“What about Miss Ora?” I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from him.
“I would have my ass handed to me on a platter if I charged an old woman in a nursing home for anything. The statutes are out on everything anyway, thank God.”
My relief was immediate and visceral. I almost cried, but I willed myself to be calm and poised, just like I’d been trained to do. Still, my hands shook as I reached for my briefcase on the floor between our chairs.
“Where you going?” Barry asked.
The question confused me.
“Uh, back to my office?” I wasn’t sure why I answered with a question, so I added, “Why?”
“I wondered what you would say if I asked you to lunch. A little celebration of sorts.”
“Oh, gosh…I would say…I would say I have to think about it.”
He wrinkled up his face and raised himself out of his chair. He offered me his hand so I stood, too.
“Okay, I’ve got a few minutes. Think about it…starting…now.” He walked around his desk, took his suit coat off the coat rack and put it on.
I just shook my head and laughed.
“Have you thought about it yet?” He grinned like the joke was on me.
“Are you seriously flirting with me?”
“That depends on whether it’s working or not.”
The truth is, the thought of going to lunch with Barry Hammond was pretty intriguing. As friends, not so unusual. We’d socialized in groups plenty of times. But this felt different, caught me off guard. I’m not used to being off guard. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing really came out.
“So that’s a no?”
I was surprised at how disappointed he looked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think you’ll go to lunch with me? Or you don’t think it’s a no?”
“I don’t think it’s a no,” I said.
The man actually clapped his hands together. “Whoop! I’m halfway there.”
“Don’t get too excited now. It’s just lunch.” I turned and started for the door and he caught up with me.
“Well, duh, it was always just lunch. You don’t have to worry until I ask you to dinner.”
“Good to know,” I said, which made him laugh out loud.
Don’t overthink this, Patrice, I said to myself as he opened the passenger door and waited for me to settle in.
And as he walked around the back of the car, I heard my mother’s voice, as clear in my head as if she were sitting there with me, Everything go’n be all right, baby girl. Everything go’n be fine.
Epilogue
Ora Lee Beckworth
“Mama? Mama! Can you come help me?” Rochelle’s voice carried down the hallway where I was trying to take a nap. I’m back on my feet now, but I don’t venture up the stairs much these days.
Grace moved me into Walter’s old room when we got out of rehab. I nearly drove her crazy trying to hang onto things that just needed to go. I sat in his mother’s old gooseneck chair in the corner and watched as she pulled out old ties – I bought that one for his mother’s funeral, and the red striped one for a Fourth of July celebration downtown – and sorted through cufflinks and watches – Patty at the jewelry store helped me pick those out – and a variety of suits ranging from gray to black and nothing in between. I’d never missed my husband as I did when I gathered his belongings and donated them to Goodwill. I think I always felt like he was just away on business and any minute would walk back in the door. In my own way, it was grief that made me hold on to the physical things and push down the emotional ones. As always, I just put one foot in front of the other and did what needed to be done.
“Just a minute, Rochelle, I’m busy,” Grace yelled back from upstairs. But I heard her chair roll across the floor and her sure footsteps on the stairs as she went to her daughter in the kitchen.
I inched out of my bed and slid my feet into the soft slippers I kept at the side of my bed. I used to dress every single day, but I’ve decided I’m old enough to stay in a housedress all day if I want to. And today I wanted to.
I shuffled down the hallway and into the kitchen. Rochelle was baking cookies for a class party the next day. I secretly hoped she’d save me one or two, but I didn’t ask.
“Smells good in here,” I said.
“Did we wake you up?” Grace leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“No,” I lied. “I was just resting my eyes.”
“You go on out to the porch now,” she said. “I’ll bring you a cup of coffee and a cookie when they’re done.”
“Spoiling me again,” I crooned on the way to the porch.
It was a glorious late September afternoon, the slightest hint of fall in the air. Dovey already had her mailbox decorated with fake sunflowers and straw, and a metal scarecrow stuck in the ground at its base. It has been almost a year since Grace and I came home, and I marvel at every single day I wake up and I am still here. I count my progress by how many mailbox changes I get to see and sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly morbid, I wonder which will be my last.
Dovey still stops by every now and then, and her daughter is here even more often. We buried the hatchet when the newspaper article came out, though I first thought I’d have to bury it in her behind. You’d think she’d be scared of waving a newspaper in my face, but she hustled right over to the nursing home the day it came out.
She peeked her head through the crack in the door with the newspaper clutched in her hand. “Is it true? Is all of this true?”
“Lord, what took you so long, Dovey?” I waved her inside. I’d already had phone calls from women who hadn’t called on me in years. They all knew where to find me, prayer chains being so informative and all, so I was expecting Dovey.
“Funny, Ora Lee.” She emphasized my first name to remind me she’d long since stopped deferring to my age.
“Oh, come on, Dovey. I’m old and I’m tired. I don’t have any fight left.”
