RG2 - Twenty-Nine and a Half Reasons

by Denise Grover Swank

  Loneliness for Joe washed over me. I hadn’t talked to him in twenty-four hours and I needed to hear his voice. I leaned over and whispered in Violet’s ear. “Let’s leave early.”

  She pinched her lips together in disapproval and shook her head. “Rose Gardner,” she hissed in my ear. “If you want to fit into this town, you need to make more of an effort.”

  Scowling, I reached into my purse for my phone. I didn’t want to fit into Henryetta. I wanted to run away and never look back.

  She must have known what I was thinking. Wearing a smug smile, she whispered, “You think the Henryetta Garden Club is stuffy? They’re nothing compared to Joe’s family and the company they keep. Consider this practice.”

  I had no idea if her plan was to truly help me fit into high society or make me aware of the hole I was digging myself into with Joe, but either way, I wasn’t happy. Especially when I saw I’d missed a call from him. I rose from my chair, planning to leave the room to call him back, but Violet grabbed my wrist. “Don’t you dare. You sit in that seat until this is over.”

  A blue-haired woman in front of us looked over her shoulder and glared.

  Yep, I was fitting in just fine.

  I sent Joe a text message. Stuck in this boring meeting with Violet and I can’t hear your message yet. I miss you.

  A half-minute later, he texted back. The voice mail has a surprise. :)

  Now I really wanted to hear his message.

  Violet frowned at my phone.

  I had two choices. I could make an excuse to go to the bathroom and irritate Violet more or I could wait. I wanted her as happy as possible when I told her I was moving.

  I sent Joe a text. I have a surprise too.

  Does it involve sexy lingerie?

  No. I blushed and stuffed my phone into my purse.

  An hour later, the speaker finally stopped chattering.

  Violet stood and pulled me to my feet. “We need to introduce you to the Garden Club board.”

  I had no interest in meeting the board. I wanted to hear my message from Joe. “Violet, I really have to pee.”

  Puckering her mouth, she shook her head. “No, you don’t. You have the bladder of a whale. You’re just tryin’ to get out of meeting people. Come on.” She looped her arm around mine and dragged me to the front of the room.

  “We already know Miss Mildred. Why are we doing this?”

  “Stop your whining. You want to be a grownup, then it’s time to act like one.”

  I had no idea what meeting the old regime of the Garden Club had to do with being a grownup. I was sure millions of United States citizens were considered grownups without the pleasure of glad-handing the Henryetta Garden Club. But escaping from Violet’s death grip would cause a scene, which definitely was not a good way to stay on Violet’s good side.

  “Fine.” I huffed.

  She spoke through gritted teeth as we stood in the reception line. “Can you at least try to look like you want to be here?”

  I plastered on a fake smile. “Better?”

  Violet beamed. “Yes.”

  Miss Mildred looked like she sucked on a lemon when Violet and I approached her.

  “What a wonderful presentation, Miss Mildred.” Violet shook her hand. “Having the meeting in the evening was a wonderful idea. Look at all the new faces!”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Not all of them are desirable.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  We moved to the next woman, who looked like she was a hundred years old. She couldn’t have stood more than five feet. Her hair was pure white and I’d seen fewer wrinkles on a raisin.

  “Miss Eloise?” Violet shouted, grabbing the woman’s gnarled hand. “I want you to meet my sister.”

  “You have a blister?”

  Violet shook her head. “No. My sister. My sister Rose.”

  “Roses? Yes, the program was about roses.”

  Violet smiled and moved to another woman.

  I gave Miss Eloise a warm smile as I moved past, but a gold glint on her lapel caught my eye. A pin with a tree, a dog and a bird.

  My stomach cartwheeled and I turned back to her. “Miss Eloise, what a lovely pin you have!”

  She looked confused. “Eh?”

  Violet moved closer to me. “Rose, she’s hard of hearing.”

  I swung my head to face Violet. “I think I’ve deduced that already, Violet, thank you very much. I need to find out about her pin.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I just do, you move on if you like.” I had no desire to be part of the Garden Club board gauntlet and most of the other members seemed to be steering clear of Miss Eloise.

  Violet muttered under her breath and greeted another member.

  I stood directly in front of Miss Eloise, pointing to her lapel. “Your pin,” I shouted. “What does it mean?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “My pin?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes!”

  “It was my grandmother’s.”

  If the pin was her grandmother’s, it was well over a hundred years old. “What does it mean?”

  “Eh?”

  “What does your pin mean?”

  “I’m mean? Well, I never…” She started hobbling away.

  Grabbing her arm, I shook my head. “No!” I dug in my purse, looking for a something to write with. A program lay on a chair by us and I snatched it up, scribbling in large block letters. I held it in front of her.

  WHAT DOES YOUR PIN MEAN?

  She leaned closer, then pulled a pair of reading glasses from her pocket, perching them on her nose.

  Anxious for her answer, I fought to keep from fidgeting.

  She read the note and her face lit up. “Oh!”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What?” I screeched.

  If looks could kill, Violet would have me stuffed and mounted to the wall.

  Miss Eloise patted my arm. “But I can tell you that only four people had them. My grandmother and her three best friends.”

