She looked up at him. Only inches separated them, and for a moment his heart seemed to pause mid-beat. She took a deep, hiccuping breath. “It doesn’t matter…if I’ve done anything. If you help me, you know he’ll come after you….”
“The judge?”
She gave the faintest of nods.
“Have you done anything wrong, Carolina?”
“Is it wrong…to want to raise my own children, Billy Ray?”
He didn’t know what was happening here, but he knew he wasn’t going to find out anything else right now. He had to choose, and he had to do it right away. If he helped Carolina, he was siding with her against the most powerful man in River County, a man who could destroy him without even working up a sweat.
“Help me, Billy Ray. Please…”
He realized there was no choice to be made. He was Billy Ray Wainwright, a man who’d been born to tilt at windmills.
He wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb. Her skin was too warm, and much, much too soft. “We’ll go to my place, in my car. I’ll call Joel and get yours delivered to my house tonight. We’ll store it in my barn until you’re well. Then you can decide what to do.”
“I can’t pay you back. I have nothing…I’m nothing. Not anymore.”
“It’s not about paying me back.” He turned and searched for Kitten. She was comforting her brother. “Kitten, can you watch your mother while I get my car?”
“You’re not going to call the cops, are you?”
“You watch too much television.” He helped Carolina into a sitting position and settled her comfortably against the door of the BMW.
She touched his chest as he started to rise. “Please, Billy Ray. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll lose my children if you do. Please…”
He nodded. Then he started his jog to the roadside.
2
In the service lot, Billy Ray had mulled over the general facts of Carolina’s life, but he hadn’t considered the finer points. Now, as he drove home with Carolina beside him and her children drowsing in the back seat, the rest of the story came back to him.
Rumors had circulated after Champ’s death, and time had only increased their number. Carolina had been at the wheel the night Champ died, and most of Moss Bend believed that the only reason she hadn’t been prosecuted was the identity of her father-in-law.
Right after the accident, Billy Ray had grilled Doug for details, but Doug had been uncharacteristically silent. Billy Ray had been left to wonder, like everyone else, whether pressure had been applied by the Grayson family to keep the sheriffs findings a secret. Although Carolina had been well liked in Moss Bend, after the crash her popularity had taken a serious tumble. Many of the locals believed she had been drinking on the night of the accident, and many more believed that she had been drunk.
Champ’s loss was a serious blow for the town. The young man had been everything the South believed about itself. Refined, chivalrous, and a success at everything he touched, Champion Collier Grayson had been Moss Bend’s golden boy. He had charmed the hearts of even those ill-tempered residents who believed it was time for the Grayson family to loosen its hold on the county’s politics and purse strings.
Billy Ray didn’t know what to believe about the accident, but he certainly had reasons to be cautious. Despite them, tonight he had let the feelings of an adolescent boy intrude on the decisions of a man. He had sided with Carolina without having any good reasons to do so. All he really knew was that she was burning with fever, but she had been trying to leave town with her children, anyway. What did that say about her emotional state?
“Billy, I…I can’t thank you enough.”
Carolina spoke softly, as if she couldn’t summon. the effort to speak louder. He didn’t know how to answer her. Doubt poured through him, and if there hadn’t been two small children riding in the back seat, he would have pulled over to discuss his fears.
“I can’t believe I’ve involved you in this.” Carolina rested her head against the back of her seat. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring straight ahead at the dimly lit downtown of Moss Bend.
Billy Ray stared straight ahead, too. He had chosen the fastest way home because he had to call Joel immediately. Only a small window of opportunity existed between the time that Doug sent someone to check the garage and Cal’s son arrived to settle in for the night. Joel had to get to the garage during that time, reassemble Carolina’s car and drive it to Billy Ray’s. And it would take some time to wake him up and convince him to help, which was why Billy Ray hadn’t tried to use his cellular phone in the parking lot.
“What’s really wrong with you, Carolina?” Downtown was nearly empty, and the picturesque storefronts with their clapboard siding and country curtains had only security lights shining in their windows. Most of downtown, a six-block square of brick and frame buildings, closed down at eight. “And don’t tell me it’s a cold,” he added.
She hesitated; then she sighed. “I have pneumonia.”
He almost ran off the side of the road. “What?”
“Billy, I’m on antibiotics. I have them with me, and I can take them anywhere. I…I’m not sick enough to be in a hospital. Really.”
“You picked a hell of a time to run away.”
“It must look…that way.” She began to cough, and for a moment she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
He waited until she was silent. “It sure does.”
“It was the best time. For once, no one was…watching me. I was sick…. My car was in the shop….”
“Did you plan it that way?”
“I asked Gabe to take the car in. I told him I wouldn’t be needing it…while I was sick.”
He shot her a quick glance. “And all the time you were planning to leave?”
She nodded.
He realized that she had made her plans carefully, and he felt better. This was not the spur-of-the-moment action of a mentally unstable woman. Despite her illness, she had used logic and executed her plan with precision.
“I…I packed the trunk with a few things before Gabe took the car. I made…them look like bags for the women’s shelter…in case anyone noticed.”
