Roses (16 page)

“It’s just as I expected,” Beatrice announced irritably. “I told Mayor Harper that the parade ought to be scheduled for later
in the week when we’ve all had the opportunity to catch our breaths, but he wanted to save all these people a second trip
into town. Abel wants to take Ollie home. The poor boy is worn out.”

“So is Miles,” Mary said, “and he’s eager to see Mama.”

“Well, we can’t all fit in the Packard,” Lucy pointed out, sidling close to Percy with an oblique look at Mary.

“We are aware of that, Lucy.” Beatrice cast her a sour look. “Miles, dear, you and Mary go with Abel, and let’s all meet up
at the house about four o’clock to drive into town. With hope, that will give the boys time to have some rest.”

There were murmurs of agreement as bags were gathered and hoisted. Beatrice took the flowers from her husband’s arms and shoved
one of the arrangements into Lucy’s. “Kindly help me take these to the car, Lucy,” she said.

“But, I—” Lucy protested through the spikes of gladiola screening her face.

“Now, if you please,” Beatrice ordered, giving her son and Mary a wink over her shoulder as she marched Lucy off.

Left alone, Percy removed his hands from his pockets and took her by the shoulders. “I’ll take you and Miles home after the
hoopla is over tonight,” he said. “Plan to stay up with me so we can talk. Don’t deny me this, Mary.”

“I won’t,” she whispered, almost woozy from the blood pounding in her head.

He smiled for the first time. “That’s my girl,” he said with a swift stroke of her dimple before following his parents and
Lucy to the Packard.

M
ary waited in the parlor while Miles went upstairs to their mother’s room. Hugging herself—her tendency in times of despair—she
stood before one of the French doors that opened to what was once a magnificent rose garden. A few bushes had survived her
mother’s vicious attack several nights after the will was read. Most had succumbed to the crowbar used to beat them to the
ground while the household slept. Toby had found the severed red and white blossoms and slashed stalks early the next morning
and gone in search of the weapon, fearing his mistress might take it into her head to give her daughter the same treatment
as she lay in her bed.

The rosebushes had not been replanted, and now weeds and grass grew over the desecration, mercifully hidden from the street
by a trellis in need of a fresh coat of white paint. Only a few bloomed bravely on spindly stalks here at the end of the season.

There was no liquor in the house, and Mary wished she’d thought to ask Toby to buy a bottle of champagne for her brother’s
homecoming. They wouldn’t have been able to share it with their mother, of course, but the two of them could have celebrated
with a quiet toast in the parlor.

Not that there was much to celebrate. Her brother was a sick, fractious man, even more of a stranger now than when he had
left. On the drive home, he had sat in a resentful silence broken only by fits of coughing into a handkerchief. Once in the
house, he’d set his army duffels by the door, as if he didn’t mean to stay but had merely stopped by to see his mother before
setting off for another war. He’d embraced Sassie warmly but left her welcome-home meal cooling on the table set with their
finest tableware. “I don’t feel like eating,” he’d said. “I’ll have a sandwich later in my room.”

And poor, dear Ollie. The jollity he’d assumed for the crowd had evaporated once he was seated in his father’s new Cadillac,
one of the first of its kind manufactured by Henry Ford. Abel had bought the elegant motorcar as a homecoming present, but
Ollie was unable to drive with his right leg gone. Abel was still in shock over his son’s amputation. It was an old man who
led the group to the Cadillac where it was parked with the Packard among Howbutker’s less modern conveyances.

And then there was Percy. He owed Ollie his life. Did Percy know of Ollie’s promise to her? Had he taken the blast on their
behalf? Those two were closer than brothers. Maybe Ollie had acted instinctively out of love for his best friend, with no
thought of his vow to her at all. But if Ollie
had
saved Percy for their sakes, what was her obligation to either of them?

She’d get a better picture of the situation when she and Percy had a chance to talk tonight, but the answer to her most pressing
question she already knew. Percy’s feelings for her had not changed.

