Temple Secrets: Southern Humorous Fiction: (New for 2015) For Lovers of Southern Authors and Southern Novels

by Susan Gabriel

  Violet imagines how Jack’s life might change, too, if he finally has a home office to do his class preparation, instead of taking up the whole kitchen table. He can have two offices if he wants. Not to mention the thousand square foot workshop located at the very back of the property that currently serves as a garden shed of sorts, but could easily be converted. The biggest question, of course, is whether or not he minds sharing an office with the ghost of Mister Oscar. My father, she reminds herself. She remembers as a little girl riding on his shoulders in the garden. She blinks away more tears that threaten to come. It is still too much to take in.

  “I can’t leave my high school,” Leisha says. “All my friends are there.”

  Despite their phenomenal good fortune, Violet’s older daughter looks upset. Geographical changes don’t sit well with teenagers. So much change is going on in their bodies that to throw in a literal geographic change, even if it is only a few miles away, is too much to ask. Leisha’s best friend moved to Atlanta over Christmas holidays and it’s been hard on her. Violet reassures Leisha that everything will work out. It’s too soon to make any decisions, anyway. The house isn’t officially Violet’s yet and maybe it won’t ever be. Especially if Edward Temple has any say about it, she wants to add.

  For the first time that day she realizes Edward is her half-brother. The thought makes her queasy. Violet was Leisha’s age when he attacked her. She never told Jack about the incident and now she wonders why.

  She yawns. It is after midnight by the time she and Jack crawl into bed.

  “God works in mysterious ways,” Jack says.

  “Do you really think this is God’s doing?” Violet asks.

  “You never know,” Jack says.

  Jack always has more faith than Violet that things will work out and that God is watching out for them. Violet isn’t so sure.

  “I don’t even know how to think about Queenie being my mother,” she says.

  “I’ve always liked her, though,” Jack says. “If you were going to have a surprise relative, she’s a great one to have.”

  Sometimes Jack is so easy-going, Violet wishes she could get a rise out of him. He looks like a giant teddy bear and he acts like one, too.

  “You’re not upset that she lied to me for all these years?” Violet asks.

  “It sounds like she had her reasons,” Jack says. “Besides, she’s been so generous to you and me and the girls over the years. Now it all kind of makes sense.”

  “So what’s your reasoning about Miss Temple leaving her house to me?” Violet says. “Even if her dead husband, my father, did leave a letter telling her to do it, that’s just too unreal.”

  “Maybe she grew a conscience,” Jack says. “Your family has been working for her family forever. Let’s face it. You haven’t been paid what you’re worth the whole time you’ve been there and it’s doubtful anybody else did, either. Maybe it was time for her to give something back. Maybe, at the end of her life, she realized that.”

  “But this just doesn’t happen in real life, Jack. No matter how many maybes you throw in.”

  He gives her a quick kiss on the lips and rolls over. “Just accept it and be grateful,” he says.

  Her anger at Queenie threatens to bleed over to Jack. She stops herself from voicing it. Besides, she doesn’t have the energy to fight.

  Within minutes, Jack begins his low snore. Violet questions briefly how he can sleep with all that has happened, but that is Jack. He’s unflappable. He won’t let this windfall go to his head. It simply goes in the blessing column, and a requirement of accepting blessings is to have gratitude. But Violet hasn’t made her way to the gratitude column yet.

  Her thoughts return to Queenie. She’ll need a place to live. Violet can’t imagine throwing her out. If anything, it’s more Queenie’s home than hers. Despite her anger and hurt, she has to admit that Queenie’s reasons for withholding the truth make sense. Miss Temple could be vindictive. If she found out the truth, she might have thrown Queenie out of the house and probably Violet, too.

  But why give Violet the house? Did she really feel that strongly about honoring the last wishes of Mister Oscar—Violet’s father? Something doesn’t add up. Unfortunately, it seems, everybody who could clear up the mystery is dead.

