The Road to Testament

by Eva Marie Everson

  I did as I was told.

  “You look a lot like Connie,” she said, bringing clammy hands to my face. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Thank you.” I placed my hands over hers and brought them down to rest between us.

  “She was a beautiful woman.”

  “She still is.”

  The young man who’d been sent to get punch returned. “Here, Granny.”

  “Set it on the table there,” she told him with a wave of her hand. Then to me, “One of my grands.”

  “I’m one of your great-grands, Granny,” he said with a shake of his head. Then, to me, “Can I get you anything, ma’am?”

  “Punch would be nice,” I said, relieved to have something cold coming my way.

  “Hot, ain’t it?” Miss Helen asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  “Tryin’ to figure out how in the world we ever lived like this, I ’spect.”

  This time I chuckled. “I admit, I am.”

  “Well, chile, when you didn’t know no different, you just made do. Course in the earlier years of my marriage, we didn’t have the kitchen as part of the main house.”

  “Really? How interesting . . .” And it was. “You’ll have to tell me more for the piece we’ll write about your party.”

  An older woman sitting nearby laughed heartily. “Mama will be more than happy to fill your ears with stories. She’s got a million of them.”

  I glanced at the woman, smiled briefly, then turned back to Miss Helen.

  “Never mind that now,” she said. “How’s Connie?” I couldn’t help but notice that her eyes had not left my face.

  “She’s doing well. When I talk to her tonight, I’ll be sure to tell her I met you.”

  “She’ll remember me,” she said with a nod of her head. “I was there, you know, the night the four of them”—she nodded toward Bobbie and Shelton, who’d joined us—“the night they all decided to start the magazine.”

  “Well, I guess Miss Bobbie told you I’m here to help start it back up.”

  The old woman patted my hand. “Good. That was a awful good magazine in its time and I bet it could be again.”

  “I hope so.” I glanced at Bobbie. “I’m hoping that by the end of next week I’ll have everything in motion to start.”

  Miss Helen grinned then; a few of her teeth were missing. “You could do a story on this old girl,” she whispered. “And put my old mug on the cover.”

  “She means her picture,” Will’s voice spoke from over my shoulder.

  I looked behind me. He stood, cowboy hat dangling from between his fingers. I mouthed, “Thank you,” grateful my vision of Miss Helen’s coffee mug gracing the cover of the magazine was in error.

  “We went to a restaurant to celebrate,” Miss Bobbie added. “Your grandparents and Shel and I.”

  “To celebrate?” I asked.

  “The night we decided to join our talents and go into business together.”

  I couldn’t help but think of what the four of them must have looked like. Young. Eager. Ready to take the world by storm.

  “Celebrated at Harry’s where I worked as a waitress,” Helen said. “That was after Mr. Baugh had passed, and I needed the extra money to raise my young’uns.”

  “Harry’s,” Shelton said, as though he were in a world of his own. “Sure miss his fried catfish.”

  Miss Helen chortled as she looked at Mr. Shelton, who stood next to his grandson. “Them was good eats, weren’t they?” She returned her attention to me. “You going to cover football?”

  Will shifted behind me. “Miss Helen, football isn’t exactly Ashlynne’s forte.”

  “Gotta have football,” Miss Helen said. “And gotta know something about it.”

  I heard snickering. And muttering. And I knew the voices, knew them too well. They had robbed me of any moments of joy—or at least they tried to—every day for the past week.

  The girls from advertising.

  Tension ran through my veins. Nothing I’d done had swayed their sarcasm, but that didn’t keep me from trying. Nor did it keep me from turning and smiling at them now, but to no avail.

  Rob entered the room with a cluster of people behind him. He carried a small pink paper plate with a large slice of cake and a clear plastic cup filled with punch. “I intercepted,” he said, bringing them both to me.

  “Oh.” I swallowed frustration at the cattiness of the three women. Kicked myself for allowing them to get to me. Most of the people here who knew me, liked me. Why was I allowing myself to even think about the three who did not?

