Palmetto Moon (28 page)

He whips off his apron, and for the first time in days, he feels alive.

“So you’ll do it?” Daniel asks. “You’ll bring her back?”

“Or die trying.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“Daniel,” Claire snaps, “mind your manners. Now, you and Peter take Jonathan home.”

“I’ll take them,” Reggie offers.

“No, Frank will need you,” Claire says.

“Thanks, but I know the way to Charleston.” Why did Vada tell him she didn’t have a boyfriend? How could he be so stupid to believe a girl like her wouldn’t have one? “I’ll find her, say I’m sorry, do whatever I have to do to get her back.”

“Frank, if she’s as angry at you as I heard—and, mind you, I’m going by Miss Mamie’s version of the story—you can’t just barge into the Hadley mansion and haul her away. Maybe you shou—”

“Show her how much I love her.” Frank opens the till and takes the money out of the drawer. He hurries into the kitchen and cleans the cash out of the old coffee can. “I’ll find Darby O’Doul and bring her back, just like she wanted.”

“But if you and Vada couldn’t find her before, what makes you think you can find her now?”

“I have to, Claire.” When Frank’s mind catches up with his body, he looks around the diner to see every customer has stopped eating and is completely enthralled in his business. Even Tiny is silent, a coffeepot in each hand, waiting for him to redeem himself.

“Wait. Take Reggie with you,” Claire barks as he starts for the door.

“Me?” Reggie asks. “Why?”

“If Frank is lucky enough to find Darby, surely between your polish and Frank’s brawn you can talk her into coming back to Charleston to stop the wedding.”

“Claire, dear, I’ve met Vada’s parents before. Believe me, we won’t be stopping anything with Frank and an Irish servant girl,” Reggie says. “Besides, I’m not even sure it’s possible to stop nuptials of this magnitude.”

“Of course they can be stopped. Vada did it before, but she’ll have to be the one to do it again.”

“Thanks, Claire.” Frank gives her a peck on the cheek. “But I don’t need any help.” He nods at Reggie. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Not taking Reggie is foolish, Frank. It’s a long trip and you don’t have much time. Besides, Reggie can help drive and help you look for Darby.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He nods at Reggie. “All right, you can go.”

“Wonderful.” Reggie is horrible at pretending to be compliant. “Just how I wanted to spend my week, looking for a bawdy Irish woman.”

Down to his bones, Frank is afraid he’ll lose Vada forever, but he can’t let himself think like that. He’s as sure now as he was when he was in Memphis, that the Wentworth woman has known where Darby is all along. And if he’s honest, when he was with Vada in Memphis, Frank was more interested in romancing her than actually finding the person most dear to her. No. This time, he won’t stop until he gets what he wants, until he gets what Vada wants, and then he’ll spend the rest of his life making up for the mess he made. But his feet are cemented to the well-oiled diner floor, like the slightest movement either way might lead to an eternity without Vada Hadley. What if he can’t find Darby? And if he finds her and can talk her into coming back to Charleston with him, what if Frank’s apology isn’t enough?

Tiny is beside Big Jim’s booth, and he has his arm around her hips. He pipes up, but Frank’s thoughts are too tangled to hear him. He nods at Frank and gives Tiny a little squeeze. “What are you waiting for, Frank? Go get your girl.”

“Three o’clock, honey.” Rosa Lee sits down on the bed beside me. “Time for dinner.”

Her worried look makes me feel guiltier. Even my parents have been doting on me. I tell them I’m fine, ready to buck up and do what is required of me by them, by Justin. The last thought makes my insides clench. I know what he will expect of me, and while I’ve resigned myself to this union, I can’t imagine wanting him to touch me the way I wanted Frank to, or begging him to make love to me.

Justin says I belong with him; the words sound foreign coming from him, but he genuinely seems to have had a change of heart. I’m not sure if he’s right, but I have been surprised at how natural it’s been to fall back into my old life. Maybe if I continue to let go, I’ll land where I truly belong.