  I might as well give up on sleeping tonight, she thinks. Violet rolls over in bed and for the first time that day her shoulder throbs. Edward. The last thing she needs is to have him seeking revenge for something she didn’t even ask for. If she’s right about him, and she’s almost certain she is, he will do anything to get back whatever he feels belongs to him. Her shoulder confirms the danger. But there is already something suspicious going on. Someone in a black sedan is watching the Temple house. Not to mention that long-buried secrets are popping up everywhere.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Rose

  The landing at the Denver airport is bumpy. Wind currents dance along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies like bucking broncos refusing to be tamed. Rose gets off the jet and has to resist getting on her hands and knees to kiss the azure blue carpet at the unloading gate. She makes her way through the familiar airport feeling a combination of fatigue, hunger and shell-shock from the reading of her mother’s will.

  At baggage claim, she looks for Max. He is probably parking the truck by now. At least she hopes he is. Rose feels weary from the day and wants to see him. It’s hard to believe a few hours earlier she was in the office of her mother’s attorney. Yet Savannah feels a world away now. She wants to be home. She wants to sleep in her own bed. And tomorrow morning she will get back to her normal routine and check in on the new calves that were born while she was away.

  As she waits on Max she tries to adjust to being back in the West. She remembers when she first arrived here. After growing up on the east coast, relocating to Cheyenne was like moving to another planet. The average rainfall is 13 to 15 inches in Wyoming. Savannah receives fifty inches or more. Cheyenne is high plains, semi-desert—Savannah is low country, sea level, and marshland. The first few years, it felt like the wind on the edge of the Great Plains nearly lifted her off the ground. She made jokes about being Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Now, like Dorothy, she wants to find her way back to Kansas, but in Rose’s story that is Savannah. She clicks her heels together three times but is too tired to smile.

  A man next to her announces it is snowing outside, as he retrieves his skis from a second baggage area. Winter in Cheyenne has an element of life and death to it. Becoming stranded on the highway in an unexpected blizzard in April or May can be dangerous. A woman she knew from the co-op froze to death during a May snowstorm. Her body wasn’t found until the snow drift finally melted in mid-June. It is April now, one of the most unpredictable months of the year. It can be raining one minute, hailing another and snowing heavily the next. The Rocky Mountains create their own weather system and the Front Range has a front row seat to the drama. Meanwhile, Rose isn’t even wearing a coat. It is packed in her suitcase.

  “Where are you, Max?” she whispers, scanning the crowd for a familiar face.

  “Are you from around here?” a young man asks, perhaps college age. If not dressed in blue jeans and a sweater Rose might think he was a Hare Krishna. He seems much too friendly and peaceful to be a normal guy. Do Hare Krishna’s still hang out in airports? she wonders.

  “I’ve lived in Wyoming for twenty-five years,” Rose says.

  “Wow, that’s a really long time,” he says. Rose is grateful he doesn’t add that he wasn’t even born yet or one of those comments that the young say to accidentally bring attention to how ancient she is. “I’m from D.C.,” he adds. “Is it true that it’s still wild here?”

  “In Denver?” she asks.

  “The West, in general,” he says.

  “It’s true,” she says. “We have coyotes that roam outside our ranch and pronghorn deer, descendants of the African antelope.”

  “Wow,” he says again with a grin.

 
; Rose doesn’t really have the energy to be friendly, but in a way it’s a nice distraction while she waits on Max. On the ranch, there aren’t many opportunities to wow people. “Of course, our biggest worry out here is the rattlesnakes.” She adds this part simply for the shock affect.

  “Really?” the young man says. His smile has not wavered.

  “We find them in the garden all the time and under the house and in the barn, and sometimes they’ll just be sunning themselves out on the road or next to the mailbox.”

  No wonder I miss Savannah, she thinks. The Georgia coast has its own species of rattlesnake, as well as water moccasins, but in all the years she lived there she never actually saw any. The wildness in the South has an easier time keeping itself hidden in the undergrowth than creatures in the stark, open plains. The people on the coast keep their wildness mostly hidden, too. Especially when it comes to their secrets.

  Rose remembers the look on Edward’s face when her part of the inheritance was read. If he had been holding a sword, he might have lopped off her head instead of a little finger.

