Palmetto Moon (27 page)

Desmond has tears in his eyes when he opens the front door. A half dozen servants are lined up to welcome me home; throwing decorum aside, Rosa Lee dashes to me, wrapping her arms around me, sobbing for joy and for the great sorrow that I’ve returned. I hold her close and beg her not to cry. “I’ve missed you so. Please don’t cry. I’m home now.”

From the foyer, nothing has changed, but Mother stands by the staircase, kindly giving Rosa Lee her due as my real mother.

“Are you all right?” Rosa Lee searches my eyes for the truth.

I nod, because I can’t tell her my heart is angry, broken, but she knows. She hugs me again, and then steps back into line.

“Vada?” My mother reaches for me but then pulls back like she’s unworthy. I can see I’m not the only one who is hurt. “Can we talk?”

I nod and head to my bedroom. My father follows, but she stops him at the entrance. They’ve always communicated well without words. He nods and closes the door behind us.

The trunks are still packed, the one with my shoes still open. The white Ferragamos are beside my closet; everything is as I left it, except the wedding dress and the veil are gone. Mother motions for me to sit down on the bed, but instead of standing to lecture me, she sits down beside me.

“Vada. I want you to know that I was only doing what I thought was best for you.” She dabs at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “This life, our life, has been this way for so long—it’s in the best interest of our lineage to keep the wealth within our small circle. It’s how our kind has survived in a world full of people who are more than happy to steal your money and break your heart into a million pieces.”

I thread my hand in hers, and she whimpers a little, tears staining her makeup. “Don’t cry, Mother.”

“I talked to Justin before you left, and—”

“I know you did. I was listening outside the door. What you said meant a lot to me. I think it helped me stand up for myself, which is what I should have done in the first place.”

My mother’s always been as strong as she is beautiful. It seems wrong to see her so fragile. “I know I’m not very good at it, but I
do
love you.”

“I know, Mother. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long for me to figure that out.” My head is cradled against her neck in a shameless display of affection, both of us with happy tears. And sad.

The springs creak under our weight, reminding me how much I’ve missed sleeping in my own bed, and
not
sharing a bathroom. And shoes, God, how I’ve missed my shoes. Maybe I really do belong here.

A little black Chanel number is where I left it on the back of the closet door that is open and welcomes me home. But it reminds me of Claire. I miss her terribly. I miss the boys, already, especially the little one. I miss the openness of the crossroads and the earthy, musty smell of the open fields after a hard rain—and I miss Frank Darling. Damn him. I miss Frank.

“Vada, sweetheart.” Mother holds me while I sob.

I collect myself as best I can. “Justin proposed again.”

“Dear, if you don’t want to—”

“I know that. He’s actually being kind and patient with me, making it hard to say no.”

“How is he?” Reggie whispers; his worried look for Daniel warms Claire’s heart.

“He’ll be fine.”

“It breaks my heart to see him so unhappy.”

“He’s just upset. Vada was his first love. He believes her leaving is his fault because he gave her to Frank.” And she was Claire’s first real friend in a very long time. “She’s a hard one to get over.”

“But he’ll be okay?” Reggie sounds like he’s not so sure.

“Of course. In time.” Claire puts her arm around Reggie. She’s so grateful to have him. Even if he didn’t have a nickel to his name, she’d still love him. He doesn’t press her, like other people have, like Vada did, to root Bobby out of her heart, and sometimes she thinks he understands her better than Bobby did. Perhaps it’s because he’s gay. But Claire believes Reggie understands her because he knows what it’s like to find the love of your life and then lose him forever.

Daniel lies across the bed that will soon be his, permanently. Even asleep, his breathing stutters from crying over Vada Hadley. “I’ll get him up for supper soon. Maybe he’ll eat something this time.”

Reggie nods and excuses himself.

She can hear Peter and Jonathan playing outside, but since Vada left, even they have seemed melancholy. Miss Mamie certainly didn’t spare any details when she retold the story of Vada’s father and her fiancé showing up. Claire understands it was a terrible scene, but it still smarts that Vada left without saying good-bye.

