Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes by Cathy Holton Page B

through a clogged gutter. Eadie didn't believe in therapy but she could imagine a therapist making much of her sudden flow of creativity. She could imagine a guy who looked like Freud saying,
Go back to your hometown and find out why it is the source of your unhappiness. Find out why you feel disconnected and disjointed when you are away from it
.
    Far out on the river a barge passed, its metal decks gleaming in the sun. Swallows darted in the deep blue sky. Eadie thumbed through the sketchbook and tried not to think about Trevor.
    Driving through the outskirts of Ithaca a few days ago, she had felt the baggage of her childhood settle through her like sediment. It had stunned her to feel that old familiar feeling of dread returning. She had made Lavonne turn right on Tuckertown Road and drive slowly through the Shangri-La Trailer Park, past the lot where the Wilkenses' trailer had stood, past the sandy creek bank where Eadie had sat as a child and dreamed of a life better than the one she had.
    Trevor was responsible for all this somehow. She wasn't quite sure how, but it was easier to blame him than it was to crash through all the barricades she had long ago erected inside herself. He was the one who'd insisted they could go away and start over again. It had been easy for him. He'd had every opportunity: money, looks, family connections, a safe and happy childhood. Talent. It was hard loving someone so damn perfect.
    Eadie saw Lavonne's car pull into the parking lot and a few minutes later, Lavonne was crossing the lawn, carrying the double lattes in a cardboard tray with one hand, and the bag of cream cheese muffins in the other.
    “Hey, look at you,” Lavonne said, sitting down on the bench. “You're working again.”
    Eadie closed her sketchbook. A slight sheen of perspiration glistened across her forehead. She looked tired but happy. “It just came over me,” she said, reaching for one of the lattes. “I got up this morning and knew I had to work.” She took the plastic lid off the coffee and sipped carefully. “I think it has something to do with this place,” she said, looking around the crowded park.
    “I know, isn't it great? They finished it right after you moved to New Orleans.”
    “No. I don't mean the park. I mean Ithaca. I mean running into Virginiaand Lee Anne Bales at the wedding. It has something to do with conflict. I need conflict to work.”
    “What,” Lavonne said, opening the sack of muffins, “you don't get enough conflict married to Trevor?” She offered one to Eadie.
    Eadie shook her head sadly. “We don't fight like we used to,” she said. “He's always working. And when he's working, he's happy.”
    Lavonne chewed slowly and stared at her for several minutes. “You poor thing,” she said. “Your husband's happy and you don't fight anymore. How do you stand it?”
    Eadie made a wry face and sipped her coffee. “It's hard to explain,” she said. “It's complicated.”
    She had met him her freshman year at the University of Georgia, where he was a second-year law student. They were from the same small town but Trevor was six years older and he came from money and the land-owning aristocracy. Eadie came from people who had only recently embraced the joys of indoor plumbing, people whose idea of moving up was a double- wide trailer instead of a single-wide.
    Their attraction for each other smoldered for a few weeks and then erupted into a blazing love affair, more like a wildfire than a controlled burn. She met him in September and by Thanksgiving he had proposed. Eadie was aware that everyone in Ithaca thought she married him for his money, but the truth was, this never occurred to her. She married him because she had never met anyone like him. Until Trevor Boone, she had never met anyone she felt had the stamina, courage, and strength of character to survive loving her. Not to mention his all-American good looks and the fact that he was an absolute pervert in bed. Eadie was