Peach Pies and Alibis (26 page)

“Watch out!” Maurelle shouted, and Ella Mae focused on the road again, swerving around
a tree branch as wide and solid as a bodybuilder’s leg.

“I feel like I’m in a video game,” Ella Mae said once she had the Jeep back under
control. She didn’t speak again until a mobile home appeared from out of the gloom.
Once, it had been white, but now it was a shade of sickly yellow mottled by bold patches
of rust. The clearing surrounding the trailer had become overgrown with weeds and
brambles. A broken lawn chair must have been toppled by the wind, for one of its metal
arms was buried in the mud and its blue- and green-striped fabric was torn and faded.

“I’m guessing today was a lousy one for tips. Sorry about that,” Ella Mae said as
she pulled to a stop. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to apologize to Maurelle,
but she did. Perhaps it had to do with how little joy seemed to be in Maurelle’s life.
She’d battled cancer, didn’t have any close family or friends except for Candis, and
rented a beat-up trailer in the middle of nowhere.

Maurelle looked eager to escape. Her hand was already on the door handle. “Actually,
I made out pretty well. Mr.
Templeton said that after all the talking he did, he owed me as much as he paid his
therapist, plus extra for delivering all the hand pies to his office in the middle
of a storm.” She patted her hip pocket. “Trust me, I did okay.”

Ella Mae sensed she was about to cross a line, but she forged ahead anyway. “Maurelle,
why do you live here? Am I not paying you enough? Because if that’s the case, we should
definitely talk about your salary.”

Flicking her eyes briefly at the dilapidated mobile home, Maurelle shook her head.
“My wages are totally fair and the tips are above average. It’s just that I have lots
of debt. The rent here is dirt cheap and that’s what I needed. Yeah, it looks like
a dump, but it’s quiet and the deer run through my yard at dawn and dusk, which is
pretty cool. I’m not really an apartment kind of girl. I can’t live in a box stacked
up on a bunch of other boxes. I need to be around a few trees.”

Recalling how difficult it had been to adjust to the Manhattan high-rise she’d shared
with Sloan, Ella Mae nodded in understanding. “I get that. There’s nothing like stepping
out your front door and inhaling a deep breath of sun-drenched grass, pine, honeysuckle,
and wild onion.”

“Yeah,” Maurelle agreed, and Ella Mae knew that it was time to let her go.

“Do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?” she asked.

Maurelle opened the door and jumped out into the rain. “No, thanks!” she shouted over
the wind and water. “I’m all set!”

With Ella Mae’s towel draped over her head and shoulders, the slim, dark-haired young
woman dashed over the saturated ground, up a pair of rotted wooden stairs, and into
the mobile home.

Ella Mae put the Jeep into reverse and prayed that she’d make it back to Partridge
Hill alive. “I can just see me driving into a sinkhole. That would be the perfect
way to end
this insane day,” she muttered, peering at the road in between the frenzied passes
of her wiper blades. At the end of the tunnel of trees, a thin ribbon of lightning
flashed across the gray sky. Ella Mae wasn’t sure if it was a beacon beckoning her
home or a warning that she was heading deeper into the storm.

That evening, Reba and the LeFayes gathered around the fireplace in Partridge Hill’s
library. On the other side of the large windows, the rain continued to fall. It had
grown less violent as the afternoon gave way to night and no longer resembled a roaring
lion. Now it merely scratched and whined at the door like a hungry tomcat, and the
women were too focused on their conversation to pay it any mind.

Verena handed Ella Mae a glass of wine and sniffed the air. “Is that your beef stew,
Reba? I hope so, because I’m famished!”

Reba nodded. “Sure is. Should be done in about thirty minutes. And I made a big pot
of wild rice just for you. I know how you like to have somethin’ to catch up all the
gravy.”

“You’re a treasure!” Verena exclaimed. “Now, on to business. Earlier today, Buddy
made a call to a friend at the Atlanta office of the Environmental Protection Agency.
He’d had an aide drive the cheese from Melissa Carlisle’s house straight to their
lab as soon as Reba collected it for us, and the results are in. As we suspected,
the cheese was contaminated with
Listeria
.”

