Wild Raspberries

by Connie Chappell

  Talkative Lucius was now stunned into silence. Reflexively, Arnett looked to Callie with the change in travel arrangements. Callie gave a thin smile, but showed no outward objection.

  “Lizbeth, please, let me—” Beebe began.

  “No, this is ridiculous behavior,” Lizbeth said of Arnett. “She must know better.”

  Arnett’s hands formed fists, her arms stiffened, then her shoulders humped. With a growl, she turned on her heel and fled toward the parking lot. Lizbeth pursued Arnett out the door.

  “Right. This is better,” a sarcastic Beebe said, rubbing her temples. “We’ll take it outside.”

  No, Lucius thought, no. Let’s all be ridiculous right here.

  But Beebe already expelled a weary sigh and took up the chase.

  . . .

  Callie absorbed the enveloping quiet of the old depot. She found the separation from the others soothing. Beside her, Lucius dipped his chin in an effort to level his face with hers. She knew he wanted to tap into her thoughts.

  Without meeting his eyes, she reached out and patted his arm. That action would tell him she’d received his transmission of barbed worry. She believed in the kinetic connection they possessed since birth. For thirty-one minutes, the dark-haired baby boy experienced the world alone until the blonde-headed little girl arrived to keep him company.

  Callie wound a path across the lobby, around a plastic hip-high trashcan and the sawhorse supports for a length of plywood. Arms folded, she leaned into a fluted pillar beside a window with a view of the asphalt lot. Outside, Lizbeth stood apart while Beebe huddled with Arnett at the Tahoe’s back bumper.

  Adding herself to the mix, Callie thought Lucius must perceive the four of them a very peculiar combo. She turned. “Come over here, and I’ll give you the dirt before you die of gossip-deprived curiosity right there with your work boots on.” She hoped he picked up her smile in the dwindling light. “They’re lovely, by the way, with the brushed leather and all.”

  Lucius looked down his thin frame, past his Top Dog T-shirt and denim shorts to the band of white sock rimming each of his over-the-ankle boots. He kicked one boot up onto its heel. Cocking his head, he inspected the dyed leather before pushing himself into motion. “Did you say deprived or depraved?”

  She laughed at his easy nature. When he reached her, he lay the width of his gentle grip across her nape and gave a brotherly jostle that made her blunt-cut hair swing.

  She slid him a sideways look. “We both know I’m right there with you in the depraved category.”

  “Direct and to the heart of things. That’s my Callie. I’m sorry about all that, gumdrop.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing back in time to Arnett’s point of attack. “I thought I was just saying something sweet. It was true, you know. I really considered the looks between you and Jack moonbeam quality.”

  Despite Arnett’s outburst to Lucius’s declaration, Callie processed his words the first time around. They’d taken her breath.

  She grinned. “You’re far too sensitive for everyone’s good.”

  “Comes with the territory, I think.”

  “Forgive me for not asking sooner. How’s Willie? He still the good-looking one?” she said, ribbing him with an old standard.

  “I shall not dignify that with an answer.” His tone mocked injury, but his antics caused Callie to smile: He licked a fingertip, ran it first over one eyebrow, then the other.

  Lucius referred to Willie Thorne as his beloved. The way he said the word conveyed the tease and a deeply felt emotional truth. Callie met Willie on multiple occasions. The two men owned a cabin in one of Baron’s woods. A fixer-upper. Willie lived day-to-day in Cassel and made the four-hour commute to the mountain hideaway for weekends. He was their age, a financial genius, and on the fast-track to retirement.

  Sporting a grin, Lucius answered. “Willie’s fine. Thanks for asking.”

  Callie looked into Lucius’s mint-green eyes. It had been over two years since Callie saw Lucius. Jack was still alive then. Sometimes it was hard to believe he’d been gone eighteen months. Callie and Lucius were unique in today’s world of easy communication. Their daily contact broke when she went to Duke. Like their fourteen-year separation, they seemed destined to be distanced. They were two cogs on mismatched gearing inside the same clock. Eventually, their lives would mesh again. They left it that way. Wanting face to face. Physical meetings of their souls. Predetermined at birth.

