Tonight I was thinking about Provence, too, as I would be driving to Atlanta for Alex’s book signing tomorrow. He was launching the first of his travel guides, the product of our trip to Provence last year, in an independent bookstore owned by one of his oldest friends. The tiny venue would be bursting at the seams, no doubt. Alex had many friends and many more acquaintances. He had not said so, exactly, but I had the sense that the little bookstore needed this lavish event—it would be lavish, with champagne and catering along a Provencal theme—and Alex’s loyalty to his friends was unfailing.
I warmed a plate of pasta from earlier in the week, tossed a small salad, and poured a tall glass of iced tea. It was Catherine’s night to volunteer at the free clinic. Julie was going out with friends after work. Yes, Julie had a job! At a bike shop. Not what she’d hoped for, with her degree from Cornell, but it provided a regular paycheck. I took my dinner to the sunroom and settled at my desk. The sunroom was an addition across the back of my century-old house on Abercorn. Huge white oaks draped with Spanish moss shaded the backyard. Shade didn’t mean cool, not on an evening like this, summer in full swing. My backyard was best enjoyed from behind a wall of glass. Flame azaleas, crape myrtle, hydrangea, wisteria, and bougainvillea—the native plants flourished in the Savannah climate. They did look a little thirsty tonight, though.
Winston stretched out under the desk. I kicked off my shoes and ran my foot along his back. I turned on the computer and let it go through its gyrations as I checked my iPhone for texts. Nothing recent. I was feeling a little low—lonely, I supposed. Why, I couldn’t say. Being alone was nothing new to me. Maybe it was just post-vacation letdown, like the blues you get after Christmas, although my vacation, those extraordinary two weeks in Ireland, had ended more than a month ago.
The phone startled me with its jingle, and Drew’s number appeared. I was smiling when I answered. Drew said, “You sound cheery!” I couldn’t tell him what I was thinking, that I must have been feeling really blue if a call from my brother lifted my spirits.
“You win,” he said a minute later. “I’ve decided to go with you.”
“Oh.”
“That’s all you have to say? Oh?”
“I’m glad, and—most important—Alex will be glad. It would’ve hurt his feelings if you didn’t show up at his book signing.”
“Alex isn’t like that, Jordie,” Drew said. “But I’ve switched some things around, so I can go. What time do you want to leave? Your car or mine?”
“I suppose Walter Sutton cancelled sailing on Hilton Head?”
“Happens he did have to cancel tomorrow, but he’s still counting on meeting you Saturday night,” Drew went on. “Alligator Soul all right with you? I’ll make reservations.”
I sighed noisily for his benefit. “Sure.” It was business. We still hoped to get some work from Walter Sutton.
“You know he wants to pin you down about flying up to Ohio before they start filming the documentary.”
Something knotted in my stomach.
“I can’t understand why you’re not more excited about going up there,” Drew said. “I think it’s way cool that he invited us. Not everybody gets a chance to go inside a hidden room that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
“I know.” Maybe someday I would tell my brother how Alex and I were stuffed into the priest hole, but the time had not presented itself. Going into the secret chamber in an Ohio farmhouse, with people all around, wouldn’t be anything like the black hole in Magdala’s cottage—or not anything like it was in the mid-1800s when lives were at stake, to be sure—but the thought of a confined space still spooked me. I realized my breathing was shallow. Drew hadn’t paid attention, though. I took a cleansing breath. “Let’s talk about it Saturday night.”
“Good. Now what about tomorrow?”
We finalized our plans. I would drive to Atlanta. If Drew was supposed to come by for me, chances were he’d be dreadfully late and we would fight all the way there.
He was reminding me of something work-related that I didn’t want to hear when I pulled up my e-mail. “See you tomorrow, Drew,” I said, and rang off. Sisters can do that to brothers.
There was an e-mail from Grace.
Jabbing some greens with my fork, I began to read. It was a lengthy e-mail, reminding me of the kind of letters people used to write—newsy and full of personality.
Mr. Sweeney had lived. He’d gone to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin, a facility specializing in treatment of brain injuries. Apparently he had a sister who was seeing to his needs. Colin had met her when he had visited Mr. Sweeney, and she had told him that her brother was always difficult and they’d never been close, but now he was easy to love. She seemed most attentive. Colin reported that “he doesn’t say a word, but he smiles and nods, and though it wouldn’t be right to say he’s happy in that state, he does not seem in any way troubled or uncomfortable.” I could hear Colin, his lilting words. Grace had added: “Very strange, the way things turn out, isn’t it?”
Helen and Charles had spent a night at Shepherds on their way to the Irish Open in Cork. Grace said they continued their bickering but Charles generally seemed more affectionate. Helen had confided to Grace that one of their investments had taken off in a surprising way, and it looked like Charles might not have to go to work after all. How glad they were that he didn’t get mixed up in a scheme with Lucas Riordan!
