Georgia Rules

by Nanci Turner Steveson

  Dedication

  For Mom—with love and admiration

  Contents

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  On a hot day in June, when all I wanted was to come back from my run and cool off in my room alone, Mama didn’t even give me two minutes recovery time before she sent my world spinning. I was late for lunch, still sweaty, probably smelling like the locker room of a high school football team, and was counting on her to send me off to shower before being allowed at the table. She barely glanced my way. Instead, she wiggled in her seat and cleared her throat twice, then stood up so fast her chair almost fell backward.

  “My word, what good is central air-conditioning if it doesn’t keep you from sweating like a bronc on rodeo night?” She nervously adjusted the little lever under the thermostat on the wall, then sat down again and fanned herself with her hand. “I grew up without air-conditioning, did I tell you that? And believe me, it’s a whole lot hotter where I come from than it ever thought about being here in Atlanta!”

  More sweat broke out on my brow. The wiggle-and-throat-clearing thing was a sign she was about to drop some kind of bomb. I took a sip of sweet tea and swiped a napkin across my forehead. “Yup, you told me.”

  She shifted one more time and before I even had a chance to catch my breath, she laid the biggest kind of crazy ever right in my lap. “Did I happen to mention your daddy left you his farm in Vermont when he died?”

  My daddy had been dead almost four months. I figured there must be something wrong with me because I never felt the type of devastation you’re supposed to feel when a parent dies. It’s not like I knew him that well. Mama had been married to Peter since I was five, and some days I forgot about my daddy altogether. I don’t think I even cried. When my best friend Irene’s dog died, I was near inconsolable for days.

  “No, you didn’t tell me,” I said. “I mean about the farm.”

  Mama picked up her salad fork and pushed lettuce around the plate. “Well, he did. Those kind of things always take time, but we finally got the formal documents. I had the lawyer check everything out. It’s all official. There’s even a trustee. And guess what else? We’re going to live there for one year.”

  That knocked the air right out of me. She might as well have said we were moving to Siberia. Or Montana.

  Her face puckered up like it did when she’d been dipping into her not-so-secret stash of Sour Patch Kids candy. “What are you looking at me like that for?” she asked.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me what you mean.”

  “About what?”

  “About moving to Vermont. Does Peter want to go?”

  Then she pretended to be really invested in her soup, stirring, sipping, studying mint-colored ripples that spread to the painted meadow around the edge of her bowl. “Oh, he’s not going. Just you and me. It will be like an adventure.”

  “And Peter’s not going becaaauuuse . . .”

  Pause.

  “Because he’s decided to divorce us, that’s why.”

  Then she did look at me. Right square in the eyes. And because of what I saw in hers, I didn’t let the hissy fit loose that was simmering just under my skin. She was scared. I took a deep breath and picked up my spoon, drawing in the creamy sensation of chilled soup, letting it coat my tongue and hoping it would have the same soothing effect on my spinning brain.

  “Peter’s decided he likes that friend of his, Albert, better than us, so we’re moving out and Albert’s moving in. If it weren’t for the opportunity your daddy’s farm gives us, I might feel like discarded furniture. But I don’t. Now stop acting so shocked and close your mouth—it’s hanging wide open.”

  My mouth wasn’t hanging open because she’d implied my very proper stepfather was gay. It was hanging open because I couldn’t imagine—if it was true—how he’d kept that a secret for so long. He and Mama didn’t approve of homosexuality. Or at least, that’s what they’d always said to me. One time at dinner, I told them about a discussion some friends and I were having at school about gay marriage. Mama had been so horrified, she’d leaned in to me and whispered, “We don’t discuss things like that, sugar.” Then she’d made me give her the names of all the other kids, and she’d actually called their parents.

  That was my least popular week at school.

  “Well, you can go to Vermont if you want,” I said. “I’m staying in Georgia.” I turned back to my lunch, signaling that my decision was final.

  “And just where do you think you’ll live?”

  “Here. With Peter.”

  Her nostrils flared. “You, Peter, and Albert? Not a chance. We’re going to Vermont and there is nothing more to discuss.” She sat tall and lifted her chin, signaling that her decision was final.

  “Why can’t we stay in Atlanta and just live somewhere else? We can find an apartment near my school.”

  “Do you have any idea how much that fancy school of yours costs? How do you expect me to pay for something like that?”

  “Peter will still pay for it,” I said, my bravado fading. “Won’t he?”

  “He’s not throwing us to the dogs, if that’s what you mean. He’ll give us enough to live on, but I can’t hold my head up in this town anymore, not with this—this dark shadow of shame being cast over my head.”

  She waved her salad fork around in the air.