  The exceptions were Lucius’s many calls from Baron during Jack’s illness and after his death.

  With the tedious day, pressure was mounting. Callie repeated the same words to Lucius in the depot that she cried into the phone with his first call. Lucius’s grin faded when her chin started to tremble. “Jack was so very, very sick, Lucius.”

  Lucius didn’t hesitate. He pulled Callie gently to his chest. He rocked her, and she wept. After she quieted, he scooted a covered paint tub away from the wall with the toe of his boot. The tub was footstool-height. He lowered her onto it, then repositioned another tub and perched next to her. She wiped at her eyes. They both focused on her left hand.

  He pulled it out of her lap. “Now you wear both rings.”

  Callie struggled numbly into that first cold morning following Jack’s death. The pain of his heart freshly torn from hers drove her to slip his ring on her index finger. That memory choked off any hope of verbal reply.

  Meddler Extraordinaire

  Lucius squeezed Callie’s hand, then got up. He returned from the bathroom a moment later, clutching a fist full of two-ply and a damp paper towel. She stood at the window again, but with regained composure. The three women outside were a hodgepodge of sizes and shapes, dispositions and coloring. They’d gravitated to a cluster.

  “Look at them,” she said when he came alongside.

  “Oh, I am.”

  “The animated one—that’s Arnett’s daughter-in-law, Lizbeth Sebring.”

  Lucius’s translation was, “Battling relatives.”

  “The other woman is Beebe Walker. A grief counselor.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “She’s got something up her sleeve if she allows this change in driving arrangements.”

  “You trust her? I noticed you didn’t say anything about riding with Arnett. Maybe you shouldn’t. Because, honey, Arnett is not fond of you.” He tapped her nose. “You need to keep this above water.”

  Callie smiled at Lucius’s water reference. She remembered her too-close-to-the edge-of-the-pool conversation with Arnett. “No one knows that better than I. And, yes, I do trust Beebe. At some point, Arnett and I must come to terms with this trip.”

  “You know I want more, but tend to yourself first.” Callie took the tissue and towel he offered and walked back to the trashcan. When they were again elbow to elbow, he said, “The new rule still hasn’t landed in the acceptance category.” Resistant Arnett jabbed a finger at Lizbeth’s Tahoe while adamant Lizbeth jabbed a finger at Callie’s Santa Fe. “I honestly didn’t think it would.”

  Callie rolled her eyes up to his. “Honesty. That’s the link to this trip. Or retreat. I don’t know what to call it. Lizbeth calls it a peace summit. She and Beebe are the organizers.” Lucius lifted a foot to the nearby paint tub. “I got roped in because I had the cabin. I planned to be here, anyway, this week. We all took an honesty pledge this morning. That’s why I had to answer your question truthfully. Arnett was standing right there. She’d have called me out if I skirted the issue.”

  Lucius threw his head back and laughed. “So I was duped by Arnett. Figures. She hoped to embarrass you into answering my nosy question, but then it backfired in her face. She knew your answer, b
ut she didn’t anticipate my response. The honesty rule,” he asked, “that landed in the acceptance category?”

  “Yes, if you mean Arnett.” Callie decided not to describe Arnett’s fingers-crossed-behind-her-back escapade. “She was in better spirits this morning. Guarded, but still better. Something must have happened between her and Lizbeth in the car.”

  “Another triumph for honesty, I bet.”

  “Who knows. It seemed like Beebe and Lizbeth were in the bathroom a long time. Maybe they were discussing the problem.”

  Just then, Arnett stomped past both vehicles and headed for the bench under the crabapple. The other two followed suit, but stopped short of the curbing that bordered the grassy area beyond. The curbing seemed symbolic, like a toe drawn through the dirt.

  “Beebe holds her counseling sessions in the carriage house behind Swanson Funeral Home,” Callie informed Lucius. “Remember it?”

