by Kay Shostak
Peter wrinkles his nose at me. “This place feels artificial. Doesn’t it?”
We are so on the same wavelength, just going in opposite directions. Why is that so evident now? What if I’d… well, I didn’t. I didn’t.
“You here for coffee or to see Jordan?” I ask.
“Both. You?”
“Just Jordan. I’ve had my fill of coffee today. Probably had enough for the entire week.”
“Yeah, me too probably, but I’m not going to let that stop me. I’ll take a regular with cream and sugar,” he says as we approach the counter. The store is empty, but the pastry case is full. I step closer to it as Peter asks Jimmy if Jordan is around. I don’t jerk my head when he says he has an appointment with her, but I do frown. From what I hear, that wouldn’t be an odd expression when looking in this case.
“They don’t look that bad to me. Of course I’m not a real connoisseur of fresh baked goods,” I say.
Jimmy, whom I met yesterday during the siege, wrinkles his nose at me, and whispers, “They just don’t taste right. I told her to put in a rack of Little Debbies, and she’d do better. She got kinda mad.”
“I didn’t get mad.” Jordan strides out of the back room and around the counter. She has on a royal blue dress and matching heels. The dress is simple, but probably cost an arm and a leg. It’s form-fitting with ¾-length, tight sleeves. Her eyes look a softer, deeper blue next to the dress, and she has on pink lipstick that adds to her fresh look. I kind of miss the black. This looks almost approachable. Oh, and she’s approaching Peter.
“Can I help you, Carolina?” the smiling lady asks. She and Peter look really, really good together. Now I notice that he’s wearing gray pants and a dress shirt. His beard is trimmed and his hair smoothed back. What is it with everyone in Chancey looking good this morning? I did not get the memo.
“Um, here. It’s a muffin from Ruby. She says she’ll help you out and do whatever you need her to do.”
“Just give it to Jimmy,” she says as she and Peter exchange a look, and he nods at her.
I hand the bag to Jimmy and turn back toward them. Peter sips his coffee, and they look at me. No, they’re waiting me out. They want me to leave. Okay. They can’t make me leave. It’s a public place.
So I turn towards the door and leave.
Seriously, like I’m going to ignore the unspoken directions of a couple of well-dressed, good-looking people? Please. Do you even know me?
Chapter 39
“My garden and just everything is going to burst out all over when this rain stops,” FM says as he holds out a hand for our wet raincoats. We left our umbrellas on the front porch.
Jackson apologizes, “We tried waiting for a break in the rain, but there just wasn’t one.”
“No problem at all.” FM shakes Jackson and Will’s hands and then gives me a quick hug. He waits for Anna to struggle out of her jacket, and then he gives her a tight hug. “Darlin’, it’s so good to see you. Your grandmother just couldn’t wait for you to get here tonight.”
Anna doesn’t smile. She hardly said two words on the drive here. And none of us really know her, even though we are now related to her, so we don’t know if this is normal or if should we be worried. Will isn’t worried, but that’s not really surprising. He’s just not a worrier.
“Can we go on up?” Will asks, one foot already on the bottom stair.
“No, you may not. We are having dessert first,” Missus says as she comes through the kitchen door. “Welcome, everyone. Let’s move into the parlor.”
The men step back for her to go through and then motion me and Anna to go ahead of them. Missus sits on a rose-colored settee in front of a coffee table on which dessert plates have been set. They each hold a piece of cheesecake, a strawberry, and a drizzle of chocolate. She has a silver coffee service on a tray with china cups. “Anna, sit here beside me. Carolina, there,” she says as she points me to the chair directly across from the settee. “Men, sit wherever you are most comfortable, after you get your coffee and dessert. By the way, its decaffeinated coffee since it’s late.”
She pours coffee for everyone and hands out plates of cheesecake.
“No, thanks. I don’t like cheesecake,” Anna says.
“Of course you do. Everyone likes cheesecake,” Missus says. “Now about the wedding.”
