by Hope Ramsay
“If he’s a stray, then he’s not her dog, is he? You can’t have it both ways.”
“No, I reckon not.” There was a hard, angry quality to Zeph’s voice.
“Why are you so pissed off at me?” Gabe asked.
“I’m not pissed off. I just want you to leave.”
Gabe knew better than to follow this circular line of questions. He was getting nowhere with the old guy. So he changed his tack. “What happened to Bear?” he asked.
“Your granny didn’t want him. She didn’t want to be reminded of your brother. She was going to have your granddad put him down. Can you imagine? Luke would have been furious. So I stepped in. I took him. But I told your grandparents that I thought you needed the dog. They thought otherwise. I’m surprised you don’t remember any of this.”
He said nothing because his heart was twisting in his chest. Now that Zeph mentioned it, he remembered Granddad walking out the front door with his rifle and the dog. He remembered knowing what Granddad planned to do and being entirely unable to stop him. He remembered he was weeping like a girl because Granddad had smacked him across the face for pleading Bear’s case.
Shit. He didn’t want to remember this crap. But hell, it wasn’t as if he didn’t already know that Granddad could be cruel. He certainly hadn’t forgotten that.
CHAPTER
4
Jenny waited in the cold for the power to be restored. But it didn’t happen, and according to Maryanne, who had called several times with news updates, the county didn’t expect all the power to be restored for a few days.
So the sewing circle wasn’t coming again, and she couldn’t even sew on her own since her sewing machine wasn’t the kind that worked with a treadle.
Her day unraveled even further when the moving company called with the news that they wouldn’t be able to deliver her furniture until the following Monday because of downed power lines and other mayhem caused by the storm.
She was stuck with nothing to do but brood about the puppy who had abandoned her. And since she didn’t like to brood about anything, she picked up The Haunting of Hill House, even though she had sworn that she wasn’t going to finish it. But it was the only book she had out here at the house. And tonight was book club night.
She finished the book, but the ending was so creepy she wondered why she had bothered. She was still feeling unsettled and grumpy later that evening when she walked into the Last Chance branch of the Allenberg Library for the bi-weekly meeting of the Last Chance Book Club.
It was Molly Wolfe’s turn to bring refreshments, so of course there were a couple of boxes of store-bought cupcakes. Molly wasn’t much of a cook, and besides she was about six weeks short of her delivery date and not dealing well with being pregnant. So everyone was happy enough with the cupcakes.
Jenny bypassed the sweets and poured herself a cup of coffee from the urn. She was heading toward an empty seat at the table when Nita Wills, the librarian, grabbed her by the arm.
“Jenny, what’s this I hear about Gabriel Raintree buying back The Jonquil House?”
Boy, the gossip mill in Last Chance moved fast, and no doubt Mr. Raintree knew exactly how to feed it. After all, he was a famous author and had plenty of experience controlling public relations.
“I am not selling the house, Nita.” She practically growled the words.
“But I heard directly from Annie Jasper that he’s planning on moving back in. Annie said Zeph drove him into the clinic this morning, and he has a broken ankle that he got out at The Jonquil House. Honey, if this is true, it’s a godsend.”
Great, Jenny needed this gossip like she needed a root canal. But what could she do? Annie Jasper was a wonderful nurse, and also the source of medical news for every busybody in town.
“Nita, it wasn’t a godsend for Gabriel Raintree to slip on the ice and break his ankle.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean his breaking his ankle. I meant his buying back The Jonquil House.”
“But—”
“Didn’t Gabriel Raintree just sell The Jonquil House to you?” Savannah Randall joined the conversation and interrupted Jenny in one fell swoop. Savannah was the proprietor of The Kismet dinner theater and an excellent baker. Jenny noted that Savannah had also bypassed the inferior cupcakes.
“Yes, he sold me the house,” Jenny said. “And yes, he’s offered a lot of money to buy it back. But I’m not selling.”
“How much did he offer?” Lola May wanted to know.
