“I’m so sorry,” Annajane said. “Mason, I am so, so sorry. I’m coming back. Right now.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ve gotta go. The nurse is coming out to talk to us.”
“Call me,” Annajane said. “Let me know what they say. I’m on the way.”
* * *
She found Mason alone in the waiting room at the hospital, slumped forward in one of those hard-backed green chairs. Even with the harsh fluorescent overhead lights the beige room was wreathed in shadows. He didn’t look up when she sat down and called his name.
“Where’s Sallie?” she asked, looking around the room. “And Pokey?”
“Pokey had to go home,” Mason said, his voice a monotone. “To nurse the baby. Mama’s in the room with Dad. They tried to make her leave, but she raised holy hell and threatened to sue everybody, so they finally let her stay.”
“What about Davis?”
Mason shrugged. “He went up to Boone early this morning, to go skiing. Phone reception is lousy up there.”
“Is there … any change?”
“No,” Mason said. He sat up and stared at the television. “It’s not good,” he said bleakly. “Dr. Kaufman says his brain had likely been without oxygen for at least an hour or more by the time Mama found him. The EMTs managed to get his heart started in the ambulance, but Dr. Kaufman told us, even if he does make it, he won’t be the same. You know.”
Annajane nodded mutely. “I prayed the whole way back,” she said finally. “For your daddy. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed so hard in my life.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “That’s nice. Mama will appreciate it.”
They sat like that, not talking for another hour. Finally, she could stand the silence no more. “I’m gonna get some coffee,” she said, standing and stretching. “I’ll get some for you, too.”
“No thanks,” Mason said.
She got up and walked over to the coffee station in the corner, taking her time with sugar packets and instant creamer. She was about to sit down again when Sallie Bayless appeared in the doorway.
She was still dressed in the elegant black cashmere sweater and slacks she’d been wearing hours and hours ago, when Annajane had sat through that awful luncheon. But Sallie’s usually perfectly arranged hair was a tangled mess. Her face was pale, her lipstick chewed off, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Mama?” Mason stood.
She nodded. “He’s gone. They did everything they could, but your daddy is gone, son.” She burst into tears, and threw herself into her oldest child’s arms, while Annajane stood by, mute and heartbroken.
* * *
The next few days and weeks after the funeral were a blur.
Glenn Bayless’s sudden death shook his family, and the company, to its core. Sallie, his widow, wept constantly and seemed unable to cope with even the simplest detail of day-to-day life. The first few nights after Glenn’s death, she declared herself afraid to stay alone in the rambling old house. It fell to Mason, the oldest son, to move into his old bedroom down the hall to keep her company.
After two weeks, Sallie’s doctor prescribed sleeping pills, and Mason came home. To the lumpy pullout sofa.
He plunged into the work of settling his father’s estate and came home exhausted and ashen-faced from endless meetings with the lawyers. If Annajane inquired, he brusquely replied that everything was “fine.”
But things were not fine. Without confiding in his son, Glenn had quietly begun acquiring expensive parcels of land for a new bottling plant in the southern part of the state, anticipating increased demand for Quixie. But the owner of the key parcel, the only acreage with the direct rail access a plant would require, had suddenly backed out of the sale. The company was stuck with the land, bought at a top-of-the-market price, with a correspondingly high interest rate.
At the same time, Quixie’s sales had taken a worrisome dip. Vitamin waters, energy drinks, and flavored bottled iced teas were eroding their share of the soft drink market.
And Annajane and Mason hadn’t had sex since before the ill-fated Quixie Christmas party. They lived in the same house and worked for the same company, their offices only feet apart, but the chasm between them seemed to widen every day. When Leonard Hudgens fell and broke his hip and died of pneumonia a month after the death of Glenn Bayless, Annajane spent two weeks in Holden Beach with her mother. By the time she got back to Passcoe, Mason had moved out of the caretaker’s cottage. And the marriage was over.
