Southern Gentlemen

by Jennifer Blake

She settled herself with obvious gratitude and returned Hattie’s gigantic hug. She was wearing pale blue shorts and a coordinating T-shirt, and her hair was neatly combed. But if she normally made more elaborate preparations to greet the day, she hadn’t made them this morning. She looked washed-out and unsteady.

  Much the way Yancy had looked on the morning after a bender.

  “Juice to start?” Billy Ray asked.

  “I’d love some.”

  He strolled to the cabinet and got a glass. “Coffee or tea to go with it?”

  “Tea,” Hattie said firmly, before Carolina could respond. “With lots of honey and lemon in it. Carolina, you’re going right straight back to bed after breakfast, if I have to carry you myself.”

  Carolina looked sheepish. “I’ve imposed on Billy Ray way too much as it is.”

  “I’m done!” Kitten held up her bowl. “Chris is done, too. I want to go outside.”

  “You’re going upstairs to take a bath and get some clothes on first, and so is that baby. Come on now. Let’s see what we can find.” Hattie ushered both children out of the kitchen.

  Carolina waited until they were gone. “Does she know she can’t tell—”

  “She knows.”

  “Did Joel bring the car last night?”

  “It’s in my barn.” Billy Ray set the juice in front of her. “I’ll make you some tea.”

  “Thank you, Billy Ray.”

  He guessed she wasn’t talking about the tea. “Are you going to call the Graysons?”

  “Gloria has a guild meeting this morning at ten. She won’t miss it, because if she does, there’ll be talk. And she hates gossip about the family worse than anything. The housekeeper always drives her. I’ll call when they’re gone and leave a message on her machine.”

  Gloria was Carolina’s mother-in-law. Billy Ray had never had much contact with her, but she had always seemed unemotional to a fault, a woman who lived to do her duty and not one thing more.

  “What will you tell her?” he asked.

  “That we’re fine, and that when we’re settled, we’ll get back in touch.”

  “And you think that will take care of the problem?”

  “No, but I think I owe Gloria that much.”

  “Not the judge?”

  She seemed to think carefully about her answer. “After the accident…Gloria helped me because it was expected. The judge helped so I would be under his control.” She sipped her juice. “I…I don’t expect you to understand. It’s all right”

  “I had to tell Joel some of what you told me. I got him out of bed and made him reassemble your car. Considering, I had to tell him something.”

  “Billy, will he tell…anyone?”

  Billy Ray thought about his encounter with his grandfather. Joel had stood quietly in Billy Ray’s barn and listened to his explanation. Then, without a word, he had started toward an old Chevy jalopy of Billy Ray’s that he planned to drive back to the shop where he had parked his own car.

  “Joel, Carolina asked me to keep this a secret. Can you do that?” Billy Ray called after him.

  Joel didn’t speak until he reached the Chevy’s door. “Your father knew a thing or two about the judge. More than he ever told me. But I always thought the judge was the one…” He shook his head and reached for the handle.

  “The one what?”

  “The one who turned your father into the man he was when he died “

  “Billy?” Carolina repeated in a worried tone. “Will Joel tell the judge I’m here?”

  “You couldn’t beat it out of him,” Billy Ray said. “Not in this lifetime.”

  She sighed, and with it, she began to cough again.

  “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to,” Billy Ray said. “Hattie will take care of the kids while I’m at work. You’re going to need time to get well and make some hard decisions.”

  She sipped her juice until she was able to talk. “The decisions were all made. But they won’t do me any good now, will they. Last night, I had a shot at leaving town, but not anymore. He’ll have the roads watched.”

  “Has the judge attempted to get legal custody?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t need to, since the children were right there, anyway. But when I told him I was ready to move out…he told me I wasn’t ready, and that if I tried to leave before he thought the time was right, he’d take me to court to protect them.”

  “He can’t stop you if you have custody. You’re their mother.”

