by Tamara Leigh
“And don’t forget to pick up toilet paper,” Mrs. Templeton says in her crotchety voice as I ascend the steps to the front door of the Pickwick mansion. “Last I was in the bathroom, there was only a few turns of the roll left, and you know how fast it goes with folks who don’t know nothin’ about storin’ up for hard times. Yep, best get you a whole case.”
My life is so glamorous.
“And don’t be wastin’ no more money on that fluffy stuff. It’s expensive, especially considerin’ where it ends up.”
I’d rather not. “A case it is.” Of the fluffy stuff. “Well, I’m at my uncle’s—”
“Oh, mercy! He called earlier.”
I mute my groan. As my cousin Piper had to fly to Atlanta three days ago on a consulting job for her old PR firm, I agreed to fill in to ease the burden on the caregiver hired to stay with Uncle Obe. I don’t mind. It just would have been nice to know what he wanted me to pick up so I could have made one trip.
“What does he need?”
“Nothin’.”
He just wanted to talk? That doesn’t sound like him.
“I told him you were off runnin’ errands, but when I tried to give him your mo-bile number, he said he didn’t need to talk to you after all.”
A knob rattles at the back of my mind. “Did you tell him where I was going?”
“I did. Hey, how do the new signs look?”
She told him I was going to Fate and Connie’s. That has to be how Reece Thorpe and I ended up at the same place at the same time. “They look good. What time did my uncle call?”
“Two or three hours ago.”
That fits. I look at the front door, somewhere behind which lurks my meddlesome kin. Thankfully, Devyn didn’t try to talk me into letting her come along (those psychology articles are good for something). “Thank you, Mrs. Templeton. I won’t be back in today, so can you lock up?”
“I can. Now don’t forget the toilet paper, hear? And would you tell Trinity not to be late for supper?”
Her granddaughter, whose housekeeping services Piper enlists to keep the mansion in shape. “She’s not here.”
“You sure?”
Who could miss the battered VW Bug painted to look like Cinderella’s pumpkin coach? “Positive.”
She grunts. “Probably off with that no-good cousin of yours.”
Bart, who has been dating Trinity since last year. “I need to get inside, Mrs. Templeton. Bye.” I slip the phone into my purse and step forward.
The door is answered almost immediately. “Ms. Pickwick! How nice of you to drop by.” Ida Newbottom—retired nurse, once-upon-a-long-time-ago hog wrestler, and twenty years my senior—smiles.
I make a face. “‘Ms. Pickwick’? What happened to ‘Maggie’?” I don’t often run into her, but when I do, I’m Maggie to her, and by invitation years back, she’s Ida to me.
She smoothes her nurse’s fatigues. “As I am here in a professional capacity, Ms. Pickwick, I will conduct myself in said manner.” She steps aside and grandly pans a hand inside. “Do come in.”
Strange. As I cross the threshold, I notice that Piper has once more turned her restless energy on bringing light into the dim corners of what was an impressive showplace in the early 1900s. The grand entryway, dingy and for years in need of a paint job, is freshly cream colored against a gleaming white ceiling and base moldings. The mirrors and side tables shine, the chandelier—formerly a spider refuge—sparkles, and the worn rug that stretches across the hardwood floors somehow made it through a cleaning in one piece.
Ida closes the door. “Mr. Pickwick is takin’ his ease in the library.”
Ease?
“It’s been a busy day for him, and he’s tired, but I’m sure he’ll be pleased to receive you.”
Receive? And what’s this about his being busy? “Has he had other visitors today?”
“Only the one.” She takes the lead toward the library. “That sculptor.”
Another fit. “What time was that?”
“A few hours ago. A nice young man for someone who’s not from the South.”
No, Reece Thorpe isn’t. At the age of seventeen, his family moved to North Carolina when Uncle Bartholomew hired his father to try to save the textile mill from going under. A year later, Reece’s father had had enough of my uncle’s borderline criminal shenanigans and took his family back to Minnesota, never to be heard from again. Or so I thought.