“Come eat something, child. If not for yourself, for me.”

But the truth is, my body isn’t on Charleston time, where the main meal is served at three o’clock each day. Another reminder of how different this place is from the rest of the world, and how different I am from Charleston.

“All right.” I sit up, and Rosa Lee brushes out my hair and then twists it up in a knot. Looking at myself in the cheval mirror, I’m not sure how Justin likes my hair. Frank liked it down, but that doesn’t matter anymore. It looks right drawn up into a tight bun. I look older, stately.

“I made all your favorites,” Rosa Lee says, and while she goes on about dinner, I can’t seem to think of anything but cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream. Sucking peach juice off of Frank’s fingertips.

“Thank you,
Murrah
.” Frightened, she looks around to see if anyone heard me. “Don’t be afraid, Rosa Lee. I’ll speak the way I please. And if it’s okay with you—and Desmond, of course—I’d like for you to come live with Justin and I after we’re married. But not as servants. He has a carriage house on the property. If you want it, it’s yours.”

“But Mr. Justin—”

“I’m not a little girl anymore. I make my own decisions now, and if I’m going to marry him, I will have my say in all things.”

She gives me an incredulous nod and helps me dress.

“Darling,” Mother coos as I enter the dining room. I want to snap at her and demand she call me by another pet name, but I know she’s trying to fix things between us. Reggie Sheridan was right. I do look so very much like her. Even our movements are the same.

The doorbell rings before the soup is served, and Desmond shows Justin into the dining room. He kisses the top of my head before taking the seat beside me, lingering for a moment.

“Vada,” he says warmly and not curtly like he used to.

“Justin.”

Mother gushes over the fact that the whole city has stopped what they’re doing to make my wedding happen tomorrow. “Why, Ruthie Rutledge is positively beside herself that Father John moved the time of her wedding back to two so that you and Justin can be married at six. You have your father to thank for that.”

“Oh, it was nothing, really,” Father laughs. “What is it they say in the Bible? Ask and ye shall receive?”

“Anything you want if your pockets are deep enough,” my mother adds, laughing.

Justin takes my hand in his and rubs his lips against the ridges of my knuckles before giving them a chaste kiss. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride, Vada.”

He seems different, like he really wants this. “Thank you, Justin.”

Rosa Lee removes the soup bowls and the tureen and returns with plates piled high with fresh vegetables she got at the market this morning. Mashed potatoes. Fried chicken. The warmer beside my place is filled with a dozen perfect biscuits.

“There’s no wine on the table, but I’d like to propose a toast to you, Justin, and to my beautiful daughter, on the eve of her wedding.” My father raises his glass of sweet tea. “To health, wealth, and happiness.”

“Hear, hear.” Justin clinks his glass to mine.

I take a sip. “Mother, I want to thank you for canceling the rehearsal party for tonight. I know you wanted that very much, and I appreciate you graciously bowing to my wishes instead of tradition.”

“Hear, hear,” Justin says. “Matthew, perhaps we should break out some wine and celebrate my lovely and incredibly agreeable bride.”

“You might want to hear me out before you lift a glass, Justin.”

He looks playfully aroused. “All right, then. Speak, bride.”

“Mother, I love you very much, and I have no say over how you run your household, but it’s wrong for the servants to live in fear that if they slip and say one Gullah word, they’ll be fired.”

“
Vada
.” She sets her fork down and dabs at her mouth with a linen napkin. “This was meant to be a consolatory dinner to bring us all together before your special day. That remark was quite unnecessary.”

“But you’re wrong, Mother. It is necessary. Justin deserves to know what I expect of him before he says,
I do
.”

“Vada,” Father barks. “This is a dinner, not an ambush.”

“No, please, Matthew.” Justin is grinning from ear to ear, laughing. “Let the bride speak. I must hear what’s
expected
of me.”

“I’m not the same tearstained girl you saw the day before our last wedding date, Justin.”

