Carolina Mist (8 page)

“Oh, you can’t, huh?” Belle’s chin jutted out indignantly.

“Belle, I look around, and I see windows nearly falling out.” Abby could barely restrain herself from shouting.
“Wallpaper dancing its way backward down the walls, a front porch that’s ready to drop into the front lawn, and a chimney that won’t make it through the next big storm.”

“Forgive her, Leila,” Belle muttered. “She has eyes but cannot see.”

“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Abby yelled in exasperation as the doorbell rang from the front of the house. “Now, who the hell is that?”

Abby stomped to the front door and struggled to open it. A young man in his early twenties stood before her.

“Yes?” she bellowed.

“I
…
I’m Paul Phelps, ma’am,” the young man stuttered, taking a few steps backward. “My daddy—that’d be Pete Phelps, down to the hardware—said you wanted me to look at some work you might be wanting done.”

His voice trailed off, leery of the wild-eyed woman with the wild curly hair who stood blocking the doorway like some petite and ornery sentinel.

“I didn’t expect you until later this afternoon.” The words bounced from her mouth before she realized how rude she must sound to the poor young fellow who’d had the misfortune to ring the doorbell at precisely the wrong moment.

“I…
I can come back,” he told her as he took a few steps toward the porch and away from her.

“No, no.” She regained both her senses and her composure at the same time. Damn, Belle had riled her.

“I apologize”—she smiled sweetly—“for snapping at you. You startled me, that’s all. Now, Paul.” She stepped out onto the porch and took his arm. “Suppose I show you around the outside first, then we can go inside and look. I need to know what has to be done and how much it would cost. Can you prepare an estimate for me that’s broken down like that?”

“Sure could.” He bobbed his head up and down. His light brown ponytail flopped against his back, and his gold earring glittered. Primrose, meet MTV.

Almost two hours later, a broadly grinning Paul headed
back to town in his pickup truck, anxious to begin writing up the estimate for the old house on Cove Road. Abby had stood on the sidewalk with her hands on her hips, trying to comprehend the extent of the work. Paul’s “eyeball number” was somewhere between forty-five and fifty thousand dollars.

No wonder he was smiling when he left,
she grumbled to herself.
He's planning on whistling all the way to the bank.

Abby tapped one foot in agitation, then turned toward the house. Might as well put a call into Leila’s jewelry man, she decided. She would make an appointment with him to appraise—and, she hoped, purchase—the treasure she had left in the bank vault.

She started toward the morning room, where Belle was still glued to the television, but decided she’d try looking through Leila’s desk to see if she could find the phone number herself. She’d just as soon not get into another discussion with Belle over the fate of Leila’s jewelry.

I don’t know why it would matter so much to Belle, anyway,
she thought to herself as she entered Thomas’s study.

Abby had assumed Leila’s desk would be there, where Thomas’s own desk stood, a massive roll-top affair. Never having known the man, Abby felt every bit the intruder. Standing in the center of the room, she surveyed Thomas’s private domain. Wide shelves with glass doors completely wrapped around the walls of the room. A well-used, overstuffed chair and matching ottoman stood at an angle to the fireplace. Other than the desk and a small table upon which rose a tall brass lamp, there was no other furniture in the room.

Next to a photograph of Leila in a wide frame of thick polished wood, Thomas’s notebook lay open on the desktop, a pen resting in the valley made by the spine of the book. Leila obviously had taken care not to disturb her husband’s personal things in all the years since he had died. Abby had no intention of doing so now. She all but backed out of the room.

Abby discovered the small oak lady’s writing desk in the sitting room next to the front parlor. The writing surface squealed slightly as she let the top fall forward to reveal a dozen small compartments and a flat surface upon which sat a stack of pale yellow writing paper. The top three sheets had been written on. Abby took them to the window to better see the words.

Dear Susannah
—that would be Sunny Hollister, Abby’s first cousin—
Thank you ever so much for the lovely birthday greetings.
Abby flinched, trying to recall if she, herself, had sent a card the previous February.
I did greatly enjoy your note, and deeply appreciate being remembered. I so rarely hear from anyone in the family, and so am very happy when someone thinks to bring me up to date. I am delighted to hear that your business is doing so well, dear. I do hope you will be able to stop in Primrose on your way to Atlanta later this fall. I would like to pass on to you a few family mementos which I feel should go to you. In remembrance of our shared February birthday, I would like you to have several amethyst pieces which I have cherished and a gold necklace made in the shape of leaves. (Quite an interesting piece, by the way. Thomas had brought it back on one of his forays into treasure hunting, though I seem to forget the origin of it.) And also the portrait of my mother, your greatgrandmother, Serena Dunham, whom you so resemble. I’d never realized how much you look like her, dear, until you sent the photograph from your wedding. Of course, I remember you best as a child
…

Abby’s heart was in her knees. The amethysts and the gold necklace—probably the single most valuable piece in the vault—were intended for her cousin, Sunny.

