Again, Alabama

by Susan Sands

  He didn’t care in the least that she’d pulled on her shirt wrong-side out. He’d hardly been able to process at that moment.

  She was lovelier now than ten years ago. Back then, she’d been everything he’d ever wanted, until he’d slept with her best friend. Yes, ten years ago things had gone horribly wrong.

  Her mother and siblings had gotten to a place of civility toward him nowadays, especially since he’d offered to do the work on the family home at cost. He owed them all that much for what he’d dished out in grief and gossip to their family, but he especially owed it to Cammie. He was planning to make amends. Now that Deb was gone, it was time.

  After he’d married Cammie’s best friend, Deb, ten years ago and moved a few cities away, visits back here to see his parents often placed him in the path of one or more of Cammie’s relatives. For quite awhile they’d been chilly toward him, but over time, they’d let bygones go.

  Grey and Cammie had grown up together, and while their parents had been friendly, though not super close, had always been good neighbors. Nowadays, his dad kept a protective eye out for Miz Maureen because she was alone in the house, and their properties adjoined in back. Since Grey’s mother had passed away six years ago, he was glad they looked out for one another. And he would further ingratiate himself with Cammie’s mother and the rest of the family by doing all he could to save their home—and business, since they were one and the same.

  Grey’s recent, and possibly permanent, return to Ministry hadn’t been on his life’s plan. Back just over a month now, he continued to struggle with the adjustment to a less hurried lifestyle where people were overly interested in his personal life. Of course, how could he blame them? He did have quite a history here with and without the town’s most famous, and currently infamous, citizen.

  The expected pang of guilt and frustration swept through him, as he allowed memories of his combined past with Cammie and his late wife, Deb, to intrude on his task. He nearly smashed his thumb with the hammer.

  “Damn!” Shaking his head to clear away the angsty emotions Deb unfailingly evoked, even beyond the grave, he began to get an idea of how complicated Cammie’s reentry into his world might be. At least for him.

  Besides the whole ‘caught you in your underwear’ gaffe, his impact on her appeared mostly to surprise her and piss her off equally. She’d seemed pretty shocked, and maybe a little shaken up, but the great big engagement ring she wore spoke volumes that her personal life was rocking along just fine. He wanted her to be happy, didn’t he? She deserved it after the awful way their relationship had ended, thanks to his youth, stupidity, and misplaced sense of responsibility gone horribly wrong.

  Turning, Grey caught sight of a Laroux family photo fixed on the richly paneled library wall. Cammie must have been about sixteen then, still sprinkled with those freckles she’d hated so badly. He remembered as if it were yesterday. They’d been each others’ first and only love—until Deb’d figured out a way to manipulate them. Not that he was blameless. How could he have been? He’d fathered Deb’s child. His daughter.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  Cammie was so distracted by this morning’s deeply disturbing events and overwhelmed by intense annoyance with her siblings that she’d left without her much anticipated coffee. She hardly noticed Ministry’s familiar wrought iron benches, colorful window planters, and crisp awnings as she drove through the historic treelined town square. Ministry was the name on the map. Misery best described the fiercest of emotions churning within her as she’d hightailed it out of here ten years ago.

  It was hard to pine for a place that held such bitter memories, no matter how historically quaint and lovely the town. Or for that matter, the gorgeous, old plantation house where she’d grown up. The one with the huge deep-rooted, oak trees and gardens that connected to Grey’s parents’ property. Where he now lived—again.

  Cammie’s three sisters and twin brother, not to mention Mom, had deliberately kept her in the dark to drag her back here. They must realize how awkward it would be for her to face Grey again—especially with no warning. But somehow he didn’t seem as surprised to see her as she’d been. Hmm.

  She had loved him with all the innocence, passion, and hope reserved for the one. He’d been rock solid and mature at such a young age, steady in his dedication to their future. Nothing or no one could have persuaded her of his betrayal, except proof of his own actions.

  Yes, it had been ten years; but the whole town had witnessed her humiliation, if not firsthand, then by word-of-mouth. Maybe ten of those people had left Ministry since. Now the whole television watching population of at least the North American continent had feasted on her latest professional and personal humiliation.

