Cancel the Wedding

by Carolyn T. Dingman

  “No, you don’t have to leave.” Elliott stood up. “I’m sorry. Graham should’ve explained better. It’s fine that you’re here. We don’t mind at all.”

  “I don’t think so.” Where are my stupid sunglasses?

  Logan put her hand out to him. “I’m Logan.”

  He shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Logan.”

  I mumbled, “I’m sorry. We’ll be out of here in just a minute.”

  Logan pointed to me. “That’s my aunt Olivia.”

  He held his hand out. “Nice to meet you, Olivia.” I shook, sheepishly. He kept talking. “Really, please just sit down and we can start this over. I have to be back in the office by two o’clock and I don’t want to waste the whole day having you apologize over nothing.” He opened his tackle box and began poking through some lures. Without looking up at me he said, “Your sunglasses are on your head. If that’s what you’re looking for.”

  I stood there like a disheveled idiot, my hastily packed bag overflowing with my towel and lotion and magazines. I was staring at the back of their two heads waiting for someone to realize the absurdity here and let me off the hook so I could slink away. But no, I was stuck. I dropped my bag on the dock.

  Logan was unfazed. “So is Graham your nephew or something?”

  “He’s my brother actually.”

  She nodded, tucking away this new bit of information. “Cool.”

  Elliott looked at me as I sat, defeated and embarrassed, on the edge of the dock. He said, “Can you believe kids still say the word ‘cool’?”

  Can you believe I’ve been in this state for less than twenty-four hours and I’ve managed to make an ass out of myself in front of the same man twice? I put my sunglasses back on to give me some semblance of invisibility and kicked my feet in the water.

  While Elliott readied his fishing rod Logan threw me a series of frantic gestures and facial expressions ordering me to find out what I could about Graham from his brother. Elliott cast his line in a smooth arc, landing the lure in the muddy waters bordering the shore. He sat down on the dock next to me and sighed as his feet hit the cool lake. “So, what brings you guys to Tillman?”

  I was staring out at the water watching the small ripples the breeze was stirring up. “Actually”—there didn’t seem like any other way to put this—“we’re here to bury my mother.”

  “Oh.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I am so sorry. And here I am acting like a jackass.”

  That made me laugh. “I thought I was the jackass.”

  “No. That was me. I shouldn’t have made that joke about—” He cut himself off. “I’m sorry for your loss. Was it recent?”

  Elliott the nonwaiter was so genuinely empathetic about my mother that I thought I might cry. “No. It wasn’t recent. Actually she passed away last year. She was cremated and we’ve come to scatter the ashes.”

  Elliott just nodded his head as he reeled his line back in and cast it out again. We sat there quietly for a long time, swinging our feet in the water in unison. Logan eventually tracked down an inner tube and floated out into the lake. She would glance up at me occasionally and nod in Elliott’s direction. She could be really demanding when she wanted to be.

  It was fact-finding time. “So . . . Graham’s your brother?”

  “Yes. He’s the baby.”

  “I’ll say. What is he? Sixteen?”

  “He just turned seventeen, actually.” Elliott opened a small cooler he had with him and handed me a bottle of water.

  I took it with a nod of thanks. “That’s quite an age difference.”

  “I know. I’m the oldest of five. I was sixteen when Graham was born. I can’t tell you how traumatizing it is to know that your parents are still doing that when you’re sixteen.”

  That made me laugh. “I can imagine. Actually, I don’t want to imagine.” I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “So listen, I’m not very good at being subtle about these things, but I think Logan would like to know if Graham has a girlfriend.”

  “Wow, is that the best you’ve got? That wasn’t sneaky at all.” He shook his head in mock disapproval.

  “I said I wasn’t good at this. What should I have done?”

  Elliott slowly cranked the wheel on his fishing rod, bringing the glittering lure back to the surface before casting it out again. “You should have done what I did.” I held my hands up, questioning. He explained, saying, as if it were obvious, “I don’t normally go fishing on a Monday in the middle of the day.” I nodded, understanding, as he continued. “Graham sent me out here to find out about her.”

