Phantom of Riverside Park

by Peggy Webb

“I can see that. I still got my eyes. What I want to know is how come?”

  Elizabeth’s feathers fell. She’d thought he would be tickled pink. She’d thought his first glimpse of the Delta would put a permanent-press smile on his face. She’d thought a triumphant return to Tunica would help make up for all he’d sacrificed.

  “I thought we’d spend a few days here, look around a bit, maybe find a nice little house on a piece of land where Nicky could have a dog and you could have a few cows if you wanted to.”

  Papa set his jaw and turned his face from the window.

  “I thought we could finally go back home, Papa.” He didn’t answer her, and Elizabeth anchored herself to the steering wheel. She’d committed herself to this course of action and she wasn’t ready to give up yet. “I thought you’d like to be back where Mae Mae is. We can plant bulbs around her headstone so she’ll have flowers next spring.”

  “Lola Mae’s not in that grave.”

  “Well, I know that, Papa, but I thought...”

  Whatever she was thinking just petered out, and since there was no place to turn around and she hadn’t called Quincy to ask if they could stay with her and she’d simply die before she’d go back and cast herself on David’s mercy for even one more night, Elizabeth kept on driving. It would soon be dark anyhow. They’d get a motel and stay the night, then decide what to do.

  She pulled in at a McDonald’s sign. “Anybody hungry?”

  After their orders came Papa said, “Oh, Lord, bless this food, Amen,” which showed how upset he was. He believed the more you talked, the harder God listened.

  Nicky took three bites of his hamburger then raced off to the slides to play, and Papa, who had hardly eaten a bite said, “Not that I’m complainin’, mind you. I guess you’ve got your reasons.”

  “Ralph Belliveau called early this morning and said they wanted to see Nicky.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said no, not yet, at least. He’s been through too much.” Papa nodded. “He’ll hate me when he’s grown though, if he learns I’ve kept him from grandparents who might have loved him.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I told them they had to earn my trust before they could see my son. Eventually I’ll go see them. But not yet, Papa. I want to try and make up for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

  “Have I ever acted like I thought you and Nicky were any trouble?”

  “No, of course not. But I know how you’ve missed your farm. I want us to have a real home, Papa.”

  “Seems to me like we had one.”

  He took a bite of his hamburger and began to chew and when Elizabeth said, “Do you want to go back to Memphis,” as if she couldn’t believe her ears, he just kept on eating. All of sudden it hit her that he wasn’t talking about Memphis at all: he was talking about David’s farm.

  “You want to go back to New Albany, Papa?”

  He turned his face toward the playground and watched Nicky a while, then wrapped his left-over hamburger in a paper napkin, put it in the sack and folded down the top before he ever answered her.

  “It’s not for me to say.”

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  She’d got the cheapest motel rooms she could find, never mind that she could afford better, and now Papa was snoring in the next room and Nicky was taking a bath and she was staring at the annulment papers as if they’d sprouted horns.

  There it was in black and white. The severing of all ties with David, signed, sealed and delivered. With her signature, the deed was done. So why couldn’t she sign it?

  Snatches of song drifted from the bathroom, Nicky belting out “I’ve found my pill on Blueberry Hill.”

  That’s why she couldn’t sign the annulment papers. She’d found her thrill, too, and he had let her go without so much as a single word of protest. She’d hugged him and kissed him and done everything she knew to let him know she cared short of getting down on her knees and begging him to pay attention. She’d even given herself body, heart and soul to him in the big canopied bed.

  And still he’d let her go. Sent her away with legal papers in her hand, as a matter of fact.

  He set you free. There was that voice again.

  Elizabeth went to the window and leaned her head against the cool panes. Though she’d paid attention to every detail, every familiar piece of farm machinery, every stalk of cotton in every field, every petal of every flower along the road, the Delta no longer sang its home songs to her.

  Every fiber in her being longed to be in another county, another town, another room.

  There had been a connecting door. Why hadn’t David ever come back through?

  Because he’s a gentleman and a man of honor.

