Sweetgrass (31 page)

When he hit the china again, she moved closer, eyeing him sharply even as his eyes bore into her with an alarming urgency.

“Preston, are you trying to tell me something?”

His whole body seemed to shiver with relief. He blinked twice.

“Lord, help us, I’m sorry! Morgan, he’s trying to tell us something! What can we do?”

“Play twenty questions,” said Kristina. “He can respond yes or no. Preston,” she told him, “we know you’re tired. But try.”

Preston took several bolstering breaths.

“Go ahead,” Kristina said.

Mama June looked at the tray, wondering where to begin. There was nothing there but leftover breakfast. She put her hand out and began, speaking clearly. “Is it the tray?”

He blinked once.

“No. The breakfast? Is it food?”

He shook his head.

She searched the tray. “The china?” she said with exaggeration.

He nodded.

“What?” she asked, surprised. “The china?”

His eyes shone as he blinked twice.

Mama June was bewildered. “Morgan, what were you telling him when he had this outburst?”

Morgan stroked the dog’s head as he held on to his collar. “I’d just told him about Adele’s buyout offer.”

Preston’s hand jerked upward in agitation.

“He’s excited about that,” Kristina said. “You’re on the right trail.”

“So you’re not angry with Morgan?” Mama June asked Preston.

His face grew sad and he shook his head no.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” she said with a tremendous relief.

“It sounds to me like he got angry about Adele,” said Kristina.

Mama June drew closer. “And that’s when you broke the china, right?”

When he nodded, Mama June felt a stirring of hope. She walked around the room, muttering the word
china,
her fin
ger tapping her chin, fumbling with the pieces of the puzzle. “There’s something there. It’s niggling in the back of my brain. I just can’t quite grasp it.”

Morgan stood and placed his hands on his hips. “What the hell does a Chinese plate have to do with a partnership agreement?”

Mama June stopped abruptly and looked up, eyes bright. “That’s it!”

She walked to where the papers were scattered beside the bed and picked them up.

“What is
it?
” Morgan asked, coming closer.

“It’s something about a Chinese Partnership! When you said it, something clicked in my brain. Is that right, darlin’?” she asked Preston.

Preston’s eyes shone with triumph.

Morgan felt the thrill of the hunt in his veins. “I don’t get it. Bring me up to speed.”

“Chinese Partnership. Your daddy told me something about it years ago. I remembered it because I’d thought it was a funny name for a partnership. You were unhappy about it,” she said to Preston. “I remember that clearly. He had a hissy fit because his sister wouldn’t loan the money using the farm as collateral.”

“Which would’ve been standard,” Morgan said.

“That’s what he’d asked her for. But Adele came up with this partnership idea.”

“I’m still lost,” said Kristina. “What’s a Chinese Partnership?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” Mama June replied. “But I know whatever it is, it’s got to do with whatever scheme Adele is cooking up.”

“I don’t know, either,” Morgan said. “I just wish to God I knew if Daddy still had his copy of the agreement floating around.”

“I’m sure he does,” she said, relief shining in her eyes. “Your father never threw anything out, especially not a legal document.”

“Then I’d like to know where it is. I’ve prowled through every sheet of paper in his office. There’s no record, not even a memo of any such agreement.”

“Did you go through the boxes stored up in the attic?”

“The what?” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me about them?”

“Because they’re all old papers. Anything still viable your father kept in his office. But maybe it got mixed up with something else? It was a long time ago, after all.”

Morgan’s eyes gleamed as he looked at his father. “If you can go through all that to tell us about the Chinese Partnership, you can bet the farm I’m going to find that damned agreement.”

Mama June hurried to Preston’s side. She cupped his cheeks in her hands and bent to kiss him soundly on the mouth. “You really are an incredibly clever man!”

Any attic in the month of July is hot, but an attic in the southern United States at any time in the summer is a living hell.

