Libby could have stopped there and left well enough alone. But she pulled up Jeremy’s page and found herself staring at the couple’s smiling faces as they posed in front of the courthouse, holding up their marriage license. Their megawatt smiles beamed on the screen. The license blocked Monica’s tummy, but Libby could see that Monica’s face was nicely rounded and her breasts fuller. If only Jeremy had been a little fatter or less pulled together.
“Happy. Fat. Happy. Fatter.”
The words rolled over and over in her head like a mantra as she scrolled back in time. In April, the two were standing at a country estate that looked a great deal like Woodmont. He had his arm around her, and both were holding up cans of soda.
Jeremy had given up wine and beer all three times she had been pregnant. It had been a solidarity move, showing more than telling that they were in this parenting thing together. He had held her hair back during her bouts of morning sickness. He had never complained when she had asked him to buy mint chocolate chip ice cream at eleven o’clock at night. He had been there for her. Her rock.
And now he was there for Monica. And their soon-to-be baby.
Libby had done everything she could think of to make her pregnancy work. There had been dozens of lists of what to do and not do, and she had dutifully followed each every day. She had resisted the urge to list potential disasters detailing all that could go wrong with her baby. She had been determined to stay positive.
Sitting up straighter, she tossed the phone aside. It was almost five o’clock, and she had promised Elaine she would stop by her place. She still was not sure why Elaine was looping her into this gathering, but the idea of mingling with strangers had far greater appeal than cyberstalking Jeremy.
She climbed the stairs. She always kept the doors to her parents’ old room and her father’s office closed. It made it easier to pretend she was just here for the weekend and that any second now she would have to get in her car and drive back to her real life.
Since she had moved back in early January, she had not gone in her father’s study. Her father had prepaid his housekeeper, Lou Ann, to clean the house every two weeks, and she could tell by the sharp scent of lemon polish that Lou Ann dutifully cleaned without exception.
So when she opened the door to her father’s office, she was not surprised to see the polished, clean surface of her father’s desk.
Stepping into the room, she could not miss the freshly painted walls.
“Dad, why are you having the inside of the house painted?” It had been one of a dozen visits she had made to his hospital bedside during the last eight weeks of his life. If she was not shooting or editing, she was with her dad.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t leave you a mess. The house is going to be in tip-top shape and ready to sell whenever you’re ready.”
“Dad, we shouldn’t talk about selling.” This was Libby’s denial stage regarding her father’s illness. She and denial had met up a few times before, so when it strolled in, it sadly felt like an old friend.
“I want you to take the money and do something nice for yourself.”
“Like what, a cruise?” Mention of a cruise sent her mind gathering fresh concerns such as rogue waves, pirates, and shipboard illnesses that debilitated passengers and crew with nausea.
“You could set up a studio.”
“I don’t need a studio.”
“Don’t just sit on that house, Libby.” His pale hand gripped hers with surprising strength. “I want you to move on with your life and be happy.”
“I’m happy.”
He shook his head and said nothing.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I always figure out a way to make things right.”
He had stared at her a long moment with clear, bright eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I’ve never worried about you, kiddo. You are the strongest McKenzie there ever was.”
Libby hurried down the stairs, grabbed her phone off the couch, and dialed Sierra’s number.
She picked up on the third ring. “Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
Water from the tap ran in the background. “I’m washing out my mixing bowl so I can bake a lemon cake.”
Knowing her friend, she asked, “How many have you already made?”
“Five.”
She headed back up the stairs to her father’s office. “And why do you need six? Do you have an order?”
“Law of attraction. I’m willing my business to come to me.”
Libby glanced up at the fresh pale-gray walls and the white trim. “What say we use my dad’s house as collateral for your loan?”
The water shut off. “What? No way. That’s your house.”
“It’s not my house,” Libby said. “It was Dad’s.”
“You can sell it and make good money.”
“Yeah, and then I guess I could loan you the money for the sandwich shop renovation, but why not just use it as collateral? It’ll save me from having to get a real estate agent.”
Silence vibrated over the line.
“Still there?” Libby asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“If we do this, and I mean if, I’ll pay you back every cent.”
“Technically, you won’t owe me any money. You’ll owe the bank. As long as you don’t default, we’re golden.” She could have scribbled down several worst-case scenarios. Sandwich shop doesn’t earn a dime, and Sierra defaults on the loan. The sandwich shop burns. Sierra runs off with the money and moves to Mexico with a guy named Manny.
But Libby did not feel like jotting that list down.
“Is this a yes or a no?”
“It’s a yes,” Sierra said softly.
“Say it like you mean it,” Libby said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Set up a meeting with the bank. Knowing my dad, the title to the house is in his desk. I’ll go through it tonight.”
“Okay. Then yes!”
“Good.” She looked around the room and for the first time was glad her father had left it to her.
“You’ve got that thing at Elaine’s tonight. I forgot, what kind of party is it again?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“Hey, you want to take a lemon cake?”
It was nearly six o’clock as Libby drove up Woodmont’s long driveway toward the house. Sitting on the seat beside her was a large cake box filled with lemon cake number three, which Sierra believed was the best of the six.