  She shook her head again, but this time sadly. “Billy, the judge and Doug Fletcher are thick as thieves. Doug would have me picked up for…something else. Running a stop sign or driving in a suspicious manner. You know how it works.”

  He did know, but he didn’t like Doug’s name being dragged into the conversation. Worst of all, he couldn’t defend his friend, because he knew Doug was perfectly capable of twisting the law to suit his own purposes. He wasn’t a bad man, but he was an ambitious one.

  He changed the subject. “Let me get you some toast. Then I have to get to the office. Have Hattie call me if you need anything. But don’t go anywhere, Carolina. Don’t try a run to Georgia in broad daylight. Rest and take care of yourself. When I get home, we’ll talk some more.”

  “Do you remember the conversations we used to have?”

  He reached for a loaf of bread and took his time unwrapping it and retrieving two slices. He dusted off the toaster, although it was already crumb free. He didn’t face her until the bread was nearly done.

  “I remember.” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “But I’m surprised you still do.”

  “I think it was the last time I really talked to anybody.” She smiled sadly. “I missed you…after we stopped being friends.”

  “After you decided to marry Champ,” he corrected her. It was more accurate. She had become engaged to Champ at the end of their senior year of high school, and although she and Champ hadn’t married until they nearly completed college, the engagement had served to isolate her from everyone, but particularly from Billy Ray.

  “It was the worst decision in a life filled with bad ones.” She didn’t look up from her mug of tea. “I’ve wanted to tell you that…forever.”

  “You weren’t happy, Carolina?”

  “Remember all those tent revival meetings that used to come through here in the summers and set up over at the fairgrounds? The ones where the preachers screamed and shouted about how awful hell was going to be?”

  “I remember. I got dragged to my share.”

  She looked up, and her eyes were filled with pain. “Well, I’ve been to hell, Billy. And I can tell you, those preachers knew exactly what they were talking about.”

  Billy Ray’s office consisted of three rooms on a side street in Moss Bend. He had a reception area, a conference room, and a private office that was just big enough for a desk and three bookcases. The front of the building was leased by the town’s most popular florist, and even though Billy Ray had a reserved parking spot beside his office, most of the time he had to park on the street.

  Today was one of those days. A Cadillac nestled comfortably where his Taurus belonged. Giggling young ladies in pastel sundresses streamed in and out of the florist’s door, chaperoned by mothers wearing slightly more conservative adaptations. He supposed that Gabriel, the proprietor, was in the midst of another society wedding. Gabriel was an honorary member of the town’s first families.

  Billy Ray parked halfway down the block, smiling as one of the girls, a tanned brunette, winked as she passed. He didn’t have the heart to point out that even though he wasn’t quite old enough to be her father, he could be a beloved uncle. He supposed he was still young enough to be attractive to young women, but old enough to find maturity more appealing.

  He thought of Carolina, who hadn’t really been out of his mind since he’d encountered her last night. Even sick and discouraged, she was more appealing to him than the pretty brunette. But Carolin
a Waverly had captivated him from the time he first walked through the door of River County High and saw her giggling with her girlfriends beside her locker.

  Billy Ray and Carolina had both lived their entire lives in River County, but because he lived so far out in the country, they had attended different elementary and junior high schools. Even so, that morning he had recognized her. He lived outside of town, but he had spent much of his short life in Moss Bend, at the garage with Joel or hiking from bar to bar looking for Yancy. He knew that Carolina’s father had retired from the state senate to take over the family savings and loan in Moss Bend, where, despite being a widower in his late fifties, he’d quickly married a twenty-five-year-old debutante and fathered Carolina. Billy Ray knew that Carolina lived on Old Waverly Lane, which said everything about the length of the family’s taproot in Moss Bend society.

  He had recognized her, but he had never really seen her. Not until that moment. Carolina looked up from the gaggle of giggling girls and favored him with a smile. And somehow, he knew that he’d made a friend.