Ian had e-mailed Grace and Colin, thanking them for their kindness, and had mentioned that Molly was accepting a position as a music teacher at a heritage school in Dublin. “Where the children learn the Irish language and culture,” Grace wrote, “as in the performance you saw of schoolchildren from Thurles.” I had kept up with Ian’s website myself, and we had become Facebook friends, so I also knew that he and Molly had been on holiday together to a music festival in Wicklow. Somewhat surprising to me that he continued to put his private life “out there” on social media, after the experience with Mr. Sweeney.
My stomach suddenly felt unsettled as I read, “Lucas Riordan is awaiting trial for manslaughter, and the case is still much debated in Thurles.” Lucas Riordan. I felt a chill, remembering the foul, suffocating priest hole. I pushed aside my plate and kept reading. The general feeling in town, Grace wrote, was that there was nothing to Lucas’s self-defense story. So that—what Inspector Perone had told us on the way to Dublin—had come out. Secrets were plentiful in Thurles, but so was gossip, I thought with a smile. Though the whole town knew about the way Liam Riordan was drugged, it had not caused a backlash against Dr. Malone, who had done everything for his patients from delivering their babies to holding the hands of their dying elders. “People don’t forget those things, and they don’t know that Dr. Malone had a dark side to him,” Grace said. Most residents of Thurles hoped Lucas would be convicted, but they worried that the case might be too circumstantial.
The bright side was that Liam Riordan was healthy again and back to running the bank, and he had been generous, working with Grace and Colin to meet their debt burden. “Shepherds is having our best season ever, booked solid most of the time,” Grace said.
Enya was back. She and Patrick were still living at Shepherds, but the prospect of finding their own place had done wonders for Enya’s frame of mind. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy looking at rental properties. Rentals were not in great supply in Thurles, and Enya was very selective, looking for the perfect one, but “as long as she’s not discouraged, we are all happy,” Grace wrote. Even Patrick commented that Enya was in no particular hurry to leave Shepherds.
And the very best news of all—Bridget had finished her treatment. She was home.
“She told us everything, Jordan, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting her confide in you at that confusing time,” Grace said. “Colin and I did speculate about James Malone when Bridget got pregnant. As time went on, the doctor handled it all in such a way that we felt sure he knew who the man was but was keeping Bridge
t’s secret, being a friend to her. He was very manipulative—and we never imagined the terrible thing he was doing with prescription drugs. But what matters now is that Bridget is doing so well, and you should see her and Jimmie together.”
Grace ended with an apology that it had taken so long for her to e-mail. “Do you Skype or Facetime?” she asked. “Wouldn’t that be fun to do sometime?”
“Definitely!” I said out loud as I closed the message.
Winston was delighted when we went outside to water my plants. Evening was the payoff after a blistering Savannah day. As rosy twilight melted into a soft darkness and lightning bugs begin to flicker, a hint of a breeze began to move the perfumed air across my skin. I leashed Winston and we took a short walk around the neighborhood. Earlier than usual, I was yawning. “Won’t make it through the news tonight,” I told Winston, back in my bedroom. I closed the overnight bag I’d packed for Atlanta. Thinking about Alex’s big event, about his travel books, our trip to Provence, our trip to Ireland, I suddenly wanted to hear my uncle’s voice. I decided to call. He always stayed up past eleven to get the headline news.
I told him what Grace had reported—most of it. Bridget’s secret was not generally known, and it was not my place to tell. No doubt Alex was glad to know that Colin had seen Mr. Sweeney, but he didn’t say much, just “Poor man,” prompting me to move on to a brighter topic. I directed the conversation to his book signing.
“My living room is full of flowers,” he said. He’d received deliveries from his publisher, his agent, and friends who were not able to attend, even my daughter Claire from Santa Fe. Good for her! “And a most exquisite basket I could hardly lift that featured lavender and sunflowers, along with a bottle of a fine Bordeaux,” Alex said. “It must have been the most challenging order the little flower shop here in Buckhead had ever received. The woman who delivered the basket went on and on about the Frenchman’s explicit instructions.”
“Nice.” I tried not to sound too smug. I didn’t say who had given the Frenchman Alex’s address or recommended the little flower shop in Buckhead.
“Paul Broussard is an exceptional man, Jordan,” Alex said. “I’m sorry I didn’t see that in the beginning. And when the call from him saved our lives—I can’t quite get over that.”
I let him go on a bit longer and then said it was getting late. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said. “Just one more question. Where are we going next?”
“Ah, I’ve been thinking about that. But it’s getting late. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Alex said.
Now I was wide awake.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phyllis Gobbell is the author of Pursuit in Provence—the first Jordan Mayfair mystery—and co-author of two true-crime books based on high-profile murders in Nashville, Tennessee: An Unfinished Canvas with Michael Glasgow (Berkley, 2007) and Season of Darkness with Douglas Jones (Berkley, 2010). She was interviewed on Discovery ID’s “Deadly Sins,” discussing the murder case in An Unfinished Canvas. Her narrative, “Lost Innocence,” was published in the anthology Masters of True Crime (Prometheus, 2012). She has received awards in both fiction and nonfiction, including Tennessee’s Individual Artist Literary Award and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize for short fiction. An associate professor of English at Nashville State Community College, she teaches writing and literature.
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