As we near the library, I lay a hand on Ida’s arm. “Has my uncle had a good day?”
“He’s very here today. I think it’s all that talk about the sculpture. It lit him right up.”
And you want to take that light from him, Maggie Pickwick.
No, I just want him to find a different sculptor.
“I mixed up a batch of pimento cheese,” Ida says. “Would you care for a sandwich?”
“Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”
“A cup of hot tea? I took one in to your uncle a while back.”
“That would be nice.”
As she bustles toward the kitchen on hugely muscled calves, I step beneath the library’s arched doorway.
“I knew it was you.” Uncle Obe smiles at me from across the desk on the far side of the room. “Come on in, Magdalene.”
I falter. Ms. Pickwick is one thing, but Magdalene? Only my mother calls me that, and only when she’s either introducing me to high-society friends or is angry. So why is my uncle taking the long way around my name? Is it the dementia? Of course, it’s not always the hard words and names that go missing. More often, it’s the easier ones that slip off his radar.
I cross the library and peck his cheek. “How are you feelin’?”
“Good.” He reclines in the age-softened leather chair, clasps his hands across his concave abdomen, and nods at the scattered sheets of cream-colored stationery covered with shaky handwriting. “Been workin’ on my letter to Antonio and Daisy.”
The one he started last summer in hopes of making amends to his estranged illegitimate children. According to Piper, who is itching to take the matter into her own hands, he’s on draft number twenty-something.
“It has to be just right.” He nods. “Lots of years to cover and…” His jaw opens and closes and his eyes jitter as he engages in the cruel game of hide-and-seek that has become more popular as his dementia progresses. “Apologies!” he exclaims, as if holding up the word by the scruff of the neck. “Yes, lots of apologies to be made.” Eyes brightening, he taps his head. “See, all this cogitatin’ and ruminatin’ is good for the mind.”
Don’t you dare steal his light!
He clears his throat. “I’m guessin’ you ran into an old friend today.”
My eyes strain against muscles working hard to keep them in my head. Though my uncle isn’t one to sidestep or try to make something ugly pretty, I didn’t expect him to be up-front about his interference in my life.
“Don’t get yourself in a twist. Just sit yourself down where I can see you proper.”
I turn up my hands in an embarrassing display of helplessness. “What’s going on?”
He jerks his head toward the chair.
On legs that feel spindly, I walk around the desk. Though I aim for the edge of the chair, my knees fold like oiled hinges, and I sink back into the seriously unsprung seat, giving a little cough as the dusty de-velveted upholstery surrounds me.
“Feel better?”
Actually, in spite of a ticklish dust-sensitive nose, I do. “Talk to me, Uncle Obe.”
“You saw Reece, hmm?”
“I did.” Considering the slippery slope my emotions are on, I’m surprised at how level my voice sounds. “And you sent him to Fate and Connie’s after Mrs. Templeton told you I was on my way there.”
He puts his elbows on the chair arms and grips the brass-studded end caps, as if in preparation for takeoff. “Seemed as good a time as any for him to scout out a place for his…er, studio.”
So that’s what brought him down High Holler
Road—doubtless unaware he was being maneuvered into my orbit.
“Gotta hand it to me,” Uncle Obe says. “My timin’ was right on.”
“Actually, it was off.”
“Oh?”
I defy the seat’s gravitational pull and lean toward him. “School let out early because of the snow.”
“That must have made a lot of kids happy. Well, not Devyn. That girl does like her schoolin’.”
“The point is, she accompanied me on my errands.”
“That was nice of her.”
Patience. “Meaning she was with me when I stopped to check on my signs.”
He stills, then makes a face that rearranges the lines grooving his skin. “Why, that wasn’t part of the plan.”
I’m supposed to feel better? “The plan being to throw Mr. Thorpe and me together?”
“Exactly!” He jabs a finger in my direction, only to turn it on himself and scratch his head. “I suppose I should have taken it as a sign my train was off track when I called to be certain you were at the theater and that grumpy old woman told me you were off runnin’ errands.”