  Her family had been in cahoots here, even knowing the craziness her life had been the last few weeks. Courtesy demanded at least a heads-up. Family demanded even better. She was once again fodder for the local gossip mill, and with Grey back in town, folks here might book parties at Evangeline House just to enjoy a front row seat. Another bonus she could provide her kin.

  It wasn’t as if she’d not wanted to come here and support her family right now. Likely, she would have flown down for Mom’s surgery and stayed a few days without anyone asking. Hell, she’d missed them all. But right now, she felt wrestled to the dirt and hog-tied.

  Without much enthusiasm for the many coming weeks, she dragged her feet toward the hospital’s main entrance. She supposed she was a little over-dressed for small town Alabama on a Tuesday, but her slim, black pants and striped tunic were at the top of the suitcase, plus accessories. She couldn’t very well not wear any jewelry, could she? So, she would be called uppity by the locals—again. Ever since she’d moved to the city, gotten a good job, and learned to love pretty clothes and accessories, she caught hell about it when she came home. Well, just because she was a laughingstock didn’t mean she couldn’t put on some armor. Better to be talked about because she looked too good than shabby and downtrodden. No more, “Poor Cammie.”

  As Cammie approached the volunteer desk, she asked the young woman for directions to the surgical waiting area. So far today Cammie had yet to speak with any of her siblings. She figured they would all be gathered at the hospital by the time Mom went in to surgery.

  “Hey, wait a dang minute. Don’t I know you from someplace?” The blonde’s candy pink nails suddenly wrapped around her wrist like a vice just as she turned to leave the desk.

  Oh, crap. She’d been made. The girl’s head lolled around, as if tuning in her brain like an antenna to the right station. “Yep! I got it. You’re the one who caught Jessie Greene’s hair on fire. Girlfriend, that was about the funniest thing I ever saw.” To prove it, she hooted with such laughter that Cammie became concerned for her bladder.

  Cammie smiled tightly at the airhead and disentangled her arm. She’d forgotten how quick folks in town were to reach out and touch a stranger, or in her case, a semi-stranger. She turned to search for the elevator. It was bound to happen—especially here at a public place. Locals would recognize her and spread the word.

  Punching the elevator button extra hard, she waited in the slow moving cage filled with George Jones going on about how he’d stopped loving her today and a wreath upon her grave. Poor song selection at a hospital. Not very uplifting for families of the sick and dying.

  Finally the elevator dinged at the third floor and came to a rocking halt. Stepping out, Cammie took a deep, calming breath. Time to face her screwy family. She hoped for this reunion it would only be her sisters and brother. There would be plenty of opportunity later to see the in-laws and offspring.

  Rounding the corner, she heard the ruckus. It was as if they’d scented her. She first caught sight of her middle sister, Emma, the pageant queen, and noticed her head swivel and eyes lock onto her as she approached.

  “Well, hey there, honey. It’s about time you showed up.” Maeve, her oldest sister wrapped her in a great big hug the moment she entered
the carpeted waiting area. Beyond Maeve, Cammie spotted Ben, her twin brother, on his cell phone holding a cup of coffee. Jo Jo, her closest sister, and Emma lined up to greet her warmly.

  “How was your trip?” Jo Jo, closest to Cammie in age and the one who best understood her, held Cammie out at arms’ length for close scrutiny.

  “I got in really late,” Cammie defended her dark circles to deflect any comments on the subject.

  “Mmmm. Hmmm. I can tell. Aren’t you getting enough sleep?” Jo Jo tittered.

  “Doesn’t look like she’s slept a wink in weeks. Maybe just enough for her eyes to puff up.” Emma’s observation came on the heels of a very tight hug. The former hometown beauty queen and current junior pageant coach firmly believed in the “God’s honest truth.” Cammie recognized her sister’s unflattering comments as concern for her lack of sleep.

  “Thanks, Emma, but I gave up on my puffy eyes long ago. Where’s Mom? Are we allowed to see her before surgery?”

  “They’re prepping her now and said they’d bring us back to say hi to her before she goes to the operating room. Starting her IVs and whatnot,” Jo Jo answered for the group.

