I turned back to Catherine. “Where’s Mother?”
“Not here yet,” Catherine said.
“Have you spoken to her?”
She shook her head. “Why?”
“She spent the night with Bob. I haven’t seen her since she left after the party last night.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Catherine said. “We would have heard if she wasn’t.”
Nice that they were all so certain about that. “Did you hear that Todd got engaged?”
“To Marley?”
I nodded.
“Good for him,” Catherine said. “How do you know?”
I explained that Rafe had spoken to the sheriff earlier. “He told Rafe, and Rafe told me.”
“Why are you worried about Mother, if your husband has spoken to Bob? Didn’t Bob tell him that Mother’s all right?”
He had.
“Do you think he’s lying?” Catherine wanted to know. “What do you think he did? Strangled her and hid her in the freezer and now he just isn’t telling us?”
“Of course not.” Bob Satterfield wasn’t the kind of person who’d do something like that.
“You’ve gotten involved in too many murders,” Catherine told me. “Mother’s fine. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
And if she wasn’t, we’d mount a search party and go looking for her. I wandered over to an empty spot between Darcy and Dix, and proceeded to sit. “Where’s Grimaldi?”
“She had to work,” Dix said.
“In Nashville?”
He nodded. “She’s still there until the thirty-first.”
Of course she was. Because God forbid that she quit a week early and spent the holidays with us.
Of course, she had a habit of working holidays so her colleagues with families didn’t have to, which I suppose is nice of her. But I’d expected her to be here. If nothing else, so she could ask Rafe what his answer to her offer was. I’d kind of like to know, too.
“I don’t think she expected an answer today,” Dix told me.
“Sounds like you know what I’m talking about, anyway.”
“She talked to me about it.” He glanced at me. “She wanted to know whether I thought you’d want to move back home. And whether he would.”
The second glance was for Rafe, perched on the arm of the sofa where his grandmother was sitting. He had given Carrie to her, and they were both beaming down at the baby. I could tell from the way Rafe was poised, that he was ready to make a grab for Carrie if she slipped out of Mrs. Jenkins’s hands.
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
Dix shrugged. “That I had no idea. I figure you might be open to it. I’m less sure about him.”
I nodded. I was less sure about him, too. “Between you and me…”
Dix nodded.
“How do you think the population of Columbia would take to Rafe policing them?”
“If they have any sense,” Dix said, “they’ll take a look at his reputation and consider themselves lucky.”
Awww.
“And if that doesn’t work, all he has to do is flash his badge and his gun, and that look he gets in his eyes when people don’t do what he wants, and that ought to take care of it.”
Hard to argue with that. The look Rafe gets in his eyes sometimes is enough to make grown men wet themselves. It was nice of Dix to notice.
“I love you,” I said.
He grinned. “I love you too, Sis.”
“It’ll be nice for you to have Grimaldi here.”
“Nice for all of us,” Dix said.
It was hard to argue with that, too.
* * *
The search party turned out to be unnecessary. They cut it close, so close that we were almost ready to move into the dining room for Christmas dinner by the time the doorbell rang again, but a minute later Bob ushered Mother into the family room.
“Sorry we’re late.” They stopped just inside the door, him with his hand on her back.
“Yes,” Mother chirped, and reached up to sweep a lock of champagne-colored hair from her temple, “sorry we’re late.”
The hand lingered, and the lights from the tree caught on something shiny, glimmering on her finger. I squinted as a beam of reflected light hit me squarely in the face. “What’s… is that what I think it is?”
Mother giggled. Actually giggled, like a school girl. And pulled it off, in spite of being fifty-nine and several months old.
“Ohmigod!” Audrey squealed and jumped to her feet. Her heels clacked on the floor as she hurried toward Mother, her wedge of black hair swinging. “Ohmigod! You’re engaged. You’re engaged!”
She’s a year older than Mother, but managed to pull off the middle school squeal, too. They fell on each other, jumping up and down, while Bob edged out of the way. Audrey was crying, and so was Mother.
Dix was the first to congratulate Bob. He slapped him on the shoulder with one hand and extended the other. “Welcome to the family. Congratulations!”
After that, the whole thing pretty much descended into pandemonium. We all hugged Mother and sniffled along with her, and we all either hugged Bob or shook his hand, and congratulated them both. She kept shedding happy tears, and he was beaming, like the happiest man in the world.
By the time we made it to the dinner table, Catherine was apologizing for the roast and how the rolls were a little too brown on the bottom. Nobody had heard the oven bell ding in the excitement, so we were eating slightly-burnt rolls and a roast that was, perhaps, just a touch dry. The sauce helped, though, and I don’t think anyone really minded.
“So when’s the wedding?” Jonathan wanted to know. He’s my brother-in-law, Catherine’s husband, and more than ten years in the South—first at Vanderbilt University’s law school, and then here in Sweetwater—hasn’t managed to wear the sharp edges off his Boston accent.
Mother and Bob exchanged a look. “We were thinking of eloping,” Mother said demurely.
Really? I would have thought she’d want the big reception and the adoration of the populace for her nuptials.
