The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank

Pucci print.”
    â€œOh, right! I can just see you wearing a Speedo!”
    â€œOh, fine. Maybe not. What the heck is in your bags? Rocks?”
    â€œHousecoats.”
    â€œJeepers. Housecoats? Who are you? Ethel Mertz? We can’t have that! Truly, I’m working out for my cholesterol. I’m down fifty points! And without eating oatmeal.”
    â€œGod spare us oatmeal. Ethel Mertz?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThe housecoats are a metaphor for my misery.”
    â€œGot it.”
    Harlan piled my bags in the trunk of his fully restored 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air. It was blue and white with white leather interior and one gorgeous trip down memory lane.
    â€œYou’re still driving this land yacht?” I asked.
    â€œExcuse me! This is one of the great American classics!”
    â€œWith an AM radio and manual locks?”
    â€œI prefer the past,” Harlan said, smiling.
    â€œKnow what? Maybe I do too!”
    We drove to downtown Charleston listening to the hum of the engine on I-26 and the sounds of the city on the peninsula where we were born and where we grew up. I wondered how I would tell the story to my brother. It was pretty obvious from the amount of luggage I had that I was staying for longer than a weekend. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I knew he loved company. I thought about Harlan and what his life was like in Charleston. He had so many friends and things he was involved in—everything that had to do with the arts in any way, shape, or form had a place in his princely heart. And he was a marvelous cook, entertaining all the time. He was a great storyteller too. People adored him and loved to come to his house. Harlan was gregarious and so filled with historic facts that we used to laugh and say we were going to put him on a quiz show. Surely he would have made millions of dollars, not that he needed money. Leonard had left him tons, in addition to the house they shared.
    We turned off I-26 and began to make our way downtown. Traffic thickened and we slowed to a crawl. By the time we reached the corner of Meeting and Market Streets, throngs of tourists were everywhere, taking pictures and peering through windows of local businesses. It was high season for tourism. Spoleto Festival and its many amazing events brought hundreds of thousands of culture lovers to the Holy City every year as it had for decades. In fact, tourism was one of the more important engines that powered Charleston’s economy.
    Professional guides dressed as Civil War soldiers driving horse-drawn carriages regaled tourists with stories of the bygone glories of the Confederate South and what it was like to be a true Charlestonian. Harlan and I always laughed as we listened to them because they could embellish a story like no other tour guides the Holy City had to offer. To my way of thinking, the tourists were getting a great bargain, and I suspected that mostly they knew when they were being offered a fish story with a side order of truth. When you looked at their faces, everyone was always smiling, a sure sign of customer satisfaction.
    There would be plenty of time for Harlan and me to talk. Plenty of time. As much as Wes’s secrets frightened me, I had to tell someone the truth. Harlan was the person I trusted most.
    We pulled off the street, rolled through the beautiful wrought-iron gates at 36 Chalmers Street, and came to a stop. In their curls and swirls I noticed for the very first time that the left gate had a J worked into the design and the right gate had a P for, of course, Josephine Pinckney.
    â€œI never saw that before!” I said. “The J and the P, I mean.”
    â€œWhat? Oh! That’s because it was overgrown with roses and Lord knows what else! Philip Simmons made those gates.”
    â€œReally?”
    Philip Simmons had been Charleston’s premier wrought-iron worker.
    â€œYeah, I thought you knew that.”
    â€œI probably did. Harlan, I swear, I can