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  “Anyway,” the blond woman was saying, “we really do have to keep her in our prayers, because while her husband was away, there was another man whose car was there all weekend, and she’s not even technically divorced. She must be feeling out of control of her life and distanced from God, since she’s acting this way. And I know that the children weren’t there, but still, it’s not like it’s appropriate even then.” The woman shook her head sorrowfully and cleared her throat before continuing. “That’s just not the right kind of behavior for a good Christian woman, and I know that deep in her heart she must feel the same way, and I know she probably deeply regrets what she’s doing. And if her husband’s business doesn’t turn around quickly, then we all know it won’t even matter what she’s doing or where she’s sleeping or with whom. But I just want to ask all of you to keep her in your prayers.”

  A contented silence followed the prayer request, and Amanda had the sinking feeling that the women were not using the time to pray for the poor woman in question, bless her heart, whoever she was. It could not have been too hard for the women in the room to determine just for whom they were supposed to be praying. They all must have known the speaker, they all must have known where she lived, and they all must have known who lived next door. Amanda wondered whether the request for prayer was genuine, or merely an opportunity to set in motion a hot item for the gossip circuit. Were the women calling out to Jesus, or were they making a mental list of whom to call on their cell phones once they could get back in their cars?

  The situation had everything a Hillside Park housewife could ask for in a prayer request—the collapse of a once-solid neighborhood marriage, the potential availability on the market of the soon-to-be ex-husband, unless he was already spoken for—an alarming possibility, given the shortage of wealthy potential husbands—the acute joy that someone else’s perilous financial condition always brings, and the drama of someone else’s children’s lives on the verge of crisis. It was better than the movies.

  The silence ended when another woman put up her hand. Again, Amanda turned in the direction of the hand, trying to identify the prayer-seeker, but she had no idea who she was.

  “Mmm-hmm, go right ahead, honey,” Sharon said, and Amanda thought she saw a flash of what looked like a hungry grin. The women in the room all seemed to lean forward a tiny bit, ready to devour the latest morsels of misery and unhappiness that the prayer-seeker was about to share with her eager audience.

  “I do know a woman who needs your prayer,” she began, almost salivating, her eyes glazed ever so slightly with excitement, which she tried unsuccessfully to mask as pity. “Her marriage isn’t on the rocks—it’s over the cliff, the poor dear. Her husband—well, we really ought to be praying for him, because he knows that God wants every man to walk a humble path and keep his gaze reserved for his wife.

  “And I’m sure his heart was in the right place, but the rest of him was all over town, if you know what I mean, and it just about broke his poor wife’s heart that he was, well, how can I put it delicately? Ladies, I think you know what I’m trying to say.”

  The heads nodding and the murmurs of agreement in the room made clear that all of the ladies knew exactly what she was trying to say—the ex-husband in question had been out there bedding anything with a pulse, short of a farm animal.

  “It’s rough,” she continued, her audience of Bible devotees rapt and hanging on every word. “The woman for whom I’m seeking prayer isn’t alone in this situation. She does have two darling children, just like the other lady we discussed a moment ago, and their lives have been uprooted by the infidelities and dishonesty that her ex-husband brought into their home.”

  Amanda, for reasons she couldn’t identify, suddenly found herself feeling uncomfortable. The story was hitting a little too close to home. Well, the good news, she told herself, is that I’m not the only one. Sounds like another woman’s in the same predicament I’m in. And then she immediately chastised herself for taking satisfaction in the sufferings of another person.

  The speaker continued, “She even had to give up her home and the community where she and her ex-husband lived for more than a decade. What her husband had done was pretty much known all over town, and she could no longer bear the shame of it all, and she had to move.”

  I’ve got to figure out who this woman is, Amanda decided. I just went through the same thing. Maybe I can be helpful to her. After all, we seem to be in the same situation.

  “As I understand it,” the prayer-seeker continued, “she and her husband owned a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and now she’s had to sell that house . . .”

  Overlooking the Pacific Ocean? Amanda thought, startled. That’s just too much of a coincidence. Who is this woman?

