Beebe popped her eyes at Callie.
“Well, clutches is my word, not hers.”
“She’s demonstrated her charm.”
“Of course they are her age, not ours.”
“Exactly.” Lizbeth and Beebe bantered back and forth.
“I don’t even think they’ve noticed we’re gone.”
“She hasn’t stopped smiling since Mick put his hat on her head.”
“Which one’s Mick?” Callie asked.
“Gray hair. Across from her.”
“You’ve got pictures?” Callie raised the question as if concrete evidence was an imperative.
Lizbeth snapped her fingers, simulating the many opportunities lost, then pointed at Callie and grinned. “Dozens,” she said.
One of the Aussies motioned for Tom.
“That’s Owen. Sportsman. Owned a fleet of ships. Resort fishing. Retired.”
“How many drinks has she had?” Callie asked.
“Let’s just say, she’ll feel this tomorrow,” Beebe said.
Tom swung by the threesome on his way behind the bar. “After this, I’m cutting them off. I’ve watered down the last two.”
“We’ve got to get her home,” Callie said, sounding concerned.
“Oh, Callie, you’re just a potty pooper.”
Two seconds of realization were followed by unrepressed giggles.
“Oops,” Lizbeth said. “I meant party pooper.”
“You’re not driving,” Callie said, decidedly.
When that round of giggles died off, Beebe said, “My mother always said, ‘Laugh before breakfast, cry before supper.’”
Callie gave her a quizzical look. “You haven’t even gone to bed yet. You’re not driving.”
Beebe shook her head. “I meant in the broader sense, taking the entire week into consideration. In that sense, we are still relatively close to breakfast.” She counted the remaining time span on her fingers. “Five days to go.”
“Hang on to the philosophical side,” Callie said, then asked Tom for two orders of mozzarella sticks. “Some for here and the Aussies. My compliments.” Her blue eyes passed from Beebe to Lizbeth. “I want you two sobered up. I’m going to need help with Arnett.”
Callie’s words sounded decades away. Beebe returned to the days of her youth. She hadn’t thought of her mother’s favorite ditty since she ran away. Now, her mother’s memory was chipping its way back into Beebe’s consciousness.
. . .
Callie pinned the heavily stocked brown grocery sack against her ribcage with one arm. With the other, she twisted the knob that got her back inside the cabin. Lizbeth stood in the doorway of Arnett’s room, coffee cup in hand. Since Callie’s departure for Cheat River General Store, Lizbeth had dressed and was ready to retrieve the Tahoe. It spent a sobering night parked in the steakhouse’s lot.
Arnett’s social evening provoked a black-bear hangover. Black bears were indigenous to the West Virginia wilderness, and they were killers.
Lizbeth pushed herself into motion toward the kitchen. Beebe, clothed in her striped nightshirt and terry robe, appeared next in the doorway. From somewhere in her past, Beebe learned how to concoct a Bloody Mary. It was her list of supplies Callie purchased from the overpriced general store a mile past Old County Road A.
Loudly so her words would carry, Lizbeth said, “Thanks for going, Callie. I doubt you’ll get a thank-you out of Arnett.”
“You’re right. She won’t,” sailed out of the sick room.
Lizbeth gave Callie a gleefully mischievous look. “I never heard Dan speak of his mother as ever being tipsy.”
Immediately, Beebe cut into Lizbeth’s fun. “Now don’t you two start anything that will ruin the progress we made yesterday.”
“Ruin?” Arnett called in a worried voice. “Are they trying to ruin my hat?”
“No, Arnett,” Beebe said consolingly, “your hat’s right there on the bedpost.”
“I know Jack never drank to excess,” Callie said, “not since his college days, anyway. He claimed his lips got numb.”
Callie watched Beebe working hers for a moment. “Numb lips,” she said. “I’m trying to imagine that.”
