SEALed with a Ring

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  "Here's something to cover him with." Ham passed him a knitted, cotton summer blanket. Clearly, Ham had stripped his entire bed for a dog.

  JJ went back to the Miata, where a stiff-faced Blount stared straight ahead. Rigid with disapproval, he hung onto the steering wheel as if the car wanted to run away and he was holding it back by main force. Wonderful. He hadn't gotten his way so now he was sulking. What an ass. She retrieved her purse and quilted, Waverly tote from behind the seat.

  "What are you doing?" Blount yelped, breaking his stony silence. "Get back in the car!"

  JJ, respecter of good machinery, if not of its owner, closed the car gently. "Earlier, you asked if I was crazy. Apparently I was—I thought I could marry you. Fortunately," she gave him her sunniest smile, "in the last several minutes, I seem to have had a miraculous recovery."

  "Come on, JJ. Don't do this. This is another example of your impulsive sentimentality. You're going to re gret this."

  "Not as much as I would regret being married to you."

  "What about your grandfather?"

  JJ went cold. "What about him?"

  "He thinks you're going to marry me. What are you going to tell him?"

  "I'll tell him I realized I could have you or a dog. I chose the dog."

  Chapter 17

  BY THE TIME HAM AND JJ TRANSPORTED GRADY AND Snake to the vet, waited while the dog was stabilized, took Grady home, and then drove to JJ's cottage on Topsail Island, she was too tired to do anything but strip and fall in bed.

  In spite of her late night, JJ woke when the red rays of morning sun rising over the ocean filled her bedroom. She loved having her first sight in the morning be the ocean. She always opened the curtains before she went to sleep—even when, as now, she knew the sun would wake her before she'd slept long enough.

  JJ slipped into the thigh-length silk gown she kept al ways close at hand—because really, you never knew— and padded into the cottage's kitchen.

  By today's standards, when newer cottages were the size of mini-hotels, this one was small, only three bed rooms, but as promised, it was elegantly decorated in shades of periwinkle, sand, and pale coral. The kitchen area of the great room boasted every gourmet chef's dream appliance. Floor-to-ceiling windows took up the entire front wall, making the house seem continuous with the beach and flooding the interior with light even on the grayest days.

  Outside the window, the rising sun tinted the light fog, present most autumn mornings, a pearly pink. As the sun climbed higher, the fog would draw back until it was a solid-looking cloud out over the ocean. For now, it drew the horizon closer and forced the watcher to notice only what was close at hand. Only the sea oats atop the dunes next to the deck were clearly visible. They stood motionless.

  JJ watched day come while she waited for the coffee to drip.

  She often had a fancy that the alternating land and ocean breezes were caused by the land breathing. In the daytime, air rushed into the land; at night, it rushed out. Moments of utter stillness like this were the relaxed pause before the invigoration of the next in-breath.

  This morning, she felt as if she, too, hung between the night and the day, between one breath and the next. She kept waiting for the gasp when the terrible reality of what she had done would burst upon her.

  Idly, JJ pictured herself as a cartoon character with a huge wave rising up behind her, cresting, beginning to curl over her. Only, in the cartoon, the hapless character was always blissfully oblivious to the wave. That was the joke.

  She, on the other hand, was completely conscious of the onrushing tsunami. She knew it was there and knew it would sweep away and destroy everything when it crashed down.

  For a long time, like a cartoon figure, she had man aged to run ahead of it, but in one moment of impatience and intolerance, she had stumbled, and now it was gain ing. Not only was it coming closer, but it also seemed now the disastrous wave was pulling her toward it.

  The coffeemaker hissed and sputtered, signaling the end of the drip cycle. She left the window to pour herself a cup and then returned to look out again, holding the cup against her heart while the coffee warmed the slick china of the mug from within.

  In a few minutes, the quiver of one tall sea-grass stalk and the swaying of another told her the great cycle of inspiration had started again.

  For a year, she had tried so hard to shape a future that compromised between her grandfather's de mands and Caruthers' needs. She'd been so sure only Caruthers mattered. And yet, in one lightning flash of passion, she had dumped the well-being of Caruthers in an argument about a scruffy mongrel and his equally scruffy owner.

  JJ drew a deep breath. Her mind could not encompass the enormity of the tidal wave of change about to crash down on her head, but she accepted that it was going to. Still, for the first time in a long time, the sense of being slowly and relentlessly strangled had eased.

  After watching the fog dissipate for a few more min utes, JJ poured herself more coffee and perched on a stool at the counter. Habitually, she reached for a list pad, but the feeling of unreality persisted. For once, she had difficulty thinking of anything that really needed doing. She filled the first four lines with doodles.

  Finally she wrote, "Call vet, check on Snake," which led to thoughts of Ham's generosity—or unworldiness, she wasn't sure which. He had assured her he'd be warm enough last night, and fortunately the mild Indian sum mer weather had held. Winter was coming though.

  She wrote, "Blankets for Ham," then checked her watch. If she called right now, she could probably catch Esperanza before she left for mass.

