Roses

by Leila Meacham

  “I’m in no mood for whitewash, young lady.”

  “How about the unvarnished truth?”

  Chapter Seventy-five

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA, A WEEK LATER

  Crossing the hall to the parlor where her mistress was hosting two tables of bridge, Betty glanced through the screen of the decorative outer door to see a chauffeured black Lincoln Town Car drive up before the town house. The chauffeur hopped out immediately, and Betty nearly dropped the plate of sandwiches she’d been on her way to serve when he opened the door to the passenger in the backseat.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said aloud, setting the plate on the foyer table and smoothing her apron. “Oh, my goodness.”

  She’d never met him or seen him except for newspaper shots when he was younger, but she knew who he was. She watched him climb out, elderly as you might expect, but matching the image she’d had of him in her mind all these years. She’d pictured a tall, distinguished man, wearing fine clothes and carrying himself in a way that communicated power without shouting it… a true massa. Her awe turned to dismay when the chauffeur handed him a vase containing a single red rose. Miss Lucy hated roses.

  Betty hurriedly closed the pocket doors of the parlor, muffling the between-hands chatter, and stationed herself before the screen. The chauffeur, resettled behind the wheel of the limousine, had laid his head back and tipped his hat forward, as if anticipating time for a snooze.

  “Good afternoon,” she said through the screen as Percy reached the porch. “Mister Percy Warwick, I’m thinkin’.”

  He acknowledged her assumption with a nod of his silver head. “Betty,” he returned as familiarly as if he’d known her for years. “Is my wife at home?”

  “She is, sir.” Betty unlocked the door and held it open for him. “She’s playin’ bridge with her lady friends in the parlor.”

  “Her Sunday gathering, I presume?”

  “Yessir. Would you mind waitin’ in the foyer while I tell her? I… don’t believe she’s expectin’ you.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Percy said, “but I’m sure she won’t mind the interruption.” He held out the vase. “And will you please give her this?”

  “Oh, sir—” Betty’s face screwed up. “She don’t like roses.”

  He smiled. “She will this one.”

  The plate of sandwiches forgotten, Betty slid open one of the pocket doors and closed it behind her, holding the vase at arm’s length as if it were a dripping diaper. “Miss Lucy, you have a visitor.”

  Lucy eyed the rose balefully. “Why are you whispering? And what in God’s name is that?”

  “It’s a rose, Lucy,” one of the bridge ladies enlightened her.

  Lucy snapped a look at her. “I can see that, Sarah Jo. Where did it come from?”

  “Your husband,” Betty said. “He’s in the foyer.”

  All heads in hues denoting ages over seventy turned in concert to Lucy, who shot up from the bridge table, sloshing coffee into saucers. “What? Percy is here?”

  “Yes’m. Outside in the foyer.”

  “But he can’t be….”

  The parlor doors slid open. “But I am,” Percy said, entering. “Hello, Lucy.”

  Now all gawping mouths and dilated eyes turned to the dark-suited figure of legend and speculation. He nodded and smiled. “Ladies, would you mind excusing us? I have something urgent to discuss with my wife.”

  Immediately, the ladies rolled back their chairs and hastily collected handbags and canes. The more audacious among them shook hands with Percy as they filed past and murmured that it was nice to have met Lucy’s husband at last. Lucy stood as if flash frozen and Betty as if uncertain whether to go with the group or stay with the rose. “Uh, Miss Lucy, what do you want me to do with this?”

  Lucy snapped to. “Take it to the kitchen and add water to it,” she said. “I’ll call you if we need anything.” Left alone with her husband, she said, “What are you doing here, Percy?”

  “After what you did for us, surely you know?”

  “Rachel had already spoken with her lawyer by the time I saw her. I could have saved myself a trip. What good did I do?” The backs of her wobbly legs had found her chair, and she managed to lower herself into it with a semblance of grace.

  “You confirmed to her that she’d made the right decision. Because of you, she and Matt now have a chance.”

