A.I.
Copyright© 2015 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 27
One of the things about Charleston is that it's something of a tourism mecca. That's especially true during the weeks of the annual Spoleto Festival, a music/theatre event spanning the cusp of May and June that attracts visitors from all over the country, even the world.
Among those it attracted that year was Lee's old college friend Janet.
"Jackie, I'm so sorry," Lee told me in tears when she got home from what had been planned as a normal lunch with a couple of female friends. "She recognized me right away, and what could I do, pretend I wasn't me? She was my best friend then, she knew. Wouldn't denying it have made it worse?"
As I comforted her I had to agree. But I needed to assess the damage. "What did you tell her?" I asked.
"The first thing she wanted to know was, was I still with you?" she said tearfully. "I told her no, I'd married somebody else, and she acted surprised, she said something about my e-mail, and all I could do was stammer that I'd changed my mind. So then she asked me about you, I mean my husband, and I tried to make it sound like you were different, but I don't think it came out real well."
"It's OK," I reassured her. "You said the important stuff."
"We're going to have to go, aren't we, Jackie?" she said. "At the end, the last thing she said was she'd have to let our friends, hers and mine, know, tell them she'd finally found me. And they'll pick it up sooner or later, Ashley and his people, won't they? Oh, God, I hate leaving here, we've made such a wonderful life for us, and little John is getting close and I wanted so much for him to have it, too, but I know we can't stay."
"We're not running any more, Lee," I said firmly. "We are going to stay. Sooner or later this was bound to happen, this or something like it, and I'm ready for it. We stay put and ride it out. Let me tell you what I have in mind." And I did.
The first step was to come out of the shell I'd built around us, and do it spectacularly. Million-dollar charitable contributions are big news anywhere, and are especially rare in smaller communities like Charleston. I liked Spoleto a lot, it was the number-one event on Charleston's cultural calendar, and it would guarantee maximum publicity right then.
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