Unconsciously, she began to pace the length of the room, the letter clutched in one hand. It was dated just two days before Leila died. Sunny obviously did not know of Leila’s intentions. Who would know if Abby didn’t tell anyone that Leila had planned to give the jewelry to Sunny?

I would know,
she told herself as she plunked down on the chair closest to the window.
And Leila would know.

Her eyes scanned the room, coming to rest on the portrait
that hung over the fireplace. Serena, the great-grandmother she and Sunny shared, seemed to arch a dark eyebrow in her direction. Did Sunny look like her? Abby wouldn’t know. They hadn’t seen each other since they were fifteen.

“And you’d know, too.” She addressed her greatgrandmother from across the room. Serena’s wry smile was as good as a nodded acknowledgment.

Abby stared up at the portrait. If Sunny looked anything like Serena, she’d be magnificent. Thick dark hair piled high above an unforgettably lovely face. The high cheekbones Serena had inherited from her mother, Elizabeth, a full- blooded Cherokee. The deep blue eyes—a gift, no doubt, from Serena’s father, Stephen Cameron—close in hue to the blue satin dress. Closer still to the stones in the necklace that wound around her graceful neck. The same necklace Abby had held in her hands earlier that day in the bank vault. From her ears dangled ovals of sapphires surrounded by diamonds. The ring that graced Serena’s left hand lay, at this minute, in the bottom of Abby’s jeans pocket. Leila had chosen not to sell them because they had belonged to her mother.

Belle’s invocation to Leila rang in Abby’s ears.
She has eyes but cannot see.

Okay, Aunt Leila. Serena's sapphires will stay in the vault. And Sunny will have her inheritance, just as you intended.

Sighing deeply, she went back to Leila’s desk and rummaged through the cubbyholes, hoping to find an address book. She had no idea where Sunny was living these days or what her married name might be. She located the small book and flipped through it till she came to the H’s, where she found the listing for Susannah Hollister. Either Sunny had not changed her name when she married, or Aunt Leila had not bothered to change the entry in her book. Abby wondered if the Connecticut address was current. She would to write to Sunny and tell her of their aunt’s bequest.

Several small pieces of paper escaped from the inside cover of the book. On one was written the name “Edwin Robinson” and a phone number. Abby tucked the paper in the pocket with the ring, thinking that perhaps she would
call him in the morning. She wondered what the emeralds would bring.

“Okay, Belle,” she said with resignation as she slumped onto the small sofa in the morning room. “I know about the sapphires. And I know that Leila wanted the gold necklace and the amethysts to go to my cousin, Susannah.”

“Did she, now?” Belle asked without taking her eyes from the television. “I thought perhaps she was holding on to them because of their sentimental value.”

“Which was?”

“Thomas gave the amethysts to Leila on their wedding day. Which was also Leila’s birthday.”

“Well, it was apparently Sunny’s birthday, too,” Abby noted. “And the gold necklace?”

“Thomas gave it to Leila when he proposed to her. He had brought it back with him from a trip he’d made to one of those Asian countries that ends in ‘stan.’ I can’t remember which one. His next expedition was in search of some silver mines in Montana.”

“Where he met Leila.”

Belle nodded without taking her eyes from the television. “He came back to Primrose a changed man. He only stayed a few weeks before returning to Montana, where he married Leila. He gave her the gold necklace. It was a symbol, he said.”

“A symbol of what?”

“That he loved her more than he loved the life he had led before he met her. He never went on another trip, just stayed here in Primrose and wrote books about his adventures.”

“And she chose to live in a house that was falling down around her, rather than sell it?”

“There are some things that are worth more than money, Abigail,” Belle said pointedly.

“Well, it just seems to me
that
…
”

“Oh, for pity’s sake.” The old woman fairly exploded. “Hasn’t there ever been anything that meant something to you, not because of its monetary value but because you
loved the person who gave it to you? Hasn’t there ever been anything you simply couldn’t bear to part with, because of the memories?”