  “Two divorces, one from a man not right in the head, the other from a man who’s decided he’s in love with another man, and I’m only thirty-three years old! No, this is our chance to start over. You and I are going to Vermont and that’s final.”

  Now it was my turn to wiggle. “But we are coming back after a year, right?”

  “How can I answer that right this second? You always want answers to the most impossible questions when I’m stressed, do you realize that?”

  I wasn’t thirteen yet, but even I knew the truth. Any question was impossible when Mama was like this. It didn’t matter if I asked how her day was, or what the astronauts on Apollo 13 ate for breakfast, it would be too difficult for her to answer. So I shut up.

  “All we need to think about right now is getting through the year. It was in your daddy’s last will and testament. One year, then we can sell the place and have a huge amount of money to live on the rest of our lives. Those four thousand acres are worth a fortune. That’s the only reason I’m taking us back there.”

  “Well, I’m the one in school, so I vote we stay here.”

  “Until you are an adul
t, your vote doesn’t count. So get over it and start packing.”

  Peter didn’t come home until after dinner. I figured he’d planned it that way on purpose because he knew Mama was going to tell me about the divorce. Once inside, he made a beeline for his study, but he left the door open. That meant it was okay to interrupt. He sat at his computer examining a colorful graph on the screen, his back tall and stiff, his starched shirt buttoned to the top, his hair clipped in precise half circles over each ear. It was the same way he sat at the breakfast table, the same way he sat in his car and in the stadium at my track meets. I knocked gently.

  “Come in,” he said.

  I perched on the edge of a leather chair and clasped my hands together, hoping it made me look calm and relaxed on the outside. Inside, things were stormy.

  Peter swung around. “Did you know Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair?”

  I nodded. “You showed me when we went to Monticello.”

  “Yes, I’d forgotten. I did.”

  I shifted uneasily. The speech I’d spent the afternoon preparing escaped out the top of my head like dandelion seeds blown away from the stem.

  “I suppose your mother spoke to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you don’t judge me too harshly.”

  “No.”

  He dipped his head in a teeny-tiny nod and his eyes softened, like he’d really been worried I would judge him.

  “I’ll always see to your finances. You and your mother won’t suffer for funds, and if you ever need anything, you can always call me. You know that, right?”

  Then I remembered what I came to tell him. “I don’t want to go to Vermont.”

  Silence.

  Maybe he didn’t understand I needed his help to make that happen.

  “Can you tell her to stay? I don’t mean in this house, but here, in Atlanta. I don’t want to move.”

  Peter’s left cheek twitched, just under his eye. He folded, then unfolded his hands. His cheek twitched again, and I knew right then that he wasn’t going to help me.

  “I understand,” he said. “I really do. But she’s thinking of your future. It is best.”

  My future? What about now? What about this very minute?

  I waited, hoping he might say something else, something with more promise to it. But he didn’t. Nothing. We stared at each other until his computer screen turned dark in power-save mode.

  “Okay,” I finally said.

  “I’m glad you understand. We’ll talk more before you go.”

  “Okay.”

  Peter reached out and touched my shoulder with his fingertips before turning back to his computer. I left the room feeling shocked and defeated. Really, who moves from the busy city of Atlanta to a town in Vermont so tiny you’ve probably never heard of it, right smack in the middle of summer, when your best friend is an ocean away on vacation and you can’t even say good-bye to her?

  Me. That’s who.

  TWO

  After four long, lonely days in Vermont, we still didn’t have internet. We didn’t even have cell service, because living out in the boonies meant we had to have some special machine to draw in satellite signals. And I still hadn’t ventured outside the big, rambling farmhouse to explore the property that was supposedly now mine.

  All of the above made me cranky. At breakfast, Mama made it clear I had to change my attitude and get on with life.

  “You’re depressed,” she said, jerking the hot sauce bottle so hard it made a red pool in the middle of her grits and burned my nose from across the table. “I am, too, but we have to deal with our current lot in life. It’s only for one year. A person can do almost anything for a year, if they put their mind to it. So put your mind to it and get outside. You’re pale as a ghost.”

  She reached out to touch my cheek, but I pulled away.

  “All you’ve done is lie in bed for four days and read those books of yours. Get outside. Run,” she said. “That always fixes you right up.”

  She was right. Running was the only thing, besides losing myself in a book, that guaranteed happiness for a while. After lunch, I headed outside, fully intending to start by running a mile. I didn’t get very far. Instead, I stopped at the threshold of a big red barn on the property. I was scared to go inside. On the drive up north, Mama’d said my daddy had lived and died in that old barn. I wasn’t sure how literal she’d been, but what if his ghost was still lurking around, waiting for me to show up?

