Roses

by Leila Meacham

  She looked for the portrait now, but it was missing. Another mystery. Green, she thought, moving toward the mirrored closet doors. Uncle Ollie would have chosen green. She selected a dress of the simple lines and luxurious fabric Aunt Mary would have preferred, pausing to push the slippers with their peeping eyes under the bed out of sight before she left the room.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  After unpacking, Rachel settled glumly behind her great-aunt’s desk in her office to start her round of calls using a private line. Outside its closed door, the house telephone rang constantly, Sassie and Henry alternating taking messages. She’d left word that she was not to be disturbed to take inquiries from the press.

  She’d gotten through most of the list when Henry poked his head in from the hallway. “Miss Rachel, you’ll want to answer this. Line two.”

  “Who is it, Henry?”

  “Matt Warwick.”

  Rachel picked up the receiver immediately. “Matt Warwick!” she exclaimed, feeling a rush of pleasure. “It’s been a while.”

  “Too long,” Matt said. “I wish we didn’t have to keep meeting like this. You still have my handkerchief?”

  Rachel smiled. So he remembered the last time they’d met. She glanced at the handkerchief she’d brought down to remind herself to return it to him. “I’m looking at it right now,” she said. “I’d hoped to give it back to you in person long before now.”

  “Amazing that we haven’t had the opportunity. You’d think there was some divine conspiracy to keep us apart. Why don’t we take care of that right now? Granddad’s finally fallen asleep after being up most of the night, and I’m at your service. Maybe I could drive you somewhere? Or head off a few casseroles while you rest?”

  It was as if an arm had come around her shoulders, strong and comforting, the same arm that had been there for her when Uncle Ollie had died. She had never forgotten. She glanced at the notes she’d made from speaking with the funeral director. “How would you feel about taking me to the mortuary to… see Aunt Mary? Her body has been released from the coroner’s and they’re waiting for the viewing dress.”

  “It would be my privilege,” he said, his voice softening. “How about some lunch first?”

  “I’d like that. Thirty minutes?”

  She flipped the intercom button to tell Sassie she’d be leaving the house for a while and not to worry about lunch for her. Then she took out her compact to repair the ravages of a sleepless night and her periodic crying jags, aware of a familiar quiver of anticipation. It had been twelve years since she’d felt this particular flutter. The gloomy drive to Howbutker with her father in June 1973 to attend Uncle Ollie’s funeral had held one bright spot for her: She’d see Matt Warwick again. On that occasion, the object of her distant crush had fully met her expectations. He was drop-dead handsome, mature, and confident, as easygoing as she remembered, but disappointingly cool toward her. The reason had not come to light until the reception, when he’d found her crying her heart out in the gazebo while everybody else was eating and drinking inside the house.

  “Here,” he’d said none too kindly, and thrust out a handkerchief. “Looks like you could use another one of these.”

  “Thank you,” she’d said gratefully, and covered her face, embarrassed that he’d caught her in such a state.

  “Sounds to me like a lot more’s going on there than your sorrow for your uncle Ollie,” he’d remarked.

  Her face had shot up from the handkerchief, and she’d stared at him out of sandpapery eyes. How did he know? It was at that time she’d discovered that a big part of grief was guilt, and she was feeling plenty of it that day in the gazebo—guilt for her treatment of Uncle Ollie, guilt for going back on her promise to her mother. That morning, she had broken the news to her that she would be staying in Howbutker.

  I don’t know that I can forgive you for this, Rachel.

  Mama, please try to understand. Aunt Mary is all alone now. She needs me here.

  And we both know why, don’t we?

  It will be all right, Mama.

  No, it won’t. It’s never going to be all right again.

  Matt had sat beside her on the swing, his expression unfeeling. “Would all that angst have to do with dropping the DuMonts from your prom card for three years? They lived for your visits in the summer, you know, and you left them high and dry. You broke their hearts, especially Mister Ollie’s. He adored you.”

  She had gasped in shock, the tears streaming again. “Oh, Matt, I had no choice!” And to her complete surprise—because she couldn’t bear to have him mad at her, too—she’d sobbed out the whole story. She’d revealed the family secrets that had led to her promise to her mother and described her pain in being separated from Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie and having to give up her garden and her dream of becoming a farmer. And now, to make it all worse, Uncle Ollie had died without ever knowing how much she had loved him.

  And somehow in the blubbering, she’d wound up with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her, the handkerchief soaked along with the lapel of his navy blue blazer.

  When finally the tears had subsided to hiccups, he’d said, “Your uncle Ollie was a very wise, understanding man. I’ll bet right now he’s sitting on the edge of the sweet by-and-by saying to himself, ‘Mon Dieu! I knew it had to be something like that to keep our Rachel from us.’ ”

  She’d gazed at him, raw-eyed. “You think so?”

  “I’d bet on it.”

  “Do you win your bets?”

  “Nearly always,” he’d said.

  “How do you do it?”

  “I bet only on what I believe to be a sure thing.”