  “I mean,” the woman was saying, “imagine having a dream, twelve-thousand-square-foot home in Newport Beach, California, and then you’ve got to sell it in the middle of a down real estate market and then come home with your tail between your legs to Hillside Park, where you grew up . . . and to come back as a renter.”

  Renting? There was a tiny gasp of horror among the group as the reality of the woman’s dismal situation sunk in. Renting was a step up from having a relative let you live in one of their rental properties for free, but not a very big step up. In Hillside Park terms, renters were practically in the same category as the homeless.

  Amanda’s cheeks flushed, and she was shocked both at her own naïveté and at how well this woman, whoever she was, knew her story. This woman wasn’t talking about somebody else. She was talking about Amanda. The gossip mill in Hillside Park was as powerful as ever, Amanda realized to her dismay.

  “Fortunately,” the woman was saying, “even though she has really been through it, the good thing is that she’s come back to Hillside Park, and nobody here in town knows exactly what happened out there in Newport Beach, or why her marriage failed, or just how big a philanderer her husband was, or just how deeply troubled her children are by this tragic turn of events.” Amanda’s mouth hung open.

  “And as we all learned this morning, idle gossip in any form can be so damaging to someone, so it’s up to each of us to keep this poor woman’s travails in our hearts and in our prayers, and I know that there’s not a woman in here who would share these sad tidings with anyone outside the walls of this Bible study.”

  Amanda just sat there, slowly shaking her head from side to side, too shocked to say a word in her own defense. Not that she really wanted to.

  “So as this woman starts her life over,” the prayer-seeker earnestly concluded, her mission of character destruction carried out completely and perfectly, “let’s pray for her, and for her children, that they may find a measure of happiness in her new life here in the neighborhood, and let’s especially pray for her ex-husband, and may he find treatment or counseling for his obvious sex addiction and become the man we know God intends him to be.”

  Amanda thought she saw at least half a dozen of the women surreptitiously reaching for their Gucci or Chanel bags to get to their cell phones, as if they couldn’t even wait to get outside the Bible study before sharing the news.

  Frightened, disgusted, and hurt, Amanda quietly rose to her feet and slipped out the door of the Bible study classroom. No one noticed her leave. She glanced back into the room at the stranger who so casually had broadcast the intimate details of her shattered life to this fascinated gathering of women—who were almost certain to share Amanda’s story with everyone on their speed dials.

  As Amanda turned away from the classroom and headed down the hall, tears streaming down her face, she could hear the group of women intoning solemnly, “In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”

  Chapter 2

  “Get your hands off me!”

  As Amanda was about to get back into her SUV outside the church, she was startled by the sound of a woman shouting. She turned and looked across the street, where she saw a woman in handcuffs being escorted from a
two-story office building by two uniformed members of the Hillside Park Police Department. Hillside Park, strictly speaking, was well within the confines of the city of Dallas, but it had created its own police department almost a century ago and refused to share jurisdiction with or even accept the validity of Dallas police officers within Hillside Park. To Amanda’s surprise, the woman was Susie Caruth, her former sorority sister from Southern Methodist University.

  “Don’t you idiots know who I am?” Susie was shouting.

  Amanda slammed the door of her SUV and stood beside the vehicle watching Susie, fascinated. Susie looked exactly the same, except for her western outfit. She looked like a wannabe country music star, which was hardly her normal style. Otherwise, nothing’s changed, Amanda thought. But then again, it’s not every day that you see a sorority sister from SMU under arrest.

  The police, for their part, looked deeply pained. Amanda figured, accurately, that they knew exactly who Susie Caruth was, and more to the point, who her husband was. Edward Caruth came from a long line of Texas-rich Caruths who had made their money in cattle ranching and then real estate in the early 1900s. Edward Caruth had the money to indulge all of his wife’s expensive tastes, and it was a good thing that he had a lot of money, because she had a lot of them. The word in Hillside Park was that Susie lacked for nothing except a sense of proportion, common sense, and good taste. Otherwise, she had everything else, and now looked as though she was about to add to her extraordinary collection of things something few other women in Hillside Park possessed—a criminal record.