She plops down in the wingback chair beside the bed and touches Daniel’s hair softly. He’s been so busy acting grown-up since his father died, it’s hard to remember he’s only twelve. But living here will be wonderful for all of the boys, especially for Daniel. He can be a child again.

“Any better?” Reggie asks hopefully.

“You haven’t even been gone fifteen minutes.”

“I can’t stand seeing him so hurt and not being able to do something about it.” The look on Reggie’s face reminds her of Bobby, just after Daniel was born. He was awkward, wanting to help but paralyzed by how fragile Daniel was.

“I know. But if you do this, if we raise my boys together, there are going to be a lot of skinned knees and broken hearts we won’t be able to fix.”

“We’ll see about that.” Reggie gives her a peck on the cheek. “Judge Swenson is stopping by at six.”

“
Reggie
. Why didn’t you tell me?” Claire is out of her chair and gathering toys off of the floor. “The house is a mess and there’s precious little time to straighten up before he comes. And dinner . . .”

“Relax, Claire. Peter and I will put out some refreshments. When Daniel wakes up, tell him we’re getting married tonight.” Reggie guides her back to the bedside chair. “When he wakes up, tell him he’s home.”

“Franklin James Darling. You better open this cabin door.” Although it’s not like he wasn’t expecting her, Tiny’s incessant banging only makes him more determined to stay put. He hasn’t missed a day of work in seven years, but he’s sick over losing Vada Hadley and sick over her pretty fiancé he punched. Not that he knocked the guy’s lights out. He can’t believe she actually has a fiancé. Besides him.

“Life goes on, Frank. It always does. To hell with that girl with her fancy dresses and her hot tea in the summertime. You can’t stay lower than a snake’s ankles. You got to live, and folks have got to eat. It’s Monday morning and time to get back in the kitchen. Things’ll get better, Frank. I promise.”

He knows that more than anything, it’s his silence killing Tiny, but he’s not doing it to be mean. He’s screamed himself hoarse, cursing the damn geese, the cabin. God. Besides, there’s nothing anyone can say that’s going to make him feel better.

Hearing Tiny’s truck starting back up the dirt road is a relief. He thinks back to that day she brought Vada to him. How beautiful she was, how, for a moment, Vada seemed like she wanted to stay at the cabin instead of going off on some snipe hunt. Even then he knew he could have gotten her to stay, loved her so good, she would have forgotten everything but his name, but no. He just had to try to give her everything she wanted, and the truth is that’s not possible. Not with a girl like Vada Hadley.

The only thing that hurts worse than his busted hand is his head. His belly has given up rumbling for food. He can’t remember the last time he ate. That would mean sifting back through the events of the last two days, and he’d rather take a boot to the face than remember the particulars that got his hopes up for a lifetime with Vada and then stomped to death by two black Cadillacs and a would-be insurance salesman.

Frank opens the door and stands there for a moment before he ambles toward the rickety little pier that stretches over the riverbank. He knows from taking a flatboat trip with his daddy when he was a kid that this same river ends near the motel he was going to take her. Wing tips and Jesus flowers. Hell, a stinking motel room wouldn’t have been good enough for her.
In the end, he wasn’t good enough for her.

If his daddy were here, he’d tell him the same thing Tiny was hollering. He’d tell him to get back in the kitchen. That’s what he did when Frank’s mother left. He didn’t skip a beat. He just kept cooking until he found his peace.

Sitting down on the pier, Frank lets the black water cut around his ankles. Life without Vada is unthinkable, but it’s a life, his life. He’ll do another night’s penance on the cot and head back before the sun comes up tomorrow. Maybe open up the diner.

Everything seems to stop, and the world is dead silent in agreement. Frank can’t even hear his defective heart like he could before Vada Hadley walked into his life. It’s too busted up to remind Frank that he was broken to begin with. “What’d you expect?” He whispers the words, glad his voice is shot to hell, and hopes that when he goes back to work, folks will take pity on him and not ask him about the biggest thing that’s happened at the crossroads since the preacher caught him with Lila.