  And because he would never do anything or say anything to make her feel obligated. The man who didn’t want her pity would never try to buy her love.

  All of a sudden someone as dear and familiar to her as her own skin was standing in the room, someone Papa had kept alive through the years and made so real, so much a part of their family it was as if she’d never died.

  “Mae Mae?”

  I thought I never was going to get you to listen. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said to you all these years?

  “What have you been trying to say?”

  Home is not a piece of earth. Home is somebody to love, somebody who loves you right back.

  “Mommy! Can I get out now?” Elizabeth turned her head toward Nicky yelling in the bathroom, and when she turned back around Mae Mae was gone.

  “Come back, Mae Mae, I need you,” she whispered.

  You won’t be needing me anymore.

  Elizabeth’s hands trembled as she picked up the annulment papers. “Are your ears clean?” she called to her son.

  “Yep.”

  “Then you can get out of the tub.”

  Nicky appeared in the doorway swathed in an enormous white towel, his hair sticking up like bean sprouts, his eyelashes spiky with water.

  “I’ve been thinking about what we might do tomorrow. I could take you to the ice cream shop I used to go to when I was little like you.”

  For a minute Nicky’s eyes got big as saucers, then he went to the window dragging his towel behind him, and stood with his back to her. She could tell by the rigid way he held himself that he was doing some serious grown-up thinking.

  Elizabeth waited, and when her son turned back around he’d adjusted his towel. With his serious and angelic face, he looked like a miniature pope.

  “Bear’n David’s callin’ me,” he said. “When can we go home?”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  David traced the familiar lines and ridges on the left side of his face. The surgeon he’d talked to yesterday had been the most impressive of the lot. His practice was in Houston, Texas.

  “There have been many improvements in plastic surgery in the last few years,” Dr. Lance had told him. “I can’t promise you perfection, but I think I can safely say that you will be very pleased with the results.”

  “What’s holding you back?” McKenzie had asked. “Why don’t you go ahead with it?”

  The answer, of course, was Elizabeth. What if she called while he was gone? What is she needed him and he wasn’t there? What if something happened to her and he was stuck in a hospital somewhere and couldn’t get to her?

  She’d been gone four days and he hadn’t heard a word from her. He didn’t even know where she was. It felt as if she’d dropped off the edge of the earth.

  She hadn’t sent back the annulment papers, either, but he knew better than to take heart from that. There could be a dozen reasons why she hadn’t. She was too busy taking care of a little boy and two old men. She was having too much fun. She’d met somebody else.

  David prowled the library looking for a good book he hadn’t read. Or even one he had. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that Elizabeth was young and beautiful and available, and men all over the country would be fawning at her feet.

  It w
as enough to turn any girl’s head. Who could blame her for falling in love with one of them? Who could blame her for not writing, not calling? By now she probably didn’t even remember his name.

  “David?”

  He squeezed A Farewell to Arms so hard his knuckles turned white. He was dreaming with his eyes wide open, imagining her soft voice calling to him.

  He turned around just in case he wasn’t hallucinating, and there was Elizabeth standing in his doorway.

  “I’ve come home,” she said, and because he couldn’t trust what he was hearing, he said, “Home?”

  “To you, David.”

  She smiled at him, and at last he knew. David opened his arms and folded her safely inside where she belonged, where she’d belonged all along. And suddenly love spread through him like a river, cleansing everything in its path.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Thomas didn’t feel as young as he had during World War II, but he felt at least fifteen years younger. So did Fred. Their favorite thing to do in Paris was sit in the sunshine in the little cafe by the Louvre and discuss their remarkable rejuvenation.

  “I can feel the old sap runnin’ again,” Fred said. “Makes me wish I’d brought Quincy.”

  “Like she’d come.”

  “She’d be over here in a minute if she could see that fancy hotel. And lordy, that bidet. Ain’t that somethin’? The Mayfair! Shish! I done fell in with some high falutin’ company.”