Anna takes a small sip of her coffee and sits back, leaving her plate where Missus sat it on the table in front of her.
“You will all be glad to know the music for the wedding is set with the string quartet we decided on and a pianist from Kennesaw. He’s quite good, plays for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra occasionally.”
Will is busy eating. Anna is busy not eating. So I ask, “Who is the ‘we’ you’re talking about?”
Missus picks up her fork. She slices off the tip of her cake and lifts the fork to her mouth. She chews, swallows, take a sip of coffee, and finally looks at me. “What is it you want to know, Carolina?”
“I’m just wondering who decided on a string quartet and a pianist.”
She clears her throat and looks at her granddaughter. “Anna, did you want to help select the string quartet or the pianist?” Getting no response, she looks to my son who is lifting the crust end of the cheesecake to his mouth, with his fingers. “Will?”
He pauses. “Oh, no. I don’t care.” Then he pops the last piece in and grins.
I try again. “What about Patty and Andy? What kind of music do they want?”
“What kind of music do you think they want?” She scoffs. “Any input they would be allowed to have, would most assuredly be inappropriate. Carolina, I understand your sympathies for democratic principles, but this is a wedding. My first wedding in Chancey since my own. There is a certain way it must go. I feel inviting you here, to my home, and letting you see the plans should be adequate to calm any fears you might have. Your son and my granddaughter seem quite willing to leave everything in my hands. Not that I’m complaining, you understand. It is a joy. A joy to bear this family’s responsibilities.”
“Is Gertie happy for you to bear her family responsibilities, too?”
“Gertie Samson will not ruin this day. She will not.” Missus stands up. “Everyone ready for the tour?” She steps around the coffee table, but as she comes in front of me, she stops. “I will send you an email detailing the rest of the arrangements. If you feel Gertie needs to be informed, that is your prerogative. Feel free to get some of her father’s moonshine, sit out on the porch, and go over everything, detail by detail. You might have to explain some of the bigger words, but that is your choice.” And she walks out of the room. “Follow me.”
FM tries to smile at me. “It’s all made her a little crazier than usual,” he whispers. “I’ll work on her.”
Jackson offers his hand to Anna and helps her up from the low settee. “Come on, Anna, let’s go see. You know your grandmother can be over the top, but she loves you. Right?” His last word comes out rather weak, and Anna looks as weak and unsure as he sounded. And so very tired. Will walks out to the hall, but waits beside the newel post of the staircase. Anna goes to him, and he hugs her to him.
“It’s going to be all right,” he says as he kisses the top of her head.
On the second floor, Missus is turning on lights. FM pats his granddaughter’s back. “She’s so excited about y’all living here. It’s real nice up there. You’re going to love it.” Anna smiles at him and they start up the stairs.
Jackson and I bring up the rear, and as we do he studies the steep, old-fashioned staircase. “Well,” he mutters to me, “if staircases were your weapon of choice, looks like this one would do the trick.”
Chapter 40
All the chores I put off yesterday are waiting for me today, but at least the rain has stopped. And FM was right. Everything is bursting out. My garden might be a problem. It’s a mess. Everything is climbing on top of each other, and there are these shoots (which I hope are some kind of vegetable, but I have my
doubts) that grew four feet last night. Okay, since I really haven’t been down here to look at the garden at eye level, they may have already been three feet tall, but needless to say, they are almost as tall as me.
We enjoyed our coffee on the deck, and after Jackson left, I refilled my cup, rolled up the bottoms of my pajama pants, and ventured barefoot into the wet grass of the backyard.
Jackson has been very tolerant of my garden. I can’t say he was happy to see so much of the grass tilled up, but he’s tolerating it. Or maybe just ignoring it. What’s getting harder to ignore is that we can’t just mow the part I didn’t plant. You can’t mow tilled up ground. That really never dawned on me. So, behind the ten feet or so which I planted, there’s another twenty feet of weeds, clumps of dirt, and more weeds.