Lizbeth and Beebe pulled up on either side of Callie at the counter where she deposited the sack. “Here’s the tomato juice, vodka, lemon juice.” She extracted the items. “The store had Worcestershire sauce. I’ve already got pepper sauce.” Lizbeth leaned her head back so Callie could open the cabinet door and pluck out the Tabasco brand. “There’s celery in the fridge if a garnish is required.” Callie dragged a loaf of bread and a box of teabags onto the countertop. “For toast if she feels better, and an herbal brew if that sounds good.” She tipped the bag up. The last box slid out. “And saltines if she’s pregnant.”
Arnett was not amused. “I heard that. I am not pregnant. You’re a couple of assholes.”
Callie figured the last remark was intended for her and Lizbeth. On track with her accent, Lizbeth cheered, “Aussie that!”
“You two get out of here,” Beebe said, pushing said assholes toward the door.
The words, “Stop messin’,” rolled off Callie’s tongue, surprising her. That’s exactly what Jack would have said, she thought. With each additional day, he seemed to press closer and closer. She could feel him, in the cabin, at the restaurant the night before. Especially at the golf course. There, he seemed to walk in her shadow.
Peacekeeper
Callie and Lizbeth buckled themselves into the Santa Fe. When the road forked just past Sarah Prosser’s condo office, Callie steered left. For all their high jinks back at Heatherwood, Callie and Lizbeth fell into an uncomfortable silence. Remnants of their last caucus rode in the space between them.
When Jack’s post-surgical depression worsened and Arnett worked up the courage to telephone Callie, Callie was caught in a swirling updraft of quick-firing thoughts and feelings that day: her unbearable separation from Jack, Jack facing his mortality, the aggressive disease, its debilitating nature. She ached with his pain, and his fear. Pelted by such an emotional blitz, she uttered words into the receiver that seemed beaten into oversimplification. “Jack is such a special man.”
“Yes. Yes, he is.” Strangely enough, the tone of Arnett’s response spoke volumes. Her voice listed toward a distant place in time, where more than a caring concern existed between Jack and Arnett. Where once, Callie thought, there had been love.
Lizbeth cleared her throat, interrupting Callie’s reverie. “Since our last caucus, where I badly misbehaved,” she admitted, “I keep returning to one thought: What if Dan died in the accident before he made up with his father? All these things Arnett does—manipulating people, protecting her image—can have real consequence.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry Gary and Dan had to go through their parents’ marital troubles. I am. But I look at Chad, and I’d rather he suffered his parents’ divorce than his father’s death. And Geoff. He still needs his father’s influence. What gets me is that Gary, Dan, and I had this conversation. We knew after Dad recovered, he’d go right back to his old ways. Meaning you.” She turned toward Callie. “While I was ready to accept it when Dad announced he would move in with you, Dan and Gary wouldn’t. I was disappointed in Dan for that. He let Gary talk him into showing solidarity. Gary was arrogant enough to think Dad would stop seeing you if he asked him to stop. He wouldn’t understand that you and Dad weren’t having a fling. Twenty years is not a fling. He always got what he wanted out of his father; he would never stop asking. And of course, Gary thought he could convince Dad to live at home with Arnett because he convinced him to move back prior to surgery. So it was a
blow when Dad chose you. God, he was angry. It took him a solid month to recover, and Dan hung with him.”
Lizbeth fell silent for a moment. All Callie heard was the hum of tires on asphalt.
“I’ve seen a lot with the Sebring family, but Dad,” Lizbeth said, “Dad was the peacekeeper.”
Callie swung off the road onto the restaurant’s gravel lot and rolled to a stop next to the Tahoe. Lizbeth’s conclusion reminded Callie of her duty as Jack’s stand-in.
“If I might step into the peacekeeper’s role,” she wondered politely. “You’ve acquired quite a bit of evidence against Arnett, evidence she won’t want Gary to learn. You could probably keep her on track if you promised to keep those secrets, provided she followed your guidelines, quilt and all.”
