The Sweetest September (Home in Magnolia Bend)

by Liz Talley

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  CHAPTER ONE

  BILLY JOEL IS full of crap. Not only the good die young.

  The low gray clouds seemed to settle on Priss’s shoulders as she walked between the graves, zipping her leather jacket against the chill air. Was it a sin to wear jeans to a funeral? Probably. But it was a long way from Boulder to Widow’s Grove, and Mona had overheated in Phoenix. If she’d stopped to change clothes, Priss would have been alone in this graveyard.

  As it was, there were only two other people in the cemetery on the right side of the winter-brown grass. They stood beside the subtly Astroturfed dirt pile.

  She stopped a few feet short of the open grave. Her mother was down there. Shouldn’t she feel something beyond tired? Hearing her heart thud in her ears, she listened for something else. Sadness, maybe, or loss? Regret?

  A little late for that. Old wounds didn’t always heal—the deepest ones festered.

  By the time the hospital had tracked down Priss and called, her mother was gone. Better that way really, for them both.

  “Come, Ignacio. It’s time to go.” A meager woman stood at the foot of the grave, both her face and raincoat set in similar generic authoritarian lines.

  Priss recognized a social worker when she saw one. Given her past, she should.

  A kid stood beside her, head down, face obscured by a black hoodie pulled out of shape by fists crammed into the pocket across the front. Crotch-sagging jeans puddled atop untied tennis shoes that might have, in a former life, been white.

  The woman touched his shoulder. The kid shrugged her off. One hand appeared from his pocket, and Priss got a flash of knuckles lettered with homemade tattoos before it disappeared beneath the hood.

  She heard a muffled snuffle, and the boy swiped the sleeve across his face.

  Priss felt a pinch in her chest, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

  Shit.

  The hood flew back and for the first time, she stared into the defiant eyes of her half brother. She stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I’m Priss, your—”

  “I know who you are.” Below the knit stocking cap, his almost delicate eyebrows drew together over narrowed eyes.

  His hostility slapped her hard. She took a step back.

  The matron spoke up. “Well, I don’t know who you are.”

  Priss looked her over. “Who are you?”

  She sniffed and looked Priss over. “I am Ms. Barnes, children’s social worker for Santa Barbara County. And you haven’t answered my question.” Her tone was haughty, but her glare was weak. She should ask the kid for lessons.

  “I’m Priscilla Hart.” She tipped her chin at the grave. “My mother’s the one in the box.”

  The Barnes woman tsk-tsked and her lip curled, as if she’d encountered a turd in a church pew. It was a response Priss was used to. She’d always been what her mother called, “outspoken,” but Priss didn’t know how else to be.

  Her opinions were like a deposit of crude oil, buried shallower than most people’s. Others had regulators to control and filter to a civilized flow; hers were much more likely to spew. She never meant to hurt people’s feelings, but mostly the nuances of refined talk escaped her. Dancing around the facts to be polite made her head hurt.

  She’d take her facts straight up, thank you.

  The social worker reached for the kid’s shoulder again but at his glare, dropped her hand. “Come, Ignacio. We’ll get your things.”

  “My name is Nacho!” His shout rolled away through the empty graveyard.

  The woman pursed her lips and pink spread from her cheeks to the rest of her face. “Well, then...come with me.” She turned, took a few steps and waved her hands to encourage Nacho to follow her.

  But the kid didn’t move, just stood looking at his sister. His defiant eyes had taken on a shiny cast and his bottom lip wobbled. The tough guy morphed into a scared ten-year-old.

  Oh, crap.

  When Priss followed the social worker away from the grave, Nacho was right behind her. “Where are you taking him?”

  “To pick up his clothing at his home.”

  Something old and lumbering stirred deep inside Priss. She was curious to see where her mother had lived. “I’m going with you.” She said it to Nacho, but Ms. Barnes stopped and turned.