  “Who were her best friends?”

  “Eh?”

  Frustrated, I took the paper back and wrote my question.

  “Oh! Rosemary and Mary Beth Dickens, and Viola Stanford.”

  I wrote out WHAT WERE THEY FOR? and held it up to her.

  “They were friendship pins, dear. A way to show they were a group.”

  DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE OTHER PINS ARE?

  She shook her head, a forlorn look in her eyes. “No, I know that Roberta Malcolm had one. Her grandmother was Viola. Roberta threw herself into the gutter when she married into the Malcolms. A bunch of malcontents and wastrels.”

  That sounded like Skeeter Malcolm.

  I lowered my face to hers. “And the other two?” I said slowly enunciating the words.

  “I think Rosemary married a man named White. I don’t know about the other.”

  “Thank you, Miss Eloise! Thank you so much!”

  Miss Eloise pinched my cheek. “That’s a good girl, interested in Henryetta history. You were born and raised here, weren’t ya?’

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you listen to the young people today. Who you are is tied to where you’re from. Henryetta is in your blood.”

  I couldn’t have disagreed more, but she wouldn’t have understood and I didn’t want to be rude after the information she gave me.

  I hurried over to Violet, who was deep in conversation with the speaker, Mrs. Perkins. “Violet, I have to go. Now.”

  “What on earth is so important that you have to go now?”

  She was right. What did I have to rush to? Who was I gonna share my information with? I could tell Joe, but at this point, I knew he was placating me, trying to keep me out of trouble. Could I tell Mason Deveraux? I doubted he’d care. And besides, I’d been inexcusably rude. I doubted he wanted to hear from me anytime in the near future. Surprisingly, the realization filled me with sadness. />
  Mrs. Perkins stared at the program in my hand with pure evil in her eyes.

  I glanced down to see if anything I’d written could be construed as rude. The front of the leaflet featured Mrs. Perkins’s face, which now sported a drawn in curlicue mustache and devil horns.

  My eyes widened in horror. “Oh, no! I didn’t…this wasn’t…” I stopped. There was no way out of this. I pointed to row of chairs. “I’m just gonna wait over there.”

  Violet didn’t say a word to me and continued her conversation with Mrs. Perkins as though my interruption had never occurred.

  Traitor.

  While I waited for Violet, the Henryetta social debutante, to stop making her rounds, I sat in the now deserted front row, trying to figure out who might have the other two pins. Part of me wondered if I should bother—the Malcolm family had been known to have one, and Skeeter was already on my suspect list. But Joe’s words echoed in my head. Just because a puzzle piece appeared to fit in a spot, it didn’t mean it belonged there.

  I briefly considered calling Mason despite our last argument. I’d tried to find him after I left Neely Kate earlier, but he’d been in court all afternoon. Even if I apologized, he probably still didn’t want to hear from me, not that I blamed him. But he’d said he couldn’t charge Skeeter because he didn’t have enough evidence. Was this important enough to make a difference? I doubted it and a friendship pin sure wasn’t important enough to be calling Mr. Deveraux on his off hours, even though he still might be working. It could wait until morning.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Violet wandered over, looking less surly. I’m sure the empty plate smeared with cake frosting had something to do with that.

  “Are you ready to go?” she asked, her snippy tone barely in check.

  “Does a bear—”

  She shot me the look she saved for Ashley and Mikey when they misbehaved. The expressionless face with one eyebrow slightly raised. “A simple yes or no will do, Rose.”

  “Yes.”

  She threw her plate away as we exited the church hall. Her bad mood had lessened but she was still a bit cranky, and I hadn’t even told her my news yet. As she pulled out of the church parking lot, I knew it was now or never.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Wringing my hands in my lap, I squared my shoulders. “Violet, I need to tell you something.”

  Her head swung side to side and her smile was forced. “No, I need to tell you something first.”

  I groaned. “If this is about Joe, I don’t want to hear it. I’m sick to death of you belittling him.”

  “It’s about me.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  She sounded so serious and so scared, my chest squeezed tight. “What is it?”

  “Mike’s leaving me.”

  Violet drove down Main Street as though it were an ordinary evening, like the world hadn’t just split open and threatened to swallow us all whole.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She inhaled through her nose, her chest expanding. A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “He’s tired of me.”

  “Oh, Violet. No. It’s just a rough patch is all.”

  She pulled up to the four-way stop at the main intersection in town and turned her head to look at me. “No. It’s more than that.”

  “But you both were so happy. Before.”

  Before Momma died. Before I had a midlife crisis at twenty-four. Before I stopped being Violet’s full-time project. Before Violet realized our childhood had been based on a lie.

  A tear ran down her cheek. “Were we? I don’t even know anymore.”

  “But…” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t fix this.

  “We married so young,” Violet sighed, hunching over the steering wheel. “We were babies. We hardly knew who we were let alone what we wanted in life.”

  “What do you want in life?” I whispered.

  She released a tiny sob with a laugh. “I don’t even know. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m Mike’s wife and Ashley and Mikey’s mom, but who am I?”

