Simple Gone South (Crimson Romance) (17 page)

“Where are my Thanksgiving cinnamon rolls?” The words came out of his mouth before he realized he had forgotten the Thanksgiving tradition of Evelyn’s homemade sweet rolls. His stomach turned over. Papa had loved those rolls.
Stop. It will be okay. Lucy is coming.
He took a bite of scrambled eggs.

“Cinnamon rolls are ready and waiting.” Evelyn looked pleased that he had asked. “I want to get some protein in you before you carb up. And liquor up.” She went back to her apples.

“Evelyn has been watching Dr. Oz,” Big Mama explained as she refilled her coffee cup and Evelyn’s.

“What does Dr. Oz say about drinking a little red wine?” Brantley didn’t know the answer precisely, but he could make a good guess.

“Dr. Oz is a smart man but he can’t know everything. Just some things. You’d do well to listen at him. Quit running all over the place all the time, like you got no time. All we’ve got is time, till we don’t.” Evelyn piled the apples in the pie pan and put the crust on top.

“I’d do better to listen to you.” Brantley got up, rinsed his plate, and put it in the dishwasher.

“That too.” She covered the unbaked pie with plastic wrap and took off her apron. “Well, that’s it, I guess.” She looked around. “Miss Caroline, you sure you don’t want me to stay? I can.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Big Mama said. “I’ve got your instructions. I know just what to do.” She picked up a piece of paper from the table where Evelyn had written out a timetable for finishing the meal. “Lucy and Annelle will be here early to help.”

The sooner the better. Brantley didn’t like the idea of Big Mama being in here alone while he and Charles sat in lawn chairs in the driveway tending to the turkey.

Evelyn took a plate of cinnamon rolls out of the warming oven and set them on the table between Brantley and Miss Caroline. “Don’t do the dishes. Just put the food in the ice box and leave everything else. I want to get in that china cabinet and clean it good before I put them back up.” Evelyn had said that every holiday that Brantley could remember and probably before. Mama and Big Mama used to laugh about it and say she didn’t trust them with the good china and crystal. But they always obeyed her. “Did I write down that the congealed salad and extra iced tea are in the ice box in the garage?”

“Right here.” Big Mama showed her the list.

“All right. I’ll be at my granddaughter’s house. If you need anything, call me on that cell phone Brantley gave me for my birthday. Or send me a text.”

When she’d gone, Brantley said, “We have to remember to call her and ask a question we know the answer to.”

“Right.” Big Mama nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “She’s worried about us.”

So am I
. Except Lucy was coming, so it would be okay.

The sound of a vehicle in the driveway broke the silence. Brantley glanced out the window to see Charles emerging from his pickup truck.

He jumped to his feet and clapped his hands together. “Time to heat the oil!”

• • •

Annelle’s car was already in Miss Caroline’s driveway when Lucy arrived. She carefully lifted her food offering from the back of her vehicle. It looked nice. The burnt orange ceramic casserole dish that she’d had overnighted from Williams-Sonoma was sitting in a basket that she had lined with a linen tea towel printed with autumn leaves. The towel and the basket had also come from Williams-Sonoma. She could never remember stressing so much over what to make.

Of course, like a good southern woman she had asked Miss Caroline what she could bring. And like a perfect hostess, Miss Caroline had told her, “Not a thing.”

But they both knew that’s not how it was done. Flowers were out. Most people didn’t understand that taking flowers, especially flowers that had to be arranged, to a festive occasion only made trouble for the hostess. Wine and chocolates would have been good choices, but Annelle had beat her to the draw on that.

So it had to be food. She had thought of sweet potato casserole. She made a good one, but so did everybody else and the likelihood of it already being on the menu was high. She could make a Coca-Cola cake but from what Brantley had said, his family was pretty committed to pie. Finally, she’d hit on curried fruit. It was pretty, festive, and southern, but not a given for Thanksgiving. If Miss Caroline did not want to serve it with lunch, it would be good cold with turkey sandwiches later.

And if curried fruit was already on the menu, there was nothing she could do about it. She’d tried.