Neither had hers for him. If anything, they had strengthened in the time he’d been away. Every morning she’d awakened thinking
of him, and every night she’d gone to bed with his safety the utmost concern on her mind. There had been times when she’d
shaken awake from a nightmare in which the worst fear of her life had come to pass—worse even than losing the plantation.
She’d dreamed that Percy had been killed.

So that left her in a dilemma. Percy would expect her to be over Somerset by now, but she was more determined than ever to
hold on to it. By all that was holy, she deserved that reward for her sacrifices. When Miles left, naming Emmitt Waithe as
trustee in his absence, she’d fired Jethro Smart, the overseer she’d hired to replace Len Deeter, and assumed his job, sometimes
working eighteen hours a day. With Emmitt’s cooperation and under her uncompromising hand, Somerset began to pay. Its profits
allowed her to increase the mortgage payments, making it possible to repair the debt several years in advance of the bank
contract.

True, there had been no money left for nonessentials. She was sure to catch grief from Miles when he saw the run-down condition
of the house and the lack of help, but the day was drawing nearer when they’d be able to modernize the house and replace their
horse and buggy with a motorcar.

Also, if her mother’s health did not require further expensive treatment and if the harvest was as abundant as predicted,
there would be money to pour back into the land, making it more productive. Already, now that the war was over, industry and
science were addressing the needs of the farmer. New methods of cultivation were being tried. More efficient equipment, improved
seeds, and a new substance called insecticide for combating destructive pests like the boll weevil were coming on the market.
They were all within Somerset’s grasp once the mortgage was settled.

How in the world would Percy fit into her plans? Would he be willing to accept her
and
Somerset? Had his war experiences softened or hardened his views against sharing his wife with the risky venture of a cotton
plantation? He would soon turn twenty-five. He would want to settle down, have children, return to the family business. She
wanted that, too, more than anything in the world.

But not at the cost of Somerset. She could never, ever give up the plantation. That would mean betraying her father and his
father and all the Tolivers before them who had wrested the land from the forests, had sweated and toiled, sacrificed and
died, for the thousands of acres they lived to see swelling with the pride of their labor. No way in tarnation would she sacrifice
Somerset for the sake of male pride! But… she loved Percy. He was a thorn in her side she couldn’t pull out, no matter how
hard she tried. She wanted him, she needed him. She had no doubt of that now. He meant to wait no longer, and she was not
confident of her strength to resist him.

“She looks bad.”

At the window, Mary jumped.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Miles slouched into the room with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his ill-fitting
trousers. He had changed into civilian clothes and was looking around the parlor with the air of someone in a waiting room,
uncertain of where to sit. “Mama looks terrible, doesn’t she? That place you sent her to really wrung her out.”

Mary felt a sting of indignation. “Actually, she looked quite well when she left the sanitarium,” she said, careful to keep
a calm tone. “Emmitt thought she seemed a lot like her old self, but she caught a cold in the train on the way home from Denver
that turned into pneumonia. It’s taken a toll on her.”

“She says you sent her away to that sanitarium in Denver to get her out of your hair while you got in last year’s harvest.”

“Oh, Miles, that’s not true!” Her voice rose in frustration. “She required professional help to cope with her. You can’t believe
the ruses, the lengths she went to, for a bottle. She was so offensive to the sitters I hired that none of them would stay
on, and Sassie was worn out.”

“What about you? Where were you?”

“You know very well where I was. I had to get the harvest in. You’re aware of the work involved in running a plantation. It’s
a year-long, day-in-and-day-out, sunup-to-sundown business.”

Miles’s look was piercing. “It doesn’t have to be. If that land had been sold when Papa died, none of this would have happened.”

Mary bit off a reply, but not before a tremor passed through her. It was a question she refused to consider—how different
things might have been. She lifted a silver pot from a tray. “Would you like a cup of coffee? And there’s gingerbread here.
Sassie made it especially for you.”

“No thanks. Tell me about Mama. Do you think she’ll ever get better?”

“She’s not yet what is called a recovered alcoholic.” Mary sipped the hot coffee to soften her tight throat. “She still craves
liquor, and we were warned—”

“We?”