She spotted Colton’s truck parked beside a Mercedes and a Land Rover and was grateful he would be here among the landed gentry. The ping of anticipation was unexpected but kind of nice. It was what she had felt once for Jeremy, what she had seen in Ginger’s eyes, and what she had heard in Sierra’s voice as she had screamed, “This is going to be so great!”
She gathered up the lemon cake and followed the sound of laughter and music to the east garden. As she stepped through the gate, she was transported back to an issue of Martha Stewart Living. It was all that anyone would expect in a slick, glossy lifestyle magazine. A long rustic farmhouse table dressed with white earthenware plates, cobalt-blue Depression-era glasses, white linen napkins, mismatched chairs that should not go together but somehow did, and a long garland table runner festooned with small vases filled with white roses.
Elaine stood at the head of the table. Her coloring was better today, and she was laughing, surrounded by her husband and daughter, who was a carbon copy of her mother.
Libby did not look like her adoptive parents, and it had always sparked questions about whom she did resemble. She had asked her mother a few times about her birth mother, but the question had always put her mother in such a dark mood she had stopped asking.
As she approached Elaine, her stomach tightened with nerves. As if sensing her, Elaine looked up and smiled. “Libby, you made it.”
Libby held up the cake. “Thank you for having
me.”
Elaine took the cake. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“My neighbor Sierra Mancuso is opening a sandwich shop soon. She’s very good, and she wanted us to enjoy it.”
“It smells amazing.”
“It is.”
Ted came up beside Elaine. “Welcome back. I know I’ll be having at least two pieces. I know Margaret won’t mind an unplanned dessert.”
“Ted is grilling, and Margaret is just finishing up a couple of side dishes in the kitchen. I did set the table,” Elaine said, laughing. “It’s the extent of my culinary talents.” She turned toward her daughter. “I would like you to meet Lofton.”
Ted took the cake from Elaine, and as he set it in the center of the farmhouse table, Elaine clasped her daughter’s hand and tugged her forward. “This is Lofton. I think I told you she just graduated from the University of Virginia law school.”
Libby shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Lofton. And congratulations on the law degree.”
“Thank you,” Lofton said. “Mom tells me you took some amazing pictures at Ginger’s wedding.”
“I think I got a couple of great shots.” For some reason, she felt the need to toot her own horn.
Ted handed Libby and Lofton glasses of red wine. “I opened a bottle Elaine and I bought in Naples last year while in Europe. Seemed the perfect night to try it.”
The warm fruity flavor tasted good, and the alcohol would soon take the edge off. “I saw Colton’s truck out front.” She wasn’t going to ask a forward question about whether he was coming or not, even though she hoped the extra place setting was for him. “How is the greenhouse coming?”
“It looks fantastic,” Elaine said. “The vines are all stripped away, and the inside is all cleaned out. We’ll have to walk down after dinner.”
“I’d like that.”
“Next up is to remove the stone flooring and excavate down so he can install a new gravity-fed water system. That starts in a day or two. I have a few of Olivia’s early gardening journals. You said you were interested.”
“That would be great. I’ll have them back to you shortly.”
“There’s no rush,” Elaine said.
“Are you giving Libby my great-grandmother’s journals?” Lofton asked.
“Sure,” Elaine said. “Libby is photographing the estate for me. If we go into this wedding venue business as you have been suggesting, then we’ll need photographs with background history.”
Lofton’s polished finger tapped against the side of her glass. “Yes, but she doesn’t need the journals.”
“Lofton, help me with the grill,” Ted said. “I don’t want to burn the steaks.”
As if sensing a warning in her father’s tone, Lofton grinned. “Sure, Daddy.”
Lofton and Ted retreated to the grill. Libby took another sip of wine.
“You know what?” Libby said. “I’ll take a raincheck on the journals. I don’t have time to read them anyway.”
“You strike me as the kind of woman who finds the time, and Lofton has just become a little overprotective since I got sick. Don’t worry about it. I’ll send them to you.”
“Did I miss much?” Colton’s deep voice mingled with Sam and Jeff’s chatter. Margaret walked beside him carrying a bowl of potato salad. Colton had a platter filled with steamed corn on the cob.
The boys ran past Libby and straight up to Lofton, who promptly grabbed Jeff by the midsection and turned him upside down. Jeff laughed and flailed his arms as Sam jumped up and down, begging, “Pick me up!”
Margaret set her bowl of salad on the table, glancing up at Elaine. The two exchanged glances, but Libby couldn’t decipher their silent communication.
“Last summer the boys spent a lot of time with Lofton,” Elaine explained.
“They ask about her all the time,” Colton said.
“I wish she were staying longer this summer. She and Ted have such fun together,” Elaine said. “But she’s clerking in DC. Very big step for her.”
Libby sipped her wine, remembering the last time she and her father had had real fun together. She had to go back a few years and sort through the days before she’d met Jeremy.