  “I’ll need some identification to prove you’re related to...” She shot a glance at Nacho. “Mr. Hart.”

  The kid rolled his eyes.

  Priss restrained herself from doing the same, pulled her wallet from her jacket pocket and handed over her Colorado driver’s license.

  The social worker inspected it like a Stop-n-Go clerk checks a twenty then handed it back. “I suppose you are also next of kin. You can follow me in your car.”

  Deciding the clouds were window dressing for the funeral rather than rainmakers, Priss left Mona’s top down and pulled out behind the county Chevy.

  When they reached the outskirts of town, Priss took in the fussy Victorians perched on manicured lawns, looking down their patrician noses at the traffic in the street.

  She rolled to a four-way stop in the middle of town. A tall flagpole with a limp flag graced the middle of the intersection. Up the cross street, buildings crowded each other for space, cute wooden signs declaring them B & Bs, antique shops, art galleries, coffeehouses.

  Her mother sure hadn’t lived in this part of town.

  Following the county car, Priss took a left. Sure enough, the posh buildings were replaced by ranch houses, and after they crossed over a creek, single-wide trailers and ramshackle cracker-box houses lined the street. The stunted, skeletal trees did nothing to soften the dingy neighborhood.

  After parking behind the Chevy, Priss cut the engine and waited as Mona went through the death throes the ’81 Caddy had been named for. Priss had seen past the scaly black paint and the rust-dotted chrome to the Glory of Detroit in Mona’s lines and under her hood. She’d bought Mona off a university student and since then had put every penny she could spare into restoring her.

  Priss finger-combed her short stand-up black hair in the rearview mirror. The painful squeal of her car door cracked the quiet.

  The squat one-story wooden building was set in a C, creating a courtyard full of weeds and wind-blown trash. It had probably been a Motor Lodge, back in the ’60s. But that heyday was long past. Its boards were warped and wavy, a faded barn-red. The hand-lettered wooden sign out front advertised rooms for rent by the week.

  The familiar weight of poverty and want settled over Priss like a foul-smelling wool blanket. As she stepped out of the car, a shudder of déjà vu ran through her, helping to shake off a taint of despair. It wasn’t hers any longer.

  But it is his.

  Nacho stood on the cracked sidewalk, his face empty of emotion. When Ms. Barnes asked him a question, he dug in his pocket and handed over a key. She led the way to a door at the end of the derelict building.

  Nacho walked in first, and Ms. Barnes followed, flipping on the light. She flinched slightly, but to her credit she didn’t wrinkle her nose.

  Priss stepped in behind them. It wasn’t the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that brought it all back, or the tired room it illuminated. It was the smell. The walls exhaled ghosts of damp rot, untold cartons of her mother’s cigarettes and decades of starchy food, into her face.

  Oh, yeah. She knew this place.

  It was her pas
t.

  Priss glanced at the tinfoil-tipped rabbit ears on the TV, the sagging, sheet-covered couch, the dime-store painting of a rapturous bleeding Christ hanging over it. His suffering-crazed eyes had always frightened her—as if his hanging on the dirty wall was somehow her fault.

  She shouldn’t have been curious about this place—her mom changed locations a lot, but “home” remained the same. Widow’s Grove was the final stop on Cora Hart’s rutted road in search of happy.

  Priss had bailed off that road ten years ago, when public school set her free with an emancipation proclamation they called a diploma.

  The county lady walked across the warped linoleum to the kitchen area. “Just pack a few changes of clothes. We’ll deal with the rest later.” She pulled open a sagging cabinet and peered in.

  Head down, Nacho strode to the doorless room on the right. Priss followed. A small, rumpled cot with dingy sheets took up one corner of the eight-by-eight room. Nacho pulled a backpack from under the bed and stuffed it with clothes from a stack of plastic storage bins. Priss had had that same dresser, growing up.