9
The nurse who’d wheeled Sophie back to the exam room beckoned. “Dr. Kaufman wanted me to tell you that he’s gonna go ahead and take out her appendix,” she said hurriedly. “They’re prepping her now. You can go back, but only for a minute.”
They found Sophie clutching a teddy bear, with an IV-drip tube connected to her arm. Nurse Molly patted the child’s hand. “She’s been such a good girl,” she told Mason. “Didn’t even cry when we stuck her for blood or put in the IV needle.”
Mason laid his cheek against Sophie’s. “Hey kiddo,” he said softly. “Dr. Max is gonna fix up your tummy now.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. “Daddy?” she said woozily. “I got a new bear.”
“I see that,” Mason said.
Annajane took Sophie’s hand. “What have you got there?”
Clenched in the palm of her hand was an empty glass vial, probably from some drug that had been injected into her IV tube. Sophie was a magpie. From the moment she’d first started to crawl, she had a habit of picking up random small items. A misplaced earring, paper clip, discarded gum wrapper, all of these were treasures to Sophie, who would carefully tuck them in a pocket or hide them under her pillow. Or more often than not lately, in her treasured pink plastic pocketbook.
“It’s a baby bottle. For my new bear,” Sophie said.
“I’ll keep it for you,” Annajane promised, carefully placing the vial on the table out of Sophie’s reach. “Does the bear have a name?”
“Mittens,” Sophie said. “I’m sooo sleepy.”
“You rest,” Mason told her. “And when you wake up, I’ll be right here.”
“Annajane, too?”
“Me, too,” Annajane said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And then they were wheeling her into surgery.
When they got back to the waiting area, Pokey was there. She’d changed out of her wedding attire and was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt. “The nurse told me they’re gonna operate?”
Mason nodded tersely. “Did you go by the club? How’s Celia?”
“Fine, I guess,” Pokey reported. “Pete took Letha to help out with the boys. She made me promise to call her as soon as we know something. I talked to him a little while ago. He said people were a little shocked at first, just kinda standing around, staring at each other, but then Mama took charge, got the waiters passing appetizers and the bar up and running, and the band warmed up. Everybody’s dancing and having a high old time.”
She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “Mama has ordered me to make sure you call her with an update on Sophie.”
He exhaled loudly. “I can’t deal with her right now.” He looked at Annajane. “Could you?”
Annajane was in no mood for a long conversation with Sallie Bayless either, but she took the phone, made the call, and reassured her former mother-in-law that Dr. Kaufman had things firmly in hand. She heard the sound of music in the background, the clink of glasses and ice, and voices.
“Thank you for calling, Annajane dear,” Sallie said finally. “I know this can’t be easy for you.”
“Sophie is a little trouper,” Annajane said. “But yes, I’ll feel better once she’s out of surgery.”
“I meant the wedding,” Sallie said.
Annajane allowed herself a wry smile. “I’m happy for Mason. And Celia,” she added.
“Of course,” Sallie said. Her tone said otherwise.
When she rejoined the others, Mason was thumbing through e-mails
on his BlackBerry, and his sister was staring at the television with a blank expression on her face.
“Hey,” Pokey said, standing up quickly. “C’mon, let’s go raid the vending machines. I’m starved. Mase? Can we bring you anything?”
“Nothing,” he said without looking up.
Annajane trailed along after Pokey. They found a bank of vending machines outside the hospital’s cafeteria, which was closed.
Pokey dug in the pocket of her jeans and came up with a handful of coins. She studied the candy machine. “Hmm. Almond Joy or Butterfinger?”
“Nothing for me,” Annajane said. “Maybe a bottle of water or something.” She looked at the other machines. “Although I could use some aspirin or ibuprofen or something for this headache.”
“Hangover?” Pokey gave her a surprised look. Annajane was almost never sick, and almost never drank to excess.
Her friend sighed. “I dosed myself with bourbon before leaving for the church this afternoon. Should have known it would come back later and bite me in the butt.”
Pokey fed coins into the soda machine and bought bottled water for both of them, then, moving over to the next machine, bought a packet of Aleve for Annajane.
