Secondhand Sister

by Rhett DeVane

  “Just hush and open this.” Bobby passed her a sparkly gift bag.

  “To Hattie from Mary-Esther,” she read the tag, then glanced toward Mary-Esther. “Oh, you shouldn’t have!”

  Bobby spoke in a loud stage whisper to Mary-Esther. “Don’t let her kid you. She lives for this part, even more than the soup thing.”

  Hattie dug beneath curled tissue paper and removed a small velvet box. When she opened the clasp, she gasped. A sterling hawk pendant rested on a bed of gray satin. “This is perfect!” She clipped the chain around her neck. “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” Mary-Esther asked.

  “I’ll tell you the whole story later. Pretty cool.” Hattie rested her fingers on the hawk pendant.

  Jake spoke behind his hand, “Warning, Mary-Esther. Hattie thinks everything that moves, breaths, or creeps is carrying some sign from the great beyond.”

  Mary-Esther threw a befuddled look toward Jerry, then said, “Glad you like it. I spotted it in a little shop off the interstate when Jerry and I were on the way back from New Orleans. I found yours there too, Bobby.”

  “Too strange.” Hattie motioned to Bobby, who held up his gift from Mary-Esther—a silver hand-tooled belt buckle with a similar hawk etching. “Hand her that little red box, bro.”

  Mary-Esther peeled the paper from the present and looked inside. A garnet and diamond ring sparkled in the twinkling tree lights. “Oh . . .” She held one hand to her chest.

  Bobby and Hattie exchanged meaningful glances, then Hattie said, “It was Mama’s. Ruby is her birthstone. We thought you might like to have something . . .”

  The moisture left Mary-Esther’s mouth. She slipped the ring onto her finger. Precise fit. As if it had been sized just for her. “Thank you.” Her voice came out in a hoarse whisper.

  Evelyn jumped up. “Don’t be shy. There’re gifts for everyone.”

  A few minutes later, the living room floor disappeared beneath a layer of crumpled Christmas paper.

  “I simply love everything I got,” Hattie said. “Thank you, everyone.” She wore a chenille vest hand-sewn by Evelyn, Mary-Esther’s pendant, and a new watch from Bobby and Leigh. She clutched a box of vanilla latte-scented beeswax candles from Shug and Jake, and the gift certificate for an hour massage, a gift from Elvina. Her Grinch-printed T-shirt held an array of stick-on bows.

  “You can never say Hattie Davis Lewis hates Christmas,” Jake commented.

  “And she hasn’t even gotten my present yet,” Holston said.

  “We have to wait on our gifts to each other until the morning so we’ll have something to open with the kiddo.” Hattie pecked her husband on the cheek.

  Elvina pulled a gift from behind a chair and handed it to Mary-Esther. “I saved this for last.”

  When Mary-Esther removed the paper, she gasped. Her face grew warm.

  “Thought you might like to have some family pictures, so I put together this collage. Took me some time to scan them into the computer. Not that I had anything more pressing to do with my foot in a cast.”

  Hattie leaned over Mary-Esther’s shoulder. “This is great. You have pictures from way back. I don’t even remember some of these. Look, Bobby. Here’s one of us at the fish pond with Daddy.”

  “There’s the Chevy we used to have when I was a senior in high school,” Bobby said. “Man, was that a sweet ride.”

  Jerry pointed to a copy of a faded Polaroid. “This is Miz Tillie, right?” He looked at the picture, then to Mary-Esther. “You really do look like her. A lot.”

  “I figured you could hang it in your new house,” Elvina said. “That way, you always have pictures of your family nearby.”

  Hattie handed over a decorative envelope. “Hope you might like this too.”

  Mary-Esther’s fingers trembled. She slid out a sheet of pastel paper. She read the scripted print, then looked up.

  “Mama never claimed to be a writer,” Hattie said, “but she often mentioned how she had been the poet for her senior class. This is a copy of one of my favorite pieces, At Twilight, from a little handwritten chapbook I found in her bedside table right after she died.” Hattie’s eyes watered. “She loved twilight. Her favorite time of the day. Said it was when sundown made things soften, calm down. I especially like the line about the whip-poor-will’s call. We had the preacher read this at her funeral.”

