The Peach Keeper (19 page)

“I was at a cookout I hadn’t intended to go to.”

Lucky for me
. Paxton took a deep breath and got to the point. “Listen, Colin told me he asked you about what happened last Friday, and that you refused to tell him. He also doesn’t seem to know about Nana Osgood’s confession.” She hesitated. “I thought you’d tell him. I’ve been waiting for you to tell everyone.”

Willa’s brows knitted. “Why would I do that?”

“It’s been my experience that people take a little more joy than they should when things don’t go my way.”

“Well, when Colin didn’t seem to be aware that the police had asked me about my grandmother, I figured we were on the same page. How do we know what really happened, anyway?” Willa asked.

“You’re right. We don’t know,” Paxton said, relieved. “But for what it’s worth, I think it’s absurd that Georgie had anything to do with that skeleton. I’ve always liked your grandmother.” There was a knowing silence. “That’s okay, I know you can’t say the same about mine.”

Willa gave her an apologetic smile.

Paxton looked around awkwardly. There were boxes in the living room that hadn’t been here last week. Her eyes immediately fell on a beautiful gray dress that was draped over one of the boxes. The fabric was beaded and looked like it was covered in twinkling stars. She stepped over to it and touched it with the reverence only someone who knew the true power of dresses could have.

“This is gorgeous. Is it vintage?” It had to be. It had the tight bustier, cinched waist, and wide skirt of something from the early 1950s.

Willa nodded. “It’s apparently from 1954. It still has its tags. And it was in the original box with the card attached. It was a Christmas gift from your grandmother to mine. She kept it all this time but never wore it.”

“They really were good friends, weren’t they?” Paxton said, still staring at the dress.

“At one time, yes, I believe they were.”

Paxton stepped away from the dress and gestured to the other boxes. “What is all this?”

“My grandmother’s things. I’ve been going through them. You caught me in the middle of putting them back in the attic.”

“Looking for answers?” Paxton surmised. Of course
she was. Georgie Jackson wouldn’t hurt a fly. And Willa was out to prove it. But when it came to Nana Osgood, Paxton wasn’t sure what she was capable of. And that scared her.

“I haven’t found much, though,” Willa said, shrugging.

“What have you found?”

“I’m not out to incriminate Agatha, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just want to know what happened. Nothing was the same for my grandmother after that year. And I’m beginning to think Tucker Devlin might have had some hand in it.” She walked over to the coffee table and riffled through some papers there. “I found this at the library.” She handed Paxton a printout of the old society newsletter. Willa tapped a grainy black-and-white photo of a man in a suit standing between two mooning teenagers. The style of their clothing looked to be 1930s or ’40s. “That’s Tucker Devlin. He’s with Georgie and Agatha in that photo.”

Startled, Paxton looked closer. Sure enough, there were her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones, her large dark eyes. She looked so
happy
. Paxton couldn’t remember ever seeing her grandmother happy. What had happened? Where did this girl go?

“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” Willa said. “Do you think it’s just a coincidence that the Women’s Society Club was formed around the time he was killed?”

“Of course it’s a coincidence,” Paxton said immediately. “How could the two possibly be connected?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that according to these
newsletters, our grandmothers were friends who seemed devoted to each other. Then Tucker Devlin arrived and suddenly they were competitors for his affection. He disappeared in August, when they became tight again and formed the club.”

Paxton rubbed her forehead. Why did that have to make so much sense? “Please don’t let that theory get out. I only have a tenuous hold on the club as it is.”

“I thought we just went over this. I’m not going to tell anyone,” Willa said. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes,” Paxton said. “Thank you.”

When Willa left the room, Paxton went to the couch and sat, trying not to let it remind her of how sick she’d been the last time she was on it. She set the newsletter printout back down with the other papers on the coffee table, then noticed a photo album with a single photo sitting on top of it. She picked it up and studied it. He looked so magnetic in this photo. He was the kind of man you were sure could destroy entire civilizations with only a smile. Why would her grandmother kill him?

Willa came back with two bottles of Snapple and handed one to Paxton. “Tucker Devlin certainly was handsome,” Paxton said. “If our grandmothers fell for him, I can see why.”

Willa looked confused. “That’s not Tucker Devlin. That’s an old photo of my father I found in the album. I’ve been debating whether or not to put it back.”

Paxton looked at it again. “What?”

“That’s a photo of my father.”

“It is? It looks just like Tucker Devlin.”

Willa set her bottle down and took the photo from Paxton and looked at it. Then she lifted the newsletter printout. She compared the two, a look of comprehension coming over her face as she sat down hard beside Paxton on the couch. “Oh, God, I was trying
so hard
not to believe it.”

Seconds later, it hit Paxton, too. Georgie Jackson had been pregnant when her family lost the Madam—everyone knew that. But no one knew who the father was. Until now.

That was it. The thing that turned everything around. This wasn’t just Paxton’s history, the one she loved and protected, the one that gave her such a sense of belonging. It was Willa’s, too. And somehow they were connected. Discovering that Tucker Devlin might be Willa’s grandfather was too much to ignore. Willa needed to know what happened to her family, even if it changed how Paxton thought about her own.

“I think we need to talk to Nana Osgood,” Paxton said.

Agatha was sitting on the love seat in her room as the sun set that evening. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it, feel the way the warmth moved across her face in tiny increments. There was a slight hint of peaches in the air, but it didn’t scare her. She was just glad Georgie wasn’t cognizant enough to be aware of him now.

She didn’t want to eat in the dining hall that night,
so she requested that her food be brought to her room. She liked eating her food alone. Her one last pleasure. She didn’t care much for mingling with the people here, anyway. She was far too old to make friends now. No one understood her anymore.

