She leaned back in the bed. “That’s not good enough.” She pressed the call button and a nurse entered the room almost immediately.
“I’m checking out,” Connie said. “Bring me whatever papers I need to sign.” The nurse hustled out of the room, making a beeline for a telephone, no doubt.
“Good luck, Connie,” I said. “I hope you wake up before you destroy everything you claim you care about.” I stepped out of the room and into Coleman’s arms.
He pulled me against his chest and held me so tightly I almost couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t want you involved in this,” he said into my hair.
I didn’t answer. The feel of his arms was too safe, too necessary. I simply closed my eyes and let myself have him for a few seconds.
There was the sound of a clearing throat and I opened my eyes to see Doc Sawyer standing beside us. Coleman and I stepped apart.
“What are you going to do?” Doc asked. He studiously avoided meeting my gaze.
“Bring me the papers. I’ll have her institutionalized,” Coleman said.
“Coleman,” I touched his arm. “She isn’t crazy.”
“I don’t care to put a label on what she is, Sarah Booth. All I know is that she’s endangering herself and my baby. I can’t let it go on. If they have to put her in a straitjacket and force-feed her, then that’s how it’s going to be. Once the baby is born, she can kill herself, if that’s her choice.”
Doc sighed. “I’ll get the papers,” he said, “but you realize this is only temporary. She can fight this if she chooses.”
“Doc, do you think this is the right thing to do?” I asked.
He looked from Coleman back to me. “I don’t have a clue what’s right or fair in this world, Sarah Booth. I do know that Connie’s a danger to herself and her baby. Does she have that right? Maybe. Maybe not. I do know this has to end. I’ll get the paperwork.” He walked down the hospital corridor, his shoes soundless.
Coleman and I were left facing each other. All I wanted was to walk back into his arms, to have him hold me. But I couldn’t. There was something in his eyes that warned me to keep my distance. I was about to be hurt.
“I’m taking Connie to a private clinic in Arizona. I think it would be best to get her away from here completely. I’m stepping down as sheriff so I can spend the next five months with her, until the baby comes.”
“And after that?” I asked, my chest hurting so badly I could hardly breathe.
“I don’t know.”
I nodded.
He touched my cheek, then turned and followed Doc down the corridor.
36
A COLD FRONT WAS MOVING IN OUT OF LOUISIANA, AND I SAT ON the front porch steps with Sweetie Pie between my feet and a tall Jack at my side. I’d gotten my dog out of hock after a personal visit to Mrs. Hedgepeth. After our brief conversation, she’d decided that maybe it wasn’t Sweetie Pie who’d bitten her.
Now I leaned forward and stroked Sweetie’s long, silky ears. The bitter wind scattered the leaves on the sycamore trees and traced icy fingers down my face and neck. I liked the cold. It numbed me.
Coleman was gone. Gordon Walters had taken over the sheriff’s office on an appointed basis. The county was ablaze with gossip.
A lot of folks were talking about me, but neither Tinkie nor Cece were speaking to me. My last conversation with Tinkie had been when she’d called me from the New Orleans airport to tell me about the look on Hamilton’s face when I’d failed to meet him. Since then, both Tinkie and Cece had studiously ignored me. I’d heard rumors, via Millie, that something big was in the works with Cece. But I’d spent the last three days basically alone. Except for my most reliable friend, Jack Daniel’s.
“You know what followed the days of the flapper, don’t you?”
I looked over my shoulder to see Jitty dressed in shapeless, somber, knee-length black. A cloche hat was pulled tight on her head, shadowing her eyes.
“Let’s see, after the flapper came the Great Depression,” I said without enthusiasm.
“That’s right, Sarah Booth. I’d say that’s exactly where you are.”
She was right. Yeah! All of my friends and my ghost were right and I was wrong. I’d lost on all fronts. Hamilton had never even left the New Orleans airport when I didn’t show up. He’d booked a flight for Paris and flew out two hours later.
I’d tried six times to call him, but he wasn’t taking my calls. I didn’t blame him. In fact, I admired him. He made a decision and stuck with it, unlike me.
Jitty took a seat beside me. “You can get him back, you know.”
“Which one?”
She shook her head. “That’s the problem, Sarah Booth. That’s why you’re sittin’ here all alone. You hadn’t really made up your mind. That’s the worst insult you can hand a person.”
“Let me ask you something, Jitty. What would you have done if I’d gone to Paris and married Hamilton?”
