His sexy smile disappeared in a flash. He released his tight grip on my waist and pulled away, motioning with his head for me to follow. My steps matched his as we walked, and my peripheral vision caught all his movements. He ran his long fingers through his thick, black hair and sighed as he moved across the polished hardwood to the main living area. The bronze skin on his wide forehead furrowed with worry, and he closed his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, a habit he involuntarily did when he was stressed.
Even though they lived in the same house, Dane wasn’t close to his grandfather—but death was death. Dealing with it, no matter your personal feelings toward the deceased, was never easy. And the passing of his pops wasn’t going to be an easy task to recover from for Dane and his mom. I shot a quick glance at the ornate, over-the-top decorations of the living room and wondered if they would stay or move out. If his grandfather was as mean as local legend made him out to be, the old bastard probably left them high and dry.
A twinge of guilt hit me at the lie I’d just spoken to him. I pushed the emotion aside and kept my face warm and neutral. After all, his grandfather did die of a heart attack. At least according to his obituary and the two page spread about his life and contributions to Locasia County in The Daily Grinder this morning. Only the four of us in the booth yesterday knew the rest of the bloody story—though that little morbid detail was about as clear as Mississippi mud in my mind.
So far, Ms. Johnson had followed the cryptic note’s instructions to keep her mouth shut. In fact, while Mom, Meemaw, and I finished wrapping up the food earlier, Ms. Johnson stopped by the diner. In a rush and her face still as pale as a newly opened bud on a cotton plant, she spoke in hushed tones. Told us goodbye and asked us to keep an eye on her house until she returned from an extended vacation to visit her family up North. The three of us refused to exchange glances with each other, worried our facial expressions would give our true thoughts away. It was obvious to all of us that Papa Joe’s mental suggestions from the day before were still working on Ms. Johnson. I had to bite my lip to keep from asking her about the dog.
Though none of us said a word, we all knew it was a load of swill. First of all, Lucinda Johnson didn’t have any other relatives alive, at least none we knew about. And we lived in a small town, which meant everyone’s business was, well, everyone’s business. Ms. Johnson never married, never bore any children. She was the only child of Rayburn and Nanette Johnson, both of whom had been only children themselves. And if Lucinda Johnson had any distant cousins or other relatives alive, she had never spoken about or visited them before. Where she was really going we had no idea, but it seemed the instructions to leave for a while from Papa Joe had worked.
Her big eyes kept looking at the door as she spoke, like she was watching for a ghost or Satan himself to come through it and snatch her soul. The woman seemed scared out of granny panties and, if I gambled, I’d place my bet on her not returning to Junction City.
Ever.
I let out my breath in a small huff, chased the memories from earlier away, and shoved my concerns about Dane’s living arrangements aside. I would deal with the matter of all that mess later. Right now, my baby needed me. I watched him plop his tall, lanky frame down on the plush couch behind him. I followed and sank down on the overstuffed cushion next to him.
“Thumbs up for home-cooked food. Thank goodness. Momma and I are both dangerous in the kitchen. Last time Momma made meatloaf, I think I was about six. She nearly caught the damned oven on fire. Pops ripped her a new one, tellin’ her to let Ms. Johnson fix our food since that’s what he paid her for. That he didn’t move us in here to burn the place down. And me? Shoot, I ain’t no help. I can boil water for tea and that’s about it. If I had to cook for myself, I’d starve. It’s the woman’s job to cook. Well, it’s supposed to be. With Ms. Johnson gone, Momma better learn how to—and quick. Or hire another housekeeper. After all, I’m a growin’ boy who needs to eat. A lot. Some of my activities burn up a lot of energy.”
He looked over and winked a luminous brown eye at me, assuring me he was joking. Last year, when we first started dating, I exploded and gave him an earful about my feelings on the subject of feminine duties when he brought them up. His grandfather’s mindset seemed trapped in the 1700’s. His Pops had some pretty archaic ideas about the role and place of women. No wonder his wife died at such a young age after giving birth to their son. Ol’ Pops liked them one of three ways: barefoot and pregnant, cooking and cleaning, or naked under the covers. Oh, and he took the same approach to children should be seen and not heard to womenfolk as well. The old bastard tried his best to instill the asinine ideas in his grandson’s head.