She’d tried to dress correctly too, though who knew what “dressing down” meant. She would have liked to have worn a simple dress, but she was too afraid that Brantley had meant what he said about putting his hand up her skirt at the table. Also, a dress was not as conducive to lounging around and watching football, as Brantley expected her to do.

Finally she had settled on brown leggings and a knee length tunic in fall colors. Might as well admit it. She’d had that outfit overnighted too, from Nordstrom. And the belt, gold jewelry, and bronze flats that went with it.

She was so new she squeaked. If she’d been taller, thinner, and prettier someone might have taken her for a mannequin in a store window.

“Lucy Mead.”

She jumped. Brantley had snuck up behind her.

“I thought I heard you pull up. Let me have that.” He took the basket, set it on the porch steps, and pulled her to him. “Happy Turkey Day,” he said and kissed her full on the mouth. He tasted like beer and cinnamon.

“Have you been drinking beer and eating pumpkin pie already?”

“Would that I had. No pie cutting until after the turkey. I learned that the hard way one year. Though, in my defense, I don’t know what they thought was going to happen with the pies right there on the counter and a step stool behind the door. But anyway, Evelyn’s cinnamon rolls are almost as good.” He slid his hand up her tunic and let it rest on her bottom. “I like this getup you’ve got on. Accessible.”

She jerked away. What had made her think this outfit was safer than a dress? “We are in the front yard of your grandmother’s house!” she hissed.

“We could go out back, where my dad is watching the turkey. Or better yet—to the carriage house.”

Where that scrumptious bed was.
“Or we could go inside and make merry.” But she couldn’t help but smile.

“Or that.” He gave an exaggerated sigh and picked up the basket with the casserole dish. His phone beeped. He pulled it from his pocket and checked. “My father summons. We need to check the turkey. Here.” He handed her the casserole, pulled his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and threw it open. “Go on in. They’re probably in the kitchen. I’ll see you in a minute.”

“But Brantley! I can’t just walk into Miss Caroline’s house!”

“Go on,” he said as he bounded down the steps and around the house. “She won’t care. I can’t let that turkey burn!”

Lucy almost closed the door and rang the bell but how stupid was that? She would simply explain that Brantley had opened the door and told her to go in. Miss Caroline wouldn’t hold it against her.

She stopped outside the kitchen door and wondered if Brantley had smeared her lipstick when he kissed her. She should put the curried fruit down and check that.

Then she heard her aunt’s voice. “Caroline, this must be very hard for you.”

After a pause, Miss Caroline said, “Yes, at turns. But I guess that’s been the story of our lives since the car wreck, even after seventeen years. People talk about premonitions before something happens or getting a bad feeling as it happens. There was never any of that for me. One minute I was weeding my flowerbeds and the next I was planning a funeral for my husband and my only child. Just that fast. But you move on, though it is a little poignant that Charles and Brantley are outside frying the turkey without Alden. I am so glad you and Lucy will be here. Setting those three places was so sad. But the hardest thing has been being in this kitchen without my daughter. I made tomato aspic yesterday and then remembered that Eva was the only one who liked it. I put it down the garbage disposal and indulged in some self-pity for a good long time.”

“I don’t believe anyone would say that was self-pity. I believe that is called grief,” Annelle said.

It was a shock to hear Aunt Annelle and Miss Caroline talking the way she and Missy, Lanie, and Tolly would have—though why she was surprised, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if her generation had the monopoly on friendship.

“Grief—I suppose so,” Miss Caroline went on. “But even at that, none of this is as hard as traveling to some strange city where Brantley is working and sitting in a restaurant, trying to pretend. Or worse, when Brantley would have no part of the holiday and Charles and I went it alone at the kitchen table. We always had invitations, of course, but it never seemed the thing to do. So.” Her voice filled with steel. “I am determined that this will be a good day. I know better than to try to recreate the past, but I will make this a
different
day. Charles and I are of one mind on that. Our boy is home. That’s what matters.”

Annelle murmured something else, but Lucy didn’t stay to hear. She quietly went out the front door and rang the bell, redoubling her resolve to do what she could to help this family have a happy day.

• • •

Brantley sat at the Thanksgiving table and watched his father and grandmother fall in love with Lucy. He had never seen her so charming, so beautiful. She smiled, she asked the right questions, gave the right answers. Most of all, she looked at him adoringly and laughed when he said something funny. And he found himself trying harder and harder to win her laughter.

