I was smiling. “I’ll send the check and all the particulars,” I said, then took down her name and address and hung up. I called my publisher. I was going to buy the house in her name so no one in Cole Creek would know it was me.
I knew I couldn’t leave town until after the twenty-seventh of April when I had to pay the blackmail-reading, so I occupied myself by reading about North Carolina. The realtor called me back and said that old Mr. Belcher would give me the house furnished for another dollar.
That took me aback and I had to think about why he’d do that. “Doesn’t want to move all his junk out, does he?”
“You got it,” the realtor said. “My advice is not to take the offer. There’s a hundred and fifty years of trash inside that house.”
“Old newspapers? Crumbling books? Attic full of old trunks?”
She sighed dramatically. “You’re one of those. Okay. You got a house full of trash. Tell you what, I’ll pay the dollar. My gift.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The twenty-seventh was a Saturday, and I spent three hours answering the same questions at Mrs. Attila’s ladies’ luncheon (chicken salad) as I had everywhere else. My plan was to leave for Cole Creek early Monday morning. My furniture was to go into storage and I planned to take just a couple of suitcases of clothes, a couple of laptops, plus a gross of my favorite pens (I was terrified that Pilot would discontinue them). I’d already shipped my research books to the realtor to hold for me. And Pat’s father’s tools were on the floor of the backseat of my car.
At the luncheon Mrs. Hun told me that Jackie Maxwell was getting married the next day. Smiling-—and trying to be gracious and amusing—I asked her to tell Jackie that I’d bought a house in Cole Creek, and was spending the summer there, where I’d be researching my next book, and if Jackie wanted the job, it was still open. I even said she could ride with me when I left on Monday morning.
Mrs. Free Books smiled in a way that let me know I’d missed my chance, but she agreed to relay my message to Jackie.
On Sunday afternoon I was shoving my socks into a duffel bag when there was a hard, fast knock on my door. The urgency of the sound made me hurry to answer it.
What I saw when I opened the door startled me into speechlessness.
Jackie Maxwell stood there in her wedding dress. She had on a veil over what looked to be an acre and a half of long dark hair. The last time I’d seen her her hair had been about ear length. Had it grown that fast? Some genetic thing? And the front of her dress was…well, she’d grown there, too.
“Is the research job in Cole Creek still open?” she asked in a tone that dared me to ask even one question.
I said yes, but it came out in a squeak.
When she moved, the dress caught on something on the porch. Angrily, she snatched at the skirt and I heard cloth tearing. The sound made her give an evil little smile.
Let me tell you that I never want to make a woman so angry that she smiles when she hears her own wedding dress rip. I’d rather—truthfully, I can’t think of anything on earth I wouldn’t rather do than be on the receiving end of anger like I saw in Ms. Maxwell’s eyes.
Or was this after the ceremony and she was now Mrs. Somebody Else?
Since I wanted to live, I asked no questions.
“What time should I be here tomorrow?”
“Eight A.M. too early for you?”
She opened her mouth to answer but the dress caught again. This time she didn’t jerk it. This time her face twisted into a frightening little smirk, and she very, very, very slowly pulled on that dress. The ripping sound went on for seconds.
I would have stepped back and shut the door but I was too scared.
“I’ll be here,” she said, then turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the street. There was no car waiting for her, and since I lived miles from any church, I don’t know how she got to my house.
At the street sidewalk, she turned left and kept walking. Not a person or child was in sight. No one had come out to see the woman in the wedding dress walk by. I figured they were as scared as I was.
I watched her until she was out of sight, then I went inside and poured myself a double shot of bourbon.
All I can say is that I was real glad I wasn’t the man on the receiving end of that anger.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jackie
I decided I was never going to tell anyone what had passed between Kirk and me just before the wedding ceremony. The organist was playing that march, the one that was my cue to start walking down the aisle, and Jennifer was on the other side of the door, pulling on the knob and hissing at me, but I wasn’t moving. I was sitting there with my wedding dress billowing out around me in a life-of-its-own heap (I’d punch it down, then, like bread dough gone wild, it would rise again) and listening to Kirk’s tearful story.
