Roses (70 page)

Lucy rang for Betty. “I’m going on a mission out of town,” she announced. “A very important one. I’ll need a taxi to take
me to the airport.”

“How long you goin’ to be gone?”

“As long as it takes. I should be back tonight, but pack my overnight case anyway. Now scoot, dear girl. Time’s of the essence.”

Lucy picked up the tape on her way out of the room. A stroke of luck had opened her cage door, and she was ready to fly.

R
achel looked up from the final page of the family history and took her dumbstruck gaze to the pink explosion of queen’s crown,
busy with pollination, draped along the wrought-iron fence. Fertilization in action, she thought numbly, an accomplishment
that seemed to have eluded the Somerset Tolivers. The buzz mocked the facts she’d never known or realized. None who had possessed
the plantation had been prolific sires or bearers of children, and only one child in each generation had lived to inherit.
Thomas and Vernon had been the sole heirs in theirs, and Aunt Mary’s only child had died in hers, leaving, with her father’s
death, only Rachel as the remaining Toliver. She stared at the antiquated volume. Did she hold here the explanation of the
Toliver curse?

It wasn’t possible. There was no such thing as a curse. But her great-grandfather had believed in it, and so had Aunt Mary.
She’d told Amos that she had saved her from it. Dear God… had Aunt Mary feared that by leaving her Somerset, she was sentencing
her to the barren state she’d known? She recalled the picture of Matthew DuMont displayed on Aunt Mary’s dressing room table,
the heartache in the words written on the back. Her father had described him as a wonderful fellow—kind and patient, teaching
him English and allowing him to participate in the big-boy games he and Wyatt Warwick had played on their front lawns. Aunt
Mary and Uncle Ollie had been devastated when he died, he’d said. They had gone on with their lives, but life was gone. There
had been no other children….

Had Aunt Mary hoped to spare her the tragedy she’d suffered?

The kitchen phone shrilled, sending the bees into a frenzy. She jumped. A flash of intuition told her the name of the caller.
She laid the book on the patio table through a second ring, then got up with robotic stiffness to slide back the door and
enter the all-white kitchen. She removed the white receiver from the wall. “Hello.”

“Good afternoon, Rachel. This is Percy Warwick.”

She listened emotionless as he briefly informed her of his decision, wished her well, and hung up. Slowly, she returned to
the patio and sat an hour in the sun, reflecting to the hum of bees in the queen’s crown. Afterward, her own decision made,
she dialed Taylor Sutherland.

A half hour later, the doorbell rang. Rachel surmised that Carrie had forgotten her house keys again or Taylor had come around
to hold her hand. A squint through the peephole proved both guesses wrong. A mound of snow white hair as fluffy as cotton
candy met her eye. She moved her gaze downward to encounter a pair of oddly familiar blue eyes fixed unflinchingly on the
glass eye in the door. She opened it inquiringly. The woman had arrived in a black limousine, its liveried driver propped
against the hood, snapping a lighter to a cigarette. Her visitor—short and round, in her mid-eighties, and wearing a suit
the color of her eyes—reminded Rachel of a cupcake. “May I help you?” she said.

The woman blinked. “Hannah was right,” she said. “You’re the mirror image of Mary, only less…” She peered at Rachel more closely.
“Intense.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m Matt’s grandmother,” the woman announced. “Lucy Warwick. May I come in?”

T
HE TIME WAS SIX O’CLOCK
. The thermostat had been adjusted, and the town house was at a comfortable temperature. To hell with Carrie’s posted monition.
The telephone had rung twice and gone unanswered. Rachel had not moved from her chair once Matt’s grandmother clicked on the
tape recorder. Through the living room window, at some level of awareness, she registered the driver pacing by the limousine,
cigarette smoke streaming like dragon fire from his nostrils. The man was probably hot and thirsty and needed to use the facilities,
but she could not have stirred from her chair to offer water and a bathroom if her life had depended on it.

There had been no exchange of pleasantries, no time to offer coffee or tea. Wielding her cane, Lucy Warwick had thumped straight
into the living room, sat down, and unsnapped her purse. “You’re going to listen to this, girl, whether you want to or not,”
she’d said, extracting a tape recorder and plunking it on the table. “There are things you don’t know about you Tolivers and
a hell of a lot you don’t know about the man you seem bent on sending to an early death. So sit down and listen and then I’ll
be gone, and you can do what you have to do.”