I mentally scratch my own head. “You were hoping I was at the theater—er, auction house?” That is the function the old building has served since Uncle Obe leased it to me over a year ago. “Why?”
“It’s where I originally intended to send Reece.”
On the pretext of scouting out studio space. I catch my breath. No, he wouldn’t set up his studio at my place of business. Not only would he find the idea of being under my nose unsavory, but every square foot is mine for the duration of the lease. Nothing to worry about. Now I just need to convince my uncle to send him back to his artist’s commune or wherever he seeks inspiration and oneness with the world.
“Uncle Obe—”
“Here you are, Ms. Pickwick.” Ida appears at my elbow and extends a scalloped saucer, at the center of which perches a delicate china cup, circa late 1800s. Knowing how much the complete set could bring at auction, I glance at the desk. There sits a matching cup and saucer earlier used to serve Uncle Obe his tea. I open my mouth to suggest that Ida use the everyday china, but it isn’t my place, and apparently Uncle Obe sees nothing wrong with the casual use of Sotheby’s-worthy china.
“Did you change your mind?” Ida rattles the cup in its saucer.
Envisioning chips and cracks, I practically snatch the saucer from her hand, causing hot liquid to slop over the cup’s rim.
“My goodness!” She retreats a step.
“Sorry.” I sink my nose into the fragrant steam rising from the cup. “I must be thirstier than I thought.”
“I’ll say.”
I’m not an herbal tea person, but the scent of peppermint acts like moisturizer on my dry and cracked nerve endings. “Thank you, Ida. I needed this.”
She looks to Uncle Obe. “Anything I can get you, Mr. Pickwick?”
“I’m fine. And stop calling me that. It’s Obadiah.”
“Yes, Mr. Pickwick.” She withdraws, and as her shoes transition from the hardwood floor to the hallway rug, I hear her mutter, “I am his nurse. And I will behave accordingly. Humph!”
“Takes her job a tad too serious,” Uncle Obe says.
I balance the cup and saucer on my thighs. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Mr. Thorpe has no idea what you’re up to.”
He stares at me, and as his smile slips away, a kink appears between his eyebrows. I’ve seen this more in recent months, and it always strikes me like he’s trying to find his place, as if in a book that the wind has whipped closed. I wait for him to locate the page, and eventually the kink resolves.
“Yes, Reece is in the dark. Or he was. He might be a wee suspicious after your meeting at Fate and Connie’s.”
Satisfaction flows over me like hot syrup on pancakes. “We didn’t meet.”
Uncle Obe cranes his neck forward. “You didn’t?”
“No, I saw him before he saw me and ducked out of sight.” I bounce twice to free my rear end from the seat, causing the cup and saucer to rattle alarmingly. I perch on the edge of the chair. “Can you guess who Mr. Thorpe was talking to outside the shop?”
“Haven’t a clue, my dear.”
“Devyn.”
He eases back in his chair. “That wasn’t part of the p-plan either. Does he know she’s your daughter?”
“No. When she introduced herself, he asked if she was Luc’s or Bart’s, and that’s when I decided it was time for a diversion.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
I set the cup and saucer on his desk, rise, and walk around to his side. “Send him away, Uncle Obe.” I lay a hand on his bony shoulder. “I don’t need this complication.”
He tips his head back to see to the top of me. “He could be the girl’s daddy.”
I don’t know how he knows that, especially as I had little to do with Uncle Obe during high school, but he probably knows about the other two possibilities as well. “Not likely, and even if he were, it wouldn’t change a thing. Send him away.”
“Can’t.”
“It’s your money. You’re the one who decides which sculptor is best suited to the job.”
“But I already decided.” He rubs the back of his neck. “And Reece is best suited to give our…our…town”—he emphasizes the word as if to nail it down—“what I stole from it years ago.”
It’s still hard to believe he’s responsible for the missing statue of Great-Granddad Pickwick that stood in the town square. But according to his public confession at last year’s Fourth of July celebration, it was a young and quietly rebellious Obadiah Pickwick who did the deed, and the statue is somewhere at the bottom of Pickwick Lake.