  “I don’t know that I did him any favor.”

  Percy chuckled and rolled out another bridge chair, seating himself with the ease of the master of the house. “We’ll have to wait and see, but my bet’s on the two of them living happily ever after. He’s gone after her. She took off to San Angelo to help a laid-up A and M classmate run his cotton farm until he’s back on his feet.”

  Short of breath, she fought the urge to fan herself. “Tell me, what made you call Rachel’s bluff? Weren’t you taking an awful gamble with our grandson’s birthright?”

  “Maybe, but I looked to the rock and the quarry, you see.”

  “The rock and quarry?”

  “From the scriptures. Isaiah 51, verse 1.”

  Lucy looked at him in exasperation. “You’re not going to be more specific than that?”

  “I gambled she’d do the right thing—like her great-aunt.”

  Lucy dropped her gaze to wipe at a spill on the bridge table lest she appear to be absorbing his features. Age had done its work, but not unkindly. His looks could still break her heart. “What’s the rose for?”

  “Oh, just a general asking forgiveness for the way things turned out—to say I’m sorry they couldn’t have been better for you.”

  An ache ballooned in her throat, and she clamped her jaw tight, daring herself to show tears. It was a moment before she trusted herself to speak. “They weren’t any better for you, Percy, due to me. And I wronged Mary terribly. If only I’d known from the beginning how you felt about each other, I’d have had… other expectations. I’d have made do with your friendship. It would have been enough.”

  “You deserved more, Lucy.”

  She gave a short “Humph” and said, “Didn’t we all? Matt tells me you’re not going to divorce me. Is that true?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Well, that’s… nice of you.” She made a racket in her throat in her attempt to unclog it. “What are you going to do with Somerset?”

  “I’ll bestow it on Texas A and M, Rachel’s alma mater, as an agricultural experimental center. The Ledbetter place will become a museum in commemoration of the contributions the generations of Tolivers have made to Texas cotton.”

  She felt her face flare with admiration. “Well, call you King Solomon. I’m sure Rachel will be very pleased.” His presence, as always, warmed the room… like sunlight on a winter’s day. “Do you think she’ll be able to forgive you and Mary for denying her father knowledge of his inheritance?”

  “Only time will tell.” He said it with a small smile that suggested the reality they both shared—neither had a lot left. “But speaking of that,” he said, “one of the reasons I came was to ask you to consider coming home if things work out between Matt and Rachel. As you recall, there’s plenty of room for you to have your own space, and I’m sure they’d want their children to have a great-grandmother around.”

  Her eyes were now thoroughly stinging and her throat incapable of swallowing. Urgent, he’d said to the girls. She brushed at some cake crumbs caught by her bosom. “I’ll… certainly give it some thought. Anything else?”

  “No… I don’t think so,” he said, and to her dismay he got to his feet, a little creakily, but still in the slow way he used to draw to his full height and square his shoulders—always a turn-on for her. “I only wanted to bring you the rose and to express my gratitude for coming to our rescue.”

  She forced herself to rise as well and her lip not to tremble. It seemed only yesterday they’d faced each other in this way. “Good-bye, Percy,” she said, repeating her words from the train station forty years ago. />
  She saw the same memory float into his eyes, but unlike then, this time he placed his hand around her shoulders and smiled. “For a little while, Lucy,” he said, and she closed her eyes to better remember the brief touch of his lips upon her cheek.

  Betty, with her uncanny sense of timing, arrived to show him out. Lucy remained glued to the spot until she heard the front door close and Betty return. “Well, well, well!” Betty said.

  Lucy smiled softly. “I’d say so,” she said.

  MATT STOOD A MOMENT BY the Range Rover, taking in his surroundings. He was parked before a sprawling white clapboard farmhouse bordered on both sides and beyond by fields of burgeoning cotton. A couple of mechanical cotton pickers were lined up along a service road, and in the distance a lone figure—a man, not Rachel—worked on a stretch of irrigation pipe, but otherwise there was no other sight or sound of human activity to break the snoozing quiet of the early Sunday afternoon. No pickups or other vehicles were about. He’d expected to find Rachel’s BMW parked in the yard, confirming that he’d come to the right place. The peace increased his apprehension. Against such a tranquil backdrop, how could he bear the shattering news that Rachel wanted nothing more to do with him?