“No, you are not.” Under the table, his hand travels over my knee, but I stop it before it goes any higher. “I like you a bit feisty.”

“Father, I want you to give Desmond and Rosa Lee their retirement money that you’ve told them you’ve been investing all these years, and I want them to come live with me.”

“Vada, they’re not slaves,” my father huffs. “I can’t just give them to you.”

“No they’re
not
slaves, but sometimes you treat them that way. They are loyal servants who have worked long and hard enough, and if they want, they’ll live out the rest of their days in retirement in the carriage house.”

“In
my
carriage house?” Justin isn’t laughing anymore.

“No, Justin,
our
carriage house. After tomorrow, I’m your partner. What I have is yours, and what you have will be mine.”

“Matthew, she’s lost her mind,” Justin says.

“Speak to me, Justin. Not my father.”

“All right. Vada Hadley, you’re insane.”

“Rosa Lee,” my mother calls, in an uncharacteristically loud voice. “Please clear the plates and serve the dessert. Now.”

As my parents and Justin argue whose fault it is that I have suddenly developed a brain, Rosa Lee’s worried look asks if I know what I’m doing.

“I assure you I am quite sane. I look around at the women in our social circle, who are nothing more than well-heeled accessories to their husbands’ lives. I don’t want that kind of marriage, Justin.”

“Tell me, Vada, what kind of marriage
do
you want?”

“I want a husband who listens to me, who values my opinions, and who looks at me as more than just window dressing.” Both Father and Justin are red teakettles ready to blow. “And I want to teach.”

My father slams the table hard, making the crystal dessert bowls jump. “Vada, no Hadley woman has ever worked. Stop this ridiculous talk this instant.” He wags his spoon at my mother. “I told you, Katherine, she should have gone to college here in Charleston, but no, you had to send her off to Radcliffe to have her head filled full of this nonsense.”

“There’s nothing wrong with teaching, Father. It’s an honorable and valuable profession. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with a woman working. We might all be speaking German if women didn’t do their part during the war. Besides, I want to work.”

“Eat your cobbler, Matthew. It’s really quite good.” My mother takes a dainty little spoonful and pretends everything is fine.

“Well, no wife of mine is going to work, and that’s final.” Justin pushes back from the table and throws his linen napkin in his plate.

“Justin, whether I choose to work or choose not to work, I’ll consider your opinion, your feelings, but ultimately it’s my decision.”

“What about all of this what’s-mine-is-yours nonsense? Being partners? Doesn’t that cut both ways?”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t get up to see me out, Vada. Stay here at the table and run your little show, get it all out now while you can. After tomorrow, I will not only expect you to be more reasonable, more submissive. I’ll demand it.”

Frank didn’t bother to change clothes. He and Reggie just jumped in the Plymouth, although Reggie had said he’d rather they take his Cadillac, and the two of them headed up Highway 78, toward Memphis. Frank made it clear that he didn’t want to talk and that seemed fine by Reggie, who said he could sleep anywhere and proved it, on and off, with his head thrown against the back of the seat, snoring.

Reggie seems like a good guy. He must be if he took in Claire and her boys. Not that Claire isn’t pretty, because she is, but with three boys, she’s lucky she didn’t end up with Mr. Stanley. Frank smiles at how incensed Vada was when he called Claire the Widow Greeley, even more so when he suggested that accepting Mr. Stanley’s proposal might be a good thing.

A car passes in the other direction, going too fast. Frank glances down at the speedometer. It’s him who is going too fast. But he can’t get to Memphis and then back to Charleston quickly enough to suit him. Better to let off the gas a little, just so he doesn’t get pulled over. The car blows past a truck stop Frank thinks wasn’t far from the Memphis city limits. He’s had almost twelve hours to think about how to go about finding Darby O’Doul, and his best idea is to go back to the cathouse and talk to the harlot.

“How much farther?” Reggie stretches and yawns.