By the time the sheriff showed up at Miss Mamie’s, the show was over and the Cadillacs were gone. Vada was so angry at Frank, she was trembling, tears spilling down her beautiful face. Before she left with that bastard Justin, she’d glared at Frank like she hoped he’d burn in hell, and he just might, for all of his sins.

Still, it felt like a cruel joke that Frank was on the road back to the sameness of his life in Round O, and there was nothing else to do but go back to the diner until it killed him like it did his daddy, and his daddy before him.

Frank hadn’t brought anything with him to the cabin except his troubles, and as much as he’d like to leave them at the cabin, he was stuck like a toad in a hailstorm with them. If he could somehow get time back, if he could do it over again, he sure wouldn’t have written that postcard. He will suffer the loss of her all right, till the day he dies. Hell, maybe forever. But to have that little slice of time with her, to be loved by her—even though she left him with a busted heart—it was worth it.

Tiny didn’t make a peep when she saw he’d permanently scratched “crab cakes” off all the menus with his bruised hand. Frank nods at her when she puts an order up, not really looking at her. His hand hurts like hell, and he feels pitiful enough without her big brown eyes confirming it. Folks who asked about the inkblot on their menu got shushed, and then Tiny, who has always been incapable of talking in a low voice, would whisper something to them, while she glanced up at Frank to see if he was going to snap out of his stupor. The offending person always gives Frank an apologetic smile or a little shrug.

“Order up.” His gravelly voice is almost back. He shoves two plates of salmon croquettes and grits through the window and stares at them for a moment. He put red and green bell peppers in them so they wouldn’t look too much like crab cakes, but sitting there on top of a puddle of hominy grits, it hurts to look at them. Maybe he’d sell bacon and sausage and forget the cakes altogether, or just put more salmon and less flour in the mix to bring out the red color of the fish, maybe brown them a little more.

“We’re busier than a one-armed monkey with two peckers,” Tiny says, putting four more orders up. “Big Jim’s truck just pulled up.” Frank knows she’s trying real hard, for his sake, not to sound ecstatic that the love of her life just pulled into the parking lot. He gets right on the orders, but notices Tiny behind the counter; with her back to the customers, she pinches her cheeks and unbuttons the top button on her uniform. She almost gets a smile out of Frank when she smooths her hands over her bottom. Big Jim won’t know what hit him.

Frank wills himself not to look when Big Jim lumbers into the diner. The man’s well over fifty, but still a half dozen years younger than Tiny. But it’s a force of habit to see who’s coming in the door, and even losing Vada Hadley won’t cure it. Jim is so shy, his leathery, sunbaked face actually blushes when he sees her. Dolphis learned all about Tiny’s hands-off policy the last time Big Jim was here, but when Tiny shows Jim to his seat, he nonchalantly cups her bottom as he slides into the booth.

He recognizes the look on Big Jim’s face and knows it won’t be long until he proposes to Tiny, hopefully after breakfast, because Frank knows she’ll say yes on the spot. They’ll drive off in the truck, and he’ll be left with a diner full of hungry customers and no waitress. He opens three cans of salmon and starts sifting out the bones to make croquettes. He’s happy for her.

He cracks two eggs in a mixing bowl. Really, he is. He throws in a handful of diced onion, parsley, and mayonnaise.
Get busy;
he tells himself to hurry past the holy trinity for crab cakes.

He’s relieved when he dumps the red fish into the mix, stirs it up fast, too fast, so that it’s almost mush. The peppers make the mix look better and unfamiliar. He goes heavy on the Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, throws in some yellow mustard, and bread crumbs instead of flour, so there’s no way they’ll look like Vada’s crab cakes.

Tiny puts Big Jim’s order on the wheel and gives it a whirl. “I got to admit, the croquettes are selling, and they’re so good, nary a customer has complained about not having—” She looks at him, and for a moment he’s seven again, with a broken heart, only this time he understands why the woman he loves is gone. “You just might have changed the history of the Lowcountry by doing away with crab cakes. But I think we’re gonna be just fine with the croquettes. I do.”

