the country club had suffered a fire caused by lightening.

As we stepped onto the porch Diane said, "Now, will this go through the door?"

"What in the world-?" It was the first Tom had seen of the flooding. "Why are we taking this in your house? And what are we going to put it on? I don't see any furniture. What's it for anyway?" Then a look of comprehension spread across his face. "The reception for the governor and his wife?"

"It's not really for them, but that's not important, now." Diane looked at all of us. "What do you think?"

Tom spoke up. "I think it's a big waste of time taking this inside, because no one is going to be visiting you today, at least not by choice. What's plan B?"

"There isn't one," I said.

Jeremy shifted his hands on the board. "What about the Baptist Church? They have a big basement."

"I called and it's flooded," Diane said. "And at the Episcopal Church they're having a wedding. Actually, it's only the rehearsal dinner, but the hall is already decorated. I asked if they might work around our reception but Father Matson said we didn't have a prayer."

"Not very holy of him," Tom said.

Jeremy was thinking hard. "What about our house?" he asked.

"Of course! That's what we'll have to do," I said. Our house was smaller and not as formal, but it was dry. "We'll just rotate people through, rather than allowing them to linger." The cake was getting heavy and even though we were under the two-story portico, it was damp and cold. "Let's put the cake back in your truck."

Diane shook her head. "Your place is too far away. It would take the governor twenty minutes to drive out there and twenty minutes back in the wrong direction from Austin. He'd be late to his own formal dinner. And where would you put all the cars?"

We live on a ranch outside of Purple Sage. It was my husband's family home, set over half a mile back from the highway on a white, caliche road. Our guests couldn't walk the distance in the mud and rain, nor was there room for all the cars near the house.

My shoulders began to sag, both from the weight of the cake, and from what seemed an insurmountable problem. "We'll just have to cancel," I said.

"No, you don't. This way," Tom said. He began walking and we had no choice but to move with him. He went straight to the end of the drive, into the street, then around the low brick wall that separated his property from Diane's.

"We can't!" I said.

Diane pulled back, jerking the cake ominously. "Tom, this isn't a good idea. Leigh isn't expecting company and certainly not over a hundred people." Not that Diane's refusal had a damn thing to do with Leigh.

"Leigh'll love having the reception. Come on." He started forward. We were having a tug of war with the cake board.

Diane held her ground as best she could. "Women see these things differently from men."

"You think she'll be worried about how the house looks, but that isn't a problem. We had a cleaning crew in yesterday so it's never looked better." He began to march us inexorably toward the front door.

Diane's face paled. Jeremy appeared stunned. I felt sick. We had good reason to be that way and it wasn't one that we should have to explain to Tom.

"Leigh will be happy to see y'all. She's missed you."

The man was oblivious to the fact that we were not friends of his wife's, and never had been. At least not friends with this wife.

Four years earlier Tom had divorced his first wife, Beverly. Beverly the honoree of the reception.

Divorces are rarely happy events, but in most cases, after they are over, everyone gets on with their lives, including family and friends.

In Tom and Beverly's divorce my husband, Matt, and I had been some of the friends, as had Diane and Trey. We had played cards, watched our kid's ball games, gone out to dinner, and had even taken weekend trips together.

When I had first arrived in Purple Sage, newly married to Matt with my then-twelve-year-old son in tow, Beverly had made me feel welcome. Special. Which is how she makes everyone feel.

Bev isn't a particularly beautiful woman, but she is an exquisitely beautiful person; she has an inner glow that radiates out of her and draws people to her.

She had been one of the original members of our writer's group where we read each other's work and offered encouragement. Beverly was the best at that. No matter how bad a piece of writing had been, Beverly found some reason to praise the writer. Reading her early work gave me the opportunity to really know her; we used to kid about seeing into each other's souls. Beverly's soul is glorious. And funny. And sometimes downright wicked.

When she called to tell me that she and Tom were divorcing I had been stunned. She didn't offer details, so I was blindsided when Tom showed up on our doorstep, holding hands with Leigh Burton. At the time Leigh had been twenty-six years old, and according to Tom, the woman he had been searching for all of his life. That was quite a shock to Beverly and the rest of us.