“Let’s sit in here,” she said, gesturing to the half-darkened cafeteria.
They found a table near the door, and Annajane gratefully swallowed the pain medicine with a swig of water.
“Something I need to ask you,” Pokey said, leaning across the table. “And don’t bullshit me, okay? We’ve known each other too long for that.”
“Oh God,” Annajane said warily. “What is it now?”
“I saw the look on your face in church today, when Celia came down the aisle. I saw the look on Mason’s face, too. And I know him just as well as I know you.”
“And?” Annajane wished she had not followed her friend out of the waiting room. She’d walked right into Pokey’s trap.
“And I got the distinct feeling, right before Sophie got sick, that you were about to make a big move.”
“That’s crazy,” Annajane said, laughing uneasily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do,” Pokey said. “You shoved me into the aisle. I don’t care what you say. I know you, Annajane Hudgens. And I know you are not over him. You are still in love with my brother.”
“Absolutely not,” Annajane said automatically. “I’m in love with Shane. I’ve moved on.”
“You are so not over Mason. And I’ve got a news flash for you. He’s not over you, either.”
“You’re delusional,” Annajane said, taking another swig of water. “Either that, or smoking crack. Hey. What were you drinking before the wedding?”
“Skim milk. Straight up. Iron supplement chaser.” Pokey said. “I’m pregnant.”
Annajane nearly spit out her water. “Again! Oh my God, Pokey, are you sure?”
Pokey took a big bite of her Butterfinger and chewed for a moment. “The fourth time around, you tend to know these things. And the EPT test I took Monday confirmed it. Yup. Just call me Fertile Myrtle. Knocked up again.”
Annajane grasped both her friend’s hands in hers. “Oh honey, that’s great. I mean, I know Clayton isn’t even two, but you really were born for motherhood. Are you okay with it? What does Pete say?”
Pokey laughed. “I’m fine with popping ’em out one, two, three. And four. As for Pete, he did allow that he wouldn’t mind having a girl this time around. I pointed out to him that he’s the one shooting all the blue bullets so far. Anyway, don’t try to change the subject. We were talking about how you and my brother are still stupid in love with each other.”
Annajane sighed. “I’ll admit it was hard today, being in church, facing the reality of, well, everything. Mason truly was my first love. Yeah, I dated around in college, but nobody else ever came close. I guess I just had the world’s biggest, longest crush on him. But marriage is different. It’s real life, not a fairy tale. You can’t sustain a crush when bad things happen, when people hurt each other. When they cheat on each other and won’t even be honest enough to admit what they’ve done. If Mason had just apologized, if he’d just acknowledged what had happened, maybe things would have been different. But I’m not going to dwell on that anymore. I’ve found a man I can love as well as trust. Shane would never cheat on me. He just wouldn’t.”
“Stop!” Pokey exclaimed. “I will never believe Mason ever loved anybody but you. So maybe he screwed up, maybe he slipped up. He’s a man, and gawd knows none of ’em are perfect. Especially the Bayless men.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Annajane asked.
Pokey shrugged. “What it sounds like. Look at Davis. What a man whore! He sleeps with any and every girl that comes along, single or married, and he gets away with it because he’s Davis. He behaves like a goat in rut and we all just roll our eyes and laugh. And my daddy? Annajane, you know there was never a bigger daddy’s girl than me. I loved my daddy and I miss him every day, but I’m not dumb, and I’m not blind. I know he … fooled around on Mama.”
Annajane had heard rumors about her former father-in-law’s conquests over the years. After all, even in his sixties, Glenn Bayless was a startlingly handsome man, with a full head of hair that had turned silver in his early forties, piercing blue eyes, and a lean athlete’s build honed from hours in the gym he’d set up in the basement of Cherry Hill, not to mention twice-weekly games of cutthroat tennis with partners half his age.
Still, this was not a topic she had ever discussed with anybody in the family. “You really believe all those old stories?”
