Rose tries to imagine Max in Savannah. He’s only been there twice. Once for their wedding and then a second time at Christmas, a year after that. Rose pauses to let this new possibility seep into her tired body. She thought moving back to Savannah was not even an option. She thought that Max wouldn’t want to leave their home, nor be manipulated by her dead mother. But evidently, Rose thought wrong.
As they pass the last exit for Fort Collins, the snow begins again in earnest. She hopes they don’t close I-25 down before they get home. She thinks back to her walk on the beach earlier that day. It was nearly 80 degrees in Savannah. She doesn’t have the heart to tell this to Max.
Snow drifts form along the highway. Max isn’t talking now. He’s putting all his attention into getting them home before the road closes. Even though Max seems certain, they will probably need to have many more conversations about her mother’s proposition before they sell the ranch. But Rose feels a spark of possibility come alive inside of her. Is it really possible to go home again?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
11 Months Later
Queenie
The one year anniversary of Iris’s death is a month away and the Temple Book of Secrets is still in the news. Reporters have joined the crowds out front and Queenie has even dealt with paparazzi while doing her errands. Paparazzi—Savannah style—which consists of a couple of acne-faced teenagers taking snapshots of her picking out lettuce in the produce aisle of the Piggly Wiggly. Why anyone in the world would want a picture of Queenie threatening to throw produce at her stalkers is beyond her.
After a court injunction stopped the newspaper from printing the secrets, they began to show up on flyers delivered to downtown mailboxes and stapled to light poles and trees. Not to mention community boards in almost every grocery store and coffee shop. The mystery continues as to who is planting the secrets and Queenie has heard that there are even bookies who are laying odds as to who it might be. Queenie, Edward and Rose are suspected. Even Violet has been named. But what would they have to gain from all this? If she had to guess, she thinks that whoever it is planting the secrets is someone outside of the immediate family, but also someone who knows a tremendous amount about the Temples and somehow got access to the book. But how?
Queenie is usually good at figuring out who done it in the murder mysteries she reads, and it is usually the last person you would ever suspect. But this is one mystery that has her totally stumped. She is even starting to wonder if it is the deceased Temples who are doing it, in an effort to somehow free themselves.
Whoever it is has also not tired in their quest to expose every last secret. It doesn’t matter if a secret is two hundred years old and contains information about a family that has long since died out, it shows up somewhere and is reported upon. Savannah is getting a history lesson about its past.
However, Queenie prefers to focus on the present. Earlier that day, she received a phone call from Rose that they sold their ranch and were now in the process of packing up everything to move to Savannah. At Violet’s insistence, they will live in the Temple house with Queenie, as well as Violet and her family, who plan to make the move as soon as school is out in June.
“How do you like that, Iris?” Queenie looks up at the light fixture in the sun room. “This old mansion is becoming a halfway house for recovering Temples.”
As always, Queenie’s laugh comes out as a cackle, but then she stops herself with the thought: No need to rub it in. Even dead, Iris can still make Queenie regret it. For months now, she has carried a sweater with her everywhere she goes to combat the icy blasts of Iris’s disapproval. But at least the odor has gone away.
For Queenie, life without Iris isn’t what she expected. As much as she yearned not to be ordered around and criticized, she has yet to find something to fill the yawning gap that Iris left behind. In her weaker moments she even wishes Iris was still here.
For months, Edward kept things interesting with his team of lawyers contesting the will like a team of Georgia bulldogs fighting for a touchdown from the one yard line on a fourth down. However, Bo Rivers assures them that Edward doesn’t have a case and that the entire dispute should be settled in the next few weeks.
Queenie walks into the dining room where she looks out the window to see the black sedan parked in its usual place. It shows up as regularly as a Temple secret. She wonders if they are somehow related. Queenie goes into the kitchen where Violet is polishing the silverware at the kitchen table.
“What are you doing?” Queenie asks. “Nobody’s going to fire you if you want to relax for a change.”
“The silver still needs to be polished,” Violet says. “What am I going to do, hire someone?” She laughs.
Queenie tells her she has a point and takes a polishing cloth and starts on the knives.
A day doesn’t pass without Queenie writing in her journal about how grateful she is that Violet forgave her. It took several months and many talks and tears on both parts, but they reached the conclusion that they needed to forget the past and focus on the future.
Now if these damn ghosts would just do the same, Queenie thinks. “Rose called this morning,” she says to Violet. “They’ll be here this time next month.”
“I’m so glad they’ll be living here, too,” Violet says, going to town on a gravy boat. “At least then the ghosts won’t outnumber the people anymore.”
“It’s about time,” Queenie says.
Violet’s girls, her granddaughters, as Queenie is now finally free to call them, have already claimed two bedrooms at the east end of the house. Queenie and Violet have been getting them ready for weeks. Not only have they taken down draperies and cleaned windows, but they have also moved furniture from other parts of the house to accommodate two teenage girls.
“I like that this old house is coming alive again,” Queenie says.
“I’m not sure the rest of the Temples like it,” Violet says. “Have you noticed how quiet it’s been on the ghost front lately?”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t needed my sweater all day,” Queenie says.