“So you’ve been planning for a while?”
“Yes.”
He drove on. He was out of town now, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Hardly anyone had been out on the streets. He had planned his route carefully, avoiding the one block with a bar and restaurant that stayed open late. His windows were tinted, and despite the heat, he had closed them so no one would be able to tell who was inside.
“You still live at the farm, don’t you?” Carolina shifted in her seat.
“That’s right.” For generations his ancestors had supported themselves on fifty acres on Hitchcock Road south of town. They hadn’t supported themselves well. No River County Wainwrights had ever been rich, but they had eked a living from the sandy soil, cultivating soybeans and corn and alfalfa. The land was still farmed by a neighbor, who also ran cattle in Billy Ray’s pastures. Someday, if Moss Bend grew and spilled over the city limits, the land would be worth money. But now it was rich only in family sentiment.
“I’ve always liked that house,” she said.
He was intrigued. He wondered if Carolina was just trying to curry favor, or if she really had a taste for simple white farmhouses, for wide front porches and ancient live oaks dripping enough Spanish moss to single-handedly give the town its name.
“I liked the garden,” she added. “When I was a little girl…my mother told me it was the Garden of Eden.”
Billy Ray’s father had created the garden, insisting that despite his professional status, he had been genetically programmed to work the soil. Yancy had planted half an acre of camellias, azaleas and brightly colored perennial flowers along the roadside. The garden had declined as his father had. Billy Ray had done little to restore it.
“You won’t like it now,” he said.
“I know…it’s overgrown. I’
ve driven by.”
That surprised him. Hitchcock was a rural road, paved only in the last decade. Basically, it led nowhere—which was a fitting symbol for the lives of generations of Wainwrights. “Well, if you were still expecting the Garden of Eden, you were disappointed.”
“I like wild things. No one can control them.”
He had never thought of the garden that way, but she was right. Birds nested in the locust trees that had sprung up in garden pathways; rabbits huddled under shrubs; squirrels fought battles with marauding raccoons. And sometimes, in the hours near dawn, deer came to prune the plants they loved the best. Billy Ray had no heart for controlling them or the jungle bequeathed him by his father.
Carolina turned to look at him. “He’ll find us, you know.”
“The judge?”
“If we leave town we have a chance. Here…” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t involve you.”
Billy Ray kept his voice low, but frustration sounded, anyway. “How in the hell did you think you’d make it anywhere in the shape you’re in? What if you’d fainted behind the wheel, Carolina? You have two children to think about.”
“I’ve never fainted before in my life. I’ve never considered…I might.” She began to cough again.
He waited until she finished. “Seems to me that might not be the only thing you didn’t consider. If you were trying to escape without being noticed, a silver BMW wasn’t your best choice.”
“I didn’t have a choice. Do you think…I wanted that car? He chose it for me. He wants me to remember…every time I look at it. He wants me…to remember the other one.”
Billy Ray’s hands locked tight on the wheel as he considered that. He was not an admirer of Judge Whit-tier Grayson. The judge was a remnant of another time in history when powerful Southern aristocrats ran counties like this one with an iron hand.
That phenomenon still occurred frequently, of course, all over the country, but not with the same sense of noblesse oblige. Ruthless men and women clawed their way to power, but few of them felt they’d been born to it. Judge Grayson believed that River County was his birthright. From all appearances it was a birthright he had intended to pass on to his son.
Until Champ’s death in a car driven by this woman.
After another fit of coughing, Carolina continued. “I was going to drive to Atlanta tonight…and sell the car. Go to another lot…Buy an ordinary used car. Move on from there.”
He shook his head. “You would have left a trail a mile long and wide.”
“I know…how to be careful.”
“Do you?” His question hung in the air between them. One night last December she had not been careful enough.
Her eyes widened with hurt, and she turned away from him. “My children’s future…depended on not…taking chances.”
She began to cough again, and Billy Ray knew better than to continue this way. He had to get Carolina home. Until she was settled and feeling stronger, she wasn’t going to give him the answers he needed.
They made the rest of the trip in silence. Even when they turned onto Hitchcock Road, she didn’t speak. Not until they’d gone half a mile and he’d slowed to turn into his property did she face him again.
“I’m at your mercy. I can’t…drive anywhere. I’m weaker than I thought. I’d be lying…if I pretended…” She shrugged. “But if you let me rest here…until I’m better, I’ll leave as soon as—”
“Carolina, by tomorrow morning, every cop in the county—hell, in north Florida—will be looking for you. You’re going to have to come up with a new plan. But you’re too sick to be worrying about this right now. Come inside. We’ll work out something once you’re feeling better.”
Her expression reminded him of an animal caught in a snare. She hadn’t given up, but she knew better than to hope for much.
He parked beside the house instead of the barn. He needed the barn for her BMW, and besides, he didn’t want her walking farther than necessary. “Hattie came today. At least the house is clean and so are the sheets.”
“Hattie McFerguson?”
“You know Hattie?”
“She cleaned for me. She’s the best….”
