Christmas Bliss

by Mary Kay Andrews

  She looked around at the overgrown garden, the collapsing dock, and then back at the farmhouse. The rooftop was just barely visible above the tree line. “It’s not much, not to you. But it’s all Opal and I have.”

  “I don’t want it,” I said hastily. “The only thing I ever wanted from Richard was a divorce. The farm, anything else, it’s yours. I’ll get James Foley, he’s my lawyer, to draw up the papers right away. In the meantime, I don’t see why anything has to change.”

  “What about him?” Cindy asked, giving Harry a hard look. “How’s he feel about you signing away a farm like this? Twelve acres, right on the river? The economy’s better now. People are building houses again. You could sell off the rest of the land around us, if you wanted to.”

  Harry put his arm around my shoulder. “BeBe makes her own decisions. I know she’ll do the right thing.” He stood up then. “I’ll leave the two of you to hash this out.”

  I flashed him a grateful smile.

  Cindy watched him go. “He seems like a decent guy. He’s the baby’s father, right? So now nothing stopping you two from getting married.”

  “He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I agreed. “But marriage? That’s not what any of this is about.”

  “No? What is it about, then?” she asked.

  That stopped me cold. I’d been so frantic to make sure I had no legal ties to Richard Hodges, I hadn’t had a lot of time to really question my own motives.

  “I’m sorry about Richard,” I said, pointing toward his grave. “Despite your opinion of me, I know what it’s like to lose family. My parents are both gone, you know. It must have been hard, losing your only brother like that.”

  She was tough, that Cindy. With a brother like Richard, she’d had to be. She brushed off my sympathy the way she’d brushed me off the first time we’d met.

  “Opal misses him. He was always her pet,” Cindy said. “Me? I’m gonna miss that disability check of his. Unless…”

  And here I’d thought Richard was an anomaly, the only Hodges to ever go bad. But it turned out big sister Cindy had more than a little larceny in her soul too.

  “I’m not turning you in, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said. “But I am going to need some proof that Richard is deceased—if only to deed the farm over to you. And that’ll probably mean an end to the government checks.”

  She frowned and I could already see the wheels turning. But it was time for me to leave Oak Point, and the Hodge family farm. Past time, really.

  Chapter 23

  Weezie

  Daniel brought a cup of hot tea and sat it down on the floor beside the wretched sleeper sofa.

  He brushed a kiss on my forehead. “Gotta get to work. You’ll be okay by yourself, right?”

  “Mmm,” I said sleepily. “I’m still exhausted from yesterday. I might just stay in bed all day to rest up.” I tried to pull him down beside me, but he just laughed and stood up.

  “Wish I could,” he said. “But there’s no telling what the kitchen will be like today, after Carlotta ran things last night. She likes to think of herself as a chef, but she’s really strictly a front-of-the-house type.”

  “I guess that’s why she needs somebody like you.”

  “Probably.”

  “When do you have to give her an answer about the job?”

  “She’d like an answer yesterday. You know these New Yorkers. Everything is hurry up, right now! Get it done!”

  “Right.” I tried to gauge what he was thinking, but Daniel was wearing his poker face.

  “I’ll call you later,” he said, as he headed out. “Lock the door after me. And the dead bolts.”

  “And the dead bolts,” I repeated.

  * * *

  Somehow the streets of New York did not beckon me that day. I did go back to sleep. At lunchtime, I ordered Chinese and felt positively decadent eating in bed, still in my pajamas, at one in the afternoon. I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol on television and was starting to think about yet another nap when my cell phone rang.

  I winced when I saw the call was from my mother. Mama calls me every day at home, sometimes two or three times a day, but I couldn’t convince her that long-distance calls on her cell phone were free. So she never called when I was out of town. Except now. I knew it had to be bad news.

  “Hi, Mama. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s your daddy,” she said, her voice shrill with barely contained panic. “Something’s happened to him. I just know it.”

  “Did you call an ambulance? Is he breathing?”

  “How should I know? He’s been gone since ten thirty this morning. It’s two now, and there’s no sign of him!”

  “Gone, where? Calm down, Mama, and just tell me what’s going on.”

  “How can I be calm? This is all my fault. He hardly goes out at all these days. But today was the Christmas lunch with his post office buddies, at Johnny Harris. He wasn’t going to go, but I convinced him it would be good to see the guys. Weezie, he left here at ten thirty. Said he wanted to get the car washed and waxed before lunch, which was at eleven thirty. You know old men, they have to eat early. Anyway, I waited and waited for him, but he’s still not home.”

  “Maybe they all got to talking and having a good time,” I suggested.

  “No. I called Harold Andrews, his old supervisor, and Harold said the party broke up right at twelve thirty. He said everybody was real glad to see your daddy, but that Joe was acting kind of funny. Distracted, he said.”

  I stood up and paced around the tiny apartment, trying to think where Daddy might have gone.

  “Maybe he stopped by to see one of your neighbors,” I offered.

  “He didn’t. I’ve called everybody, and I’ve been driving around for the past thirty minutes, but nobody has seen him. As soon as I hang up from you, I’m going to start calling emergency rooms to see if he’s been in some kind of accident.”

