There could not have been a more unlikely combo than thirty-five-year-old Laurel and the three older women, who were all icons of Charles Valley respectability. Laurel's past was, to put it politely, colorful. Her mother, Sara Jayne, had been a drunk with a high profile at the major and minor honky-tonks along Highway 22. Her daddy, who hadn't lived long enough to see Laurel born or give her his name, was equally well known as a murderer who then went out and got himself killed over the affections of a black woman in a scandal that still lived in the hearts and minds of many of the townspeople, even though it was thirty-six years old. The fact that Laurel Selene, with her family history, was welcome at the sacred afternoon gathering of the three Miss Margarets drove the Charles Valley grapevine nuts.
But two years ago, on a cold autumn evening, the three women had told Laurel a secret—one they'd kept since before she was born. In doing it, they had given her a kind of peace about her past, but they'd put themselves at great risk. If Laurel had chosen to betray them she could have destroyed them and might even have sent them to jail. But Laurel had kept their secret, and the three Miss Margarets considered her a friend for life. Only they weren't the three Miss Margarets anymore, because Peggy was gone.
Laurel swallowed hard, the way she always had to when she thought of Peggy, and looked around the Gazette office. She and Peggy had been alone on Li'l Bit's porch the day Peggy had offered to buy the Gazette for her. Li'l Bit was inside the house, and Maggie hadn't come over from the clinic yet. Peggy had wrapped up her pitch by saying, “Hank wants to get out of the newspaper business, which does seem to prove there's a God, and I'd love to watch you try your hand at it. What do you say?”
Peggy was sitting in the wicker rocking chair that was her spot on the porch. Her hair was the shade of blond favored by the starlets of her youth; under an expert makeup job, her once-beautiful face showed the wear and tear of her ongoing relationship with Jack Daniel's. She was smiling at Laurel with the kind of affection that felt dangerous if you had spent your whole life not trusting anyone. “I would have loved having a daughter like you, Laurel,” she said softly.
For a few days Laurel had been thrilled about the idea of taking over the Gazette. She floated around in a happy dream of a revamped newspaper that would never again cover bake sales as if they were hard news, devote its entire editorial page to the ramblings of the elderly minister of the Baptist church, or suck up to the Garrisons. The Charles Valley Gazette would be relevant and honest, she told herself.
But then her devil voices kicked in and demanded to know who the hell she thought she was? She'd left college before finishing her first semester. She'd never taken a course in journalism or business. The local merchants who kept the Charles Valley Gazette afloat by advertising in it would never trust her. Hank was one of them; he went to their Rotary and Kiwanis meetings, laughed at their jokes, and sat next to them in church on Sunday. Laurel hadn't been inside a church since her mother's funeral, and her idea of humor did not include hoary dumb-blonde gags, bad puns, or the word titties. Add to all of this her family history. And her dicey relationship with Charles Valley's gossip mill.
Laurel walked a fine line with the town of her birth, hating it almost as much as she loved it. She'd never leave Charles Valley; it was her home, but sometimes she wondered how she was going to keep from going crazy living there.
One thing she was sure of, after she thought over Peggy's offer: The Charles Valley Gazette was more than eighty years old, and she was not going to be the one who ran it into the ground. So the next time Peggy brought up buying the newspaper, Laurel said no thank you. “It's not that I don't appreciate it, Peggy,” she said, stumbling around for the right words. “It's real generous of you, and I'm flattered you think I could do it, and I—”
“I'm sorry I scared you, sugar.” Peggy had a way of cutting to the chase that could be unnerving.
“I wouldn't say I'm afraid, exactly—”
“Sure you are. I came at you too fast with the idea. Don't you fuss, we'll talk about it again.”
But they never did, because a few weeks later Peggy mentioned she'd been having some pain in her back. So there was a trip to Atlanta for tests, and a couple of desperate weeks of waiting until the doctor at Emory said the words pancreatic cancer. Then Laurel got fired, and Peggy had the exploratory surgery that confirmed the doctor's diagnosis. After that there was the roller-coaster ride of radiation that only worked for a while and chemo that didn't work at all. Laurel was on hand for all of it, because she'd said she would be and because she wanted to be. The subject of the newspaper didn't come up again. But by that point, although Laurel didn't know it, Peggy had made other plans.
