“Trey, hon, are you dawdlin’?” his aunt shouted up a few minutes later. “I’m not cleaning Hank’s bathroom on my own. Get down here.”
He couldn’t blame her. His father’s bathroom had offended his bachelor sensibilities—skirting mighty close to the memories of the bathrooms in his frat house. Knowing what was in store for him didn’t speed up his steps down the stairs.
Aunt Lois obviously had more practice cleaning a house before a funeral than Trey did, a fact evident in the way the wood of the banisters sparkled. He peeked into his dad’s bedroom. Photos of his father and mother with different relatives were nicely displayed on the dressers. His mother’s sick room across the hall looked like any other guest bedroom in an old Piedmont farmhouse. As soon as his mother had gotten too sick to sleep through the night, she’d moved across the hall rather than disturb her husband’s sleep, a gesture Trey would have found touching if there was a possibility his father had ever said, “Don’t worry about me.”
Aunt Lois was attacking the stove when he walked into the kitchen. “Bathroom.” She didn’t even look up.
“Aunt Lois, nobody liked my father and there’s no wife to console. I seriously doubt anyone besides you will be dropping by with casseroles.”
“Trey—” she still didn’t look up from her scrubbing “—I don’t care if you’re five or thirty-five, if you don’t get in that bathroom and start cleaning in thirty seconds, I will take a switch to your behind.”
His aunt had always made good on her threats.
Bathroom.
* * *
THE FIRST RELATIVE knocked on the door thirty minutes before Aunt Lois had predicted. “That Gwen Harris,” his aunt muttered, “has had no respect for keeping decent time since she moved to the city.”
Durham, a city of two hundred and fifty thousand souls, was the city Aunt Lois referred to, and downtown Durham was a bare thirteen miles from “downtown” Bahama, despite Aunt Lois’s sniff implying the other side of the world. But Aunt Lois and Uncle Garner had taken their share of Harris farmland and withstood mechanization, buyouts and the bald fact that tobacco causes cancer to keep and expand on a successful tobacco farm. She had no patience with the farmers who gave up their land for pennies to the dollar—even though she and Uncle Garner had profited from their sales—to move into the city. And she also had no respect for a man like Trey’s father, who had clung to his farmland like a virgin to her panties, but had been unwilling or unable to make the land useful.
But, as Cousin Gwen dropping off her rolls being the first of many in a parade of relatives evidenced, blood is thicker than respect. And Aunt Lois had made the house presentable because Hank Harris had been a Harris, even if he’d been a distasteful one.
Kelly slipped in through the kitchen door just after Gwen had said her condolences and left. “I saw her on Roxboro Road driving up here and took my time, just so I’d miss her,” his brother whispered to him. “I’ll see her at the viewing and that will be plenty enough of Cousin Gwen for me.”
Unlike his aunt, Trey didn’t care that Cousin Gwen and her husband had left their farmhouse for a split-level in the city. Hell, having escaped to D.C. as soon as the ink on his college diploma had dried, he wasn’t one to judge. However, Gwen had been a crushing cheek pincher all of his childhood, and hadn’t even stopped when he’d hit puberty. Her kids had been just as awful, though in different ways. The eldest always made sure to include the mention of major life purchases in his Christmas letters. Every year between his accomplishments at work and the achievements of his kids was a description of the new boat/car/RV/lawn mower that the family had just purchased. It had bothered Trey a lot more when he’d been a poor country cousin. Now Trey just thought it was in poor taste and felt for all the pinched country cousins getting that letter every Christmas.
During her short visit, Cousin Gwen had apologized for her children, who had to work and couldn’t make it over. Lucky for him and Kelly, they would be at the viewing. And the funeral. And back here after the funeral to eat all this food.