She wasn’t depressed. Agatha had never been depressed. She was much too self-possessed for that. That’s not to say she liked her present circumstances, and, especially since hearing about the Madam and the discovery of Tucker Devlin’s remains, she found herself more and more in the past lately.

“Nana Osgood?” It was Paxton’s voice coming from the doorway.

“Paxton, what are you doing here? You just missed your brother, the tree boy. He came to visit me, finally. He brought me chocolates. What did you bring me?”

“Willa Jackson,” Paxton said as she walked farther into the room. There was another set of footsteps, another form beside Paxton.

“Hello, Mrs. Osgood,” Willa said. Willa had been a sneaky child. Not a mean one. Not a deceitful one. But sneaky nonetheless. Agatha had always seen it. Georgie had, too, but as with Ham, she’d been convinced that she could trample down any wild hair that reminded her of Tucker Devlin and make her family as quiet and normal as possible. It hadn’t always been to their advantage. In fact, Agatha believed Ham could have gone on to great things if only his mother hadn’t instilled in him such a sense of his own smallness. But Georgie had felt she was only balancing out the magical stormy nature she was scared Ham and Willa might have
inherited from Tucker. They
had
inherited it, of course. That much had always been clear. But that didn’t mean they would turn out badly. She should have told Georgie that.

“The two of you here together can only mean one thing,” Agatha said. “You want to know what happened.”

“Willa found something called
The Walls of Water Society Newsletter
. We’ve pieced some things together.”

“The
Society Newsletter
. I’d forgotten about that.” Agatha laughed when she thought of it, how important they all thought it was at the time. “Jojo McPeat published it. That woman was the nosiest person God ever created.”

“Mrs. Osgood, was Tucker Devlin my father’s father?” Willa asked.

That hit her in the place her heart used to be. “Figured that out, did you?”

“What happened?” Paxton asked, taking a seat beside Agatha. Willa lingered in the doorway. “Did you really kill him?”

“Yes. I did,” Agatha said. For all the things she couldn’t give Georgie, she could at least give her this.

“Why?”

“Because we’re connected, as women. It’s like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there’s trouble, we all know it. But most of the time we’re just too scared or selfish or insecure to help. But if we don’t help each other, who will?”

“So you killed him
for
Georgie?” Paxton asked, and
her tone insinuated she had assumed it was for other reasons—other, less noble, reasons.

“We were once as close as shirt buttons, Georgie and I. I didn’t think anything would change that. Until Tucker Devlin. You have to understand what it was like back then. It was during the Depression, and on top of that, the new national forest meant no more logging. Those of us who managed to keep our money were trying to help those who had lost theirs. When he arrived, it was like we came alive again. Days were brighter. Food was sweeter. He promised us each exactly the thing we wanted most. And we believed him. The whole town believed him. We were his captives. And we learned early on not to cross him. There was an old man named Earl Youngston who repeatedly tried to get us to see that Tucker was a con man. But after a confrontation with Tucker one day, Earl’s beard grew forty feet overnight, trapping him in his bed. He was quiet after that, and had to shave six times a day.

“After a while, all the men wanted his opinion, and all the girls were in love with him. He made certain of it. Because he knew the best way to get what he wanted was to break down what made us strongest. And our friendships were what made us strong. He changed all that. That’s why we were so jealous when Tucker moved into the Blue Ridge Madam with his big plans to save the town by turning Jackson Hill into a peach orchard. Not only was Georgie the prettiest of our group, but she now had him under her roof.”

Agatha turned her head. She could hear the food
trolley coming down the hall. It was the only sense of anticipation she had left. Her stomach tightened with it.

“Nana?” Paxton said.

Where was she? “Oh. Well, Georgie tried to tell us what was happening. She said Tucker slept in the attic and paced a lot. She said he was restless, and it affected the whole house. She said mice fled, but birds were always trying to get in. She would say things like
He’s got a mean temper
and
He won’t leave me alone
. But we hated her for it, because we wanted him for ourselves. After a few months, Georgie started avoiding us. She didn’t go to parties anymore. We thought she was saying we were no longer good enough for her. But she did it because she was scared and ashamed, and when we turned our backs on her, she had no one left.”

“What was she scared and ashamed of?” Willa asked.

“There was no love story going on up there,” Agatha said. “Tucker raped her. That was one of the reasons he wanted to move there in the first place. To get to her.”

Silence from the girls. The food trolley was getting nearer.

“When she finally got up enough nerve to tell me she was pregnant, I was so angry with myself. She was my best friend, and she had tried so many times to tell me what was happening, but I let my jealousy get in the way. I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it all.”

“So you killed him because of what he did,” Paxton said.

“No. I killed him because he wouldn’t stop doing it.
He was terrorizing her. I hit him over the head with a frying pan.”

“The frying pan that was buried with him,” Willa surmised.

“Yes.”

“Did no one know?” Paxton asked. “Did you bury him under the peach tree by yourself?”

“Georgie knew. We buried him together. And there wasn’t a peach tree there at the time. It came up later.” There was a knock at the door. “He always did say he had peach juice in his veins.”

“Here’s your dinner, Mrs. Osgood,” the food-service girl said.

“Go now,” Agatha said. “I want to eat.”

“But …” Paxton said.

“If you want to know more, come back. The story has been around seventy-five years. It’s not going anywhere.”

She heard the shuffle as the girls left. She liked that they were together. It gave her hope.

“Don’t underestimate us. You did before, and look where that got you,” she told Tucker.