  “That’s a good idea. Tell you what, you call St. Joseph’s/Candler and I’ll call Memorial, all right?”

  “Thank you. Call me right back, you hear?”

  * * *

  Mama called back five minutes later. “He’s not at St. Joe’s,” she said breathlessly. “What did you hear?”

  “Not at Memorial either,” I said.

  “I just know he’s dead in a ditch somewhere,” Mama said. “I never should have let him drive by himself. I didn’t want to tell you, but he hasn’t been himself this week. Sometimes I find him just standing out in the yard, looking around like he doesn’t know where he is. I should have driven him to the party myself. But I wanted to finish working on your wedding dress…”

  “Oh, Mama. It’s not your fault. Daddy has a mind of his own. He wouldn’t have liked you dropping him off like that. It would have embarrassed him in front of the guys.”

  “Well, I’m going to call the police. Maybe they can put out a lookout for him.”

  “Are you sure? Won’t he be awful upset if it turns out he just stopped off somewhere?”

  “Better upset than dead,” Mama retorted.

  “How about this? Why don’t you get in your car and drive over to Johnny Harris right now. Drive the exact route Daddy would have taken to the restaurant from your house. And just look, all along the way. Maybe he pulled over at a store or something. Okay? Will you do that? Call me back.”

  It was a very long twenty minutes before she called back. I hadn’t wanted to upset Mama, but my mind was reeling with all kinds of awful possibilities. Maybe Daddy had suffered a stroke or heart attack while driving …

  Mama was in tears. “I’ve looked and looked, Weezie. And his car just isn’t anywhere. I am at the end of my rope. I think I’m just going to go home and call the police and light a candle and pray.”

  “Let’s think about this a minute. Maybe Daddy got confused and took a wrong turn somewhere. Are you still in the car?”

  She sniffed. “Yes.”

  “Where are you right now?�
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  “I’m on Victory Drive, headed east. But I already checked the Target store. He loves Target. I swear, before he started getting all fuzzy-headed lately, he’d go there two or three times a week, just pushing that red plastic buggy around and looking at all the stuff.”

  “So, you’re almost to the Thunderbolt bridge?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  I mentally retraced the route Daddy would have taken to go home from Johnny Harris’s, the barbecue restaurant where he’d met his friends for lunch.

  “I bet he did take a wrong turn,” I said suddenly. “Mama, take a left, instead of the right he should have taken.”

  “Joe knows the way home, Weezie.”

  “He used to. But you said he’s gotten forgetful. If you take a left, where does that put you?”

  “On Bonaventure Road. This is ridiculous. You know that just goes to the cemetery. Why would he go there?”

  “Isn’t that where Grandmamma and Granddaddy are buried?”

  “But Joe hasn’t been out there in years. Your uncle James sees to their burial plot.”

  “It won’t hurt to look, will it?”

  Mama sighed. “I guess not. I don’t remember where the Foley family plot is, it’s been so long.”

  “I remember it’s in the Catholic section, with all those other Irish families,” I said. “Stop in the sextant’s office. They’ve got a map. And call me back.”

  * * *

  While I was waiting to hear back from Mama, I called the airlines. It wasn’t fair for my mother to have to deal with my wedding, plus Daddy’s increasing “fuzziness” alone. I got put on hold, of course, so I put the phone on speaker and started packing my suitcase—which I’d gotten only two days ago. After forty minutes on hold with Delta, I hung up in disgust.

  And as soon as I disconnected, Mama called back.

  “I found him! You were right. He was at Bonaventure. He wasn’t at the Foley plot, though. I found his car parked there, but there was no sign of him, so I started walking. He was just sitting on one of those benches they have on the bluff there, looking out over the river. He’d fallen asleep. When I woke him up, he was mad as blazes. Said I’d made him miss the end of the ball game.”

  “Dear God,” I murmured.

  “Weezie, he didn’t have any idea where he was. I think he thought he was at home sleeping on our sofa in front of the television, like he does all the time.”

  “What did you do?”

  She was weeping softly. “I sat there with him for a while, and we looked out at the river. After a while, he was his old self again. He said he’d been thinking about his mama and daddy and feeling bad that he hadn’t visited their graves in such a long time. And he did go to Target, I was right about that part. He went in and bought a pot of plastic poinsettias to put on their headstones. He visited with them, and then he went for a walk, and then he said he got tired and just sat down on that bench where I found him. It was such a pretty day, he sat and watched sailboats out on the water.”

  “It’s been snowing here in New York,” I offered. “Off and on all day.”

  “Sixty-five and sunny here in Savannah,” Mama said. “There were even jonquils popping up on some of the headstones.”

  “Twenty-six in New York. You’ve never seen so many people in your whole life. I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral the other day. It was so beautiful. I wish you could see it, Mama. I lit a candle for everybody in the family.”

  “I bet it wasn’t any prettier than St. John the Baptist right here in Savannah,” Mama said. “And I hear they have muggings in churches up there. I don’t know how folks live up north in weather like that. I’ve been worried about you all week. Are you locking the door on that apartment? You’re not carrying any money around, are you?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “We’re having the best time. Daniel took me to see a Broadway show, and we went to see the most magnificent manger scene at the museum…”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re having a nice time. I don’t know how this dress is going to look on you, though, since you never would stay home long enough for a final fitting…”

  Time to change the subject, I thought.

