Roses

by Leila Meacham

  Shockingly thin, his face ghastly pale, Miles descended behind him laden with luggage, his concentration focused on managing the steps. With grim composure, Abel offered Mary his arm and together they went to meet son and brother.

  “Miles?” Mary said uncertainly, wondering if he’d allow her to embrace him.

  He stared at her blankly. “Mary? Is that you? My God, but you’re beautiful. I guess I am, too, huh?” He smiled with a touch of his old irony, revealing teeth that had begun to decay. “Where’s Mama?”

  “At home. She’s so eager to see you, Miles. I… have been, too.” She felt her chin trembling and tears spurt to her eyes.

  Miles set down the bags and held out his arms. “Well then, come here and give your big brother a hug.”

  She threw her arms around him and held him fiercely, dismayed at his appallingly thin frame. “You’re all bones and hollows,” she moaned. “Sassie will have a job fattening you up.”

  “How is Sassie?”

  If she’d answered truthfully, she would have said, Tired, Miles. Worn out from seeing after our mother, trying to run the house without help, to put food on the table from our limited larder. But his battle had been worse than theirs. “The same,” she said. “A bit older. Wearies a little easier.”

  “And Mama?”

  “The same, too, I’m afraid. I’ll tell you about her away from here.”

  She heard a shuffle behind her. “Hello, Mary Lamb.”

  It was Ollie, so much the same, so much changed. As with the others, his uniform hung on him, but the twinkle in his eyes for her had not altered. His father, who’d held up until now, turned to Miles and embraced him with an audible sob.

  “Dear Ollie,” she said, her eyes brimming again as she leaned to kiss him lightly upon the lips. “Welcome home.”

  A smile broke across his face. “That was worth coming home for, I can tell you. You’re even more beautiful than I remembered. Don’t you think so, Miles?”

  “I said the same,” her brother agreed, his voice choked from Abel’s emotional welcome. “I’d worry about her beauty going to her head if I didn’t know Mary.”

  “Part of her charm,” Ollie said. While Miles showed Abel the luggage belonging to his son, he took her hand and squeezed it affectionately. “Thanks for the letters.”

  “They reached you?”

  “Four of them did. Percy was jealous as hell that you sent them to me, but I let him stew. It did him good.”

  “They were meant for all of you, as I’m sure he knew. Was it unpatriotic of me not to write to each of you individually?”

  “Hell, no! He had plenty of mail from other girls.”

  “Did he really?” Over his head, she saw Percy trying to extricate himself from Lucy’s tenacious arms, his tall, much sparer figure bent to accommodate her diminutive height.

  “But it was your letters he kept looking for,” Ollie confided quietly in her ear.

  Hearing the drop of his voice, she studied his face for confirmation of her predawn fears. “Ollie? You didn’t do anything absurdly self-sacrificial out of regard for Percy and me, did you?” But another thought, lightning quick, struck her: God forbid, what if he had not…?

  “How could I ever do anything absurdly self-sacrificial out of regard for Percy and you?” he asked, swiping at the dimple in her chin.

  “My turn, Ollie,” Percy said behind her, and Mary felt her legs turn as limp as boiled noodles.

  “All yours,” Ollie said, and hopped back on his crutches with the smiling regret of someone who must return a found treasure.

  She’d rehearsed the scene of his homecoming as often as she’d remembered the one in which they’d parted… what she would say, how she would act. Everyone would be looking at them, expecting some sort of romantic drama, but she would give no tongue an excuse to wag or Percy a reason to hope—that is, if he still wished to marry her.

  But now that they were face-to-face, her carefully prepared speech and practiced demeanor flew from her mind like puff weed on the wind. Without thinking, she put out her hand, not to be shaken, as she’d rehearsed, but to touch the war-hardened ridge of his cheekbone. “Hello, Percy,” she said, all that the hot rush of her gratitude and relief would allow her to vocalize.

  “Hello, Gypsy.” He stood with his usual ease, his hands in the pockets of his jodhpurs, holding himself from her as if she were a rare wine that must be sipped rather than gulped down. “Why didn’t you write?”