I don't believe in taking sides in a divorce, but in that case I had to make an exception. Not only did Leigh want Beverly's husband, whom she got, she also wanted Beverly's house, all the things in it, and Beverly's life. Tom saw no reason for her not to have them.

In a moment of disgust and anger, Beverly had named a price for her half of the house and furnishings, and Leigh had snapped at it.

Beverly packed her personal belongings and moved to Dallas. She landed a great job at one of the teaching hospitals. She also did a little freelance writing on the side.

Leigh should have accepted her victory with grace, but she wasn't finished. Having gotten Tom and his house, she then wanted Beverly's friends. Bev and Tom had always hosted a number of parties throughout the year, and Leigh attempted to give those same parties with the identical guest lists. I came down with a sinus infection at the time of the first one and called in my regrets; I also vowed to my husband, Matt, that while I would always be cordial to the couple, I would never set foot in that house again.

It seemed 'never' had arrived.

"Tom, we can't do this," I said. "There has to be some other place."

"Why? Just not good enough for you anymore?" His response hit like a whiplash.

"No. No, of course not."

"Bullshit, Jolie. You and Matt have avoided us for years. It's obvious that any port in a storm doesn't hold here, because mine won't do."

"Tom - "

Diane spoke up, "Look, Tom, it's not about you, it's about Beverly." She shifted the weight of the cake slightly and said, "We can't bring her here. That wouldn't be fair."

Comprehension slid across his face. I felt relief. He did understand. "God, is that all you're worried about? That's not a problem! Bev and I have talked since she's been back in town. I even took her a couple of boxes of pictures that she left." He dismissed our concerns. "We're very civilized these days. Bev won't mind a bit."

We were under the canopy of his front porch and Tom hit the doorbell with his elbow. He was being naïve; I was sure of it.

Leigh appeared in the door, a bright smile on her pretty face. She was in tight, light blue jeans and tall, strappy high heels.

"Oh, wow," she said, "it looks like a party on my doorstep! Here this way; bring that into the dining room before it gets wet." She opened the double front doors, and started off through the foyer, then veered into the formal dining room. We followed.

A sense of deja vu grabbed me hard. The room was almost exactly the same way I remembered, with a beautiful round oak table in the center, a matching sideboard to the right, and on the far wall a fireplace that was also open to the kitchen. Above the mantle was an antique beveled mirror that Bev had bought at an auction in Austin. Diane and I had been with her at the time.

There were photographs on the mantle and for one startling moment I thought they were the same pictures as four years before. They weren't; the frames were the same, but the pictures inside had been changed. In the ornate, gilt frame that had held a wedding photo of Beverly in her flowing satin gown, there was now a wedding picture of Leigh. Another frame, turquoise and modern, held a photo of Leigh and Tom on a ski lift. I remembered it particularly because it had once contained a snapshot of Beverly, Diane and me taken during one of our rare snowfalls.

It was eerie to the point of frightening.

"You have to tell me what the cake is for." Leigh studied it a moment, and said, "Oh, I get it, this is for Dr. Bill's reception. Isn't the governor coming, too?" She either didn't know or didn't choose to acknowledge that Beverly was being welcomed back to Purple Sage. "Diane, that's being held at your house, isn't it?"

"Except Diane has a broken pipe and a flooded downstairs," Tom explained.

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

Tom said, "I want to move the reception here."

"Really?'" Leigh looked like a five year old who'd been given a present. She turned to Diane. "Do you mean it? I get to have the reception? For the governor."

"Not just the governor -"

"So, it's settled." Tom's expression was smug.

"No," I said. Someone had to have both feet planted firmly on the Earth, even if it was wet ground. "Leigh, this is also to honor Dr. Marchak and Beverly."

Leigh took in the information, giving it serious thought.

Finally she nodded. "I see your concern. But, Bev is a real trooper, and if this was still her house and the party was for me, she'd do the same thing I'm doing. So, what time is everyone arriving?"

A sick dread invaded my body. I looked at Diane who was checking her watch. "Forty eight minutes and counting," she said.

I was frantically trying to think of an alternative location.

Leigh opened a drawer of the sideboard to whip out a beautiful tablecloth with delicate bluebonnets embroidered around the edge. I'd swear it had been Beverly's. "Here, lift the cake and let me get this under it."

The matter was settled.

The party would be held as planned - except it would be in Beverly's old house.