Stargazey Nights (3 page)

She looked at a man's watch she wore on her left arm. “You have plenty of time, the funeral isn't until two.”

“And is there somewhere I can get a quick lunch before then?”

“Flora's serves sandwiches and salads and things. We only serve breakfast.”

“Do you know where the funeral is?”

“It's going to be at the First Zion Baptist Church.”

“He's going to be buried there?”

“He insisted on it. Said he'd been listening to them singing every Sunday that he could remember.”

Cab smiled. Ned had grumbled about “that damn singing” waking him up every Sunday since he could remember.

“That's where most of his friends went, and that's where he wanted to be buried, so he wouldn't be lonely.”

Cab's throat spasmed. He was afraid he might burst into tears. He hadn't done that in years. He really needed to get some sleep.

“Well, thank you Ms.—­Bethanne. Until later.” He gently ushered her out the door, but she turned before she left.

“We all loved Ned. He was a good man.”

Cab nodded. He was a good man. And no one knew it better than Cab.

Chapter 3

S
ARAH
D
AVIS PUSHED
P
ENNY
F
ARLOWE
out the door of Flora's Tea Shoppe.

“Careful. You're jostling the coffee and pastries,” said Penny, owner, baker, and waitress of Flora's. Flora had sold out years before, but Penny kept the name. As Penny told anyone who asked, “You can't go changing the name of a place that has always been known as Flora's.”

“Won't matter if you don't hurry your butt. The guy will be registered and upstairs before we get there.” Sarah, barely five feet and a pencil to Penny's cushioned frame, gave her an encouraging nudge.

“Ow. I know that. But maybe we should leave the man alone. I mean, he's grieving and all.”

Sarah snorted, a country habit she'd picked up since returning to Stargazey last June. “Grieving my foot. If Cabot Reynolds III were grieving, he wouldn't have had his secretary send that god-­awful, nouveau riche, New Jersey big-­haired flower arrangement. He would have come down to make the funeral arrangements himself. And he would have been here for the viewing.”

“You sure have gotten unforgiving since you've been living up in New York with all those Yankees. Bad enough you talk just like them now.” Penny moved aside to let Sarah open the gate to the Inn. “How do you know he's a third?”

“I looked him up, and I've always been unforgiving. It's one of my better traits.” Sarah flashed her a smug smile and followed her up the walk. Jumped ahead to open the door. “I'm beginning to feel a little step and fetch it, doing all this work,” Sarah said, relapsing into a brutal Southern accent.

Penny pushed past her. “I'd say something unladylike, but I don't want to shock Bethanne.”

They bustled inside . . . to an empty foyer. Exchanged looks.

“Damn,” Sarah said, just as Bethanne came down the stairs.

She saw them and put her fingers to her lips. Then she giggled. Something, Sarah realized, they hardly ever heard from the young widow. “You're too late.”

Sarah huffed. “I told you we should have just grabbed a tea bag and come on over. So give us the lowdown.”

Bethanne looked over her shoulder as if she thought maybe Cabot Reynolds might be afraid to stay upstairs by himself and had followed her back down. “He drove all night to get here, so he's sleeping for a ­couple of hours.” She walked behind the registration desk.

Penny put down the plate of pastries and pulled off the plastic wrap. “We might as well eat these, seeing how he's out for the count.”

“I told him he could get a quick lunch at the tea shop before the funeral.”

“I'll get dressed early and meet you there,” Sarah told her. “I'll even buy you lunch.”

“Sarah, you're terrible.”

“I know. It's because I'm bored.”

Bethanne looked at her like she was crazy, which Sarah had to admit might be true. She'd given up a second year of teaching at Columbia's Cultural Studies Department to do research on the “Disappearing Gullah Culture of the Carolina Shore.” Like there wasn't enough written about that already. What she was more interested in doing was recording the remnants of that culture in a real setting, with primary source material and live, on-­site interviews before it disappeared altogether. So far, she hadn't had much cooperation from the locals.

At least it masked the other reason she had come back to her “roots,” which was to make sure her great-­grandmother was not living alone, neglected by social ser­vices, and poor.