  He’d been ready to refuel the plane and go to her the minute he landed back in Howbutker and heard the great news, but his grandfather had admonished him to wait. “Give her space, son—time to deal with the issues she still has to work out.”

  He had agreed, though he’d worried that every day that passed might give Rachel—the woman he loved now more than ever—greater reason to tell him to go to hell. It had occurred to him that there might be something going on between her and the classmate she’d gone to help. Carrie had described him as an old A and M buddy—a cotton farmer like herself—when he’d called to get her address. “Married?” he couldn’t resist asking, and she’d said archly, “Well, now, that’s for me to know and you to find out, big boy.”

  He heard a clump, clump, clump in answer to his ring, and his heart fell a fraction when a boyishly handsome man opened the door, as tall as himself and big enough, even on crutches with his leg in a hip cast, to make him think twice about muscling his way in. “Afternoon. What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Excuse the interruption. I’m looking for a friend of mine—Rachel Toliver.”

  “That so?” he said. “And who might you be?”

  “Matt Warwick.”

  “Ah, so.” He held him in an appraising gaze for a few seconds, then shouted over his shoulder, “Honey!”

  Matt’s heart sank lower until a pretty blonde appeared with two small children trailing behind and a third on the way, judging from the bulge of her apron over her dress. “We’ve got company asking for Rachel.”

  The young woman smiled. “Well, get out of the way, Luke, so we can let him in. Kids, go wash your hands and get ready to eat. Hi,” she said to Matt, “I’m Leslie, and this big lug is my husband, Luke Riley. You must be Matt Warwick. Come on in. Rachel’s been expecting you.”

  “She has?” Matt said in astonishment.

  Her husband had apparently held off his grin until then. It broke across his face, big and sappy, as he stuck out his hand. “Now, honey, I don’t think you were supposed to tell him that,” he said with a wink at Matt. “Howdy, Matt.”

  “Well, knowing Rachel, she might not get the point across. You’re just in time for Sunday dinner, Matt. I hope you like fried chicken.”

  His head whirling, his heart about to race out of him, Matt said he was crazy about fried chicken and followed Leslie, Luke thumping behind him, into a large kitchen sparkling with sunshine and redolent with the aroma of the chicken sizzling on the stove. Rachel glanced up from her task of setting the table, the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. “Hello, Rachel,” he said.

  She nodded, color mounting in her cheeks. “Matt.”

  In the silence, Leslie glanced from one to the other and said, “Just a thought, but maybe you guys would like to take a walk before we sit down. The chicken won’t be ready for a while.”

  “A good idea,” Rachel said. She removed her apron from over an elegant sleeveless sheath and without a word led Matt out, Luke giving him the thumbs-up behind her back.

  They walked without speaking down a path to a white-fenced paddock, Matt conscious of the smooth length of her brown arm and the way a couple of tendrils of her hair, swept on top of her head, curled alluringly at her neckline. He guessed she and Leslie must have attended church services earlier, and he wondered how anybody sitting a pew behind her had been able to concentrate on the sermon. At the fence, he set his foot on the bottom rail and draped his arms over the top, his attention on a fine chestnut stallion munching grass. “I understand you were expecting me,” he said.

  “I knew Carrie couldn’t keep a secret.”

  “Did you want her to?”

  “I was counting on her loose lips.”

  He let out a silent breath of relief. “Granddad said your lawyer called Amos with your decision to drop the lawsuit even before you heard the tape. You never intended to go through with it, did you?”

  The chestnut discovered them and whinnied, the greeting obviously for Rachel. She stuck her hand through the railing and twiddled her fingers, and he sauntered over. “My intent was to convince your grandfather and Amos that I would.”