Morgan breathed in air so thick and humid he imagined the mildew growing on his lungs. He prowled through cardboard boxes so moist they were mushy to the touch. His father’s leather briefcase was coated with a layer of mold, and cartons of file boxes were filled with yellowed papers polka-dotted with mildew. The black dust coated his fingers like moss, and the sweat poured from his brow and down his back faster than he could replenish with the sweet tea Nona kept bringing him.

Despite the punishing heat, however, Morgan didn’t rush. He charily scrutinized every paper that passed his hand.
Hours crawled by, yet he was surprised when he was called down for lunch. The morning had passed, but he’d only dug his way through half the attic. Mama June, worried he’d pass out in the heat, insisted he take a cool shower and change his clothes, which he did gratefully. She prepared him a cool lunch of gazpacho soup, cold salmon, salad niçoise and ice cream for dessert. Thus fortified, he returned to Hades.

Several more hours passed in his deliberate slowness. He finished plowing through another stack of boxes and moved them to the back of the attic. Coughing in the stirred dust that floated in the relentless rays of sun from the windows, he faced another stack of sealed boxes. He was wiping his brow with his sleeve and considering whether to just call it quits for the day when his gaze fell upon a box with the black magic marker numbers
1989.

He dropped his arm and his heart skipped faster. With a wild swipe he tore off the tape and dug into the contents. Slow down, he ordered himself, and his fingers slowed to a painstaking pace as he flipped through the files.

He found the post-Hurricane Hugo damage report that his father had filed with the insurance company. It was painstakingly thorough and portrayed an accurate picture of the devastating loss of his dairy house, the smoke house, a herd of cows, outbuildings and barns, the peach orchard and the harvest of his crops. Morgan found old tax bills—almost laughable compared to today’s bill—the mortgage payments, health insurance, life insurance…all of the usual records of bills and payments made. Then his hands stilled. He saw it. A manila file marked
Adele.

The sweat made the dust on his fingers muddy, so he paused to rub his hands against his pants. He took a deep breath. Then he reached out to pick up the folder. Like all the others, this one was spotted with mildew and soft to the
touch from all the humidity. He opened it. Several legal papers slipped out into his lap. He licked his dry lips and began to read, scanning the papers quickly. Then he went back and read them again, more slowly this time, making sure he didn’t omit anything important while his adrenaline had the best of him.

When he finished, Morgan leaned back against the stack of dusty boxes and stretched his long legs out in front of him. His mind wandered as his gaze traveled down his dirty T-shirt to his khaki shorts. He’d cut them from old trousers and the hem was raggedy and frayed. Motes of dust clung to the soft hairs on his legs.

He looked at the papers in his hands again. Slowly, a grin creased the dust coating his face, spreading across his cheeks, stretching from ear to ear. He felt absolutely giddy. A small giggle escaped from his lips. He looked around, making sure no one could hear him. Then from his gut a laugh burst forth.

Oh, dear Aunt Adele. We have you now.

He laughed again, and with a jubilant whoop he reached over to grab hold of his sweet tea. His hand was so sweaty he knocked over the glass and the tea spilled all over the small chest it rested upon. Muttering a short curse, he put the contract papers carefully back into the file and set it out of harm’s way. Grabbing the towel he’d been using to wipe his face, he began mopping up the tea. The dark tannin colored the leather strips of the old chest and he worried if some of the liquid had somehow spilled between the cracks of wood into the contents of the chest.

It was unlocked. He lifted the lid and immediately caught a whiff of the scent of mothballs and cedar. It was a dainty trunk, a girl’s chest, lined with a feminine floral fabric. Someone had taken steps to preserve this chest. It seemed to
be filled with mementos of the past. Looking closer, he recognized the plaster cast of his hand that he’d made for his mother as a little boy. Enchanted, he took it out to study it. Was he ever that small? he wondered. He also found his sister’s print, and choking up a bit, his brother’s. He placed his hand beside Hamlin’s chubby print, dwarfing it.

Curious now, he began to browse through this collection of odds and ends, most of them about him and his siblings. He hadn’t known his mother had saved all this stuff. He knew she was tenderhearted and nostalgic, but discovering the three silver boxes that held locks of each of their hair gave him new insight into the depths of her devotion.