The look he gives Tiny lets her know her croquette metaphor isn’t appreciated. He patties out a dozen cakes, puts them on the grill, and watches a fat dollop of butter meander around the hot surface, bouncing off the cakes like a pinball until it melts into a puddle.

“Morning,” Hank says, smiling with his empty coffee cup.

“Morning.” Frank flips the cakes and likes how they look, but the crowd is so big this morning, he’s about to run out of biscuits. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Guess you heard about Joe Pike,” Hank says.

Frank keeps his head down, slopping grits, then a little pat of butter, on each of the six plates in front of him.

“Left town for good, you know. Just the other day. Shame about Lila. She was a nice girl.”

Frank almost laughs. There was nothing girlish about Lila Smudge, but when you’re ninety like Hank, she probably seemed like one.

“Guess he stayed because he thought she’d come back one day.” Hank holds his coffee cup out for Tiny to refill.

“Who’re you talking about, Hank?” Tiny asks.

“Lila. Smudge. Joe’s gone, you know. For good, he said.”

He can feel Tiny’s intense stare as she checks to see if Hank’s words injured Frank any more than he already is, but he’ll not look at her.
Just keep your head down. Keep going.
Let the hard work of the diner numb the pain—not from Lila. He is sorry for what happened to her, but he hurts so badly from knowing he’s lost Vada Hadley for good, exhaustion is his only solace.

Tiny fills Hank’s cup. “There you go, handsome. And if you’re needing any more coffee, just holler at me and I’ll come to you.”

“Well, that’s mighty nice of you, young lady.”

As quickly as Frank pushes them through the window, Tiny balances all six plates on her arms. He yanks the next order off the wheel to let her know he’s fine.
Just go away.

“What in the hell?” one of the truckers by the window says. “There’s a woman marching this way with a man trailing behind her, and she looks madder than a full-moon dog.”

Frank pulls two frying pans off the burners at once and wipes his hands on the towel slung over his shoulder. He starts untying his apron, praying hard that it’s Vada.

Claire Greeley comes into the diner with a fury, marches up to his window, and slaps the
Charleston Post
newspaper down. Before he even glances at the paper or can say anything, a man, who he guesses is Reggie Sheridan, comes in with Claire’s little one on his hip and Daniel and Peter trailing behind.

“What are you going to do about
this
?” Claire smacks her hand above the fold of the paper. Frank sees the headline and can’t read past “Hadley-McLeod Union.”

“There’s nothing I can do.” He reties his apron and goes back to cooking.

“The wedding is Saturday, so you’d better do something fast, because she loves you,” Claire bites out. “I know she does.”

“If she loved me, Claire, she wouldn’t be marrying somebody else.”

“Why didn’t you fight for her, Frank?”

“I did, Claire, and nearly broke my hand in the process.”

“You didn’t fight for her.” Daniel glares at Frank. “Because you’re a coward. And you’re a liar. You said if I gave her to you, you’d make her happy. But that was a lie. If she was happy, she would have stayed.”

Reggie puts his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and draws him close. An opulent gold band that matches the one Claire’s wearing says everybody’s getting married
but
Frank Darling.

With his mother so riled, the little one starts to fuss, and Reggie bounces him on his hip. When he lays his head against Reggie’s chest, every defect of Frank’s heart sings he’ll never have this with Vada Hadley.

“Daniel.” Frank turns the stove off. “I tried to make her happy, but in the end, she wanted what you wanted to give her.”

“Then you shouldn’t have talked me into giving her to you.” Daniel bursts into tears.

“You’re a fool, Frank,” Claire snaps. “Vada didn’t want money, or even the fancy necklace her grandmother gave her. She only wanted two things: to see her friend Darby again and
you
, Frank Darling. She wanted you.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes, all the time, but she didn’t have to tell me. I could see it in her face.”

“But I screwed up, Claire. Bad.”

“She loves you, Frank. She’ll forgive you, I know she will. But if you never go after her, she won’t know how much you love her. She’ll think you don’t care about her, that you never cared at all.”