Home Stretch

by Jenna Bennett

  “You do that,” I said. “I’m going to grab some breakfast and then show your grandmother around. Call me if there’s anything I need to know. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you again tonight.”

  Rafe said he would. We made kissy noises at each other, and then I hung up and headed downstairs.

  Mrs. Jenkins’s door stood open, and I found her in the kitchen with Mother. They seemed to be getting along all right. I have to admit I’d been a little worried about Mother doing the Lady of the Manor act with poor Mrs. J. My mother, not to put too fine a point on it, was brought up with some old Southern mores she hasn’t been entirely successful in eradicating.

  I’m not sure she’s ever felt it necessary to eradicate them, to be honest. At least not until I brought Rafe into our midst, and she came face-to-face with her prejudices. She’s doing a lot better than she was, but I know I can’t expect miracles, so I’d made my way down the stairs concerned that the atmosphere in the kitchen was tense.

  It wasn’t. They were sitting at the island having coffee together. Mother was doing most of the talking, but that wasn’t unusual. Mrs. Jenkins never had a whole lot to say, and as she’s gotten more confused over the past year, she’s said less and less. But she looked clean and comfortable, in one of her housedresses—not the same one she’d been wearing yesterday—and a pair of clean, white socks.

  “We should get you a new dress for tomorrow,” I said, as I headed for the fridge and the bottle of milk. The coffee smelled good, but I couldn’t have any. “For Thanksgiving dinner.”

  Mother nodded.

  “Would you like to come with us?” I offered. “Later, I mean? I need something to eat first. But we were going to do the grand tour of Sweetwater. I was going to show Mrs. Jenkins the Bog, and the cemetery where LaDonna’s buried, and I thought we might have some lunch at the café, maybe.”

  “That’s all right,” Mother said pleasantly. “I have things to do here.”

  I looked at her. “You and Audrey still aren’t talking?”

  “She slept with my husband,” Mother said.

  “Before he was your husband. Before he even knew you. And he broke it off with her as soon as the two of you met.”

  Mother looked stubborn.

  “We’ve been over this before,” I told her, as I dipped a spoon into a cup of yogurt I’d found in the fridge. “There’s no point in rehashing it again.”

  And then I proceeded to rehash it anyway. “She’s been your best friend since before Catherine was born. There are good reasons why she didn’t tell you she had Dad’s baby and gave it up for adoption. You’re being silly.”

  Mother looked mulish.

  “Fine,” I said. “Don’t come with us. But you’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later. Darcy is my sister. And Audrey’s her mother. Neither of them is going away. Dix and Catherine and I want a relationship with Darcy. And we love Audrey. I understand that you’re hurt—anyone would understand why you’re hurt—but holding on to your feelings doesn’t help anybody. All it does, is leave you without your best friend. When you need her most.”

  Mother’s mouth opened, probably to tell me it would be a cold day in hell when she needed Audrey for anything. I continued. “Audrey’s all right. She has her daughter back. I’m sure she misses you, but she gained something from this. All you gained, was a step-daughter you didn’t want.”

  I waited a second. She didn’t deny it.

  “But nobody did any of this to hurt you. And the person you’re punishing the most, is yourself.”

  Mother didn’t have a response to that.

  “I’m going to go upstairs and get ready,” I said, as much to my mother as to Mrs. Jenkins. “I need to wash and put on real clothes.” Since I’d come down in my bathrobe. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. And then we can go.”

  Neither of them said anything. I padded down the hallway and upstairs.

  When I came down twenty minutes later, Mrs. Jenkins was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase talking to Pearl. My mother was nowhere to be seen. I assumed she was sulking, so I didn’t push it. “Ready?” I asked Mrs. Jenkins instead.

  She nodded.

  “You’ll need your coat. Is it upstairs?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll get it.” I was pregnant, but she was old. And moving might be good for me. I still had that niggling lower backache.