The tears were his, not mine. I don’t know what he expected from me. Did he actually think I’d do as he asked and “forgive” him? Did he think I’d kiss away his manly tears, tell him I still loved him bunches and heaps, then walk down the aisle and marry him?
Yeah, right. As his wife, I’d be legally responsible for half the debt he was telling me that he’d incurred.
No, thanks. The fact that he’d lost all my savings, the tiny inheritance my father had left me, and that now all I owned were my clothes, my camera equipment, and my dad’s books, didn’t seem to bother him. Kirk held my hands in his and, sobbing, told me that he’d get it all back for me. He swore it. On his mother’s grave. On his deep love for me, he swore he’d pay me back.
It’s an odd thing about love. When someone you love cries, your heart melts. But when someone you don’t love cries, you look at them and think, Why are you telling me this?
And that’s how I felt at seeing Kirk cry: nothing. I felt nothing at all except rage at his presumption. And rage at how he’d finagled the local bank president (his cousin) into helping clean me out. “It was for you, Pumpkin,” he told me. “I did it all for you. For us.”
Wonder when he’d been planning to tell me? If one coincidence after another hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have found out about my empty bank account until after I was his wife. Then what could I have done?
For that matter, what could I do even if I wasn’t married to him? Sue? Now that’s a good idea. Kirk’s father was a judge. Maybe I’d get my almost father-in-law on the bench in the case. Or one of his father’s golfing buddies.
No, I knew that all I could do was cut my losses and get the hell away from him and his relatives as fast as possible. Yesterday, Jennifer’s mother had laughingly told me that Ford Newcombe had said the job was still open, that he was leaving on Monday for Cole Creek, and that I could ride with him. At the time, I’d just smiled and shook my head. While watching Kirk cry and beg me to forgive him, I decided to take the job.
There was a backdoor to the little anteroom—the room where brides and bridesmaids are supposed to giggle in happy anticipation—and I walked out of it. Outside, I grabbed one of those tall, steel sprinklers out of the lawn and wedged it through the door handles to give myself a few moments before Kirk ran after me.
By the time I reached Newcombe’s house (so ordinary and inexpensive that the townspeople said, “Is he trying to pretend he’s poor? That he’s just like us?”) I hated that big fat white dress. And I hated the hair extensions Ashley and Autumn had talked me into. And I especially hated the padded bra they’d put on me.
When I got to Newcombe’s house, I could see that he was dying to ask me a thousand personal questions but I didn’t explain anything to him, nor did I plan to. I wanted to keep it on a business level between him and me. And I was glad he wasn’t handsome, because the way I was feeling about sexually attractive men, Lorena Bobbitt was my personal hero.
After I left Newcombe’s I went back to the little rental house that I’d shared with my dad. Kirk’s father owned the house, which is how I met Kirk. As I stripped off that hated dress and pulled on jeans and a
T-shirt, I shoved my few clothes and other possessions into some old duffels and a couple of plastic bags, and I packed up my precious camera equipment. I knew I was racing against a clock. It wouldn’t take long for my friends to find me, and when they did, I knew they’d be so “supportive” that I might be persuaded into talking to Kirk again.
First they’d do the “men are slime” bit, but then, gradually, like cold chocolate syrup coming down the neck of the bottle, they’d say what a shame it was about the wedding and all. Heather, who owned all the Miss Manners books and studied them as though they were a guide to life, would start talking to me about the disappointment of the guests, and wondering whether or not I was obligated to send handwritten thank-you notes for all the gifts I’d be giving up if I “left” Kirk.
I knew myself well enough to know that I’d use the f-word to describe my feelings about the gifts—and that would get me looks telling me I’d broken some unwritten girl code. Autumn would, of course, cry. And she would, of course, expect Momma Jackie to hold her hands and fix everything.
I knew that not one of the women would listen to me—I mean, really and truly listen—about what an illegal—not to mention despicable—thing Kirk had done to me.
