'Til Grits Do Us Part

by Jennifer Rogers Spinola

  My mouth still hung open. “Ashley, I appreciate your offers, but—”

  “My advice: get a real photographer and toss the Asian theme. If we leave it up to you, we’ll have squid on the buffet. Or those nasty Japanese fish things you’re always crunching.”

  Ashley didn’t wait for me to reply. “I’ve already called a seamstress in Falls Church—it’s close enough, right?—and she can sew a wedding dress that’ll make you look a little less…hmm…boyish, let’s say. And I’ll want a distinctive matron-of-honor dress, since I’ll be virtually responsible for your entire wedding, and…”

  Boyish?!

  “Falls Church?” I cried. “It’s nowhere near Staunton!”

  “Closer than Chicago. Unless you want it done here when you come. My friends and I can be the bridesmaids, since your guest list sounds pretty short, and I’ve already picked out these cool turquoise dresses for us that’ll—”

  “I’m not getting married in Chicago!” I hollered, stopping in my tracks.

  My voice echoed off the lonely parking lot and long brick school building, shrouded by silver maples around the edges. Only a few cars pulled out of the exit and into a dreary side street.

  I threw my head back and took a long, deep breath of fresh night air, wishing I could scream and hurl the phone a mile away.

  Finally Ashley spoke, her voice like ice. “Fine. Have everything your way. I thought you needed help, and I offered. But forget it.”

  I shook my head and plodded toward my car in too-tight, pinching heels. One of the giant lights in the parking lot was out, like the black gap of a missing tooth.

  “We’re supposed to be family, you know,” Ashley said in clipped tones. “You said so yourself in that ridiculous letter you sent a few months ago. Or have you changed your mind about that, too?”

  “Family?” I repeated incredulously, walking faster. Ashley and Dad hadn’t been close to me in years—until Mom died, and suddenly they were all I had left. But to tell the truth, I didn’t know how to “be” family. I tried, but it still felt like mincing forward in Japanese geta sandals: clumsy, off-balance, and about to fall on my head any second.

  “It’s not that I don’t want your help, Ashley,” I managed, trying again. “I appreciate it. I really do. I’m…happy you’re going to be a bridesmaid.” The last sentence wasn’t exactly true, but I squeezed it out through clenched teeth, giving a last clumsy attempt at grace. “But I want to make some of my own plans, too.”

  “Go ahead. Do what you want. You always were selfish and independent.”

  That did it. I blew out my breath, fuming. “You know what? This is exactly what I told Becky would happen. And I was right. She can feed her ‘people ain’t what you think’ speeches to her hound.”

  “How dare you blab about me to your silly redneck friends!” Ashley bellowed.

  “Becky isn’t silly!” I raised my voice. “She’s one of my best friends! And I want you to come to our wedding, but not like this!” My fingers shook, cold, on the cell phone. “Always fighting. You always bossing me around.”

  I paused to catch my breath. “I want you to be in my life, Ashley. I miss family. But this isn’t working.”

  “Not working? You’re the one who’s always overreacting. Just like Ellen.” She huffed out her angry breath. “She never gave Dad any peace.”

  “Okay. I’m done.” I clenched my teeth together, my blood beating in my ears.

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  I clicked off my cell phone then unzipped my purse and dug for my keys, sifting through lipstick and pens. Chewable aspirin for those moments when the story, or quite often the subject, gave me a headache. In fact, now seemed like a good time for some.

  But no keys.

  I groaned out loud, tipping the opening of the purse toward the nearest floodlight and sorting through everything piece by piece. Shaking my purse to hear the jingle. Again, no.

  Great. Shiloh P. Jacobs strikes again. How on earth had I possibly managed to bungle this one?

  I rolled my knuckles against my forehead, wishing I was home in bed. At the office, even. Anywhere but stranded in an elementary school parking lot in the middle of redneck nowhere, Ashley’s words still grating in my ear.

  But with no keys, there’d be no drive home, unless I hopped in Adam’s truck when he arrived and left my car in Waynesboro.

  I sighed and headed back toward the entrance of the school.