  In the years that followed, their friendship had grown and deepened. Carolina had a whirlwind social life that revolved around the Moss Bend Country Club, but she had another, more serious side, too. In the classes that they shared she was always the one who asked the most probing questions, who wrote the most thoughtful papers. Whenever there was a chance to collaborate on a project, she always chose Billy Ray. They were intellectual equals, and they could sit for hours discussing ideas—and often did.

  By their junior year their friendship had progressed beyond ideas to feelings. They sought out each other when times were rough. If they didn’t share everything, they did share the small problems of their lives, commiserating when a teacher gave an unfair grade or when an honor went to someone less deserving.

  When Carolina wasn’t required at a party or at drill team practice, they sometimes hung out together after school. By unspoken consent, they never went to each other’s homes. They studied at the library or took long, lazy walks through the woods bordering the old town dairy.

  He had first kissed her under a tree beside a crumbling silo. They had paused there to rest after a particularly long walk. For the first time, Billy Ray had opened up a little about his father. Yancy had been admitted to the hospital two nights before, after a fall from the footbridge behind the Blue Bayou. Broken bones and a concussion were nothing to Yancy compared to his sudden separation from cheap whiskey. That morning Billy Ray had visited his father in the hospital on the way to school and found him in restraints because he had pitched his bedpan at a nurse.

  Billy Ray didn’t tell Carolina that story, but he did express his frustration. “I’m leaving this town the minute I’m out of high school,” he told her. “And I’m never, never coming back.”

  She slipped her arms around his waist in comfort. He looked down at her, at the soft blond hair that fell to her shoulders and the sympathetic green eyes that told him she understood, and he was lost.

  He knew better than to fall in love with Carolina Waverly, and he knew better than to kiss her. But he had done both that afternoon.

  Now, just outside his office door, Billy Ray heard a shrill whistle that cut off the parade of memories. He turned to find Doug, in full uniform, cutting across the parking lot. Doug lifted his hat to the last of the women exiting the shop, then joined Billy Ray at the door to his office.

  “Don’t you have somebody to arrest?” Billy Ray asked him.

  “Want me to ticket that car?” Doug inclined his head toward the Cadillac.

  “Nah, it’d be just my luck if it belonged to the wife of somebody over at the courthouse. I’ll just have Fran put a polite note on the windshield telling them to park somewhere else next time. Not that it’ll do any good.”

  Billy Ray opened the door and let Doug pass in front of him. Fran, his secretary, had the air conditioner turned too high, but considering that the mercury had already shot up past ninety, he didn’t have the heart to complain.

  “Hey, Franny,” Doug greeted her. Fran was an older woman, with frizzy gray hair and deep lines engraved between perpetually narrowed eyes. She disapproved of most things and of even more people. Luckily she didn’t disapprove of Billy Ray.

  “Bad pennies always turn up,” she said, her eyes narrowing even more at the sight of Doug.

  “Now, come on, Franny. You love me,” Doug said. “You always have.”

  “The way I love rutabaga and horsemeat.”

  “Um-um! You cooking up some for lunch?”

  “You get out of here, Doug Fletcher.” She switched her gaze to Billy Ray. “You’re late.”

  “Sorry. I got held up. Any calls?”

  “I put a fax on your desk. And Mrs. Balou wants you to call her when you have the chance. She says somebody was out on her patio last night, staring in her windows.”

  “Call the men with the butterfly nets,” Doug said. “We’re out there two, three times a week checking her place. If you ask me, the old bat’s hoping somebody’11 stare in her windows.”

  Fran sighed heavily. “I don’t believe anyone asked you.”

  “Doug’s the sheriff now,” Billy Ray reminded her. “Be nice to him or he won’t fix your parking tickets.”

  She lifted her chin. “Some people park where they’re supposed to.”

  “Got any coffee?” Doug asked her.

  “We have coffee. We have filters. We have water.” She began to type.