In the dark office of the Gazette, Laurel rubbed her eyes, which had begun to sting. She'd never begrudged the way Peggy's illness took over her own life, but she'd known from watching her mother die that it would have been easier if she'd had something else to keep her busy. So even though she'd been fired, she'd gone back to Hank.
“I don't need a full-time job,” she'd said. “I probably wouldn't have the time now, because of helping Peggy. But if you could just let me write a story for you every now and then. Or let me do the copyediting; you know how good I am at that. I need something to take my mind off things, Hank—just a little.”
Hank let her beg; then he turned her down with his biggest Rotary Club smile. Even though he had to cancel the paper for the next two weeks because he still hadn't found anyone who could take her place.
Laurel's eyes had stopped stinging. “After everything I did for this place,” she said out loud to the Gazette office. “After the way I used to stay up all night getting the damn paper out for that dickweed—”
The sound of her own voice rattling around the empty room stopped her. Because she suddenly realized just how much the dickweed would love to find her breaking and entering. Clearly, she should get the hell out while she still could. Instead, she marched to the back of the room where there was a door marked PRIVATE—EMPLOYEES ONLY.
In a town that prided itself on offering every amenity to friends and strangers, Hank had what was probably the only locked restroom. He was protective of it in a way that suggested an early potty training Laurel didn't want to think about. When she'd first started working for him, he'd tried to make her go next door and use the ladies' room in the Sweet Home Café until she shamed him out of it.
She found the right key on her chain, unlocked the door, went inside, and peed in Hank's sacred commode. Without covering the seat with toilet paper.
After violating Hank's plumbing, she turned on the light and studied herself in the mirror over his sink. The face that stared back at her was a series of circles: round cheeks, round brown eyes, a round mouth, and a rounded nose. It was an old-fashioned country face, free of makeup, because she had no patience for it, and framed by a mass of red hair she usually kept pulled back in an unhip ponytail. She'd never land on the cover of a magazine, but that was fine with her. She'd always had her own way of being memorable. When she was in the mood, she'd let her hair fly free, put on a tank top, jeans with a wide belt, and cowboy boots. It was a tried-and-true outfit that showed off her good boobs, small waist, and the long legs she'd inherited from her ma. With a couple of beers in her she could pretty much get any kind of attention she wanted—and some she regretted after the fact.
Laurel looked at her face in the mirror. “Oh, what the hell,” she said. She opened her purse and took out the black and gold makeup case Peggy had given her.
“I hope you don't take this wrong,” Peggy had said tentatively, “but you're such a pretty girl. . . .” She'd trailed off. Because that was two years ago and all of the three Miss Margarets were tentative with her then. In some ways, Li'l Bit and Maggie still were. But Peggy had reached out.
“When I was young, I wanted a baby more than anything,” she'd said, when she gave Laurel the makeup case. “A little girl. I was going to name her Amanda. Don't tell Li'l Bit and Maggie, but I used to
talk to her sometimes. I told her she'd never be afraid of anything, and if anyone ever tried to call her Mandy she should spit in their eye.” She let out a wicked little giggle, and for a moment Laurel could see how she'd managed to capture the heart of Dalton Garrison so many years ago. Then the giggle died. “I never did have her, of course,” Peggy said. “But if I had, she'd be about your age.”
Laurel dumped the contents of the makeup case into Hank's sink and found the mascara wand. “This one's for you, Peggy,” she murmured, as she began to unscrew the top. The mascara was old and dry because she never used it, although for a while, when Peggy was bedridden and near the end, Laurel had tried for her sake.
“Don't you ever let anyone tell you keeping up appearances is shallow, sugar,” Peggy's tired voice had whispered from the bed. “You just put on your face and tell yourself you're doing a public service. No one ever felt better by looking at a woman who let herself go.”
Two days later Peggy didn't know who she was talking to. “I fixed everything for you, Amanda,” she'd said.