He tried to make conversation, as if this situation was somehow normal and the social graces applied. “I defended her son last year. He paid me what he owed, but for some reason Hattie thinks she owes me something, too. She sneaks in here every Thursday to clean and do my laundry, whether I want her to or not.”
“Hattie was…” Her voice drifted off. She shook her head.
“Was what?”
“One of the few people who believed…in me.”
“That’s all the recommendation I need.”
Her eyes were sad. “Did you need one at all, Billy? Has it come to that?”
He thought about her words as he went around the car to open her door. By the time he got there, Kitten was awake, staring sleepily around her, and Chris was beginning to wail.
“Come on, little ‘uns.” He opened their door next, letting the night breeze cool them. “We’ve got real beds inside.”
Carolina let Billy Ray get the children out of the car, then she got slowly to her feet. In the moonlight her face was pale, and despite having a suspiciously wet toddler weighing down one arm, he took her arm with his other. “Lean on me. Once we get into the house we’ll get some cool liquids down you and some aspirin for the fever.” He looked down at Kitten. “Can you make it?”
“I’ll help my mommy.”
“Great. Get on the other side. It might take two of us.”
With nothing to argue about, she did as he’d suggested.
Carolina sighed. “When this is over…I will never ask anyone for another blessed thing.”
Billy Ray didn’t know what he’d expected from her. He didn’t pretend to understand this woman. He wasn’t even sure he had ever understood the girl. But this display of backbone, this distaste for her own helplessness, was reassuring, somehow. She might have been pampered and protected until the accident that took her husband’s life, but now she wanted to take care of herself.
He unlocked his front door and pushed it open. The house smelled of lemon oil and pine-scented cleaner. A light burned on a table in the corner, compliments of Hattie, who hated the thought that he came home every night to an empty house. Most likely he would find a pie in his refrigerator, too, one she had baked herself, and maybe a dinner to warm in his microwave.
Tonight, he would have to share.
“Let’s get you to the sofa.” He led them all into the living room on the right of the narrow hallway. The room was small, and furnished much the way it had been when his grandfather and grandmother, Edna, had lived here. Billy Ray hadn’t had the heart to replace the old horsehair-stuffed chair that his grandmother had kept carefully covered in plastic, or to give away the rosewood piano with half a dozen keys missing. These had been Edna’s treasures, and when Joel hadn’t had room for them in his apartment in town, Billy Ray had promised to leave them where they were.
The navy blue velvet sofa was the only concession to the nineties. A grateful client—charged with setting up a pleasure palace on a side street in town—had given it to Billy Ray in lieu of cash. Billy Ray had never wanted to know exactly where the sofa had come from, but it was a substantial piece of furniture, no matter its origins.
He led Carolina there now and settled her against the cushions. Chris wiggled to get down and join Kitten, who had already made herself at home beside her mother.
“This guy’s wet,” Billy Ray said. “I hope you’re not going to tell me all the diapers are in your car.”
She opened a large purse and began to move things around. “I have one here. I’11 change him.”
He held out his hand for the diaper. “Rest. I’ve changed diapers before. But first I’ve got to call Joel, so we’ll be gone a few minutes. Kitten, can you come with me? Your mom needs something to drink and some medicine.”
Kitten, her eyelids he
avy, looked from Billy Ray back to her mother, as if she were assessing the situation.
He raised a brow in question. “Do you need a character reference?”
“Go with Billy,” Carolina said.
“She likes juice.” Kitten stuck out her lower lip. “And not apple.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Carolina closed her eyes, obviously too exhausted to do anything else.
Billy Ray started through the house with the wiggling toddler on his hip. He didn’t look at the little boy, afraid if he examined him too closely he might see a miniature Champ Grayson staring back up at him. “Does the wiggler talk?” he asked Kitten.
“Not much. Everybody talks for him.”
“Uh-huh. You, too?”
“No. Mommy told me not to.”
“His name is Chris?”
“Christopher Collier Grayson.”
“And you’re Catherine Waverly Grayson, but your mama calls you Kitten?”
“When I’m older I’ll be Cat.”
“Makes sense to me.”
Kitten looked around. “Does anybody else live here?”
“Nope. Just me.”
“Where’s your family?”
“I have a grandfather, but he lives in town now.”
“No, I mean your kids and stuff.”
“I don’t have children.”
“Why not? Don’t you like kids?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’ve never thought a lot about it.” They had reached the kitchen, after winding their way through small rooms built one after another by successive generations with no talent for architecture. He liked the random placement of rooms, the way that connecting hallways narrowed or widened according to the builder’s whim. The house had been built for living, not entertaining, and definitely not for show.
He liked the kitchen best of all. The house had no dining room. Meals had always been taken here or in the room that had served as a kitchen when the house was first built. This room was wide and long, with windows looking over the back acres. Sometimes he imagined the Wainwright women standing at the windows waiting for their men to come back to the house after a long day of chores, biscuits baking in the oven and pork sizzling on the stove.
Southern Gentlemen: John Rip PetersonBilly Ray Wainwright Page 15