  The luggage conveyor springs to life. Everyone turns to watch luggage surge out of the terminal’s inner bowels and circle on the baggage carousel.

  “Hey, nice talking to you,” the Hare Krishna says, with an even bigger smile to go with his blond hair and peaceful blue eyes.

  “You, too,” she says with what she decides is a western wave—quick and noncommittal. Rose and the young man are separated as people in the back move forward to get their bags.

  As usual, Rose forgot to tie a red ribbon around the handle like Max always tells her to do, so that her common-looking black bag can be more easily recognized. She grabs one off the conveyor belt, sees it isn’t hers and then hoists it back. Too tired to be coordinated, she bangs her knee in the process. Wincing with pain, she eyes another.

  “There you are,” Max says, arriving at her side. He grabs Rose’s bag off the conveyor belt just as it is about to pass and sits it at her feet. Help has arrived.

  Rose hugs him and takes in his smell, his shape. At six feet, two inches, he is a half a foot taller than her and when he’s wearing his cowboy hat it seems even more. He has cleaned up for the occasion. He wears the shirt she loves and his best pair of blue jeans. His face is also clean-shaven. Rose hasn’t realized just how much she missed him until this moment.

  “You look good,” he says.

  “You’re lying,” Rose says. “I caught a look at myself in the airport bathroom and nearly scared myself to death. But thanks for saying so anyway.” She squeezes him again. These days, her face always reveals her tiredness. She can’t rely on the resiliency and elasticity of youth any longer, the only help she gets is from Revlon.

  “How was the flight?” Max asks.

  “Bumpy, as always,” Rose says with a grimace.

  Rose hates turbulence. It ranks right up there with stomach flu and a pinched nerve in her back. Except for the quickness of getting places, there isn’t anything about flying that she actually enjoys. By car, the trip from Wyoming to the Georgia coastline would take 28 hours of nonstop driving. She would still be somewhere in Tennessee.

  “Let’s get you home, little lady,” Max says in his faux western voice. His attempt to sound like John Wayne isn’t even remotely close but Rose plays along as his damsel in distress.

  “Why, thank you, kind sir,” Rose says in an exaggerated southern drawl she reserves only for him.

  Max reaches for her carry-on full of books and magazines for the trip—she always takes enough to read for a year—and swings it lightly over his shoulder. Life feels easier whenever Max is around. Rose wraps her arm around his as they walk in a comfortable, welcoming silence to the parking garage.

  After Max puts her things in the back of the truck, he pays the parking attendant and they hit the open road. Despite her weariness, she resigns herself to the two hour drive home.

  Even though it is dark, Rose can feel the vastness of the landscape stretching out in front of them. It is snowing hard now. Max has his wipers on high. On I - 25 they have a straight shot home to Cheyenne. Rose’s thoughts drift to where normal life awaits her. The next morning she will make her favorite coffee and glance at the morning newspaper before diving into the bookkeeping for the ranch that is undoubtedly piled up on the desk in the den. Then as soon as the sun is up she will go out to the barn. If I can make it to the barn, she thinks, as they pass a snow plow.

  The windshield wipers take frantic swipes to keep the glass clear. Her shoulders are tense. The weather is a topic of daily conversation at the ranch. Part of Rose’s job is to monitor the cable weather channel so nothing storm-related catches them by surprise.

  “So do you want to tell me what happened?” Max says, breaking the silence. He keeps his eyes on the road.

  Rose called him earlier that day and told him there was big news, but that she wanted to tell him in person. This also bought her time to decide how she felt about it. Max, in his infinite and sometimes maddening patience, hasn’t pushed it. Now she feels too tired to go into it.

  “You’ve kept me in suspense all day,” he says, as if sensing her hesitation.

  Rose pauses, pulling forward what feels like her last bit of energy. “Well, it seems Mother has an interesting proposition for us,” Rose says, “and I don’t know if you’ll even consider it for a second.”

  Max gives an inquisitive grunt, cowboy-ease, for ‘what might that be?’

  “If I move back to Savannah, I inherit twenty million dollars,” Rose begins. “If I stay here, I get two thousand.”