He chuckled when he read some of the cards they’d made her for Mother’s Day and birthdays. It amazed him that he actually remembered them!

There weren’t many photographs, just the few select set into this treasure box by choice. The first was a photograph of him, Hamlin and Nan hanging in the big oak tree like monkeys and Mama June sitting on the circular bench beneath. Her feet were tucked under her skirt, a scarf was at her neck and she was radiant. Morgan remembered that she smiled a lot in those days.

There were more photographs—the kids in school or in costume or with Santa. There was one of Mama June and Daddy. His father looked so young with his smooth, tanned skin and can-do smile. His wavy hair—so much like Morgan’s—refused to be slicked back in the style of the day; a wayward curl hung over his forehead. His arm was tight around Mama June in a possessive grip, and both of them were smiling at the camera.

He recognized a photograph of his Blakely grandparents, even though they’d died before he was born. There was one of Granddad and Grandmama Clark, too. Aunt Adele smiled
up from another. She was young, windswept and, Morgan thought, a real looker.

One photograph caught his attention. Bringing it closer, he studied the black-and-white photograph of a handsome young man in jeans and a T-shirt rolled up at his biceps. He had dark hair and a wide, engaging smile. At first glance, Morgan had thought it was his brother, Hamlin. But the man was older and the clothes were all wrong. Checking the back of the photograph, he saw the words
Tripp, Blakely’s Bluff,
written in his mother’s script, and the date
1957.
He’d seen photographs of his uncle Tripp before, but not many. There was this mystique about the man and something very secretive about his death. He remembered people talking about it in hushed voices after Hamlin died. His uncle had died in a boating accident, too, and it had angered him that people were making comparisons.

He put the photograph back in the box. It was just a lousy coincidence, he thought now as he’d thought then. A cruel twist of fate.

Growing weary, he poked around a few more things and began to lose interest in the oppressive heat. He glanced through the papers quickly now. There were some scattered papers of pink stationery, probably from Nan when she was a teenager. He chuckled softly, remembering how religiously she’d written home from college. He casually read a few lines.

Morgan froze. What the hell? This wasn’t from Nan. It couldn’t be. Picking it up, he recognized his mother’s hand
writing, only younger, not as defined, with lots of flourishes.
Dearest Tripp?
Not Preston? He looked at the date—1957. The year his parents were married.

His mouth went dry and he could hear his blood roar in his ears. He shouldn’t read it. After all, it was personal. He hesitated. Hadn’t his mother given him carte blanche to go through everything in the attic? He looked over his shoulder, his gaze crafty, feeling it was wrong. But something was tugging at him. What was going on? What else didn’t he know?

He lowered his head and began to read.

Morgan drew his knees close to his chest, his arms dangling lifelessly over them. The letters lay scattered on the floor beside him. He didn’t feel the heat intensely any longer. He didn’t feel anything at all. It was as if he was some meaningless, dim-witted bug that had haplessly flown head straight into a gossamer web of lies and deceit. He felt unable to move while the spider’s venom spread throughout his limbs, numbing them.

Yet even in the numbness he felt a thrumming of pain that told him even though he felt dead, wished he were dead, he was still alive. He knew this feeling. It was how he’d felt after his brother’s drowning.

He used to go to remote places like the barn or the attic to curl up, close his eyes and wait for sleep to finally come. When the nightmares began, however, they were worse—much worse. That’s when he’d started reading. He read anything he could get his hands on and he read all the time. In books he’d found a place to escape.

But he was too old to hide out in attics and forts. The truth was the truth, like it or not. He knew what he was getting himself into when he’d decided to read those letters. No one put a gun to his head. It was his choice.

He rose quickly and immediately felt light-headed. Bursts
of white light and black dots clouded his vision. Putting his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose, he breathed deeply and waited to get his equilibrium back. Then, feeling as old and gimp-legged as Blackjack, he made his way from the sizzling heat of the attic down into the cooler air of his mother’s house.