  “I—I—” She was vaguely conscious of the others leaving them—Ollie hobbling off with his father to waylay Lucy from bearing down upon them and Miles to greet Jeremy and Beatrice. “I was afraid,” she said. It was the first question she knew he’d ask, and she’d decided to tell him the truth.

  “Afraid?”

  “I… was unable to write what you wanted to read. You were at war. I was afraid my letters would disappoint you more than if I’d not written at all.”

  “You misjudged the risk.”

  “I’m sure,” she agreed, ashamed. Any letter from home in the midst of what they were going through would have been better than no letter at all. Shyly, she reached up and again touched the tightly drawn flesh of his jaw. “You’ve all lost so much weight.”

  “Would that were all,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, understanding. They had lost an essence of themselves—innocence, she supposed. She could see it in their old, young faces, both familiar and strange. In her mirror each morning before setting out for another backbreaking day at the plantation, she could see the loss of it in herself. She removed her hand, seeing that he did not seem moved to take it. “You had my prayers, if not my letters, Percy. I’m happy more than I can say that they were answered.” It was impossible to break away from his gaze. He still had not touched her but stood with an awesome containment that unsettled her.

  “They were answered, but at the cost of Ollie’s leg.”

  She covered her mouth in dismay. “You mean…?”

  “That German grenade was meant for me. He saved my life.”

  Before she could speak, Miles appeared beside her, frowning. “Mary, when are we leaving? I want to go home to see Mama.”

  “And the boys could use some sleep,” Percy said. “Neither one slept on the train.”

  “If you noticed, you didn’t either,” Miles said, punching his shoulder.

  Dazed by Percy’s revelation, she glanced around in confusion at the crowd milling about for their cue to depart and saw Beatrice swooping toward them like a large black bird. Lucy followed in her bright plumage and Jeremy loaded with flowers presented in honor of the boys’ homecoming. “I came with the Warwicks, Miles,” Mary managed to explain, aware that Percy still held her in his quiet gaze. “Beatrice will have to tell us how we’re to get home.”

  “It’s just as I expected,” Beatrice announced irritably. “I told Mayor Harper that the parade ought to be scheduled for later in the week when we’ve all had the opportunity to catch our breaths, but he wanted to save all these people a second trip into town. Abel wants to take Ollie home. The poor boy is worn out.”

  “So is Miles,” Mary said, “and he’s eager to see Mama.”

  “Well, we can’t all fit in the Packard,” Lucy pointed out, sidling close to Percy with an oblique look at Mary.

  “We are aware of that, Lucy.” Beatrice cast her a sour look. “Miles, dear, you and Mary go with Abel, and let’s all meet up at the house about four o’clock to drive into town. With hope, that will give the boys time to have some rest.”

  There were murmurs of agreement as bags were gathered and hoisted. Beatrice took the flowers from her husband’s arms and shoved one of the arrangements into Lucy’s. “Kindly help me take these to the car, Lucy,” she said.

  “But, I—” Lucy protested through the spikes of gladiola screening her face.

  “Now, if you please,” Beatrice ordered, giving her son and Mary a wink over her shoulder as she marched Lucy off.

  Le
ft alone, Percy removed his hands from his pockets and took her by the shoulders. “I’ll take you and Miles home after the hoopla is over tonight,” he said. “Plan to stay up with me so we can talk. Don’t deny me this, Mary.”

  “I won’t,” she whispered, almost woozy from the blood pounding in her head.

  He smiled for the first time. “That’s my girl,” he said with a swift stroke of her dimple before following his parents and Lucy to the Packard.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mary waited in the parlor while Miles went upstairs to their mother’s room. Hugging herself—her tendency in times of despair—she stood before one of the French doors that opened to what was once a magnificent rose garden. A few bushes had survived her mother’s vicious attack several nights after the will was read. Most had succumbed to the crowbar used to beat them to the ground while the household slept. Toby had found the severed red and white blossoms and slashed stalks early the next morning and gone in search of the weapon, fearing his mistress might take it into her head to give her daughter the same treatment as she lay in her bed.

