“It was. Back in the sixties, when it was the fashion to have a black woman raising your children. You can imagine the scandal when word got out that I’d gone and hired a white girl, and an English girl at that.”
Dovie felt certain she had detected a hint of amusement in Gemma’s voice, perhaps even the trace of a smile. “Is that why you hired her?”
“No,” Gemma said wistfully. “That isn’t why, though it certainly was a bonus. I hired her because she had nowhere else to go, and I didn’t have the heart to send her away.”
“That was generous of you, taking a complete stranger into your home. Not everyone would have been as kind.”
Gemma’s cup and saucer clattered as she set them on the tray and came to her feet. “I’m sorry, Miss . . . Dovie, but I’m going to have to cut our meeting short. I’ve been fighting a terrible headache all morning, and I’m afraid it’s suddenly grown much worse.” She was already moving to the door, calling for Kimberly, who appeared almost instantly.
Dovie stood and gathered her tote, bewildered by the change that had suddenly come over her hostess. She’d gone white as chalk and was trembling now, as if a ghost only she could see had appeared somewhere in the room.
“Please show Miss Larkin out, Kimberly. I need to go upstairs.”
“Yes, ma’am. Would you like me to bring a compress and your pills?”
“No. I just need to lie down for a while. I’ll be fine. Dovie, thank you for the information. I’ll look it over and be in touch in a few days.”
And then she was gone, leaving Dovie to follow Kimberly back through the gloomy parlor, to the floral-perfumed foyer and the waiting front door. Perhaps it was only a headache. It would explain the pulled drapes and darkened rooms, but as she stepped out onto the Tates’ front porch, she couldn’t help feeling there was more to it.
FOURTEEN
Dovie was still wrestling with her emotions as she pulled into the museum lot and cut the engine. In terms of learning anything new about Alice, the morning hadn’t exactly been fruitful, but she couldn’t shake the memory of Gemma’s face when Alice’s name came up, which could have been a coincidence, but felt like something else.
At least she’d done something right as far as Jack was concerned. She’d gone the extra mile and had established a rapport with Gemma Tate, something even he hadn’t managed to do. So why did she feel as though there was something she was forgetting, that somewhere there was another shoe waiting to drop? She was probably just being paranoid, but she reached for her planner, just to be on the safe side.
“Looks like I almost missed you.”
It took a moment to register the words, another to realize they were meant for her, and still one more to notice Austin standing at the top of the steps. “Mr. Tate,” she said as she began to climb. “To what do I . . . ?”
Her words trailed off as she realized with a prickle of horror that there was in fact something she’d forgotten to do—call Austin’s office and let someone know he wouldn’t need to pick up the folder as planned. At least she’d managed to catch him before he went inside and found out for himself, and potentially made a scene, which, after two wasted trips across town, he would certainly be within his rights to do. She supposed there was nothing to do but paste on a smile. “I’m glad I caught you. You’re here for the folder, aren’t you?”
“Please don’t tell me it’s still in your kitchen.”
“No, it isn’t in my kitchen, but it isn’t here, either.”
“Let me guess,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “The dog ate it?”
“Actually, your mother has it,” she said more bluntly than she’d intended. “I dropped it off on my way in this morning, and meant to call your office.”
“You dropped it off at my mother’s house?”
Something in his tone made Dovie want to take a step back. “I thought I’d save you a trip and just run it by on my way in.”
“But you haven’t saved me a trip, have you? As you can see, I’m standing right here.”
“I really did mean to call your office, but the morning got away from me. I’m so sorry.”
“You seem to be saying that a lot lately.”
There was nothing to say to that. It was true. She had dealt with him on three different occasions, and out of those three, she had been late to a meeting, and had failed to deliver the same folder not once, but twice. Not exactly a stellar record.
“Again, I apologize. The meeting with your mother ran longer than I expected, and then when I—”
“You had a meeting with my mother?”
“Well, not a meeting, exactly. I really didn’t expect to see her at all. I thought I’d just leave the folder with whoever answered the door, but then she answered the door and invited me in. She seemed very pleased with what I’d put together and promised to look things over when she was feeling better.”
“She was sick?”
Dovie didn’t like the way his mouth had thinned, or the deep furrow that had appeared between his brows. “It was just a headache, but it came on all of a sudden. She said she just needed to lie down.”
Austin closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, as if counting to ten. “They’re not just headaches. They’re migraines, the kind that send her to bed for days. But then I think I explained that at our first meeting. I believe I also made it clear that all arrangements for the fund-raiser were to go through me. I did, didn’t I?”
Dovie’s cheeks went hot. “Yes, but I thought I could—”
“Through me,” he snapped, cutting her off. “Are we clear?”
“I was trying to be helpful. And we actually had a nice chat. We talked about your first day of school—and about Alice.” She was on dangerous ground, she knew, deliberately goading him, but his snarky tone had gotten under her skin, and she couldn’t seem to help herself. If she was hoping for a reaction, she certainly got one.