  Ignore them, Gram would say. So I focused on the kind man who stood before me with punch and cake. “Thank you, Rob.” I took the plate and punch and swung around to give Miss Helen my full attention again.

  “Tell me something, young lady,” she said. “How is it you live in the South and you don’t know nothing about football?”

  I took a much-needed sip of punch. The tartness tickled my tongue and quenched my growing thirst. “It’s not that I don’t know anything . . .” And Winter Park, Florida, is hardly “the South.” Old Florida, yes. But you’d have to go north to get south of there.

  “Well, then. Tell me what you do know,” she ordered.

  “Ah . . . well. Ah.” I peered over my shoulder once more. The girls from advertising seemed to have grown all the more interested in my discomfort. I looked back to Miss Helen, my mind scrambling over everything I’d learned the night before, searching for some little tidbit beyond the goalposts and the yard lines that would help me appear somewhat knowledgeable. “Well, I know one thing for sure,” I said, elevating my voice, “Number 75 is a running back heading straight for the Heisman trophy.”

  The rain started shortly before the party’s intended end time, but fell like a deluge, creating enough noise to make conversation difficult. Water cascaded from the roof in narrow waterfalls, spilling to the ground where deep, muddy puddles formed among leaf-bare shrubs.

  “We’d better get out of here while we can,” Will mumbled in my ear. “Before everyone else tries to.”

  I stood at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the house, looking out to the blur of automobiles, including mine, in the grass-sparse yard. I turned and crossed my arms. “Why?”

  “Because if we go last, we’ll get bogged down in the ruts left by the others. Not to mention that road’s gonna be slick as an eel’s belly.”

  Ew.

  I uncrossed my arms. “Won’t everyone make a beeline for their cars and just stir up the mud?”

  “Most have decided to wait it out.” His eyes traveled to the floor. Back up to me. “Besides, don’t you need to get ready for your date tonight?”

  I looked at my watch. Rob and his family had left more than a half hour before for that very reason. “Yeah, I guess so.” I took a few steps. “I’ll say good-bye to your grandparents and to Miss Helen.”

  “I’ll meet you on the front porch.”

  I walked past him, then looked over my shoulder. “How are we going to get to the car without an umbrella?”

  He gave a half-smile. “Run.”

  I said good-bye to the Deckers, then to Miss Helen. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said. “I’ve had a good time talking to you about the old days.”

  “I wish I didn’t, too, Miss Helen,” I said, and it was true. I had spent hours on the opposite side of normal, and yet had felt comfortable in my surroundings. At home. “But Will thinks it’s best that we leave before the roads get . . . slick.”

  The old woman nodded. “I know that’s right. But I’d appreciate it if you came to see me sometime at the nursing home. I have a lot of stories I could tell you,” she said.

  I kissed her dry and wrinkled cheek. It felt awkward doing so, but I wanted to nonetheless. “I’ll do that,” I said, fully intending to do so.

  I said good-bye to a few others, including the girls from advertising, who had nothing to say back to me. I shrugge
d. “You know,” I said to them in a low voice, “if you came to my hometown, I’d at least be nice to you.”

  When they still had nothing to say, I sighed and walked out of the room.

  As he said he would be, Will stood a foot from the front porch steps. Several others had gathered there as well, but they stood against the wall in a futile effort to stay dry.

  “You’d better let me drive,” he said without looking at me. “And I’m as serious as a heart attack about it.”

  I knew he was. “All right,” I said over the rhythm of the storm. I held the purse close to my chest. “My purse is going to be ruined.”

  “Tuck it under your shirt there.”

  “Will that help?”

  “Probably not.”

  I did it anyway. Will’s right arm slid around my shoulder while his left hand reached across and grabbed my left arm. Without so much as a “Go!” he started down the steps, taking me with him.

  We were drenched within seconds. “Sopping wet”—or so Will said—when we made it inside the car.

  I ran my hands down the exposed parts of my arms to draw off the excess water, then slung my hair from my face. Will pulled his hat from his head, popped it a few times with his hand, sending a spray of water to the dashboard.