Sissy set her wineglass down and sighed theatrically. “But we
still
don’t know if Freda ate the same cheese.”

“No, we don’t,” Dee agreed. “Adelaide asked Peter and Candis, but neither of them
can remember what became of the cheese sampler the Shermans prepared for the Shaws.”

Ella Mae, who was wrapped in a luxurious silk blanket
embroidered with wild roses, shook her head in astonishment. “That’s kind of odd,
don’t you think? Either the Shermans are lying or Peter and Candis are lying. And
I don’t think the Shermans could have lied to me if they wanted to. The confession
pie was really potent.”

“That’s for certain, judging from what Opal divulged!” Verena cried, shooting a meaningful
glance at Ella Mae’s mother.

“I’m more interested in why Opal Gaynor wanted Sloan to take me away from Havenwood
seven years ago,” Ella Mae said quickly, hoping to save her mother further discomfort.

Reba took a sip of whiskey from a red Solo cup. “Guess you can ask her Saturday night.”
She grinned gleefully. “I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when you show
up in the sacred grove, my girl.”

Ella Mae’s mother studied her with a worried expression. “No more enchantments for
you until you recover from today’s labors. You can ask Maurelle if she remembers seeing
Candis take a box of cheese home with her from the Shermans’ farm. Other than that,
no more magic. You need to rest up for the harvest.”

Relaxing her tired body against the soft cushions of the couch, Ella Mae murmured
her assent. Her aunts began to discuss whether Tilda Gaynor would ever make a good
Lady of the Ash. Ella Mae listened for a few moments, but then her focus shifted to
the dancing orange and yellow flames in the fireplace. The fire’s warmth coaxed the
tension from her muscles, and the soft crackle of wood allowed her mind and body to
slowly relax. Her eyelids began to grow heavy, and she decided to close them just
for a second.

Before she knew it, Reba was shaking her gently on the shoulder with one hand while
balancing a bowl of steaming beef stew in the other.

“Eat up. You need your protein. I added extra carrots just
like I used to when you were little.” Reba smiled as Ella Mae cupped the bowl between
her palms. “You were so wild about carrots. Remember how I’d call you Flopsy every
time you wanted them for a snack?”

“I remember asking you not to call me that at the bus stop,” Ella Mae murmured groggily
and raised a forkful of stew to her mouth. The blend of garlic, onion, paprika, beer,
and a healthy splash of Worcestershire was as comforting as the blanket around her
shoulders.

Sissy dabbed her lips with a napkin and pointed a finger at Ella Mae. “You had
such
a terrible sweet tooth when you were a girl. We were certain you’d have a mouth full
of cavities before you graduated high school. That’s why Reba took to chewing licorice
sticks, you know. You never really liked them, so it was the
one
candy she could keep around.”

“I stole one of her packs once,” Ella Mae admitted solemnly. “Ate the whole thing
even though I didn’t really want them. That’s one of the memories I used to make the
confession pies. I can still remember how terrible I felt about taking something Reba
loved without asking her first.”

“Oh, sugar. You were such a good girl,” Reba said, her nut brown eyes growing moist.
“You shouldn’t be feelin’ bad over somethin’ so small and unimportant.”

Ella Mae looked around at her family. They sat in a semicircle with her in the center,
as if even here, in the only house she’d ever known, she needed protecting. She searched
their dear faces and felt such a powerful rush of affection for each of them that
she longed to jump out of her chair and embrace them all. Instead, in a thick voice,
she said, “This is why I can’t understand why someone would volunteer to be the Lady.
If I lost any of you to that awful sacrifice, I’d never recover.”

“People do it to protect and serve our kind, but also to elevate their own family,”
Dee explained. “The Lady is our
ultimate authority and she speaks through a living relative. A translator of sorts.
Let’s say I became the Lady—”

“Heaven forbid!” Verena interrupted. “You’re too gentle, Sister. The Lady needs to
make difficult decisions. And we could never be separated! It’s always been the four
of us.”