  “Excuse me.” Mary-Esther leaned the frame against her chair and stood so suddenly, Elvis yipped and dove behind Spackle. She rushed from the living room, the pastel paper still clutched in one hand.

  The front door slammed shut behind her.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Mary-Esther dashed through the misting rain. As soon as she slid into the driver’s seat and wrapped her hands around the van’s steering wheel, the tightness in her chest eased. The old vehicle—her safe place for over a year—enveloped her like one of her Nana’s hugs. No matter how far she went, or where, the aging Chevy had proved the one constant. She concentrated on deep breathing. Quivers rattled her center.

  A few minutes passed before Jerry entered the passenger’s side and closed the door against the night’s dreary dampness. “Want to tell me what that was all about?”

  She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. “I felt . . . trapped.”

  “Trapped. By what?”

  She lifted her head. “I don’t know. It’s like the walls were closing in on me.”

  Jerry sighed. “Mary-E, I have to be honest. You absolutely confound me. Here, you traveled hundreds of miles in the hope of finding out if you had any family to claim . . . heck, that’s what you were doing when I first saw you.

  “You settle in, carve out a life for yourself. You seemed content, leaving New Orleans behind. Just as things are beginning to make a turn, you act like you’re being backed into a briar patch with a shotgun aimed at your head.” He motioned toward the house. “These people are doing their best to fold you into their family, into your family. What’s your deal?”

  Mary-Esther glanced at the poem, smoothed the spots where her grasp had fouled the damp paper. She stared from the rain-speckled window toward the lighted farmhouse. Indistinct, shifting forms silhouetted in the glow of flickering Christmas lights. The curtains were open, like the people inside.

  She turned to face Jerry. “I want so badly to be here. I go through the motions. But something inside of me won’t let me.”

  “I took a psychology class in college. You’re having what I remember them calling an approach-avoidance conflict. That’s when you want something strongly, but at the same time, are busy repelling it.”

  She tried for an amused huff, but it came out more like a derisive snort. “Didn’t know it had a name.”

  Jerry held up his palms. “Those psychology types. They like to label everything. Makes life into a neat package.”

  “Did they say how to get beyond it?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t recall them ever giving any answers.”

  “What am I going to do, Jerry?” She strained to make out his features. The mist droplets reflected red, green, and blue from the outdoor holiday lights.

  “Way I see it, you have two choices, Mary-E. You can pack up this van and high tail it out of here. You can keep moving from town to town, making a handful of acquaintances—won’t call them friends. Friends require work and commitment. You can ditch the house. List all the stuff inside on eBay and pocket the money. Leave Boudreau with me, though. He deserves a stable home.”

  Her eyes burned.

  “Every now and then, you might run up on a man who will take you into his bed for a night or two. He might even start to care, if you stay too long.”

  Trickles of water trailed down the windshield, gathering speed until they disappeared beneath the idle wiper blades.

  “Or you can get your butt off your shoulders and march right back in there and start your life again.”

  Mary-Esther blinked back tears. “I’m not the g
olden person they, and you, believe I am. I’m not Tillie Davis’s sweet baby girl, all pink and innocent.” A pleading edge crept into her voice. “Don’t you see, Jerry? For me to turn my back on my past would be like saying Nana didn’t exist . . . or Loretta, for that matter. She wasn’t a great mother. Far from it. But she was what I had. All the mistakes, I would gladly leave behind. But some things, I can’t, and won’t.”

  Jerry’s words came out so soft, Mary-Esther strained to hear. “You’re not the only one who’s lost someone. You’re not the only one who’s been hurt. Who’s scared.”

  When she glanced over at him, Mary-Esther noticed the muscles at his temples pulsing. How his eyes glimmered the way men’s eyes do when they’re forcing back tears.

  “I love you, Mary-E. Probably did from the first time I laid eyes on you in front of the sheriff’s department, eating that white bread bologna sandwich. I’ve only loved two women. Lost one. And it will hurt like someone’s ripping out my soul all over again if I lose this one.”