  It took me a good twenty minutes of crawling around on my hands and knees to find my keys. They’d apparently fallen through a gap in my not-quite-closed purse zipper, slid through the seat cushion, and fallen on the floor—where they promptly got kicked six rows behind and wedged next to one of the thick metal feet that attached the chair to the floor.

  Man, do I have the worst luck!

  I brushed off my black skirt and tights and clumsily got to my feet then slid out the row of folding chairs and finally the auditorium. Hoping I’d never have to see that stage and rippled velvet curtain again. I’d had enough of Waynesboro Elementary School for one night.

  By the time I got out to the lobby, the school building had hushed to an eerie silence. The doors still opened though, and overhead lights burned at the entrance.

  “Lockin’ up,” said the man at the door impatiently, checking his watch and smoking.

  “I’m waiting for somebody.” I reached again for my cell phone, sending a quick text to Adam to hurry. “What am I supposed to do, wait in my car?”

  “Reckon.” His smoke breath made me cough. “Or over at the gas station if it’s still open.”

  “Thanks for your consideration,” I said sarcastically, snapping my cell phone shut. No way I’d sit around in some empty parking lot after the notes and roses—or hang around with Mr. Creep-o with the elementary school keys. I’d just dump my stuff in the car and head over to the Texaco station and text Adam on the way.

  Good thing this is rural Virginia, not Brooklyn, I thought, clicking over to my car in my heels. Once I’d left my wallet on the hood at a busy local restaurant for two hours while I interviewed the proprietor and staff, and nobody touched it except the woman who turned it in (intact) to the manager.

  I stuck my keys in the lock and reached for the door handle.

  And there behind me in the car window, framed by the reflection of a thin, sliver-shaped moon, loomed the dark silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders.

  Just inches behind my own.

  Chapter 17

  I whirled around, but before I could make a complete turn, he’d slammed me into the car, wrapping an arm around my neck. My keys splatted across the asphalt.

  I clawed at him, turning my head enough to sink my teeth into a thick bicep, but he shook me loose and started dragging me away from the car. Fingers from his other hand clamped across my mouth.

  And in a liquid second, a sensation of ice slipped across my throat in a fine line. Cold and sharp, pressing into the tender flesh just above my collarbone. I felt my pulse throb against it, pinching painfully.

  A knife. The guy’s got a knife. The thought jumped into my stunned brain like the memory of a whole frozen groundhog in Tim’s freezer—hovering just one step above ludicrous. Where was this anyway? Hickville, Waynesboro? Where people spat tobacco out their truck windows at stoplights?

  I reached for the car door and tried to hang on, but felt my balance shift and then falter.

  The knife dug deeper into my throat, making me cry out, and my knees crumpled as a rush of real panic set in.

  He was pulling me—dragging me—and my fingers slipped off the car door and into nothingness, clutching at the thick arm he’d forced under my chin. I dug in my nails, but he swatted me away.

  I stumbled, one spindly Jimmy Choo heel sliding on the asphalt, and gasped for air. The seam under the arm of my floral silk blouse ripped as I twisted against his chest and struggled for my footing, my hair falling down over my face and tangling in his fingers.

  He removed
the knife just long enough to yank hard on my purse.

  The strap tugged sharply against my arm, making me yelp, until I managed to loosen my arm and let it slip partially off.

  Air. I need air. I pounded him with my elbow as he tightened his chokehold, but he only yanked my arm harder, making me double over. Slashing the purse strap with his knife, he tore it from me.

  The whine of a car engine rumbled in my ears, sounding far away and distant like I was hearing it from inside a cave, cotton in my ears.

  The knife dropped with a startling clatter on the pitted asphalt.

  I tried unsuccessfully to kick it under my car and out of reach and finally managed to suck in a shallow, jagged breath. At the same time I whacked him full in the face with my fist. Feeling the thick black material of a ski cap. I ripped at it with adrenaline-shaky fingers, hoping to unmask him, just as two impossible beams of yellow light sliced through the parking lot.

  The whine of an engine jerking into PARK—the slam of a car door—and footsteps running, coming closer. Just as I lost my balance and tumbled down.

