“Please, do not tell her that. I don’t want to encourage her for—”
“Sticking up for herself?”
“I just want to keep her out of jail. Don’t forget, her sister, Patsy, is my granddaughter too. I’m hoping to have a relationship with all three girls. I know Rett is hurt, but Patsy is hurting too and has a bigger problem.”
Mel was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was subdued. “I’m sorry, Love. I don’t mean to make light of this. I know it must be hard.”
She sighed and switched the phone to her other ear. “No need to apologize. It’s not exactly the relationship I’d always imagined having with my grandchildren.”
“Nothing ever is what we imagine, is it?” Mel’s voice sounded so sad and, not for the first time, Love wondered about her family. In their three years of friendship, she’d rarely spoken of her parents. If she’d ever said anything to Cy, she’d obviously sworn him to secrecy, and as close as Cy and Love were, he would have honored his promise.
“Sweetie, are you all right?” Love asked. Though she knew Mel’s mother lived in Las Vegas, she didn’t know anything about her father, if he was alive or just gone. The holidays had to be hard for her. She’d shared three Christmases with Cy, Love, Polly and August. As far as Love knew, she’d never gone home to Las Vegas.
“I’m fine,” Mel said, her voice revealing nothing. “Look, I have to tell you about what happened tonight at the boat parade.”
During the story about August getting lost, Love felt herself falling further into a funk. She was going to have to face the fact that he and Polly could not live alone at the ranch much longer. The problem was, of course, how best to convince them a change needed to be made.
“I’m sorry,” Mel said when she finished. “I mean, sorry this has happened.”
“Yes, it’s a horrible thing, but we aren’t the first people to have to face this. I’ll go by tomorrow and try to talk to them about it.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“I know you will. Thanks for letting me know.”
Love hung up the phone just as Rett was clumping up the back steps. Throughout her conversation with Mel, Love sensed that there was something else besides what happened with August. But as was normal for Mel, she kept whatever was bothering her close to her chest. Love chalked it up to holiday depression. Heaven knows, she certainly felt a little blue about this Christmas despite the joy of seeing her granddaughter. It would be her second one without Cy. The second of how many? She didn’t even want to think about it.
After unhooking Ace’s leash, Rett excused herself to go to bed. Love made her a snack and knocked on her door.
“It’s open,” Rett called.
She sat cross-legged on the bed, flipping through a steno notepad filled with words and what looked like musical doodlings. She didn’t try to hide it when Love set the tray of cold milk and a slice of five-layer caramel cake on her nightstand.
“Thanks,” Rett said. “That looks awesome.”
“Let it thaw a little. Should be ready to eat in about fifteen minutes,” Love said. “I usually have a cake in the freezer. Cakes are kind of my specialty. I try to bake them once a week for the café.” She looked down at her notebook. “Are those your songs?”
Rett nodded.
“How long have you been writing them?”
“Since I was eight,” she said, ducking her head. “Those first ones were dumb, of course. I was just learning.”
“Well, you know that no one was born knowing how to do something well. Everyone starts as a beginner, just at different times in their lives.” Love sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re luckier than most people.”
She raised her head to look at Love, her eyes transparent in that way a person was before life handed them their own personal plate of sorrow. “Why?”
“You know what you want to do. Sounds like you’ve always known. Some people search their whole life for the one thing that makes them happy.”
“This is all I want to do . . . write songs.” She bit her lip. “Do you think that it’s something that’s really possible? I mean to do for a living?”
Love didn’t answer right away, guessing that her words would be something Rett would always remember. “Other people have done it. Why wouldn’t it be possible for you?”
Rett seemed to consider Love’s words, then she smiled. The answer seemed to satisfy her. “Thanks for taking me to the boat parade. It was pretty cool.”
“It was my pleasure,” Love said. “Guess I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sure,” Rett said, looking back down at her notebook.
When Love closed the bedroom door and walked back to the kitchen, she couldn’t help wondering. Would there ever be a time when Rett and she had the same comfortable relationship she’d seen with Magnolia and her kids or Benni and her grandmother Dove? Please, Love thought. Oh, please, yes.
The rattling of pans, the smell of smoky bacon and a sharp bark woke Love the next morning. Though she had no idea why, it was the best night’s sleep she’d had since Cy had died. She hadn’t jerked awake once during the night in a pool of damp desperation, his presence hovering at the edge of her dreams, so close she sometimes felt like she could touch the warmth of him. She went into the kitchen still wearing her lavender flannel pajamas printed with flying pink pigs, a birthday gift from Magnolia.
Rett stood at the stove flipping pancakes and frying bacon. Ace tap-danced around her feet, smiling his hopeful corgi smile.
“What’s going on?” Love asked.
“Crazy pj’s, Grandma,” she said. “I was going to send Ace in to wake you up. Breakfast is almost ready. I made coffee, if you want it. Or I can make you tea.” She gestured with her spatula over at the Mr. Coffee.
“Coffee’s fine.” She poured herself a cup and sat down at the table. It felt strange having another woman standing in front of her stove.