  “Careful,” I said.

  “Like it’s going to matter,” he shot back.

  I looked at him. He returned the glare. Hard as I tried to keep my lips in a straight line, when his broke into a smile, mine did too.

  “You look like a wet rat,” he said.

  I pulled the visor down and looked into the mirror. I burst out laughing. “Oh dear. I sure do.”

  Will flipped the visor back up before pushing the starter button.

  “Have you ever driven a Jag?”

  He turned the selector to reverse the car. “Would you believe me if I said I had?”

  “I guess so. You haven’t lied to me so far, I don’t think.”

  We eased out of the yard and into the muddy road. Will kept the car steady as the wiper blades swiped back and forth, barely making a dent in clearing the water away. I had to remind myself to breathe. Every other second I had to keep myself from saying something stupid, such as, “Don’t wreck my car.” I knew if I did, I’d end up on the side of the road.

  After twenty minutes, I said, “How far have we gone?”

  “Not far enough.”

  I turned the air conditioner as far down as it would go and rubbed at the gooseflesh on my arms. Will caught the movement; his eyes glanced over as the car revved then spun and slid. My eyes widened and my mouth gaped as I watched his hands fight the wheel, but to no avail. When we finally stopped, my door on the passenger’s side had pressed into a mucky embankment.

  Will unbuckled his seat belt faster than I could gasp. “Are you all right?”

  I turned my face slowly to his. “I’m—I’m fine.” I looked out the window to where razor-wire branches pressed against the window and dark mud oozed upward on the glass. “My car!” The driver’s door opened, taking my attention with it. “Where are you going?”

  “To get us out of the mud before we’re buried in it.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt and crawled over the console. “What does that mean?”

  “Get behind the wheel,” he said.

  I already was. Once settled, I stuck my head out and watched him trudge through the rain and the mire to the back of the car. If his shirt hadn’t been clinging to his frame enough, it surely was now.

  “And close the door, but power down the window.”

  I blinked, forcing my mind back to the issue at hand and followed his instructions. “Do you know what you’re doing?” I hollered.

  “There’s not a boy in these parts that hasn’t gone boggin’ at some point or another.” He hunkered down behind the fender. “All right. Put it in neutral.”

  I did.

  “Now give her a little gas . . .”

  Mud covered Will Decker, but the car—banged up as it was—now rolled westward toward an asphalt heaven. Neither of us spoke. He was too filthy and I was too shaken.

  Truth be told, if I’d said one word, I’d have burst out laughing. My $95,000 car was banged up on the passenger side, the interior now held a layer of mud and rainwater, and a sludge-covered man who growled with every other yard we traveled. All-in-all the entire scene was pretty amusing.

  We were mere feet from the highway when Will said, “See that narrow driveway right there?”

  “Where?”

  “To the right. There.” He pointed and his voice sounded agitated.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Turn there.”

  “Why?”

  He growled again. “Just turn.”

  I did. As the rain continued—now more of a summer shower—I drove between leafy sycamores lined behind white split-rail fences. Then the paved road became a drive, winding its way around a grand two-story house with large white columns and sprawling wings. “What in the world . . .”

  “Drive around to the back,” Will said.

  Behind the house stood a small guesthouse next to a pool. Behind the guesthouse, mist rose over a lake where a short arched bridge led to a white-latticed gazebo. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Be it ever so humble . . .”

  I jerked the car to a stop and my head to look at the back of the mansion. “Excuse me?” He’d condemned me for being brought up in privilege and he lived here?

  But Will pointed to the small 1940s guesthouse where a large dog sat on his haunches and barked. “No. There.” He looked down at himself. “I need to change. If I stay like this any longer, I’m going to be permanently caked in mud.”

  I wasn’t willing to let it go. “Do you mind telling me, then, who lives in that house?” I asked, pointing.

  He opened his car door. “I don’t mind at all. My parents.” He hoisted himself from the passenger’s seat.

  My mouth fell open as the door closed. His parents? His parents? The missionaries?