  A familiar voice, a shout! And the sound of my own gasping lungfuls of air while my assailant abruptly fled, his panicked footsteps rustling bushes in the thin woods at the edge of the school yard. Disappearing into a dingy alley.

  Wait a second—my purse. I patted my empty shoulder. He got my purse. WITH MOM’S PECAN PIE TUCKED IN THE POCKET.

  “You coward!” I hollered, scrambling up off the asphalt and tearing off my high heels. “Get back here!” I waved at the woman running toward me in the parking lot. “Help me, will you?”

  And I tore off after him in stocking feet.

  “He got away! I can’t believe it.” Meg bent over next to me in the parking lot, gasping for breath. “You okay, Shiloh?” Her chunky earrings jingled, hair pulled back in a surprisingly chic twist.

  I leaned back against the side of my Honda to catch my breath, unable to juxtapose the images that made no sense—my scattered heels, the dingy shadows of the parking lot, and Meg’s face. In Waynesboro, Virginia. Black dots swam behind my eyes.

  “Hey. You’re not going to faint, are you?” Meg shook my shoulder lightly.

  “No. I’m okay. I’m just…mad. The guy got my purse.” I brushed myself off, unspeakably glad I did stories with Meg and not Chastity—who’d have left me there to get knifed.

  “What happened, Jacobs? Who was that guy?”

  I glanced back over my shoulder in the direction my assailant had gone. “I have no idea.” I spun back around to face her, my teeth chattering in the late-night cool. “What are you still doing here? I thought you left ages ago.”

  “Are you kidding? That school board guy with the keys locked me in. I told him I needed to use the bathroom, but apparently he forgot. I’d have been stuck in that school building all night if I hadn’t hollered.” Meg’s lip curled in a scowl. “Sexist jerk. He brought coffee to the TV guys, but me? I had to remind him three times I’m a Leader photographer!”

  “Where’d he go? He didn’t do it, did he?”

  “The school board fellow? No. He left when I did.” Meg hooked a thumb toward the parking lot exit. “But listen—we’ve got to get you out of here—now. In case that masked bandit comes back.”

  Before we could move, bright headlights cut the darkness, and the familiar rumble of Adam’s pickup echoed against the long brick school building and barren asphalt.

  Meg ran up to his truck, dragging me along by the arm, and stuck her head up to the window while he rolled it down. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes,” she said, shoving me in his direction. “Quick! Get her out of here before something else happens. It’s not like I carry Cooter’s machete to city council meetings, although I might have to start.”

  “Sorry?” Adam’s eyes bounced from Meg to me, widening at the sight of my rumpled sweater and messed-up hair. “You okay, Shiloh? What happened?” He cut the engine and threw open the truck door, nearly knocking me down as he scrambled out.

  “She’ll tell you on the way to the police station.” Meg bobbed her eyebrows sternly. “And if I were you, I’d get her car out of here, too, so the creep doesn’t track her plate number or something equally evil.” She gave us a push. “Go on. I’ll follow you guys to the station.”

  Meg waited in her car, engine running, while Adam and I sprinted over to my Honda. I felt around the tires for my keys and tossed them to Adam, and he shoved me into the passenger’s side. He jammed the keys into the ignition and squealed out of the parking space.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” A vein bulged angrily in Adam’s neck. “That guy your mom wrote about in her letters? With the messed-up right hand?”

  It took me a second to register Adam’s question, and I jerked on my seat belt as he swerved around his truck then gunned the accelerator into the street.

  “Could you see his face? Try to remember, Shiloh!” Adam reached over with a shaky hand and pressed it to my cheek.

  The knife. The ski mask. I blinked, snatching bits of stress-seared images from the recesses of my brain.

  “I felt hair under the mask.” I swallowed, trying to conjure some moisture into my parched mouth.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” I hung onto the armrest as Adam turned sharply at the intersection. “When I reached for the mask, I felt bulk at the top, like hair. I don’t know how much, but the stretchy material didn’t slide like it would on a perfectly smooth surface.”

  “Did he wear glasses?”

  I considered this. “No. I hit him in the face, so I would have felt them.”