  “I’ll get you some,” Billy Ray told him. “Go on in my office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  He found a fresh pot of coffee in the conference room and filled two mugs, adding sugar to Doug’s. In his office he set it in front of his friend before he took his own seat. “What brings you here so early?” he asked casually, although he had a pretty good idea what Doug was going to say.

  “Did you check the garage last night, the way you said you planned to?”

  “Uh-huh. Why?”

  “And you didn’t notice anything special?”

  “The place was secure. I checked it, then I went home.” He wondered how long he could evade the truth without telling a lie. “Did you send somebody around at midnight?”

  “Yeah, and he didn’t see anything, either.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Well, it seems a car disappeared out of the service lot last night. Carolina Grayson’s car.”

  “Is that so?”

  “What do you know about it, Billy Ray? Your grandfather’s not saying much. How about you?”

  Billy Ray sipped his coffee. Fran liked it as strong as battery acid, but the jolt of caffeine was exactly what he needed. “Did somebody report the car stolen?”

  “Judge Grayson.”

  “Oh. It’s his car?”

  “It’s Carolina’s car. And she’s missing, too.”

  “It sounds like you have your answer, then. She’s gone. The car’s gone.” Billy Ray shrugged. “It doesn’t sound like a crime’s been committed.”

  “You know more about this than you’re saying.”

  “I know when I should stay out of a situation that’s none of my business.”

  Doug sat back and worked on his coffee, too. The two men had been friends for too many years to fool each other. Billy Ray just hoped that because of that friendship, Doug would back off.

  “You and Carolina were friends in high school,” Doug said when his mug was significantly lighter. “Seen much of her lately?”

  “I stopped seeing her when she got engaged to Champ.”

  “You never much liked him, did you?”

  “We didn’t travel in the same circles. I barely knew him.”

  “You know, Billy Ray, old Champ wasn’t everything he appeared to be.”

  Billy Ray waited. Doug might look like a good old boy on the surface, but even when it seemed as if he was just passing time, he was usually working on something.

  “Neither was Carolina,” Doug added, when his
coffee was gone and the mug was perched on the edge of Billy Ray’s desk. “Some people look good on the outside, you know, Billy Ray? But when you peek underneath, it’s like one of those fire ant hills on a winter day. Nothing seems to be going on, but you stir ’em up?” He shook his head. “Trouble for everybody.”

  “You want to stop talking around the subject, Barney Fife, and get right to it? You’re warning me about something, but I don’t know what.”

  “Carolina’s in plenty of trouble. She took off with the judge’s grandkids last night.”

  “Wait a minute. They’re Carolina’s kids, aren’t they? I hadn’t heard that the judge has any particular right to decide when and where she goes. Am I wrong about that?”

  “She’s not a well woman, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t.”

  “She’s not stable. She drinks. She forgets she’s supposed to be watching her babies. She’s…what’s that word? Paranoid. That’s it. She imagines things. The judge doesn’t want her left alone with them. He’s worried.”

  “I can understand that. But none of that sounds like the Carolina I used to know.”

  Doug stood and stretched. “People change, Billy Ray. You know that. Keep an eye out, would you? And if you hear something…”

  “If I hear anything worth repeating, I’ll give you a call.”

  “You do that.” Doug touched his hat in farewell.

  Billy Ray watched his friend disappear through the door. Doug was suspicious that Billy Ray knew more than he was telling. It was too bad Doug knew he’d been on his way to Joel’s last night after the party. Now, before he did anything else, he was going to have to call home and tell Carolina to keep the children inside for the rest of the day. He might live in the middle of nowhere, but he was pretty sure a sheriff’s car would find its way past his house today.

  And more than once.

  Carolina knew she was a good mother. But over the years, Champ and Whittier had chipped away at her ego so that little of her confidence remained. Her husband had accused her of being a terrible wife, and eventually she’d begun to believe him. Her father-in-law had told her repeatedly that nothing she did was good enough for a Grayson, and eventually she’d succumbed to that belief, too.