Roses

by Leila Meacham

  Immediately, Alice had snatched her infant daughter into the harbor of her own arms, and William had read in her action that to his wife, living in the world of Houston Avenue would result in a constant fight to keep and hold that which was hers. No one could mitigate her sense of feeling hopelessly out of place, not even his sweetly mannered uncle, whom she’d liked at once. Because he had “rescued” her husband, she tolerated Amos Hines, who was now thoroughly entrenched in the way of life he’d chanced into. Percy Warwick, his blond hair silvered, tanned and still fit at sixty-one, literally took her breath away. She pronounced him handsomer than any movie star and thought his wife must be crazy to go off and leave a man like him alone.

  Even so, for all the unfailing courtesy shown her, Alice had felt as inappropriate in the elegant company of Houston Avenue as flour sacking among silks and satins.

  The evening before they were to return to Kermit, his aunt had asked him to sit with her for a while in the gazebo. “Your wife does not like me,” she stated in her direct way when they were seated on the swing. “She isn’t comfortable with us here among the pines.”

  William cared too much for her to deny it. “She’s never been out of West Texas,” he said.

  “The important thing is that she loves you, William, and that she’s made you happy.”

  “You mean that, Aunt?” He regarded her in surprise. This was a different tune from the one he’d expected to hear, certainly a change from the verse she’d sung when he was a boy. Commitment to one’s name, to one’s heritage, to that which the sacrifices of others had made possible—that was the song he used to hear from Aunt Mary.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “If I’ve learned anything by now, it’s that some things are too priceless to sacrifice for a name. You go on back to Kermit and don’t worry about anything you may have thought you left behind.”

  She spoke sincerely, he could tell, but the stoicism with which she told him to forget what had been her life’s work tore at his heart. He spoke softly in the darkness. “Aunt Mary, what about the plantation? What’s going to happen to it when… you’re…”

  “Dead and gone or too old to run it anymore? Why, I’ll sell it. You’ll receive the proceeds as my heir even if Ollie succeeds me. It’s already taken care of in the will. The house I may leave to the Conservation Society.”

  “It’s such a shame….” Through a film of tears, William studied his crippled hand. “I’m so sorry, Aunt.”

  “Don’t be.” She slipped her hand over his. “Somerset has always cost too much. It’s brought a curse to the Tolivers. No use now enlightening you as to that. Be glad your children will grow up free of Somerset. Take Alice and that beautiful little girl home and enjoy your life, though how that’s possible in a sand pit, I’ll never know.” William caught the sliver of a smile in the darkness.

  He asked, “Did you find the red rose I left on your pillow the morning I ran away?”

  “Yes, William, I found your rose.”

  That night when he went up to bed, he found a white one lying on his pillow.

  Thinking of that time, he felt a pang of conscience. No matter that Aunt Mary had forgiven him, he’d always believed he owed her for running out on her. Maybe Alice had been right about that, too. Deep down, maybe his main reason for taking Rachel to Howbutker in 1966 was to make up for what he’d done—or hadn’t done—because he’d known that no matter what Aunt Mary had stated in the gazebo, she could not resist a chance to install another Toliver on the land. Still, that would have been all right, too, if he hadn’t shared with Alice the conversation between him and his aunt that night. If it hadn’t been for that information and the fact that his great-grandfather had not seen fit to leave his son an acre of family soil, mother and daughter would still be united.

  He heard the telephone ring, and in a moment Alice came to the door. “Your lord and master is on the phone asking where in hell you are,” she said.

  William’s mouth pulled to one side. “Now how did he know where I’d be?”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Amos was at the Howbutker Municipal Airport when the small Cessna Citation bearing the name Toliver Farms landed at ten o’clock. He knew he looked ghastly, as if he’d spent time in a Tijuana jail. His face, never one to crow about at the best of times, had shocked him when he went to shave this morning, but how could it not? His guts felt twisted into ball bearings, and he’d been unable to sleep, getting up at three o’clock and spending the rest of the night on his terrace listening to the screech of alley cats in heat.