Abby straightened her spine and glared across the room at Belle. “I think it’s time to start dinner,” she said flatly as she turned heel toward the kitchen.

T
he bells from the center of town were chiming three a
.
m
.
Abby punched her pillow for about the twentieth time and tried to find a comfortable spot on the ancient mattress. Maybe she was chilled, she thought.

Maybe if I pull up the quilt
…

Abby searched in the darkness at the end of the bed but could not find it. She turned on the lamp on the bedside table, threw back the covers, and got out of bed. The quilt had slipped to the floor. She retrieved it and spread it over the blanket.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling almost to the floor, she looked around the room. It had been reserved just for her as a child and had known all her childhood dreams.

My childhood dreams,
she mused.

Almost without thinking, she rose and opened one of the suitcases she had carried in that afternoon. There, in one of the satin compartments, was a small wooden box wherein rested her most cherished possessions. Her mother’s plain gold wedding ring, the one her father had placed upon his bride’s finger, the one that years later had been replaced by another that had been much more expensive. Pearl earrings given to her on her twelfth birthday by her mother. A thin gold chain with a tiny gold heart, a gift from her father when she turned sixteen.

At the bottom of the box lay a small ring, two lengths of thick silver rope that wound endlessly around each other. Turning it around and around in her hand, she glanced out the window toward the pine where Alex had carved their initials the night he placed the silver band on her finger.

“Hasn’t there ever been anything you simply couldn’t
bear to part with, because of the memories?” Belle had asked her, and she had not answered.

Abby dropped the ring back into the box, snapped the lid closed, and turned off the light.

9

A
bby sat on the front porch steps in the late-November sun, unconsciously fanning herself with the sheets of notepaper on which the Phelps lad had composed his estimate for the repairs on her house: $53,475, a nice, round, tidy number.
It might as well be fifty-three million,
she thought, questioning for the first time the wisdom of having so promptly sent off a letter to her cousin Sunny to let her know what was awaiting her in Primrose. She leaned back against the wobbly railing, rethinking her decision to keep Serena’s sapphires in the vault.

She made a mental note to call Mr. Robinson. At least no one seemed to have a claim, emotional or otherwise, on the emeralds. She doubted they’d bring enough, but whatever she’d get for them, it should make a dent in the repair bill.

Abby raised her head at the sound of a passing car that had slowed, then stopped as the driver leaned out the window to exchange a few words with a young woman who had been about to cross the street. The woman was tall and well built, with dark wavy hair pulled into an untamed bun at the nape of her neck. Short wisps of curly hair wound around her face, which, even from Abby’s perch on the porch steps, appeared open and friendly. She was dressed in a white sweatshirt and jeans, and she fumbled with the pins in her hair as she leaned forward toward the driver and patted him on the arm before he pulled away from the curb to continue down the road.

The young woman smiled broadly and waved as she
crossed the road and made eye contact with Abby. “Mankind is one,” proclaimed her sweatshirt.

“Hi,” she called pleasantly as she walked slowly, deliberately, and with a very pronounced limp toward Abby’s front porch. “I’m Naomi Hunter. I live across the street.”

“Oh, of course. The new owner of Belle’s place.” Abby forced herself from her gloomy mental retreat and tried to return the cordiality. “I’m Abby McKenna.”

“Yes, I know,” the woman told her. “I remember you.”

“Remember me?” Abby frowned, trying to place the name, the face.

“Sure.” Naomi seated herself on the bottom step and stretched her left leg out in front of her. “Gosh, I remember as a kid, watching you and Miz Matthews’s grandson go trekking off on your bikes. I always th
ought there was something so…
I don’t know,
exotic,
about you. Big-city girl with big-city clothes.” Naomi laughed without a trace of self-consciousness.

“I didn’t think any of the kids from Primrose even knew I was alive.” Abby laughed.

“Are you
kidding?
You and Miz Matthews’s grandson were an
event.
It was like summer didn’t
begin
until you arrived,” Naomi drawled softly, smiling at the recollection. “I always envied you your freedom, and the way you always seemed to be off on some adventure, you know? Sometimes I even got up early, just to watch you from my bedroom window. You’d be riding
your bikes off into the early-
morning mist, that wild red hair streaming behind you. I used to pray that one day, you’d see me in the window and wave me down to go with you.”

“Why didn’t you just come out and introduce yourself and come with us?” Abby asked, flattered and curious at the same time.

“I just never would have had the nerve.” Naomi shook her head, a few strands of hair sliding loose as she did so.

