Dixie Virgin Chronicles: Clementine (Book 5)

by Webb, Peggy

  One day when he’d crossed the hedge that separated their yards, he’d found the place deserted. No matter how loud he had called, Roger had not come. Finally an old man with a severe expression on his face had come out of the house and told him to shut up, that Roger had moved away and would never come when he called.

  Fighting back the tears, for he’d been told that big boys didn’t cry, he’d turned and gone bravely back to his own lonesome house. He felt that way now. But big boys didn’t cry. And they certainly didn’t hold up multi-million-dollar pictures while they bemoaned the sorry state of their lives.

  Resolutely he turned back to the set.

  o0o

  He left Peppertown six days later.

  He’d watched a crew strike the set, supervised the loading of the heavy, expensive cameras, and watched the caravan of trucks and trailers pull out of the pasture that had been their home for the last few weeks.

  It was over. Soon Peppertown would be just a memory, another footnote in the mental scrapbook of his life. The rental car slowed as he drove past a big white Victorian house. He hadn’t meant to slow down, and he certainly hadn’t meant to look. Partings were best done quickly. Prolonged goodbyes only added to the pain.

  Clemmie was in her yard, gathering roses from a late- blooming bush beside the front door. The sound of his car must have alerted her, for she straightened up, shading her eyes against the sun, and looked right at him.

  He couldn’t drive past her. Cursing his own weakness, he pulled into her yard and cut the engine. She stood, clutching a rose against her chest.

  The slamming of the car door sounded loud in the quiet morning. Michael walked over to where Clementine stood.

  “I didn’t mean to come, Clemmie,” he said when he stopped. “But when I saw you, I knew I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes. Today.”

  “I knew it would be soon, but I never dreamed...”

  “What, Clemmie?”

  “That I would be so unprepared for it.” She reached hesitantly toward him, as if she weren’t sure of her welcome.

  He caught her hand and squeezed. “You have been a breath of fresh air in my life, sweet one.”

  “And you’ve been the best time I’ve ever known.”

  They clung to each other. Although nothing touched except their hands, they both had the sensation of being held heart to heart, touching length to length.

  “Have I truly, Clemmie?”

  “Yes. You’ve given me music and laughter and wine and roses.” And love, she wanted to say. Instead she handed him the white rose, freshly cut from the bush. “A memento, Michael. Something to remember me by.”

  “Thank you, Clemmie.” As he took the rose from her hand, he knew he would need no reminders of this woman. She was forever engraved on his heart. He gazed at her a while longer, thinking of all the things he wanted to say. In the end he said only one word. “Goodbye.” Turning quickly, he strode back to his car.

  “Take care, Michael.”

  Her parting words were still echoing in his mind when he arrived at the Tupelo Airport. Jay Wilkins, Rick Love and Lonnie Bobo were waiting for him. By the time he boarded the small jet that would take him to Memphis and his connecting flight, he knew he was leaving the best thing that had ever happened to him. He half rose from his seat.

  Rick leaned across the aisle toward him. “Forget something, Michael?”

  “Nothing. I’m just restless. Finishing a movie always does that to me.”

  “Yeah. I know the feeling—finish one thing and I can’t wait to move on to another. What’s your next project, Michael?”

  “I think I’ll look into that script Nikki Mackenzie sent me.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t interested in doing a ghost story in Spain?”

  Michael looked out the window. The city of Tupelo was a tiny toy town, boxed by cultivated fields and wrapped with highway ribbons. Somewhere east, just off Highway 78, was Peppertown. If he looked long enough, he might see a tiny white speck that was a Victorian house. Clemmie’s house.

  He turned back to Rick. “Spain suddenly holds a great appeal for me. It will do me good to get out of the country for a while.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s called escape—putting an ocean between you and Clemmie.”

  “It’s called business.” He snapped open his briefcase and took out his appointment book. On page ninety-nine, pressed between Thanksgiving and Friday the twenty-fifth, was a single white rose. He used his index finger to trace the petals.

  Chapter Ten

  Daniel and David Brady arrived in Peppertown on Wednesday afternoon. They entered the big white boarding house like a parade, feet drumming on the hardwood floor, door banging on its hinges, deep bass voices sounding the trumpet call for their sister.

  “Clemmie! We’re home.”

  Clemmie was in the attic, striving to make a lump of clay resemble a bulldog, Mississippi State University’s mascot. The pottery dog was going to be a Christmas gift for David. Oblivious to the commotion downstairs, she took a fresh lump of clay and added it to the snout. What she had now was an elephant, she decided. And that was nobody’s mascot.

  She squashed the clay with the flat of her hand and started over. Nothing she did these days seemed to turn out right. Michael had been gone for a little over a week, and she still hadn’t adjusted. She burned two pans of gingerbread boys, made a batch of French pastry that didn’t rise, stitched the sleeves in Daniel’s Christmas shirt backward, and typed the wrong date on all the church bulletins. Reading Shakespeare made her sad and hearing La Traviata made her cry. She was going to have to do something about herself—and soon.

  “Clemmie? Are you up here?”

  She threw the lump of clay onto her hobby table and raced toward the door.

