Leaving Carolina

by Tamara Leigh

  “A recent addition, I’m sure.”

  “Pickwick may be relatively small and shamelessly Southern, but it has plenty of real life in it. And it has things a big city doesn’t.”

  “Like?”

  “People who know each other, and not just because they work together or live in the same apartment building. And it has charm, safety, clean air, a town square—”

  “Town square?”

  I don’t know why I added that. “Yes, a pretty one with a park in the middle.”

  He looks like he might laugh. “It must have been a real sacrifice to leave all this for the big city.”

  I blink at the realization of what I’m saying and what it sounds like. “No, I wanted to leave—had to. Things were different then. I was different, and so was my family. It’s better now.”

  “You’re not considering staying?”

  “No!”

  He smiles like he knows something I don’t. “That sounded knee-jerk.”

  Which I’ve warned him about when answering reporters’ questions. It makes a person sound defensive, as if he’s eager to get a lie off his chest.

  “I’m going back to L.A.”

  He nods. “And I’m going back to Denver.”

  Less a fiancée. And less a story for Janet Farr/Jane Farredy, which he needs to know about. I tell him about my discovery, watching as his face goes from grave to horrified and certain his association with my PR firm is about to end.

  At the end of the telling, he shoves his hands in his pants pockets and, head down, paces the library. On the third time through, he suddenly stops. “Politics! Conniving, backstabbing, double-dealing, bloodsucking!” He grunts, and in the bunching of his shoulders, curling of his lips, and baring of his teeth, I see a bit of the alpha male. “It’s getting old.”

  I take a step toward him. “You aren’t thinking of quitting the race, are you?”

  He startles, causing the alpha male to go back underground. “Of course not, but neither am I going to let it run my life—or ruin it.”

  I sigh. “I’m glad to hear that. You’re good for Colorado, Grant.” I draw a deep breath. “I suppose I should remove you from my client list.”

  I’m surprised by his hesitation but more surprised by the words that follow. “We’ll finish the race together—regardless of what this Jane Farredy has to say about me or you.”

  Meaning less hot water for my partners to boil me in. “Thank you.” I move forward and stick out a hand. “Now you had best get back to Colorado before she finds out you’re here and reads too much into your visit.”

  He shakes my hand and releases it. “Good-bye, Piper.” With that unbroken stride of his—unnaturally perfect, if you ask me—he crosses the library.

  “Grant?”

  He looks around.

  “I shouldn’t say this, but with regards to Penelope—”

  “Yes.” He nods sharply. “Far better I remain the single, eligible bachelor I was when I was first voted into office.”

  “Actually, I was going to say—”

  “No, that is what the specialist I’m paying to help me get re-elected was going to say.” He continues to the doorway, where he turns. “But after the election… once I’m settled back into office…” He smiles and disappears down the hallway.

  So he isn’t giving up on Penelope? Feeling a tingle in my chest, I turn to the windows and watch him drive away.

  One down, many more to go, though what I’m going to do about Axel, I have no idea.

  I try not to think about him. I set my mind to the tasks ahead, the greatest being to get Uncle Obe’s estate in order so that pieces can be sold off, and the next being to keep my promise to Trinity.

  I sigh. “No time like the present.” I cross the library, determined to drive to the little house where Trinity still lives with her grandmother. But what if she isn’t there? I don’t want to face the old woman alone.

  I retrieve my iPhone and dial Trinity’s home.

  “Hello?” an irritated voice demands.

  “Can I speak to Trinity?”

  “Ain’t here. Out with that Pickwick boy, she is.”

  Oh no.

  “Fool girl. I told her no, and what does she do when I lay me down for a nap? Jumps in his car and off they go before I can make it to the front door.”

  Bart? Trinity did mention he had asked her out. Infusing my voice with sympathy, I say, “That’s Bart Pickwick for you, all right.” I hold my breath.

  “Yep, that boy’s bad news. All them Pickwicks are bad news.”

  Now is probably not the time to clear Trinity of the Lady Go-diva stunt. “If I were you, Mrs. Templeton, I would lie down and get some rest. No sense worrying yourself silly.”

