The Nice Girl Gets Even novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Birthday Candles
Margot crashes Posey's birthday dinner and Truett tells Posey to be nice, so Posey thanks Margot in a toast and leaves him in front of the restaurant; the next morning an eviction notice signed by Margot is on the school door, and Margot's brother is taking it down.
Margot Merrill blew out my birthday candles before I could make a wish.
All twenty-eight of them, in one long breath, leaning across my boyfriend to do it.
Then she laughed and clapped.
"Oops! Old habit. Truett and I always did each other's candles."
The waiter was still holding the cake.
The whole back room of the restaurant had just finished singing to me.
Now they were looking at the smoke.
I looked at Truett.
Truett was laughing too, a little.
"Pose," he said. "Come on. It's funny."
I had planned this dinner for a month.
I booked the back room at the oyster place on Dauphin Street because it was where he first asked me out, three years ago.
I invited eight people.
Margot wasn't one of them.
She had walked in during the crab claws, in a red dress and gold hoops, and said, "Surprise!"
Then she stood behind the chair beside Truett until my aunt Gussie got up out of it.
My aunt is sixty-three.
Margot thanked her and sat down.
After that she ordered Truett's dinner for him, because he "always gets the wrong thing here."
She took the first picture of the cake, for her stories.
She told the table about the time she and Truett got kicked out of a pool in Gulf Shores.
Now she'd blown out my candles.
"Make a wish anyway, birthday girl," she said.
She reached for her wine.
Her elbow caught my glass.
Red wine went straight down the front of my white dress.
It was cold.
It soaked through to my skin.
Margot pressed both hands over her mouth.
"Oh my God. Oh, Posey. I am the worst."
"You're fine," Truett told her.
He handed her his napkin.
Her, not me.
Gussie was already dabbing at me with a fistful of napkins and swearing under her breath.
"Accident," Margot said to the table. "Total accident. Right, Tru?"
"Of course it was," he said.
Then he leaned over to me and lowered his voice.
"Don't make it a thing, okay? She's having a hard week. Her pipes burst, so she's going to crash in my guest room for a while."
I stared at him.
"A while."
"A month. Maybe two." He squeezed my knee under the table. "Be nice, Pose. You're the nice one. That's what I love about you."
I have taught manners for a living since I was nineteen.
My grandmother started the Blanchard School of Manners in 1971, in a brick carriage house on Government Street.
I teach eight-year-olds to shake hands.
I teach grown men to waltz at their daughters' weddings.
I teach people that you never, ever make a scene.
For three years I had not made one scene.
Not when Margot called him at two in the morning.
Not when she picked his tie for my cousin's wedding.
Not when she cried at Christmas because he'd bought me a nicer present than hers.
I had been nice.
I set Gussie's napkins down.
I stood up and picked up a clean glass of water.
I tapped it with my dessert fork.
The room went quiet.
"I'd like to make a toast," I said.
Truett smiled at me, relieved.
He thought I was smoothing it over.
"To Margot," I said.
Margot put a hand on her chest.
"Thank you for coming tonight, though nobody invited you. Thank you for my aunt's chair. She only had a new knee put in in October."
Somebody near the window snorted.
"Thank you for ordering Truett's supper, since he's a grown man of thirty and can't read a menu. Thank you for my candles. And my wish."
Margot's smile was getting stiff.
"And thank you for the wine. I always wondered what this dress would look like red."
Gussie raised her glass. "Hear, hear."
I turned to Truett.
"And thank you, Truett, for three lovely years."
I took his house key off my key ring.
My fingers were steady.
I set it on the cake plate, in the frosting, next to the dead candles.
"Your guest room's free now. She can have the whole house."
"Posey," he said. "Sit down. You're embarrassing me."
"No, sugar," I said. "I'm leaving you. It's a different thing."
I put my napkin on my chair the way my grandmother taught me, folded once, to show I wasn't coming back.
Then I walked out through the front room, past every table, in a white dress soaked red down to the hem.
A woman at the bar started clapping.
I didn't turn around.
I didn't cry until I got home, and then only a little, and only because I'd liked that dress.
I went to bed in the two rooms over the ballroom and slept better than I had in a year.
At seven the next morning I came downstairs to unlock the school for Saturday class.
There was paper taped to the glass of the front door.
A man was on the step outside, peeling it off very carefully.
He was tall, in a black vest with his white shirt sleeves rolled up.
I opened the door.
"Excuse me. That's my door."
He held the paper up so I could read it.
NOTICE TO VACATE. THIRTY DAYS.
Gaillard Properties.
And under that, in loopy blue ink, a signature I had seen on a hundred birthday cards to my boyfriend.
Margot Merrill, Leasing Manager.
"I'm sorry about this," the man said. "I'm Emmett Merrill. Margot's my sister."
He folded the notice in half.
"I'm also the lawyer who wrote your lease. And she just made a very expensive mistake."
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