I made sure to retrain my new boyfriend’s brain with a thorough dressing down. Told him if he didn’t yank his mind out the caveman era and into the present, we would be over before we really began. Guess my loud tirade was quite convincing. The first time he told me he loved me a few months later, he said my fiery spirit and passion were two of the reasons he fell for me.
And, of course, my own tight ass and firm boobs. Traces of the Neanderthal remained no matter how hard I tried to erase them. Oh well, at least he wasn’t prejudiced.
I ignored his attempt to needle me and decided to cut him some slack, considering why he was home and in a semi-foul mood. Thinking about those issues would put me in a rotten mood as well, and I didn’t need any more on my overloaded plate. So much was rumbling around in my head, it felt like a tote sack full of rocks was loose up there. I reached over and tugged at his hand to get up. “Help me unload my car before all our hard work spoils. I got to get back to the diner and help prepare before the dinner crowd arrives.”
Without a word, but with a feeble smile, he obliged and we traipsed out to my car to bring in the meals. We exchanged the cool air of the inside of the house for the wall of heat outside, and it was like we stepped into a steam room. This summer had been hotter than any I recalled in all my eighteen years. Everyone around town whined and moaned about the overbearing heat. It was so bad that Barb and I changed our running schedules from early morning to late at night.
It took less than three minutes to gather everything up and get back inside, but it didn’t matter. We were both sweating bullets by the time we set the boxes on the kitchen counter. As we unloaded and started stashing the prepared meals in the fridge, I asked, “How’s your mom holdin’ up? Is she out settin’ up the funeral arrangements?”
“Fine, like me. You know, there wasn’t a whole lotta warm, fuzzy feelin’s around this place. Wow, that came out rude. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sorry Pops passed on and glad I wasn’t here when it happened—but neither of us feel the need to, oh, what’s the word?”
“Mourn?” I offered.
Dane snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that’s it. Can’t really mourn for losin’ somethin’ you never had, right? I mean, yeah, I saw Pops every day, but seein’ someone all the time don’t mean you’re close to them.”
I looked away and grabbed another packet of food. A lump formed in my throat for the sadness of it all. How people lived under the same roof, no matter how the circumstances of their living arrangements came to be, and not become close to each other was beyond me. I decided to shift subjects. “Couldn’t convince Ms. Johnson to stay, huh?”
“Oh, don’t think Momma didn’t try. She practically was on her knees beggin’. Course, that little visual didn’t do much good since she was on the phone with Ms. Johnson. She even offered her a raise, but it didn’t work. Conversation didn’t last too long, and Momma said it was weird.”
“Weird?”
“You know Ms. Johnson. Never a dull moment around her with her gums flappin’ and hands always busy either cleanin’ or cookin’ or workin’ out in the garden. If she weren’t tryin’ to talk your ear off, she was hummin’ one song or another. She was happy, you know?”
I handed him the last container of chicken and dumplings, and he focused his atten
tion on squeezing it into the packed freezer. Yeah, I knew. But I also was aware of the new Ms. Johnson—and he wasn’t. A woman so frightened, she seemed to have aged twenty years in less than twenty-four hours. “So, I guess Ms. Emma didn’t sense any happiness, huh?”
“Nope,” he said, grunting in frustration as he tried to close the freezer door.
“Understandable, considerin’ she worked here for longer than you’ve been alive. I’m sure walkin’ in and, uh, findin’ her employer gone was hard. Eww, I would have freaked.”
“Oh, please. She may have been a naturally happy person, but she and Pops weren’t friends or anythin’. I mean, guess I might freak a bit if I found him…like that. But he’s my kin—even though we weren’t close or nothin’. Momma said Ms. Johnson was actin’ like Pops was her kin too. Said she got all sad and quiet, like she was mournin’ him or somethin’. Yet, she told Momma she wouldn’t be able to make his service. And when Momma asked if she’d like to come over to visit us, she didn’t answer. Totally ignored her like she didn’t hear the question Momma posed to her. I mean, I don’t understand. She’s known me ever since I was in diapers, and I always thought we were, you know, close. I kinda always looked at her as a second mom of sorts. And she can’t find the time to even stop by and pay her respects? Like I said…weird.”