  He glanced at the schoolbooks lying on the bed, then shot a sly look at Priss. She just shrugged. None of her concern if he left them behind. He pushed past her, stopped in the bathroom only long enough to pick up his toothbrush and jammed it in the outside pocket of the backpack.

  Outside the bathroom door he reached for a small, ornate iron cross hanging on the wall beside his head. He lifted the cross off the hook, dropped it into the backpack and snapped the bag’s flap closed. His eyes cut to her again. Sad, moist eyes.

  She remembered that cross. According to her mother it had been passed down from her Spanish ancestors; it was her proudest possession. A gossamer wisp of nostalgia floated through Priss’s chest before she could quash it.

  Pushing away from the wall, she sauntered to the kitchen area feigning untouchable indifference. “What happens to all this stuff?”

  Ms. Barnes handed Priss her business card. “Anything of value will be sold to reimburse the State for her medical care.” Her pinched lips told Priss what she thought of that likelihood.

  “Oh, I don’t know. A museum might want the TV.”

  Nacho walked by her. “Museums don’t pay for things, stupid.”

  She smiled. He sounded like her. “You’ve got a point there, kid.”

  He stopped in front of the social worker who stood washing her hands at the sink. “I could stay here. There’s food, and I know how to cook.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call what’s in that refrigerator food. You’re ten years old. You cannot live by yourself.”

  “She could stay with me.” The thumb he threw over his shoulder pointed at Priss.

  She backed away. “Oh, no. Uh-uh. I’ve been there and done that. Couldn’t afford the T-shirt.” Alarm raced along her skin, chasing the goose bumps.

  It didn’t matter that she was grown, had a life of her own and some money in the bank. Her first instinct was that someone was going to force her to stay here. Forever.

  Claustrophobia bloomed like squid’s ink in her brain. In a panic she rushed out of the apartment. Outside in the clean air, she pulled in deep, grateful lungfuls, exhaling the past.

  Her ears buzzed. Exhaustion or déjà vu? Maybe both.

  Nacho barreled past her, stopped in the weeds and chest heaving, looked at her, his eyes full of betrayal. “Don’t you think I know nobody wants me?” His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  The pain and animosity on the kid’s face brought it all back—a slap-in-the-face reminder of why she had never come back.

  Ms. Barnes stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her. “Now, now, Ignacio. I understand that you’ve had an emotional day. But anger will not serve you well.”

  “My mom’s dead. My dad’s in prison. And this one—” he jerked a thumb at Priss “—is useless.” He spit into the weeds. “Fine. Take me. I don’t give a shit.” He stalked to the car and stood with his back to them, shoulders square, head up.

  Way to go, Mom. As usual, you bail and leave someone else to be responsible. Well, I didn’t sign up for this. It’s not my problem.

  She strode to her car, got in, and peeled out, tires squealing as she made her way back to her life.

  * * *

  WHEN THE GUNMETAL-GRAY ocean rose in the horizon of her windshield, Priss realized she’d made a wrong turn. No surprise, since she couldn’t recall the roads she’d taken to get here.

  Idling at the corner of whatever and Pacific Coast Highway, she stared at the moody water until a driver honked behind her. Her mind still churning, she pulled across the road to an empty parking lot on the deserted beach.

  Memories banged at the door she’d locked years ago and her head pounded with the hammering. Jesus, the smell in that apartment. She thought she’d forgotten it but when she stepped inside that hole it was all there, waiting for her.

  She switched off the engine and Mona settled with a wheeze. Opening the door, she stepped into the wind. It was much colder here than inland. Her eyes watered, so she closed them and absorbed the astringent scent of timeless salt caverns at the bottom of the ocean. Zipping her leather jacket, she floundered through the loose sand to where the waves pounded the beach smooth, making walking easier. She walked, watching the little bubbles that rose with each wave’s retreat.

  She ached for the mindless drift of Colorado. Those days when Ryan was home and they’d make love in the long, languid mornings until her skin burned all over from passion and his beard stubble. Reading him the comics, tangled in the sheets and sunlight.

