“Sorry if we woke you.”
She shook her head. “I was up.”
A sudden rustling from a tomato bush caught their attention and the tiny kitten emerged, tail high.
“I believe this kitty launched an offensive with a vital strategic objective, and won. What a smart little thing,” Jem said.
“It won? It’s been hanging around all weekend, but I’d say it was a class-D battle.” Lucy put a finger to her chin, as if in thought. “It achieved a limited tactical objective of reconnaissance and occupation.”
“It’s sure taken to Crawford House like it was born to be here,” Zeke said.
“Maybe it’s taken to the chitlins someone left on the porch,” Jem said.
“Chitlins?” Lucy cocked a brow at Zeke. “Now the battle is upgraded to a class A. Indisputable victory on the field and termination of the campaign offensive. I guess the kitty stays.”
Jem scooped it up and peered into its bright eyes. “I knew it. It needs a name. How about Jubal? Rosecrans? Beauregard?”
Reaching out toward the kitten, Zeke lifted its tail. “Huh. I thought you took yourself to medical school. You better think of a name more fittin’ for a lady.”
Lucy laughed and Jem looked up, unable to keep himself from smiling at the sound. He loved her laugh, how it rolled through several husky pitches. “How about Harriet Tubman? She knows all the little paths through the garden that nobody else does,” she said.
“Or how about Rose O’Neal Greenhow? This little kitty is silent as the grave. She’d wear the name of a famous spy with dignity.” Jem held her in one hand and felt the rumble of her little body as she purred. She looked up at him and he could have sworn she smiled, whiskers out and ears up.
Lucy stepped forward, slipping her hand between the kitten and Jem. He felt her touch for a moment against his chest, then it was gone as she took her turn. “No, her name is Hattie.” Her voice was soft and sure. “We’ll name her after Hattie Winter, the woman who fought disguised as a man.”
“I better move my truck before your aunt comes by,” Zeke said, moving toward the gate. “She gonna be mad enough about the yard birds.”
There was a beat of silence as Zeke walked away. The conversation that had been so easy now limped to a halt.
Jem cleared his throat. “So . . . chickens.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he wanted to turn around and walk away. He sounded like an idiot. He couldn’t find anything better to say than “chickens”?
She nodded. “I’ve been reading about sustainable living and how much of our food is delivered from far away, even when we are surrounded by farmland.” She rubbed Hattie’s head. “We have a garden, but it only produces for nine months of the year, and I thought chickens would be a good way to supplement it.”
“So it’s not just a way to annoy your aunt?”
She shot him a sly look. “Maybe that, too.”
They stood there, smiling at each other until the moment stretched too long.
“I should—”
“We need to—”
Another awkward pause and Jem waved a hand. “Go ahead.”
“I should let you get to work.”
He blinked. He’d forgotten all about his paperwork. “Right.” Reaching out, he gave Hattie a scratch. “Don’t chase the chickens when they get here.”
“She would never.” Lucy looked up. “And, Jem?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for helping. With the wood.” Her eyes traveled past him, to where Zeke had walked through the yard to the parking spot. “I know I should have hired someone younger, but Zeke isn’t just the handyman.”
“He’s a member of the family.”
“Exactly.” She seemed relieved that he understood. “It’s not the most practical use of the money coming in, but I felt that if we had the chance to save this old place, it was all or nothing.” She moved a finger under the kitten’s chin. “Either we all stay here together, or none of us.”
Jem nodded. “See you later,” he said, although he wasn’t sure that he would. He turned and walked out of the garden, through the gate and up to the porch. He hardly noticed the steps under his feet and the wooden rail under his fingers. He was finally doing what he should have done five minutes ago. But now it was too late. A short conversation and he understood something about Lucy that he hadn’t before: she was loyal. He had thought that she was flighty and fickle, but she was the opposite. It was true that she hadn’t chosen him, hadn’t vowed to be with him through college and beyond, but it wasn’t so much that she had refused him, as she had chosen her family instead.