“Emmitt Waithe and myself. He’s been helping me to deal with her. I don’t know what I would have done without him. He found
the sanitarium for Mama. He went with me on the train to Denver and helped me bring her home.”

“Out of guilt, no doubt.”

“It was out of compassion.” Mary forced patience into her defense of their lawyer. “We were told that Mama would have to be
watched for years before she could be allowed to come and go as she pleased. Sit down, Miles, and we’ll talk. Or would you
rather go to your room and rest awhile?”

“We’ll talk.” He plopped down on the sofa and hung his hands between his bony knees, his head down. After a moment he said,
“She asked me for a drink.”

“Oh, Miles, no….” Mary had not considered the possibility that her mother would try to wheedle a drink out of Miles—depended
on it, come to think of it. Ever since she’d been told of Miles’s arrival date, her mother’s color had been higher, her eyes
brighter, as if she were harboring a secret. Mary thought the new animation was due to her son coming home, but now she realized
she’d been anticipating he’d supply her with liquor.

“What did you tell her?” She eyed her brother warily. Miles had always been putty in their mother’s hands.

“I told her no, of course.”

“What did she do?”

Miles raked a hand through his dull, thinning hair, releasing dandruff that caught like dust motes in the autumn sunlight
filtering through the sheers. “She didn’t throw a fit, if that’s what you’re asking. At least she’s past that stage. She looked
like a doll with all the stuffing yanked out, that’s all.”

Mary sat next to him. “I thought you were the reason she was getting better, not the bottle she’d hoped you’d bring.”

“Well, I wasn’t, was I,” Miles said, his tone peevish. He linked his hands and gazed downcast at the floor.

Mary placed a hand on his shoulder. “What is it, Miles? You seem so disappointed in everything. Aren’t you happy to be home?”

He stood abruptly and jammed his hands into his pockets, then commenced to pace about the room, shoulders hunched—a familiar
indication to Mary that he was working up nerve to tell her something. “I’m not staying,” he said at last. “I want to go back
to France. There’s a nurse there, a woman who brought me back to health, what little there is left of it—” A bout of coughing
interrupted him. When he’d recovered, he faced his sister directly. “My lungs are shattered, Mary Lamb, and I don’t know how
much time I have left.”

“Miles, dear…”

He held up a desisting hand. “I’m not being maudlin. You know me better than that. I’m only being frank. What time I have
left, I want to spend with Marietta. There’s something else. I’ve… become a Communist.”

“Miles!”
Mary leaped up. “You can’t be!” She was surprised at the depth of her dismay. This was nothing unusual. Her brother tried
on every new political affiliation to come along, only to discard it when the next faction appeared waving its flags. But
a Toliver… a
Communist
!

“I knew you’d react this way,” Miles said, “and I know you think this is just another cause I’ve leaped onto, but you’re wrong.
The Bolshevik rebellion is the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. It will do more for the world than—”

“Oh, stop!
Stop!
” Mary covered her ears. “I will not hear another word in this house in defense of a political system more bloodthirsty than
the one it replaced. Communist indeed!” She could not tone down her disgust. “What about this Marietta? Does she share the
same political delusions?”

“She’s a sworn member of the Communist Party.”

“Oh, good Lord!” Mary turned away wearily. “So what are you saying—that you want to go back to France to become a Communist?”

“I want to go back to France to marry Marietta. I already am a Communist.”

“Bring her over here.”

“No. The political climate for a Communist is easier over there.”

“Oh, I see….” Mary let the innuendo hang, her lip curling. “What about Mama? I’d counted on you to help out with her, to give
Sassie some relief. She and Toby and Beatrice are the only ones she’ll allow into her room. She can’t abide me.”

“In the state she’s in, dreaming of nothing but deliverance by the bottle, she doesn’t need me, Mary. You don’t, either. I’m
betting that Somerset hasn’t been in as good a shape since Papa died. You’ve probably got every poor sod out there picking
a bale a day. I’d think you’d want to get rid of me so that I won’t muck everything up.”

She wasn’t concerned that he’d interfere with her efficient management. She and Emmitt would make sure he didn’t. “It’s not
the plantation that needs you. Mama and I do. We need to become a family again.”