“Why not? Did I act snobby or something?”

“No, not really. You just never seemed to notic
e anyone. You and…
what was his name?”

“Alex.”

“Right. You and Alex just always seemed to be in your own world, somehow. Like you didn’t see nothin’ or no one else.” Naomi slipped cozily into a little Southern vernacular. “Like you were in a bubble that just sort of floated around Primrose for two months or so, then disappeared.” Her eyes looked skyward. “Just sort of floated away until the next year.”

Abby sat in silence.
It was exactly like that,
she could have said.
We were in our own world. It never occurred to either of m to seek out the company of anyone else.

“Besides,” Naomi continued, “I lived up on the other side of town, not down here where the old money lived. But I remember what it was like when I was growing up, when all the houses down here were so fancy, and all those genteel old ladies were still alive. Sundays, I’d ride my bike down here, like I was headed out to the cove. I’d ride real slow past this place.” She nodded her head back toward the house behind them. “When your aunt would have her fancy teas, in the warm weather, they’d all sit out here on the porch, all the fancy old ladies of Primrose, all gathered around that big wicker table, sitting on the edge of those high-backed wicker chairs. Are they still in there?” she asked, referring to the chairs and the table. Abby, fascinated by the accuracy of the young woman’s recollection, nodded that they were. “If you ever want to sell that set, you let me know, okay? Anyway, there they’d be, and it looked so elegant, you know? The old ladies in their white summe
r dresses and their big hats…
it was right out of a picture book. Have you ever seen
Victoria
magazine?” Without waiting for an answer, Naomi plowed ahead, almost as if Abby was not there. “It was just like what you see in that magazine sometimes. Except the women in the magazine are always young and beautiful, and the women on Miz Cassidy’s porch were old. Not hard to imagine them being young and beautiful once, though. And the women on the porch were real, not models posing for a picture. They really lived like that, didn’t they?”

“For as long as I can remember, Aunt Leila did.” Abby nodded. “And she was beautiful when she was young. Tall and straight and regal.”

“Even as an older lady, she still had that elegance, you know?” Naomi twisted her body and looked thoughtfully toward the side of the porch, where the fabled teas had taken place. “I
cannot tell you how many times I
fell off my bike for staring over here instead of watching where I was going. Broke two fingers on my left hand once.” She held up her hand as if to show off her old injury. “And in the summers, you’d be there, too. You and Alex, all dressed up in white, a white straw hat on your head.”

“And white gloves.” Abby smiled fondly at the memory. “Aunt Leila insisted that I wear white gloves.”

“I’d be so jealous.” Naomi laughed again. “Wanting to know what it felt like to sit there, so grown-u
p like, being part of that…
tableau.” She spoke the word tentatively, as if testing it for its sound. “Wondering what you all were talking about. Wondering what secrets you learned from those old ladies. When I heard Miz Matthews’s house was being sold for taxes, I had to have it. I bugged the bejesus out of Colin—that’s my husband—until he said yes. Got it cheap enough, but God knows we’ll put more into it than what we paid for it by the time we’re done with the repairs.” Abby grimaced, knowing full well just how much went into restoring these old homes.

“I don’t know.” Naomi glanced across the street toward her own house. “But I guess I thought living in one of these grand houses would make me feel grand somehow, too.”

“Has it?”

“Sometimes. I guess I thought living here would somehow make me more like them—the old ladies, I mean. Like maybe somehow some of their secrets were still in the house and that maybe when I got older, there’d be teas on the front porches again, only maybe this time I’d be part of it.” She sighed and blushed faintly. “You must think I’m really daft.”

“Not at all.” Abby shook her head. “I miss those days sometimes, too. I didn’t appreciate it then, but it was a
gentler time. Mostly what I remember was being hot and uncomfortable and bored to death by the chatter. ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs. Chandler. I did quite well in school this past year.’ And ‘Thank you, Mrs. Evans, I am happy to be here.’ ‘Yes, it is quite humid today.’ ‘Yes, Aunt Leila’s garden is particularly lovely this summer.’ ”

“Don’t tell me that wa
s all?” Naomi slapped her blue-
denimed knee. “Here, all these years, I thought they were imparting their secrets of the genteel life.”

“In a way, I guess th
ey were. If knowing how to serve a proper tea, bake a perfect sponge cake, and make authentic Devonshire cream counts for anything.” Abby pondered the lessons learned and their value in the grand scheme of her life.

“Can you do all those things?” Naomi grinned.