“Less than twenty miles, I think.” They pass a road sign confirming Frank’s guess, and by his watch, they’ve made really good time. He hates to admit it, but he’s glad to have someone along to help him find Darby. And Reggie’s a nice enough guy. “So you and Claire got married?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“That’s good. She’s a good woman.”

“Yes, she is, and I’m lucky to have her, and the boys.”

Frank slows when he gets to the Memphis-city-limit sign. He hopes he remembers his way back to the harlot’s. He doesn’t have a plan. He’s just going to ask the woman straight-up where Darby is and hope she’s not too mad at him to tell him. If she knows. And if she doesn’t, he and Reggie will hit the streets again, like he did with Vada. But what if Darby’s not in Memphis anymore? He can’t let himself think like that. He won’t.

“Vada’s a lovely girl. Looks just like her mother.”

“How well do you know her family?”

“I’ve met them a couple of times, years ago at parties, that kind of thing.”

Frank nods. “Help me look for Adams Street.” There’s probably a lot he can learn from a guy like Reggie. For one thing, he’s a snappy dresser, and he can probably give Frank some pointers when it comes time to talk with the Hadleys and ask Vada’s father for her hand before she gives it to that fancy-pants bastard Justin.

“There, on the right,” Reggie says, and Frank turns the car down Adams Street and pulls up in front of the cathouse. “I hear music, and there’s a valet. They must be having a party.”

This is new to Frank. He doesn’t feel right handing the keys to the Mayflower over to the guy in the black zoot suit, but Reggie’s halfway up the sidewalk and he doesn’t have a choice.

Reggie rings the bell, and a tall colored man dressed in a Sunday suit answers the door. “Good evening. Pardon me, gentlemen, but I don’t recognize you.”

“I’m here to see Kittie Wentworth. She knows me.” Frank nods toward Reggie. “He’s with me.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Frank Darling.”

He raises his eyebrows like either he doesn’t believe Frank or he’s heard about him from the harlot. “Sorry to have to leave you gents standing out here, but I’ll be right back.”

Reggie buttons the top button on the collar of his shirt and then straightens his shirtsleeves. “Must be quite the party.”

“It’s a whorehouse.”

“No! In this neighborhood?”

“I thought the same thing when I was here with Vada.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I love courtesans. They’re such fascinating women.”

“We’re not here for that.”

The door opens, and the same gentleman nods them in. “This your first time at the manor?” he asks Reggie.

“At manors as a whole, of course not, but at this one, yes.”

“Miss Wentworth likes for her guests to have a few drinks and socialize a little in the parlor first.” He points toward the large room where the harlot attempted to show Frank her trophies. A jazzy tune is playing on the hi-fi. “You’ll meet all the girls who aren’t working right now. Pick one or two, and then head on upstairs.”

“Lovely,” Reggie says.

“But Miss Kittie wants to see
you
right now,” he says to Frank.

“Give me a minute with my friend.” Frank pulls Reggie to the side. “Find out what you can, and I’ll go take care of the Wentworth dame.”

“What exactly does ‘taking care’ entail, Frank?”

“I don’t know, but I’m convinced she was stringing Vada along and knows something more about Darby than she let on. I’m not leaving here until I know what that is.”

Reggie gives a curt nod and heads into the parlor, where a half dozen girls immediately throw themselves at him.
Some help he’s going to be.
Frank shakes his head and starts up the stairs.

“Oh, a glass of champagne would be lovely,” Reggie says to the tall blonde. He looks around the room at the handful of men; all of them are old, or at least older than Reggie, portly. Most are rather unfortunate-looking. But their suits and the gold and diamond rings on their big fat fingers scream new money.

Lesley used to tease Reggie about always having to be the prettiest man in the room. He wonders if the sadness he feels will ever go away, but suspects it won’t. There has always been a part of him that pined for Lesley whenever they were apart, and it’s no different after his death. Maybe a half lifetime with Claire and the boys will make the feeling subside, but Reggie hopes it will never go away completely. It’s the last bit of Lesley he has to hang on to.