The sound of a car door out front makes me turn around. I walk through the yard to the corner of the house and then up the side yard to the front. Seven on a summer morning is early for any of the kids to be up, or at least to be outside. At the big maple tree on the front corner of the house, I look up on the porch, and there is Susan looking in my front window.
“Hey.”
She jumps. “Oh, you scared me. I knew Jackson was in town, so I figured you were up. What are you doing out here?” she asks as she jogs down the porch steps.
“Just wandering around. You’ve got coffee?”
She raises her travel mug as we walk back the way I’d come. She has on long jean shorts and those plastic gardening shoes, so she doesn’t think twice about walking through the wet yard. By now my pants have fallen out of their folds and are dragging in the dewy grass.
“What are you doing wandering around this early?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, and we continue walking in silence. Crows call to each other, and the chirp of bugs in the trees provides a relaxing undercurrent. One tone, like the sound of a fan, or white noise. And I can smell everything growing. Green, if green has a smell, smells like this. Water, dirt, freshness. “Love how it smells out here,” I say, taking another deep breath.
As I start up the deck steps, Susan continues past them. “Show me your garden.”
“Compared to yours, mine can’t really be called a garden,” I say to her back.
She says, “Tomatoes, lots of tomatoes. Some kind of squash? Zucchini or yellow squash?”
I shrug. “Don’t look at me.”
“Hold this,” she says as she hands me her coffee. She bends down and begins pushing and pulling at the plants. And true to my fears, she yanks up a couple of the really tall stalks.
“Darn, I was hoping those were just doing really, really well.”
“They are. They just aren’t anything you want in a garden.” She stands back up and reaches for her coffee cup. “Tell you what. I’ll come over tomorrow morning, and we can clean this up a bit. See all those little yellow flowers? Those. And those.”
I nod.
“Well, those are all going to be tomatoes, and these are going to be yellow squash. Those over there, I’m not sure what kind of squash that is.” She takes a sip of coffee and looks out to the expanse of weeds. “So why did you have Griffin plow up all that?”
I’m at a loss. “I was bored. Thought I wanted a garden. And why have a garden at all if you can’t have a big one. How hard will it be to turn it all back into grass?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “Won’t be awful, but won’t be easy.”
We turn toward the deck, but then she stops and looks back at the garden. “Wait. Wait a minute.” She swivels to face me. “Okay, here’s why I came up here this morning. We’re moving.”
“What?! Leaving Chancey? But you just got your job, and Bryan will be lost without Grant. And your family. Where are you moving to?”
“Slow down. We’re not leaving Chancey.” She walks toward the steps and climbs them without answering any of my other questions.
As I join her on the deck, I see Will in the kitchen. Looks like he’s packing a lunch and he doesn’t see us out here. Too absorbed in the music leaking through closed windows and doors from inside. Susan and I watch him for a minute, then she walks to the railing and leans on it. “We bought a house up in Laurel Cove.”
“Laurel Cove?” Luxury homes on the side of the mountain, filled with people from Atlanta who want the quaintness of Chancey, but wouldn’t dream of living here. That isn’t a slam on Laurel Cove; it’s actually how they advertise. Most of my negative thoughts about Laurel Cove came from the mouth of the woman standing in front of me. “But you hate Laurel Cove.”
“Not really. I mean, it’s beautiful, right?” She pushes away from the railing and moves to sit at the table. “Maybe I didn’t like it because I knew we could never afford to live there.”
“Ohh, the new jobs.” I sit back down in the chair I began the morning in.
“Yeah. It will be nice to have a new house. No more uneven floors or sticking doors or coats of old paint to deal with. And we have a pool.”
“You already have a house picked out?”
“Hey, Mrs. Lyles. Didn’t know y’all were out here.” Will steps out onto the deck, coffee in one hand, toast in the other. “Congratulations on the new house.”
How does he know?