I paused a moment and considered whether I should tell him what was really going on, but the words were locked inside my throat. After Ms. Johnson dropped the bomb in our laps yesterday at the diner, Mom, Meemaw, and I closed up the diner and huddled in the kitchen. To say we were scared would be an understatement. Mom and Meemaw tried their best to hide their fears from me, but I saw right through their act. We were all shaking in our boots, so to speak. The events of the previous twenty-four hours popped into my mind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Whatever funky juju Papa Joe used on us earlier had apparently worn off. Mom and I were both so wound up, we starting yelling at each other. We sounded like two ramped-up feral cats screeching and hollering at each other over the rights to a dead mouse carcass. I told Mom to stop treating me like I was a child and just spit out what she was thinking, no matter how odd or stupid it sounded. After all, the note specifically mentioned my name. Mom told me to mind my own business and let the “adults” handle whatever was going on. I countered that it was my name used so it certainly was my business to mind and that I was an adult as well. She spit back not to sass her, so I answered by flinging a cup full of corn meal across the kitchen in her general direction. Papa Joe stopped the frantic argument, and possible food fight, with a squirt of cold water in both of our faces from the kitchen sprayer.
After Papa Joe calmed us all down a bit, we cleaned up the mess we’d made and ended up talking for hours about the strange events. When we got to the part about the morbid note and the fact that Ms. Johnson delivered an exact replica of Nana’s totem necklace, all of us felt the chill in the air. When Daddy called hours later and told Mom he was staying overnight in Greenville because of car trouble, Mom had a hard time holding in her sigh of relief. Though she didn’t say it out loud, I knew she didn’t want to alarm Daddy with any details until we understood exactly what we were dealing with.
Mom wanted to call Sheriff Gilmore. She thought we might be in danger and wanted the threat investigated. Thought an inquiry should be made as well about the death of old man Witherspoon. Maybe get the coroner to check for unusual things that weren’t part of a normal autopsy. But Papa Joe reminded her that Mr. Witherspoon was mostly Native American, so no autopsy would be performed unless the signs of death pointed to homicide, which of course, they did not. Mom countered with Ms. Johnson’s vivid description of the terror frozen on the old man’s face, along with a brand new head full of powdery white hair. Papa Joe asked her what part of that pointed to homicide, to which Momma didn’t have an answer. He planted a seed of doubt in the minds of Mom and Meemaw when he mentioned Ms. Johnson might be lying. After all, none of us had seen the dog either at her house or at Dane’s. And it was common knowledge that Pops Witherspoon despised canines. Maybe the entire show she put on was just a well-acted farce, concocted to elicit sympathy, Papa Joe reasoned. Meemaw tried to defend her lifelong friend, saying it wasn’t true. But Papa Joe reminded her that during the time Ms. Emma moved into the Witherspoon estate, Ms. Johnson had been one of the worst gossips in town. He offered that maybe this was Ms. Johnson’s way of getting back at them and used my interracial relationship with Dane V as a catalyst. After all, though rarely talked about, the stigma and deep seated traditions of the past were still alive in the small minds of some of the townsfolk.
I watched Mom and Meemaw chew those little nuggets around and spotted the moment their attitude changed from raw terror to partial acceptance. My hands shook and my body trembled because I was waiting for the question about Nana’s necklace to come up, but it never did. Nor did the question of “what she did” come up. It took every ounce of mental strength I had not to blurt out my guilt. I almost did when the pain, which I had buried deep, ripped out of the hiding spot in my heart and bolted to the frontlines of my head. Right in the middle of making the crust for Dane’s peach pie, I almost blurted out, “I killed Nana” until a warm hand touched my shoulder. I looked up into the sable-brown orbs of Papa Joe staring at me. The intense heat and warmth from his hand calmed me. Though his lips never moved, I distinctly heard him say, No, not now Little One.