  Their lifestyle was high falutin’, all right. Had been ever since Elizabeth had gone back to David. Thomas reckoned they could afford anything they wanted now, but Nicky still liked his Papa’s homemade biscuits and he still wrapped his leftovers and put them in a paper sack. Waste was a sin.

  Having their financial burden lifted was a gift of the Almighty, but the thing that blessed Thomas most was seeing Elizabeth happy. She and David were finally living the way a husband and wife ought.

  The day he and Elizabeth and Nicky had left the Delta and gone on back home where they belonged, Thomas had dropped to his knees right there in David’s driveway. “Lord, I don’t know why You’ve been so good to me, but I sure do ‘preciate it. Looks like I won’t be worryin’ You about so much now. Looks like me and You can both take a rest, and I humbly thank You.”

  That night he’d gone out to set a spell with Lola Mae’s star. “You ought to see the two them, Lola Mae,” he’d told her. “They’ve nearly ‘bout happy as we were.”

  Yessire, that David Lassiter was a fine man. And generous... Lord, after that man had his reconstructive surgery he’d set up a foundation that heaped millions on causes like Wounded Warriors and homes for unwed mothers, then he’d put McKenzie and Peter in charge. She’d had a thing or two to say about that, but you could tell it was all a bluff. She was as happy as Thomas to see the way David plunged into life of as a husband and father.

  How many men married little more than a year would take a bunch of kinfolks to Pairs? And their friends, to boot.

  Thomas wished Lola Mae could see him now, him just spittin’ distance from the Seine, not to mention the Jardin des Tuileries. Fancy names for fancy places.

  He and Fred were having the time of their life. So was Nicky. His favorite place so far was the Zoo de Vincennes which boasted of twelve hundred animals. Yesterday when they took him, Nicky had wanted to see every one of them. Fred and Thomas had finally said enough, then sat down in front of the monkey’s cage to wait.

  “Reckon who’s entertaining who?” Fred had said. “Look at that red-tailed baboon. Looks just like he’s laughing at us.”

  “Laughing at you, maybe. You’re too old for a hat like that.”

  “It ain’t a hat, it’s a beret, and that little French dish that sold it to me said it made me look like Walter Matthau.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Don’t matter. He’s a movie star, ain’t he?” Fred had turned his face up to the sun, just the way he was doing now at their favorite cafe. “Here I am in Paris, movie star hat and all.”

  Paris is bittersweet to Thomas. Seeing his family having such fun here makes him thankful just to be alive, but the one he’d most wanted to bring to Paris never got far from the rich black earth of the Delta.

  Thinking of Lola Mae, Thomas sighed. Mistaking the sigh for contentment, Fred said, “Me, too,” then signaled the waitress to their table.

  She took their drink order, and when she left another young woman came up with a basket of flowers on her arm.

  She stood in front of Thomas smiling.

  “A lady said to give you this,” she said, then bent over and pinned a daisy in his lapel.

  Thomas’ heart beat so hard he thought he was having another attack. “What lady?”

  “Over there, sir.”

  Thomas looked in the direction she’d pointed but he couldn’t see a thing. He wiped his sleeve over his face, straining hard against the bright sunlight and old age.

  Then all of a sudden he caught a glimpse of white, a shadow, an angel, and Lola Mae turned to smile at him. See you soon, darling, she said then she was gone.

  He took the daisy from his lapel and kissed it. He’d brought Lola Mae to Paris, after all.

  “See you soon,” he whispered.

  He searched the crowd again and though he didn’t find her, he knew she hadn’t disappeared but was somewhere waiting for him. He lifted the flower to his lips once more but it had turned to a star, and from a distance came the sound of music. It was the land singing songs his heart hears, the rich black earth of the Delta calling to him in a dear familiar voice...

  Why from the sunshine of love wilt thou roam?

  Quickly ,arise and away.

  ...a sweet soprano that lifted him up on wings that beat slowly upward toward the light.

  -The End-

  If You Enjoyed This Book…

  If you enjoyed Phantom of Riverside Park, try The Sweetest Hallelujah (MIRA, 2013), Peggy’s critically acclaimed literary fiction novel written as Elaine Hussey. Look for Elaine’s second book, The Oleander Sisters (MIRA, July 30, 2014).