  The rosebushes had not been replanted, and now weeds and grass grew over the desecration, mercifully hidden from the street by a trellis in need of a fresh coat of white paint. Only a few bloomed bravely on spindly stalks here at the end of the season.

  There was no liquor in the house, and Mary wished she’d thought to ask Toby to buy a bottle of champagne for her brother’s homecoming. They wouldn’t have been able to share it with their mother, of course, but the two of them could have celebrated with a quiet toast in the parlor.

  Not that there was much to celebrate. Her brother was a sick, fractious man, even more of a stranger now than when he had left. On the drive home, he had sat in a resentful silence broken only by fits of coughing into a handkerchief. Once in the house, he’d set his army duffels by the door, as if he didn’t mean to stay but had merely stopped by to see his mother before setting off for another war. He’d embraced Sassie warmly but left her welcome-home meal cooling on the table set with their finest tableware. “I don’t feel like eating,” he’d said. “I’ll have a sandwich later in my room.”

  And poor, dear Ollie. The jollity he’d assumed for the crowd had evaporated once he was seated in his father’s new Cadillac, one of the first of its kind manufactured by Henry Ford. Abel had bought the elegant motorcar as a homecoming present, but Ollie was unable to drive with his right leg gone. Abel was still in shock over his son’s amputation. It was an old man who led the group to the Cadillac where it was parked with the Packard among Howbutker’s less modern conveyances.

  And then there was Percy. He owed Ollie his life. Did Percy know of Ollie’s promise to her? Had he taken the blast on their behalf? Those two were closer than brothers. Maybe Ollie had acted instinctively out of love for his best friend, with no thought of his vow to her at all. But if Ollie had saved Percy for their sakes, what was her obligation to either of them?

  She’d get a better picture of the situation when she and Percy had a chance to talk tonight, but the answer to her most pressing question she already knew. Percy’s feelings for her had not changed.

  Neither had hers for him. If anything, they had strengthened in the time he’d been away. Every morning she’d awakened thinking of him, and every night she’d gone to bed with his safety the utmost concern on her mind. There had been times when she’d shaken awake from a nightmare in which the worst fear of her life had come to pass—worse even than losing the plantation. She’d dreamed that Percy had been killed.

  So that left her in a dilemma. Percy would expect her to be over Somerset by now, but she was more determined than ever to hold on to it. By all that was holy, she deserved that reward for her sacrifices. When Miles left, naming Emmitt Waithe as trustee in his absence, she’d fired Jethro Smart, the overseer she’d hired to replace Len Deeter, and assumed his job, sometimes working eighteen hours a day. With Emmitt’s cooperation and under her uncompromising hand, Somerset began to pay. Its profits allowed her to increase the mortgage payments, making it possible to repair the debt several years in advance of the bank contract.

  True, there had been no money left for nonessentials. She was sure to catch grief from Miles when he saw the run-down condition of the house and the lack of help, but the day was drawing nearer when they’d be able to modernize the house and replace their horse and buggy with a motorcar.

  Also, if her mother’s health did not require further expensive treatment and if the harvest was as abundant as predicted, there would be money to pour back into the land, making it more productive. Already, now that the war was over, industry and science were addressing the needs of the farmer. New methods of cultivation were being tried. More efficient equipment, improved seeds, and a new substance called insecticide for combating destructive pests like the boll weevil were coming on the market. They were all within Somerset’s grasp once the mortgage was settled.

  How in the world would Percy fit into her plans? Would he be willing to accept her and Somerset? Had his war experiences softened or hardened his views against sharing his wife with the risky venture of a cotton plantation? He would soon turn twenty-five. He would want to settle down, have children, return to the family business. She wanted that, too, more than anything in the world.

  But not at the cost of Somerset. She could never, ever give up the plantation. That would mean betraying her father and his father and all the Tolivers before them who had wrested the land from the forests, had sweated and toiled, sacrificed and died, for the thousands of acres they lived to see swelling with the pride of their labor. No way in tarnation would she sacrifice Somerset for the sake of male pride! But… she loved Percy. He was a thorn in her side she couldn’t pull out, no matter how hard she tried. She wanted him, she needed him. She had no doubt of that now. He meant to wait no longer, and she was not confident of her strength to resist him.

