Carolina Mist

by Mariah Stewart

  After climbing off the ladder, she hastened down the steps. By the time she reached the bottom step, Belle had picked it up in the kitchen.

  “Why, Alexander, what a surprise,” she heard Belle coo delightedly. “Why, yes, dear, I am quite well…”

  Abby’s heart turned over at the sound of his name.

  “You are? How wonderful… why, I’d love that, dear…”

  This is perfect, Abby thought as she regained the momentary lapse of her senses. Belle will tell him that I’m here. He’ll understand the situation, maybe take Belle to live with him. I know as soon as he knows, he’ll…

  “Oh, well, no, dear. Leila can’t come to the phone right now. She’s… napping.”

  Abby stopped dead in her tracks just outside the kitchen door, certain she’d not heard correctly. She stepped quietly into the room and leaned against the door, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Certainly, dear. I’ll tell her you were asking for her.” Belle turned, sensing Abby’s presence. Flushing slightly, she ignored the eavesdropper. “And have you heard from your sister?”

  Abby waited out the conversation, and when Belle had hung up, she repeated wryly, “Leila is napping?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Belle sniffed with indignation and pulled her sweater more closely around her shoulders. “Really, Abigail, I’d have thought you’d have better manners than to listen in on other people’s conversations.”

  “Belle, why didn’t you tell him the truth?” Abby asked pointedly.

  “I don’t want to worry him.” Belle turned her back and busied herself rinsing out her teacup. “That boy has enough on his mind. Just starting a new job, moving to a new city…”

  “Where’d he move to?”

  “Hampton, Virginia.”

  “That’s only a few hours away,” Abby thought aloud. “Will he be coming to visit?”

  “Sooner or later,” Belle replied, still not facing Abby, “I expect he will.”

  “Don’t you think he’ll think something is odd, if Leila is ‘napping’ the entire time he’s here?”

  “I will tell him, Abigail.” Belle’s voice dropped to a low whisper of resignation.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t told him before this.” Abby shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell him when Leila died?”

  “Because he’d never have permitted me to stay here alone, Abigail.” Belle turned slowly, the pain of being forced to speak the obvious filling every line of her face. “And I have no place else to go.”

  She brushed past Abby without meeting her eyes as she shuffled, shoulders slumped, from the room.

  12

  “Abigail, I simply cannot thank you enough for taking me down to the church tonight.” Belle beamed as Abby helped her off with her worn winter coat. “I cannot recall when I enjoyed an evening more. Why, the last time I went to one of those little Christmas pageants, my Josie was in it. So many, many years ago…” She shook her head at the thought of how much time had passed.

  “Well, I had a good time, too.” Abby hung their coats in the front hall closet. “And wasn’t Meredy absolutely adorable in her little white organdy dress and those little gold wings?”

  “She was the cutest one on the stage.” Belle nodded vehemently. “Just like I told her, she couldn’t have been one bit cuter.”

  “What the choir lacked in heavenly voices, they certainly made up for in enthusiasm.” Abby chuckled, the wide-eyed little faces from which emitted the most uncelestial notes still fresh in her mind.

  “Oh my, yes. They were off-key, weren’t they?” Belle tucked her black wool gloves into her purse. “You know, I couldn’t help but think of one time when our Josie was right up there on that same stage. Singing ‘Away in a Manger’ to beat the band. If I live to be a hundred—and at the rate I’m going, that’s a distinct possibility—I will still see that earnest little face peering out to the audience”—the memory flickered across her face, softening the lines for just a second—“looking for her daddy and me in the crowd. Josie never had much of a singing voice, but she sure was loud. Must have heard her clear out to the Outer Banks.”

  Abby followed Belle back to the morning room and turned on the lamp as the old woman lowered herself into her usual chair. Belle reached for the remote control, absentmindedly turning it over and over in her hands yet not activating the television, as if she had slipped off somewhere.