Lizbeth flipped her attention away. For a time, she studied her knees. Callie’s strategic compromise required her to play the Sebring secrets game. Lizbeth was adamantly opposed to the game on general principle, Callie knew, but, in the short run, during this first year of grief, she and Chad would cope better with fewer changes in their life. Callie could attest to the wave of sorrow that would overtake her when the first anniversary of Dan’s death approached. Progress would be lost, but Lizbeth would recoup and wade through a second year. There, Callie’s prediction ended. She’d yet to complete her own journey. She didn’t feel she ever would.
Without comment one way or the other, Lizbeth opened the car door and got out. She moved her purse from the floorboard to the seat and fished in an external compartment for her cell phone. She read the screen. “Damn this place with no reception.”
“Use the restaurant’s phone. It’s not open yet, but Tom’s in there. Let’s knock.” Callie jumped out of the SUV and came around.
“But the call’s long distance.”
“Leave him a couple bucks.”
At the back door, they raised Tom easily. He gave them a cheery, “G’day, mates.” Clearly, Australians make a lasting impression.
“Can we bribe you into letting us use the phone?” Beside Callie, Lizbeth snapped a five-dollar bill taut.
“Keep it,” he said. “Car problems?” They dispelled that concern as he walked them to an alcove and pointed to a wall phone. “Be my guest.”
“You calling Patrick?” Callie assumed.
Lizbeth lifted the receiver. “No, Maryland State Senator Amos Emerson,” she said, the official’s title tripping easily off her tongue. “I managed his local office in Cassel until Chad was born. There’s a job waiting for me when I get back if I want it.”
“You like politics, girl?” Tom exclaimed.
Lizbeth gave him a genuine laugh. “A steady dose, yes, I do. Back in college, I was a fast study. I crammed finance and investment, poli-sci, and American history into four years. Working for the senator, I have to admit I drew on every course taken.” Callie and Tom exchanged looks that said each was a little more than impressed with Lizbeth Sebring. “But I haven’t accepted the position yet.”
That last sentence was added for Callie’s benefit. Lizbeth wanted Callie to know Florida remained a clear-cut option. Callie managed to eavesdrop during Tom’s recitation of his minestrone soup recipe. The soup headed the day’s lunch menu. Lizbeth hung up after arranging an appointment with Senator Emerson for early next week.
The two ladies and the restaurateur made small talk for a few minutes around a butcher-block table overlaid with individual mounds of chopped celery, onion, and carrots. Cans of dark kidney beans waited at one corner beside a stainless steel bowl filled with curly macaroni.
Back outside, the women headed for the front lot.
“It was nice of Tom to let me use the phone.”
“That’s the first thing I’m going to do,” Callie said. “Add a landline.”
“Why? You rarely come—” A sharp intake of air sliced through her words. “Callie, are you staying?”
“Just wishful thinking,” Callie said, waving away the thought she spoke aloud. “I was offered a job yesterday at Brier Hills.” All bragging aside, Brier Hills Golf Course was the flagship of Jack’s designs.
“Golf pro?”
“Uh-huh. And I’d need to learn the ski resort business.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Yeah. But I can’t accept it. I couldn’t leave Petey,” Callie said of Jack’s stepmother.
“You and she have grown close?”
“We have a few things in common. Jack, of course, and sports. Her baseball. My golf. She’s had a tremendously uncommon life. Her stories are fabulous. In her younger days, she was acquainted with baseball greats, old-time gangsters, and celebrities coming off vaudeville’s heyday. I felt drawn to her after Jack died. I needed someone to talk to, someone who knew Jack. My family was gone. His family, well, you guys—”
“Did not receive you well.” Lizbeth finished Callie’s fledging sentence.
Callie shot her a look, surprised by how neatly she admitted a family shortcoming and, with the same words, reduced it to sounding like nothing more than a minor social blunder.
The two women arrived back at the SUVs. “The Brier Hills’ offer is a pipe dream,” Callie said. “Life will proceed in Cassel, the town with the Sebrings, in the house where I’ve lived my entire life.” Shaking off a wave of melancholy, she said, “Anyway, I can’t leave Petey. That would break her heart.”
