The Colonel

by Beau North

  “I like you,” he corrected. “Nothing more.”

  “So…your English lessons?”

  He shrugged. “They were fun.”

  She felt herself crack open, and it was not pain that came rushing out of that fissure but rage.

  “You are…a fucking cad!”

  She had a moment to enjoy a surge of victory as his eyes widened in shock, but the surprise was gone in an instant, replaced with that infuriating cool distance.

  “You’re a cad, and a coward. A mean, lowly sonofabitch and…and…you can go to hell!” She turned on her heel and stormed back inside, nearly knocking the wide-eyed maid over in the process. She barked a brief apology before storming up to the family wing. If she’d turned around, she would have seen Ari watching her, looking like he’d just lost something irreplaceable.

  24

  April 5, 1954

  Somewhere in Florida

  Richard thought the sign declaring “Welcome to Florida” would have been more welcoming if it hadn’t been riddled with bullet holes. His fingers tightened on the wheel as he sped over the line that divided Georgia and Florida. If someone had asked him a week ago if he thought he’d ever go back to Florida, he would have laughed in their face. It was only the tense, drawn face of Charlotte in the seat next to him that kept him driving. She deserved answers, and he’d be damned if he’d let her get them alone.

  “You good?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Anne, who was sleeping in the back sleep.

  She smiled, fidgeting with the Wedgewood-blue and white scarf tied around her neck. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Oh, I’ll let you know if I start getting a headache.”

  It had taken him a year, two road tests, and several modifications to his Catalina before he was permitted to drive again, and while his mind had adapted to his monocular vision, he still got headaches if he looked at any one thing (like a highway) for too long. Anne had driven all night, stopping only when they drove through South Carolina. The sagging remains of Rosings House were sadder and duller now that its last living occupant was gone, its belongings boxed up and put into storage. A heart attack had taken Catherine DeBourgh while Richard lay unconscious in a Tokyo hospital. She’d been found later that day by the maid, who said Catherine had been sitting so upright when she died it took a full hour before the maid realized she wasn’t breathing. Anne had walked the grounds of her former home, but Charlotte had refused to get out of the car. Richard didn’t think she’d ever be able to think fondly of the place.

  “You don’t like it here very much,” she said now.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You look like you’ve just bitten a lemon.”

  He felt a smile, a real one, spread across his face. The tension in his jaw and shoulders eased somewhat.

  “I don’t, actually. I did my basic training here, and I wasn’t fond of the climate or the insects. It’s also―”

  “It’s where you found out about your brother,” she said simply.

  “Anne told you?”

  “Actually, it was Elizabeth who told me.”

  He supposed it made sense. Elizabeth and Charlotte had been the best of friends their whole lives. He was certain there wasn’t much about him Elizabeth hadn’t told her. Strangely, he didn’t mind. That confusing tangle of feelings was still there—always there—but it didn’t seem to matter the way it once had.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked, pulling a pack of Kents out of his pocket.

  “Not at all. Do you think I could have one?”

  That surprised him. In the years they’d lived together, he’d never seen her smoke. He supposed she needed it more than he did. He lit two at once, keeping a hand on the wheel. She took one with a quiet word of thanks and proceeded to smoke as if she smoked every day. For all he knew, she did.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

  She blew out a plume of gray-white smoke with an unsteady breath. “More than I thought possible. But I’m not afraid anymore. He can’t hurt me now, not now that I know my own worth.”

  Richard was aghast to feel tears prickle his eyes. When are you going to know your own worth?

  He almost reached across the seat to take her hand when he remembered she didn’t like to be touched, especially by men. And who could blame her? It had been four days since he’d gotten the call from his friend Adam Carter that he’d finally managed to track down the elusive Leland Collins. Richard could still remember the way all the blood had drained from Charlotte’s face at the news. He could still see the yellowing bruises on her face the day of Charles and Jane’s wedding, somewhat covered under makeup, and the way Charlotte would avert her eyes if anyone looked at her. He was grateful now that she and Anne had chosen to live with him at the townhouse. God knows he needed the companionship.