Then again, I don’t know why she would. I mean, she had the big wedding and the white gown when she married my father. She got to experience it again six months ago, when Rafe and I got married on the grounds of the mansion. If she just wanted to run off somewhere now, and tie the knot in a private little ceremony with no fanfare, maybe it wasn’t so surprising.
I tried to imagine my mother and the sheriff being lawfully wedded by an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas. The mind balked.
“Maybe somewhere tropical,” Mother added.
“Wedding and honeymoon in one? What a good idea.”
Mother smiled at me. “We thought so.”
“Todd called me to share the good news about Marley,” Dix said. Since Todd Satterfield is his best friend, and has been since kindergarten, I guess it made sense that he would have. “Hard to believe you’re both tying the knot.”
He grinned at the sheriff, who grinned back and took Mother’s hand. “I’m a lucky man. I gain a wife and a daughter-in-law, all at the same time.”
“I guess Todd’s moving in with Marley, so you’ll finally get your house back.”
Todd had been living with his father for the past year-and-a-half or so, since he came back from Atlanta to take the position as assistant DA for Maury County. I hadn’t heard Bob complain, and I imagined they’d probably gotten along reasonably well. And it wasn’t like they’d been stumbling over each other. Bob’s house isn’t quite as enormous as the mansion, but it’s one of the big four-squares in the middle of town, so there was plenty of room for the two of them.
But of course Marley had a house, too, where she and her son Oliver lived. And it made sense that Todd would move in there.
“He’s been staying with Marley on and off for a while,” Bob confirmed. “Half the time lately, he didn’t even come home at night.”
Well, good for him. “Are they having Christmas dinner together?”<
br />
“They went away for Christmas,” Bob said. “Todd rented a cabin in Gatlinburg. Oliver’s enjoying the snow.”
No doubt. And Todd and Marley were surely enjoying the ambience after Oliver went to bed. All snuggled up in front of a fire with the mountains outside. And a ring box in Todd’s pocket.
“So where will you two be living?” Catherine wanted to know. “A night here and a night there? Separate residences? Or?”
Mother looked discomfited. She didn’t really look at any of us when she said, “We wanted to talk to you about that.”
Uh-oh.
Mother squared her shoulders under the green silk. “I want to move in with Bob.”
And…?
“Sure,” Catherine said, with a glance at me and Dix. “You can move in with Bob. Why would we mind?”
“We’re adults,” I added. “We realize that… you know.”
Mother flushed. So did I. Rafe turned his head to hide a smile.
Dix cleared his throat. “What’s the problem?”
Mother focused on him. She looked relieved to be dealing with him instead of me or Catherine. “It isn’t a problem, really. Just… what to do with the house.”
There was a moment of silence. I blinked. “When you say the house, you mean the mansion? The Martin Mansion?”
Mother nodded. “If I won’t be living there anymore…”
Since in her world, I guess, a wife moves in with her husband. The way Mother had done when she married Dad. The way she proposed to do now, after marrying Bob.
Then again, that was exactly what I’d done, too, in shacking up with Rafe, so I had very little room to talk.
“I hope you’re not suggesting that we should sell it,” Dix said, with another glance at the rest of us. He included Darcy this time, since she was also one of Dad’s children. “The Martins have owned the place for a hundred and eighty years. Longer.”
“Of course not,” Mother said with a sniff. “But you’re the Martins. Not me. I’ll be Margaret Anne Satterfield.”
So she would.
Catherine looked at Dix. “I already have a house.”
He nodded. “So do I. And the girls like it. I don’t want to take them away from where they lived with Sheila.”
They both turned to look at Darcy. She shook her head. “No offense, but I don’t really want it. I have a house, too. So does Patrick.” Her boyfriend, an officer with the Columbia PD. One of Grimaldi’s underlings come New Year, I guess. He was sitting next to her, but not saying much. He nodded, though.
“You guys fight it out,” Darcy added, sharing a glance between the three of us. “I appreciate that you’re including me, but you’re the ones who grew up there. I wasn’t a Martin until a couple of months ago. I still don’t feel like one. To me it’s just a house. A really big one.”
OK, then.
There was a beat of silence, and then everyone turned to me.
And to Rafe.
Seven
I opened my mouth and closed it again. And looked at Rafe. Better if he took care of this one.
“We have a house, too,” he said. “In Nashville.”
“And a job offer here.” It was the sheriff who spoke up. “This would solve the problem of where to live.”
The corner of Rafe’s mouth pulled up. “Finding someplace to live was really the least of it.”
“Well, now it’s one thing you don’t have to worry about,” Mother said brightly. “Savannah has always loved the house. Much more so than Dix or Catherine.”
She glanced at them for corroboration. They both nodded. I have no idea whether it was true or not.
But maybe it was, since they’d both made it clear that they didn’t want to move from their cushy McMansions.
“It wouldn’t be yours,” Dix told me. Always the lawyer, I guess, making sure I knew the legal ramifications. “Unless she quit claims it, the house would belong to Mother until… um…”
Until she died. But of course he couldn’t really say that.
I nodded. “I know about quit claim deeds.”
He looked surprised, and I added, “Real estate school is really just Real Estate Law 101. We covered deeds and trusts in detail.”