He took out his key for the back door and, after several seconds of fiddling, realized it was already unlocked. Jem shoved the key back into his pocket with a sigh. Avoiding Lucy completely wasn’t going to work, although he needed to get his mind off her and focus on his job. His patients deserved someone who wasn’t completely distracted. As he stepped into the dim waiting room and flipped on the lights, Jem tried to shelve his emotions. He’d think about it later, when he had time to sit and brood. All of the bitterness he’d held against her, for all those years, wouldn’t fade away with one offhand comment. But he had to admit that he might have been unfair, just a little, in the way he saw her rejection of him when they were just teenagers.
Jem settled behind his desk and opened the files he’d left from yesterday. He stared at the words, pen poised, thoughts far away. She was anything but disloyal. Lucy was holding this family together. He had seen how she’d watched Paulette at the party, growing more worried with every drink she consumed. Lucy had come into the clinic to shepherd Olympia back toward the family area. Lucy was making the best financial decisions she could, trying to keep Crawford House out of foreclosure, even if that meant having her old boyfriend hanging around.
He dropped his head into his hands. Lucy had been forced to choose between him and her entire family. She’d broken his heart, but now that he was older, he saw it all more clearly. The Crawfords didn’t deserve Lucy, it was true. And maybe, just maybe, he couldn’t have expected her to leave everything and everyone she loved to be with a boy she had only known for a summer.
For the first time in ten long years, Jem wondered if Lucy had been right after all.
Lucy stood in the garden, morning sun beating down, the smell of the tomato vines and soil wrapping around her like a memory of her childhood. Hattie snuggled into the crook of her elbow, whiskers tickling her skin. Watching Jem walk toward the house made her chest tighten with conflicting emotions. For a moment they had almost seemed as if they were friends. She shivered, remembering the way his blue eyes crinkled when he laughed and the way he carried the lumber as easily as a man, but in his face was the shadow of the boy she once knew. She would never have thought they had anything left in common, but standing here in the garden with Zeke, they could have passed for something other than enemies.
Lucy lowered Hattie to the ground. She shouldn’t have stepped off the porch once she’d realized Jem was outside, but the melody of the song pulled her into the garden. Such an old, mournful tune. She didn’t remember Jem singing, not really. Maybe a bit of a pop song. She remembered the way he read a poem, and his laugh, and the way his face went stony when he was scared, but never him singing.
Hattie wound around Lucy’s ankles and batted at the little buckle on the side of her flats. It was just like Jem to help carry the wood for the coop. He was the sort of person who was always ready to lend a hand. She wasn’t surprised to see him, really, with a length of lumber over one shoulder and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up. He was so handsome she hadn’t been able to look away, and it stole her breath to hear his voice rising with old Zeke’s in that Civil War tune.
Lucy looked out past the garden, toward the old elm trees at the edge of the property. She had never forgotten him, and all it had taken was one bit of son
g to reopen her heart. With a mixture of dread and wonder, Lucy faced the truth: she loved Jem.
She had always loved him, and she always would.
The evening ended with dancing. On its being proposed, Anne offered her services, as usual; and though her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at the instrument, she was extremely glad to be employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved.
—ANNE ELLIOT
Chapter Ten
“ No, this dinner has nothing to do with me. I already told you I’m going out.” Lucy stuffed her keys in her purse and yanked on her shoes. She had managed to avoid Jem since that morning in the garden three days ago, and she was hoping to make it all the way through the weekend without another encounter.
“You have to help me! Everyone will be here in less than an hour and there’s nothing to eat!” Paulette was waving her hands in the air and her voice was reaching a pitch that only dogs could hear.
“This was your idea, not mine.” Lucy shouldered her purse and went for the door. If she could get out of the house, she’d be safe. No way was she going to sit through a dinner with Jem and Regan, no matter what kind of disaster Paulette had created in the kitchen. It wasn’t her problem.
“Mama would have wanted you to help me,” her sister said, tears muffling her words.