  Dear God, help us all, he prayed as the door to the sleek little jet opened and the short flight of steps popped down. A minute later, Rachel appeared, saw him, and waved. Amos experienced a woozy feeling of déjà vu. How like Mary she looked, when he’d first seen her standing at the top of the stairs in Ollie’s department store. Rachel was far younger, of course, but so utterly like her in loveliness and—as Mary had appeared then—looking distressed. He waved back and fixed a smile.

  Rachel hurried toward him, tanned legs gleaming in white culottes, and threw her arms around his neck. “Dear Amos,” she said, her voice tender and warm. “How are you?”

  “About the same as you, I expect,” he said, hugging her close.

  “Then we’ll be a mess together.” She linked an arm through his and motioned the pilot to follow with her bags to his car, a dark blue Cadillac as conspicuous in size but as unobtrusive as Amos himself. “I wasn’t able to convince my family to come with me, as you can see,” she said, “but they should arrive by noon tomorrow. My mother’s coming, too. Tell me the plans you’ve made.”

  She felt as light as a sprite on his arm—a sacrificial maiden unaware of her doom. “The funeral is set for eleven o’clock Monday, with the burial at three. Viewing hours are tentatively set for Saturday morning from ten until twelve and from five to seven, if those times are all right with you.”

  “They’re ideal,” Rachel said. “They’ll allow time for all of us to catch our breaths. Anything else?”

  He cited other details subject to her approval. He’d given the go-ahead for the burial plot next to Ollie’s to be prepared since Mary had not wished to be cremated. And to spare Sassie and Henry, themselves terribly bereaved, he’d booked the church parlor for the reception after the funeral. No use having hundreds of people tramping through the house, dropping food everywhere. Let the Women’s Auxiliary at the First Methodist Church handle it. There would be plenty of folks paying their respects at Houston Avenue anyway.

  “Seems as if you’ve thought of everything,” Rachel said. “What’s left for me to do?”

  “You’ll need to choose a viewing dress for Mary and decide on the coffin and family flowers. I’ve prepared a folder of my notes and the telephone numbers and names of personnel for you to contact. They’re waiting to hear from you. Also, today, you’ll have to go over the obituary in case you wish to add anything. Mary wrote it herself and included it with her legal documents. The funeral home requested it by four o’clock.”

  Rachel stopped in her tracks. “Aunt Mary had already written her obituary? Did she know she was in failing health?”

  “Well… as I’ve said, she never mentioned heart trouble to me. As for the obituary”—he attempted a weak grin—“it’s been my professional experience that southern ladies of a certain age, long before the event of their deaths, like to compose their own histories for print rather than leave the task to relatives. In Mary’s case, I believe she wanted to keep hers simple and direct. No flowery embellishments.”

  “How long ago was it written?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t testify to the date.”

  “Then I’ll leave it as it is, but I’m surprised that Aunt Mary would have even bothered with it.”

  They had reached the car. The pilot caught up with them and loaded her luggage into his trunk. “Well, Miss Toliver,” he said, sticking out his hand when he’d finished, “it’s been nice knowing you.”

&n
bsp; Rachel took the hand as if she didn’t quite know what to do with it. “What do you mean, Ben? Where are you going?”

  “Why, didn’t you know? My contract has been terminated as of this last flight. I was supposed to have flown Mrs. DuMont to Lubbock today, but… I brought you here instead. This is my last run for Toliver Farms.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mrs. DuMont.”

  “Did you and she have a disagreement of some kind?”

  “No, ma’am. She simply told me she’d have no more need of my services. Scuttlebutt has it that the plane has been sold.”

  “Sold?” Rachel turned to Amos. “Did you know anything about this?”

  He lifted his shoulders and looked innocent, but he felt the blood sluice from his face. “She never said anything to me about getting rid of the plane.”

  Rachel swung back to the pilot. “Ben, I don’t know what to say, but I’ll get to the bottom of this. There must be some mistake.”

  “Well, in case it is, you have my card and know where to reach me,” Ben said.

  Rachel stared after the retreating pilot, looking perplexed. “You know,” she mused, “this is the second incident that makes me think something’s going on in regard to the farms that I’m unaware of. Yesterday a representative from a textile company we’ve sold to for years informed me that our contract would not be renewed.” She turned questioningly to Amos. “Do you think Aunt Mary knew she had a short time to live and was making certain changes prior to her death? Do you suppose that was the reason she was coming out to see me?”