  “What are you going to do about Daddy?” I asked.

  “Do? I’m not going to do anything. He’ll be fine. He just gets overtired some days. I guess maybe I won’t send him to the store by himself anymore, though.”

  “You don’t think you should get him to see a doctor?”

  “What would a doctor tell me?” Marian said, her voice sharp. “That I should put him in a home? Take away his car keys? Is that what you’ll do to me the first chance you get?”

  “No! I just want you to figure out what’s going on with Daddy. Maybe there’s some drug they can give him or something the doctors can suggest. There’s a lot of new research on dementia these days. I was reading a story about it in the New York Times…”

  “You just worry about you, and I’ll worry about your daddy and me,” Mama said. “When are you thinking about coming home? There’s still a lot to do about this wedding, and I can’t be worrying about your daddy and Christmas and all this wedding stuff.”

  “I’m flying home on Saturday.” I did not dare tell her that Daniel was considering a job offer that might make my trip home to Savannah a temporary one.

  “Saturday! That doesn’t give me any time at all to hem your dress. And I’ve got so much else to do. I’m baking Daniel’s groom’s cake, and I need you to figure out what kind of cake plate you want to serve it on…”

  “Excuse me just a minute, Mama.”

  I put the phone down, went into the tiny bathroom, climbed into the phone-booth-sized shower, and screamed my head off for fifteen seconds. Then I went to the sink and splashed cold water on my face and examined my hair to see if any of it had turned white during my conversation with my mother.

  “Okay, I’m back. What were you saying?”

  “About the groom’s cake. I pinned a recipe out of Pinterest for a chocolate fruitcake…”

  Sweet baby Jesus! Mama’s regular fruitcake was bad enough, but add chocolate to it and you would have a full-blown disaster on your hands.

  “Now, Mama, I don’t want you worrying about a cake. We don’t even need a groom’s cake. I’ve already baked the wedding cake. It’s in the freezer and I’ll frost it Sunday morning. Most of the food is coming from Guale. Remember, we’re just doing heavy appetizers.”

  “I have no intention of letting you get married without a groom’s cake. It’s bad enough that you’re not getting married in a church in front of a priest. And on a Sunday! What will people think if I let somebody else do all the food for my only daughter’s wedding?”

  They’ll be incredibly relieved, I thought. Especially anybody who’d ever had a taste of Marian’s unfortunate home cooking.

  “We’ve been over this already,” I said, trying to be patient. “This is not my first rodeo, remember? I want to get married in my house, and I want Uncle James to marry us this time. He wants it too. He even went and got himself named a justice of the peace to make it all legal.”

  “James is a former priest. And I just don’t think it’s right.”

  “I think it’s right,” I said gently. “And Daniel does too. We’re adults, Mama. I respect your ideas and beliefs, so I hope you’ll respect mine.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to like them. Anyway, back to the cake. I’ve already bought all the ingredients. I’m making it, and that’s final. So what cake plate?”

  “Just a sec, Mama.”

  I put the phone down, threw myself on the bed, covered my face with a pillow, and practiced my primal screaming for maybe ten seconds.

  “I’m back now.”

  “Good heavens, Weezie. Is something wrong with your phone?”

  “I might need to charge it. If you insist on doing the cake, just use a nice cut-glass cake stand. But it doesn’t need to be very big. We’re only having forty people, remember?”


  “How could I forget? Your cousins in Pooler and over there in Swainsboro are absolutely crushed that they didn’t get invited. And I can’t even look at the women in my rosary guild, since you snubbed all of them.”

  “I haven’t seen any of those cousins since my first communion. And as for the rosary guild, you’ll just have to tell the old biddies that you have a rude and thoughtless daughter.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t already told them that?”

  “Good-bye, Mama. See you Saturday.”

  Chapter 24

  BeBe

  “Miz Loudermilk? You want to take a look at this kitchen backsplash and tell me if it looks all right?”

  Benny, the tile contractor, was standing on the porch of the new house, hollering down at me. I was standing at the foot of the staircase, rubbing my aching lower back and wondering if I had the energy to climb those steps one more time.

  It was Friday morning, ten o’clock, and I’d been awakened at seven with the cheerful whine of a table saw coming from our construction site. Not that I’d gotten much sleep. No position was comfortable for me these days, and when I did doze off, the baby managed to kick me awake soon after.

  Harry had headed off to work in the predawn hours. I was starting to wonder when the nine-to-five part of his new office job was going to kick in. So in addition to running the inn I’d also become construction manager.

  I hauled myself up the stairs and picked my way carefully through the construction debris in the living room.

  Benny stood proudly by the kitchen counter, pointing at his handiwork, neatly laid and grouted gray and white penny tiles on the backsplash.

  “Oh no.” I felt a stabbing pain in my lower back.

  His face fell. “You don’t like it?”

  “I liked it fine for the guest bathroom floor. This is the wrong tile, Benny.”

  “Huh?”