Ervina was none of these things. She was just crazy. Or the wisewoman, depending on who you talked to.

Whatever it was, Sarah hoped to hell it didn't run in her veins. She reached for one of the lemon tarts Penny had made just that morning. “So? What does he look like?”

Bethanne shrugged. “He looked really tired.”

Penny snatched the plate away. “You're as bad as Sarah. She knew him when he was young. All she said was he was a skinny white boy.”

“Sarah.”

Sarah shrugged. “I know, I had an aberrant moment of being un-­PC.” She grinned. “But it's true. That's the main thing I remember about him. And that he'd show up every summer with some god-­awful version of what his folks thought was beachwear, and Ned would have to take him over to Hadley's and buy him some dungarees. And he never had his size, so The Third would go around all summer hoisting those pants up. He was the prototype of boyz 'n the hood. Only he didn't know it.”

“Well, he's a lot better dressed now,” Bethanne said.

“You're going to have to do better than that if you're eating my lemon tarts.”

“Well, he's tall . . . and dark . . . and handsome.”

Penny pushed the plate back toward her. “Girl, you've been reading too many romance novels.”

“No. Really. He is. Try to imagine Ned Reynolds about forty years ago. Really dark hair. And darker eyes. Only Ned's always had a twinkle since I knew him. His nephew's eyes have a glint, but I don't think it's fun.”

“Do I detect a note of interest?” Sarah knew the minute she'd said it that it was the wrong thing to say.

“Sarah, how could you say such a thing?” Bethanne's eyes filled with tears.

“Now, now, Sarah was just kidding,” Penny said, patting Bethanne's arm and frowning at Sarah. “But it has been almost three years, Bethie. No one would blame you if you got interested in seeing men again.”

Bethanne shook her head so vehemently that her hair swung across her face.

“Okay, whatever,” Sarah said. “Call me when he's leaving for the tea shop, so I can get there in time to see him. You can come, too.”

“Don't you think that would be a little obvious? Besides, you'll see him at the funeral.”

“Yeah, but with all the folderol and rigmarole and ‘Praise the Lords,' I might not get up close and personal.”

“Why are you so interested?” Bethanne asked.

“Like I said, I'm bored. Plus, if we can guilt him out, maybe he'll give a big donation to the community center in Ned's name.”

C
AB WOKE TW
O
hours later amidst flowers and frills and thought he must have wandered into a Martha Stewart magazine in his dreams. Then he remembered. The Stargazey Inn, the mousy, sweet inn lady. This froufrou room.

He shuddered as his brain clicked in. He'd be back in his nice, sleek, urban condo tonight with any luck, but he really didn't look forward to Bailey's cold shoulder. But hell, it was his apartment. She could just be a little understanding.

He staggered to the bathroom and turned on the shower full blast. Gave the showerhead the evil eye. It had to be an antique, and the water pressure—­

And he was being a goddamn, condescending ass. It was a lovely inn if you liked that kind of thing. When had he gotten so damn smug and opinionated?

The water was hot and cleansing, and he stood there, mindless, for way too long. Then he got out and dressed in his summerweight suit.

He went downstairs. He was pretty sure he remembered the church from when he stayed with Ned, but he asked his hostess for directions anyway. Then she reminded him that the tea shop was open for lunch.

He thanked her, but he didn't have any appetite. Now that he was here, he realized how much he'd lost.

She followed him to the door, pointed him in the right direction, said again how sorry she was, and he was out the door and standing alone on the sidewalk.

He was a little early still, so he decided to walk; besides, if he remembered correctly, there wasn't a big parking lot at the church. He started toward the south end of town. All two blocks of it. For the first few stores, everything looked normal and fairly prosperous. But the sidewalk came to an abrupt end in front of a vacant lot, where weeds grew knee high and had turned brown and brittle. He could see the edge of a ­couple of discarded tires and what looked like an old icebox lying on its side.

He walked on past two abandoned buildings, which he vaguely remembered as being stores. They were boarded over; the first had lost its steps, and the door stood several feet above the ground. The sidewalk, if there had ever been one, was gone.