“I warmed up the syrup,” she said, setting the platter of pancakes and bacon on the table. “Oh, and I fed Ace.”
“How did you know how much . . . ?”
“I’ve watched you. I figured it out.”
“Oh,” Love said, sitting there with her hands in her lap. It stunned her a bit, seeing Rett switch back and forth between an almost-mature woman to a stubborn, willful adolescent. It had been a long time since Love was that age. Had she been like that too? How she longed at that moment for Mama to be alive so she could call her and ask that simple question. She stood up and went over to the phone. “I want to give Polly a call and make sure they’re okay. Then I’ll be ready for breakfast.”
Polly answered on the fourth ring. “Mel came by about six a.m. this morning,” she said. “It was a real nice surprise. Had breakfast with us, and she and August are out gathering eggs.”
Thank you, Mel, Love thought, leaning against the wall. “Great, just wanted to see how you were doing and let you know we’ll be seeing you at church.” She’d not gone for two weeks, so this seemed as good a Sunday to attend as any. Rocky would love seeing her and Rett there.
“We probably won’t be there this morning,” Polly said. “August is a little stoved up from being out and about last night.”
“Then we’ll see you later. What time do you want to decorate the tree?”
“Come any time. We got plenty in the refrigerator to make up a meal.”
“Okay, we’ll probably see you right after church.”
Love sat back down at the table and took the cloth napkin Rett had neatly folded and placed on top of her plate. “This looks delicious. I didn’t know you could cook.”
Rett shrugged and sat down, unfolding her own napkin. “Mom was always busy booking us gigs or dealing with business stuff.” She gave a rueful smile. “Or trying to find new husbands. In Florida, our neighbor taught me some stuff. I used to cook for Faith and me. It was something to do.”
While they ate, Love told her about what happened to August. She listened int
ently, not commenting until Love was finished.
“So, he’s got Alzheimer’s?” Rett said.
“We don’t actually know yet. He needs to be tested. I looked some stuff up on the Internet, and there are apparently many types of dementia. It could be any one of them.”
“But the problem is the same, no matter what kind he has?”
Love nodded. “About their living situation? Yes, it is.”
“That sucks.”
Though she’d never really liked that word, she had to admit it perfectly described the situation. “Yes, Rett, it definitely does.”
“So, how can I help?” she asked, cutting a pie wedge of pancake and putting it into her mouth.
Love inhaled deeply before answering. They were getting along so well, but her question demanded the truth. “Getting this situation with Dale straightened out would help the most.”
She scowled. “I’m working on it.”
“Telling him you’ll accuse him of child molestation is not working on it. It’s putting gasoline on an already huge fire.”
“He deserves to be the freaked-out one for a change.”
“I might agree with that, but you need to look at the larger picture. What would help the most is for you to give him back his banjo and let bygones be bygones.”
“That’s a stupid saying. What’s a bygone anyway?”
“Rett, don’t change the subject.”
“Whatever.”
Love bit the end off a strip of crisp bacon. “You asked how you could help, and I told you. What you really want is to dictate how you can help.”
She shrugged and didn’t answer, but the word whatever lingered unspoken in the air between them. Love wondered briefly if there was a way to vote a word out of the English language. Parents of adolescents everywhere would surely write their name on a petition to rid the world of that irritating word.
“Okay,” Love said. “Let’s just put all our cards on the table right now. Are you planning on staying for very long?”
She cut another piece of pancake and studied it for a moment before putting it in her mouth. “Don’t know.”
“That’s not a good enough answer. As you saw last night, I need to start making plans, and if you’re going to stay, you’ll need to be part of those plans.”
“I might go down to L.A. Or maybe to Nashville.”
Love’s heart dropped, but she was determined not to let her disappointment show. “You’re a grown woman, so you certainly have the right to go where you want. I just need to know so I can make plans.”
“I might, umm . . .” Her sentence dropped off into a garbled mutter.
“Excuse me,” Love said, leaning forward. “I didn’t hear what you said.”
She looked up, her round eyes unblinking. “I said I might have to get a job before I move on. I’m kinda broke.”
Was it horrible, Love thought, to be thrilled at her granddaughter’s financial dilemma? She would have to stay for however long it took her to earn the money to leave.
“That makes perfect sense,” Love said calmly. “You getting a job, I mean. Exactly how much money do you have, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Her eyes shifted to the side. “Some.”
Okay, she wasn’t going to give Love that. “All right, how about I loan you fifty dollars to tide you over while you look for a job? You’re welcome to stay here, free room and board, as long as you help out around the house.”
She considered Love’s words. “Like doing what?”
Love stood up and took her empty breakfast plate to the sink. “You know, help with the dishes, keep your room clean, walk Ace. I have a gardener come once a month to do the yard, and really, there’s not much maintenance to this house. You seem to be pretty neat . . .”
She sat up straight. “I am.”
“And so am I. So living together shouldn’t be very hard. The only thing I do request is that through the holidays you participate in things, like going out today to your great-grandparents’ and helping them decorate their tree.”