  Amanda took a few steps toward the street so that she could observe the situation more closely.

  “Amanda Vaughn?” Susie yelled when she saw Amanda. “Hey! What in the world are you doing here? Can you please tell these men who I am?”

  The policemen stared at Amanda, as if perhaps she offered the key to solving the awful predicament in which they found themselves, arresting the wife of one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the community.

  Against her better judgment, Amanda crossed the street and ventured closer to Susie, whom she had not seen since Susie’s wedding a decade earlier. Edward had generously sent private jets to fetch any out-of-town invitees, which included Amanda and her then-husband. Amanda stiffened at the thought of the wedding, because she had heard rumors later that her husband had been seen at the reception coming out of the coatroom with one of the catering girls. She’d heard both were disheveled, out of breath, and smiling. She bristled at the memory.

  “Amanda, help me!” Susie pleaded, the picture of consternation. “These morons are fixin’ to take me to jail!”

  “Officers,” Amanda said respectfully to the policemen. They were a little older than she and Susie, and Amanda thought she recognized one of them from having busted an underaged drinking party at the home of one of the families in Hillside Park when she was in high school. That seemed like a lifetime ago. The police officer didn’t recognize her, though, which, in Hillside Park, was actually surprising—the police officers had been around so long they almost counted as friends.

  “Ma’am,” the police officers chorused, touching the tips of their hats.

  It’s nice to be home, Amanda suddenly thought. Texas cops were a heck of a lot nicer than the ones out in California. You couldn’t even talk to them, especially if you had been driving too fast, one of the few faults to which Amanda readily admitted.

  “Tell them who I am!” Susie insisted. The more she fought against the handcuffs, the more they cut into her wrists.

  “We know who you are, ma’am,” one of the officers said, his tone demonstrating his high degree of discomfort. “That’s why we arrested you.”

  “You can’t arrest a woman in her own office!” Susie shouted. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong!”

  “We were told,” the other officer began, “that it wasn’t your office anymore, and that you refused to vacate.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard!” Susie insisted. “I’m the Chair of the Longhorn Ball! You just barged into the executive offices of the Longhorn Ball and pulled me out of there as if I were a common criminal! Do you realize you can measure the rest of your careers in law enforcement not in years, but in hours or even minutes?”

  The officers clearly didn’t doubt her. Amanda had the sense that they would have rather been engaged in a shootout with meth-crazed drug dealers in the worst part of town than to spend another minute embroiled with Susie Caruth in the middle of Hillside Park.

  “You’re the Chair of the Longhorn Ball?” Amanda asked, impressed. The Longhorn Ball was one of the premier events of the Hillside Park social season. It’s an outdoor event, always held in the fall and usually in early September, but the real truth is, the calendar of the entertainment is what dictates what date is chosen. Every Ball Chairman always has a very clear idea of what her Ball year will look like—from the entertainment to the theme, to the foods served, to the special touches she’ll add of her own to put her personal signature on the event. It was the only high-profile event where the men didn’t have to wear tuxes; they could wear jeans. Everybody loved it because for that one night each year, the wives didn’t have to drag their husbands kicking and screaming to a social event. The event sometimes raised two to three million dollars in a single night for charity. Practically anyone of any importance in Dallas attended, bought tables, donated fabulous luxury items for the auctions, or otherwise contributed goods, services, and money to the cause. To say that the event actually raised that much money in one night was actually an exaggeration; planning the Longhorn Ball took a full year. And to be Chair of the Longhorn Ball was to rise to a position of authority and prominence among the women of Hillside Park that few would experience. The last Ball had taken place just two weeks ago, right before Amanda arrived, and Amanda realized she hadn’t heard anything about it. Clearly, she’d been away for too long.

  Susie nodded smartly. “We raised five million dollars,” she said, her pride evident.