So she had listened, her pity for Percy and Aunt Mary starting as a trickle and then building to a full stream as the tape
unreeled the hidden years of their tragic lives. Overlaying it, she recognized her own short history, like the superimposed
reflection of her face over the young Mary Toliver’s in the glass of the photographer’s portrait hanging in the library. She’d
often thought, standing before it, that if a picture of her in the same pose hung beside it, their faces would line up feature
for feature, plane for plane… as her life so far had repeated Aunt Mary’s.

“There now, that’s done,” Lucy said, whisking the tape back into her purse. She snapped it shut and planted the cane to rise.
“I hope that tomorrow you’ll take into account what you’ve heard here today.”

“You came too late, Mrs. Warwick,” Rachel said. “Percy called earlier to tell me his decision, and I’ve contacted my lawyer
with mine. By now he’s informed Amos Hines.”

Lucy’s plump face whitened, then fell. “Oh, I see….”

“No, I don’t think you do. Please don’t go, and I’ll explain.”

“I’m in no mood for whitewash, young lady.”

“How about the unvarnished truth?”

A
TLANTA
, G
EORGIA, A WEEK LATER

C
rossing the hall to the parlor where her mistress was hosting two tables of bridge, Betty glanced through the screen of the
decorative outer door to see a chauffeured black Lincoln Town Car drive up before the town house. The chauffeur hopped out
immediately, and Betty nearly dropped the plate of sandwiches she’d been on her way to serve when he opened the door to the
passenger in the backseat.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said aloud, setting the plate on the foyer table and smoothing her apron. “Oh, my goodness.”

She’d never met him or seen him except for newspaper shots when he was younger, but she knew who he was. She watched him climb
out, elderly as you might expect, but matching the image she’d had of him in her mind all these years. She’d pictured a tall,
distinguished man, wearing fine clothes and carrying himself in a way that communicated power without shouting it… a true
massa
. Her awe turned to dismay when the chauffeur handed him a vase containing a single red rose. Miss Lucy hated roses.

Betty hurriedly closed the pocket doors of the parlor, muffling the between-hands chatter, and stationed herself before the
screen. The chauffeur, resettled behind the wheel of the limousine, had laid his head back and tipped his hat forward, as
if anticipating time for a snooze.

“Good afternoon,” she said through the screen as Percy reached the porch. “Mister Percy Warwick, I’m thinkin’.”

He acknowledged her assumption with a nod of his silver head. “Betty,” he returned as familiarly as if he’d known her for
years. “Is my wife at home?”

“She is, sir.” Betty unlocked the door and held it open for him. “She’s playin’ bridge with her lady friends in the parlor.”

“Her Sunday gathering, I presume?”

“Yessir. Would you mind waitin’ in the foyer while I tell her? I… don’t believe she’s expectin’ you.”

“No, she isn’t,” Percy said, “but I’m sure she won’t mind the interruption.” He held out the vase. “And will you please give
her this?”

“Oh, sir—” Betty’s face screwed up. “She don’t like roses.”

He smiled. “She will this one.”

The plate of sandwiches forgotten, Betty slid open one of the pocket doors and closed it behind her, holding the vase at arm’s
length as if it were a dripping diaper. “Miss Lucy, you have a visitor.”

Lucy eyed the rose balefully. “Why are you whispering? And what in God’s name is that?”

“It’s a rose, Lucy,” one of the bridge ladies enlightened her.

Lucy snapped a look at her. “I can see that, Sarah Jo. Where did it come from?”

“Your husband,” Betty said. “He’s in the foyer.”

All heads in hues denoting ages over seventy turned in concert to Lucy, who shot up from the bridge table, sloshing coffee
into saucers. “What? Percy is here?”

“Yes’m. Outside in the foyer.”

“But he can’t be….”

The parlor doors slid open. “But I am,” Percy said, entering. “Hello, Lucy.”

Now all gawping mouths and dilated eyes turned to the dark-suited figure of legend and speculation. He nodded and smiled.
“Ladies, would you mind excusing us? I have something urgent to discuss with my wife.”