Lucy tried to keep walking but the guilt was too much. She paused, resting her forehead against the front door. “Maybe Mama would have wanted you to cook something easier than lamb purses or whatever you just burned to a crisp.”
“I’m telling you, the recipe must have been printed wrong. I did everything the way it said to. I walked away for a second, and it just burst into flame.” Paulette was back to being angry.
“So, what about the other dishes?” Lucy turned, arms folded over her chest.
“I’d planned these tiny bacon-wrapped scallops topped with black truffle butter, but the bacon must have been bad quality. It was supposed to cook just a little, then I was going to wrap it around the scallops, but it turned crispy in no time. So, then I thought I’d just cook the scallops, but they went from totally raw to little, chewy erasers. Now all I’ve got left is the truffle butter, and nobody can eat straight truffle butter for an hors d’oeuvres.”
Lucy sighed. “What else do you have?”
Paulette chewed her lip. “I made some smoked-salmon mousse.”
“So, just serve that on crackers and make some sandwiches or something. It will be fine. Pretend it’s a picnic.” Lucy turned back to the door.
“But we can’t eat the salmon mousse. I blended it with the sour cream and cream cheese and onion and dill and lemon juice and caviar . . . but I used raw salmon instead of smoked.” Paulette started to cry in earnest. “When I realized it was the wrong thing, I thought maybe I could cook it, but it just turned brown and started smelling up the kitchen.”
Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know how to help you. I’m not even sure what’s in the pantry.”
“Tons of stuff.” Paulette grabbed Lucy’s hands and pulled her toward the kitchen. “Mrs. Hardy keeps it stocked. Just whip something together and I’ll be so grateful.”
“Maybe I could make some macaroni and cheese if there’s enough milk in the fridge.”
Her sister stopped, frown creasing her face. “Mac and cheese? That’s not very fancy.”
“Look, do you want me to help you or not?” Lucy wanted to reach out and give Paulette a good shake. The girl was so used to getting her own way that she didn’t even know when to stop giving instructions.
Paulette let out a huff. “Fine. I’ll go get ready. I brought my dress and makeup because I didn’t want to cook in my nice clothes.”
A moment later she was gone, and Lucy was standing alone in the kitchen. Lord, You have quite a sense of humor. Here she was, the one place she didn’t want to be, cooking for the people she didn’t want to see, and cleaning up for the sister who treated her like the hired help. But what Paulette had said was true: their Mama would have expected Lucy to lend a hand. A good Southern girl didn’t walk away from a crisis, especially one involving food and guests.
Lucy slipped on the red-checkered apron that hung behind the kitchen door and grabbed two large pots. The garden was in high gear and she could find plenty of good produce. Whether Paulette’s friends would be impressed by any of it was another matter altogether.
Hattie met her at the entrance of the garden, tail high. Her tiny meow was like a rebuke.
“Sorry, sweet pea. Can’t stop to play. How about we look for tomatoes?” Lucy searched through the vines, tugging off the ripest ones as the kitten wound her way under the leaves and through the squares of the tomato cages. The green-bean row was next, then the cucumber patch. Lucy carried one pot to the porch and headed back to the garden. Hattie trotted beside her.
She would dearly love to cook a fabulous Southern meal and show Paulette that lamb pockets weren’t the way to impress a guest, but the need to get the food prepared in a short amount of time was bigger. Lucy thought that if everything went perfectly, she could make an edible dinner and get out of the kitchen just as the guests arrived.
In the rows of corn she selected the most tender of the white, sweet variety and deftly twisted ears off the stalks. Carrying them to the corner of the garden where the compost moldered, she husked them as quickly as possible. Rubbing the ears between her hands, she cleaned the silk from between the uniform kernels.
Hattie sneezed and Lucy giggled at the strings of corn silk hanging from the kitty’s ears. “Very fancy, but I think you look pretty just as you are,” she said, brushing them away. Arms full, she deposited them on the porch and headed back to the garden, mentally ticking off ingredients.