  This time, Max’s grunt has more energy to it—a kind of nuanced ‘what the hell?’ A long pause follows as he takes this news in. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does say something, it is usually worth waiting for. Rose waits. She and Katie used to make jokes about Max being E. F. Hutton, from those stock brokerage commercials that aired with the slogan: When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen.

  Max takes off his cowboy hat, worn on even the darkest of nights and the cloudiest of days. The lights on the dashboard reveal the crease from the brim that always brands his forehead, along with the rancher’s version of a golfer’s tan. Max grunts again.

  A three-grunt conversation, Rose notes. That’s a new record.

  Rose doesn’t know how to tell him that she’d like to go back. Maybe after she’s rested she’ll have the energy to bring it up.

  The wipers keep to their task and begin to drag against the glass. The snow slows. Max turns down the wipers and Rose relaxes her shoulders.

  “How soon can we pack?” Max says finally.

  Even in her tiredness, Rose’s gasp is full volume. “Excuse me?” she asks.

  This isn’t the response she expected at all. She never considered that Max might actually give up the ranch. Four generations of his family have lived in Wyoming. Most of his extended family are still here, except for one wild cousin—considered disloyal by the rest of the family—who moved to Austin and works in radio.

  “I say, let’s do it,” Max repeats, sans grunt.

  “Are you serious?” Rose asks, although she knows Max isn’t the type to kid around.

  “For twenty five years I’ve watched you try to fit in here,” he says. “You’ve tried. You’ve really tried.”

  “But this is our home,” she says.

  “I know.” He goes silent again like he’s giving the possibility more thought.

  For several minutes Rose is hypnotized by the wipers pushing the snowflakes to the edges of the windshield. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up. If they stay in Cheyenne she’ll be fine. They have a good life here.

  Max clears his throat and pulls her out of her daze.

  “It’s not a decision to take lightly, Rose, but I turn fifty this year. Before I know it, I’ll be seventy, with no one to turn the ranch over to.”

  “What about Katie?” Rose asks.

  “You know Katie doesn’t want to come back here. She’s not
the ranching type.”

  Max is right. Katie wasn’t happy in Cheyenne. She survived high school by pouring all her energy into making good grades so she could be accepted at a college back east.

  The evening after the funeral, Rose gave Max a detailed description of Angela on the phone. Their daughter’s lifestyle has not caused Max to waver in his devotion to Katie in the slightest. Their only hesitation—the fear of any parent, especially in Wyoming after the Matthew Shepherd tragedy—is that they don’t want Katie to have a difficult life.

  “Besides,” Max begins again, “we’re practically bankrupt. So twenty million dollars sounds very attractive at the moment.”

  They pass Fort Collins, an hour from home. The snow has slowed even more. A full moon emerges from behind the clouds. It fills the entire side view mirror and looks enormous. It suddenly occurs to Rose that if they move, she will miss seeing the moon and stars with such clarity on the open plains. But there is also something magical about seeing a full moon through trees laden with Spanish moss accompanied by the smell of magnolia blossoms wafting through the air.

  “I can’t believe you’re even considering this,” Rose says to Max.

  “I can’t believe I’m considering it, either,” Max says. “But I think I’m ready for a new adventure. I’m definitely ready to stop working so damn hard. But mostly I want you to be happy, Rose. We’ve lived the last twenty-five years where I wanted to live. Let’s live the next twenty-five years where you want to.”

  Emotion catches in her throat. She has never loved Max more than she does at this moment. Like every couple, they’ve had their issues, but nothing they didn’t work hard to get past. She reaches over and takes his calloused right hand and presses her love into it.

  Are you sure?” she asks.

  “I’m sure,” he says.

  Their eyes meet briefly and he squeezes her hand again before returning it to the steering wheel.

  The weariness around Max’s eyes is as tangible as the calluses on his hands. She has spent hours of her life trying to rub the pain out of his back and shoulders after a long day. Ranching is hard on an almost fifty year old man. It’s hard on anyone. She’s had her share of aches and pains, too. But this is the first time she’s heard him voice his willingness to walk away from the ranch.