  “Well, you aren’t me, are you? Good-bye, Miss Busybody.” She hangs up without bothering to find out who “Miss Busybody” is. Thankfully.

  I mull over the puzzle piece of Bart. Bart and Trinity. Bart and Luc, both of whom broke into the mansion in search of… the proof in the box. Which Trinity knows about, though only the will. Or maybe she lied when she said she didn’t look through the whole box. That would explain how Luc learned the details of Uncle Obe’s dementia. Still, I can’t see Trinity taking an active role in this. Did Bart take advantage of her naiveté?

  Bridget is less than cordial when I call—something about being up to her elbows in manure—but whips off Bart’s cell number before curtly telling me she has to go.

  Bart answers on the second ring. “Bart Pickwick speaking.”

  “This is Piper. Can I speak to Trinity?”

  “Sure.”

  “Piper?” Trinity screeches. “How did you know I was with Bart?”

  “Your grandmother told me.”

  She gasps. “I was sure she was asleep. She’s gonna be ill as a sore-tailed cat when I get home. But hey! You talked to her? Discussed you-know-what?” On that last, she lowers her voice, although probably not enough to exclude Bart from our exchange.

  I grit my teeth. “There wasn’t an opportunity.”

  “Ah,” she groans.

  “Too, I think you should be there when I talk to her.”

  “You’re probably right. Well, I’d best get back to this ice cream sundae I’m sharin’ with Bart. Thanks for calling.”

  “Trinity!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you mind excusing yourself from Bart so we can speak in private?”

  “This sundae is meltin’ awful fast.”

  “It will only take a minute.”

  “Hold on.” She says something to Bart, and then I hear the click of her heels over tile. “What’s up?”

  I nearly ask, “What in the world are you doing with my cousin?” But there’s a more pressing matter. “When you found Uncle Obe’s box in Axel’s office, you said you didn’t go through the whole thing.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I assumed that meant you only looked in the file about the will.”

  “No, I glanced at a few others.”

  “Did you glance through the medical file?”

  “I did.” She gasps. “Oh my stars! You found out. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to say anything, disturbin’ as it was to learn that your uncle is strugglin’ with demons, all the more reason I was pleased to see him at service today, but—”

  “Demons?”

  “Yeah. I think the doctor called it demon-ti-a.”

  I draw a cleansing breath. “Actually, it’s dementia, and it has nothing to do with demons.” Although a person so afflicted might disagree. “It’s a disease that affects older people’s memory and intellectual ability.”

  “Like Alzheimer’s?”

  How can she know about that and not this? “Yes.”

  “Well, no wonder when I ran into Bart here at the ice cream place last week, he about laughed when I offered my condolences. That rascal! And here I thought he was using humor to deal with the pain.”

  So Trinity told Bart, and Bart told Luc. “I’m as
suming you also told Bart the name of the doctor who made the diagnosis.”

  “I may have, though I don’t recall his name. Dr. Die maybe?”

  Demontia for dementia. Die for Dyer.

  “Piper, if I don’t get back to my sundae, Bart is gonna scarf it all down. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.”

  Time to pay my ponytailed gardener a visit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was Trinity who found the box?” Axel finally speaks.

  I stare at where he’s pulling weeds in the flower bed, as he was doing when I found him here. In all that time, he looked around once—when I first appeared—and his face was impassive. What is it now?

  “It didn’t seem important, since I thought the file for Uncle Obe’s will was the only one she’d seen, specifically the list of new beneficiaries.”

  “Was that before or after you decided to personally make restitution and marked out her name?”

  “Before.”

  He looks over his shoulder. “Does she know the reason your uncle wanted to add her to his will?”

  Does Axel? Has he put two and two together? “No.”

  He returns to redistributing the dirt disturbed by the removal of weeds. “So what now?” Wiping his hands on his jeans, he stands. “And what are you going to do about this reporter who followed you to Pickwick?”