  “Belle?” Abby gently touched her shoulder.

  “Ever wonder where it all goes, Abigail?” Belle’s eyes were as clear and as wide as a child’s pondering the flight of a bird for the first time.

  “Where what goes, Belle?” Abby seated herself on the edge of the hassock, near Belle’s chair.

  “All the little bits and pieces of your life. All the minutes of all the hours, all the days and all the years. Sometimes, in my mind, I can see so much of it so clearly. Just as clear as the pictures on that television.” Belle spoke softly but distinctly, as if being drawn to some far-off place. “Granger’s face when he asked me to be his bride, his eyes so intense, deep and warm as the good brown earth after a summer rain. Some nights, when I close my eyes, I can still see that face, clear as I see yours. And sometimes I can even hear his laughter…”

  Belle raised a hand to her face, lightly brushing her lips with her finger tips. Her voice was low, like a voice in a confessional.

  “I still miss him in my bed at night. All these years he’s been gone, I still reach for him in the night. And sometimes, when it storms, I hear Josie calling me from the foot of the bed. Always scared of thunder, Josie was. She’d stand there till one of us woke up and patted the blankets, then she’d jump in between us and snuggle down and go out like a light…”

  Abby listened, pondering the ability of the human mind to transcend time. Had she herself not heard voices from her own past, glimpsed within her own mind her own mother’s face as she kissed Abby good-bye that last time they had been together?

  Swallowing hard, a tight wedge of compassion blocking her throat and stinging her eyes, Abby studied the face of the woman who sat before her. This tiny woman who had loved so greatly over the course of her many years, who had been so dearly loved, was now alone with only memories of family and friends to sustain her, dependent upon a stranger for even the most basic necessities of her existence. And who knew how long Abby could be here for her?

  “And then, of course, there’s Leila,” Belle said.

  “You must miss her terribly.”

  “Well, yes, but, of course, she’s never really left us,” Belle told her in hushed tones.

  “They say those we love are always with us.” Abby reached out a hand to pat Belle’s arm.

  “Never more true than with Leila, dear.” Belle sighed.

  “So many times since I’ve been here, I’ve caught the scent of lavender,” Abby confessed, “and sometimes it takes me off guard. I almost think that she’s there. I find myself turning to look for her.”

  “You haven’t seen her, have you?” Belle leaned forward, her brow folding into an instant crease.

  “Of course not.” Abby giggled at the thought.

  Belle raised an eyebrow, as if to speak. Instead, she merely stared at Abby for a long moment or two.

  “I think I’ll go up to bed,” Belle told her, and she placed the remote control on the table, and the moment passed as if it had not been. “I don’t believe I much feel like watching television, after all.”

  “I’ll be up in few minutes.” Abby braced her hands against her thighs and pushed herself up from her low seat on the hassock.

  “Good night, then, Abigail.”

  “Belle…” Abby called to her as she reached the doorway and turned slowly. “Belle, would you like me to take you to the Christmas service in the morning?”

  “Why, that would be a delight, Abigail.” The faint hall light veiled Belle’s face, but her pleasure was evident in her sincere response. “Thank you. I would very much like that. I would i
ndeed.”

  “It’s at nine o’clock, Naomi said.”

  “What lovely surprises this day has held,” Belle said as she turned toward the hall. She stopped momentarily and looked over her shoulder. “Thank you, Abigail. And Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Belle.”

  Abby turned off the light and stood in the darkness, the only sound in the house being Belle’s light footfall on the steps. After walking into the front room to turn off the lights, she stopped to straighten a candle on the mantel. The smell of the pine boughs she’d cut and draped around the brass candle holders evoked memories of other Christmases when trees had reached upward to graze the ceiling of the Chicago brownstone and the piles of gaily wrapped presents reached end to end across the living room. Her mother had insisted on a touch of the holiday in every room, and Abby smiled to herself as she recalled Charlotte’s zeal as she decked every window with greens.