  Cammie nodded, but noticed her three sisters continued their close inspection. “Stop eyeballing me. I’m fine. I just need coffee,” she snapped.

  “Somebody’s protesting just a bit too much, don’t you think?” Emma muttered, eyebrows raised.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben approached, late to the conversation after ending his call, placed his arm around her shoulders and frowned as he scanned her features for trouble.

  “Nothing is wrong,” she answered, “except that you all are a bunch of buttheads.” Had she not been so deeply angry and frustrated by their keeping things from her, she might have been amused at their shocked expressions.

  Ben responded first. “My dear sister, I don’t doubt that we are, but to what are you referring?”

  “Right. Like you didn’t know ahead of time that Grey Harrison was back in town,” Cammie accused the group.

  Their surprise at her statement turned quickly to comprehension. Jo Jo reddened. She would, because Jo Jo understood more how Grey’s betrayal had shattered her.

  But no real admission from the others emerged. The expected bluster came forth. “Honey, that was years ago. You’re engaged. We didn’t realize Grey’s coming back would cause you to get all het-up,” Maeve, her eldest sister, said, then shrugged as if she was a moron.

  “He was hammering outside my bedroom window when I came out of the bathroom this morning.” She shuddered, remembering. “I jerked open the blinds.”

  “Oh. That must have been quite a surprise,” Jo Jo had the grace to appear shamed.

  “I was in my underwear.” Cammie clarified to her family.

  “God Almighty. Tell me you weren’t in some old granny drawers. I have a recurring nightmare about being in a car wreck and the hot paramedics finding me in granny drawers!” Emma, obviously aghast at Cammie’s morning horror, hadn’t worn cotton underwear since—well, likely never.

  “No, I wasn’t in granny panties.” Cammie shook her head at how easily they’d derailed her. “You’re missing the point. Had I known—had any of you bothered to tell me—he was working on Evangeline House, I wouldn’t have opened the blinds—in my underwear! I might not have even come to Alabama.”

  “Mom hired him a couple weeks ago to do work on the house. We obviously didn’t know he’d be there bright and early this morning outside your window,” Ben said. “And we certainly weren’t of the mind that you’d freak out.”

  She ignored her brother. “Were any of you planning to fill me in about Evangeline House’s problems?”

  She nailed them with a glare. Guilty. Dead busted, all of them.

  Maeve stepped up. “You’ve been covered up with your own problems lately. Nobody wanted to dump more on top of you just now,” Maeve said, her expression oozed sympathy.

  “You didn’t feel badly enough to take over for Mom while she’s down instead of guilting me into taking over. I’m putting my life on hold to come down here and run things. I didn’t realize I’d be in a construction zone while I was doing it,” Cammie said, unforgiving.

  “And we can’t tell you how much we appreciate it, honey. It’ll fill your time while you figure out what to do next. And you can finally spend some time with all of us,” Emma said.

  They’d gotten together and made a plan to bring her back home to Alabama, apparently for her own good.

  She could almost hear the twanging of banjos. God help her.

  “You manipulated me.” She said, angry and hurt.

  “Don’t look at it like that. We have your best interests at heart,” Emma said.

  “Maybe staying home with my fiancé and taking some deserved time off is in my best interest. Did you think of that?” She thought of Jason waiting for her back home in Virginia Beach. She missed him. And right now it would have been nice to have him here helping defend her.

  “You’re never any better than when you’re surrounded by your family. Plus, pretty boy can come down to Ministry and visit while you’re here. It’ll give us all a chance to meet him,” Maeve said.

  “His name is Jason.” But the idea of her family having a go at him made her palms actually become instantly clammy, so she rethought the good sense of his being with her.

  “Well, you’re here now, and we need your super special skills to run things. You and Grey will just have to forgive and forget. That’s ten year old stuff and it shouldn’t matter anymore anyway.”

  Cammie supposed Emma was right in theory. But all that ‘ten year old stuff’ hadn’t happened to any of them.

  Just then, a pretty young nurse entered and suggested two or three family members at a time go back where mom was ready for surgery.