  “Can I ask you a question, Charlotte?”

  “Of course, Richard.”

  “Do you remember that party we had on New Year’s Eve a few years ago?”

  Her brows shot up. “I’m surprised you do,” she said, crushing her cigarette out in the ashtray. “You were so soaked, I’m amazed you didn’t drown.”

  “It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who stayed with me and took care of me that night.”

  Color rose high on her cheeks. It rather suited her.

  “It wasn’t just me,” she said pointedly. “Anne helped.”

  A chuckle escaped him. “You know I love our Annie as if she was my own sister, but a caretaker she is not.”

  “She tries.”

  He sighed, keeping his eyes on the road. On either side of the long, flat road rose high ditch walls covered in a fringe of sweet-smelling kudzu. Tall, skinny pines lined the landscape, providing little break in the scenery. The northern part of Florida, he remembered, looked no different from Georgia or South Carolina.

  “I don’t blame her, really,” he said finally. “I was―”

  “You were in pain,” she said. “And that’s all there was to it.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Do you two mind?” Anne groaned from the back seat. She sat up, her face creased from heavy sleep. Her hair was mussed, her eyes puffy. Charlotte gave her an affectionate smile.

  “Why, hello, sleepyhead.”

  “Are we there yet?”

  Charlotte absently touched the envelope that lay on the seat between her and Richard, a manila envelope that contained the few sheets of paper that would finally give Charlotte her freedom.

  Anne noticed and brought a gentle hand to her lover’s face. Charlotte leaned into the gesture, smiling slightly.

  “Do you think it’s true?” she asked them both. “And am I terrible for hoping it is?”

  “Christ’s sake, Ducks. Don’t waste another second feeling bad about that. Hoping it’s true doesn’t make you terrible. It makes you smart.”

  “You’re not terrible,” Richard added. “Not to me, not ever.”

  “It’s just hard to believe after all this time. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for five whole years.”

  “Well, soon enough you’ll get to let that go,” Anne said. “You’ll finally get to exhale.”

  Charlotte looked over at Richard and smiled, a real smile this time. “And you, you won’t have to stay behind and watch over us anymore. You can have your life back.”

  Richard’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. He hadn’t even thought of that. All this time, he’d felt like he’d needed them as much as they’d needed him. Charlotte and Anne had been there for him through heartbreak and folly and the long recovery after his injuries. The idea that they were looking forward to a life that he wasn’t a part of…he supposed it was natural. He was just surprised by how much it hurt.

  Leland Collins, born into pride and believing himself entitled to every privilege, met his end in a cinderblock building no bigger than a shack. His last days had been spent in the
tiny hamlet of Senebel, a town so small there was no hospital or medical office. His body had instead been transported to the next largest town, which bore the unusual name of Sopchoppy. His death had been mean, ugly, and painful.

  “It was quick, but it weren’t pretty,” the bespectacled coroner informed Richard, quietly so that Anne and Charlotte couldn’t overhear from where they sat down the hall, in two uncomfortable-looking chairs. Charlotte was filling out paperwork.

  “My aunt Minnie was there and says it was a big to-do. Nobody knew what was happening for a few good minutes and the timber rattler…well, one dose is enough to kill twenty grown men. Antivenin can’t do much even if you have it. That snake bites deep.”

  He seemed to remember himself, straightened his tie. “Not that you’d ever catch me in one of those snake handling parishes. I’m a god-fearing Methodist, and a snake fearing one too.”

  “I see.” Richard was trying to imagine it and decided he’d had enough horror in the past decade or so. Charlotte had insisted on seeing her husband’s body, and Richard had gone with her for support. What he’d seen had briefly made him wish he’d lost both eyes in Korea. Collins had been bitten twice, once on the arm and again on the neck. Both had swollen grotesquely, and several days later, his body was still a mottled shade of purple. Richard wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

  “Will you be wanting to make your arrangements, Mrs. Collins?” the coroner asked more loudly, peering over Richard’s shoulder.

