“I know, but—”
“But nothing. And I haven’t been lonely. I’ve kept busy with the nursery and my activities. Of course I wish I saw you more often, but I understand how painful it’s been.” She smiled. “We’ve discussed it ad nauseam.”
I grinned back.
“I’m only considering it because of Mason. He’s lonely. He misses me and, well . . .”
“He’s your son.” And her daughter had been murdered over a year ago, so he was also her only child. Her husband had died when Mason was in college, and they only had each other now.
“Yes,” she said. “One day when you have a child, you’ll understand.”
“I think I understand now.”
The look she gave me was full of warmth. “Of course, I wouldn’t leave you high and dry with the nursery. Anna’s been doing a wonderful job, so I’m sure she could take over my duties. We’d just have to hire someone to replace her. In fact, business has picked up so much, we might consider hiring a seasonal worker to help out until the end of fall.”
I nodded, but truthfully I hadn’t even considered the nursery. I was sad she was leaving because I didn’t want her to go, pure and simple. “Maeve, you’re the last person I would accuse of leaving me high and dry.”
“I probably wouldn’t leave right away. Maybe just take off some weekends to go up to Little Rock. I know you have your hands full with Violet and all.”
I nodded, looking away so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. I’d taken her for granted all these months. I’d expected her to be waiting for me when I was ready to jump back into our friendship, only a part of me had never considered Maeve a friend at all. I’d considered her to be the mother I’d never had but always wanted. And now I could be losing her.
She closed the distance between us and hugged me. “I haven’t made a decision yet. I want to think about it, but I promise you’ll be one of the first people I tell if I decide to move.”
“Okay.”
She pulled back and lifted my chin. “I’ll still be here for you, Rose, even if I’m not in Henryetta.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Before I say my next piece, I want you to know I’m not trying to meddle.”
I grinned through my tears. “You’re not a meddler.”
“You may think differently when I’m done.” I waited while she took a breath. “Mason knows your conversation went badly yesterday. He hadn’t planned to see you. You hadn’t planned to see him. You were both caught off guard, and I suspect he may have said some things he regrets. He feels terrible. He won’t discuss his feelings for you, but I know he’d like to see you again before he goes back to Little Rock.” She paused. “I’m not going to ask you to see him. That wouldn’t be fair. I’m only telling you this because I think he wants to make things right.”
“Thanks, Maeve. I’ll consider it.”
She kissed my cheek. “That’s all I ask. I’ll love you no matter what you decide.”
A lump filled my throat, and I couldn’t push out the “Me too.”
I was losing everyone. I’d lost Mason. Violet was dying. Maeve was thinking of moving away. Neely Kate would spend less and less time with me now that she had Jed. I told myself I had James, but even if I decided to take the risk of being with him, I wouldn’t have him. Not really. We couldn’t have lunches like Mason and I used to do. Or go out to dinner. Or be seen together at all for that matter. He couldn’t come to the hospital while I sat in the waiting room, anxious for news about my sister. He couldn’t spend time with my niece and nephew. He couldn’t stand by my side at Violet’s funeral.
That last thought cracked me open.
“Rose.”
Tears were streaming down my face, and I was barely holding myself together. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are.”
I swiped my face, irritated at all the tears I’d leaked over the past twenty-four hours. But my sister was dying—didn’t that cut me some slack? “I was thinking about Violet.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Not good,” I said, my voice breaking. “She doesn’t have much time. Maybe weeks.” Then I began to cry in earnest, gut-wrenching sobs that consumed my entire body.
My legs gave out and I lowered myself to the floor. Maeve got to her knees next to me and wrapped her arms around me. She rocked me and smoothed my hair, and the thought of losing her—of losing this—made me sob even harder.
We sat like that for several minutes until I started to settle down, and as I came to my senses, profound embarrassment washed through me.
“I’m so sorry . . .”
“Whatever for?” she asked in admonishment.
I gestured to her tear-soaked and snot-covered shoulder. “Exhibit A.”
She reached up and cupped my cheek, staring into my eyes. “How many times have you cried since you found out that Violet was dying?”
“Like this? None.”
A soft smile lit up her face. “Then I’d say you were due. I’m honored you felt safe enough with me to help you through it.”
“I’m going to be alone, Maeve,” I said, starting to cry again.
“Oh, sweet girl. You’re not alone. You have so many people who love you. I promise you that.” Then she pulled me into another hug. “If I move, I won’t go until you’re ready.”
I wanted to tell her I’d never be ready, but that was selfish, so instead I said, “Thank you, but I could never ask you to stay.”
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t asking for permission,” she said with an ornery grin.
“You sounded like Neely Kate just now.”
She laughed. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
I realized we were both still sitting on the floor, so I got up and offered Maeve a hand to help her to her feet. She waited while I went into the restroom to wash my face—what little makeup I’d put on was now smeared all over my face.
When I emerged, Maeve wore a guilty look. “I’m sorry if anything I said upset you. In hindsight, I realize this wasn’t a good time to bring up my possible move.”
I gave her a wry grin. “There’d never be a good time to bring that one up, and besides, I don’t want you to tiptoe around me.”