  Amanda’s jaw dropped. Back in the day, when she had been an active member of the Longhorn Ball committee, the annual event, which featured country music headliners such as George Strait and Willie Nelson, netted close to a million. Five million? That was hard to believe. But then, since she had come back to Dallas, everything was hard to believe.

  “Five million!” Amanda exclaimed. “That’s amazing, Susie. Congratulations!”

  “My husband helped,” Susie admitted. “He leaned on a lot of people to kick in some serious cash. Actually, confidentially, and I only tell you this because I’ve known you so long and you were at my wedding . . .”

  Along with only about eight hundred other people, Amanda told herself.

  “We really only raised three point six million,” Susie admitted. “But since Kelly Hill . . . remember her? She was the Ball Chair the year before? Anyway, she raised four point two million. I could hardly be seen raising less money than Kelly. So my husband kicked in an extra eight hundred thousand. Isn’t he a dear?”

  “No doubt,” Amanda said, and suddenly the insanity of the situation struck her. Susie wasn’t just bragging about how much money she had raised but about how much money she and her husband actually had—even as she stood in handcuffs between two uniformed Hillside Park cops.

  “I hate to interrupt your conversation, ladies,” one of the policemen began, his voice somewhat timid.

  Susie glared at him, unhappy at having the discussion cut short. It appeared to all present that she had forgotten she was being arrested and had gone back to her usual way of bossing around anyone who had a net worth of under two hundred million dollars, as was surely the case with the two police officers.

  “Why are they arresting you?” Amanda asked, glancing again at Susie’s western getup. Sometimes people who chaired the Ball got into the ridiculous habit of adopting a western-inspired theme wardrobe, and then acted like they were really living the part at all times. They traded in their usual wardrobes for
rodeo attire. It was the cheesy Dallas equivalent of “going native.” It was quite a phenomenon, and at the Ball you would see photos of these women in earlier years looking very awkward and uncomfortable in a cowboy hat. Years later they reappeared as Ball Chair, dressing daily like they’d grown up on a ranch and were former rodeo queens.

  Susie rolled her eyes. “Oh, it’s all just a big misunderstanding,” she said matter-of-factly. “Some of the people on the Ball committee keep saying that I was supposed to vacate my office the day after the Ball. But I say that’s ridiculous! They can’t turn this over to someone else and lose all the momentum I’ve created. I need to Chair this one more year. I bring in five million dollars? And the committee has me arrested . . . for trespassing? In my own office?”

  “That’s terrible!” Amanda sympathized.

  “You bet it is!” Susie said indignantly. “First, one of these fools broke my nail when he was putting these handcuffs on me. On top of that, when I told him I was going to scratch his eyes out or hit him with mace, he should have known I was exaggerating. Everybody knows I tend to exaggerate. I would never do that to a police officer.” The police eyed her warily. Evidently, they thought otherwise.

  “Who’s the new Ball Chair?” Amanda asked.

  “I wanted to do it for a second year in a row,” Susie said. “But after the way I’ve been manhandled, I’m thinking about suing the organization to get my husband’s eight hundred thousand back. Actually,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “he donated four and a half million. I never really got my act together as Ball Chair, with one thing or another. That’s why I want to do it for another year. I figure, I’ve got the experience, right? And I raised five million without really applying myself. And now I’m thinking about suing the city as well,” she concluded, glaring at the cops on either side of her.

  “Really,” Amanda said, not saying what she was thinking, which was that it was outrageous that anyone would try to be Ball Chair for two straight years. That’s just not how things were done, at least not when she had been in town. The Longhorn Ball Committee was made up of one hundred women, most of whom lived in Hillside Park, and most of whom were somewhere between very comfortable and incredibly wealthy, or at least their husbands or family were. There were a few women on the committee who got there by making the right friends, but such a practice was frowned upon by the majority of the group. You could declare an active or inactive status. If you were active, you were involved for at least the first three years of your membership in the hard work of pulling the event together. After that, you could go to inactive status, retaining your membership among the hundred chosen women, but you would not be required to do any work. Amanda had remained inactive during all her years in Newport Beach.