  Also, look for Peggy Webb’s stunning women’s fiction novel, The Language of Silence (Gallery, July 30, 2014).

  Don’t miss Peggy’s award-winning novel, Where Dolphins Go, now available in the boxed set, Finding Paradise.

  Details on these and all Peggy’s books are at www.peggywebb.com. Join Peggy on Facebook and Twitter.

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  About Peggy Webb

  Peggy Webb is a USA Today best-selling author from Mississippi with 70 books to her credit. She writes romance, women’s fiction and the hilarious Southern Cousins cozy mystery series starring Elvis, the basset hound who thinks he’s the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll reincarnated. Her peers call her a “comic genius.” She also writes literary fiction under the pen names Anna Michaels (for Simon & Schuster) and Elaine Hussey (The Sweetest Hallelujah, MIRA, July 30, 2013). Pat Conroy calls her literary work “astonishing.” This critically acclaimed author has won many awards, including a Romantic Times Pioneer Award for creating the sub-genre of romantic comedy. Several of her romances have been optioned for film.

  Peggy is a member of Novelists, Inc., Authors Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Romance Writers of America. She is excited about bringing her romance classics back to readers as E-books. The award-winning Touched by Angels and A Prince for Jenny, as well as the Donovans of the Delta series, have all been Kindle Top 100 bestsellers.

  Follow the author on her websites: www.peggywebb.com and www.elainehussey.com and on Facebook and Twitter.

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  Other E-Books from Peggy Webb

  Classic Romance

  Dark Fire

  Touched by Angels (RT Reviewer’s Choice)

  A Prince for Jenny, sequel to Touched by Angels

  The Edge of Paradise

  Duplicity (Rave review, RT Reviewer’s Choice)

  Where Dolphins Go (RT Reviewer’s Choice, women’s fiction, optioned for film)

  Ni
ght of the Dragon (time travel romance)

  Christmas in Time (time travel, prequel to Only Yesterday)

  Only Yesterday (time travel, sequel to Christmas in Time)

  Summer Jazz

  Taming Maggie (#1 on romance bestseller list)

  That Jones Girl (sequel to the Mississippi McGills series)

  The Donovans of the Delta Series:

  Donovan’s Angel (Paul Donovan’s story)

  Sleepless Nights (Tanner Donovan’s story)

  Hallie’s Destiny (award winning book, Hallie Donovan’s story)

  Any Thursday (Hannah Donovan’s story)

  Higher Than Eagles (Jacob Donovan’s story)

  The Mississippi McGills Series (spin-off from Donovans of the Delta)

  Valley of Fire (Rick McGill’s story)

  Until Morning Comes (Jo Beth McGill and Colter Gray Wolf’s story)

  Saturday Mornings (Andrew McGill’s story)

  Forever Friends series

  Can’t Stop Loving You (Book 1, Helen’s story)

  Only His Touch (Kat’s story, Book 2)

  Bringing Up Baxter (B. J.’s story, Book 3)

  Angels on Zebras (Maxie’s story, Book 4)

  Romantic Suspense

  Witch Dance

  From A Distance

  Boxed Sets

  Donovans of the Delta

  Finding Mr. Perfect

  Finding Paradise

  Time’s Embrace

  Southern Cousins Mysteries

  Elvis and the Dearly Departed, 2008

  Elvis and the Grateful Dead, 2009

  Elvis and the Memphis Mambo Murders, 2010

  Elvis and the Tropical Double Trouble, 2011

  Elvis and the Blue Christmas Corpse, 2012

  Jack Loves Callie Tender (series prequel and companion guide), 2013

  Elvis and the Bridegroom Stiffs, 2014

  Elvis and the Deadly Love Letters, a short story, 2014

  Women’s Fiction/Literary Fiction

  Phantom of Riverside Park, March, 2014

  The Language of Silence (Gallery, Simon & Schuster), July 30, 2014