  “How about his hand or wrist? Was it weak or twisted or…?”

  “Not at all.” I closed my eyes and replayed the scene like a slow-motion movie. “He held the knife under my chin with a strong right hand. Perfect dexterity. I couldn’t pry his fingers off.”

  “I can’t believe the jerk took my purse,” I mumbled, standing at the counter at the Waynesboro police station while Adam’s warm hand nursed the back of my neck. I’d tried to put my hair back in place in the dingy bathroom, but brown chunks still hung out of my impromptu ponytail, strands sticking up.

  “Your purse? I’m just glad you’re okay.” Adam kissed the top of my head. “But I’m sorry he got your ID and money.”

  “My debit card. Driver’s license. Wallet. All that stuff. Yep.” I shook my head in disgust as I scrawled in my phone and license plate numbers, thinking thoughts toward my assailant that would have had me arrested if the deputy on duty could hear them.

  “You sure you called all of them to stop any withdrawals?”

  “Meg did on her cell phone before she left. I don’t have that many cards, you know.” I raised an eyebrow. “Me being the consummate nonspender these days.” I rubbed a hand across tired eyes, trying not to smudge my mascara. “And the consummate queen of confusion. I have no idea if this guy is linked to the roses or Mom’s letters or what. Nothing makes any sense!”

  “But you’ve told the police everything.”

  “Every detail.” I blew out my breath. “I’ve already given them all the florist’s cards, too. Mom’s letters.”

  I caught my breath, remembering Shane Pendergrass the cop—the one who’d sent me roses last year. Who practically WAS the Staunton Police Department. Everybody knew him and loved him. The Pendergrass family held a swanky, low-slung power over most of the police force—like a friendly Mafia of grouse-hunting hillbillies. Just sophisticated enough to make the local girls swoon.

  “On second thought,” I said, “I probably should’ve made the report somewhere else.”

  I looked up as the officer on duty came toward us with a sheet of paper. “Believe me, I never thought I’d get mugged in Virginia,” I muttered to Adam. “And this makes the second time—that fiasco at the Civil War battle reenactment being the first. New York’s looking less and less dangerous every day, you know that? Maybe we should move back to that cold-water flat I shared with Mom where the woman u
pstairs stabbed her husband to death with a frozen sausage.”

  “She…she what?” Adam leaned toward me, incredulous.

  “She sharpened it to a point while it was soft. Pretty clever, don’t you think?”

  I looked up as the officer leaned over the counter facing me, pen poised. “So could you please list the contents of your purse, ma’am?” Officer Rodunk, as his nametag read, scratched the back of his freckled neck, tapping the pen impatiently.

  “Debit card, wallet, the whole bit.” I crossed my arms, fresh anger making my hands clench. “I told you that already. Plus the new Shiseido lipstick and blush Kyoko sent me—from their premium line.” I paused. “The purse is a Kate Spade original, in a limited-edition pink—if that means anything to you. I probably sank more money into that thing than I make now per year.”

  He raised an eyebrow and shifted his position. “Anything else in the purse?”

  “A pecan pie.”

  He glanced up. “A…pie?”

  “Right. You know. One of those little gas station snacks.” I gestured with my hands. “The little pecan pies in a metal tin. Only this one’s about two years old. Maybe more.” I clasped my hands together. “But it’s important.”

  Officer Rodunk’s pen wobbled. “Ooookay.” He tipped an eyebrow. “Um…anything else?”

  “A glow-in-the-dark jellyfish. Plastic.” I wiggled my fingers. “With little sucker tentacles. The kind you can throw against walls and they stick.”

  This time even Adam’s eyebrows shot up. Officer Rodunk tapped his pen again, not writing anything down.

  “Kyoko sent it, Adam!” I put my hands up. “Do you want the contents of my purse or not, officer?”

  “What else?” His voice turned sour.

  “A package of gummy shrunken heads, a dangly Japanese cell phone strap with a cartoon character made of blue cheese, and a wind-up plastic sushi toy.” I thought hard, trying to recollect all the ridiculous stuff Kyoko had sent me. “And…I think that’s all.”