  Rachel smiled to herself, remembering, and snapped her compact shut. The next day, he had returned to Oregon, where the company had an office, but he’d left her with a lighter heart and the handkerchief now in her purse. From then on, they had passed each other, as Uncle Ollie had remarked, on in- and outbound trains. Now that he’d mentioned it, it did seem as if by design their paths had not crossed sometime in all these twelve years.

  She wondered if she’d find him as attractive as she remembered—if he’d developed a paunch or was beginning to lose his hair. Her infatuation had faded with time, and another man had come along to make her forget Matt Warwick altogether. As for him, there had been the beauty in California to whom he’d become engaged: “A debutante from San Francisco,” Aunt Mary had said. “Very lovely, though she doesn’t seem quite right for Matt, in my opinion.”

  The marriage had not happened, and the man in her life had flown away—literally—so here they were now, both unattached and back at the gazebo, so to speak.

  The doorbell rang, and her heart jumped. She grabbed her purse and the viewing dress in its plastic cleaner’s bag and hurried to answer it before Sassie could bustle out from the kitchen and talk Matt into staying for lunch. In the hall, she glanced into the mirror and grimaced. She’d not been able to mask the dim shadows under her eyes or do much with hair that showed her hurried departure from Lubbock. She sighed. Well, she would have to do. She opened the door.

  Their grins broke simultaneously. “Well, look at you,” he said.

  “Please don’t. I can clean up better—honestly.”

  “Don’t do it for my sake,” he said. “I might not be able to take it.”

  Her grin widened. “You’re so much as I remember, Matt Warwick.”

  “I’ll take it that’s good?”

  “That’s splendid,” she said.

  He laughed and gave her his hand to draw her out onto the porch. “I just spotted a covered-dish brigade headed this way. Should we get out of here before you’re waylaid?”

  “Please,” she said, and they locked hands and flew like conspirators down the steps to a Range Rover marked Warwick Industries on its doors. Once under way, she settled back, sighing audibly, feeling the tension drain out of her.

  “Long night, huh?” Matt said.

  “One of the longest of my lif
e. How’s your grandfather?”

  “Hard to tell. He’s the toughest man I’ve ever known—even at ninety—but Mary’s death may be his undoing.”

  “I was afraid of that. They were awfully close friends.”

  “Oh, they were much more than that,” Matt said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you about it over lunch, and you’re staring, by the way. Not fair. I’ve got to keep my eyes on my driving.”

  She flushed. She found him actually more of what she remembered—completely hewn and polished off, like strong, solid wood, and she liked the hint of premature gray showing at his temples. “I’m curious, Matt—no, amazed—at how you’ve managed to escape the snares of some wily female for so long.”

  He chuckled. “You go first. I heard there was someone… an air force pilot.”

  “There was. He was stationed at Reese Air Force Base near Lubbock. We met on the side of the road when my car ran out of gas.”

  Matt hiked a brow at her. “Ran out of gas? A sensible girl like you?”

  “Somebody siphoned off all but the gas fumes. You can’t imagine how good a United States Air Force officer looks to a girl alone on a long, deserted road at ten o’clock at night.”

  “And what were you doing on a long, deserted road? Better still, what was he doing there?”

  “I was driving in from the fields. We’d had a long day of harvesting. I never noticed the gas gauge that morning. He was out for a drive. One of his friends in the squadron had been killed that afternoon on a training mission. He took me to a gas station. I bought a five-gallon drum, and he drove me back to my car with it.”

  “And then he followed you home.”

  Rachel nodded. “He followed me home.” She toyed with the handkerchief. “But it didn’t work out. Our careers didn’t mesh. I’m a woman of the earth, and he’s a man of the air. Now, what about you? I seem to recall a San Francisco belle almost getting you to the altar.”

  “Another case of irreconcilable differences.”

  “Oh.” His flat tone discouraged further questions, and she wondered if he still carried a torch for the girl he didn’t marry. They must have had some differences for her to let Matt get away. “By the way, here’s your handkerchief,” she said.

  “Keep it. You may need it before we’re through.”

  They drove to a coffee shop next to a Holiday Inn on the interstate, Matt explaining his choice as the only place where they’d have a chance to eat and talk undisturbed. “Otherwise,” he said, “everybody and his second cousin will be stopping by our table to offer condolences.”

  “The handicap to living in a small community, I guess,” Rachel said, “but I confess it’s what I like about little towns… the feeling of everybody sharing the same nest. Are you glad to be back?” She’d been told his grandfather had stepped down and he’d taken his position as president of the company.

  Matt consulted the menu. “I believe I can say now more than ever.”

  Rachel felt her cheeks warm with a feeling she’d not known for a long time. “Could we talk awhile before ordering?” she suggested.

  Matt promptly laid aside the menu. “Only coffee for now,” he said to the waitress.

  When she’d moved away, Rachel said, “Okay, give. What makes you say that Aunt Mary and your grandfather were more than friends?”

  “This will come as a shock,” he said, and commenced to describe Mary’s moment of confusion on the courthouse common when she’d mistaken him for his grandfather. “There was something so plaintive in her voice and the way she held out her arms to me,” he concluded. “It just about broke my heart.”

  “And she honestly said, ‘Percy, my love’?”