“It’s like when children get quiet,” Violet says. “It means they’re up to something.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Queenie says. “By the way, Mama called with another warning. She says to be careful around the anniversary of Iris’s death. Evidently, anniversaries create openings between the visible and the invisible worlds.”
“That’s the last thing we need,” Violet says.
“Tell me about it.” Queenie polishes the salad forks, wondering how many of her ancestors have done this same thing. Except now these salad forks belong to her daughter. She smiles her glee.
“I think Rose and Max should have the back two bedrooms,” Violet says. “They look out over the garden and they can convert one of the bedrooms into a den.”
“That’s a great idea,” Queenie says, “those rooms will be perfect for them.” She remembers a summer when Violet and Rose were girls. The older she gets, the more vivid her recollections. “Do you remember saying as a little girl that you wanted to live with Rose when you grew up? Mama and I just rolled our eyes. But it seems you got your wish.”
Violet smiles. “I’d forgotten all about that,” she says. “Maybe the seed got planted then and the possibility has been growing all these years.”
“In that case, I should have planted the seed that I’d be wealthy in my old age,” Queenie says with a wink. “But I guess there’s still time.”
Queenie has talked to Violet about Old Sally maybe living here, too, someday. Not that it will be easy to convince her to leave her house. Violet was totally open to the idea. Old Sally is getting frail—something she didn’t think was possible a few years ago—and Queenie worries about her.
“By the way,” Violet says. “Spud is coming over later to help with some things.”
“He’s been coming around a lot these days,” Queenie says. She’s not sure how she feels about this. In a way, s
he hates sharing Violet, now that they get along again. But she doesn’t want to be selfish.
“I think he’s lonely,” Violet says. “That’s our good luck because he’s incredibly helpful, too.”
“I’ll see him today,” Queenie says. “I’ve continued Iris’s tradition of going to the Piggly Wiggly every Wednesday. He always seems glad to see me.” What Queenie doesn’t admit is she likes seeing him, too.
“Spud is a real sweetheart,” Violet says. “Maybe you should get to know him a little better. How long’s it been since you had a man in your life, Queenie?”
She pauses long enough to count back the years.
“Would you believe 1973?” Queenie asks. This shocks her as much as it appears to shock Violet.
“Time to get back on that horse,” Violet says.
“That horse turned into a jackass and died a long time ago,” Queenie says with a chuckle.
“I have an idea,” Violet says. “Why don’t you invite him over for dinner? He’s a vegetarian, you know, so how about picking up some Portobello mushrooms at the store, and I’ll make Portobello burgers.”
“I could never be interested in a man who doesn’t eat meat,” Queenie says, her tone dismissive.
“Don’t make excuses,” Violet says. She hands Queenie the car keys and gently pushes her toward the door.
As Queenie walks down the aisle toward the meat section, she remembers following Iris down this same aisle. At the counter, Spud Grainger wraps a package of ribs for a customer. When he sees Queenie he smiles and she nods in return. Lips pursed, she studies him from the back of the line.
He’s a tad scrawny, as men go, she thinks, yet still handsome. It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s about a dozen shades lighter than Denzel. But how does he feel about full-figured women? Iris was scrawny as a Q-tip. Queenie puts her hands where her waist used to be. A waist that disappeared sometime in the 1970s. She thinks, Lord, have mercy, if things ever got amorous I might accidentally crush him. She smiles at this thought and catches Spud Grainger smiling back.
When it is her turn, Queenie tells Spud of Violet’s invitation to come to dinner that night, all the while trying not to gag at the thought of mushroom burgers.
Yet Spud accepts the invitation and then straightens his tie, which prompts Queenie to straighten the red wrap she’s wearing around her hair. Instead of two peas in a pod, they are more like a zucchini and a watermelon growing on different vines altogether.
A flash goes off near the dairy section and she rolls her eyes at the same kid who got a photo of her getting out of the Town Car. Does he think she’s delivering a Temple secret to the butcher?
“If it’s okay with you, I’ll bring some shrimp,” Spud says, unaware of the camera. “We just got in some beauties this morning. Do you like shrimp and grits?” he asks. “I make a mean shrimp and grits.”
“I thought you were a vegetarian,” Queenie whispers, in case he doesn’t want his customers or the paparazzi to know.
“Not a strict one,” he says. “I also eat seafood.”
Queenie smiles, thinking there may be hope for him after all.
“Six o’clock?” Queenie asks. She flutters her eyelashes wondering who she’s trying to fool. She hasn’t flirted with a man since Elvis Presley wore blue suede shoes.
“Is something irritating your eye?” Spud asks. “I have some eye drops in the back.”
Queenie assures him she’s okay and swears off flirting for another forty years, as they say their goodbyes.
While in the area, Queenie gets her hair done at the Gladys Knight and the Tints beauty parlor, as she always does. It feels strange to drive on these outings, instead of being Iris’s unwitting passenger. However, she likes the thought that pedestrians are safe in Savannah again. She half expects a public service announcement to run at the bottom of her favorite television programs to document this change. Along with the latest Temple secret.