And miraculously, it wasn’t hard. This was a happy table—and it was Lucy who made the difference. It felt like family.

They had already finished with dessert, but they remained at the table. Charles circled and poured everyone another glass of wine. “Tell us how your family usually spends Thanksgiving, Lucy. Aren’t your parents in Tibet?”

“They are.” She nodded and took a sip of her wine. “Though they go somewhere every summer, this is the first time they have been on a year-long sabbatical since I was twelve. I assume you don’t want to hear about the Thanksgiving that year we were in China. It would be a
very
short story.”

“No turkey?” Brantley asked.

“Not in the village where we were, though to call it a village is an overstatement. Eller is more of a dog than that place was a village.”

Everyone laughed with delight—again.

“But usually it’s the three of us and Annelle. Sometimes we go to some cousins’ in Charleston, but usually it’s in Oxford. Mama makes a turkey and—you’re going to think this is odd—lasagna.”

“Really?” Big Mama said.

“Her mother was Italian and she taught Mama to make really good lasagna. My daddy loves it, so we always have that. She also makes dressing, some with oysters, some without. The oysters are the Charleston influence. I don’t like them. They are the only thing that swims that I can’t abide.”

“Now, Lucy,” Brantley said. “I ask you this—do oysters really swim so much as they lie around and make pearls?”

She wrinkled her adorable little nose. “I am not all that wise in the ways of oysters. But I am wise enough in the way they taste to know that I want to stay away from them.”

“Maybe you just haven’t had the right oyster,” he said. “Perfectly fresh, on the half shell, with just a little lemon and horseradish.”

Lucy shuddered.

“I quite agree,” Big Mama said. “I think they earn their keep best by making pearls.” And she wound her fingers around the triple strand at her neck—the same ones Brantley’s mother had borrowed for special parties. He found himself wondering how they would look around Lucy’s neck.

“Pearls
are
one of the finest things in life,” Annelle chimed in. “Though I do agree with Brantley about the right oyster, and Michelle’s oyster dressing is wonderful.”

Lucy shuddered again. “Good thing that’s not all we had to eat. My parents always invite a slew of people from the university—students who can’t go home, other professors at loose ends. It’s causal and chaotic. Everybody brings something and it can get really interesting, especially from the foreign students. Once we had a big vat of tamales. There’s always some Indian food. Mama tells them to bring what they think of when they think of holiday food so there’s never any rhyme or reason to it.”

Suddenly Brantley felt like the most selfish bastard on the planet. This was Lucy’s first major holiday away from her parents. They weren’t dead, but still.

“Are you sad?” he asked. “Do you miss them?”

“I miss them.” She smiled. “But I’m not sad. Missing is part of loving, and we talk often. And I have loved today.”

Everyone laughed again. What she’d said wasn’t funny but they laughed because they were delighted with her—something he understood.

“So, Lucy,” Charles said. “What food do you think of when you think of Thanksgiving?”

She laughed. “Again, like the lasagna, you’re going to think this is odd, but homemade vanilla ice cream. My daddy always makes it at Thanksgiving because they’re always gone summers when most people make ice cream.”

Then something happened that hadn’t happened in a long, long time—so long that Brantley had forgotten the special thing that used to happen between his father and him.

They looked up, locked eyes, and read each other’s mind.

Simultaneously they laughed and rose from their chairs.

“Excuse us from your table, Miss Caroline,” Charles said, placing his napkin by his plate. “We’ll be back soon. My boy and I have a mission.”

They ran out the back door like exuberant children. Brantley hadn’t felt this way in so long and it felt good—but not as good as seeing his dad like this.

“I’ll drive,” Charles said. “You look up on your phone how to make ice cream. Find one with stuff we can get at the minimart out by the highway.”

After just one day, Lucy had already made such a difference in Brantley’s family. Slowly, an idea came to him. What if Lucy became
part
of his family? He could see a high chair at that dining table, with Big Mama spooning mashed potatoes into a small mouth. He could see a little boy with dark curly hair sitting in his dad’s lap in a golf cart as Brantley drove them to the next hole.