“I just know, okay?” Pokey said. “The crazy thing is, I don’t think it affected their marriage. Daddy worshipped the ground Mama walked on. I think he just, you know, liked the ladies. And they liked him back. But I am here to tell you that Mason isn’t like that.”
“And what makes Mason so different?” Annajane said flippantly.
“Because he knew Daddy screwed around on Mama,” Pokey said flatly. “And it wasn’t just a rumor. If you must know, Mason and I caught him at it. Red-handed. And Mason never forgave him for it.”
Caught off guard, Annajane sat back in her chair and regarded Pokey, who was calmly finishing off the last bite of her candy bar.
“Mason never said a word,” Annajane said.
“We swore to keep it a secret,” Pokey said. “We didn’t even tell Davis. It was awful. For both of us. You remember that summer Mason moved away? Right after graduation? The only summer he didn’t work at the plant?”
Annajane nodded. What she remembered most was the way her heart beat faster the first time she saw Mason Bayless roaring through town in the red convertible, headed for a summer job at the Outer Banks, and how her sixteen-year-old self pined for a man who barely knew she existed.
“Daddy said he was giving Mason the Chevelle as a birthday present. But really? It was a bribe. Or maybe a peace offering. Mason wasn’t even speaking to Daddy at that point. I don’t think he spoke to him that whole summer.”
“But Mason came back home in the fall. And he went back to work for Quixie,” Annajane pointed out. “And I never heard him say a single bad thing about your dad. I always thought it was so sweet, the way they worked together.”
“They patched things up,” Pokey agreed. “But they were never as close again as they were before that summer. Mason loved Daddy, but he didn’t respect him.”
Annajane shook her head. “I don’t even know why we are having this conversation. The past is past.” She held up her left hand, and wiggled her ring finger pointedly. “I’ve got a new life; Mason has a new life. It’s time, all right?”
Pokey rolled her eyes.
“I know you don’t like Celia,” Annajane went on. “And no, she’s not who I would have picked for Mason, but the important thing is, he picked her, and he apparently loves her, and I honestly think she’ll be good for him and for the company.”
“The company!” Pokey exclaimed. “W
ho gives a rat’s ass about Quixie? We are talking about my brother’s happiness. And yours. Celia is totally wrong for him. Did you notice he only asked the bitch to marry him after you announced your engagement? And don’t get me started on the topic of Celia as mommy material.”
“Sophie seems okay with Celia,” Annajane broke in.
“Sophie doesn’t know her like we do. But I don’t care what kind of show she puts on; Celia just barely tolerates Sophie. I mean, Sophie is another woman’s baby, not hers. Celia doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body. The woman is an ice queen. And as for her company—so what if she made money selling kids’ clothes? That doesn’t mean she can keep Quixie from going down the tubes. Soft drinks are an entirely different ball game. I don’t care if she is Miss Congeniality. I don’t like her and I don’t trust her. What do we really know about this woman, aside from what she’s told us?”
“We know Mason wants to marry her,” Annajane said softly. “Anyway, much as I love you and the rest of your crazy clan, Pokey, the company is no longer my problem. In case you forgot, I’m moving to Atlanta in five days. I have a new job, and I’m starting a new life. Going to the wedding was about closure. I’m engaged to Shane, remember?”
“Closure?” Pokey scoffed. “And you really intend to marry a guy named Shane? Really? Shane? What kind of name is that for a grown man? Is he a cowboy or something?”
It was Annajane’s turn for an eyeroll. “Hello, Pokey? May I remind you that you named your own sons Glenndenning, Peterson, and Clayton? And that you have brothers named Mason and Davis?”
“Those are family names, and you know it,” Pokey said.
“Fine. I think Shane is a perfectly nice name. And he’s a nice guy, and he loves me and I love him.”
A wicked, familiar glint shone in Pokey’s eyes. “How’s the sex?”
“None of your business.”
“I knew it,” Pokey crowed. “You’ve been dating, what, six months, and you haven’t fucked him?”
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