He didn't understand how one end of town could have revived and the other been left to die. He willed himself not to look across the street to where the carousel building stood. If it was still standing. There had been near misses during several hurricanes that Cab could remember. He knew there had been more that he didn't know about . . . because he hadn't bothered to take the time to ask.

He suddenly felt uncomfortably hot in his suit and was tempted to take off his jacket until he got to the church. But before he could act, he came to Hadley's, and a smile tugged at his mouth. The single red gas pump, that had been ancient when Cab was a boy, was still standing in the middle of a concrete slab in front of the old clapboard general store, which had once been whitewashed but now had weathered to a dull gray.

Cab took a step closer, stood at the bottom of the steps that led to the sagging porch as if he expected Ned or Hadley to come out the door.

The door opened and a man did come out. He stopped, gawking as if he'd seen a ghost. He was a little softer, maybe a tiny bit stooped. Fifteen years ago, his hair had already receded several inches.

“Makes you look like a MoonPie, only white,” Ned would tell him.

“That's not a very nice thing to say,” Cab had said. He must have been about eight at the time, on his first trip to spend the summer with his uncle.

Hadley bent over to show his beginning pate to Cab. “You just remember this, young Cabot. 'Cause one day my forehead's gonna push my hair right off my head. And I'll be an egg instead of a MoonPie.”

His forehead had been victorious—­Hadley was bald as an egg. A rush of affection rolled through Cab. A ­couple of silly grown-­ups, trying to make a lonely little boy laugh.

Cab smiled tentatively.

Hadley squinted at him, then his eyes widened. “Cabot Reynolds. Is that you, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” Cab said, reverting to his childhood manners—­gentleman manners in these parts. And today they sat comfortably on Cab's shoulders.

Hadley lumbered down the steps and pumped Cab's hand, then pulled him forward and clapped him on the back.

“Glad you could make it.”

Cab started to say he hadn't known. It was just by luck that he'd found out about the funeral at all. But that seemed an indictment of his relationship with his future wife and a larger indictment of himself.

“You going on over to the church now?”

“Thought I'd walk.”

“Mind some company?”

“I would appreciate it,” Cab said. Hadley was wearing a suit, shiny where it had been hand ironed, and a yellowed button shirt not buttoned at the neck. As they started down the street, he pulled a paisley tie out of his pocket and flapped it in the air before hanging it around his neck.

While they walked, Hadley ran the tie under his collar, wrapped it, knotted it, and yanked on it until it turned into a colorful, if somewhat wrinkled, nod to fashion.

More than ever, Cab was tempted to take off his jacket. He was beginning to sweat. Partially from the afternoon September sun and anticipation, and nerves—­and a soul-­clinging sadness.

They walked side by side in silence. After the initial recognition and hellos, there seemed to be nothing to say. All of their mutual experiences were behind them. The man who had connected Cab to this place was gone. And he felt like an interloper.

The feeling didn't change when, two blocks later, they turned the corner, and Cab saw the Zion Baptist Church a block away. It was a small church, white, with a stumpy little bell tower that Cab didn't remember ever pealing. But it was the crowd out front that checked his steps.

“Got a nice turnout,” Hadley said.

“Yeah,” Cab said, and cleared his throat. There had to be a hundred ­people, all ages and colors. Some wore traditional funeral black, others wore a spectacle of bright colors. All the women and some of the men wore hats. All the men wore suits.

As Cab and Hadley approached, the buzz of quiet voices quickened then died as the mourners turned as one to watch them walk the last half block to the church.

Then a man stepped out of the crowd, and Cab recognized the tall, gangly form of Beau Crispin. An old man now, with thick white hair, wearing a dark suit and looking about as uncomfortable in it as Cab felt in his.

He walked slowly toward them, but then Beau had never seemed to hurry in the whole time Cab had known him.

Hadley stopped, and they waited for Beau to reach them.

It seemed an eon until Beau stuck out his hand. “Knew you'd want to be here. Everybody's real thankful you saw fit to come.”

Cab didn't even try to explain why he'd almost missed the funeral. He was still having a hard time understanding why Bailey had kept the news from him. Which was a bit of a lie; he knew exactly why she hadn't told him.