  “Aw, that’s so cute.” It did seem odd that he would just show up. I hadn’t seen another person on the lake. “But then why were you so surprised to see us out here?”

  He looked sort of puzzled that his surprise had registered with me. “Oh, well, I just didn’t realize that it would be you guys.”

  I looked over the water at Logan to make sure she was out of earshot. Her head was kicked back on the edge of the inner tube. It looked like she might be napping out there. She had the right idea being in the water; it was starting to get hot on the dock.

  I said, “You cannot tell Graham that she was asking about him.”

  “Ditto. And no, he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Excellent, I shall report back to my superior with the information that I so cagily extracted from you without you even being aware of it.”

  “Yes, you were very sly. I didn’t suspect a thing. So what about Logan?”

  “No boyfriend. She’ll be a junior in the fall, same as Graham.”

  Elliott took a sandwich from the cooler and handed me half in a way that told me declining the offer would be pointless. It turned out he was a nice guy and very easy to talk to. And yes, I suppose he was good-looking, as Logan had mentioned, but I wasn’t really in the habit of noticing that anymore. But I did notice his very slight Southern accent. It was so charming. He had an easy manner and effortless self-confidence. Elliott was simply the kind of guy that you really wanted to like you back.

  I was staring out over the water trying to remember how I had gotten here. I was engaged in a conspiracy with some strange man to set my niece up with some boy we didn’t even know. It was all a futile flirtation for her really. I mean how long would we even be in Tillman? But I would do it for her because she asked. I would do anything for her. I used to be the fun aunt who always had candy in her purse; now I was the fun aunt with a cute boy in her purse. Wait, that made me feel a little bit pimpy. I took a long sip of the water. Was I the pimp in this scenario or was Elliott?

  I could feel Elliott watching me out of the corner of his eye. “What are you thinking?”

  I surprised myself by answering honestly. “I’m thinking how odd it is that I’m sitting out here on a dock in the middle of nowhere with a stranger setting up my niece.” I pulled a tiny piece of crust from the sandwich and tossed it in the lake. “And eating half your lunch.”

  Elliott laughed and leaned back on his hand. “This is a small town. There are no strangers. Just people you haven’t met yet.”

  I was wondering how my sister, Georgia, would view this turn of events. I turned toward him. “Your family could be a whole clan of axe murderers for all I know.”

  “Now, why do people always pick the axe? I mean why not machete murderer or hacksaw murderer? It’s always the axe.”

  “Not making the girl alone on the lake feel better.”

  He laughed and finished his sandwich. “I promise I’m not a murderer. Of any kind.”

  “And neither is your brother?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Very comforting.”

  Elliott reeled the line back in. There weren’t any nibbles in the middle of the day. He asked, “How long will you two be in town?”

  “I’m not really sure.” I was watching Logan. Maybe we’d be in town long enough for her to go to a movie with Graham or something. I wondered what kids her age did on date
s these days. I probably didn’t want to know. “We’re just going to be here long enough to do some poking around in Huntley before we scatter my mom’s ashes.”

  Elliott was carefully securing the lure to the hook keeper near the rod’s handle. He asked, “Huntley?”

  “Yes, she grew up in Huntley. She never talked about it much. Actually, not at all. And it’s weird because she wants her ashes scattered here.”

  Elliott became quiet, in concentration or concern, I wasn’t sure.

  I continued. “So that’s why we came down here. We wanted to see where she grew up. Find out what we could about her life before. Before she met my dad I mean.” Our mother’s stories only traced back as far as October 1977 when she married our father, Adam Hughes. Anyone could see that she loved him. She did it gently and with a lot of quiet restraint, but fully. He positively adored her. But there was an underlying sadness to our mom that we could never quite figure out. It had to have been bred in her childhood. Losing her mother at an early age must have been devastating. And the complete destruction of her childhood home must have been difficult. But there was something else, some other reason for her refusal to ever speak of the past.