“Then you understand,” Dix said.
“Of course.” The property was a shared inheritance from our father. It belonged to Mother at the moment, since she was his widow, but once she passed—hopefully a very long time from now—the four of us would have to figure out what to do with it. I didn’t see anyone really pushing for selling, so it would probably be up to whoever lived in the house to buy out the other siblings.
At the rate we were going, it looked like that might be me.
Which was ridiculous. Rafe and I, on my non-existent real estate commissions and his law-enforcement salary—not exactly munificent—couldn’t hope to buy out two lawyers and a paralegal.
But it was also a moot point at the moment.
“He hasn’t decided to take the job yet,” I said.
The others looked at me and nodded sagely. Rafe rolled his eyes. In thinking back on it, I guess I had sort of made it sound like it was just a matter of time.
“I hope you know that we would enjoy having you around more of the time, Rafael,” Mother said. She’s one of only two people in the world who call Rafe by his given name. Tim Briggs is the other one, but Tim rolls his tongue around it in a much more inappropriate way than Mother.
And then she ruined it by adding, with a sideways glance, “And of course Carrie.”
Of course.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “I don’t suppose anyone would care one way or the other whether I came.”
Rafe smirked. Mother said primly, “We’re always happy to see you, Savannah.”
I snorted.
“Not at the table,” Mother said. “Excuse yourself, darling.”
I apologized for snorting while she turned back to Rafe. “I know you weren’t always happy here.”
Understatement of the year.
“But things are different now. You have us. And people have progressed beyond the old ways of thinking.”
After a barely perceptible pause, she added a pious, “Thank God.”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Mother had been one of the last holdouts when it came to the old way of thinking.
But since laughing would have earned me another verbal slap on the wrist, and crying probably wouldn’t have been much better, I contained myself. Even if my eyes were rolling wildly in my imagination.
Rafe was a big enough man not to call her on it. I would have to thank him for that later. He didn’t cave, either, though, or let her push him into anything. “We’ll think about it,” was as far as he’d go, in a tone that, while friendly, made it clear that further pushing wouldn’t do any good.
Mother nodded. “Keep it in mind.”
And that was the last that was said about it during dinner. But on the way home to Nashville later that night, with the two of us in the car and Carrie asleep in the backseat, I told Rafe, “You don’t have to move to Sweetwater if you don’t want to. And you don’t have to live in the mansion if we do. But you have to admit it would have a nice irony to it.”
He didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.
“I can’t believe Mother offered it to us,” I added. “I mean… It was nice of her, and I guess it makes sense. I just didn’t think she’d leave until we had to carry her cold, dead body out the door.”
“It isn’t her family home,” Rafe said. “And she’s old-fashioned.”
A nice way to say stuck in the past, wedded to the old ways of thinking.
Even if those ways were changing, slowly.
“She’s pretty dug in, though,” I said. “Even when I realized that she and Bob were getting married, I didn’t think she’d want to leave the mansion. That’s always been her identity, for as long as I’ve known her. Robert Martin’s widow. Lady of the manor.”
“Now sh
e’s going to be Bob Satterfield’s wife,” Rafe said. “A Satterfield instead of a Martin. It’s the proper thing to do.”
I supposed it was. “Just in case you wondered, I’d be happy to take over the mansion.”
His mouth curved. “I figured you would be.”
“The spring market is coming. We could try to sell the house again. And maybe actually do it this time. A lot has changed in the past year.” More houses in the neighborhood had been renovated, more new construction had gone up. Mrs. Jenkins’s house would be more desirable now than it had been last spring.
Rafe didn’t say anything.
I added, “If you wanted to take the job, that is.”
A minute passed. Then another one. Outside the car, the scenery flew by. Inside the car, nothing changed.
Then—
“You think I should?” Rafe asked.
I hesitated. “I know that the proper answer to that is, ‘if you want to.’”
He nodded. “I’m asking what you think. If you think I should.”
“I think… I think it would be nice to have family around more. Both my family and yours. Your grandmother seems to be doing well, living with Audrey. The small-town atmosphere seems to be helping her. Or maybe it’s that she feels closer to Oneida. But either way, she looks like she’s thriving.”
Rafe nodded.
“I think it would be nice for Carrie to have cousins to grow up with. Dix’s and Catherine’s kids are a little older, and they’re probably done having kids,” unless Dix married Grimaldi at some point, and she wanted one, and that thought made my mind boggle, so I moved on quickly, “but Darcy and Patrick Nolan might have kids soon, I suppose. It seems like they’re serious about one another.”
He nodded.
“If they did, their kids would be closer to Carrie’s age. That would be nice. And we might have more.” Or not. We weren’t at a point where we were talking about that yet. At the moment, our hands were full just handling Carrie.
“So for our family,” I said, “I think it might be a good move. A quieter life. Probably a more regular schedule for you. No late nights. No crazy undercover assignments. Or maybe you’ll miss those?”
The corners of his mouth turned up, but after a second he shook his head. “They can be fun. And a real adrenaline rush sometimes. But with you and the baby, not sure that’s a risk I wanna keep taking.”
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