Immediately, the ladies rolled back their chairs and hastily collected handbags and canes. The more audacious among them shook
hands with Percy as they filed past and murmured that it was nice to have met Lucy’s husband at last. Lucy stood as if flash
frozen and Betty as if uncertain whether to go with the group or stay with the rose. “Uh, Miss Lucy, what do you want me to
do with this?”

Lucy snapped to. “Take it to the kitchen and add water to it,” she said. “I’ll call you if we need anything.” Left alone with
her husband, she said, “What are you doing here, Percy?”

“After what you did for us, surely you know?”

“Rachel had already spoken with her lawyer by the time I saw her. I could have saved myself a trip. What good did I do?” The
backs of her wobbly legs had found her chair, and she managed to lower herself into it with a semblance of grace.

“You confirmed to her that she’d made the right decision. Because of you, she and Matt now have a chance.”

“I don’t know that I did him any favor.”

Percy chuckled and rolled out another bridge chair, seating himself with the ease of the master of the house. “We’ll have
to wait and see, but my bet’s on the two of them living happily ever after. He’s gone after her. She took off to San Angelo
to help a laid-up A and M classmate run his cotton farm until he’s back on his feet.”

Short of breath, she fought the urge to fan herself. “Tell me, what made you call Rachel’s bluff? Weren’t you taking an awful
gamble with our grandson’s birthright?”

“Maybe, but I looked to the rock and the quarry, you see.”

“The rock and quarry?”

“From the scriptures. Isaiah 51, verse 1.”

Lucy looked at him in exasperation. “You’re not going to be more specific than that?”

“I gambled she’d do the right thing—like her great-aunt.”

Lucy dropped her gaze to wipe at a spill on the bridge table lest she appear to be absorbing his features. Age had done its
work, but not unkindly. His looks could still break her heart. “What’s the rose for?”

“Oh, just a general asking forgiveness for the way things turned out—to say I’m sorry they couldn’t have been better for you.”

An ache ballooned in her throat, and she clamped her jaw tight, daring herself to show tears. It was a moment before she trusted
herself to speak. “They weren’t any better for you, Percy, due to me. And I wronged Mary terribly. If only I’d known from
the beginning how you felt about each other, I’d have had… other expectations. I’d have made do with your friendship. It would
have been enough.”

“You deserved more, Lucy.”

She gave a short “
Humph
” and said, “Didn’t we all? Matt tells me you’re not going to divorce me. Is that true?”

“It’s true.”

“Well, that’s… nice of you.” She made a racket in her throat in her attempt to unclog it. “What are you going to do with Somerset?”

“I’ll bestow it on Texas A and M, Rachel’s alma mater, as an agricultural experimental center. The Ledbetter place will become
a museum in commemoration of the contributions the generations of Tolivers have made to Texas cotton.”

She felt her face flare with admiration. “Well, call you King Solomon. I’m sure Rachel will be very pleased.” His presence,
as always, warmed the room… like sunlight on a winter’s day. “Do you think she’ll be able to forgive you and Mary for denying
her father knowledge of his inheritance?”

“Only time will tell.” He said it with a small smile that suggested the reality they both shared—neither had a lot left. “But
speaking of that,” he said, “one of the reasons I came was to ask you to consider coming home if things work out between Matt
and Rachel. As you recall, there’s plenty of room for you to have your own space, and I’m sure they’d want their children
to have a great-grandmother around.”

Her eyes were now thoroughly stinging and her throat incapable of swallowing. Urgent, he’d said to the girls. She brushed
at some cake crumbs caught by her bosom. “I’ll… certainly give it some thought. Anything else?”

“No… I don’t think so,” he said, and to her dismay he got to his feet, a little creakily, but still in the slow way he used
to draw to his full height and square his shoulders—always a turn-on for her. “I only wanted to bring you the rose and to
express my gratitude for coming to our rescue.”

She forced herself to rise as well and her lip not to tremble. It seemed only yesterday they’d faced each other in this way.
“Good-bye, Percy,” she said, repeating her words from the train station forty years ago.

She saw the same memory float into his eyes, but unlike then, this time he placed his hand around her shoulders and smiled.
“For a little while, Lucy,” he said, and she closed her eyes to better remember the brief touch of his lips upon her cheek.