  “Her words exactly. And when I told Granddad of the incident, he admitted the same feelings for her and that he’d loved her since the day she was born.”

  Rachel sat back, stunned. She had never suspected a romantic interest between Aunt Mary and Percy. “Then why in the world didn’t they marry?”

  Matt lifted his coffee mug to his lips—for time to frame his answer, she thought. After he’d drunk and carefully set down the mug, he said, “Somerset happened, so Granddad said.”

  A scene unfolded in her head. She was sitting with Aunt Mary in the Ledbetter house, where she had finished pouring out news of her devastating breakup with Steve Scarborough. She was twenty-five. Aunt Mary had listened with unnerving calmness, her green eyes smoky. Finally she spoke: I think you may be making a mistake you’ll regret bitterly someday, Rachel. No attachment is worth giving up the man you love.

  Rachel heard her in disbelief. She’d expected Aunt Mary to applaud her decision. Steve wanted no part of farming. He had grown up the son of a Kansas wheat farmer and knew too well the thankless demands the land imposed. But what did Aunt Mary know? Uncle Ollie had always supported her love of land and family name. She’d never had to choose between her vocation and the man she loved. Her back stiffened. There are other fish in the sea, Aunt Mary, one who’ll understand that I am my attachment—that I am what I do. She’d smiled slightly. Maybe I’ll get lucky and meet an Ollie DuMont.

  But chances are never another Steve Scarborough.

  Matt said, “Rachel?”

  Rachel blinked and was back in the present. “Did… your grandfather explain what he meant by that statement?”

  “That was all I could get from him, but I’m assuming it had to do with another one of those irreconcilable differences. Somewhere along the way, my grandmother learned of their relationship. I suppose it’s the reason they’ve lived apart all these years and why she hates Mary.”

  The waitress returned to take their order, pencil poised and eyebrow quirked at Rachel, still sitting mute and blank-eyed. “We’ll have the lunch special,” Matt ordered for both of them, and when she had gone, he covered Rachel’s hand with his. “I know this has come as a surprise, Rachel, but Mary married a good man. None could have loved her more, not even Granddad.”

  She said slowly, “She always seemed so happy with him.”

  “She was content. There’s a difference. Did you and your mother ever patch things up?”

  The question startled her out of her daze. “No, we never did.” She said in pleased surprise, “You still remember what I confided to you in the gazebo?”

  “Almost every teary word, and I’m sorry nothing’s changed. Let’s see if I remember how it went. Against your mother’s wishes—and her testamentary hopes for your father—you went on to get your degree in… agronomy, wasn’t it? Since then you’ve been learning the cotton business at Mary’s knee.”

  “That says it all,” she said, flattered that he had kept up with her through the years. “When it came right down to it, I couldn’t abandon what I was meant to do.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “Oh, sure, but I would have had worse regrets if I hadn’t followed through.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He said with an admiring shake of his head, “You’re very fortunate to be so positive.”

  “Only about that. Why are you grinning?”

  He picked up his coffee cup. “A bit of private humor. I was remembering something somebody said recently about apples.”

  AT THE FUNERAL HOME, she felt Matt’s presence like a bracing wind at her back. A hard moment came when she first looked upon her great-aunt in death. She lay under a sheet, her face a mask of cold, ancient beauty, the dark lashes and widow’s peak stark, the Toliver dimple austere in her bloodless flesh. “You… haven’t done anything to her yet?” Matt asked the mortician, an arm tight around Rachel’s waist.

  “We were waiting for the dress,” the man replied.

  Later, in meetings with the funeral director, florist, and minister, Matt’s calm manner and quiet voice steered her over the emotional hurdles of selecting a casket, flowers, and the order of the service. Finally, their appointments completed, he asked, “Where next?” They were
seated in the Range Rover in the parking lot of the First Methodist Church. His hand lay on the back of her seat, and she felt his resistance to touch her hair. “You must be awfully tired. I should take you back.”

  She heard reluctance in his concern. “What time is it?”

  He glanced at his wristwatch. “Four o’clock.”

  “It’s early yet,” she said.

  “So where else may I take you?”

  “Would you drive me out to Somerset?”

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Back at Warwick Hall, Matt was relieved to find his grandfather in the library, looking rested and immaculately attired in an ivory silk sport shirt and sharply creased slacks. He was mixing a Scotch and water at the bar. “Want one of these?” he asked as Matt strode in.

  “I’m already high enough.”

  Percy gave him a schoolmaster’s stare. “Oh, me,” he said, and took down another tumbler. “I was afraid this was going to happen. You’re smitten with Rachel Toliver. Sassie said you were together when she called to invite us to supper.”

  “I’m more than smitten, Granddad. I haven’t felt like this since… well, never.” Not even with Cecile, he thought. He had been gone from Rachel five minutes and already he was missing her. He’d let her out in front of the Toliver mansion, feeling a moment’s bereavement when she opened the car door. He’d watched her walk up the steps, his heart tensed as if she might disappear before his eyes, and on the verandah she’d turned and given him a smile. “See you in a little while,” she’d mouthed, and he’d thought, out of the blue, For the rest of my life, I hope.