  I curl my fingers into my palms to override the impulse to wipe the dirt from his jaw. “The reporter? Nothing. All she can say is that I’m a Pickwick and that for a while it appeared that Grant and I were thinking beyond a business relationship.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Meaning you no longer are?”

  “He’s on his way back to Colorado.”

  He cants his head. “That was a quick visit.”

  “He is just my client, Axel, and he accepts that now.”

  I wish he looked like he believed me—that his blue eyes would be Blue. “As for Uncle Obe’s will, we’re going forward with the plan to sell his assets and make restitution.”

  “Under the guise of philanthropy.”

  Guise. I don’t like that word. “Where possible.”

  “And hope Luc takes the threat of Antonio and Daisy seriously.”

  “I’m banking on it.”

  Axel wipes the moisture from his brow with a muscled forearm. “How much longer are you in Pickwick?”

  “I’ve made arrangements to return to L.A. this coming Sunday.” Speaking it aloud almost takes my breath away. It seems that this time when I leave, I won’t mind taking some of the Pickwick dust with me, as Celine suggested. “But I will be back however often it takes to see this through.”

  “Your uncle will appreciate that.”

  Only my uncle?

  Axel turns away. “It’s time for me to pick up Obe.”

  That’s it? “Thank you.” I hope he’ll look back, but then he’s gone, and I miss his broad shoulders, rubber-banded hair, and even the hitch in his stride.

  25

  Any questions?” Uncle Obe peers at his family gathered in the library.

  I’m proud of him. Everything is out in the open—Antonio and Daisy, his plan to contact them (if he ever gets past the rough-draft stage of the letter he’s writing), the liquidation of the estate, the plan to make restitution, and his dementia.

  Throughout the telling, Artemis stood in the doorway, shaking his head and wrinkling his cruise-tanned brow. I didn’t achieve what he summoned me home to do, but I believe I did better. And the papers Uncle Obe had Artemis draw up this week empower me to see it through.

  Devyn lifts her head from Uncle Obe’s shoulder. “Oh, Unc-Unc, I’m sorry your mind is going south.”

  Exactly how he expressed it—going south like birds for the winter. Of course, Luc had to point out that these birds aren’t returning. Ever.

  “But it’s great what you’re doing.” Devyn pats his jaw that I helped shave this morning in preparation for the Fourth of July celebration, where he’ll announce his plans for a new statue.

  “Well, I don’t like it,” says Adele. “What’s done is done, and I say we move forward from here.”

  Luc’s hand shoots up. “I agree.” He glances at Bart.

  Bart shrugs and flops a hand into the air. “Bygones be bygones.”

  His parents, Bartholomew and Belinda, also raise their hands, and the former says, “Amen to that.”

  I glance at Bridget, but her arms are crossed over her chest as she stands on the lower rung of the book ladder. And Maggie?

  “I don’t know, Uncle Obe,” Maggie says. “I understand your reasoning and that it’s the right thing to do, but I worry about…” Her gaze flicks to her daughter. “I believe Piper has the ability to make the best of a bad situation, but this could open a can of worms that some of us aren’t prepared to deal with.”

  Devyn sits tall on the arm of Uncle Obe’s chair. “If you’re talking about me, I did just turn twelve, so I can handle it. In fact—” She whips her head around and pins Uncle Obe with her eyes. “I think you should forget about prettying it all up, no offense to Miss Piper. Come clean and be done with it.”

  “Devyn!” Adele screeches. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, child. You shouldn’t even be here.”

  The hurt that fastens onto the girl’s face stirs resentment in me. Be a peacemaker. Peace. Maker.

  “I think Devyn may be right,” Axel says from somewhere behind me.

  I momentarily close my eyes at the sound of his voice, which has been mostly absent for the past six days as we’ve avoided each other.

  “This isn’t a game,” he continues. “It’s life, and it ought to be accorded the respect it’s due, beginning with honesty.”

  If only it were that easy…

  Gasping like a fish on the rocks, Adele stares at him. I’m sure she’s tempted to give him a verbal smack, but it’s Maggie she turns on. “Do something about your daughter, Magdalene. Send her outside or sit her in front of a television while we discuss what is only fit for adults to discuss.”

