LITMIR.BIZ

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smidgen of guilt or morbidity, sure that any new wife would do the same. After all, this was the woman whom the man I loved had spent most of his life with, the woman he had loved with all his heart, by his own admission. She had died tragically, and too young. Naturally I was curious about her; who wouldn’t be?

      In most of the photos Rosalyn’s face was obscured by a floppy hat or big sunglasses, but in one, Emmet had caught her perched serenely on the edge of an Adirondack chair with her fingers intertwined in her lap. She was smartly dressed in crisp white linen, a V-neck tunic over cropped pants, leather sandals on her shapely feet. This much was obvious: My predecessor was not a thing like me. That surprised me a bit, since I’ve been told that men tend to go for the same type. The only similarity I could see between Rosalyn and me was the color of our hair. Like me, Rosalyn had abundant dark blond hair, though hers was longer and a shade darker than mine, without the highlighted streaks. She was quite lovely, fine boned with long, elegant fingers and the graceful air of a prima ballerina. Her expression was serene if somewhat bemused, as though she and the photographer shared an intimate secret. Which, assuming it was Emmet, I suppose they did.

      When I’d asked Emmet what his late wife was like, he’d given me a surprising answer. “You would have liked her, Helen. Everybody did. She was a wonderful woman.” That part didn’t surprise me; it was what he said next, after studying me for a long moment: “The two of you might look a bit alike, but you aren’t, really. Rosalyn was more . . . delicate, for lack of a better word. You’re a much earthier woman than she was.”

      Now what did that mean, I wondered. The image it conjured wasn’t exactly appealing. I thought of big-boned peasant women bundling straw in the fields, or barefoot hippies, tiptoeing through the tulips. His observation sent me back to the photo album with my magnifying glass. Since Emmet was so reluctant to talk about his late wife, I’d had to piece things together on my own. Several weeks after our marriage, I’d finally met Emmet’s daughter, Annie, who was in her early twenties. Naturally I’d been curious about her, wondering if she took after her mother, but Annie was more like her father in both appearance and temperament. As for Rosalyn and Emmet’s close friends, I’d had phone conversations with them, but Rosalyn was rarely mentioned by any of them. Out of politeness, I’m sure, but their reticence only added to my curiosity.

      Even if I hadn’t figured out that Rosalyn Harmon Justice had been born into wealth and privilege, it would have been apparent from the photos. In every likeness of her, good breeding was as obvious as a birthmark. The way she dressed, the tilt of her chin and jaunty lift of her shoulders, her understated beauty—all spoke of class. But it was more than that. It was also obvious that she possessed an enviable air of confidence, and an innate poise. I say “enviable” because confidence is something I sadly lack, and what little poise I possess is as hard earned and slippery as the proverbial eel. Poise, confidence, social ease; all are qualities I admire and have worked hard to cultivate, even though they remain elusive at best. Not only am I ill-bred, I’ve always been gauche and graceless, never at my best in social situations. No wonder I studied the photos every chance I got. Rosalyn was everything I’ve always wanted to be.

      What I didn’t see in Rosalyn’s pictures was anything suggestive of fragility or delicacy. Why Emmet would refer to her as delicate was a mystery to me. Unless he meant ethereal, or otherworldly, but those terms were even more confusing. Based on her unwavering gaze into the camera, Rosalyn appeared to be the no-nonsense type. A woman secure in her own skin, there didn’t seem to be a thing hesitant or uncertain about her, unimaginable to someone like me.

      Although I focused most of my attention on Rosalyn, I was almost as curious about the others in the album, the two men and three women who were Rosalyn and Emmet’s closest friends. All of them had summer homes in Highlands, and lived in Atlanta the rest of the year, as Emmet and Rosalyn had done. When Emmet and I first started dating, he told me about his friends, as lovers do while getting to know each other. Everything I heard about them—by all accounts a rowdy, fun-loving bunch—made me eager to meet them on one hand, and nervous on the other. After our marriage, they had called me to offer their congratulations, which made me even more eager to know them.