  I found Mrs. J’s coat tossed over a chair in her—or Catherine’s—room, and brought it back down. I helped her into it, and we headed out. Since I didn’t know where Mother was—inside or out—I made sure I locked the door behind us. And while I wasn’t unmoved by Pearl’s forlorn expression and sad puppy eyes, we couldn’t take her with us. “I’m sorry, baby,” I told her. “But we’re going to Audrey’s, and she wouldn’t appreciate you in her store. The folks at the Café on the Square wouldn’t be happy to see you, either. And I don’t want to leave you in the car. You’ll be better off here. I promise. I’m sure Mother’s around somewhere...”

  Pearl dropped her tail and her ears, but she didn’t try to follow us out. I felt horribly guilty, though.

  Once in the car, I was able to shake it off. The dog wasn’t being abandoned, after all. She had food and water and was well taken care of. She had doggie beds and furniture to lie on, and we were only going to be gone a few hours. Maybe I could take her for a walk when we got home. A walk might help my back, as well.

  “Where would you like to start?” I asked Mrs. Jenkins.

  But of course she didn’t know, since she hadn’t been here before. I decided to head toward the Bog. It was the farthest away, on the south side of town. We could make our way back from there.

  While we drove, I gave her a little history.

  “When I was growing up, the Bog was a trailer park. Rafe lived there with his mother and grandfather. I didn’t know him, though. Not until I started high school. Although I’d heard of him...”

  We’d all heard of him. LaDonna Collier’s good-for-nothing colored boy, who was always getting in trouble.

  I didn’t realize at the time that some of that trouble wasn’t of his own making. Plenty was. But whenever something—anything—went wrong in Sweetwater, Rafe was the usual suspect. And he wasn’t always guilty.

  “Old Jim died when Rafe was twelve. The sheriff always thought Rafe and LaDonna had something to do with it, but Rafe says no. That his grandfather was drunk and fell into the river one night, and that they didn’t find him until later. That they were just happy he wasn’t inside the trailer giving them a hard time, and they weren’t about to put themselves out to go look for him.”

  Mrs. Jenkins didn’t answer. When I gave her a sideways look, her expression was peaceful. Could have been a couple of different reasons for that. She might not be listening to me. She might not have any idea who Rafe and Old Jim were. Sometimes she didn’t. Or—seeing as Old Jim shot her son Tyrell in retaliation for Tyrell’s knocking up LaDonna—she might be just fine with the idea of Old Jim staggering out of the trailer, dead drunk, and falling headfirst into the Duck River. Nobody else had mourned for him, so it seemed fitting.

  “Rafe and I met in high school. That was the first time I went to the Bog.”

  After a second, I added, honestly, “Not that I went to see him, or anything. We weren’t on those terms. But we found him in Columbia once. I was there with my brother and some friends to see a movie, and Rafe had been beaten up. He was sitting on the curb just down from the movie theatre. We loaded him in the car and drove him home.”

  Much against Todd’s wishes. It was his car, and it was brand new. He didn’t appreciate Rafe bleeding on the leather upholstery. And it totally destroyed Dix’s plans of necking with Charlotte in the backseat on the way home. Instead of having the backseat to themselves, they had to share it with me, squeezed in like sardines in the small sports car, while Todd kept shooting hostile glances at Rafe.

  Mrs. Jenkins smiled.

  “After that, I didn’t see him a
gain for twelve years. Until he called the real estate office and asked me to meet him outside your house last year. He knew who I was as soon as he heard my name on the phone.” He’d double-checked, I remembered. “I didn’t recognize him at first. I knew there was something familiar about him, but twelve years is a long time. He didn’t look the same.”

  And when I did realize who he was, I’d been scared. I remembered taking a step back. “I thought you went to prison.”

  And that purring answer, “That was twelve years ago, darlin’. I got out.”

  Now it seemed crazy that I could ever have been afraid of him. Not that he can’t be plenty scary. And plenty dangerous. But not to me.

  Never to me.

  “I think I fell for him almost from the second I set eyes on him. Even though it took me a long time to admit it.” Especially to myself. Other people had known long before I had.

  He’d probably known long before I had. Although I think he’d been a bit afraid I’d never admit it. And that I’d marry Todd instead, because my mother wanted me to, and because it was what a properly brought-up Southern Belle was supposed to do. Not shack up with the bad boy from the trailer park on the wrong side of town, and get pregnant out of wedlock.