  She seemed to consider for a moment. “What do you do for vagrants or people with no family?”

  The coroner didn’t appear surprised by the question. “Cremation. Or sometimes the medical school takes them.”

  Charlotte nodded. “That’s fine. Either one of those.”

  Again, the nod of someone who has truly seen it all. Richard supposed that, being a coroner in Florida, he probably had.

  “Will you be wanting his personal effects? I already gave those to Bobbie.”

  “Not necessary”―Charlotte waved the suggestion off. Then, out of curiosity asked, “Who is Bobbie?”

  The coroner coughed and looked apologetically at Richard. “She was the girl he kept, I suppose you could say. We all thought they were married but…I guess if the reverend was already married…”

  “Where is this woman? I’d like to see her if I could.”

  “Well, I reckon that’d be up to her. She’s just a young thing, never hurt a fly. I don’t want any trouble.”

  Charlotte stood and approached them. She offered the man a smile, and when she spoke, the gentle effect of her Southern accent was there, thicker and more honeyed than Richard had ever heard it.

  “I have no ill will toward this young woman, I can assure you. If you don’t feel right about it, by all means, have a deputy escort us or arrange a meeting in public. My marriage was over in all but name years ago when Mr. Collins up and abandoned me.”

  Richard had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from howling with laughter. She was good, and the old man was putty in her hands. The coroner straightened his tie again, clearing his throat.

  “Well, I reckon you seem harmless enough. And the reverend was a bit of a bully, I suppose. Those fire n’ brimstone types so oft’n are. But you’ll have to follow me out there. You’d get lost trying to find your way through those backwoods.”

  Richard looked down at the little man, with his thick glasses and round face; his pointed features made him look mole-like. “You don’t need to be here?”

  The man waved him off. “Won’t take long. I’m guessing ya’ll came in that fancy convertible? You can follow me, the red pickup. I’ll just lock up.”

  Richard ushered Charlotte and Anne back outside, into the thick air, perfumed with pine and the dusty, slightly oily smell of the heat baking the blacktop asphalt. To Richard, it was heavenly after the smell of death and chemicals that seemed to permeate every surface inside the county morgue.

  “Thank goodness,” Anne said, shaking her shoulders. “I thought one more minute in that place and I was going to scream.” She touched Charlotte’s arm. “Are you okay, Ducks?”

  Charlotte smiled. Everything in her expression, in her manner, spoke of perfect calm, but there was something removed in her eyes, a look that told Richard the full impact of everything she’d just seen hadn’t fully hit her yet.

  “Are you all right, Charlotte?” he asked, opening the car door for her. “You look a little…off.”

  “I’m perfectly fine. I just want five minutes alone with his woman, and then I’ll be ready to put this place in my rearview mirror for good.”

  “If you’re sure,” Anne said dubiously. Richard took a moment to squeeze a few drops of ointment onto his prosthetic eye, sighing with relief. His lid had become painfully dry in the air-conditioned morgue.

  “Are you okay to drive?” Anne asked him. His working eye was tired, and he could feel the edges of a headache beginning to sharpen, but he nodded and told her he’d be fine for this one last leg. They watched the coroner, whose name Richard had already forgotten, climb into a mud-splattered pickup truck the color of candied apples. Richard started the Bel Air and followed. The town was in the part of the state where the landscape began to change from piney flatwoods to live oak thickets, branches tangled and dripping with shaggy Spanish moss. They followed the red truck over a tall, spindly bridge that spanned the Sopchoppy River.

  “The water is so smooth, like glass,” Anne said.

  “You can paint me a picture later, I hope,” Richard said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. It was too dangerous for him to look away, not having the same field of vision he once did.