  Amos patted his pockets distractedly in a pretense of searching for his keys, feigning relief when he found them. “You know that your great-aunt was not one to share confidences,” he hedged. “I’m sure all will come to light soon enough. Which reminds me, Rachel. Do you think that after the burial, you and your family could meet in my office around five o’clock for the reading of the will?”

  “I’m sure that will be fine with them. They’ll want to get everything over as soon as possible so that they can leave for Kermit the next morning. I’ll stay on, of course. I’ve left my foreman in charge in Lubbock and will run things from Aunt Mary’s office for a while. Too bad that Addie Cameron retired when she did. I could have certainly used her help.”

  “Indeed…,” he murmured, keeping his eye steady on maneuvering the car off the tarmac. It had been another clue he should have picked up on, the recent and unexpected early retirement of Mary’s trusty assistant after she had worked twenty years for her as her right hand. She was now living—and no doubt well compensated—near her son’s family in Springfield, Colorado. It would be a miracle if Rachel did not learn of the sale of the farms prior to the funeral, and Lord only knew what her reaction would be. This morning, he’d been on the phone to Mary’s lawyers in Dallas to inquire how much longer the news of the sale would be held from the business community. Not long, they’d warned, once the media picked up on the fact of Mary’s death.

  When he pulled up before the Toliver mansion, Henry, wearing a black armband, came out to greet them and carry in Rachel’s bags. “I can take it from here, Amos,” she said, the folder under her arm. “Go home and get some rest. Forgive my saying so, but you look as if you could use it.”

  “Yes… yes, I will do that. One word of caution before I leave you, Rachel. I suggest you refuse to speak to reporters until after the funeral… as a matter of propriety. I’m sure it’s what Mary would have wished.”

  “Good advice.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Go grab a nap and then come back for dinner. We’ll invite Percy and Matt, too. I’m sure they’ll want to be with us.”

  Through his rearview mirror as he put the car in gear, Amos observed her climb the verandah steps, back straight and head held high—as though already feeling the weight of the crown. Sighing deeply, his sorrow twisting like a knife inside him, he prayed again, Dear God, help us all.

  AS ALWAYS WHEN IT HAD been a while since Rachel had been home, Sassie threw open the front door when she reached the verandah and embraced her in a bear hug, her smooth dark face, endearingly at odds with her cap of wiry gray curls, puckering into tears. “Oh, Miss Rachel, thank the Lord you’re here,” she cried, her rich, clean smell as much a part of Houston Avenue as the scent of honeysuckle growing over the backyard fence.

  “It happened right over there,” she said when they’d parted, and pointed to an area where two wide-armed chairs had been thrown back from a table. “She collapsed right over there. I should have never left her, what with her actin’ so strange and all. I knew she wasn’t herself.”

  Rachel stepped to the spot. “How was she acting strangely, Sassie?”

  “Why, she was drinkin’, Miss Rachel, and you know your aunt never drunk nothin’ stronger than lemonade, not even at Christmastime when a little eggnog never hurt nobody. But she done come in from town ’bout lunchtime, and she sit right down in the heat where you’re standin’ and had me bring her out a bottle of champagne.”

  Rachel frowned. That was strange, Aunt Mary drinking liquor, let alone at noon on the verandah during the hottest month of the summer. “Maybe she was celebrating something.”

  “Well, if she was, I don’t know what. Besides, that ain’t the way Miss Mary would celebrate nohow. But that’s not the only thing. Before that, she had Henry go up to the attic to find Mister Ollie’s old army trunk and unlock the lid. That’s what she was ravin’ about when I found her. ‘I got to get to the attic… I got to get to the attic.’ I figured it was the liquor talkin’, though she seemed sober enough when she cried out your name, Miss Rachel.”

  “So Amos told me,” Rachel said, her eyes smarting. “Did Aunt Mary say what she wanted out of the trunk?”

  Sassie fanned herself with the skirt of her apron. “You know Miss Mary was tighter’n a tick on a dog when it come to impartin’ her business. No, she didn’t tell neither of us nothin’. I asked her if Henry could get it for her, and she ’bout had a fit. Said she was the only one who knew what she was looking for.”