  “Here’s the turnoff.” I took a right, and the Volvo bumped and scraped down the rutted path toward what had been the Bog up until a year and a half ago. “The first time I came here was last fall. A couple of days after I met Rafe again. I wanted to see where he’d grown up.”

  Of course, I’d told my mother and myself something different. LaDonna Collier had died a few weeks ago, and Brenda Puckett had died a few days ago, both of them with a connection to Rafe. I had put forth the theory that he’d had something to do with both deaths. I’d been sleuthing, basically. But I’d also wanted to see where he’d grown up. Even if I hadn’t been willing to admit it.

  “There were a couple of clapboard shacks down here, then. And a couple of abandoned mobile homes. Ronnie Burke had already bought the land, and most of the people who lived here had moved out. LaDonna was the last holdout.” Until she died. “It was the most depressing place I’d ever seen.”

  And while I’d been sneaking around, peering through windows—trying to identify the Colliers’ trailer—Rafe had snuck up behind me and damn near scared a couple of years off my life.

  It looked different now. All the houses had been leveled and the debris hauled away, and the mobile homes had been towed off, too. The singlewide trailer where Rafe had spent his formative years was on a scrap heap somewhere, no doubt. It hadn’t been good for anything else.

  Ronnie had started staking out building plots before he went to prison. Most of what he’d done was gone by now, six months later, but here and there, a piece of plastic flapped forlornly at the end of a wooden stake driven into the ground. And he hadn’t been able to do much more before the whole business venture had blown up in his face.

  It was still one of the most depressing places I’d seen.

  “Let’s get out of here.” I put the car in reverse and made my way up the track. When we were on the road and headed back to town, I added, “So that’s the Bog. What did you think?”

  Mrs. Jenkins shrugged.

  Yeah, not a whole lot to say about it, really.

  “How did Tyrell come to know LaDonna, anyway?” I asked. An African-American eighteen-year-old from the urban core of Nashville would have had no reason to come to Sweetwater. And while LaDonna might conceivably have gone to the city for something, I couldn’t imagine what. The Colliers hadn’t been big on culture, and we had doctors in Maury County. A school trip, maybe? To see the State Capitol or something like that?

  “Dunno,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

  “He never told you?”

  She shook her head.

  Could be true, or could be one of those many misplaced details. It’s tough, trying to get information out of someone who can’t remember who you are from day to day, and not much of anything else, either.

  We drove to the Oak Street Cemetery next. It’s on the outskirts of town, about halfway between the square and the mansion, and for the past hundred years or more, all the Martins have been interred there. Before the public cemetery was established, we had our own, in the woods behind the mansion. It’s still there, but we’re not allowed to bury anyone there anymore. Mrs. Jenkins might be interested in seeing it, though. Or maybe not. It wasn’t a very pleasant time of year to go stomping through the woods.

  Everyone else in town is also buried at Oak Street, so naturally LaDonna was there. So, I assumed, were Old Jim and Wanda, his wife, and maybe Bubba, LaDonna’s brother, but I’d never looked for their graves. I did know where LaDonna’s was, though, so I guided Mrs. Jenkins there.

  Rafe had arranged for the stone. From Memphis, the sheriff had told me. Rafe had been in Nashville at that time, actually, as far as I knew. But the stone was his doing. It had an arched top with an engraving of a cross. LaDonna Jean Collier. In loving memory.

  We stood for a moment and looked at it. Mrs. Jenkins didn’t say anything. I didn’t, either. I wondered what she was thinking. Would she have liked to have met LaDonna? Or didn’t she really care?

  She loved Rafe, so she might have liked to have known him growing up. And I’m sure she’d have given anything to have had Tyrell be alive and well, instead of dead.

  Fourteen

  After the cemetery, we drove into town and parked on the square. It was a little early for lunch, so I contemplated stopping by Audrey’s first. But the yogurt hadn’t quite done the job this morning, and the baby felt like it was gnawing on my insides. I might as well suggest it.