His whining buzzed about in his head, but he couldn’t seem to swat it away. With each relative, family friend, acquaintance and Southern busybody who walked through the front door of his father’s home bearing casseroles and condolences, the house got smaller and smaller until it pressed in on his temples and made his eyes bulge. Out of respect for his mother, Trey smiled and said thank-you to each salad that had been “Hank’s favorite,” but by the time all the people left, the farmhouse felt small enough he could call it skinny jeans and hang out with the hipsters at the new downtown bars.
“I owe you,” he said to Kelly before walking out the door and leaving him with all the food to put away. “I’ll be back in time to leave for the viewing.” The scolding Aunt Lois would subject him to for leaving was nothing compared to his need to escape the confines of the farmhouse.
Storm clouds that had been threatening all day broke the moment Trey left the cover of the porch. Their punishment for the beautiful weather of yesterday was an icy January rain, but he popped up his collar to protect his neck and trudged on, desperate to be anywhere else. As soon as he reached one of the fields, he knew this was his destination.
It looked like Max had spent the day repairing fences. At the edge of the fields was an eight-foot metal and chicken-wire fence with metal wires running along the top, tied with pink flags. Like Trey, the pink flags were hanging their heads to avoid the pounding rain. He could see where she had been making repairs. Some of the flags were brighter and less downtrodden than their brethren. Some of the wires were more taut, still eager to impress with their ability to stand sentry, and some of the wood less worn. It was a deer fence. He wondered if she ever electrified the top wire. Probably, he decided. Max and her electric-green gaze had a definite look-but-don’t-touch luminescence.
Like some Irish sprite who knew she was on his mind, Max suddenly appeared in the distance with Ashes fast on her heels. While he was soaked through, she had on a complete set of rain gear and was probably dry and cozy underneath it all. It was impossible to tell the drips pouring off Ashes from the raindrops, but Trey was fairly certain he saw a big, sloppy grin on the dog’s face, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“How was the visitation?” she asked.
“Is the fence electrified?”
She slowly lowered her pale lashes over her eyes, but didn’t comment on his change of subject. “I had hoped to avoid it, but deer have already tested the fence and I don’t want them to think they can do it again.” When she moved, rain slid off her head in sheets, though she seemed not to notice. His father’s lady farmer was tough. “Would you like a tour while you’re out here?”
He looked out over the field that in just a few months would be awash in green. “No, but maybe you could email me a picture.”
“Sure.” Her slicker rustled with her shrug and more water poured off. “But there are also pictures on my website.” The farmer had a website. Of course. Every business had a website, and Max’s Vegetable Patch was as much a business as any other. She probably even had a Twitter account.
“You could come down and see it in the summer, if you’d like. You could stay with Kelly, or at the farmhouse—it has plenty of bedrooms.” She paused and he let his silence continue through the tattoo of the rain. He didn’t really want a conversation, hadn’t even wanted company until she’d come upon him. He didn’t want her to leave, but he didn’t want to talk, either.
“I’ll send you pictures throughout the growing season,” she finally said, filling the vast, dead emptiness of the fields. “Your father loved how the land changed during the growing season.”
“I probably won’t come down and visit.”
“Well, I won’t take it personally.” Her voice carried a smile he couldn’t see in her face. “The land might, though. After all these years, she’s fin
ally producing and you won’t even come and admire her beauty.”
“She—” he rolled the female pronoun Max used around in his mouth, enjoying the feel “—shouldn’t take it personally, either.”
Even though his father was dead, Trey still didn’t want to be near anything the old man had touched. Henry William Harris Jr.’s touch was poisonous and the toxins lingered on the farm like gases too heavy for the wind to blow away. The miasma would outlast the stinky grime of cigarette smoke on the walls and the farmhouse would never really be clean. Not to him.
Max was talking again and Trey only caught the tail end of what she was saying, but he got the gist; Max would tell the land not to take it personally, either. “I have to clean up before the viewing,” she continued. “And you probably have to change clothes now.”
She didn’t wait for a response, just left him in the fields and the rain, without even granting him the protection of Ashes to bark at his bad memories and keep them at bay.