  "Esperanza," JJ asked, when she heard the house keeper's Mexican-flavored English, "do you remember when you complained that Lucas wouldn't let you re place the blankets on his bed?"

  "Yes, Miss JJ. They're so faded. But he don't let me, still."

  "Can you go to that bed specialty store at the mall this afternoon and get some new ones? Get sheets, too. Use the household charge—I'll authorize it. And I'll pay you for your time."

  "Oh, Miss JJ. You don't got to pay me. I love that store. But, you don't want to pick them out?"

  "No. I don't live there anymore."

  "Miss JJ." Esperanza's sigh came over the line. "When you coming back? He don't let me do nothing except clean and cook him breakfast. He say leave his dinner in the refrigerator—he'll heat it up. But he don't. He don't eat half of it."

  Esperanza had been with them since before her grand mother died. When JJ had moved out, she'd increased Esperanza's hours from a couple of days a week to full time. She couldn't stand the thought of her grandfather alone in the big house.

  He'd never done for himself while her grandmother was alive, and now, no matter how willing, he wouldn't know how to. A thousand details would slip away be cause he wouldn't know to attend to them before they became problems. And like a lot of old people, he con stantly suffered sticker shock, and not just on big-ticket items. He got upset over the cost of what JJ considered trifles and refused to buy ordinary things needed to keep the house in good order.

  Lucas wasn't an easy man to live with. He'd always been autocratic and demanding, and he'd seen himself as entitled to the final say about everything. But he'd also always been willing to listen to advice. Only JJ and Esperanza saw how irrational and intransigent he had become in the last couple of years.

  "I know what he's like, Esperanza. Just do the best you can."

  Esperanza hesitated. Then, practical woman that she was, moved on. "Well, I think he needs blankets and a down comforter, too, and if I'm going to pick out the sheets, I'm going to buy the Egyptian cotton, 800 thread-count kind that cost four hundred dollars!"

  "You are one dangerous woman," JJ chuckled at Esperanza's idea of rebellion. "Go for it! While you're at it, get him some new towels, too. Box up the old stuff, and I'll be by to pick it up in the morning."

  "I knew it! What are you up to?"

  "Ham needs new linens, but if I buy him new, new ones—even from Target,
he'll say they're too nice to use. He'll probably sell them to some flea-market dealer."

  Esperanza tsked. "That's the truth. Mr. Lucas, he looks after Ham, but he don't think about things like sheets. You, you look after Mr. Lucas. You look after the car place. You look after all the peoples there. Who's looking after you?"

  Chapter 18

  "SO. YOU'VE KICKED ANOTHER ONE TO THE CURB." HER grandfather barked from behind his desk. "Well, I'm done helping you."

  Courtesy demanded she stop to speak to her grandfa ther when she picked up the linens for Ham, so here she stood in the doorway of his home office. The shield she had put up to guard her feelings held, mostly. After all, she knew where Lucas got his information. "Esperanza told me Blount was here yesterday," she affirmed. "What do you mean, 'helping me'?"

  "He came by here a month or so ago. Showed me the prenuptial agreement you wanted him to sign. Pretty upset."

  "He didn't think I'd marry him without a prenup, did he?"

  "The man's a big fish in a little pond there at the university. He's got the book learning, but he's a little naïve. I was surprised you chose him over some of the others."

  "You mean: of the four grooms you picked out for me? Do you think the others would have been happy with the prenup?"

  "I think Halston Ferguson," he named the agribusiness man, "would have understood business is business."

  That was true. "So what do you mean you're done with helping me?"

  "He was the one you wanted. I thought I'd sweeten the deal a little."

  Heat flooded her body. "You paid him?"

  "Said I would as soon as the ring was on your finger."

  "How much? No, don't answer that. I don't want to know." The amount wasn't important. What mattered was that she had been trying to accede to her grandfa ther's wishes, to figure out a way to make some kind of marriage work and, at the same time, keep every thing else going, while her grandfather had understood Blount's real motivation for over a month. Hadn't warned her. She never would have imagined that he had so little regard for her.

  "Okay, I have to ask this: Why? Why on earth did you imagine paying him to marry me was helping me?"

  "I gave you a year to find a husband. Time is run ning out. I don't want to sell the business—that's been in the family for five generations—out from under you. I was afraid if this one didn't stick… and I had to fol low through…" Lucas's eyes fell. "Well, I was afraid I would lose you."

  He didn't want to lose her? He should have thought of that before. Her grandfather's intransigence stole her breath. She had hoped, had tried to believe he didn't really anticipate what would happen if he destroyed the business. She wouldn't be able to find pieces of their relationship large enough to pick up. She would never forgive him.

  "If you don't want to, then don't!"

  "No, I've made my decision. You've found a reason to turn down all the men I found for you. You're on your own. But the deadline, November 27, stays the same."

  JJ hadn't believed her grandfather would relent—she knew him too well—and yet, the hope had always been there. Her mind worked frantically to find a solution while the strange, cold numbness she had lived with for the last year solidified.