  “You read my mind.” Anne dug under the seat and pulled out her sketchbook. Charlotte sat in the back, silently watching the scenery go by. He wondered what was going on in that head of hers. Did some part of her mourn for the man who she’d once vowed to honor and cherish? Not that he kept those vows for himself. Leland Collins had been a monster in life; now that he was dead (so very dead), his ghost seemed to linger in the air like cigarette smoke. Richard had only met the man once in passing, at Charles Bingley’s birthday party. He’d seemed to have an over-inflated sense of self and had droned on and on about what a godly woman their aunt Catherine was until Richard had snapped that even she enjoyed a schnapps in the evenings and the occasional bet on the horses. That had been enough to shut the man up. Neither had Richard cared for Collins’s resemblance to the Bennet sisters, from the high, dramatic cheekbones, and wide brow to the slightly upturned nose. The overall effect had been…unsettling. Part of him wondered if that was what had drawn Charlotte to him in the first place; maybe she had thought, if she had to settle, it could at least be with a man who resembled her best friends.

  “I certainly don’t miss dirt roads,” Charlotte piped up from the backseat as Richard followed the Ford down a narrow dirt road bordered by wild fringes of wire grass and saw palmetto.

  “Feeling homesick for the South?” Anne asked.

  “Not me. I’d miss Chinese food and Bloomingdales. I think I’ve fully converted to city girl.”

  “That’s funny. I actually miss it sometimes,” Anne said as they pulled up to a tiny clapboard house that at one time might have been white but was now a faded shade of dust. The yard was a combination of patchy grass and pale green moss, too sandy for anything more than the hardy, scrubby plants of the panhandle to thrive.

  A young woman stepped onto the small porch, wearing a long dress and no shoes. Her fair hair hung down past her shoulders, and her right arm appeared to be in a cast. He glanced quickly at Charlotte in the rearview mirror, but she was already climbing out of the car, face set with that same odd smile she’d been wearing since the morgue. Richard had no choice but to follow.

  “Afternoon, Buck,” the young woman greeted the mole-man coroner. Her voice was high and sweet. “I see you brought me some company.”

  “Bobbie, this is…” He seemed to remember himself at th
e last second and took off his hat crushing it to his chest. Richard could tell in an instant that the older man was carrying a torch roughly the size of a bonfire. He had to be twenty years older than Bobbie.

  “I’m Charlotte—ah, the late Mrs. Collins, that is,” Charlotte said, stepping closer.

  The girl looked her up and down. “You look different from your picture.” She looked at Richard with some interest. “And you are?”

  “I’m Richard Fitzwilliam, and this is Anne DeBourgh. We’re friends of Charlotte’s.”

  She nodded. “Ya’ll might as well come on in.”

  She went back in the house. Buck held the door open for Charlotte and Anne, who followed. Richard came in last, shutting the door behind him. Inside, the house was so dim it took Richard’s impaired vision a good minute to adjust. He saw the lack of light was due to heavy, olive-drab curtains that hung over the windows. An old-fashioned oil lamp burned in the corner. The place was sparsely furnished, with one upholstered chair that had seen better days, and a small, unpadded stool. The smells of fried foods and cigarettes seemed baked into every surface. Bobbie led them into the kitchen, where there was barely enough room for them all to be. Anne was the first to volunteer to wait outside, followed by Buck. Richard gave Charlotte a questioning look.

  “Oh, he’s welcome to stay,” Bobbie said, putting a glass of iced tea in front of Charlotte. “I like the look of him.”

  Richard grinned, unable to help himself. He was older, his face scarred, but it was good to know he could still make a pretty girl take notice. He gave Bobbie a half-bow of thanks.

  “Did Lee do that to your arm?” Charlotte asked without preamble, looking pointedly at the cast. Bobbie looked down at it a second before hiding the arm in her lap.

  “It was the laundry. I left it out, and it got rained on again.”

  “Did he do that a lot?”

  She nodded. “I reckon he did the same with you.”

  Charlotte sat back and peered at her hostess. “He never broke anything. Maybe my spirit, but I got it back.”