  I got out of the car and trudged to the front porch as Will stuck his key into the front door lock. The dog, who wagged his wet tail and seemed unimpressed with a stranger on the porch, looked anxiously up at his master. “Wait a second,” I said. Droplets of rain pelted my already damp skin.

  He looked at me as the door swung open. “What?” The dog ran inside.

  “I hate to ask, but do you have a bathroom in there you’d feel comfortable with me using? I’m miserable wet and I’ve got to . . . you know.”

  His brow furrowed under the brim of his hat. “Why wouldn’t I feel comfortable?”

  No surprise that the one thing Rob was concerned about, Will didn’t bother to consider. “The two of us? In the house? Alone?”

  “Ah.” He looked inside and back to me. “Tell you what. I’ll run up to the main house and shower and change. Feel free to use the guest bath, shower if you’d like, and I’ll meet you back here in about a half hour.” He eyed me. “I think my mother’s closet has something left in it that I can bring down to you.”

  I stepped onto the porch and out of the rain. “That would be great.” I peered into the house. “What about your dog?”

  “Rufus? He probably went straight to his bed in the laundry room to dry out. You don’t have to worry about him. He’s an old boy.” With that he darted off the porch, around the pool, and to a set of French doors he slipped another key into before stepping inside.

  “Wow,” I said. “Wait till Leigh hears about this.”

  21

  I inched through the still house, taking in the décor and the furnishings a man like Will Decker chose for his home.

  These were no ordinary pieces. Many were hand-carved and Will’s attention to detail was everywhere—from the carefully chosen artwork to the throw pillows on the sofa and the thick, spice-scented candles clustered in the center of the dining room table. As at Bobbie and Shelton’s, antique pieces shared the space with newer, giving the house a warm a
nd homey feeling.

  I searched for the bathroom. Not that it was so difficult to find. Its door stood open toward the back, on the right side of the house, exposing a retro room of black tile and white porcelain. There were two pedestal sinks with an antique bench between them. On the bench, a wicker basket filled with rolled towels and hand cloths. Over each sink hung a large oval mirror—antique and authentic to the period of the house. On both sides of the mirrors hung brass sconces; between them a brass towel hoop. Along the painted hardwood floor, thick oval rugs had been thrown for the comfort of cold feet on wintery mornings.

  “Nice,” I said.

  After using the facilities, I washed my hands, dried them on a white hand towel embroidered with a scrolling black D, then refolded it and looped it through the hook. Only then did I peer toward the door as though the dog, Rufus, would saunter in and, upon seeing my misbehavior, would run to find Will and tell on me. When he didn’t, I pulled the medicine cabinet door toward me, popping it open so expertly, no telltale sign followed.

  What might lie behind it, I wondered. What secrets now-hidden but soon to be revealed might shed some light on the owner of this house?

  The door was fully open and I frowned; nothing rested on its narrow shelves.

  I left the room and searched for the kitchen, which I found at the back of the house. Long, narrow, and unadorned windows stretched across three walls. On any other day, the room—decorated like a farmhouse kitchen complete with antique wooden bowls filled with fresh fruit—would have been washed in sunlight. Today, the room was bathed in gray and blue.

  A BrewStation coffeemaker stood to the left of the white porcelain sinks. Metal cabinets hung overhead. I opened both doors wide to find, for the most part, what I had been in search of. No tea, but plenty of coffee and mugs. I set about preparing a pot, then ambled back to the bathroom, fully intending to leave my exploration of Will Decker’s charming home with the kitchen. But a small room between it and the bathroom—its door opened wide and inviting—stopped me.

  I peered in. Stopped when I heard the dog’s groan, as though he were settling down on old joints and bones. I waited. When the house returned to silent, I looked into the room again. An antique rolltop desk stood catty-corner against the far side of the room. A green, red, and blue plaid wingback chair, floor lamp, and a short stack of books dominated the other corner. And, on both sides of the narrow room, impressive floor-to-ceiling bookshelves took up most of the wall space.