  Cammie turned to her sisters. “This isn’t over.”

  They collectively shrugged, looked sheepish, or avoided her black glare.

  Ben put an arm around Cammie’s shoulders and turned her toward the nurse. The woman did a double take when she recognized Cammie and, unlike the bimbo up front, wisely refrained from comment. But she blushed deeply when she got a good look at Ben. An expected reaction, as he had quite a reputation with the ladies within a tri-county area. Ben grinned and winked at the flustered girl.

  “Behave,” Cammie hissed, slid Ben the stink-eye and elbowed him in the ribs as they fell into step behind the lovely girl down a series of hallways until they entered their mother’s room.

  Maureen Laroux lay in a narrow adjustable bed, propped up on pillows. She appeared relaxed and resigned to having her back repaired. Her lovely face split into a sleepy smile as Cammie approached with Ben. “Darling, I’m so glad you’re here, safe and sound.”

  Unaccustomed to her mother in a vulnerable position, Cammie experienced an inexplicable urge to curl up beside her. Cammie had been hurt and abused by the world, and seeing her mother spurred a childish need to blubber like a baby. Of course she didn’t. She’d never do such a thing.

  “Hi, Mom.” She leaned down to gently embrace her mother instead. “I’m so glad we’re allowed to see you before you go in.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. But if something does happen, you all know where the keys to the safety deposit box are, don’t you?”

  “Mom, nothing bad is going to happen. And, yes, we know where everything is. Now you go get yourself fixed up. We’ll let the others come in and say hello,” Ben said, patting Mom’s hand.

  She blew them both a kiss as they waved and departed the tiny room.

  “You okay?” Ben stopped alongside and placed a hand on her shoulder. Head bowed, she indulged in her emotions for a moment before wiping the moisture away and pulling herself together.

  “I’m alright. We’d better go tag the sisters so they can head back and make a fuss over Mom.” She and Ben were the youngest two siblings by three years, Cammie technically the baby by six minutes. The three older girls were spaced closer to each
other in age, Maeve separated by two years from Emma, and Jo Jo only eighteen months behind her.

  “They can be quite a gaggle of mother hens.” He slung an arm over her shoulders as they headed toward the others.

  “So, what’s on tap for this week?” Ben asked when the sisters were gone from the waiting room. He was referring to events scheduled at Evangeline House.

  “We’ve got a wedding, a seventy-fifth anniversary, and a few other minor events. Oh, and the Little Miss Pecan Pie Pageant is coming up next month. God willing, I’ll be long gone before that rolls around.” Cammie barely controlled a shudder.

  “Emma will have your hide if you miss her big shindig.” Ben snickered. Their sister lived and breathed the junior pageant scene, and Little Miss Pecan Pie Princess was the year’s culmination of her hard work. The event was cause for great pride and bragging rights to the winners but had sparked feuds the likes of which made the Hatfields and McCoys seem like a tiny misunderstanding.

  “I’ve had more than my share of drama lately, so I’ll take a pass on the pageant mamas, if you don’t mind.”

  “Might miss an Aqua Net flame-up.”

  “At least it won’t be a full-on explosion.” She grinned at him.

  “Jessica Greene’s hair didn’t actually explode—more like went up in a ball of fire. I’ve never seen you move that fast. She was lucky. That flour rained down on her before her scalp was singed.” Ben was her twin—her other half. He understood her mind, scarily.

  “Let me guess, you’ve got it recorded for posterity.”

  “You’re famous—infamous, I mean. Heck yes, it’s recorded. I play it back whenever I need a good laugh. I’ve run through it in slow-motion too. Junior does this awesome voice-over. I swear it’ll make you pee your pants.”

  She shot him a dirty look. Junior was Maeve’s husband, and her nemesis brother-in law. Cammie and Junior had been engaged in a never ending, practical joke war since Cammie was a teen and he’d married Maeve. With e-mail, the internet, and Skyping, they could carry on from several states away. He was a taxidermist, a barbaric trade. Junior never passed up an opportunity to poke fun at Cammie in some of the most inappropriate ways.