A beautiful girl with green eyes hands him a glass of what is surprisingly good champagne and runs her hand down his leg. “I’m Charity. What’s your name, handsome? You like redheads?”

“How rude of me. Reginald Palmer Sheridan the third, but you may call me Reggie. And, of course, I love all of you.” He sips on his bubbly as the rest of the courtesans introduce themselves. “Tell me, girls, have you ever been to Rome?”

A sassy brunette named Violet throws back her head and laughs. “No, but I meet a lot of roamin’ . . . hands, that is.”

All the girls cackle. Reggie nods at the waiter, who promptly refills his glass. “In Rome, what you do is highly valued.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Reggie,” a stunningly beautiful mulatto girl named Belle purrs. “We’re highly valued, the best in the great state of Tennessee. Why don’t you let me show you?”

“I’m sure you are, my lovely. As I was saying, the Italians have always held their courtesans in high esteem and have thought of your profession as necessary as lawyers, doctors.”

After Reggie holds court for a while, the tall dark waiter nods at one of the girls, and the prettiest one leans forward to reveal breasts that seem awfully large for a woman with such a delicate frame. “Oh, Reggie, I have a thing or two I’d like to teach you. Pick me.” As an artist, Lesley rather liked the Botticelli-esque women, but they never held Reggie’s interest.

As he converses with the girls, he tries to decide which one is the most savvy and might know more about what goes on at the bordello than who is going to pop the cork on the next bottle of champagne. He settles on the mulatto girl, who seems very bright and might have a bead on the servants, as well as the courtesans, and they start up the gaudy staircase. Her beautiful dark eyes flirt with Reggie until about halfway up, then her look changes. “Why did you pick me?” she asks flatly.

“Because you’re especially lovely, Belle.”

She shakes her head and pulls him aside at the top of the stairs. “Look, I know your kind. You’re not here to be entertained, and I have to work tonight. What do you want?”

“Can we go to your room?” Reggie pulls two twenty-dollar bills out of his wallet. “Please.”

She nods, takes the money, and they start down the long hallway. The moaning and the squeaking of bedsprings competes with the jazz music from downstairs. She opens the door to a large bedroom, and Reggie steps inside. Unlike the rest of the house Reggie has seen, this room is tastefully decorated, well-appointed, and quite different from the rest of the house. “Ah,
siège d’amour
,” he says, plopping down astride the sex chair. “I’ve never seen one of these stateside. This one is quite lovely with the carvings, the gold filigree, a true work of art.”

“There’s one in every room, but you didn’t come here for that.”

“No, I guess I didn’t.” Reggie traces the outline of one of the stirrups. “Do you believe in love, Belle?”

“No,” she says flatly.

“A beautiful woman like you? You have to. You must.”

“Maybe by the hour.” Her hands are on her hips. “I’m going to ask you one more time what you want, and then I’m going to ask you to leave.”

“That gentleman you saw me come in with downstairs—”

“Is he your lover? Did you come here for a room?”

“No. Frank’s a friend. Well, he’s not really a friend, but he’s very deeply in love. Frank has all but lost this woman he’s mad about, and he’s trying desperately to get her back. To do that, he’s trying to give her the one thing she wants most in this world.”

“Are you sure he’s not like you? As good as that man looks, he ought to know what that woman wants.”

“Her name is Vada, and she’s so very angry at Frank, she’s marrying someone else for spite, and very soon, if this trip is all for naught. A few weeks ago, Vada came here looking for her friend, who I understand got in a bit of trouble with your employer.”

“We all walk a tight line here. I’ve got a good job, and Miss Kittie’s hard, but she’s fair. I think you’d better go.”

“I’m sorry. I told you about Frank and the woman he loves, because I’d hoped to gain your sympathies. So I’ll just ask you outright. Do you know Darby O’Doul?” After a long silence, he peels off another twenty and hands it to Belle.

“Yes.” She looks at the bills folded up in his hand and nods. He peels off another one.

“Do you know where she is?”

“Yes.”