  Rachel thought a moment. “I believe Aunt Mary was very sick and knew she was dying, Sassie. That’s why she disappeared to Dallas without letting any of us know. I think she was seeing a doctor. She had Henry open the trunk in order to get something out of it—a personal item, I suspect—that she didn’t want found after her death.”

  Sassie looked somewhat relieved. “Well, now, in light of everything else that’s happened round here, that makes sense.”

  Rachel took her arm. “Let’s go inside and you can tell me the rest over iced tea.”

  When they were seated at the kitchen table, two frosted glasses of sweetened tea between them, Sassie said, “I shoulda known somethin’ was wrong when Miss Mary up and left town for so long without tellin’ Mister Percy. Mister Amos, he was hurt, too.”

  “How long was she gone?”

  “Nearly four weeks.”

  Rachel sipped her tea. “What else has happened around here to support my suspicion?”

  Sassie snorted. “Her lettin’ Miss Addie go with such short notice. That shoulda told me somethin’, and then there was them pearls of hers, the ones she always wore when she dressed up.”

  “What about them?”

  “She left here wearin’ ’em, but Henry say she wasn’t when she come out of Mister Amos’s office.”

  “She must have left them with him,” Rachel suggested. “Did you know that she was flying out to see me today?”

  “Yes’m, that I did know, but only barely. She told me just before she left for Mister Amos’s office. I found her overnight bag packed when I took her purse up to her room after the ambulance come. I didn’t know nothin’ ’bout it ’forehand, though.”

  “No, neither did I.”

  The doorbell rang. “Oh, Lawsey, here comes the first of the food. Well, we can use it with all the mouths we goin’ be feedin’.”

  The cook ambled out, and Rachel mused over the series of indicato
rs that pointed to the near certainty that Aunt Mary had been aware of her coming death. The champagne itself was a conclusive clue. Aunt Mary had once told her, “Alcohol for me is a passport to places I’ve no desire to revisit. Someday when I’m old and whiter-haired than I am now… when there’s no time left… I may go back.”

  And the missing pearls was another sign. The pearls were coming to her. It would have been like Aunt Mary to leave them with Amos rather than in the safe—perhaps to give her after the reading of the will as another token of her last regards. But if so, why hadn’t he realized that something was amiss?

  She got up from the table wearily, too mentally tired to sort it all out. I’m sure all will come to light soon enough, Amos had said. Sassie returned, and she informed her of his arrangements and her family’s plan to arrive the next day. “I’ll go up and select a viewing dress before I unpack. Then I’ll start with the calls on Amos’s list. He provided the names of a couple to assist you and Henry, Sassie. I’ll contact them first.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout me, honey chile. I’d rather be movin’ and doin’ than restin’ and thinkin’.”

  Upstairs, Rachel found her great-aunt’s suite of rooms dark, the shutters sealed and the draperies drawn. No consoling residue of her spirit reached out to her as she pushed open the closed door that reminded her of the locked secrets her great-aunt had taken to the grave. The room impressed a coldness upon her in spite of the personal touches that were so warmly Aunt Mary. A pink satin robe she was in the habit of slipping into for a nap after lunch lay across a chair, and a matching pair of open-toed slippers peeped from beneath the bed like the eyes of a banished puppy. A host of family portraits, among them many of Rachel, reigned from the fireplace mantel, and an ornate and well-worn silver vanity set—a wedding present from Uncle Ollie—gleamed from the dresser. Beside it stood the overnight case Aunt Mary had packed for her last trip to Lubbock.

  Rachel had rarely been in this room and then to step no more than a few feet inside. She and Aunt Mary had passed their time together in the library or her office or on the screened back porch. But once, long ago, the door had been left open and a picture among the framed photographs had caught her eye. She’d stolen in and inspected it. The subject was a dark-haired teenage boy—her father, she’d thought at first. But closer study revealed that it wasn’t. His Toliver features were too distinct, and there was a certain strength of character in the young jawline that her father did not possess. She’d turned over the portrait. “Matthew at sixteen,” Aunt Mary had written in her distinctive script. “July 1937. The love of his father’s and my life.” A few months later, the boy was dead. Instinctively, she’d known then that Aunt Mary had never been the same afterward. What else would account for that faint nimbus of sadness that seemed always around her?