  Elliott’s eyebrows were furrowed together as if he was struggling to ask a delicate question. “Where exactly in Huntley did she want to be . . . put to rest?” I noticed that people didn’t like to use the words “scattered” or “sprinkled” when talking about human remains. But there really was no other good description.

  “She requested that half be put over a grave in the cemetery; we’re thinking that’s probably her parents, and the other half in Lake Huntley.”

  “And all you know is that she’s from Huntley?”

  I nodded.

  “So not Tillman? I mean you’re here, in Tillman.” His voice had gotten very quiet.

  “No, it was definitely Huntley. But this is the biggest town in Huntley County so I figured this was the best place to start.”

  Elliott turned his whole body toward me, getting my full attention. “Olivia, how much do you know about Lake Huntley?”

  I shrugged, “Nothing really. Why?”

  “Well, it’s just that . . . Where do I start? First of all, there are no natural lakes in Georgia. None of any size anyway. All of these lakes were created by dams. You know, for power production or reservoirs. Especially as the population grew after the war. They would dam up a river and create the lakes. Like this one. This lake was built in the nineteen sixties by the TVA, and sometimes, when creating these lakes, property got flooded. This is one of those lakes. Lake Huntley actually has a whole flooded town underneath it.”

  I pulled my feet out of the water, suddenly feeling terrified of what could be underneath me floating just out of reach.

  Elliott put his hand on mine the way someone would when preparing to deliver bad news. “The town of Huntley, Georgia, was flooded when they built the lake. It’s not here anymore. It’s under there.” He pointed to the water. Where Logan was floating. I wanted to yank her out. It seemed as if this were a mass watery grave, a whole town with streets and houses and churches flooded with water and inhabited by fish and mud beneath her floating body. It felt ghostly. As if something could reach up from the murky water and grab her.

  “Logan! We need to get going.”

  Elliott said, “I’m sorry. You didn’t know.” He was trying to soften the blow. “The town was really small I think. I’m sure the residents were all relocated and any gravesites were moved. I mean I know they moved a church.” He glanced over and saw the horrified look on my face and backpedaled. “I think what they flooded was mostly farmland.”

  I was completely freaked out. Logan was slowly kicking her way toward the dock. Suddenly I was seeing all of the bodies rising up out of the ground in the movie Poltergeist and Craig T. Nelson was screaming, You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn’t you? I really wanted Logan to move faster and get out of the water.

  Elliott was still talking, but I couldn’t process what he was saying. I interrupted him. “Sorry, I’m just a little bit shocked, that’s all. Logan, hurry up!” I was shoving all my things in my bag again. “I just never knew. Never imagined. How . . . I mean how could they do that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s the government. They can do whatever they want.”

  “Right. But why—” I just sighed. Now the frantic feeling of fleeing was waning and the urge to cry was creeping in. “Why didn’t she ever mention any of it?” Of course that was nothing new. The woman could keep her secrets.

  FOUR

  “God that is so bizarre.” Georgia had said the word “bizarre” three times since our phone call began two minutes ago. Logan and I were in our room at the inn on the speakerphone with her.

  I agreed. It was bizarre. And disheartening. Maybe this is why Mom never wanted to talk about her hometown. Because it was underwater.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “What do we do now?”

  Since we had pulled into Tillman I had this feeling that I was walking in my mother’s footsteps. That I was just one block away from finding the street where she grew up. The school she attended. The diner where she sat with friends.

  Georgia’s voice floated up from the phone. “How can they just flood a whole town?”

  “I don’t know. Apparently it was a really small town.”

  Georgia asked, “What does the lake look like again?” I think she was feeling a little bit left out now that our adventure had taken on a murky-depths quality. I mean a drowned town? That’s a peculiar turn of events.