When the second pot was filled to the brim with fresh vegetables, she lifted it, her back straining. She wasn’t used to this kind of exercise. Sitting at a desk and reading through old diaries was making her softer than she should be. Maybe a little weight lifting in the mornings would be a good idea. Lucy felt her shoulders protest as she trudged toward the porch. Hattie was already at the back door.
“Nope. I can’t have you underfoot.” She tried to close the door, but somehow the kitten squeezed through an impossibly small gap and scooted underneath the old oak table.
Lucy blew out a sigh. “Fine. Just don’t sit on the counter. You don’t have any pants and that’s highly unsanitary.” She laid the colander in the sink and started to wash batches of okra, big leafy handfuls of kale and tiny cherry tomatoes. The clock was ticking and she felt the minutes slipping away, but her body relaxed into the familiar rhythms of kitchen work. She hummed as she worked, letting the smells of fresh herbs and just-picked produce work their magic on her frayed nerves.
Lifting down the copper pots from the ceiling rack, Lucy flashed back to her mama’s gumbo. Mama had loved to cook, but not alone. She liked Lucy to keep her company in the kitchen, perched on one of the old oak stools. Mama would sing and Lucy would watch the dance of a woman who cooked from a recipe that was generations old.
Mama would take collard greens and lay them over good bacon and add a little water and cider vinegar, letting them simmer for hours. Most folks hated the smell of collards cooking, but Mama had learned from her mama, who had learned from her mama, that a cook should add a whole pecan to the pot so it wouldn’t stink up the house.
Once that was started, Mama would work on the gumbo, whisking flour into the grease from some spicy sausage. She never left the pan, stirring and watching. It seemed to take hours until it turned a nutty brown and the scent filled the kitchen. Every now and then Mama would talk, but it wasn’t clear if she was speaking to Lucy or the food. Bouki fait gombo, lapin mangé li, she’d say as she stirred, and Lucy would laugh, loving the old stories of the dumb goat and the trickster rabbit who always ate his gumbo. Mama had so many stories of that rabbit that Lucy started to belie
ve she wrote them herself. Nobody could remember all of those, surely. As Lucy got older, she realized that a person held on to what was important and forgot the rest, and to Mama, those stories were as important as the lipstick she never went without.
Lucy paused, hands full of green beans, her memory flashing back to the giant pots of crawfish on the stove. Mama would squint her green eyes into the steam, her hair pulled back, frowning in concentration. The salted water was flavored and ready to receive the “mudbugs” out of their burlap sacks. Other than an onion or maybe an ear of corn, if it wasn’t alive when you threw it in, then it shouldn’t be in the pot, she’d say. Did Mama mind that Lucy didn’t cook those old family recipes? Was she turning her back on her culinary heritage as surely as Paulette was?
Lucy snapped the ends of the beans faster, glancing at the clock. This whole dinner was breaking Mama’s cardinal rule: don’t hurry. She thought if a cook was in a hurry, you might as well just make a sandwich and go on your way, rather than risk destroying a good roux or burning a pecan pie. But Lucy didn’t have the luxury of time today.
Both stoves were covered with pots, large and small, in different stages of coming to a boil. The ovens were warming. Lucy scanned the counter and blew out a breath, saying a few words of a prayer. It was a big kitchen with plenty of counter space and two working stoves, but there was only one cook. She needed about three more hands, and Hattie wasn’t going to be able to fill that particular need, even as cute as she was. Everything had to go perfectly, no disasters allowed, or this meal wasn’t going to happen.
She knelt down and peeked into the cabinet. There was a jar of muscadine jelly in here somewhere, she was sure of it. The kitchen was bright enough when the morning sun shone through the windows that faced east, but this late in the evening, Lucy wished for a few more overhead fixtures. Sighing, she started removing bottles and jars, moving farther and farther into storage space. Soon, her head and shoulders were deep inside, her hands reaching for the last few jars in the far corner.
Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread Page 13