“He does incredible work. Have you visited his Web site?”
“Uncle Obe—”
“It’s mind-boggling what he’s capable of. And unlike other sculptors, he’s willing to work on site. Of course, it helps that he doesn’t have a…that he isn’t married or have children to go home to every night.” He winks.
Oh!
“So that means I can have an ongoing say in the process.” He rubs his neck again.
Realizing my height is responsible for his discomfort, I bend down beside his chair. “You have to tell him you’ve changed your mind.”
“Can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
“Nope, it’s all legal.”
I stiffen. “Legal?”
“Reece’s attorney faxed over a contract a few days ago. I John Hancocked it and sent it back. Legal.”
Considering his dementia and that he granted Piper the power to handle his finances months ago, that could be argued—No! I am not going there, even if it means I have to run into Reece Thorpe from time to time. I’m an adult. I can handle this. But if only he hadn’t changed his mind about the commission!
“Uncle Obe, last summer Mr. Thorpe declined the commission. What happened between then and now?”
“Budget cuts. He ought to be sculptin’ a piece for some Yankee church up north, but they changed their minds.” He gives a satisfied nod. “Their loss, our gain.”
Our gain? “So he contacted you.”
“No, no, no. I contacted him—well, his agent—same as I’ve done every month since he turned me down. And this time he agreed, which is why I ceased negotiations with that woman sculptor Piper scrounged up.” He gives a sour-faced shudder. “She was a persnickety one.”
Did Piper know he was keeping after Reece all these months? No, she would have told me. And it’s not as if Uncle Obe is under lock and key—yet. Although his dementia is advancing, it’s blessedly slow. He credits it to God, the Sudoku that Devyn got him hooked on, and the six-hundred-dollar juicing machine he bought off a home shopping channel. Regardless, he is at a better place than any of us thought he would be last year when he made public his heart-wrenching diagnosis on top of revealing his plans to right family wrongs—
Hold it! Does he regard the question of who fathered Devyn a
s a wrong that needs righting? If so, he’s reaching, as the two others who might have fathered my daughter had every opportunity to step forward. Instead, they ran for cover, and it made sense that if I had to drag them kicking and screaming into the light, they were best left in the dark. As for Reece…
Considering my reputation, he might have ducked out of sight too had his family not pulled out of Pickwick before gossip about my pregnancy became as common as fleas on a dog. So the only one wronged is Devyn, but if Uncle Obe thinks putting a face on her father will right that wrong, he’s mistaken. Unfortunately, it appears Reece Thorpe is in Pickwick to stay. But for how long?
“Uncle Obe?”
His whole body startles, as if he had dug himself deeper into his thoughts than I did mine. Of course, that’s probably a given.
I gently squeeze his forearm. “How long will it take Mr. Thorpe to complete the statue?”
“Oh, he’ll be here awhile.”
“A month or two?”
“Heavens, no!”
Good. If he’s only here for—
“More like six months.” He flicks his hands up. “At least, that’s the time he’s set aside for the project.”
Ugh. Pickwick may be growing faster than any other small town in North Carolina, but it’s still too small for six months. And there is nothing you can do about it.
I stand. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
“Thank you. Much as I hate to nap, it’s been a busy day for me.” He taps the stationery. “And if I’m going to get this letter done, I need all the energy I can muster.”
“Can I help you to bed?”
He settles more deeply into the leather. “Best nap is a chair nap—comfortable enough to doze in, but not so comfortable you sleep away the day.”
And days, especially good ones, are too precious for him to let slip away.
I peck his cheek again. “If the auction doesn’t run too long on Saturday, Devyn and I will drop by for a visit afterward.”
“And if it does run long?” He gives me the “knowing” eye.
I feel guilty for the times we haven’t made it out to see him, but it’s not for want of trying. It’s my job to get the seller the best price, and sometimes that requires being more stubborn than those in the audience who are looking for a steal as opposed to a bargain or fair market value. I don’t do steals, which is why my competition is wiping my dust out of their pocketbooks.