“Maybe I should take Chad to meet Petey,” Lizbeth said in a transparently pot-stirring way. “He might enjoy her baseball stories.”
When Arnett pronounced Petey severed from the family after she stood up against Arnett’s harassing phone calls to Callie, that edict applied to all of Arnett’s offspring and all of theirs. While a visit would have no repercussions on Petey, it would serve to further alienate Arnett.
Peacekeeping was one tough gig, Callie thought. Jack’s ability to hold his family together gained her utmost respect. “Making contact with Petey might put a wedge between you and the family,” she cautioned.
Lizbeth stood at the Tahoe’s bumper. Red patches appeared on her cheeks. “When this week is through, Arnett isn’t going to have control of my life, who I visit, or where I work or live. Arnett will be aware I have power and position over her.” She squared her shoulders. “I’m feeling a group session coming on. The cheer for today: Caucus that!”
Five seconds later, she had the SUV fired up and in reverse.
. . .
Arnett waited to hear Beebe start her shower, then ran quickly through one in her own bathroom. Thanks to Beebe’s nursing skills, she felt better. It had been decades and decades since she consumed too much alcohol. At the steakhouse last night, she became convinced of her immunity to a hangover. Age should count for something. That was probably the whiskey talking.
She hurriedly dressed, but did dally over brushing a woolen layer from her mouth. Arnett retrieved the Aussie cap and giggled out loud as she tugged it on. A picture of handsome Mick and his gold-flecked green eyes stepped forward in her mind. In her haste to sneak away, his small gift proved useful. It covered a rowdy group of lopsided curls. She picked and pulled at a few to give the navy hat a light-colored fringe. Only seconds were spared.
Almost an afterthought, she snatched her sunglasses from the dresser as she passed. When that first glimpse of nearly debilitating sunlight hit her irises on the porch, she was overjoyed to have them. She crossed to the steps. Inside, the sound of Beebe’s hair dryer masked the creaks and squeaks of her unsupervised departure.
Riversong, the cabin next door, was her intended destination. Out on the road, she climbed the hill between Callie’s cabin and the O’Malleys’. A posted sign near a narrow lane boasted the property’s name. A thick curta
in of trees, deciduous and evergreen, shrouded Riversong from the road—and a telephone line ran through them.
Lizbeth, given the opportunity to roam, would be sorely tempted to contact Gary and malign Arnett by detailing her conspiracy with Callie to extricate John from the family home. “Don’t tell John we talked,” Arnett said the morning she called Callie.
Gary and Dan asked too much after John’s infidelity. They expected Arnett to nurse him to good health and inevitably right back into the Scottish Tart’s arms. Initially, she wanted their adulation, but she couldn’t keep up the pretense. So Arnett, the injured wife, walked her sons to their father’s room, where John’s sutured body took their blows. He could have Callie, she told John before their arrival, but he must deliver the news and be solely responsible for the decision. He kept that bargain.
Arnett felt her earlier nausea return as she strode from the cool tunnel of scented trees into the brilliant sunshine soaking the O’Malley’s front yard. It was altogether possible that Lizbeth and Gary concluded their conversation. Gary might, at this very moment, be stewing over his mother’s trail of secrets. Arnett could have possibly prevented that outcome more than once yesterday during the sightseeing tour. Lizbeth’s demeanor, light and airy throughout, made her approachable, but Arnett chose not to drop to one knee and plead for mercy. She simply couldn’t, not while a viable recourse remained open.
Arnett set that recourse into motion before she left for West Virginia. Back home, her attorney, Harlow Nolan, was preparing to petition the courts for her rightful involvement in Chad’s life. If the summit’s result was not to her liking, then the petition would be filed. In finest Oldstone tradition, her claim would be upheld, and the judge’s verdict would not come wrapped in a quilt. Gary was unaware of her consultation with Nolan. Perhaps now was the time, especially if Lizbeth informed Gary of Arnett’s previous infractions, to smooth that over somewhat by making a call to her son and sharing her legal plan of attack.
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