  “Oh, Mother, what you must think of me,” she sighed as she looked around the room.

  The pine branches had been scattered on the mantel only for the sake of Meredy, who had so proudly presented Abby with a chain of red and green circles to hang on the tree. When she was told Abby and Belle would have no tree, Meredy’s tiny face had clouded with confusion. Did Abby not want her carefully crafted garland?

  It was then that Abby realized that she could not, this year, ignore the holiday as she had grown accustomed to doing. She invited Meredy to help cut branches from the old pine in the backyard and place them on the mantel, where they twined the colorful paper chain around them. Not quite as good as having a tree, Meredy had told her solemnly, but better than nothing at all.

  Abby turned off the light and moved into the hallway, stopping to check that the latch on the front door was secure. She started toward the steps, then paused before going into the dining room.

  She and Belle had taken all their meals every day in the morning room. What a treat it might be for Belle, who clearly missed the formality of years gone by, to have Christmas dinner in a more traditional setting. Abby turned on the overhead light and looked around the room, which obviously had not been used in ages.

  The low, wide silver candle holders that stood at the center of the table were badly tarnished, as were the serving pieces displayed on the old mahogany sideboard. A built-in closet with double glass doors at one end of the room held row after row of fine crystal and stacks of porcelain plates, all coated with a layer of gritty dust. The dust was thicker on the furniture, and she whispered an apology to Aunt Leila as she gathered the darkened silver pieces in her arms and headed toward the kitchen.

  Barely three hours later, all the silver as well as the dark wood furniture had been polished until it gleamed. The crystal, carefully washed and dried along with Aunt Leila’s best china, glowed from behind the glass doors. Abby replaced the candle holders on the table and stood back to admire her work.

  Something was not right.

  She opened drawers in the sideboard and rummaged until she found a creamy colored damask cloth, wrapped in tissue paper into which had been tucked sprigs of lavender. Abby shook out the cloth, then draped it over the table and returned the candlesticks.

  Still not right.

  A holiday table called for a centerpiece, she told herself as she scanned the room for something suitable. A long, low silver bowl, freshly polished, all but waved to her from the small server near the side window. She carried it back into the kitchen and plunked it onto the counter, where she stacked it high with the bright red apples she had bought with the thought of baking a pie for Christmas dinner. She’d think of something else for tomorrow’s dessert.

  Almost perfect, Abby noted as she placed the bowl of shiny fruit in the center of the dining-room table, but not quite. She went back into the kitchen to see if she could scrounge up something else to add the finishing touch.

  The moon, wide and full, lit the yard behind the house, sending a long, fat shadow of the pine tree to bisect the back porch.

  “Of course,” she said aloud, grabbing a jacket and the key from a hook just inside the back door. She unlocked the door and stepped into the first cool, dark hours of Christmas morning.

  By the light of the moon, Abby gathered pine cones and stacked them on the back steps. As the pile began to grow larger, she went back into the house to fetch a basket. On her way out the door, she grabbed a pair of scissors, which she used to snip some branches of boxwood from the ancient hedge. She cut some long, still-green arms of ivy from the side of the porch, then piled it all into the basket.

  The night was so still, the far reaches of the sky so boundless, that she stood for a moment looking upward, her face tilted toward the endless procession of stars so high above. The serenity of the night held her, motionless, for what seemed to be forever. In those few moments, without words, she said a prayer of thanksgiving for her many blessings. For the first time in ten years, there were people in her life she cared about, people who, in turn, genuinely cared about her. It was all she had, but it was more than she’d had in a decade, and she was grateful.

  When the spell was broken by the sound of the wind shaking a loose shutter, she turned back to the house, filled with the first true sense of goodwill toward her fellow men she had known in a very long time.

  13

  “I simply cannot get over how old Sarah Williamson looks.” Belle shook her head as she raised her teacup to her lips.

  “How old is she?” Abby asked.