  Ryan was fun-loving, and no more interested in ties than she. They fit.

  She lifted her face to the wind. But Boulder hadn’t really been like that in a while, had it? Certainly not the sex part, anyway. She couldn’t exactly say when it happened, but things were off, somehow. Ryan was on the road more this spring, putting on skateboard tournaments, or filming them. And when they spoke over the phone he seemed distracted, distant.

  Her temp office jobs felt mundane lately. And when she wandered down to the bar with her friends, the laughter there sounded forced, almost fiercely jolly—as if a sparkly facade would make happiness sink in and become real.

  A bit cynical maybe, but you’ve been to your mother’s grave today. That’s bound to stir the shit on the bottom of the tank.

  But Priss was the one who demanded truth above all. She couldn’t lie to herself. She knew what was wrong. Her perfect, shiny gold life was flaking away, revealing a cheap dime-store bauble underneath.

  And that scared the crap out of her.

  What if she’d run from her mother’s world—the grinding poverty and the bogus rosy future of the next man at the bar—only to settle for an upscale version of the same life?

  She crammed her icy fists into the pockets of her jacket. She had made sure not to get trapped by the chains that had held her mother captive. Priscilla Hart wasn’t getting tied to anything: a man, kids or a dead-end job. Better to just fly above it all. Jettison weight and take in the good things that came to her.

  That philosophy had served her well for ten years. The past stayed in the past, and the present...

  If Colorado had lost its shine, there were lots of other places to explore. She turned her back to the ceaseless wind and let it push her to her car. Maybe it was time to hit the road and get out of Boulder. There were plenty of other chances just waiting for her to swoop in and claim them.

  The comforting thought lasted until she slid into Mona, turned the key, and hit the button to raise the top. The cold had whipped past her flimsy barrier of skin and muscle to freeze-dry her bones.

  Nacho.

  He was a good-looking kid with his dark eyes, soft mouth, and the same widow’s peak and cowlick their mother had. The same one Priss saw
in her rearview mirror.

  But his tawny skin was his father’s. Priss knew, because she’d met the man. Her mom’s shift from losers to married losers was the gas that fueled Priss’s flight from the bad side of Vegas, from the “slut spawn” taunts of her classmates, from her mother’s assurances that with this man things would be better.

  And her mother’s record for losers stood unbroken, since it seemed he was now in prison. She rolled up the windows and cranked the heat.

  Nacho wouldn’t have the luxury of driving away. She wondered where they had taken him.

  Not your problem. He’ll be fine. They’ll take care of him.

  Wherever they put him would be safer than being alone on the rough side of town at night, while his mother worked as a barmaid in an area likely even rougher.

  “He’s better off.” She ignored the shiver that ran through her like ice water, and put the car in Reverse.

  He’d stood there, waiting for her to make some kind of decision. A decision that told him he didn’t matter any more than the trash blowing around their feet.

  She knew that feeling. She’d lived that feeling.

  After checking for oncoming traffic, she hit the gas and pulled onto the open road. It wasn’t her job to save orphans. At eighteen, she’d left that fouled nest back in Vegas, spread her wings and flown, never looking back.

  And she wasn’t starting now. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  She drove south on PCH, planning to pick up Highway 15 out of L.A., driving on autopilot. The spectacular vistas of bluffs tumbling to meet the ocean barely registered.

  Those eyes.

  He’d looked right into her, seen that she knew. Knew about lying in the dark alone as your mom left for work. When she leaned over to give a kiss goodnight, he’d begged, just like Priss had begged.

  Don’t leave me. I’m afraid.

  Yet she’d always left. And with the closing door, the shadows would shift. The space would change from something warm and safe to a place that hid bad things and held scary sounds, just on the other side of the flimsy walls. A kid’s imagination was worse than reality. Most of the time.