“A lot.”
“How much is a lot? I mean, what if he offered you a million dollars? Honey, everyone has their price.” Lola May had a pretty pessimistic view of life.
“That’s exactly what he said. But he didn’t offer me a million. And even if he did, the fact is that I’m not for sale.” Jenny lost control of her voice. It came out in a harsh tone that Mother would have called unladylike. Jenny took a gulp of air and tried to control herself.
“No one’s talking about you selling yourself, honey,” Savannah said. “We’re just talking real estate. And if he wanted to give you an inflated price, you might think twice about turning him down. I mean, you can make a lot of money flipping houses, you know.”
“Yes, but I’m not in the house-flipping business.” Her blood pressure climbed. “And I don’t want to sell to that… that… obnoxious, self-important idiot.”
“Wow,” Savannah said, giving Jenny the strangest look, “you really don’t like him, do you?”
“Not one bit. He stole my dog.” These words were spoken more softly, but they were still a bit hard-edged.
“You have a dog? Since when?” Lola May asked.
“Since this morning.” Jenny’s face heated. It was totally ridiculous to blame Gabriel Raintree for stealing her dog when the dog was a stray and had decided that he liked Mr. Raintree better than he liked her. You would think that a dog would follow the hand that fed him, but in Jenny’s life, that old adage was proving to be unreliable conventional wisdom. Sort of like the old one about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach.
She folded her arms across her chest and waited for the onslaught of questions that the book club members were sure to fire at her.
But the questions didn’t come. Instead, Savannah draped her arm around Jenny’s shoulders and gave her a little half hug. “Cheer up, Jenny I have a feeling the dog isn’t gone forever.”
Having Savannah give her a hug was something new and different. They were bake-off rivals and belonged to different churches.
They also had some difficult history to get over. Jenny had been insanely jealous of Savannah for a while last year when it looked as if Reverend Bill Ellis would choose her strudel over Jenny’s pie. But Bill had fooled everyone by running off with Hettie Marshall, who was, without question, the worst cook in Allenberg County.
Still, the entire Bill Ellis fiasco rankled. And all the more so because everyone in town, including Jenny herself, had believed that Bill was interested in her. But he wasn’t. It was just her apple pie that he liked.
“I heard from Annie that Mr. Raintree’s ankle isn’t badly injured,” Nita said, “just a little bone chip or something. And he’s staying at the Peach Blossom Motor Court with an animal that must be your dog, because you won’t give him a place to stay. But I heard that Garnet Willoughby isn’t all that happy about having a dog staying at the Peach Blossom.”
Lola May snorted. “Like Garnet has any standards. The Peach Blossom already has fleas and bedbugs, too, I’ll bet. So who cares if someone wants to keep a dog there? That place is only fit for dogs, if you ask me.”
“Aslan deserves better,” Jenny said in a small emotional voice. Darn, why was she so fixated on that dog? It was like she’d dreamed him into existence, and somehow knew in her deepest places that they belonged together.
“Aslan?” Nita said. “Like the character in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?”
Jenny nodded. “I found the dog this morning in my rhododendrons. And
the truth is, the dog knocked Mr. Raintree over, so I don’t even understand why he and the dog bonded the way they did.” Her voice wobbled, and Savannah actually patted her back as if she understood how Jenny felt.
“Maybe Mr. Raintree has just taken Aslan hostage, you know,” Lola May said. “Maybe he’s going to try to make a trade with you—the dog for the house.”
“Well,” Nita said with some urgency, “whatever you do, don’t upset him. We need him.”
“We need him? For what?”
“To save the library.”
Before Nita’s words could fully sink in, the librarian turned away and called all the members of the club to gather around the table. Everyone sat down, and Nita folded her hands together in front of her, a serious look on her face.