  I put my face close to a gap in the door and cocked my ear, listening for who knows what. The only sound came from the wisp of falling dust. That’s pretty darn quiet.

  “Magnolia Grace?”

  I launched a foot in the air and landed looking in the other direction, my hands up in front of my face. A man with skin as dark as midnight stood about ten feet away, with a black and brown dog sitting on its haunches by his side.

  “Oh! Who are you?”

  He took a step closer and put his hand out like he wanted to shake, then changed his mind and stuffed it back into the pocket of his jeans.

  “I’m Deacon. I live over there in the caretaker cottage,” he said, indicating a small building tucked into the edge of the woods. He reached down and scratched behind the dog’s ears. “And this is Quince. She and I have been watching over the place for you since your father passed.”

  My nerves jangled. Mama hadn’t said anything about some man living on the property. That didn’t mean he was lying—half the time, whatever Mama said could be all lie, part lie, or shaded truth. But you’d think she’d have told me something this important so I didn’t get spooked, like I was right then.

  “Does my mama know you’re here?”

  He nodded. “She does. I’m sorry if she didn’t mention it. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “How did you know my daddy?”

  Deacon smiled, and when he did, a tingling sensation dropped over my head like a veil.

  “Oh, that’s a long story. I don’t want to interrupt your visit to the barn. You go on in. We can talk another time.”

  I looked through the gap in the door and shook my head. “I’m not going in there. It’s creepy.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “That barn isn’t going anywhere. Part of it is on the historic registry.” He jerked his chin toward the house. “I think your mama might be looking for you.”

  Sure enough, Mama was watching from the porch of the white clapboard house, hands on hips, her hair already done up all blond and big. She was wearing a pair of supertight black leggings, a hot-pink polo, and drippy pearl earrings. She looked completely out of place.

  “Guess I’d better go inside.”

  Deacon nodded. “We’re right over there if you need anything,” he said, indicating the cottage. “Teakettle is always on.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you.”

  I started across the gravel driveway, checking to see if Mama was mad I’d been talking to a stranger. We weren’t allowed to do that in Georgia.

  “Magnolia?”

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  “Is that what they call you? Magnolia? Or your full name, Magnolia Grace?”

  “No one calls me Magnolia. I’m Maggie.”

  “Maggie,” he said. “Okay, Maggie it is. But just so you know, to your father you were always Magnolia Grace.”

  At lunch I sat by the big kitchen window looking out to a grassy field that sloped gently away from the house. A crooked wooden gate hung from a fence going across the yard. Wildflowers dotted the field in no particular order—yellow and pink, orange and fuchsia, with an occasional stalk of something blue mixed in. The field stopped abruptly at the edge of a forest scattered with tall trees with white bark.

  The view was so different from the manicured lawns and bordered azalea gardens I’d known back home. Atlanta felt so far away. Mama was silent while she set our food out.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about that man Deacon who lives here?” I asked.

  Sh
e ignored me and grumbled something instead about the house not having a proper dining room. It really bothered her, even though the kitchen was twice as big as the one back home and had enough room for two dining room tables. Plus, it had an actual fireplace in the corner, made from blue-gray stones, with these black hooks inside to hang pots from, like they did in the olden days. I’d never seen a fireplace in a kitchen before.

  “He lives in that old building on the other side of the barn with his dog, Quince. Have you seen it? The shed? Or cottage, I guess he called it. They call stuff by different names here, I think.”

  She sat down with a plunk and laid a paper towel across her lap. “Now, how would you know if they have different names for things? This was the first time you were even outside the house.”

  It wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t answer. Instead I bit into my chicken salad sandwich, put together the same way our housekeeper, Clarissa, made it back in Georgia, with chopped apples and pecans.

  “Do pecans grow in Vermont?”

  No answer.

  “I could look it up myself,” I said. “Well, if we had internet I could. Why is it going to take so long for the cable people to come?”

  “Because that’s the way things happen in the boonies,” she said. “I can assure you, if I’d known there wasn’t even a TV in this house, let alone internet, I would have made arrangements long before we left. And to think people say Southerners are slow.”

  “Why do people say Southerners are slow?”

  Mama picked at her bread crust. “Sugar, did you wake up today and decide to ask a year’s worth of questions I don’t have answers to? Because that’s the way it feels, and I’m not in the mood. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now and would appreciate a little sensitivity to my needs.”

  Mama’s needs were always requiring my sensitivity. I grew up understanding that her needs were first and foremost in our lives. Mine came second. Or third. Or tenth, depending on who else was around at any particular moment. I shut up and studied a flock of birds that rose together out of the tall grass and flew away in unison, disappearing over the tops of the trees. A little something lonely tugged at my heart.

  THREE