  Lucius stood taller. “Across from the Titus mansion?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Man, I’d love to get my hands on the crown molding in that place.”

  Callie pressed on. Such segues were common for the carpenter worth his weight in woodworking tools. “Anyway, Beebe counseled Lizbeth for several weeks. Her husband Dan—Jack’s younger son—died in May.”

  “How awful,” he said with true depth of sorrow. “Kids?”

  “Two, one in college, and Chad in preschool. Or he would be, except Arnett wants to provide daycare.” She avoided Arnett’s outlandish grandsitting term. “Money’s tight. Lizbeth needs to work. And I guess Arnett kept Geoff before he went to school.”

  “Geoff? The older one?”

  “Right.” Callie paused. She wanted to speak of Arnett with dignity, and not appear petty or mean-spirited. On a deeper level, Callie fought through the layered protections she and Jack placed over their private life. Even though that book was open to all concerned, and then some—she thought of the neighborhood clutch of men—old habits prevailed. She closed her eyes. Jack’s face materialized behind her lids. She blinked away his look of betrayal, then chose her words carefully. “Apparently, Arnett has begun to show herself.”

  “And that means?”

  Callie expelled an incredulous laugh. “Lucius, look at her.” She tapped the glass. Arnett sat at rigid attention on the bench, both hands clasping the purse in her lap, her stubborn streak nearly in lights. “And you witnessed her reaction in here.”

  “Yes, I did,” he said, pleasantly disagreeable, “but my point is: You know more, don’t you? ‘Begun to show herself.’ That just puts the key in the lock. Turn it, Callie. Turn it and open the door.” Lucius nudged her arm with his. “Jack must have told you things.”

  “Not as much as you think.”

  “Come on, Callie. What do you know?”

  Callie turned away. She looked through the windowpane. “I suspect that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  . . .

  Lucius’s heart and stomach turned somersaults, wanting to spend the next several days with the four women. If he couldn’t be physically present, then his second choice was a hidden camera inside the cabin. The unfolding drama there would far exceed anything available on reality TV. He recently paid an obscene amount to get broadband technology run down Bullwhip Road to his and Willie’s cabin in the woods. Before that, he derived his entertainment from activities around him. That sometimes meant people; sometimes it meant the simple pleasure of watching squirrels play in the clearing alongside the cabin’s porch. Then there was the reality of squirrelly people. One such person was angling through the crosswalk.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “Sylvia.”

  “What? That woman?” Callie said, inching forward.

  “This is not good. That’s Sylvia Stick-Up-Her-Butt Boyle.”

  Finally, he heard Callie’s laugh, an energetic tension-reliever. “Oh, Lucius, I haven’t heard that since high school.”

  “The stick hasn’t actually penetrated yet. Just wait. Speaking of high school,” Lucius said, “Sylvia is Baron’s full-time hall monitor. Won’t drive or can’t, so walks everywhere. She’s cousins with the mayor. Before she went high-tech, she just took notes. Now she has a cell phone. I’m sure he loves that.”

  Sylvia approached, clearly observing the scene: Lizbeth had taken center stage with Arnett.

  “Okay. Sylvia’s picking up the conversation,” Lucius said. “Walk slowing to a crawl. Watch her. She’s stopping.” Lucius’s eyes jumped back and forth from Sylvia to the three Maryland women while he bantered the play-by-play. “There,” he announced.

  Sylvia straightened, eyes and mouth wide circles. Arnett just swung her purse wildly at Lizbeth. In response, Sylvia clutched hers tightly around her middle.

  Groaning, Callie grabbed Lucius’s arm. “I can see where this is headed. I should go out there. Beebe’ll need my help.”

  “Yeah, I’d better head Sylvia off.”

  Callie slipped out the side exit. Lucius hustled through the front doors and cut through the tiny yard. Sylvia’s hand fidgeted with her purse clasp. “Miss Boyle,” he called to distract her before she retrieved her phone.

  Her head swiveled his way, her loose silver curls bouncing. “Are you the carpenter working here?” she asked, pointing to the depot.