“Ladies, and gent”—she nodded toward Angel Menendez, the only male member of the club—“I have some disturbing news. I just heard from the Allenberg County executive’s office that they plan to shut down the Last Chance branch of the Allenberg County library system at the end of this fiscal quarter, which is March thirty-first. Budgets are tight, and I was told that the county doesn’t believe they can afford to keep on two librarians. So, in essence, I’ve gotten my pink slip, and we’re losing our meeting place.”
“But they can’t do that,” Rocky deBracy said. “Last Chance is contributing more to the tax base of this county than Allenberg is, and I would guess that Last Chance is now bigger, population-wise.”
“Doesn’t matter. Allenberg is the county seat.”
“But my husband’s plant is contributing plenty. And more people are moving in here all the time. We need a library. We need the after-school programs. We need you.”
Nita shrugged. “Apparently, County Executive Hayden seems to think that I’m a prime example of wasteful government spending.”
“Ha!” Rocky replied. “That’s only because he’s thinking about running for Congress and these days you have to run to the right of Attila the Hun to win a Republican primary.” Rocky, who had once worked for Senator Rupert Warren, spoke with authority. She knew exactly how politics worked.
Savannah leaned forward and took Nita’s hand. “This is about Kamaria, isn’t it? Hayden is coming after you because your daughter is thinking about running for Congress, too.”
“I can’t prove that’s the case, Savannah. But Dennis Hayden is dreaming if he thinks Kamaria will capitulate to this kind of blackmail. And I wouldn’t want her to do something like that. So I’m afraid that the doors will be closed at the end of March unless we can find some money to keep them open.”
“We can always organize bake sales,” Hettie Ellis said. Hettie was a heck of a fund-raiser. She’d single-handedly raised the money to restore Golfing for God, the Bible-themed miniature golf course outside of town. And she’d chaired the Christ Church building fund committee for years, even before she was actually married to the pastor of the church.
“You don’t even need a bake sale. Dash will make a hefty contribution,” Savannah said, speaking of her ex-professional-ballplayer husband who had more money than God. Savannah folded her arms across her chest. “I can’t believe anyone would close our library.”
“Hugh will contribute, too. And don’t forget Tulane. He and Sarah may be on the NASCAR circuit most of the time, but they have done so much to restore the town. Don’t you worry, Nita. We’ll find the funding,” Rocky said.
“Funding a library isn’t our only problem, Rocky,” Nita said. “We have to find a way to get the county government to acknowledge that having a publicly funded library is important to the people who live here.”
“What do you have in mind?” Hettie asked.
“Something that will get a lot of people out to support the library and send a message to the county government and Dennis Hayden in particular. So when I heard that Gabriel Raintree had come back to town, I thought maybe we could get him involved in some way. I mean, if we had a bestselling author living right here in Last Chance, and he put his name behind library programs, the county would have to pay attention. Wouldn’t they?”
“You think?” Savannah asked.
Nita shrugged. “It’s a thought. I know we can raise money. I know Dash and Tulane and Hugh will make generous donations. But don’t you see? If all we do is secure large donations from a few of the wealthier members of the community, then we’ll end up with a private library. In fact, I think Dennis Hayden would be overjoyed to privatize our library. And once that happens, all the books here will go back to the Allenberg branch. So I just think we need something to get people involved and interested, like a rally or something.”
“Oh, I’ve got an idea,” Savannah said. “I’ve been planning to show Black Water at The Kismet one of these weekends. Why don’t we invite Mr. Raintree to give a talk about his book and then we could show the movie? Having an event would get people in one place, and we could talk about why we need a public library. Maybe we could get people to sign petitions at the same time or something. And if we do have to start over and create a private library, we’ll have a nice mailing list of potential ongoing supporters.”
“That’s a fabulous idea,” Hettie said. “And if we got a big turnout, we’d at least send Dennis Hayden a message that there are a lot of voters here who care about our library.”
Nita turned her dark eyes on Jenny. “This won’t work if we don’t do something about Mr. Raintree’s living arrangements. I mean, the poor man’s broken his ankle, and he’s staying at the Peach Blossom Motor Court all by his lonesome. I feel as if we haven’t shown him much in the way of southern hospitality.”