* * *
THIS WASN’T MAX’S first Southern funeral—she’d been to the funeral of her maternal grandfather over in High Point—so she knew the viewing meant Hank would be cleaned up from his heart attack and subsequent car accident and on display. As much as funerals played a role in the North Carolina gossip chain and anyone with a claim of kin or friendship on the deceased or the survivors’ side was expected to go, this couldn’t be Trey’s first funeral, either. But every time he looked over at the open casket, his eyes closed in a barely concealed grimace. No one should look so attractive while looking for an escape hatch.
Each person who expressed their condolences to Trey and Kelly probably didn’t notice Trey’s discomfort. But they probably weren’t pretending to talk farming with neighbors while really watching the grieving family like Max was.
“Maxine!” The voice of Lois Harris jolted Max out of her thoughts. “Did that mechanic Garner recommended work out for you?”
Max had given up asking Miss Lois to stop calling her Maxine. It wasn’t worth the wasted breath, plus Lois and Garner had been invaluable in providing local farming contacts. So Miss Lois could call Max whatever she wanted and Max would call her by the not-quite-formal-but-still-respectful name of Miss Lois, and they would both be happy.
“Yes, he’s been quite helpful.” The used tractor had seemed like such a deal when she’d bought it, but it turned out to be a piece of junk. Luckily, the Harris’s mechanic got it working at the end of last season and it appeared to be making it through the winter. Still, saving for a new tractor seemed smarter than trusting in the magic of the Harris’s mechanic, even if she now had three pots of savings money and keeping track of them strained her Excel spreadsheet. Asking to borrow a tractor last summer had been professionally embarrassing—and she had no desire to repeat the exercise.
“Now, don’t let him...”
Max stopped listening to Miss Lois warn her about the mechanic’s propensity to predict doom. Not only had she heard it before, but she was curious about the attractive brunette grabbing on to Trey’s hand with both hands and pressing it to her heart.
“That’s my second cousin.” Miss Lois leaned in to whisper to Max. “Never been to a funeral or wedding she didn’t cry at, bless her heart.” Sure enough, the young woman had both moved on to Kelly and been moved to tears. “The Roxboro Mangums always have a pool going on when she’ll burst into tears. She’s no blood relation to Trey, but she’s not your real competition.”
Miss Lois was a wily woman and it was a fool who turned a back to her. She “y’all’ed” and “blessed hearts” and “sugared” like a Southern cliché, but she wasn’t a fragile flower of womanhood. Max hadn’t been in North Carolina long when she realized that Lois’s politeness was a bit like a rattlesnake’s rattle—the more polite Lois was, the greater the warning about the coming bite. The ruse didn’t only work on Yankees like Max; Southern men were equally gullible. Garner might be the farmer on that side of the Harris family, but Miss Lois was the businessman.
“I’m not worried about competition.” There was always the chance this was the one time Miss Lois could have the wool pulled over her eyes.
“Oh, Maxine, you’ve been staring at my nephew the entire time we’ve been in the funeral home.”
Max hauled her gaze from Trey to Miss Lois. “He’s my new landlord. Of course I’m curious about him. And he seems troubled.”
“You’re welcome to try that on a fool, honey, but don’t try it on me.” Miss Lois’s words carried a reprimand, but her voice was kind. “He hasn’t wanted anything to do with the farm since he was five years old. Hank and Noreen are lucky he didn’t run away and join a circus. Unless you give up farming and move to D.C., there is no future in that man. You can hear it in his voice.”
Lois’s words highlighted something about Trey that had bothered Max from the moment he’d spoken to her. Trey had no Southern accent. Kelly didn’t have much of one, but Trey’s was nonexistent. His voice was completely flat—as if the drawl had been purged from his soul. And he must have grown up with one, as Max had yet to meet a Harris other than Trey without a y’all lingering somewhere on the lips.