“Actually, I can.” Abby laughed. “Aunt Leila was a superb cook. And so am I, if the truth were to be told. Maybe I picked that up from her, without even realizing it. I remember watching her in the kitchen when I was little. She could make the most fabulous meals from the most simple ingredients. And she was a very thri
fty cook. She used everything. I
never really thought about it before,” she said thoughtfully, thinking back to her college days, when she could stretch a lone chicken into two weeks’ worth of meals, “but I guess I was more influenced by her than I realized.”

“Well, maybe someday we’ll have tea together,” Naomi said wistfully, “you and me and Miz Matthews.”

“That’s a wonderful idea.” Abby stretched her legs down until they reached the top of the third step. “I’ll see if I can find Leila’s old cookbooks and see if I can bake a scone as well as she did.”

“Then you can show me, and I can reciprocate on our porch.” Naomi gazed across the street. “If it wouldn’t upset Miz Matthews too much, coming back to her old place.”

“That must have been terribly difficult for her, to have left that house.” Abby leaned forward thoughtfully, resting her elbows on her bent knees.

“It was a very sad day.” Naomi nodded. “I had such
mixed feelings, being the one to move in while she was having to move out. On th
e one hand, I wanted the house—
and we had the cash from the insurance company settlement; I was hit by a drunk driver a few years back, that’s why my leg is messed up—but on the other hand, I felt like Snidely Whiplash, foreclosing on the widow.”

“Well, from what I understand, your buying the house at least gave her money to live on and saved her from the humiliation of seeing the house go to sheriff’s sale, which would have been much worse for her. And someone would have bought the house. I’m sure she takes pleasure in knowing that the people who have it love it, just as she and her family did for so many years.”

“That’s what Colin said,” Naomi told her. “And Miz Matthews’s grandson, too, when he came to help her move out.”

“Alex was here then?” Abby’s head jerked up.

“Came down from Boston to help out with the move.” Naomi turned to look up at her. “Carried her things over to here and stored some other things—furniture and such—in the carriage house out back there.”

Abby’s toes began to twitch in agitation. “So he knows she’s been living here,” Abby said half aloud.

“Oh, sure. He moved her in and stayed for a few days.” Naomi studied Abby’s face. “How long’s it been since you’ve seen him?”

“Ten years or so.” Abby shrugged as if it was of no importance to her.

“Well, he sure did grow up nice.” Naomi grinned, her brown eyes twinkling.

“If he’s so nice, why was his elderly grandmother living alone in a house that’s falling down?” Abby snapped. “Where I come from, that’s not considered nice.”

“I meant he’s one fine-looking man.” Naomi watched for a reaction. “Tall and broad-shouldered. Really grew into his looks, if you know what I mean. You should have seen Janelle, down at the Primrose Cafe, when he’d go in for his coffee in the mor
nings. Why, she just about…
”

“Was that the only time he was here? When Belle moved in?” Abby cut her off, not interested in Alex’s local conquests.

“No, he’s been back a few times. Not since
Miz Cassidy passed on, though. I
think back in the beginning of last summer, he was here for a few days. Think Miz Matthews said he fixed the plumbing in the front bathroom when he was here.”

“That’s the least he could have done,” Abby grumbled.

“Funny, you know, I
always thought that you and he would
…
” Naomi stopped in mid-sentence, her words cut off by Abby’s frozen gaze. “Then again, maybe not.” She shrugged.

Naomi stood and brushed a few dried leav
es off the back of her jeans. “I
guess
I
need to get back on over to the house. My son will be getting up soon, then it’ll be time to run down to the school and pick up my daughter.”

“How old are your children?” Abby made an effort to be neighborly.

“My little girl will be five in a few months—she goes to the preschool down at the church. My boy is almost three.” Naomi smiled. “Just the right ages to make you want to pull your hair out half the time and smother them with kisses the other half. Now, listen, if you need anything—anything at all—don’t be hesitating to knock on my door. I’ll be baking bread tonight, so I’ll bring over a loaf in the morning.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

“I’ve been sending bread over to Miz Matthews—and Miz Cassidy, before her passing—since we moved here. And stew or soups, when I make a big batch. Seems the least I could do for them.” Naomi brushed off her acts of kindness as easily as she had dispatched the leaves from the seat of her pants. “Which reminds me of why I was stopping over here this afternoon. I usually do Miz Matthews’s laundry for her once a week. There’s a washer and dryer in the basement”—she gestured toward the house—“but I was afraid for her or Miz Cassidy to use the steps.”