Nita could have been Jenny’s mother in that instant, reminding her that a southern woman was always hospitable. At least in public.
She looked at the faces around the table. They were going to judge her if she didn’t do something to support this effort.
“I didn’t give Mr. Raintree a room at the inn because we don’t have any furniture in any of the guest rooms. But if y’all insist, I’ll let him stay in the back bedroom. It’s not really furnished, but it does have an old iron bed. Also, I don’t think he wants to stay out there right at the moment because I don’t have power or heat. So after the lights are back on, I’ll offer him a place to stay. For free.”
“Thank you,” Nita said on a big breath. “And you’ll ask him to do a book signing or a book talk or something?”
She doubted that Mr. Raintree would agree to this, but she nodded.
“Thank you, Jenny, that’s all we need. Now, before we move on to a discussion of The Haunting of Hill House, I was thinking that it might be fun to read one of Mr. Raintree’s books for next time. How many of y’all have read Black Water?”
Most of the hands in the group came up. “I saw the movie, too,” Savannah said.
“I see we have some Raintree fans here,” Nita said. “But even though a lot of you have already read the book, I still think we should read Black Water for the next time.”
“No.” Jenny’s voice was firm.
“No?” Nita looked at her as if she’d just arrived from another planet.
“No. I don’t think we should read two scary books right in a row, especially if so many of us have read Black Water already. I, for one, do not like reading books like The Haunting of Hill House. And I certainly don’t want to read a horror story that was written about our swamp. I think we should return to the list of classics that Cathy put together for us. What’s the next one on that list?”
“Jane Eyre,” Cathy said with a little grin. “And if you ask me, I’m with Jenny. The Haunting of Hill House gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“But if we’re going to—” Nita began before Cathy interrupted her.
“You know, we’ve asked Jenny to go out on a limb for us, and she’s agreed. The least we can do is read something she wants to read this next time. I mean, almost all of us have already read Black Water. It was a mega-bestseller a couple of years ago. How many people have read Jane Eyre?”<
br />
A few hands came up, but definitely a smaller number of readers had actually read the classic.
“My point is made,” Cathy said.
Everyone looked down the table at Hettie Ellis, who in addition to being married to the pastor of Christ Church was also the CEO of Country Pride Chicken, the second largest employer in the county. What Hettie said usually passed for law at the book club, even though Nita was supposed to be in charge.
“I think Cathy has a point,” Hettie said with a smile toward Jenny. “Some of us may want to re-read Black Water, but I think our group should let Jenny make the choice for next time.”
“I pick Jane Eyre,” Jenny said in a voice that sounded decidedly grumpy even to her own ears. It was a small victory, considering that she’d have to give Mr. Raintree a set of keys to The Jonquil House and give him the first-floor bedroom until she could get some furniture delivered.
She’d feel a whole lot better about having him move in if she could understand why he suddenly wanted to live there so badly.
The wind had a mind to blow Jenny over on Thursday morning as she got out of her Fiesta. She had never set foot in the parking lot of the Peach Blossom Motor Court before, not even on prom night all those years ago when so many of her girlfriends had gone off with the boys they eventually married.
She hadn’t had a boyfriend in high school. She hadn’t gone to the prom. And now eighteen years later, it wasn’t a warm May night but a biting-cold January morning.
She hunkered down in her big, puffy winter coat and examined the seedy establishment. The long, single-story building was wrapped in 1940s-vintage faux stone that was as tacky as it was shabby.
About twenty room doors opened onto a concrete walkway with an awning that was held up by ugly steel posts. The columns and the doors had been painted a garish shade of pale orange, no doubt because someone, long ago, thought peach blossoms were the same color as orange sherbet.
Jenny knew better because she owned a peach orchard that she’d inherited from her grandfather. Of course, peach-blossom pink doors and posts wouldn’t have been an improvement.