And if he’d eradicated the accent, why hadn’t he started going by some name other than Trey, which was a constant reminder that he was the third Henry William Harris? Max tried to look at Trey in his charcoal-gray suit out of the corner of her eye, but the side view gave her a headache. Miss Lois was watching her with raised brows when Max pulled her eyes away. “I’m not watching him for any future, Miss Lois—or any future beyond him being my new landlord, but...he doesn’t seem all that upset.” That wasn’t right; something was clearly wrong with Trey. “Or at least not upset about the death of his father.”
“Trey and his daddy never did rub along, and Hank didn’t care until it was too late.”
Was Trey thinking about his lost relationship with his father as he stared at the cold body lying on satin? Or was he irritated that he was saddled with a farm he didn’t want left to him from a father he had no affection for?
Reading any emotion beyond stress into the tightness of Trey’s eyes was nearly impossible.
“So long as he doesn’t try to sell the farm out from under me, his relationship with Hank doesn’t affect me.” But even as she said those words, she couldn’t take her eyes off the tension evident in Trey’s neck as he ducked out the door. Max told herself that Miss Lois wouldn’t notice and slipped out the door behind him.
* * *
TREY TURNED AROUND at the sound of someone stumbling and swearing under their breath behind him. The voice was soft, so he’d figured it was a woman, but he had expected his cousin Nicole to offer up another slippery round of tears, not solid, stable Max. She hesitated a little, then put her hand on his shoulder, her palm warm even through his suit jacket. He shivered. He should have grabbed his coat.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You already said that.” He struggled to keep the anger in his voice in check. He wasn’t angry with her. In truth, he wasn’t even angry at his father right now, but the pressures of pretending to be sad were wearing on him. And then there were the pokes from stories people had about his father. When he’d made a face at one such tale, Aunt Lois had given him a look and told him not to speak ill of the dead.
Max’s fingers curled around his shoulder, their strength pressing into his collarbone. Somehow, the simple gesture was more reassuring than any enveloping hug he’d received from his relatives. “And I’m still sorry—for Hank’s death and for whatever drove you outside.”
“My cousins were beginning to tell stories of going to the Orange County Speedway and what a grand time they all had, especially after my dad got really drunk and his insults got both creative and unintelligible.” Trey could picture the scene, including his father throwing beer cans until he was tossed out.
“I imagin
e what seems like a funny story among cousins is less funny to his children.” She hadn’t moved her hand from his shoulder, so he could feel her step closer to him in the movement of the joints in her fingers. Even in the dark, through his shirt, her fingers felt sturdy. Solid. Stable. He wanted her to press up against him so he could feel her strong, purposeful body up against his. To be able to go home with her and draw patterns in her freckles as he forgot himself in her body.
But she was his tenant and he was at his father’s funeral, so his thoughts would remain thoughts only.
“You say that like there could be something funny about the belligerent drunk.” Unexpected sexual frustration made the words come out with more anger than he’d meant.
“When I knew him, he was only belligerent.”
The bald honesty of her statement forced a laugh out of him. “And yet you still have some affection in your voice.”
Her fingers tensed on his shoulder. “I won’t force it on you.”
“Why?”
“Why won’t I force it on you?”
He turned to face her and her fingers slipped off his jacket. He wished she had kept them there. “Why the affection?”
She shrugged. “For five years we shared the farm, and worked together some. He wasn’t a very good farmer, but Hank liked to have a cup of coffee with me in the mornings and hear what I was doing to the land. He even came to the farmers’ market occasionally. It’s hard not feel some measure of affection.”
“I lived with him for eighteen years and I managed.” Even in the dark, he could tell he’d startled her again. And again, he had the inkling that he’d said something he shouldn’t have, yet knowing the words that would come out of his mouth next would make him sound like a petulant child didn’t stop him. “Despite what you and every person in that room want to think, my father should have been tossed into an unmarked grave with a bucket full of lime and forgotten about.” Max’s mouth fell open, but Trey wasn’t going to back down. “And if I was in control of this funeral instead of Aunt Lois and Kelly, that’s exactly what would happen.”
Weekends in Carolina Page 3