“I don’t want to be one more person hurting you,” she said. “You’ve had too much pain in your short life. Be kind to yourself, Rose.” Then she gave me another hug and left.
More unsettled than ever, I watched her walk across the street toward her car.
Chapter 16
On the drive to Patsy’s mother’s house, I tried to call Patsy for the twentieth or so time. When I didn’t reach her, I called Neely Kate.
“Made any progress?” I asked when she answered.
“We’ve knocked on a lot of doors at the apartment complex, and so far no luck. But the apartment manager’s supposed to show up at eleven, so we’re hopin’ he can tell us something.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Did you check on Marshall again before you left the farm?”
“Yeah, his fever’s still gone, and he has more color in his face. Witt said he’ll make sure the boy gets fed today.”
“Let me know when you find something,” I said.
“You too.”
I pulled in front of Blanche Stoneman’s house a few minutes before ten, surprised to see four cars in the driveway. A teenage girl appeared in the doorway before I could knock on the door.
“Are you Neely Kate Rivers?”
“No, but I’m her partner, Rose Gardner. Neely Kate got detained with something else.”
“Is that girl one of those lesbians?” an older woman shouted from behind the girl.
“No, Grandma,” the teen said, rolling her eyes.
“She said she was somebody’s partner,” the older woman called back. “That’s what they call their lovers on all those TV shows. They call ’em partners.”
The teen gave me a sympathetic look. “I apologize in advance for Gr
eat-Grandma Bluebell.”
Bluebell? Was she serious?
But I didn’t have time to ask because the teen stepped to the side and let me in.
It felt like a walk-in freezer when I entered the house. Two older women who looked like they were in their sixties were sitting on the sofa and an even older woman was sitting on a dining room chair with a four-footed walker in front of her. I suspected the woman with the walker was Miss Bluebell. Her next words confirmed it.
“Do you know those boys on that show?”
I shook my head in confusion. “I’m sorry. What show?”
“You know, that show on Netflix. The one with all those gay boys.”
I stared at her in disbelief for a second. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Grandma!” a woman shouted from the other room. “We’ve already told you that not all gay people know each other!”
“How am I supposed to know that?” Miss Bluebell shouted back. “The ones on TV all seem so friendly.” She looked up at me. “Are you sure you don’t know them?”
“No,” I said, trying to hide a grin. “And your granddaughter’s right. I’m not a lesbian.”
“Oh. Well, that’s too bad,” she said as she waved her hand in dismissal. “I’ve never met one before.”
“Granny,” the teen groaned. “I’ve already told you that you’ve met gays and lesbians before. You just didn’t know it.”
“That’s a doggone shame,” the elderly woman said. “Now that I’ve stopped condemning them to eternal damnation, I’d like to talk to one. They’ve got their own parade with a rainbow flag. I’ve always liked rainbows.”
A woman who looked like she was in her late thirties appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a dish towel in her hand. She gave me an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry about my grandmother.” She gestured to the girl next to me. “Nicki there introduced her to the internet a few months ago, and now we never know what she’s gonna say.”
I grinned. “That’s okay.” I turned to her grandmother. “I don’t happen to be a lesbian, but I like rainbows too.”
The older woman frowned, clearly not appeased. “Well . . . I guess that has to count for something.”
The teen leaned into my ear. “Granny just discovered tolerance at the New Living Hope Revival Church. Now she’s trying to learn about the LGBTQ community.”
“That’s great,” I said. “It’s never too late for a change in your heart.”
“That Reverend Pruitt is a miracle worker,” the girl said.
“Jonah Pruitt is a godsend to this town,” Miss Bluebell said, pointing her finger at her great-granddaughter. “I kept tryin’ to get Patsy to go to his church with me, but she’s too busy sinnin’.”
So much for tolerance.
“She goes to church, Granny,” the woman in the kitchen said. “That’s where she got into a fight with Carol Ann.”
Her face scrunched up in disgust. “It didn’t stop her from sinnin’, now did it?”
Miss Bluebell had a point. “What about Carol Ann?” I asked. “Did she come to church with you?”
The elderly woman’s eyes narrowed. “How could she have come to church with me? She was only in town for a few days, and the picnic was on Sunday.”
“I’m confused about when she got back,” I said. “Do you know what day?”
The woman in the kitchen doorway wiped her right hand off with the kitchen towel. “Where are my manners?” She held out her hand. “Poppy. I’m Patsy’s sister. Can I get you something to drink? A slice of coffee cake?”
“No, thank you.”
“I thought Neely Kate was comin’ with you,” one of the women on the sofa said.
I turned to give her my attention, suspecting that one of the two sofa sitters was Patsy’s mother. “Neely Kate got caught up in something else. I hope y’all don’t mind that it’s just me.”
The woman made a face that suggested it wasn’t ideal, but she didn’t complain.
Poppy walked into the living room and gestured to the woman who’d asked about Neely Kate. “This is my mother, Lily. And next to her is her sister Lucille.”
Lucille gave me a blank stare, looking like she was still in shock.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Ms. Nelson,” I said.