      With the photo album in hand, I could put a face with a voice on the phone, or with one of Emmet’s anecdotes. There was one really good group picture of the six of them, dated the summer before Rosalyn’s death. I’d later learn that Emmet had taken it at Bridal Veil Falls, a sixty-foot waterfall near Moonrise. The group was posed together with the falls a stunning backdrop, like a silver scrim. I studied the photo and better understood the reason it pained Emmet to talk about those lost days. Everyone in the photo looked so happy, with no way of knowing that tragedy was about to tear them apart.

      It seemed appropriate that Rosalyn stood in the center of the group, her arms stretched out as if to embrace everyone. In this photo she wore the large, face-obscuring sunglasses, the sun against her blond hair creating a halolike glow. Again she was in fashionable summer whites: knee-length shorts with a hooded top, the sleeves casually rolled to her elbows. On her right was the woman Emmet pointed out as Rosalyn’s closest friend, Kit Rutherford. Kit was the only one of them I hadn’t spoken to yet, and the others made a point of telling me she’d been traveling a lot. Even though Kit’d sent me a congratulatory card, I wondered if the real reason for her silence toward me was an ongoing grief for her best friend. After all, acknowledging the presence of a new wife meant coming to terms with the former one’s absence, and maybe she wasn’t able to do that yet.

      Because Kit was turned partly sideways and in profile, I couldn’t tell that much about her. She, too, wore large sunglasses, and although her windblown hair obscured her face, she appeared to be quite attractive. She was a widow, Emmet told me, her much-older husband having died a couple of years before Rosalyn did. Kit and Rosalyn had been like sisters, he added, childhood friends who’d been inseparable since the day they met. As I’d suspected, he verified that Kit’d had the hardest time coming to grips with Rosalyn’s death.

      In front of Rosalyn was a scholarly couple, Dr. Linc and Myna Varner, he a highly respected professor at the University of Alabama, and she a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet. Emmet winced when I showed him the picture because it showed Linc partly kneeling, one leg extended for Myna to sit on. Things have changed drastically for the Varners since then. On the eve of his fifty-sixth birthday, Linc—who’d always been in perfect health—had suffered a debilitating stroke. Since it happened only a few months after Rosalyn’s death, it was a further blow to the close-knit group. Although Linc’s tanned and agile in the photo, Emmet explained that he was now frail, and dependent on a walker. When I asked if the Varners were the most normal of the group, Emmet snorted and said that normality was a relative factor with that bunch.

      The man and woman on the other side of Rosalyn, Noel Clements and Tansy Dunwoody, were the ones I found the most intriguing—and certainly the most attractive. According to Emmet, the two of them had been together as long as he’d known them, yet they weren’t lovers, and never had been. They were a stunning couple, especially seen next to each other. Noel was sunbright and tawny, a striking contrast to the dark-eyed, sultry Tansy. He had an arm crooked around her neck, and she was contorted in a playful pose. Despite their movie-star looks, it was their relationship that interested me. In Atlanta they lived at the exclusive Reid House, where each had their own flat (as they were called at such a ritzy place). In the summer, however, they shared a house together, right below Moonrise. And they’re not lovers? I’d asked skeptically. Emmet had waved me off in exasperation and said they’d have to explain their relationship to me. And if they did, could I kindly let him know because it’d never made a damn bit of sense to him, either.

      Another photo showed a young woman who didn’t fit any of the descriptions of the folks I’d heard about. Judging by her startled expression, she’d been caught unaware as she hung a bird feeder from the eaves of a porch. Dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots, this woman was strikingly different in appearance and demeanor from the rest of Emmet and Rosalyn’s sophisticated group. When I asked Emmet about her, he frowned as he took the album from me for a closer look. “Oh, that’s Willa McFee,” he said as his face relaxed into a fond smile. “I’d forgotten taking it. Probably the only one we have of her, she’s so camera-shy. A lot of mountain folks are.” Handing the album

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