Oh, God—maybe I was losing my mind. Was Nana’s insanity hereditary and passed along the bloodlines to me?
As though he heard my panicked thoughts, Papa Joe shook his head no, his brown eyes unreadable. A surge of heat swept through me, and it felt like my blood was flowing lava in my veins.
Hush, Little One. All is well. Do not fear.
Papa Joe’s words of comfort rang through my mind. I watched in silent awe as he easily steered the conversation to lighter topics and suggested we get a move on with cooking for the remaining Witherspoons. Mom and Meemaw were entwined in the world of food preparation, as was I, and we settled our frayed nerves by cooking. It seemed trite since I would never admit to anyone that the simple act of creating sustenance with my bare hands calmed me in a profound way. The satisfaction of preparing the food was made even stronger, considering I was cooking for my boyfriend. But it worked. It gave the three of us something to occupy our worried minds for a while as Papa Joe regaled us with strange stories about legends from his tribe, passed down to him from his elders. As we bustled about the kitchen, the mundane task and Papa Joe’s engrossing tales of Choctaw history provided us all a sense of comfort. We listened, and for a while, the cryptic note and the gruesome discovery in Ms. Johnson’s house faded from our thoughts like it never happened.
For a while.
Once we finished cooking the mountain-high pile of food for the remaining Witherspoons around three thirty in the morning, we began to clean the kitchen and prepare for the early morning breakfast crowd. All of us were punch drunk from being up all night, and when Shirley Ramsey arrived for her morning shift, Mom insisted Meemaw go home and get some rest.
Considering my relationship with Dane, I was given the task of playing delivery girl. Though standard southern tradition when paying respects for the loss of a loved one was for the entire family to stop by to pass along their condolences, everyone knew I wasn’t about to let that happen. Not before I saw him first. He had been gone for over a week and my family was intuitive enough to know the two love birds needed a few moments of private time together.
No, I couldn’t tell Dane about all that. Wouldn’t. My brain still hadn’t processed it yet, so trying to explain to someone else would be impossible. Besides, he had enough going on in his life.
CHAPTER NINE
Telling him the part about Ms. Johnson’s visit to the diner earlier seemed harmless. I decided he should hear it from me rather than the local gossip queens. “Ms. Johnson stopped by the diner earlier. Told us she was takin’ a vacation to visit family up N
orth. Didn’t say when she’d be back, though. Asked us to keep an eye on her place while she’s gone.”
Dane snorted. “Family? That don’t make no sense. She doesn’t have any. And she ain’t never taken a vacation before, not since I’ve lived here. She couldn’t wait to leave until after Pop’s service? It’s only two days away! Huh, if he didn’t die of a heart attack, I’d smell a rat.”
“Oh, please, Dane. Ms. Johnson loves you two! Did you ever think that attendin’ a funeral might be hard on her? People her age don’t like to be reminded about their own mortality, at least that’s what Meemaw said this morning. They also don’t like change. And Meemaw should know because they’re the same age. Some folks just don’t deal well with passin’ on or all the emotions death brings to the surface. Ms. Johnson was always a happy woman, just like you said. Maybe she doesn’t like the idea of cryin’ in front of others. Who knows? But I don’t think you should take her absence or decision to retire as a personal slap against you or your mom. I know she cares for you all. I saw the way she doted on you. She treated you like you’re the next Indian Chief round these parts or somethin’.”
Dane didn’t say a word. He looked out the kitchen window toward the veranda, his eyes focused on something and nothing at the same time. I followed his gaze, sensed his sadness and worry through the thin material on his back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his throat muscles working. His Adam’s apple jostled a bit while he tried to hold back his real emotions. I didn’t want to let on that I felt his pain, so I concentrated on the beautiful view.
Waves of heat from the intense morning rays of sunshine shimmered across the expansive backyard. The bright blue of the water in the kidney-shaped pool sparkled with a rainbow of colors as the beams bounced across it. Even though the French doors were closed tight, the sweet scent of the jasmine and gardenia bushes Ms. Johnson planted out back tickled my nose.
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