She nodded, and tears filled her eyes. “She always had a penchant for runnin’ on the wild side. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised this was how she left us.”
“Nevertheless, I’m still sorry.”
Poppy motioned to a worn and stained pale blue wingback chair by the door. “Rose, why don’t you sit over here?”
“Thanks,” I said as I took a seat and pulled a stenographer’s notebook from my purse. “First of all, I want to thank y’all for meeting with me. I know this has to be a stressful time.”
All five women nodded, and I realized I was sitting with four generations of Patsy Sue’s family.
“Patsy called us and said you and Neely Kate would likely be comin’ by,” Poppy said in a gentle tone. She’d planted herself on the sofa between Lily and Lucille. “She told us that she’d hired you to help solve Carol Ann’s murder.”
“Yes.” Okay, not exactly, but finding Carol Ann’s killer was the surest way to clear her name. “When was the last time any of you talked to Patsy?”
They all shot glances to one another. “Yesterday morning,” Lily said. “Right after word got out around town that Carol Ann was dead.”
“Do you happen to know where she might be?” I asked.
Lily shook her head. “I have no earthly idea.”
“Does she happen to own a lake house, or any other property she might be stayin’ at?”
Lily shook her head. “I know she has some rental properties, but they’re all filled with tenants.”
I couldn’t tell if she was lying, so I decided to move on. “Miss Bluebell mentioned that Carol Ann hadn’t been in town long. Do y’all know when she came back?”
“Last Thursday,” Poppy said. “She showed up at all our houses askin’ for money.”
“How much did she want?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
My eyebrows shot up. That was a lot of money.
“I laughed in her face,” Miss Bluebell said. “I’m living from one Social Security check to the next. I ain’t got any extra to give. And even if I did, I sure wouldn’t have given it to a girl who just frittered her money away.”
“Granny,” Poppy admonished. “Think about poor Aunt Lucille.”
“What?” her grandmother demanded. “Just because the girl is dead don’t make it any less true.”
Poppy cringed. “Nevertheless, Grandma . . .”
“Where do you think she was before she came back?” I asked.
“Out in California,” Lily said, “tryin’ to become famous.”
“I heard she wanted to be an actress,” I said.
“Ha!” Miss Bluebell said. “It was a way to a means.”
“So she wanted to be an actress to become famous?” I asked.
The older woman nodded. “The last we heard, she was tryin’ to get on reality TV shows. She got on a few small ones no one’s ever heard of like Bowling with Frogs and Night Fishin’ with Gators in the Swamp. But last we heard, she hadn’t been on one of them shows in a couple of years.”
“Huh,” I said as I wrote the information down. “So she was out in LA before she came back?”
“She was in Atlanta the last two years,” Lucille said in a soft voice. “She said it was easier to get acting jobs there on account of all the production studios filming shows there. I’d hoped to see her more since she was so much closer, but if anything, I saw her less. But I think she spent a few months in Vegas after Atlanta.”
“And when was the last time you saw her, Miss Lucille?”
“Thursday,” she said, looking down at the tissue balled up in her hand.
“And when was the last time you spoke to her or saw her before t
hat?”
“Well . . . she called me about two weeks ago. She told me she was workin’ on a new opportunity that was different than anything else she’d done. She told me this one was perfect for her and it would finally bring her back home to me.”
That fit with what Neely Kate had found out from her other cousin—that she’d been working on a business opportunity. “Do you happen to know what her new business was?”
She shook her head. “She said it was a secret. That if word got out, the competition would try to stop her.”
“Competition?” I said, writing that down. “She didn’t give any hints about what the competition might be?”
“No.”
“What about where the business might be located?” I asked.
“Why are you askin’ all these questions about a business that’s never gonna happen?” Lily challenged. “My daughter is fightin’ for her life, and you’re talkin’ about Carol Ann’s pipe dream?”
“Fightin’ for her life?” Miss Bluebell snorted. “Patsy’s doin’ what Patsy does best—lookin’ out for Patsy.” She pointed her finger at Lily. “There’s no loyalty in that one. Not even to her husband.”
There was so much information here for me to dig deeper into, but I ran the risk of alienating half the people in the room with every question. “I’d like to circle back to Patsy in a bit, but first I have a few more questions about Carol Ann’s business.”
The older woman looked pissed.
I turned back to Lucille and asked in a soothing tone, “Do you happen to know where she planned on opening it?”
She shook her head. “She said she didn’t need a storefront. She could work out of her home, only she didn’t have one yet. She was workin’ on that too.”
“Do you know what part of town? Or if she was hopin’ to rent or buy?”
Lucille shook her head. “I don’t know. She was so secretive about it.”
“What does all of this have to do with Carol Ann bein’ murdered by her cousin?” Miss Bluebell asked.
Everyone in the room gasped and tensed.
“What?” the older woman demanded. “I know all y’all are thinkin’ it.”
I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned closer as I held the older woman’s gaze. “First of all, Neely Kate and I are tryin’ to prove that Patsy Sue didn’t murder her cousin.”
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