She gazed out at the beautiful white trunks of the sycamores. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve spent my entire existence here at Dahlia House. This is home to me.”
“And to me, too,” I said. “Paris was a dream, a fantasy. This is real. This house, the people around me. My dog and my horse.”
“Sarah Booth, you know as well as I do that you can build a reality wherever you go.”
She spoke with kindness, and I smiled at her. “New York was a dream. I had a fantasy of working on Broadway. The reality was something very different.”
“You can build whatever reality you want, anywhere you choose,” she said. “Never doubt that. You just have to have faith.”
Faith. It was a word that had begun to constantly recur in my life. I thought of Doreen. All charges against her had been dropped. Adam Crenshaw, alias Michael Anderson, was in jail on one count of murder, and the police were investigating the deaths of Joshua Crenshaw and Lillith Lucas.
“How do you tell the difference between illusion and delusion, between faith and fantasy?” I asked. Certainly the line had blurred for Adam. Blurred so badly that he’d killed his own children and his mother.
“That’s a tricky one, Sarah Booth.” She leaned over to whisper in my ear. “You shouldn’t ask an illusion such things.”
“I need a better answer than that.”
“You don’t need me to tell you,” she said. “You already know.”
“Cop-out,” I accused.
“You have to trust yourself to know the difference.” Jitty started to shimmer, a sure sign that she was making one of her famous getaways.
“Don’t go! Which was the illusion, Hamilton or Coleman?”
The shimmer swept through her, highlighting her chocolate eyes. “Whichever one you had chosen,” she said. “That would have been your reality.”
She was gone. I sipped my drink and felt Sweetie Pie begin to wiggle. She was doing her company’s-a-comin’ hound-dog dance. Looking down the drive, I didn’t recognize the car that came toward me at breakneck speed, scattering dead leaves behind it like a small tornado. It was silver, sleek, and expensive-looking. For a moment my heart flipped. It was exactly the kind of car Hamilton might drive.
I stood up as the car pulled near the steps. The tinted glass shielded the occupants, but when the driver’s door swung open and a long leg encased in black leather stepped out, I knew it wasn’t Hamilton.
Cece was behind the wheel and Tinkie got out on the passenger side, Chablis in her arms. She put the little fluff of fur down so that Chablis could properly greet Sweetie, who slurped her once, picked her up in her mouth, and trotted off with her.
“We decided that it was pointless to stay mad with you,” Tinkie said. “Besides, I wanted to show Cece the terrific office you set up for us.”
“Yes, dahling, if you choose to trash your life over and over again, we aren’t going to punish you.” Cece took my drink from my hand, sniffed it, and made a face.
“Tinkie, what did the doctor say?” I’d been on pins and needles for
days, wondering how her appointment had gone.
“I didn’t go,” Tinkie said. Her blue gaze was serene. “There was no need. I’m perfectly fine.”
“You promised,” I said, a flush of anger rising in my face. Deep down I’d been afraid something like this would happen.
“The lump is gone,” Tinkie said. “I’m positive of it. There’s no need for a biopsy.”
Cece put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed lightly. “It’s her decision to make,” she said softly. “Just like we had to let you make your own decision about Hamilton.” She turned me slightly so that I was looking at her car.
“How do you like it, dahling?”
“It’s a Jaguar. A new one.” Not the most brilliant deduction, but I was still trying to get over being angry at Tinkie.
Cece preened. “Yes, I bought it today.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You got an advance for your big story on Ellisea?”
“I decided not to do the story on Ellisea.”
I took the glass from her hand and took a long swallow. “Say that again,” I requested.
“I’m not doing the story.”
I looked at Tinkie, who nodded. “Why not?” I asked.
Cece cocked one hip and rolled her eyes. “I suppose it’s because—”
“She thought what it would be like if someone wrote that kind of story about her,” Tinkie said.
“But Cece was wise enough not to hide her past,” I said.
“LeMont told me a little about Ellisea’s family,” Cece said. “I decided not to write it. It’s not a story that helps anyone or illuminates anything. It would only bring heartache.”
“So how can you afford a Jag?” I asked.
“I have a job offer from the Times-Picayune.” Cece ran her hand over the car’s fender. “It’s about the largest newspaper in the South, and they want me to be society editor! Can you imagine? After all those years when no one would give me a job! Do you know how long I wanted to work at that paper and live in New Orleans? It’s going to be a big pay raise, too.”