Her voice was so far gone by then that Laurel had to bend over to hear her. But the wasted hand that held Laurel's was amazingly strong. And hot—even now, Laurel could still remember the heat.
“They'll try . . .” Peggy had started to say, but the mists that had been carrying her in and out of consciousness took over, and she had to struggle to pull herself back, “Don't let . . .” she got out before the mists took over. “Don't let them. . . .”
“It's okay, Peggy, I won't let them do it,” Laurel whispered, and wished to God she knew what they were talking about.
A dried flake of mascara, the size of a boulder by the feel of it, had lodged itself under Laurel's eyelid. Which could have been an accident. Or a warning from on high about the morning ahead of her.
“Stop stalling,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. “You promised you were going over there today.” Because this was the day when she had to deal with the way in which Peggy had “fixed” everything for her.
Chapter Three
THE SPEED LIMIT on Highway 22 was fifty-five miles an hour, but according to her speedometer Laurel was doing forty-five. It was because of her streaming eye, she told herself, not because she didn't want to get where she was going. She mashed on the gas, and drove past Garrison Gardens and the resort, plunging into a forest known as the Garrison Nature Preserve that spanned both sides of the highway. A triangular piece of land was wedged in the middle of the highway, splitting it for several miles. On this pie-shaped chunk of prime Charles Valley real estate were the homes of the three Miss Margarets. Li'l Bit and Maggie shared a swatch of land bordered by a ridge of hills at the wide end of the triangle, owning eighty and thirty acres, respectively. At the top end of the wedge, starting with the tip, were the two hundred and sixty acres that came with the huge log home Peggy had lived in for the forty-five years of her marriage and widowhood. This house was Laurel's destination.
She reached it and turned off the highway. In front of her were two stone pillars and a wooden gate. On the right-hand pillar was a sign proclaiming that you had arrived at GARRISON COTTAGE. The innocuous-looking gate was wired to alert the security system at the Garrison resort if an unauthorized person attempted to enter the grounds. Authorized persons like Laurel had a plastic ID card they swiped through a scanner that was concealed on the back of the left pillar.
Laurel leaned over to check her eye in her rearview mirror—it was red and mascara smeared. She looked like shit. Well, it had been that kind of day. Actually, it had been that kind of a month—no, make that many months. And the worst was ahead of her. She drew a deep breath and started down the long driveway to Garrison Cottage.
To call Peggy's former home a cottage was to wallow in old-money understatement. “Let's face it,” Peggy said once. “It's ten thousand square feet of house, not counting the porches and the patio around the pool. The damn thing's a castle. I don't care if it is made out of logs they cut right here in Charles Valley. Dalton wasn't the one who wanted a big house, you know. That was Miss Myrtis. Peggy was referring to Dalton's first wife, her predecessor, Myrtis Garrison. The daughter of a wealthy and powerful Georgia family, Miss Myrtis had cast a long shadow in Charles Valley. Even after Dalton married Peggy, the legend of the first Mrs. Garrison lingered.
“Miss Myrtis designed Garrison Cottage,” Peggy continued. “She wanted it to be like Monticello—a place where important people would come to talk and change the world.”
It hadn't quite worked out like that.
The driveway wound through what seemed to be a forest that had been left to grow wild. It was only after you'd driven through it several times that you realized that there was no kudzu choking the pines and oaks. The shade-loving azaleas that flourished under the canopy of trees had not gotten where they were by accident, nor had the magnolias or the crape myrtle, scattered artfully throughout. The land on either side of the river-rock drive was as exquisitely manicured as Garrison Gardens itself.
“Just one of the perks,” Peggy said, of her home and grounds.
Peggy had had the entire staff of the resort at her command. Maids from housekeeping cleaned her house, the mechanics who serviced the resort vehicles kept her car humming, the restaurants cooked her meals and delivered them to her. If she wanted to throw a party, trays of the cheese wafers and tiny biscuits with country ham for which the resort was famous would appear as if by magic, along with waiters wearing the white gloves that were a hallmark of Garrison service. And gardeners in Garrison overalls showed up every day, starting in the early spring.