  “Daniel! David!” She was scooped off her feet by four brawny arms. Her twin brothers, laughing and jostling each other, made a pack saddle with their intertwined arms, and put Clemmie in the seat of honor.

  “Put me down, you crazy things.” Tears of joy ran down Clemmie’s cheeks, and she didn’t mean a word she said.

  Her brothers ignored her commands, anyhow, just as they had been ignoring them for the last five years. They called it independence and she called it stubbornness.

  “You’re going to break your legs,” she admonished as the two strapping young men carried her down the stairs.

  “You’ve told us that a hundred times—every time we climbed a tree.” Daniel winked across the top of her head at David.

  “It wasn’t the tree I was worried about; it was the garage roof.” The boys had been in the house only two minutes, and Clemmie felt better already. She had missed them so!

  “How about all those times she told us we’d catch pneumonia if we didn’t put on our boots and gloves?” David chimed in.

  “Yeah. She’s a regular old worrywart.”

  Clemmie put her arms around their necks and hugged them close. “How have I managed without you two?”

  “By the skin of your teeth, I guess.” Daniel hooked a kitchen chair with his foot, dumped Clemmie onto its seat, then began to prowl through the cabinets. “I’m starved.”

  “You always are. Look on the top shelf of the pantry. I made some brownies this morning.” She smiled as her brothers got a handful and began eating as if they hadn’t had a meal in three days. “So, tell me about school.”

  “It’s great, except for one thing—David’s got all the women chasing him. That leaves me with zip.”

  “How about that hot little number who keeps calling you in the middle of the night?”

  “You call ten o’clock the middle of the night?”

  “It is when you’re trying to sleep.”

  Smiling, Clemmie listened to the good-natured teasing of her brothers. They were exactly what she needed to cure the blues.

  Daniel
dragged a chair out from the table and straddled it. “So, big Sis, tell me about the movies.”

  The change of subject caught her off guard. “The movies?”

  “Yeah,” David said. “You emailed us about that big Hollywood producer who came to Peppertown. He sounded cool.”

  She knew that in teenage vernacular cool was a supreme compliment, but it was hardly the word she would have chosen to describe Michael. Hot was more appropriate. Even now, sitting in her kitchen with the brisk November winds blowing outside her windows, she felt hot just thinking about Michael Forrest.

  “He was cool. As a matter of fact, he was wonderful.” She didn’t see the look David and Daniel exchanged. “While he was here, I got to visit the movie set and watch the filming.”

  “What was the movie called?”

  “Don’t talk with food in your mouth, David.” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Moonlight Madness. Michael even had a part written for Miss Josephine.”

  “Michael?”

  “The movie producer, knucklehead. Don’t you remember Clemmie’s email? Jeez! No wonder all the women chase me. I’m the one with brains.” David ate the rest of his brownie and even wiped the chocolate off his mouth before he spoke again. “So... will we get to meet the hotshot or what?”

  “No. He’s gone back to L.A.”

  Clemmie thought she was hiding her heartbreak well, but her twin brothers, ever attuned to the person they loved best in the world, saw the longing in her face. Daniel, who had been born two minutes earlier than his twin and prided himself on being the oldest, signaled to his brother.

  “Back in a minute, Clemmie,” he said as he dragged David out into the hallway.

  Clemmie was used to the abrupt appearances and departures of teenagers. Instead of wondering what was going on, she rose from her chair and opened the refrigerator. She punched the turkey to see if it would be thawed for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner. This was her brothers’ first visit home since the beginning of the semester, and she wanted everything to be perfect.

  She was still testing the turkey when David and Daniel came back into the room.

  Daniel took her arm. “Can we have a serious talk, Sis?”

  “Of course. It’s not school, is it? I thought you both were doing fine.”

  “No. It’s not school.”

  “It’s the flowers,” David blurted.

  “What flowers?” Clemmie sat back down in her chair.

  Behind her back, Daniel made a slashing motion across his throat, then pulled out a chair. This time he sat properly in the seat.

  “We saw all those vases of dead flowers in the hallway and the parlor when we came in. One of the cards was still on the hall table. It said Michael.”

  “Yeah.” David scooted his chair closer to Clemmie. “Now, before you go trying to act like we’re still thirteen and you’re the mama, we want to know how come you looked so sad when we mentioned that dude’s name and why you kept all those dead flowers? If you’re upset about something, we want to know. Maybe we can help you for once.”

  Daniel took her hand. “It’s because we love you. And it’s high time we grew up and started taking some of the responsibility around here.”

  Clemmie glanced from one brother to the other. What they had said was true. They weren’t thirteen anymore. The three months they’d been at college, their shoulders had broadened, their faces had matured, and they had grown half an inch taller. What was more, they were offering to share a part of her life.

  “How sweet of both of you.” She smiled at them. “I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do about this problem. I simply fell in love with the wrong man.”

  David and Daniel sat back in their chairs, astonished. Love was one of those words that got bandied about a lot on the college campus, but nobody took it seriously. And yet, here was their sister, the epitome of responsibility, saying that she had fallen in love.

  Daniel was the first to recover. “That’s great, Sis. That you’re in love, I mean.”