He took an abrupt step forward, then seemed to check himself. “Ms. Larkin, my mother has had quite enough of people meddling in things that are none of their business. In the future, please try to remember that your connection with my family has to do with the museum, and nothing more.”
Dovie managed a cool nod, but inside she was fuming. Who did he think he was, telling her where she could go, and who she could talk to? But even as the question tripped through her head, she knew the answer. He was the man who held the purse strings on the museum’s new education wing. He was also a man used to getting his way.
“Fine,” she said, just short of snapping. “You can pick up the folder from your mother’s. I’ll need your preferences for a venue and the menu by Wednesday. Oh, and your choice of invitation as well.”
“Someone in my office will be in touch.”
Dovie was still glaring at him, trying to think of something cutting to say, when she saw Jack standing in the shade of a large oak, puffing on one of his infernal cigarettes. He was watching her—watching them—and if her guess was correct, had been for quite a while. He met her gaze, then flicked his cigarette away, shaking his head as he turned and headed for the side door.
Austin followed her gaze. “Someone you know?”
Dovie sighed. “Only my boss.”
With a perfunctory nod, Austin turned and walked away. Dovie watched him go, fighting the urge to stick her tongue out behind his back. It had already been a disaster of a day and it wasn’t even half over.
Rounding the curve of Magnolia’s north path, Dovie did her best to shake off this morning’s debacle and enjoy what had turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon. The air had a new feel to it, fresher and lighter now that the cloying humidity of Charleston’s scorching summer months had finally lifted. The sky was different, too, no longer a stretch of hazy blue-white, but a crisp azure canvas dotted with puffs of clean white cloud. Here and there, hints of color appeared among the tree
s, the hickories and sweet gums beginning their subtle turn toward fall. Even the flowers on the graves had changed, the pulsing pinks and reds of summer gone now, replaced with splashes of orange, yellow, and gold.
Fall wasn’t coming. It was here.
Where had the year gone? What had she been doing with her time that months—whole seasons, in fact—had slipped away without her noticing?
Taking up her normal spot near William’s grave—and Alice’s—Dovie fished around in her tote, eventually producing a battered ham and Swiss on rye. On cue, Josiah appeared on the path, raising a gnarled hand as he approached. Smiling, she patted the empty spot on the bench beside her, then waited while he reached for the red rag he always kept in his back pocket and carefully wiped his hands.
When he had stuffed the rag back into his pocket and settled down beside her, she handed him half the sandwich, then watched as he painstakingly plucked the caraway seeds from the bread and tossed them into the grass.
“Seeds get up under my plate.”
“Sorry. No rye. I’ll remember next time.”
“Been thinking about you,” Josiah said, tucking in to his sandwich. “Don’t see you as much since I’ve been helping out nights over in the office. How you been doing?”
Dovie looked down at her lap, fiddling with a bit of bread crust. “I’m fine.”
Josiah’s sandwich halted midway to his mouth. “No one says fine unless they ain’t. Let’s have it.”
Dovie dipped her head in resignation. She should have known better than to try to hide anything from Josiah. “Okay. I’m not fine. I’m not even close to fine. I’m screwing things up all over the place, and I can’t seem to stop. All my life, I’ve been this annoyingly together person, dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. Now all of a sudden I’m this train wreck.”
“What kind of things you screwing up?”
“Everything. I forget meetings, leave work at home. I can’t even get to the office on time anymore. And to top it off, there’s this guy . . .”
Josiah shot her a sideways look. “’Bout time, too.”
“Not that kind of guy. It’s a work thing.”
“Course not. God forbid.”
Dovie let the dig pass. “Anyway . . . he’s the son of one of our donors. I don’t know what it is, but every time we meet we end up bumping heads. I can’t seem to stop pissing him off—like I did this morning. And this time my boss was watching. Needless to say, he’s not very happy with me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m about to get called to the principal’s office. And the last thing he’s going to want to hear is that all this friction isn’t my fault.”
“Is it your fault?”
“Maybe. A little.” She paused, tossing the last of her sandwich crust to a nearby sparrow. “Okay, more than a little. But he’s always got this attitude, like he has a million better things to do than talking to me about this fund-raiser. It just gets under my skin, and I end up saying the wrong thing.”
“This work guy—he’s big money for the museum?”
“It’s Austin Tate.”
Josiah whistled, long and low. “Yup. That’s big money all right.”
“Yes, it is. Very big money.” Diving back into her tote, she fished out a pair of oranges and handed one to Josiah. “And this time I crossed the line. The worst part is, I knew I was crossing it when I did it. There’s a good chance I’m going to end up getting myself fired.”
“You been stealing pens or something?”
Dovie grinned in spite of herself. He was trying to lighten the moment, and she loved him for it. “No, I haven’t been stealing. I went to see Gemma Tate this morning—after being told not to bother her. I pretended it was to do with the fund-raiser, but it wasn’t. It was about Alice, and a promise I made to her mother.”
