Read Online The Sassy Belles by Beth Albright - Free Book Online Page A

slow-motion movie scenes flickered like a Super 8 film in my
head. Scenes of my life with Vivi.
    It had always been just like this. I’ve always taken care of
her. I think we both liked it this way. I’m older than Vivi by only three
months, but Vivi’s the kind of girl who always needed a caretaker. I’m a little
stronger, a little more able to focus. I am on a perpetual schedule. I like
things neat and orderly…and predictable. Meanwhile, Vivi is full of adventure.
She always loved a spontaneous road trip, though for me, that meant I had no
time to pick out all the shoes I would need for the journey. But Vivi could just
jump in her Thunderbird with no luggage, saying, “Oh, hell, we can get what we
need when we get there.” Oh, I still jumped in the car with her, but immediately
I’d get out my notebook and pen and start making a list. The more I thought
about it, the more I realized we balanced each other out. She may have needed me
to take care of her, to organize her life and keep her on the right track, but I
needed Vivi to remind me of my wild side. To remind me to really live in the
moment. As I sat in the car reflecting on the days I’d been living lately,
playing second fiddle to my husband’s burgeoning political career, trying to
forget what true love and romance really felt like, I realized that maybe I
needed to be reminded of everything Vivi was. Maybe I was the one who needed
Vivi right now, not just the other way around.
    Vivi was an only child, and her parents were quite a bit older
than the rest of ours. Her society-bred mother was always somewhat sickly, and
her father was a loudmouthed, hard-drinking, gambling partygoer who loved
women—often several at a time. They lived on a massive plantation, and though
she was surrounded by wealth, no one was ever really there to care for Vivi
aside from her nanny, Corabelle, and the gardener, Arthur. She loved those two
people like they were her parents. And truly, they
were. In all the most important ways.
    Vivi ran the whole place now. It was certainly not a plantation
anymore; it had been decades since it was even active, and little by little,
acre by oak tree, it has been sold off to developers. There was about a hundred
acres left of it, and Vivi and Arthur were the only ones who lived there anymore
since they had moved Vivi’s mother to that fancy retirement center.
    After we finished high school, Vivi had gone to the University
of Alabama and gotten her journalism degree. Now she did freelance work, writing
articles for magazines and newspapers on subjects that were dear to her heart,
such as women’s rights, gardening, home and friends.
    Vivi was deeper than she let most people see, and her energy
and wild streak made her seem crazier than she actually was. But she was just
fine running the place all by herself. “Plus, I have Arthur,” she’d always say.
And she did.
    She loved that man maybe more than she’d ever loved anyone.
They were family as far as she was concerned. He loved taking care of her and
took such pains around the place to keep it feeling like home.
    Arthur had his own room in the house, and it had been appointed
with the finest things. He was family since the beginning. Interestingly, he was
actually born there, on the plantation, nearly fifty-five years ago when both of
his parents had worked for the McFaddens. When Vivi’s father died when she was
young, Arthur just moved in and took on the responsibility of caring for her and
her mother.
    Corabelle, Vivi’s nanny, died a few years back when she was
nearly seventy-five. Arthur and Vivi took it pretty hard, but you could just see
that they would get through it with each other to lean on.
    Harry was always asking me why I kept rescuing her. Was it
because I’m really all she’s got? Was it because that’s the way it’d always been
and I love being needed? Well, maybe a bit of both. And I knew it would always
be this way with us.
    As I held her in the moonlight, she