solitaire diamond engagement ring that Ashton had had made especially for me. I tried so hard to be one of them.
I watched my diet, too. Salads and low carbs, no red meat, and rarely dessert. I drove an electric Volvo. Safe, expensive and top-of-the-range, but not ostentatious. I exuded class, or at least that’s what I was aiming for. Ashton may have been a Southern boy at heart, a shrimper’s son and a dab hand at the barbecue, but he was ambitious and a hard worker and had made himself a pillar of the community. It wasn’t that he asked me to do these things or behave in any particular way, like going to the gym or practicing tennis till I could slam a backhand and challenge anyone to a decent game, but I knew it was part and parcel of my marriage, and I had to keep up. This marriage was everything to me. Without parents to call my own I clung to it like a lifeline, and I needed to make it work. And the truth was, Ashton was the only man I had ever loved. The only one I could ever imagine being with.
I didn’t make friends easily but Lindy, the wife of the owner of the Sea Oats Country Club we frequented—where Ashton played golf—had taken me under her wing and we soon became fast friends. Not best friends, though. I needed to keep her curiosity at arm’s length. Trust is not something gained overnight. There were secrets I would always leave unwrapped. Skeletons that could stay right there in their creaky old closets. But Lindy was kind, and kindness is a gift. I knew only too well about life’s blows and switchback bends. Grateful was a word I cherished. I reminded myself every day how grateful I was for my marriage with Ashton and the chance to make things right again.
As well as keeping up with our social life at the country club, I worked long hours at a local foundation, Community Promise. We provided safe, temporary shelter and meals for those in need. Transportation to employment interviews, or medical appointments, or school. It gave women and youngsters a chance in life, to learn skillsets that would offer them jobs, or places at college. Our life skills program provided assistance in securing employment, access to medical care, school placement and, ultimately, help in locating affordable housing. We helped kids who had been abandoned by their parents, steered them away from temptations of drugs or crime. We also offered shelter from family abuse, or to runaway kids who had been molested. Troublemakers who were doing badly at school. Give a troublemaker responsibility and those troubles can melt away. So many kids are just not given a chance. It was a way of giving back, and my job meant the world to me. Our music classes in particular were transformative. With some youngsters it had been like watching the morning break, seeing the sun’s orb rise from a dark horizon, and then shine slowly, brighter and brighter, lighting up the sky, making everything gleam in its wake. Some of these teenagers had made one hundred and eighty degree turns. Nothing gave me more pleasure than being part of their journey, a key element to their healing process. Ashton loved what I did because, being a doctor—a surgeon, no less—mending people (and cutting out the bad parts) was in his DNA.
I did everything I could to make Distant Island feel like my second skin. I wanted Ashton to be proud of me, I wanted—no, needed—his mother, Georgia-May, to love me as her own daughter, especially since my parents were no longer in my life. I began visiting her at her care home, Heritage Park Assisted Living, and I believed she now recognized me as her daughter-in-law and was really starting to warm up. Next were Ashton’s friends in the community and his work colleagues. I left him to his own devices with his old fishing buddies and friends from childhood. What interested me more was the social scene at the country club and bonding with the other women.
A social climber, trying to hook my foot onto the middle rungs of the ladder and haul myself up to the top? You might assume that, if you didn’t know me better. Let’s just say I cared about being accepted by good society people. I cared about fitting in.
Our first dinner party I gave was a huge success. I spent weeks