“That’s great, Cece.” I forced a big smile. Damn! Cece wasn’t afraid to grasp a fantasy and make it real.
“I’ve dreamed about this for half my life,” Cece said. “I just never believed I’d have the chance.”
“I don’t like it one bit,” Tinkie said. “What will we do without Cece?”
Now that was a good question. What would we do?
“Dahling, New Orleans isn’t that far away.” She lightly gripped my elbow. “Aren’t you going to invite us in for a drink? I feel like celebrating.”
“Absolutely,” I said, leading the way to the front parlor, where I poured generous amounts of liquor into my mother’s beautiful highball glasses. “Let me get some ice. Tinkie, why don’t you show Cece the office?”
“I heard from Hamilton,” Tinkie said.
That stopped me in my tracks. I turned back to face her. “What did he say?”
“You broke his heart, Sarah Booth.”
I couldn’t tell if she was teasing me or not. “Really, Tinkie, what did he say?”
“He said that if he ever doubted that a fantasy could be real, he’d think of you.”
“Did you tell him about . . . Coleman?”
“Yes. I told him that Coleman had taken his wife to Arizona.”
I waited, wondering what it was that I hoped to hear.
“He said he hoped Connie got well and that Coleman left her.”
“Did you tell him it wouldn’t matter to me?” I held her gaze. In the past couple of days, I’d given it a lot of thought. It was true that I’d made a decision when I left Hamilton at the airport and came home to Zinnia. It was just as true that Coleman had made his choice, too.
“I won’t lie to him, Sarah Booth. Besides, he wouldn’t believe me. You made a choice.”
“So did Coleman. So did Hamilton when he didn’t come after me. We’ve all made choices in our lives, but that doesn’t mean we don’t regret some of them.”
Tinkie walked over to me, her five-inch heels tap-tapping on the hardwood floor. “I know that better than most,” she said, taking my hand. “Hamilton is hurt now. Badly hurt. Give him time.”
I wanted to tell her that I was hurt, too. But instead I gave her a quick hug and stepped through the door into the dining room. I picked up the ice bucket and went into the kitchen. I heard them both heading toward the new office. In a moment I heard Cece’s squeal of approval.
I glanced out the kitchen window and saw Sweetie Pie and Chablis running through the pasture where Reveler grazed. Sweetie was loping, but Chablis was giving it everything she had to keep up. They ran past the horse and into the small family cemetery where everyone I’d ever loved was buried.
Coleman and Hamilton were gone. My reality was the view from my kitchen window and the sounds of my friends in the office, probably talking about me.
“Time is the biggest illusion of all, Sarah Booth.”
I saw Jitty’s wavering reflection in the sheen of the refrigerator door and turned around to face her. “Time heals all wounds,” I said, remembering Aunt LouLane’s favorite, and most foolish, adage. “I wish that were true.”
Jitty’s laugh was soft and easy. “You suffer from the biggest delusion of all, Sarah Booth. You think things come to an end.” She stepped closer to me. “There is no end. Not to what you feel for people, or what they feel for you. Have faith, Sarah Booth.”
“Sarah Booth, are you going to talk to yourself or bring us some ice?” Tinkie called. I heard her footsteps fast approaching.
“Faith in what?” I asked Jitty, reaching out to hold her before she vanished. I grasped only air.
Her smile was enigmatic. “In your own ability to love,” she said just before she disappeared.
“Who in the world are you talking to?” Tinkie said as she pushed through the swinging door. She glanced around the kitchen.
“Do you believe I’ll ever find real love?” I asked Tinkie.
She didn’t hesitate. She put her arm around me and gave a squeeze. “You already have, Sarah Booth. You have me. And all the rest of your friends.”
About the Author
A native of Mississippi, CAROLYN HAINES lives in southern Alabama on a farm with her husband, horses, dogs, and cats. She has been honored with an Alabama State Council on the Arts literary fellowship for her writing, a family with enough idiosyncracies to give her material for the rest of her life, and a bevy of terrific friends. She is a former photojournalist.
Books by Carolyn Haines
Hallowed Bones
Crossed Bones
Splintered Bones
Buried Bones
Them Bones
Summer of the Redeemers
Touched
HALLOWED BONES
A Delacorte Book / April 2004
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2004 by Carolyn Haines
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the publisher
Published simultaneously in Canada
eISBN: 978-0-440-33483-5
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