  “Yes, ma’am. Lucius Dameron.” He stood on the sidewalk beside her.

  “Who are these women? They’re disturbing the peace. That’s a misdemeanor.” Her dentures clicking, she quoted chapter and verse from Baron’s civil offenses code.

  “Just a little disagreement, Miss Boyle. It’s covered. Don’t worry.”

  “But that one woman tried to assault the other.”

  “It’s all going to take care of itself,” he said, and knew it would. His confidence in Callie reigned high, and by extension, Callie’s trust in Beebe.

  The wispy breeze that blew between Lucius and Sylvia seemed to prompt the scene change under the crabapple. Beebe broke into the squabbling. She lifted her arms over her head and danced a flat-footed pirouette. On her second full turn, she dropped to one knee in front of Arnett, nearly tipped over, and flung her arms wide. “Please, Arnett,” she said, “Ride to the cabin in Callie’s car.”

  Arnett pressed herself against the bench’s backrest, too stunned by Beebe’s awkward-ballerina performance to respond.

  Without missing a beat, Callie climbed to the grassy stage, gave a graceful twirl, and knelt before Arnett with a flourish. “Please, please, Arnett, ride to the cabin with me.”

  Arnett accepted the fun and her exalted place in it. She raised her defiant chin and fixed a look on an irked and equally shocked Lizbeth, who stared down at her companions. Arnett’s expression registered as a haughty, “Well?”

  Lizbeth heaved an enormous sigh, then imitated the other two, but with lackadaisical style. “Please, Arnett—” she started, but Beebe interrupted with a throat-clearing cue. Lizbeth muttered, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Then she found her mother-in-law’s face and completed her line with a triple-dose of politeness. “Please. Please. Please, Arnett, ride to the cabin with Callie.”

  Arnett rose to the occasion. She stepped between Beebe and Callie who folded in their arms so she could pass.

  Sylvia, present for the entire show, said, “Respect for one’s elders. That’s the way it ought to be, young man.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lucius smiled, and Sylvia strutted off.

  The Maryland women were in motion as well. Arnett, nose in the air, led. Callie flicked Lucius a wave. He crossed to the depot’s side door while Lizbeth and Beebe traipsed to the Tahoe. He didn’t go inside, but waited in the shadows, picking up
on the nuances of these two trailing women. Beebe exhibited enthusiasm. She seemed pumped with energy, due to the favorable resolution to a situation spiraling downward at a rapid rate. On the other hand, Lizbeth’s lips, pressed tightly together, were reduced to a thin line. Her eyes were the storyteller: They glared sharply and maliciously at her mother-in-law’s back. Lucius decided he trusted Beebe, too. She’d emptied Lizbeth’s blustery sails and turned her into the wind.

  From his spot under the eaves, he watched the SUVs exit the lot and roll through the intersection. Every instinct he owned urged him to jump in his truck and join the convoy, but his better angels won out. Tomorrow would be soon enough. He’d visit with a pretty basket of breakfast muffins and properly introduce himself. “I’m Lucius Dameron, dear ladies, gay carpenter and meddler extraordinaire.”

  He gave his chin a decisive nod. They were bound to appreciate his honesty.

  . . .

  The two SUVs streamed along Carmody Street. The residential section doubled as one of Baron’s main access roads. The town, with its name drawn down from the ranks of nobility, knew strength and cunning when time was new. Identity and purpose existed yet, but the fiber of Baron was weakened by age and struggle.

  Callie and Arnett rode in the lead vehicle. From the corner of Callie’s eye, she watched Arnett turn slowly and glance over the seatback. A clicking sound was all that broke the silence between them. The back seats were folded down. The enlarged cargo area held two suitcases, a large aqua and white cooler on wheels, two brown paper grocery sacks, and a golf bag. The SUV’s sway caused the clubs with iron heads to tap against each other.

  “You brought your clubs?” Arnett’s question was sharp, her tone incredulous.

  “I did,” Callie responded with a short slice of self-assurance.