“Oh, well,” I could hear Ashley say, “Men are slime. We all know that.” But she’d dismiss what Kirk had done.
So I raced. I didn’t want to see any of them. I grabbed film out of the ’frig, wrote a note to Jennifer and asked her to please box my father’s books and my other personal effects, and said I’d call her later and tell her where I was so she could send them. As an afterthought, I added a paragraph of girl-crap about how I needed to be alone so I could regain my inner peace.
I put all my bags into the back of my old car, stuck the letter in the doorjamb, then drove away. As I turned the corner, I glimpsed Kirk’s car careening toward my house and I swear that every one of my friends was in the car with him. The car was still covered in white streamers, with “Just Married” on a piece of poster board on the back.
After I saw Newcombe and was sure I had the job, I used a made-up name and spent the night at a cheap motel out on the highway, making sure my car was parked out of sight of traffic.
At eight the next morning I was outside Ford Newcombe’s house and ready to leave with him. The day before my wedding, I’d been too busy to register my surprise that he was planning to move to Cole Creek—the town of my devil story. At any other time, I’d have been full of questions, especially after I was told that he’d bought a house there. And when I saw him on Monday, I was still so upset about Kirk that I didn’t say much.
When I got into the passenger side of Ford Newcombe’s terrifically expensive BMW—700 series—he asked if I was okay. I said, “Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?” Then I said I was sorry for snapping, but he didn’t say anything, just backed out of the driveway. He glanced at my old car parked on the street and started to speak but didn’t. My car wasn’t worth much so I’d left the keys in it and thought that when I called Jennifer later I’d tell her where it was. If I’d told her in the note I left yesterday where the car was going to be, I’m sure she would have been here this morning trying to talk some “sense” into me. That my friends weren’t here meant that Jennifer’s mother hadn’t told them about Newcombe’s message she’d relayed to me. I owed that woman one.
I waited until Newcombe and I got on the highway before I spoke. I desperately wanted to forget the past day. “You’re interested enough in this devil story that you bought a house in Cole Creek?”
He didn’t look away from the road when he answered and I liked that. He was settled into that dark blue leather seat like the backside of him was growing from it, his right hand draped over the wheel like he’d grown up using a steering wheel as a teething ring.
Of course I’d read his book Uncles and had read how his hero—or protagonist—had uncles who loved any machine that had been built specifically to destroy something, and how the hero had been a misfit. I got the idea that Newcombe had spent his childhood hiding under a tree and reading Balzac. Or ironing his own clothes. He’d made a big deal about having to iron his own clothes. Gee. Maybe I could write a best-seller. I’d ironed my clothes and my dad’s since I was eight. Anyway, if I’d been asked, I would have said that, based on his books, Ford Newcombe didn’t know a gearshift from a windshield wiper.
“Yeah, I bought a house,” Newcombe said in answer to my question, then closed his mouth.
I wanted to tell him that his silence was going to make it a lllooonnnggg journey, but I didn’t. I just put my head back and closed my eyes.
I awoke when he stopped to get gas. I got out to put the gas in the car—after all, I was his assistant-—but he got the pump handle before I could.
“Go get us something to eat and drink,” he said while watching the numbers on the tank.
That’s how all his former secretaries said he was: grumpy and uncommunicative. And no matter how much work they did for him, he didn’t consider it enough.
“I have a life, Jackie,” one woman I knew said. “He wanted me to stay all night and type what he’d written in his tiny handwriting. And he shouted at me because I said I would bring the papers home.” Blowing her nose in an old tissue, she said, “Do you know what’s wrong with what I said, Jackie?”
I didn’t want to say. I wanted to be “supportive” but to do that I’d have to play dumb. “You take the papers home,” I heard myself whisper, unable to stop. “Not bring. Take.”
When this made the poor woman cry harder, I looked around the restaurant at the other diners and saw they were frowning at me. Heaven help me but they seemed to think I was making her cry. “Men!” I said loudly. Collectively, they turned away, nodding their heads in understanding.