  “She looks bad.”

  At the window, Mary jumped.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Miles slouched into the room with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his ill-fitting trousers. He had changed into civilian clothes and was looking around the parlor with the air of someone in a waiting room, uncertain of where to sit. “Mama looks terrible, doesn’t she? That place you sent her to really wrung her out.”

  Mary felt a sting of indignation. “Actually, she looked quite well when she left the sanitarium,” she said, careful to keep a calm tone. “Emmitt thought she seemed a lot like her old self, but she caught a cold in the train on the way home from Denver that turned into pneumonia. It’s taken a toll on her.”

  “She says you sent her away to that sanitarium in Denver to get her out of your hair while you got in last year’s harvest.”

  “Oh, Miles, that’s not true!” Her voice rose in frustration. “She required professional help to cope with her. You can’t believe the ruses, the lengths she went to, for a bottle. She was so offensive to the sitters I hired that none of them would stay on, and Sassie was worn out.”

  “What about you? Where were you?”

  “You know very well where I was. I had to get the harvest in. You’re aware of the work involved in running a plantation. It’s a year-long, day-in-and-day-out, sunup-to-sundown business.”

  Miles’s look was piercing. “It doesn’t have to be. If that land had been sold when Papa died, none of this would have happened.”

  Mary bit off a reply, but not before a tremor passed through her. It was a question she refused to consider—how different things might have been. She lifted a silver pot from a tray. “Would you like a cup of coffee? And there’s gingerbread here. Sassie made it especially for you.”

  “No thanks. Tell me about Mama. Do you think she’ll ever get better?”

  “She’s not yet what is called a recovered alcoholic.” Mary sipped the hot coffee to soften her tight throat. “She still craves liquor, and we were warned—”

  “We?”

  “Emmit
t Waithe and myself. He’s been helping me to deal with her. I don’t know what I would have done without him. He found the sanitarium for Mama. He went with me on the train to Denver and helped me bring her home.”

  “Out of guilt, no doubt.”

  “It was out of compassion.” Mary forced patience into her defense of their lawyer. “We were told that Mama would have to be watched for years before she could be allowed to come and go as she pleased. Sit down, Miles, and we’ll talk. Or would you rather go to your room and rest awhile?”

  “We’ll talk.” He plopped down on the sofa and hung his hands between his bony knees, his head down. After a moment he said, “She asked me for a drink.”

  “Oh, Miles, no….” Mary had not considered the possibility that her mother would try to wheedle a drink out of Miles—depended on it, come to think of it. Ever since she’d been told of Miles’s arrival date, her mother’s color had been higher, her eyes brighter, as if she were harboring a secret. Mary thought the new animation was due to her son coming home, but now she realized she’d been anticipating he’d supply her with liquor.

  “What did you tell her?” She eyed her brother warily. Miles had always been putty in their mother’s hands.

  “I told her no, of course.”

  “What did she do?”

  Miles raked a hand through his dull, thinning hair, releasing dandruff that caught like dust motes in the autumn sunlight filtering through the sheers. “She didn’t throw a fit, if that’s what you’re asking. At least she’s past that stage. She looked like a doll with all the stuffing yanked out, that’s all.”

  Mary sat next to him. “I thought you were the reason she was getting better, not the bottle she’d hoped you’d bring.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, was I,” Miles said, his tone peevish. He linked his hands and gazed downcast at the floor.

  Mary placed a hand on his shoulder. “What is it, Miles? You seem so disappointed in everything. Aren’t you happy to be home?”

  He stood abruptly and jammed his hands into his pockets, then commenced to pace about the room, shoulders hunched—a familiar indication to Mary that he was working up nerve to tell her something. “I’m not staying,” he said at last. “I want to go back to France. There’s a nurse there, a woman who brought me back to health, what little there is left of it—” A bout of coughing interrupted him. When he’d recovered, he faced his sister directly. “My lungs are shattered, Mary Lamb, and I don’t know how much time I have left.”