“Thanks, Will. How did you hear?”
“At the dealership yesterday. Mr. Conner was talking about it.” Will takes a bite of toast and heads to the door. “Gotta go get Anna up. Bye. Mom, we’ll be home earlier today, in time for dinner.”
“Okay.” Last night we didn’t see him and Anna until we went to Missus’ and FM’s. The door closes and the music from inside fades. I turn back to Susan. “So, you have a house picked out?”
“Yep. It all happened kind of fast. When the job came up for Griffin, part of the package included moving expenses. Except we didn’t need to move. But in the contract there was all this money for closing costs and stuff, which made it seem like a good idea to at least think about it. That’s where we went with the Reynolds Saturday night. They’re buying a house up there, too.”
“Really? They didn’t mention it.”
“No? Guess they were afraid folks would ask about us buying a house, too, and they understood we wanted to let folks know.”
“But it’s a done deal?”
“I guess. Something about the power company owning property up there and, well, yes, it’s a done deal. We signed the papers Sunday afternoon.”
“Wait, so you knew yesterday morning? You didn’t say anything at Ruby’s.”
She taps her fingers on the table and looks down the hill toward the river. “I started to, but you found it rather funny that Laney could be jealous of me and Griffin. Plus, I didn’t have much time due to the staff meeting.”
“Well, Laney being jealous does make more sense now.” Laney and Shaw Conner are people who know they belong in Laurel Cove. Susan and Griffin Lyles are not.
She stands up. “I need to go. Just wanted to let you know before you heard elsewhere.”
“I’m happy for you guys,” I say as I rise and walk around the table to hug her. “It’s a big step, and if I can help with whatever, just holler.”
She smiles as we hug, and then she tilts her head at me as we pull apart. “Well, now that you mention it. The new house, along with being built on pure rock, doesn’t have space for a garden. Maybe I can help with yours? That’s one thing I hadn’t even thought about until last night. You know I have to have a garden. And then this morning—” She opens her hands toward my back yard.
“Yes. Oh, yes. That would be amazing! I now love the idea of you moving. One hundred percent behind it.” I laugh and hug her again. “This way you can’t get too high-falutin’ and forget about us little people.”
We walk into the house. She leaves out the front door while I go upstairs to get rid of my soggy pajama pants. Funny, I always imagined these little towns stayed the same, nothing changed from year to year. But we’ve not been here a year yet, and it’s just change after change after chang
e.
At the top of the stairs, Will dashes out of Savannah’s door. “She’s not up there.”
“Who? Savannah’s not in her room?”
“No, I mean, yes, Savannah’s there, but Anna’s not.” He looks around, and I notice every door on the floor is open, including my bedroom, his and Anna’s room, the bathroom and even Bryan’s door.
“Anna’s gone.”
Chapter 41
“I slept in Bryan’s room last night since he spent the night at his friend’s. Anna wasn’t comfortable, and she wanted to sit up and read. I took my clothes in there, too, and got dressed in there this morning. I just came up to wake her, like I told you. I thought it was good she was able to sleep in.”
Savannah comes down from her room and joins us in the hallway. “Were you just upstairs asking me if Anna was in my room? What’s going on?”
Will repeats, “Anna’s gone.” He shakes his head. “She’s not here.”
His sister moves past us and down the stairs. “Probably just down at Missus’ or Ruby’s, right?” She opens the front door. “Yeah, your car is gone.”
“The car is gone? She really went somewhere?” Will isn’t good in an emergency. He’s a thinker, a planner. Steady as the day is long, but not a fast mover. Luckily, his sister is.
“Ruby, hey, it’s Savannah Jessup. Have you seen Anna this morning? Is Missus there, or has Patty been in?” She listens while Will and I join her at the bottom of the stairs.
“Okay, thanks, bye.” She hangs up. “No Anna, but Patty was there earlier and Missus is outside on the sidewalk talking to FM. Want me to call Missus?”