  “Yeah. He must have loved you, too, or he wouldn’t have sent all those flowers.”

  Clemmie had to smile. They made love sound so simple. “He might have. I don’t know. Love was something Michael and I never talked about.”

  “Why not?” This from the impulsive David.

  “Because it wasn’t appropriate. His work is in Hollywood and my responsibilities are here.” She took their hands and squeezed. “Don’t you two know that I would never abandon you?”

  “Abandon us? Golly dang, Sis, David and I are grown. We can take care of ourselves.”

  “Even if Michael loved me—and I’m not saying he did—you two could never manage school and keeping the house.”

  “We can manage with our school loans and our after- school jobs. Anyhow, we love this house because you are here, Clemmie. Until we have families of our own, home is wherever you are.”

  “That’s right,” David added. “I think Hollywood would be neat.”

  Clemmie had always thought of her brothers as young boys who needed caring for. Now she was astonished at their grown-up wisdom.

  “I’m proud of you,” she said. “I never dreamed you’d feel this way. Anyhow, it’s too late. Michael’s in L.A. and I’m here, and that’s that.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Tonight we’re having a party, just you and me and Miss Josephine and all the other boarders. It will be a celebration of your Thanksgiving homecoming.”

  o0o

  Later, after finishing her discussion with her brothers, Clemmie set about making the house festive for the impromptu party, dragging out tinsel from last year’s Christmas tree and draping it up the staircase banister. She sent David and Daniel to the grocery store for a supply of balloons. Harvey came home early, stowed his tuba in his room, and pitched in with the party preparations.

  By eight o’clock that evening, the old boarding house looked like a cross between a Christmas pageant, a birthday party, and a Fourth of July picnic. Clemmie, her brothers and all her boarders were gathered in the parlor.

  “I propose a toast to Miss Josephine, Peppertown’s movie star.” Clemmie lifted her glass of homemade wine. “Long may you shine.”

  A chorus of agreement filled the room.

  “To Thanksgiving,” Harvey said.

  “To life,” Miss Josephine added.

  “To Clemmie.” Daniel stepped away from the small gathering beside the sofa and took his sister’s hand. “All of us here want to show our gratitude for the many ways you make our life comfortable and pleasant and easy. And so—” pausing dramatically, he reached into his pocket “—we’re giving you this gift.” He pulled out a one-way ticket to L.A.

  o0o

  Thanksgiving Day was like any other day to Michael. He worked. He’d given the butler, the cook, the maid, and the gardener the day off, of course, but he’d gone to his office as usual. The Spanish project was moving along as fast as he could push it. With each passing day, he felt an increasing urgency to leave the country.

  He drove himself, poring relentlessly over scripts, watching screenings until he was bleary-eyed. When he finally left his office, he was so exhausted he had nothing on his mind except a quick shower, a frozen TV dinner, and bed. And he was glad. Exhaustion was the state he’d been striving for. It left him no energy to think.

  The house looked quiet when he drove up, no lights, no barking dogs, no family to greet him at the door.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” he muttered as he parked the car.

  When he opened his front door, the first thing he noticed was the smell of roast turkey.

  “What the heck?” He stood in his marble and tile hallway.

  “Welcome home, Michael.”

  He heard her before he saw her. The soft Southern voice poured over him like a balm.

  “Clemmie?”

  Whirling around, he saw her, standing in the doorway, wreathed in a white apron and a smile. It was his cook’s apron, and it was too big for Clemmie. The st
rings were wrapped twice around her small waist and the bib drooped over her chest. She had flour on her cheek and a shine in her eyes.

  Michael stood in the hallway, mesmerized, hardly daring to believe his eyes.

  “My brothers and my boarders took up a collection and bought me a ticket to Hollywood. They seemed to think I should come.”

  Clemmie’s cheeks flushed hot, and she knew she was babbling, but she didn’t know what else to do. Michael had made no move toward her, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. All the things she’d planned to say had departed her whirling brain.

  “I knew where you lived, of course. Your address was in my guest book. When I got to L.A., though, I was a little intimidated. I found Rick’s phone number, and he met me at the airport. He got somebody to let me in your house. A man named Greaser Johnson, I believe.”

  “Rick and I met him at one of my parties. He was upstairs going through my female guests’ purses. He’s a cat burglar.”

  “Good grief. You mean I consorted with a criminal?”

  Michael smiled. “Still the same innocent Clemmie. Your reputation is intact, my sweet. He’s reformed now. Straight as an arrow... except when somebody like Rick talks him into straying.”

  Now that they had exhausted the subject of how she had come and how she had gotten into his house, neither of them knew what to say. Clemmie pressed her palms together, waiting for some sign from Michael—welcome, rejection, anything. He was so still he barely seemed to be breathing. His expression was fierce, and he studied her until she grew almost faint from nerves.

  Finally he spoke. “I noticed you have a soft spot for strays. Is this a charity visit, Clemmie?”

  Heaven help me to know what to do, she thought. She certainly couldn’t blurt out that she loved him, not with him looking as remote as Alaska.

  “No. It’s not a charity visit. Call it friendship.”