  She had been trying to hold everything together and, in spite of the distance that had grown between her and Lucas, to salvage what she could of their relationship. Blount had seemed to be the best compromise between bowing to her grandfather's will and keeping Caruthers firmly anchored.

  She had been mistaken in Blount, but her grandfather had known for a month what the man really wanted. He hadn't warned her when, maybe, there would still have been time to change course. Only one conclusion was possible. Lucas didn't care what kind of man she married as long as he got his way. Whether she saved Caruthers or not, there wasn't anything to salvage be tween her and Lucas. There was only one good thing about it. She didn't have to worry any more about what he thought about anything.

  Freedom, as the old Kris Kristofferson song said, was just another word for nothing left to lose.

  Chapter 19

  TO CALL THE PLACE HAM LIVED A CABIN WOULD BE TO flatter it past recognition. It was a shack. To reach it, JJ turned off the highway onto a blacktop that wound its way through pine and holly thickets. She continued onto another, narrower blacktop where small unpre possessing fishing cottages could be seen through the thick, leaning trunks of yaupon.

  Ham's packed sand-and-oyster-shell driveway could be hard to spot. JJ slowed, keeping an eye out for his truck, to make sure she didn't pass it.

  Having been built with no thought to aesthetics, weathered until it was the same gray as the leaning yaupon under which it crouched, and half-hidden by veils of Spanish moss, Ham's house was almost invis ible. Even when found, it gave the impression of some thing that grew there, rather than a human habitation.

  JJ had taken her grandfather to task once when she was sixteen or so for "allowing" Ham to live as he did.

  "This is the best Ham can do," Lucas had explained. "He stripped off civilization to survive in Vietnam. He was never able to put it back on again. He's fine as long as someone manages the interface with society for him. At least he's not homeless. And he hasn't com mitted suicide."

  Ham put it more simply. "I got what I want, JJ. Any more'n what you want is a burden."

  He rarely went on binges anymore—in the last sev eral years, not at all—but the arrangements he and her grandfather had made many years ago continued. Her grandfather cashed Ham's disability check and gave him only the amount that would get him through a week. JJ wasn't sure if Ham understood that her grandfather paid the taxes on his property and had the utility companies notify him whenever Ham's accounts went past due.

  Ham appeared beside the car as soon as the crunch of the wheels on the drive stopped. He had a way of doing that, as if he materialized.

  "Esperanza was throwing out some sheets and things, Ham, so I thought I'd see if you could use them."

  Ham dipped his head in acknowledgment. "All right."

  That was Ham. He wasn't ungrateful, she knew. It was just that he had come to a profound acceptance that in life, things come and things go.

  "Well, I'll get back to town then."

  "You come out here just to give 'em to me? I'll be at the house day after tomorrow."

  "You gave a dog the blankets off your bed—because of me. It didn't seem right for you to do without. Nights are getting chilly now."

  "JJ, you done the right thing. Gettin' rid of that parasite."

  "Parasite?"

  "A man like that will eat you from the inside. I told Lucas to leave it alone."

  "You knew Lucas offered him money to marry me?"

  "Know about the whole thing. Lucas don't like to drive at night anymore. He calls me to come get him, take him around. Never thought I'd be sixty-five and be the young one." The fan of lines around his eyes deepened. "Never thought I'd live to see sixty-five at all."

  "You know he's going to sell Caruthers if I don't get married?"

  "Yep. Stupid-ass thing to do. Told him so. Told him it was time to let you grow up. Let you go your own way. Stop trying to mold you." He looked her up and down, a frank masculine twinkle in his eyes. "You look molded to me."

  "I hate him."

  "Yep. Told him that, too."

  "What am I going to do?"

  "Figure out what matters. You made a start with dog-man. People are like cups. Some are sixteen-ounce super-Slushee size. Some are little ketchup cups at Hardee's. Don't matter. Brimmin' over is brimmin' over. Get it?"

  JJ didn't. "Are you saying I'm trying to take on more than my capacity?"

  "I'm saying you've had your eye on one thing all your life—that's Caruthers. You've been and done whatever your grandparents said you had to do to fit yourself to it. I'm saying you ain't never measured your capacity."

  Chapter 20

  "JJ," KELLY AT THE CONCIERGE DESK SAID, "MRS. BABCOCK is here and would like to see you."

 
; JJ tore her eyes from the computer-screen display of the last quarter's sales, which were finally showing some turnaround. For three months last winter, she'd taken out loans to meet payroll, and there had been more months when the cash flow was so tight she hadn't paid herself. They'd held it together though. She hadn't laid off any one. Now they were so close, so close, to being solidly in the black again. It made the thought of Caruthers being scuttled and sold for scrap doubly poignant.

  She had returned to Caruthers after leaving Ham be cause, really, what else was there to do? Until it wasn't hers anymore, she had the responsibility to stay at the helm. Tomorrow, she'd try to cobble together a plan that would take care of her people. She knew what a lame duck felt like.