Liar's Market. Taylor Smith

had met her for lunch, where, to her own horror, Carrie had broken down in tears over her Cobb salad.

      “Oh, God, Carrie, this can’t go on,” Tracy said. “Look how unhappy he’s made you.”

      “I can’t just blame it on Drum. I let myself go down this road.”

      “You met him at a vulnerable time. You’d lost your whole family. If ever someone was looking for a port in a storm, that was you back then. And no wonder.”

      “Still, I didn’t have to abdicate my life. Look at you. You’ve had a solid relationship with Alan for years, but that didn’t keep you from starting your own legal practice.”

      “I wouldn’t read too much into that. The only reason Heather and I formed Childers and Overturf after we passed the bar is because there were no jobs to be had. And you haven’t seen our offices yet—bankruptcy auction furnishings in three small rooms in a renovated cotton mill. It’s not fancy. I’m warning you. Look, Carrie, I care about you too much to keep it on a professional level where Drum’s concerned, but Heather doesn’t know you like I do, and she’s really good—a pit bull in divorce cases. If you decide you need her, she’ll do a great job for you and make sure you get a fair deal.”

      “I don’t need that much. I’m not even sure divorce is the right answer. If it were just me, but there’s Jonah to think about. This could really mess up his life.”

      “What about your life? How happily can he grow up with a mother who’s so frustrated? Look, just talk to Heather, all right? Explore your options. Then, whatever you decide to do, at least you’ll be making an informed decision.”

      So Carrie had thought about it for a few days, then called and rebooked with Tracy’s partner—just to explore her options, she told herself. Now, she worried Drum would get wind of her plans before she had a chance to figure out what she wanted to do.

      She and Jonah had been out at the Pentagon City Mall the previous afternoon, buying new running shoes to replace yet another pair he’d outgrown before he could even wear down the treads. When they got home, Carrie had seen the message light flashing on the answering machine next to the telephone in the kitchen. Her heart had begun to pound when she’d played it back and realized it was Heather Childers’s secretary calling to confirm her appointment for the next morning.

      Althea said nothing about having heard the message, but to Carrie’s worried mind, she seemed cool that evening. Her mother-in-law had exchanged only the most cursory of greetings, then taken her dinner up in her room, pleading fatigue. But much later, a light had been burning under her door well past her usual nine-thirty bedtime.

      Carrie knew she should wait up and talk to Drum herself, heading her mother-in-law off at the pass. But ever since their return from London, days could pass without their paths crossing between 7:00 a.m. and midnight or without exchanging more than a few words face-to-face.

      In the end, Drum had returned home in the wee hours of the morning, long after everyone was asleep. Not even the dreaded Althea had that kind of staying power.

      The MacNeil home was a century-old Georgian residence built on a choice promontory overlooking the Potomac River. The family was old Virginia stock, descended from a Scots ancestor who had purchased a large tract of land in the late 1700s from the original Lord Fairfax, for whom the county was named.

      An even larger house had once stood on the site, the cornerstone of a sprawling tobacco and lumber plantation. The first time Drum had brought Carrie home, his mother had pulled out an album of old sepiatone photographs to impress his new bride with the history of the clan into which she’d somehow finagled herself. One showed an earlier generation of MacNeils standing before a grandiose Greek Revival mansion, complete with Ionic columns, a full-width front porch, and weeping magnolias lining both sides of a long and stately gravel drive—sort of a Virginia version of Tara.

      But after the insult of the Civil War, the plantation had never really recovered its former glory. When the big house had burned down during the economic depression of the 1890s, Drum’s great-grandfather had rebuilt a smaller place on the same site, looking across the river to Maryland and, downstream, to the heights of Georgetown.

      At the time of the fire, there’d been whispers that old Elcott MacNeil had torched the place for the insurance money. It was certainly coincidental that a number of irreplaceable items, including those rare old photographs, the family bible, and a few of the better pieces of furniture just happened to be out on loan or away for refurbishing when the fire broke out. Virginia gentlemen, however, do not publicly accuse one another of arson, especially when the gentleman under suspicion is an ardent supporter of the incumbent political party. And old Elcott MacNeil, solvent once more, was certainly in a position to be generous—all the more so when the federal government showed a sudden interest in buying up his tired plantation acreage for parkland and home sites for senior Union officers.

      Elcott MacNeil was also one of the chief advocates for the construction of the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad. Built at the turn of the last century, the railroad had drawn vacationers from the miasma of Washington summers, as well as year-round residents from among those government officials in the upper levels of a burgeoning federal bureaucracy who preferred to live outside the capital. Of course, railroad access to northern Virginia had only increased the value of the MacNeil acreage, which had been mostly sold off, forming the basis of the family’s wealth ever since.

      Over the years, the replacement house had been expanded in architecturally tasteful bits and pieces, becoming the new seat of the dynasty. If the old plantation with its rolling drive was gone, the house and its prime location still marked the MacNeil family as Fairfax County gentry.

      Carrie tiptoed past her mother-in-law’s closed door on her way to the guest bathroom. Althea had moved out of the master bedroom when Drum had announced their return from London. Carrie would have been happier if she would have stayed put, but Althea had insisted on moving into her daughter’s old room down the hall. By the time the family arrived back in town, the switch was a fait accompli.

      “This house is really Drum’s now, anyway,” she told Carrie as she showed off new burgundy and pink floral bed linens, drapes and matching lampshades she’d bought for the heavy, carved walnut bedroom suite that was now to be theirs.

      The walls had been newly painted in a matching shade of dark burgundy that to Carrie’s eye resembled dried blood. With its dark Victorian furnishings and heavy floral draperies, the room, despite its size, felt claustrophobic and funereal. But now that it had been redecorated especially for their arrival, Carrie knew there was no question of touching a thing in it without causing grievous offense to her mother-in-law.

      “But there’s no reason for you to give up your bedroom, Althea,” she protested. “Drum and I were fine in the room we had before.”

      “Oh, no. He works so hard. He needs his rest, and the master bedroom is so much quieter than the ones at the front of the house. You don’t hear the street noises back there at all.”

      The house sat on an acre of land on a riverfront culde-sac which had only five homes on it, all with equally large lots. The small, exclusive neighborhood had been carved out of a parklike wedge of land at the end of Chain Bridge Road, but the way Althea spoke of street noises, Carrie thought, a person might think the house was smack in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

      “We’ve never been bothered by noise,” she told her mother-in-law. “And you always say what a light sleeper you are. Wouldn’t you be better off staying put?”

      Althea would not be moved. “No, this is yours now. I’ll be fine in Ellie’s old room. I’m sure I’ll get used to the noise in time.”

      And she did seem to be coping admirably, Carrie thought. Despite the racket made by those few well-tuned luxury cars that constituted morning rush hour in this quiet neighborhood, her mother-in-law’s room seemed dark and silent when Carrie passed her door, as it was most mornings at this hour. Althea almost never rose before ten. Carrie was anxious that this day not prove the exception to the rule.

      From