  “Lunch?” I asked Mrs. Jenkins.

  She brightened. “Sure, baby.”

  We headed for the café. And had barely ordered our food when the door opened again, and Darcy walked in.

  She’s pretty, my sister. Doesn’t look anything like me, which I guess makes sense, since Dix and I take after Mother and the Georgia Calverts. Although Darcy doesn’t look much like the Martins, either. Her skin’s a little darker than Catherine’s, and so is her hair. She keeps it short, but unlike Catherine’s, it’s straight, like a sleek cap around her head. And unlike Catherine, who’s short and round, Darcy has Audrey’s build, with dramatic cheekbones, long legs, and a lot of height. All in all, she looks more like Rafe’s sister than either of ours, but of course she isn’t.

  She turned when I called her name, and flashed a smile. “Savannah.” She has a great smile, too. It lights up her face, which is already pretty to begin with.

  I made to get to my feet, and she shook her head. “Stay. You look ready to pop.”

  I felt ready to pop, and told her so, when she leaned down to put her cheek to mine. “You remember Mrs. Jenkins? Rafe’s grandmother?”

  “Of course.” Darcy smiled at Mrs. Jenkins. Mrs. J gave her a toothless smile back, but didn’t say anything. “I didn’t realize you’d be here already.”

  “We came down a day early,” I said, without going into the reasons for it. “Do you want to join us for lunch?”

  “I’m picking up a salad. We’re short-staffed today, because of the holiday. But I’ll stay with you until it’s ready.” She pulled out one of the chairs and seated herself. “I’m glad you’re here. It gives me a chance to see you.”

  I wrinkled my brows. “What do you mean? You’re coming to dinner tomorrow, aren’t you? Surely Mother invited you?”

  The whole rest of the family was coming. Plus Bob. Maybe even Todd. Mother couldn’t have neglected to invite Darcy. And even if she had, Dix and/or Catherine would have made sure to tell her she was invited.

  “She mentioned it,” Darcy said. “But you know as well as I do that my... that Audrey isn’t going to be there. And I can’t go to your house for Thanksgiving dinner and let my mother sit home by herself.”

  I guess she couldn’t. “My mother’s being a jerk.”

  “It’s a lot to deal with,” Darcy said, which I thought
was pretty damn—darn—nice of her, everything considered. I’m not sure I’d have been as understanding under the circumstances. “Anyway, Patrick and I will be spending tomorrow with my mother.”

  Patrick is the boyfriend. Patrick Nolan, an officer with the Columbia PD. They’d met a couple of months ago—I’d been there—and Nolan still couldn’t take his eyes off Darcy.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “I mean, I wish you were all coming to us instead, but it’s nice that you’ll be together. You and Nolan and Audrey.”

  Darcy nodded.

  “You two doing OK?”

  “Me and Patrick? Or me and Audrey?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Patrick and I are doing great. He’s really nice, and he treats me well. Not at all like my ex.”

  I could relate. I had an ex, too, and he hadn’t treated me well, either. For much the same reasons as Darcy’s ex.

  “He and Audrey get along well,” Darcy continued, “and Audrey and I are working things out. We meet here for lunch a couple of times a week. Sometimes we have dinner together. We’re doing all right.”

  Good to know. “Maybe, if we just give it time, Mother will come around, too.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Darcy said, but she didn’t sound optimistic. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t feel optimistic myself. My mother doesn’t have a habit of coming around.

  Then again, if she’d changed her mind about Rafe, it was possible to change her mind about anything. But it might take another man with a gun and another threat to her life to do it.

  Darcy glanced across the table at Mrs. Jenkins. “So what are you two up to today?”

  “Sightseeing.” I told her about the drive to the Bog and the stop at the cemetery. “After lunch, we’re going to stop in at Audrey’s, to look for a dress for Mrs. J. We left Nashville in sort of a hurry, and I didn’t think to bring anything for her to wear to dinner tomorrow.”

  Not that she had anything suitable. Unless I wanted to make a trip to the nursing home where she’d been staying, all she had was the handful of housecoats I’d bought her.