“Oh, that’s fun stuff,” she said, picking up her plate. “I don’t mind.”
“Then I’d say the first thing on your agenda is taking care of this problem with Dale—” Before Love could finish, the phone rang. Was she ever going to finish a conversation with Rett about this Dale?
“A happy Sunday morning to you, Love,” Clint said. “I call with glad tidings and good news.”
“Great,” Love said, watching her granddaughter rinse off the plates and open the dishwasher door. “I could use some good news.”
“I contacted Mr. Dale Bailey and, as they say in the legal biz, we cut a deal.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, we had a nice conversation with me doing most of the talking about things like how you should treat women, how the law might be interpreted in certain circumstances, and a few other things that randy young men should consider before jumping into relationships with girls under the age of consent. Offered to pay his hotel bill and meals for the next three days. That gives you time to talk your granddaughter into handing over the stolen goods.”
Love swore if Clint had been standing in front of her, she would have given him a bear hug. “That really is good news. I think we’re only inches away from that.” Rett walked out of the room, and Love lowered her voice. “I know where the banjo is, so if worse comes to worst, I’ll give it to him and face my granddaughter’s wrath.”
“But at least she won’t be a jailbird.”
“Yes and that’s my biggest goal right now. Having some kind of relationship with her might have to take a backseat to that.” She gave a big sigh. “Clint, I owe you forever for this. Thank you.”
“No problem. Got to watch out for my employees. What’re her plans after she gives back the banjo?”
“She’ll be here a little while because she just informed me she’s broke and needs to find a job.”
“I could have her work in the office here. Skye could use someone to help catch up on our filing.”
Love contemplated that a moment, then said, “No, I think it would be better if she found one herself. It would be too easy for me to smooth that path for her, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the best start to our relationship.”
“Wise woman. Just let me know if I can do anything else to help.”
“You’ve done so much already. Again, thank you.”
“My pleasure. Talk to you soon.”
She stared at the phone for a moment, listening to the dial tone. What Clint did truly was above and beyond the call of duty for a boss and a friend. It caused her to remember something that Cy had told her during the months before he died.
“That boss of yours,” he’d said. “You listen to him. He’s a nice fella. I like him a lot. He’s one to consider, Lovebug, when you start looking again.”
Her chest grew tight, remembering the silly nickname he gave her early in their relationship. “Don’t you dare talk like that, Cyrus Johnson,” she’d said. “You act like you’re trying to set me up.”
He’d given her his familiar lopsided grin. It seemed to reach from ear to ear, covering his face, which seemed wider and rounder with the loss of his thick, bushy hair. “I’ll put the judge on the list of possibilities.” He winked at her and mimed writing on his palm.
“Eat your banana pudding, you crazy man,” Love had replied, laughing through her tears, wondering how in the world she would ever live without him. “Or I swear I’ll throw it to the pigs.”
TWENTY
Rett
Would you like to come to church with me?” Love asked Rett. Her voice was neutral, but Rett could tell by her eyes that she wanted her to say yes.
“Okay,” Rett said, surprising them both.
“We’re pretty casual at Baytown Christian,” Love said. “You can dress any way you like.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “Well, I mean ...”
“No worries, Grandma,” Rett said. “I won’t wear anythin
g that’ll make the front-row ladies call the prayer chain.”
An expression of surprise swept over her grandma’s face, then she smiled and winked at Rett, acknowledging the truth to what she said. Rett really liked her grandma’s smile. She probably thinks she hides what she feels, Rett thought, but she had a face like an open book. Then Rett chided herself and tried to think of something that wasn’t a cliché. Like Morro Rock. Her face was as open as Morro Rock, like something you couldn’t avoid seeing.
The minute they walked into the small brown and white wooden church—Baytown Christian Fellowship—Rett liked it. There were about seventy-five or eighty people there, most of them old, like her grandma, some even older, like in their seventies or eighties. They were a combination of white people and Hispanics, something that sort of surprised her, though she didn’t know why. This was California, after all. There was only one black person, a really old lady wearing a lavender hat with netting and fake flowers. She was playing the wheezy old organ.
The simple lines of the building and the smooth wooden pews reminded her of the little churches throughout the South where the Son Sisters sang when they first started. That was before Mom went all crazy and thought they had the potential to become famous and make tons of money. Those churches never paid them outright but instead took up a “love offering.” It was always exciting to watch Mom count it afterward, trying to guess the amount. It was never much and certainly never enough for Mom, but it helped with gas and sometimes a motel. Churches always volunteered housing, staying in someone’s den-turned-guest-room or the bedroom left vacant by a child off to college or the military, but Mama preferred a motel, where she said they could let their hair down, which meant she could smoke a cigarette.
Rett and her sisters liked the motels because they usually had pools and Coke machines, though they’d stayed in some pretty weird ones. The funniest was the one in Alabama that looked like little cabins. Faith spilled Coke on the bedsheet, and when they pulled it off to wash, they discovered there was graffiti written with purple felt-tip pen on the mattress: Wanda loves Bobby. They laughed so hard their stomachs ached.
Love Mercy Page 20