  Maggie is ten feet from me, sitting beside her mother on the sofa, but I feel her anger. “If Devyn wants to stay, then—”

  “Shouldn’t this just be family, Obadiah?” Uncle Bartholomew glares at Axel.

  Uncle Obe raises a hand to calm the seething masses. “As far as I’m concerned, Axel is family, and he’s as welcome here as the rest of you—including my great-niece.” He pats Devyn’s shoulder.

  There is gnashing of teeth, but no one else protests.

  “So that’s the plan,” Uncle Obe concludes.

  “Fine,” Luc says. “Let’s take a vote. All in favor of leaving the estate intact, raise your hand.” He thrusts his into the air, as does Adele, Bartholomew, Belinda, and Bart, though the latter with what appears to be flagging enthusiasm.

  Uncle Obe clears his throat. “I’m sorry if you misunderstand, Luc, but this is not a… a…” He squeezes his eyes closed. “… democracy I’m simply doing you the courtesy of making you aware of what I am doing.”

  Luc’s color brightens. “You’re making a mistake. Now I don’t want to have to—”

  “And I don’t want to have to threaten my own family.” My uncle sits forward, causing Devyn to adjust her seat on the chair’s arm. “But either you nip in the bud any thought of having me declared mentally incompetent, Lucas Lee Pickwick, or I’ll write you out of my will.”

  “But if you aren’t competent—”

  “I am, as proven by tests run this week.”

  It’s true. Though I didn’t tell Uncle Obe about my run-in with Luc on Sunday, I strongly advised him to return to Dr. Dyer and undergo further testing as a precaution against any attempts to contest his mental competence now or later. He said he wanted to discuss it with Axel and would get back to me. To my surprise, that same day he agreed. The results arrived yesterday, and they showed a decline since the initial testing, but the doctor and his colleagues feel that Uncle Obe is still capable of making decisions about his affairs.
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  After much exchanging of glances between those who have grudgingly lowered their hands, Uncle Obe says, “Thank you all for coming. Now I need to get ready for the celebration.”

  Devyn slips off the chair arm, leans in, whispers something that makes him smile, and then hurries to where her mother is waiting. “I’ll see you at the parade,” she says to me as she and Maggie leave the library.

  I still can’t believe that the one thing I wanted to avoid will soon come to pass. “I’ll see you there.”

  Bart is the last of my Pickwick relatives to exit the library, but no sooner does he leave than my uncle calls to him. He ducks his head back in. “Uncle Obe?”

  “I have something for you.” He motions my cousin forward.

  Bart’s face brightens as he hurries across the library. “I’m honored, Uncle.” He halts before the desk and gives his shirt a tug, as if preparing to receive an award.

  Uncle Obe opens a drawer and pulls out something I haven’t seen in weeks. “Funny thing”—he turns the binocular-eyed object in his hands—“but I found these here in the library last week.”

  Bart stiffens a moment before his shoulders slump, as if in preparation to receive a prison sentence.

  Though I did put the night-vision goggles in the drawer, I didn’t say anything to Uncle Obe about that night. Did Axel? I look around, and he shakes his head. Hmm. Words may elude my uncle from time to time, but he’s definitely not in the dark.

  “Don’t know where they came from,” he continues, “but they immediately made me think of you.”

  I hear Bart swallow, a gulp so cartoonish I would laugh if not that I feel for him.

  “Here.” Uncle Obe extends the goggles across the desk. “I know you like gadgets. Maybe you can find a use for them.”

  Bart takes the goggles from him. “Th-thank you, Uncle Obe.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Turning, Bart frowns at me. I shake my head, as does Axel. Suddenly animated, my cousin hurries from the library.

  I look at Uncle Obe, who just smiles.

  “I’ll pick up Piper and you at six,” Axel says.

  “That’ll be good.” Uncle Obe nods.

  Then it’s just me and my uncle, but before I can ask about the goggles, he says, “He’s a fine man. A pity you’re going back to Los Angeles.”