Josiah had been peeling his orange, prying away the bright skin with his thumb. He paused and turned to look at her. “You need to back up some, Little Miss, ’cause I got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The woman—Alice’s mother.”
“Lordy,” Josiah sighed with a shake of his grizzled head. “You still stuck on that?”
“Her name is Dora,” Dovie said, ignoring his peevish tone. “She came back and sat right there on that bench. We talked.”
“You tell her you took her letter and read it?”
“No. But she told me why she was here. She’s sick, Josiah, the kind of sick you don’t get over, and she wanted to see her daughter before she dies, to beg forgiveness for what she did. The poor woman didn’t even know her daughter was dead.”
“And what’s that got to do with you?”
“Nothing. It’s just that I know what she’s going through, and I’d like to help her if I can.”
Josiah hung his head. “Wish I’d never give you them letters now. You pass ’em along to the old woman?”
“Dora. Her name is Dora. And no, I didn’t.”
“You still holding ’em?”
“Yes, and please stop looking at me like that. You read those letters. You know what they say. I couldn’t stand the thought of her reading them, knowing what happened in that place. She came here to find peace, Josiah, not more guilt. And that’s why I promised to help her find out what happened to Alice and the baby—and why I went to see Gemma Tate.”
Josiah stared at her, his mouth gaping. “Have you gone clean outta your mind? You’re telling me you went and jeopardized your job—that job you paid hell getting—because you made a promise to some old woman you don’t know, about a dead girl you ain’t never met?”
Dovie dropped her eyes to her lap, rolling the unpeeled orange between her palms. “I know, I know. It sounds crazy.”
“Only ’cause it is.”
“You wouldn’t think that if you knew her, if you saw her face when she talks about her daughter. She’s been torturing herself for years. I can’t not help her.”
“This ain’t about Dora Tandy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, it is. Maybe it didn’t start out that way, but it is about her, Josiah. Maybe it’s a little bit about me, too—and William—but mostly, it’s about Dora. Which is why I’m going to keep my promise, if I can. I know it sounds weird, but it doesn’t feel like an accident that we met. I mean, think about it. She sits on the bench right next to mine, and her daughter just happens to be connected to the Tates, who just happen to be connected to the museum. It feels, I don’t know . . . like fate.”
“Feels like trouble, if you ask me.”
“I know it does. Nothing I do these days make sense, not even to me. They say time heals all wounds, but I don’t know. I was just sitting here, wondering where this year went. I don’t even remember most of it, as if nothing at all happened.”
Josiah popped the last segment of his orange into his mouth, licking juice from his lower lip. “That right there oughtta tell you something.”
Dovie gave him a patient smile. “I feel one of your patented bits of wisdom coming on.”
“A few minutes ago, you went out of your way to make sure I knew this Austin fellow had to do with work, and nothing else. Like you having someone in your life would be wrong because of what happened last time. But that don’t make no sense. William’s gone and you’re still here, with a whole lot of life left in you. Sometimes you just have to get on with things. All kind of things.”
Dovie nodded as Josiah stood and gathered his orange peels into the empty sandwich bag. “You think about that,” he said gravely as he zipped the bag closed and wadded it into his back pocket. “I may be an old coot, but a man don’t get to be my age without knowing a little something.”
FIFTEEN
It was nearly five o’clock when Dovie wrapped up the last of the day’s meetings and finally made it back to her office. Her head had begun to throb somewhere around two, and she was more than read
y to be home, to pour a glass of wine and put the day behind her, but first she needed to clear her desk and jot a few things down before they flew out of her head. The fund-raiser might be front and center these days, but the daily ins and outs of running the museum still needed her attention.
Jack hadn’t mentioned her little scene with Austin the other day, though whether that was because he hadn’t heard enough of their conversation, or because he was simply biding his time, she couldn’t say. All she knew was she wasn’t giving him any more ammunition if she could help it. If she managed to survive the fund-raiser, and find a way to keep her promise to Dora, maybe she’d be able to get her mind back on her job—and her life.
Josiah’s words drifted back as she settled behind her desk and opened her planner. Sometimes you just have to get on with things. He was right, of course. Everyone was. Theda. Her mother. Robin. All of them. But how? A girl could get pretty banged up trying to jump back on a merry-go-round that had been spinning without her for a year, and she already had enough bruises, thank you very much. Besides, she didn’t have time for a life right now, especially one she had to build from scratch. Just the thought made her tired. She gave the elastic holding her ponytail a tug, shaking out her hair with a relieved groan, then turned her attention back to her planner and tomorrow’s growing to-do list.
“You should wear it like that more often.”
The voice from the doorway nearly startled her out of her chair. She turned to find Austin lounging in the doorway, assessing her with cool green eyes.
“What are you doing here?” It was hardly a polite response, but then, neither was sneaking up on a person and scaring her to death.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I came to bring you this.”
Dovie stood, taking the thick manila folder he was holding out to her. “Thank you.”
“You said by Wednesday.”
“I did, yes. And here you are, right on time.”
Love, Alice Page 11