  He opened the door and slid out, stood for a moment. Rain droplets peppered his hair and face. “It’s your choice.”

  She watched him huddle against the drizzling rain as he walked back to the Davis farmhouse.

  Mary-Esther’s hand sought the small gold chain circling her neck. Her fingertips traced the lines of the diminutive cross. What would Nana Boudreau say?

  Her grandmother’s words popped into her mind—the words Nana said so many times when Mary-Esther’s small world closed in, too scary to face. Find your safe place, little one. Find your safe place and go there. She touched the ruby ring circling her finger, the same ring her real mother had once worn.

  When Mary-Esther closed the front door a few minutes later, Hattie glanced up. A wide grin transformed her face. “Good. You’re back in time to help me serve the eggnog.”

  No probing questions. No need for windy explanations or apologies.

  Just her sister in a tacky holiday apron covered with stick-on Christmas bows, standing there with an egg white foam-coated spatula clutched in her hand like a fairy godmother’s wand.

  Chapter Forty

  Mary-Esther admired the modest diamond ring circling her finger, not the smallest she had ever had. Heck, Ricky had never given her anything to mark that union. Certainly not the largest. Jesus took that prize. That one, hocked long ago. She’d pitched J.R.’s plain gold band into the gutter mud.

  This one held the truest intent. Good thing Tillie’s ruby fit the same finger on her right hand.

  “Look, I know it’s not much,” Jerry had said as he presented the black velvet box the night before. Valentine’s Day. What a romantic. “Can’t afford Tiffany’s on my salary.”

  “Oh.” She had stared at the ring in its satin cocoon, maybe a little too long.

  “And I know it’s kind of sudden. Folks date for years before this kind of thing. I know what I want. I want to be with you, Mary-E. And I don’t mean spending an occasional night together. Take some time to decide, if you need.”

  “I don’t, Jerry.” Yes. She had a history of fast, bad decisions. This one would be the charm. Had to be.

  Add to the deal: she had met and actually liked her future mother-in-law. A lot.

  Ricky’s mom had hated her from the get-go for stealing her baby. Jesus’s mother was deceased before he met Mary-Esther. And John R.—who knows where his mother was? Probably in rehab somewhere, or dead.

  Mary-Esther heard Jerry’s muffled curses. He crawled from beneath the Herring house. A mask of dirt and spider webs pocked his face. “Looks like the water’s spewing from a broken pipe below the bathroom. Surprised all of them aren’t leaking.”

  “What do you suppose it will take to fix up this place?” she asked.

  Jerry wiped his face and hands with a faded bandana. “Old houses like this . . .” His shoulders rose and fell. “The framework’s sound enough, but the wiring’s shot. Not to mention, adding central heat and air. Now the plumbing.”

  “I love this house, Jerry. It’s the first place I have ever had that was truly mine.” No use counting Nana’s, a pile of worthless rubble by the time she had inherited it.

  Inside, four narrow glass shelves spanning the kitchen window housed her collection: feathers, slivers of river driftwood, and her rocks. First place Jake had helped her lay claim to the old home. One of Nana’s rocks rested on the top shelf, separate from the others.

  Hard to fathom, in a few weeks, the weather would shift. She’d turn the dirt for a vegetable garden. Tomato plants for sure. LaJune had already put in her order for as many as Mary-Esther would bring.

  She ran one hand over the back porch banister. Flakes of dead paint confettied beneath her fingers. “I thought what Jake and I did on the inside was major.”

  “You’re talking about a huge outlay, honey. If you have your heart set on it, maybe we could live in Quincy, or in the garage apartment, while we give this old girl an overhaul.”

  “I’ll have to pull a lot of extra shifts.” Money sifted through her life, again. Already, she and Jake had made four trips to home improvement stores in Tallahassee. Add to that, the cash she’d spent having the old photo restored. Worth every cent. Seeing Nana Boudreau smiling at her from atop the mantle made the house feel like home. The Davis collage hung on a nearby wall.

  Jerry regarded the structure, clicking his tongue. “I can pick up some off-duty work.”

  Mary-Esther hugged him hard. “I can see us living here. Like Eustis and Rose. This house kept them safe and happy for years.”