I went into the little convenience store at the gas station and looked around, but I had no idea what he liked to eat and drink. From the look of him, I guessed he probably ate fried things that came in plastic bags, and drank bottles of stuff that didn’t have the word “diet” on them.
I got him three bags of cheesy crispy fried things and two colas full of sugar and caffeine. As for me, I got a bottle of still water and two bananas.
When he came inside to pay, I put the items on the counter. He looked at them and didn’t complain so I guess I did all right. He added a candy bar to the lot and paid.
Outside, when I asked him if he wanted me to drive, I could see he was about to say no, but then he said, “Sure, why not?” I had an idea he wanted to see how I drove, and from the way he watched me for the first thirty minutes, I knew I was right. But I guess I passed because he finally settled back and began opening his bags and bottles.
“So tell me about this devil story,” he said. “The full version of it. Everything you remember.”
“With or without sound effects?” I asked.
“Without,” he answered. “Most definitely without. Just facts.”
So, yet again I told my devil story, but this time I told it, not for drama, but for facts. The truth was that I really didn’t know what was fact and what was fiction. The trauma of my mother’s telling of the story had so changed my life that I wasn’t sure where one began and the other ended.
I was a little awkward at first because no one had ever asked me to tell the facts. Everyone else had wanted spine-tingling drama. I started by telling him that when I was a young child, my mother had read me a Bible story that mentioned the devil and I started to ask questions. I think what I asked was whether or not the devil was real. My mother said that the devil was very real and that he’d been seen in Cole Creek. This answer sparked my interest, and I asked more questions. I wanted to know what the devil looked like, and she said, “He’s an extremely handsome man. Before he turns red and goes up in smoke, that is.” I asked more questions, such as what color the smoke was and who had seen him. She said the smoke was gray and that a woman who lived in Cole Creek, where we were living then, had loved the devil. “And everyone knows that peo
ple who love the devil must die,” she said.
As I turned to Newcombe I took a deep breath. Other times I’d told the story, I’d played it for its ability to frighten people. I’d once won a black ribbon at a summer camp for having the best horror story. But to Newcombe, I decided to tell the truth. “They killed her. The story was that there were several people who saw the woman talking to the devil, and when she backed away from them, she tripped and fell. They wouldn’t let her get up.”
It was just a story but the image in my mind was vivid. “They piled stones on top of her until she was dead.”
“And it was your mother who told you the details of this story?”
I glanced at him quickly. “It’s not worse than Hansel and Gretel,” I said defensively, then calmed. “Actually, I think I’ve taken my mother’s story and embellished it with all the TV shows and books I’ve read. I told you that I can’t remember what she said and what I’ve made up over the years.”
Newcombe was looking at me strangely so I decided to nip this in the bud. “Don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t involved in some evil coven—and neither was my mother. The truth is that the night I told my father what my mother had said, my parents split up. My parents argued horribly and later my father wrapped me in a blanket, put me in the car and took me away. I never saw my mother again. I think my mother’s telling me a forbidden story, one that was too violent for a little kid to hear, was the final straw that made my father leave. And I think the trauma of the separation made the story stick in my mind. Truthfully, I barely remember my mother but I do remember that devil story.”
Over the years, I’d learned to keep quiet about my parents, but now my father was dead and I was heading toward the town of my childhood. Telling the unembellished truth of what I remembered of what my mother had told me seemed to be making memories come back to me. And maybe it was because Newcombe was such a good listener but I’d just told him things I’d never told anyone else. When I’d calmed myself, I went on to tell him that I remembered that my parents were always arguing, all of it done in quiet whispers that I wasn’t supposed to hear. A few days after my mother told me the devil story, my father and I were walking outside and I asked him where the lady had seen the devil. He asked me what I meant. After I’d repeated my mother’s story, he picked me up, carried me back to the house and put me in my bedroom and shut the door. But even as an adult, I could still remember the argument they had that night. My mother was crying and saying that they were all going to die anyway, so what did it matter? “And she needs to be told the truth.” I remembered that sentence vividly.
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