“Since they go to all that trouble anyway, I'd just as soon they dug up the damn forest primeval and planted a pretty lawn,” Peggy complained. “When I come home late at night, all those trees are downright creepy.” But she hadn't changed so much as the placement of one shrub.
The drive up to the house had never seemed creepy to Laurel, and by the end of Peggy's life she was doing it every day. Peggy had wanted to die at home instead of in the hospital, but she hadn't wanted Maggie and Li'l Bit taking care of her. “It'd be too much for them, but they'll try anyway,” she'd said.
“Not if they know I'm going to be there,” Laurel had said.
Of course, Maggie and Li'l Bit knew what Peggy was doing.
“Peggy wants to spare us,” Li'l Bit said.
But Maggie, who sometimes saw things more clearly, said quietly, “She needs Laurel now.”
Laurel's eye had stopped tearing—Thank you, Jesus. She followed the driveway through the forest until it suddenly gave way to a meadow of wildflowers. And there, rising out of a sea of pink, red, blue, and white, was the great log castle. It was built in three parts. The central section was two stories tall, capped with a gable roof and skylights. Two side wings, each one story high, were attached to the center at a slight angle, giving the house a curved look. In front of it was an oval garden full of daylilies, daffodils, hollyhocks, and hydrangeas, anchored on either end by a massive oak. When she first saw it, the place had seemed beautiful but overwhelming to Laurel; later it had become familiar and sad. Now she wished someone would burn the damn thing down.
She parked under one of the oaks and sat for a moment, hoping she wasn't the first one there. Sure enough, another car was parked on the other side of the oval. But instead of the ancient Volvo she was expecting, it was the brand-new gray van Maggie had recently bought for the clinic. Only one person drove that van, and for the first time that morning Laurel felt herself relax. As if on cue, the front door of the house opened and a man stepped out into the sunlight. He was tall, probably six two or three, and slim, but with enough muscle to make him interesting. High cheekbones, strong features, and straight jet-black hair reinforced the legend that his daddy's great-grandmother had been part Cherokee; his deep-blue eyes and the dimple that appeared at the side of his mouth when he smiled were a gift from his Irish great-granddaddy. He had been named after the television character Perry Mason, becau
se his mama thought the law was an admirable career and she wanted a professional man in the family. She'd gotten her wish, although the profession wasn't the one she'd had in mind. Her son was a doctor. And he was stuck with the name Perry. Laurel was privy to all his family lore because she'd known him all of his life and for most of hers. To the rest of Charles Valley, he was a hero, the local boy who had gone north to Harvard University and medical school and then chosen to come back home. To Laurel he would always be The Wiener, also known as her best friend Denny's annoying baby brother.
“Hey, Wiener,” she called out.
He gave her a lazy, dimple-producing grin that would have turned her knees to jelly if she hadn't been old enough to remember him when he was teething.
“That would be Dr. Douglass to you, girl.” His voice had the intimate smoky quality of a TV spokesperson for women's hair products. No matter how many times she heard it, it came as a shock to Laurel, who remembered the years when it had been a nasal squeak. She also remembered The Wiener's impressive collection of preadolescent zits, the glasses that always seemed to be sliding off his nose, and the days when the white T-shirt that was now clinging so nicely to pecs, abs, and biceps would have been stretched over a bulging stomach that bounced violently when its youthful owner attempted to run after Laurel and Denny. The summer air would echo with screeches of “Take me with you or I'll tell Mama!” and Laurel and Denny, who were usually embarking on some form of hell-raising, would have to turn around and inflict bodily harm on the pest to teach him not to mess with his elders. There had been a time when The Wiener's punishment for calling her girl, as he just had, would have been swift and merciless. But that was before he went away from home and came back tall, gorgeous, and licensed as a physician. His first act after coming back to Charles Valley had been to charm Maggie into admitting that, as she approached her ninetieth birthday, perhaps she could use a little assistance at the clinic. Afer three months, she was admitting that she didn't know what she'd do without him.
The Ladies of Garrison Gardens Page 2