  “Have any clue as to where Rose might have kept the original plans for this place? It would help me when I start working on the updates.”

  “Only spot I can think of is the little safe in the master bedroom closet. I’ve cleaned out everywhere else. Rose wrote down the combination and left it with the will.”

  In moments, Mary-Esther dialed the five-digit entry code and the safe’s door clicked open. She pulled out a ragged pile of papers, some brittle with age.

  “Here,” Jerry held out a hand. “I’ll take half.”

  Boudreau sauntered into the room, meowed, and settled at her feet.

  A few minutes later, Mary-Esther dropped her portion of the papers back into the safe. “A lot of paid-off bank notes and a few sweet love letters, but no house plans. What about yours?”

  “Unfortunately, no blueprints. Just this.” He handed her a folded piece of parchment.

  “It’s some kind of bond.” She read the date. “From the early nineteen-hundreds. Where is this Gadsden County Bank?”

  Jerry’s brows furrowed. “SunTrust bought out the Gadsden County State Bank a few years back. Maybe that was the name back when this was issued.”

  “This bond was originally for a thousand dollars. Wonder if it’s still good?”

  “One way to find out. I’ll call Kenneth Johnson, a buddy of mine who’s one of their officers. He can research it for you,” Jerry said.

  “Even if it’s worth a little more than face value by this point, it would pay for some supplies. Anything will help.”

  Mary-Esther poured two cups of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table across from Jerry. The new Cuisinart was getting a workout. The list for the home supply store took up two pages of a legal pad. Boudreau jumped into her lap and she scratched behind his ears. Add cat door to the list, she mused.

  The phone rang. Jerry answered then glanced toward Mary-Esther. “Yes. Why?”

  Jerry’s face blanched. “Get outta here!”

  Mary-Esther grabbed his arm. “What?”

  “Thanks, Ken. I’m sure Mary-Esther will be in touch real soon.” Jerry picked up his coffee mug and took his time taking a long drink.

  “You going to share, or do I have to get rough?” Mary-Esther tickled him in the one spot on his side guaranteed to make him squirm. Boudreau gave an annoyed yowl and deserted her lap in favor of his food bowl.

  “Let’s say, at nine and a half percent interest compounded
annually all those years, you won’t have to worry about having enough to fix up this place.” He winked. “Makes me glad I fell for you before you were rich. I’d hate for you to think I had been after you for your money, all along.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Mary-Esther curled her knit scarf around her neck. No matter how many layers she added, the late February cold seeped in.

  “You want me to go with you?” Hattie asked.

  “Thanks, but I’d like to do this alone if you don’t mind.”

  Hattie pointed. “It’s the third one from the end.” She reached across the seat and cupped her sister’s shoulder in one hand.

  Mary-Esther took a deep breath. The scent from the van’s new upholstery and carpet reminded her of the changes in her life. She ran her fingers across the buttery tan leather. Next week, the clunker would sport a fresh sky blue paint job. Rose’s money could pay for a new ride, sure. But loyalty won out. Why would she commit the van to the junk metal pile when it had provided security for so many months? Old thing deserved a second chance too.

  Same way with the job at the Homeplace. If she had to stay home every day, she’d scrape the ceiling. Perhaps Mr. Bill would consider selling the restaurant. And she’d be ready.

  Mary-Esther fought the lump threatening to squeeze her airway closed. When she exited the van, the wind sliced through her coat.

  Twilight, her real mother’s favorite time of day.

  She lifted her nose to the frigid air. Her eyes watered from the breeze. Tears added to the mix.

  Rows of headstones extended to the edge of Highway 90, ten miles east of Chattahoochee. The same historic highway stretched beyond the horizon to cities and towns, some so small they had one sign marking the spot. Along its way west toward California, Highway 90 would meander to within half a mile of Nana’s decimated neighborhood.

  Soon, Nana’s grave would have a new marker. Rose granite, with a simple cross etched above her name. Jerry promised a road trip as soon as the weather warmed, to honor the placement of the headstone, add in a couple of days to wander the streets in search of good food and jazz. Whitewash the dark memories. Maybe she’d talk the family into going along.