“You’re not going anywhere,” her father said firmly and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry. Luisa has a terrible temper. She’ll calm down.” He glanced down at Daisy then, who looked crestfallen.

“Are you going?” Daisy asked Savannah.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I think I should. I don’t want to upset your mom.”

“She’s being mean,” Daisy said, looking angry. “I like having you here. I want a sister. Don’t go,” she said pleadingly, and put her arms around Savannah’s waist again. She was hard to resist.

Tom led them both up the stairs, with an arm around each of them. He liked having Savannah there too. He had always wanted her to visit, but Luisa would never allow it. Now the matter had been taken out of her hands by fate, and he was glad. He agreed with Daisy, and didn’t want her to leave.

He told Daisy to go and do her homework, and left Savannah in her room and told her to relax. She thanked him for the nice day again, but her eyes were worried, and she called her mother as soon as he left the room, and told her what had happened.

“She is such a bitch,” Alexa said in an exasperated tone.

“I don’t know what to do, Mom. I think I should go. She’s scarier than the guy writing me letters. She looked like she wanted to kill me a minute ago.”

“She probably did want to kill you, but she won’t. The ‘guy writing you letters’ might. I don’t want you back here. I hate to do this to you, but you have to try and stick it out. Just stay away from her as much as you can. Did your father say anything to her to shut her up?”

“He tried. She ran right over him and told him off.”

“She always did, and so does his mother. The two of them together are a force to be reckoned with, and he’s no match for either of them. I don’t mean to be ungrateful for what he’s doing now, having you there, but he has no balls. Luisa cut them off ten years ago.” Savannah didn’t like hearing it, and Alexa was instantly sorry she’d said it. He was Savannah’s father, but it was true. She was living proof. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Alexa apologized quickly. “Just stay in your room, or go out, or wear your iPod. I don’t want you back in New York until after the trial.”

Savannah felt as though she had been sentenced to hard labor, or prison, no matter how pretty the furniture was or how big the house. She hated it here. And Luisa hated her. It was going to be a miserable three months. And her mother was right. Her father was no match for Luisa. Savannah had just seen it for herself.

“I’ll try” was all Savannah would commit to, and promised herself to stick it out till her mother came to visit. And if it didn’t get any better, she was going back to New York with her, or she’d run away. She wasn’t going to live like this for three months, for anyone.

“I’m sorry, baby. I can’t come down this weekend, but I’ll be down the following one. I promise. Just keep your head down and ignore her.”

“Yeah, right,” Savannah said, and hung up. She was mad at her mother now too, for sending her here to live with this witch. She was worse than the evil stepmother in any fairy tale or bad movie. Cinderella’s life was a snap compared to this. As she thought it, Daisy slipped into the room with a worried look. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Savannah said, looking discouraged, and then smiled at her. “I’m not used to this. I wish I were home,” she said honestly, and Daisy nodded.

“I know. She can be pretty mean. She’s like that to my dad a lot.”

“That must be hard for you,” Savannah said sympathetically, as Daisy shrugged.

“My dad is always nice to me, and my brothers.” She smiled at Savannah and gave her a hug. “I hope you stay.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” Savannah said noncommittally, but she couldn’t imagine it for the next three months until after the trial, or even four, if the trial took a long time, which it probably would. It sounded like a complicated trial to her.

As the two girls sat talking in Savannah’s room, Tom and Luisa were in a pitched battle in theirs.

“What the hell are you thinking?” he raged at her. “Saying those things, in front of Daisy, and Savannah. How can you be so threatened by a seventeen-year-old girl?”

“I don’t want her here!” Luisa shouted back at him. “She’s the result of a mistake you made, and I don’t want her in my face, or my home.” She looked righteous about it, and he stared at her in astonishment.

“Are you crazy? You can’t rewrite history with me, Luisa. I was there. You walked out on me and our boys, you dumped me, divorced me, abandoned them, and married someone else who had more money than I did. I married Alexa while you were married to him, happily spending his money in Dallas, and you didn’t give a flying fuck about us, me, or your boys. You didn’t give a damn about me until he died, and you decided you wanted your old life back, God knows why. Lonely maybe, because you sure didn’t need the money. And then you conned me into an affair with you, and I was stupid enough to fall for it, while you saw to it that you got pregnant and cried to my mother that I couldn’t let you have an illegitimate baby, and I actually felt sorry for you, and left the woman I loved for you. Savannah is the result of a respectable marriage with a terrific woman who was wonderful to your boys, and whom I was dumb enough to give up for you, in order to be ‘honorable.’ What a crock of shit that was, and this marriage is. And I’ve allowed you to force me to keep Savannah away from here for ten years, to make you happy. I pushed out my own daughter. It’s a wonder she even talks to me. And now when her life is at stake, and I bring her here for three months, you’re rotten to her, and beat me up, and act as though she’s a ‘mistake’ I made with some hooker while I cheated on you. You abandoned us, Luisa, flat and simple. And I’m not going to abandon my daughter again to make you happy. What I did to her mother was bad enough.”

“If you’re so sorry about it, go back to her,” Luisa said coldly.

“That isn’t the point. I may have been honorable to you, but I was anything but to her. We all know that, and so do you, so lay off, and be civil to Savannah, or you’re going to have some very serious trouble with me.” And without another word, and before Luisa could respond, he stormed out of the room and slammed the door. Both girls heard it from Savannah’s room, but didn’t comment. They could both guess what it was, and why. It was the first time in a long time, if ever, that Tom had stood up to Luisa like that, and she was in a rage, but she didn’t pursue it, or him, any further and stayed in her room.

He went back to his study and called their older son, and invited him and his fiancée, Scarlette, to dinner that night. He had told Travis that morning at the bank that Savannah was there. Travis was surprised, as his father explained it to him. And he could easily guess how unhappy his mother was about it. He hadn’t been allowed to mention Alexa or Savannah in ten years, and had always felt guilty about not keeping up contact with them. He had tried to for a while, and then just let it slide, and he knew his brother had too. Travis was fifteen when Alexa left, and still young, although he had loved her and she had been good to him, which made him feel even worse. His mother had made it clear that any contact with her would be considered treason and a betrayal of his “real” mother, and he’d been young enough to buy into it. He was twenty-five now, worked at his father’s bank in town, and was planning to be married in June, to a girl from a very social Charleston family, whose ancestors were even more steeped in the Confederacy than his. She had more generals in her family than they had oak trees on their property. She was a wonderful girl, and he was deeply in love with her. She was a nurse, and a very kind person. He liked the fact that she worked, and was unpretentious, no matter how illustrious or wealthy her family was. She wanted to keep nursing until they had babies, which his mother said was ridiculous. She didn’t think it looked right for the wife of a Beaumont to be a nurse. Travis was entirely happy with it, and supported Scarlette’s decision.