  “Well, Sarah must be… let’s see now, she was the youngest of the Baldwin girls. Eloise, the oldest, was two years behind me in school, that’d make Sarah maybe seventy-five or so.”

  Abby suppressed a giggle. Sarah was roughly fifteen years younger than Belle.

  “No excuse for letting yourself go like that.” Belle touched a hand to the back of her head, as if checking to make certain the pins holding her hair in the fat bun were secure. “But it was a lovely service. How wonderful to see so many familiar faces again, Abigail. People who were just children when Josie was a child, now parents, grandparents, some of them. And how lovely to have been remembered by so many. It was the nicest gift I’ve had in a very long time, Abigail, and I thank you.”

  “You are most welcome.” Abby stood and stretched. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t afford to buy you a present.”

  “There is nothing you could have bought for me that would have meant more. However, while we are on the subject of gifts…” Belle reached down next to her chair and retrieved a small white box which she extended to a startled Abby.

  “Belle, you didn’t have to…”

  “Now, child, it’s just a token. A little something I thought you might like.” Belle folded her hands in her lap and waited expectantly while Abby opened the box.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful, Belle.” Abby lifted the gold filigree butterfly from its cotton perch. “Belle, are you sure you want to give this to me? I mean, it’s obviously not a costume piece.”

  “If it was a costume piece, I wouldn’t have kept it all these years.” Belle sniffed at the mere suggestion.

  “Thank you, Belle, for giving it to me. I absolutely love it.” Abby smiled inwardly at Belle’s indignation as she pinned the butterfly to her green sweater, then picked up the plate holding the few remaining scones and began to clear the table.

  “I only meant,” Abby said as she started toward the kitchen, “that I would have expected that you’d want to keep a piece like this in your family.”

  “And that’s exactly what I aim to do, my dear,” Belle said softly as she heard Abby push open the kitchen door.

  Abby leaned back against the kitchen counter, trying to decide how to spend the rest of the day. The dinner preparations were, for the most part, well in hand, and Belle’s menu requests carried out to the letter, right down to the sweet potato soup Abby made from Leila’s old handprinted recipe. The only compromise had been on the green beans, which Abby had refused to cook for hours in pork, the way Belle
liked them. They would be lightly steamed and crisp, all their vitamins intact.

  The turkey Belle had craved was ready to go into the oven at the appointed time. The large bird was an extravagance for just the two of them, but Abby could stretch leftover turkey thirty different ways. The savory cornbread and sausage stuffing—also Leila’s recipe—was resting in a bowl in the refrigerator.

  Dinner wouldn’t be until six. It was only eleven o’clock. She had hours to kill.

  She tapped a foot impatiently. Belle would be watching television for the next few hours. The earlier holiday glow from the Christmas service had worn off. Now, it was just another day.

  She poked her head into the morning room. “Belle, I think I’ll go up and scrape paper in that back room for a few hours.”

  “On Christmas?” Belle appeared horrified.

  “I hate to waste the day.” Abby shrugged. “And I already have everything lined up for dinner.”

  “You’ll get that flaky stuff all over you,” Belle protested. “You’ll be a mess.”

  “It washes off.” Abby laughed and headed toward the steps. “I promise to be cleaned up by dinner.”

  “Oh, dear,” Belle whispered to the empty room, through which the faintest scent of lavender began to flow. “I’m afraid that may not be quite soon enough.”

  In spite of Abby’s best efforts, the paper stuck to the wall like a two-year-old clinging to his mother’s leg. Reluctantly, she climbed down from the ladder and hunted around the room for her spray bottle. Once located under a sheet she’d draped over a chair, the bottle of water accompanied her to the top of the ladder, where she sprayed its contents onto the wall. She hated this technique of loosening the old glue, knowing that the wet paper, once its glue had been reactivated by the water, would stick to everything. The hair on her head, as well as the hair on her arms, her shirt, the drop cloths, all would soon be covered with the sticky confetti.