“I don’t wanna fight you, Ora Lee. I just want to know how much of this is true. I mean, not that it’s any of my business…”
“Truer words have not been spoken.” She clammed up then and I took pity on her. “Help me out of this bed, would you? Let’s sit over there by the window so we can visit, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
That’s the thing with Southern women. We just need to be needed. Asking for help is almost the same as an apology sometimes. She put down her newspaper and made a fuss over getting me up and over to the recliner.
“You want your water over there, too?” She picked up my Styrofoam cup and brought it to me without waiting for an answer. Then she pushed the button on my bed and asked for “a ginger ale for Miss Ora,” which, of course, was not for me at all.
When she finally settled into the hard plastic chair across from me, I thanked her and then said, “It’s all true, Dovey. Every word of it.”
Lord knows I wish she would think before she speaks, but the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh, Ora, you must be mortified!”
I just chuckled. “Can’t even show my face in town. Whatever will I do?”
“You really don’t care what people will say?”
“I really do not.”
She looked bewildered for a moment, but then there was this little wave of, I guess you’d call it relief, that flitted across her face. Like the idea that you could just decide not to worry what people thought was absolutely liberating.
After that, we had a nice long conversation and cleared the air. I can’t say we’ve been best buddies ever since, but we get along just fine.
When I finally did make it home four months later, it was to a spotless house and a yard that looked like no one had ever been gone. Dovey left me a note with a list of all the things I “wouldn’t need to worry about.”
Of course, when I tried to thank her for it, she just said, “Well, I couldn’t just sit by and watch the neighborhood go to pot.” But that’s
just Dovey for you. She means well.
Rebecca Yager-Mills won several awards for her series on racism in the judicial system. Eddie’s story was one of several and became an exposé on privilege and abuse of power. She did not go easy on me in the article. Quite frankly, I’d have questioned her journalistic integrity if she had. I know what I did wrong. I live with it every day.
We have filed for a posthumous pardon for Eddie, but we have resigned ourselves that it may never happen. Without the knife, there is little evidence to go on other than my word which is understandably in question. It’s ironic that I spent most of my life doing everything I believed to be right and honest but will likely be remembered for my deceit. I’ve heard it said that when we know better, we do better. My experience is, when we learn different, we do different. Better is a matter of perspective.
Patrice still works for the public defender’s office, but she travels a bit now. She does pro bono work for the Innocence Project of Florida and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Bible says to sow your seed in fertile ground. I don’t regret a penny of my investment.
She and Kamilah and Cheryl Kincaid have big plans for my house once I’m gone. Kamilah stops by every now and then just to say hello. Every time I open the door and see her standing there I just grin and say, “I’m not dead yet!” She just laughs and laughs.
Grace is working on her G.E.D. right now and plans on going to college once Shawn and Rochelle are gone. I told her she could go now, but she says she’s already missed enough of her kids’ lives and doesn’t want to miss a minute more. She’s been clean and sober since before she went to the rehab center. She told me once they said relapse was part of recovery and she was dead set on proving them wrong.
I have never been prouder of anyone in my life.
Note from the Author
When I wrote The Pecan Man, I had no intentions of writing a sequel, but as many of you have told me, the characters took on a life of their own and the story didn’t seem to be over. I’ve often been asked if Grace was going to be all right, and I’d always answer, “I don’t know.” The thing is, my experience has been with addicts who did not get better, who never even admitted they had a problem. I knew addiction, not recovery.
During the years I avoided writing the sequel, I lost my sister Petey and her youngest daughter Jamey Lea in the opioid crisis gripping our country. Four months after my sister passed away, my mother died of what we can only believe was a broken heart. She just stopped living.
So to say this book was difficult to write is just a huge understatement. I tried to educate myself a little by going to Al-Anon, a twelve-step program for families of addicts and alcoholics. I also consulted books on addiction and recovery, just to get an idea of the professional side of the recovery process. Debra Jay’s It Takes a Family, and Debra and Jeff Jay’s Love First were instrumental in helping me sort out my original idea to have the entire family participate in therapy with Grace. Turns out it really is a thing!
That being said, this novel is a work of fiction. It is not intended in any way to be instructive or a substitute for professional help. I would just like to take this opportunity to encourage readers to seek the services of a healthcare professional if you have a loved one who is an addict. I know firsthand how families are torn apart by the destructive nature of this disease. Our once very close family became fragmented and distant. Those of us left are doing our best to heal and love each other.
I couldn’t help thinking as I did my research, how I wish our family had known where to turn in those years when all of us were enablers in our own way. All I know is, if love was enough, my mother could have healed them. But love without a plan is a recipe for heartbreak. It was too much for all of us individually. And we didn’t know how to manage it as a family.
Thank you all for your support. Readers have been instrumental in propelling The Pecan Man into a best-selling Amazon novel. I will always be grateful.
For more information, please follow me on my Facebook pages, Obstinate Daughters Press, Cassie Dandridge Selleck, Author and The Pecan Man, or visit my website and blog.
www.CassieDandridgeSelleck.com
www.thepecanman.wordpress.com
Writers, please visit us at www.obstinatedaughters.com and see what we have available to help you publish your work.
The Truth About Grace Page 19