  “Why didn’t you go through with it? You had us, Rachel.”

  “Somerset had already caused too much pain. And what would I want with a paper-making plant?”

  “To exact vengeance, maybe?”

  She shook her head. “Not my style.”

  His eyes watered. Was there ever such a woman? “Well, I’m very grateful to you.”

  “Is that why you came—to thank me?”

  “Among other reasons.” They were talking side to side, like men do when they are discussing the weather or other innocuous subjects.

  “Such as?” She stroked the white markings on the stallion’s forehead.

  “Well, for starters, Amos sent you something from Mary that she asked him to hold for you on the day she died. She told him that he’d know the best time to give them to you.”

  “Them?”

  “Her pearls.”

  She stopped her stroking. “Oh,” she said, and out of the corner of his eye he caught the movement of a hard swallow down her throat and the rapid flutter of her lashes. “I’d say the timing is perfect. What else?”

  “I thought you’d like to know Granddad’s plans for Somerset.”

  He detected a loss of breath. “Tell me,” she said, placing both hands on the railing. By the time he’d finished explaining, she’d brought one of them to the neck of her dress. “How… thoughtful and sensitive of him,” she said in a voice of quiet awe. “I’m so pleased. Aunt Mary would be, too.”

  “I also came to ask what your plans are,” he said, dropping his arms from the paddock fence, his vocal cords losing a little power. “I suppose you’ll… stake out another Somerset somewhere and grow cotton and acorn squash.”

  They were addressing one another side to side again. “Oh, I’ll stay in some aspect of the agricultural business,” she said, “but cotton and acorn squash have lost their savor for me.”

  “You’ll grow other crops, you mean.”

  “No. I mean I have no desire to farm anymore—not on anybody else’s land.”

  “Buy your own.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same thing.”

  He took his arms from the fence and turned to face her. “I don’t understand, Rachel. I thought farming was your passion, your calling in life—all you ever wanted to do. Do you mean to give it up?”

  The horse whinnied, annoyed at being ignored, and she gave him her hand to nuzzle. “Did you ever hear of a baseball player named Billy Seton?” she asked.

  Matt nodded, puzzled. “He played first base for the New York Yankees in the early seventies.”

  She gave the stallion a final pat and walked over to a hy
drant to rinse her hands. “He was from my hometown. When they traded him, he left the game. He’s coaching it now. He discovered that his passion for playing baseball and his dream of playing for the New York Yankees were one and the same—inextricably interwoven—and when one part was missing, the other didn’t work. Once the Yankees let him go, he had no desire to play for another team. Now do you understand?”

  He did—completely. The blood rushed to his ears. He whipped out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “In other words, farming any land but a Toliver’s gives you no cause to be a farmer at all.”

  “I couldn’t have stated it better myself.”

  He watched her dry her hands, resisting the desire to take her face between his hands and kiss her eyes, her mouth, her throat, to draw her deep into himself and hold her there forevermore. The horse had followed them and tossed his head over the fence. What are you waiting for, boy?

  “Well, in that case,” he said, forcing his voice steady, “you might be interested in my proposition.”

  She handed him his handkerchief. “Try me.”

  “I’m looking for a partner to help me run a stretch of land along the Sabine. You might say it’s Toliver land. I believe you once said you had a vested interest in it, as a matter of fact.”

  “I know nothing about growing trees.”

  “Well, actually, it’s not much different from cultivating acorn squash or cotton plants. You put a little seedling into the ground and watch it grow.”

  Her eyes were growing moist. She reached again for his handkerchief. “I suppose that’s not too far afield from what I’m accustomed to. May I have some time to think about it?”

  He looked at his watch. “Sure. That chicken’s not ready yet.”

  She smiled. “Aren’t you taking a chance on me as a partner?”

  “Not at all,” he said, drawing her into his arms, where she belonged.

  “Why not?” she asked, lifting her face.

  “Don’t you remember? I always bet on what I believe is a sure thing.”