  Logan had already showered and changed into clothes for dinner. I asked her to go downstairs and find out about the Internet access in the inn.

  Her hair was still damp and was at least an hour away from being ramrod straight and she didn’t have any makeup on. Of course she didn’t need any makeup and when she was caked in it I thought she looked a little bit silly. But she was busy reminding the world that she was almost fifteen and would be a junior in high school in the fall. It took a lot of smoke and mirrors and subterfuge to make the world see you the way you wanted them to. It had always been difficult for Logan to look like her peers. She had one of those late summer birthdays that people were always using as an excuse to hold their kids back in school. But Logan had started kindergarten on time, one week after turning five. Then she skipped the second grade. Now she was about two years younger than most of her classmates.

  Logan whined about having to go to the lobby unpolished but finally gave in and left the room. The disembodied voice of Georgia barked at me. “Take me off speaker, Livie.”

  “Okay, you’re off. What’s up?”

  “Is Lo okay down there? Are you keeping an eye on her? Does she want to come home?”

  “Georgia, we’ve been here for like five minutes. She’s fine; she hasn’t said a word about home.” I knew when total silence followed that remark that it had been a mistake. I quickly added, “I mean she seemed a little blue last night. I think she may be a little homesick, but she’s putting on a brave face.” I wouldn’t call that last bit a lie, more like an exaggeration.

  Georgia sounded very small. “Oh, well good. I hope she’s having fun.” Those two could barely get through a conversation without screaming and yet Georgia was heartbroken by her absence. Why are relationships between mothers and daughters always so complicated?

  The door opened. It was Logan. “I’ve got to hang up, Gigi. Lo just got back and I have to shower before she decides she wants to straighten her hair for six hours in the bathroom.”

  Logan stuck her tongue out at me as I hung up the phone. Apparently the only place to get Internet service was the lobby.

  I suggested, “How about we just eat dinner downstairs tonight and then set up our mobile HQ in the lobby?”

  “Our what?” Logan’s raised eyebrows should have told me not to elaborate for fear of sounding foolish.

  I hardly ever take heed of the raised eyebrow
s. “Our HQ! Our headquarters. We can bring our laptops and notebooks and good pens to take notes and do research about the town and the lake.”

  Logan was laughing at me. “You are such a dork, Aunt Liv. Good pens?”

  She could act like I was a loser for wanting to dig in right away and find out more about Huntley but she was a fourteen-year-old girl who just found out she was staying on the banks of an underwater town. That had a cool factor that she couldn’t ignore. It was, in her words, pretty trippy.

  The lobby of the James Oglethorpe Inn was not exactly what one would expect to find in an early-nineteenth-century building. Especially one with such an interesting provenance. The building was originally built as a tavern and inn in the mid-1800s and then had served as a hospital and morgue for several years during the Civil War. There was even supposed to be the ghost of a Confederate soldier wandering around the third floor somewhere looking for his boots. I was making a point of avoiding the third floor.

  Over the years the building had also served as a post office, an office building, and then finally had gone back to the inn it was originally intended to be.

  I had been expecting overstuffed chintz furniture and lace curtains with the obligatory curio cabinet filled with Civil War memorabilia. And maybe for the floor to be covered in needlepoint rugs and the walls filled with mounted deer heads and trout.

  Instead it was stylish, elegant, and modern. Not in a cold way, but in a very comfortable yet lush way. The Belgian linen couches and well-worn saddle leather armchairs cuddled up to the fireplace. The floors were a beautiful distressed wide-plank pine with seating areas corralled by thick cream squares of carpet. The walls were a mottled Venetian plaster in a deep rich caramel color.

  Logan and I made our way to the dining room and were seated at a table near the window. The triple-hung window had the old pulley and weight system in the wall and the glass was warped and wavy.

  I pointed it out to Logan. “Do you see how the glass has slowly, over time, melted down slightly and become thicker at the bottom of each pane?”