“I’m just using myself as an example.” Dee gave Verena a reassuring pat and turned
back to Ella Mae. “One of my sisters would speak for me, earning a revered position
in our community. People bring gifts to the Lady’s family and see them through hardships.
Her relatives become wealthy, influential, and protected. No one is allowed to deliberately
hurt someone who shares the Lady’s blood.”

“The punishment for that offense is truly
awful
,” Sissy whispered. “You’re taken to the grove and stripped of your gifts. The old
tales say that the pain is like being burned alive.”

Ella Mae finished her stew and put the bowl aside. Ignoring Sissy’s dramatic statement,
she frowned. “Money and power, huh? I can see why the Gaynors want someone in their
clan to volunteer. I assumed that because Melissa didn’t have any family, she wanted
to become the Lady for the greater good, but what about Freda? She doesn’t strike
me as someone who’s completely willing to give up the rest of her life for any of
the reasons you’ve mentioned.”

“It’s a calling,” Dee said. “Some people hear it and some don’t. Freda told the elders
she felt the urge to volunteer the moment she heard about Melissa Carlisle’s death.”

Verena shook her head. “I wish I knew how to wake her up! If Freda keeps sleeping,
we’ll have to agree to Tilda Gaynor as our next Lady, and Havenwood will not be the
same. For one thing, Buddy won’t be mayor much longer!”

“Change comes with
every
new Lady,” Sissy said, directing her statement at Ella Mae. “I can remember our grandmother
telling us how the Lady of her time insisted that we
pool our money to purchase large tracts of land. The land was donated back to the
town and was quickly turned into wildlife sanctuaries and parks. Without that Lady’s
guidance, we’d have housing developments instead of nature trails. But some families
fought the movement tooth and nail. They thought they could leave the preservation
of the parks, the island in the middle of Lake Havenwood, and the forests surrounding
the town to the
next
generation.”

Dee turned down Reba’s offer of more wine and leaned forward in her seat. “It’s all
right to be frightened of this ritual, Ella Mae. Life is totally different after you’ve
been Awakened, and you’ve had so little time to adjust. Hopefully, you’ll see how
beautiful and moving the transfer ceremony is come Saturday. When the Lady is reborn,
we’ll celebrate our uniqueness with food and dancing and song. Two times each year,
we are all one family. It sounds cliché to say that it’s magical, but it is. It’s
one of the most enchanting nights you’ll ever know.”

Ella Mae liked the sound of that. “When’s the second occasion?”

“The spring equinox,” her mother said. “Your birthday.”

A log collapsed in the fireplace, sending a burst of sparks up the flume.

“And the anniversary of my father’s death,” Ella Mae added softly, looking directly
at her mother.

The room filled with a weighted silence. The lick of flames and the snap of kindling
were the only sounds. Ella Mae’s mother turned to stare at the fire, and for a long
moment, she became lost in its light.

“I told you that our kind was cursed,” she said in a low voice tinged with anger.
“We can’t have children without paying a horrible price. Your father was not of our
kind, but he wasn’t like other people either. He was…a man of the earth. We were foolish.
We thought that we could trick
the curse, but we were wrong. Terran paid for our mistake with his life.”

Ella Mae swallowed hard. “And I was the mistake.”

“No!” her mother shouted, startling everyone. “But I’ve always been afraid to love
you. I’ve always been afraid that the curse wasn’t done—that it would take you from
me too. I thought that if I kept you at a distance, then you’d be safe.” Her hazel
eyes grew watery. “That was my second mistake.”

Adelaide LeFaye never cried, and so Ella Mae was unsettled to see tears spill onto
her cheeks. She rushed to her mother, throwing her arms around her. Ella Mae whispered,
“I’m here, Mom. I’m right here. And we have years and years ahead of us.” She ran
a hand over her mother’s black hair, reveling in the silkiness of her thick tresses
and the scent of roses, fertile soil, and moonlight clinging to each strand. “I’m
sorry you lost the man you loved,” she said, drawing back to look at her mother’s
face. “But at least that love was true. No one can take that from you.”