They had been cleaning out the family attic. He had found a box of Libby’s baby clothes. Tiny pink, yellow, and white outfits adorned with ruffles. The fancier frocks looked almost pristine, but it was a faded pink New York Jets T-shirt covered with washed-out milk and juice stains that almost brought her father to tears. “You just about lived in this the year you turned two.”
“Who bought me a Jets T-shirt?”
“I’m not sure,” he’d said. “You spent most of that summer digging in the dirt.”
She thought back to that little T-shirt and wondered if it had been one of the few things her father had saved in the boxes stacked neatly in his office. For the first time since she had moved back to Bluestone, she wanted to open those boxes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SADIE
Tuesday, March 3, 1942
Bluestone, Virginia
The war is gearing up. Towns as small as Bluestone have sent boys down to Fort Benning. We hear the daily reports about what’s happening in Europe and the Pacific, and we’re all itching to jump in the fight. From what the brass is saying, once we get to Europe, it won’t take long for us to end it. Can’t beat an American fighting boy.
Sadie stared at Johnny’s sure-and-steady handwriting, and she pushed the letter across the kitchen table to her mother. “He sounds full of fire.”
The letter went on to say that some of the boys had already been in air raids throughout Britain. He was openly worried about Danny. The war was much different than he had imagined.
But she did not read this part to her mother. Johnny knew their mother could not read and trusted Sadie to use her discretion.
Her mother took the letter and smoothed her hands over the page, as if touching the ink was her way of hugging her son. “Are you sure he didn’t say anything about Danny?”
“No, Ma, no mention of Danny.” Unlike Johnny, who wrote almost weekly, Danny had written only one letter since he had joined the army in 1938.
“I sure do miss those boys. When do you think they’ll be home?” Her mother carefully folded the envelope and tucked it in her pocket. Later it would go in the cigar box with the others for safekeeping.
“I don’t know. But I sure hope it’s soon.” The ground was still hard from the winter and would not thaw for another few weeks. That was when she and her mother would begin tilling the soil for the kitchen garden.
Sadie smoothed her hands. “You heard what I read. I wish he wouldn’t worry about how I mix the mash for the moonshine.”
“He worries because you always add too much sugar.” Smiling as if she and Johnny had shared a private moment, her mother picked up one of Johnny’s socks she had been darning. The sock was at least ten years old and now too small for Johnny, but that did not stop her mother from sewing up the hole and then carefully removing the threads over and over. The stitches never seemed to be perfect enough for her boy.
“What does Miss Olivia say about England?” her mother asked. “She should know.”
“She talks about the gardens mostly. Her parents had a greenhouse by their home in the country.” The greenhouse was no longer filled with flowers but with vegetable plants. Two days ago, they had driven into Charlottesville, and Miss Olivia had mailed a package to her parents. It had been stuffed with canned milk, tea, potted meat, and tinned biscuits.
“I heard Mr. Sullivan saying the Germans are still bombing England,” her mother said.
“There seems to be no end in sight.”
A frown furrowed her mother’s brow. “It’s a dangerous place to be.”
“Johnny won’t be near London.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I asked Miss Olivia,” she lied. “Miss Olivia said he’d be staying in a safe place. Besides, he’s tough. He’s outrun enough revenuers an
d the sheriff. No German is going to catch him.”
Her mother’s scowl softened a little. “He is the quickest boy I ever met. Remember when Mr. Brown was kicked in the head by his horse? Johnny ran five miles for the doctor. Saved Mr. Brown’s life.”
“I remember.” Her mother had told the story a dozen times since Johnny left.
The clock on the wall ticked, and when Sadie glanced up at it, she said, “I’ve got to go. Driving Miss Olivia today.”
“You girls sure do get around. You’ve been to Charlottesville and Lynchburg more in the last couple of months than I’ve been in my entire life.”
“She gets restless. Finds it hard to sit in the big house alone. Dr. Carter is always away at the hospital, working.”
Her mother opened the small wooden cigar box and carefully placed Johnny’s letter on top of the dozen others.
“What are you doing today?” her mother asked.
She was not exactly sure what was planned for the day but, for her mother’s sake, said, “Ordering more flowers and orange trees. Miss Olivia wants orange trees in her greenhouse. Says it will be good for the baby.”
“Baby? She in the family way again?”
“I’m not sure,” Sadie said. “But she’s always hoping.” She shrugged on a jacket. The garment was a hand-me-down from Olivia. Nicer than anything she had ever owned, the jacket was the color of a new penny. It fit her body as if it had been made for her, and the fabric was soft and fine. It was nothing like the coarse, worn shirts and socks passed down to Sadie from Johnny and Danny.
Sadie kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’ll see you this evening.”
“Take care of yourself, girl.”
“Always, Mama.”
Sadie drove the old truck down the very familiar road to Woodmont. As she turned onto the property’s main driveway, she now felt like she belonged. She was not worried that the sheriff would arrest her for trespassing or the gardener would chase her off with a pitchfork. Scooting forward in the seat, she downshifted and slowed as she rounded the main house and parked around the side by the kitchen entrance. She straightened her shoulders, stood a little taller, and opened the kitchen door. She had stopped knocking almost a month ago.
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