In Iris’s honor, and because she’s hungry, Queenie goes through the pick-up window at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Another acne-clad teenager—minus a camera, yet with an Adam’s apple the shape of a chicken gizzard—sticks his head out the window.
“Hey, isn’t this the car of that rich old lady who used to come through?” he asks.
If I needed further proof there it is, Queenie thinks. “I’m afraid Iris Temple died almost a year ago,” she tells him.
The teenager sniffs, as if genuinely saddened, and starts to pick at one of his pimples. “She was kind of interesting, you know?”
“Yes, Iris Temple was definitely interesting,” Queenie says.
He leans further out the window and whispers, “She used to tip me. Can you believe that? Nobody ever tips.”
Queenie smiles. Iris could be generous when she wanted to be.
After he takes her order, the teenager gives Queenie a free side order of slaw as a condolence. After parking at the back of the lot, she eats three chicken strips and a biscuit, along with the bereavement cole slaw. It is still a mystery to her how Iris could devour an entire bucket all by herself. As delicate as Iris’s digestive system appeared to be, she must have had an iron stomach.
Queenie thinks back to the bucket of original recipe she placed in Iris’s casket the morning of her funeral. Not my finest moment, she thinks, realizing that with all the preservatives they put in things these days, the chicken will probably stay crispy for the next thirty years.
She pauses with the regret that sweeps over her occasionally, but it’s not like she can take it back. Queenie’s feelings for Iris have softened over the last months, like a mother who forgets the pains of childbirth. Although she has a vivid memory of giving birth to Violet at her mother’s beach house in the middle of the night on the 13th of August. Violet was a perfect baby and it broke Queenie’s heart to not claim her as her own. It was a death of a sort, too.
After she finishes the chicken, Queenie drives back to the Temple house where the black Buick remains at the end of the block. On this particular day, the driver has changed shirts from the one he wore earlier. At least the sleeve sticking out of the window is different. The windows are tinted so she can’t see his face.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this once and for all,” she tells herself.
Queenie parks the Town Car in the carriage house next to the big house and then sneaks back toward the gate so the anonymous driver won’t see her in his rear-view mirror. She tiptoes down the sidewalk, wondering when she might have last tiptoed anywhere. Hiding behind a forest of pink azalea bushes, Queenie then scoots along the edge of the hedge. Finally, about twenty feet from the sedan, she begins to half-run, half-pounce toward the driver’s window.
“Who are you?” she demands. “Why are you watching our house?”
The driver jumps and says, “Holy shit! Where’d you come from?”
The element of surprise has worked in her favor. She looks into his sunglasses that shield his eyes, and sees her own reflection. She has to resist fixing the bow in her hair.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
The driver turns on the car and quickly closes the window. She pounds on the dark glass. “Tell me who you are,” she insists. “Are you the one releasing the Temple secrets?”
He guns the motor, but waits until she is a safe distance away before he races off.
Her heart racing and still huffing from the exertion, Queenie retrieves her groceries from the car and goes inside to find Violet, who despite her windfall inheritance, works every day as she always has. With everything in limbo until probate is over, Queenie has been paying her salary from her own savings, although she told Violet that she is using some money Iris left behind for household expenses.
“What’s up with you?” Violet asks. “Why are you panting?”
“That guy’s still out there,” Queenie says. “I walked right up to his window this time, and I think I scared him to death.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Noth
ing,” Queenie says.
“It’s not like we’re doing anything worth watching,” Violet says.
“Exactly,” Queenie says. “But that makes twice I’ve tried to get a look at him and haven’t been able to.”
They agree that maybe Queenie should leave the sleuthing to someone else.
Everything from the refrigerator is on the counter and Violet is wiping down the shelves. For the last couple of weeks, Violet and Queenie have done the spring cleaning of a lifetime. After taking down the heavy, lined curtains that covered every window of the house, they donated them to one of the black funeral homes in town. Every day the rooms get brighter. Queenie and Violet have also cleaned the inside windows, hiring a man to help with the outside. As her lower back can attest, they have scoured everything that can be scoured. She likes to think that they are cleaning out all the secrets that were ever hidden in the Temple house.
“Oh, I almost forgot, Spud will be here at six,” Queenie says. “He’s making shrimp and grits.” She hands Violet the Portobello mushrooms.
“I’ll marinate these and make some fresh collards,” Violet says.
Collards are one of her mama’s specialties and her mouth waters just thinking about them. For some reason Queenie has been thinking about her Gullah ancestors more than usual lately. She has a few ghosts to deal with on that side of the family, too. She thinks again of the man in the sedan. Even though she saw only a sliver of him through the window, there was something about him that seemed familiar.
Later that evening, Queenie sets the kitchen table with regular plates, stainless steel cutlery and worn cloth napkins—the ones the servants always used when she was growing up. No bone china. No silverware polished to a high gloss. No crystal water goblets. While incredibly casual in comparison to the high dinners Iris insisted on, Queenie loves the informality of her meals now. She has not missed the exotic smells that always hovered around the dining room one iota—including the ones coming from Iris.
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