  I’d done so much soul-searching of my own the last couple of months, I couldn’t even imagine going through it with a family to worry about.

  “Do you still love him? Does he love you?”

  “I think I love him, but not like I used to. And he says he loves me, but I’m not who he married. Funny, he’s not who I married, but I’m still here.”

  I was the first to admit she’d put Mike through hell. Her disapproval of Joe. Her flirting with Austin Kent. But still…

  “He says it’s a break.” Her laugh was bitter. “But we both know what that means.”

  “Do you think…?” I wasn’t sure how to ask without hurting her more. “Do you think there’s someone else?”

  She pulled into my driveway and let the car idle. “What? No. Don’t be silly. It’s Mike we’re talkin’ about.”

  Mike was a good-looking man and had been unhappy for at least a couple of months. An affair didn’t seem as preposterous as Violet made it out to be, but now didn’t seem like a good time to bring it up. “So what are you gonna do? Like…for a job?”

  She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and groaned. “I don’t know. I didn’t go to college like you did.”

  “I only went a semester and a half before Momma made me come home.”

  Twisting her face, she peeked over the arm that gripped the steering wheel. “It’s more than I’ve got.”

  “You’ll come up with something. What do you think you want to do?”

  She sat up, her classic Violet determination etched into her face. The shadows from the fading sunlight made her look older. “I love flowers. You and I both do.”

  “We can thank Daddy for that.”

  Her hand lifted to her mouth and she bit her finger. “I’ve considered taking my half of Momma’s house money and using it to open my own flower business.”

  “Oh.” Violet didn’t know the first thing about running a business and there was already a florist in town, even if they were snippy. “Well that might work…”

  “I thought maybe you’d want to go into business with me.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Oh.”

  Her face lit up and her eyes radiated excitement. “I’ve been researching this for a bit. If we both put in money as collateral, we can get a small business loan. Did you know they give loans to women to start their own small businesses?”

  “Violet, I don’t know…”

  “I was thinking maybe we could open a nursery and we could figure out something to sell in the winter, like Christmas trees. Maybe have a gift shop with it.”

  “Violet…”

  The happiness left her eyes and she looked sadder than I’d ever seen her in my life. “Just think about it, okay? I can’t do this alone.”

  “How long have you been considering all this?”

  “A year.”

  I froze in surprise. This had been going on longer than Momma’s murder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged, looking away. “Mike thought it was a silly idea and wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to tell him that the construction business could be partners with the nursery. But he told me it was flighty and frivolous, and my job was to take care of our children and the house.”

  It made sense now, her desire—her need—to create the perfect house and the perfect children. “Violet, I’m so sorry. You are capable of doin’ whatever you put your mind to.”

  Clasping my hands, she pulled me closer. “You don’t have to decide tonight but think about it, okay? You hate your job at the DMV. This could be good for both of us.”

  How was I going to tell her I was moving to Little Rock? “I turned in my two-week notice yesterday.”

  “You did? Why?”

  “I’d had enough of Suzanne. You’re right. I hated that job.”

  “So what do you plan to do?”

  “I haven’t figured it out yet.” Technically, that was true.

  “S
ee?” she squealed, excited again. “It’s fate!” She pulled me into a hug. “You think about it tonight and we’ll talk more about it tomorrow after the probate meeting.”

  I’d almost forgotten about the probate meeting with all the other craziness in my life. Which reminded me that I hadn’t asked Violet if I could stay at her house for the night.

  Violet loosened her grip. “I have to go. When I get home, Mike and I are sortin’ out the details of his leaving.”

  There was no way I could ask her now. “Do you need me to watch the kids?”

  “Oh no. Mike’s mom is watching them.”

  “Does she know what’s going on?”

  Her face hardened. “Not yet. I’m gonna let Mike tell his parents.”

  I was sure that wouldn’t go over well. “Okay. You take care of yourself and call me if you need anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you, Violet.”

  “I love you too, Rose.”

  I got out of the car and watched her drive away. My whole world quaked beneath me, making me question everything.

  Joe and I weren’t like Violet and Mike. But how could I be sure our relationship would work? The truth was that life didn’t come with guarantees. Every decision was a risk. I just needed to make sure the odds were on my side.

  Odds. I’d promised Mason Deveraux that I’d spend the night somewhere else. I’d convinced myself that it was overly cautious, but knowing Skeeter’s family had had possession of the same kind of pin found at the murder scene made me reconsider. Where was I going to go? I could stay in a motel but most wouldn’t allow dogs. Maybe Muffy could stay with Heidi Joy and her boys.

  With a lump in my stomach, I knocked on their front door.

  Heidi Joy answered the door, the baby on her hip. “Hi, Rose! Your pie was delicious. Thank you so much!”

  “Thanks for watchin’ Muffy. Was she any trouble?”

  “Oh, no! None at all. She’s curled up on the bed with the boys right now while Andy reads them a bedtime story.”

  I smiled hesitantly. “Heidi Joy, I have a huge favor to ask. Do you think Muffy could spend the night with you tonight? I have to go somewhere and I can’t take her with me.”

  She winked. “Got a rendezvous with that hot boyfriend of yours?”