Gone South

by Meg Moseley

  “Dear Lord,” she whispered, “what have I done?”

  With Daisy in the crook of his arm, George paused at the top of the stairs that led from the apartment down to the shop, took a deep breath of morning air, and nearly burst out singing. After wrangling over the price for weeks, he’d finally bought a project car. He’d take possession in about a month, after the O’Neill brothers switched out the engine. Restoring the rest of the vehicle would keep him busy for months more—once he’d found a secure garage for the project. And then …

  He imagined himself at the wheel, cruising Main while the monster engine made that long black hood vibrate with pent-up power. Or he’d take the car cross country for the pleasure of turning it loose on a deserted stretch of highway out west. Or he’d take it to classic car rallies closer to home and have the chicks falling all over him.

  Because a man who took his mother’s ridiculous dog everywhere he went was an irresistible chick magnet.

  With a rueful grin, he carried Daisy down the stairs. While she did her business on his scrap of lawn, he studied the parking area and brooded over his situation.

  His van stood there, an ugly but reliable workhorse. A ding in the side panel wrinkled the M in Antiques on Main so it looked more like Nain. That didn’t bother him, though. Nor did the trees that rained their junk down on the van. But when it came to his project car … That baby deserved a proper sanctuary. But he couldn’t even start the project until he had garage space.

  He shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to sell his mother’s house, but it was too late now. Two years and two owners too late. And the new owner, rumor had it, was something to be reckoned with.

  The jingling of Daisy’s tags jolted him out of his thoughts. Trotting toward the street, she was nearly gone already, her nose in the air. Sniffing freedom.

  He chased her, catching up as she rounded the corner onto the sidewalk. He snagged her with both hands and picked her up. She tried to flatten herself against him, her heart beating at an insane pace—which was only appropriate.

  “You thought you were on your way again, didn’t you? I can’t have you off your leash for one minute, can I?”

  He carried the neurotic little dog to the front door. His uncle Calv had already turned on the lights and put the Open sign in the window. George pushed the door open with his shoulder, activating the bell above him.

  “It’s me,” he said, the familiar smells of furniture polish and dust tickling his nose. “Don’t get up.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Calv answered from the rear of the store.

  George ambled down the narrow aisle, pausing to adjust the hanging price tag on an antebellum kerosene lamp, and entered the back room. He set Daisy on the floor and nudged her in the general direction of her crate. She moved just out of reach and looked over her shoulder, radiating self-pity.

  Stooped, lanky Calv sat at the worktable, his dirt-gray hair hanging in front of his suntanned face as he oiled a mysterious mechanical gadget he’d picked up at a yard sale. “I keep telling you, the dog’s depressed. She still misses your mother.”

  “No, she doesn’t. The little schemer wants us to feel sorry for her.”

  Calv shook his head. “My neighbor’s dog, he got depressed when she kicked her husband out. He moped around for weeks. The dog, I mean, not the husband. He wouldn’t play with the kids. Wouldn’t even eat.”

  “Daisy eats. Believe me, she eats. Grain-free, gluten-free, all natural …” George sighed. He’d promised his mother. Now Daisy ate better than he did.

  He sat behind his desk in the corner, somewhat cramped but safely removed from his uncle’s messy, greasy project. “I guess you’ve heard the news? Si sold the house to a McComb.”

  “Yep. I heard it straight from him, ten times over. I’ve never in all my born days seen him so riled up.” Calv flicked his hair out of his eyes and gave George a solemn stare. “I asked him where she’s from that she don’t know the score, and he said Detroit or thereabouts. Said she had Michigan plates on her car. And an attitude. He said she called him early-early so he’d be half-asleep. She caught him off guard, and then she nagged and nagged until he caved in.”

  “Si’s got his knickers in a knot about needing to sell. He’s not trying to put her in the best light.”

  George frowned, recalling the woman he’d seen leaning against a white Volvo while she took pictures of the house. He hadn’t noticed Michigan tags, but he hadn’t been looking for them.

  “She has exactly the same name,” Calv said. “You think it’s a coincidence?”

  “Buying that particular house? It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Especially because she lied about it.”

  George gave his uncle a sharp look. “You sure about that?”

  “That’s how Si tells it, anyway. She gave him the wrong name from the get-go—Patricia instead of Letitia—and she wouldn’t say her last name until she’d worn him down on the price.”

  “That was pretty shrewd,” George said. “Si wouldn’t have budged if he’d known who she was.”

  “It was a steal. I know, I know, that doesn’t make her a literal thief, but Si’s got his gussy up. He’s even mad at her for wanting an inspection.”

  “An inspection is just standard procedure. Si has really let the place go, too. If I were her, I’d be concerned about some basic maintenance issues.”

  “I know, but he says she’s a penny-pinchin’ trash-talker.”

  “Even if he’s right, we will be nice to her.”

  “Sure we will. She’ll need a good dose of nice. She’s gonna have a tough row to hoe in this narrow-minded town. Besides the obvious, I mean. Si and Shirley’s friends won’t take kindly to her either.”

  “I hate to see them lose the place.” George’s guilty conscience circled, flapping its ugly wings, and came in for a heavy landing. “I never should have sold it to them. I should have listened to my gut.”

  “It’s not your fault that they came upon hard times. Nobody saw it coming. Poor Si, though. He loved that big ol’ garage. So did I, until your mama put an end to that business.”

  “We both loved it.” George shook his head, remembering the day his mother had decided Calv, her youngest brother, wasn’t fit company for her fatherless and impressionable son. So Calv had packed up his tools—

  A glorious idea lit George’s brain like fireworks. If the McComb woman was a penny pincher, she might want to get some rent money out of the garage. He could ask her, anyway, if she proved to be decent. It stood too far from the house to do her much good, but the noise and the fumes wouldn’t bother anybody out there. It was huge too. More than enough room.

  Everybody would win. It would solve his problem, but it might help the new owner even more, as a sort of goodwill gesture. It would say George Zorbas wasn’t afraid to do business with a McComb. Best of all, it would bring healing balm to an old man’s heart—if it panned out. He wouldn’t say anything to Calv just yet.

  The doohickey slipped from Calv’s hand and crashed onto the floor. Daisy leaped into her crate, her nails clicking, and cowered in the corner.

  “Aw, it’s okay, Daisy.” Calv leaned over to pick up the gadget. “Toss her a treat, George. Make her feel better.”

  George reached into his top drawer, pulled out one of those outrageously expensive treats, and pitched it into the crate. Daisy blinked several times and finally worked up her courage to inch over to it. She took it delicately in her mouth and crunched, not so delicately.

  Life would get interesting once the house changed hands. Every time the dog ran away, he would have to fetch her from the porch of Miss Letitia McComb.

  After stopping at the grocery store on her way home from work, Tish grabbed a shopping cart and pushed it inside at a fast clip. Lately, she was always running. Literally and mentally. Always running behind, like some scatterbrained ditz.

  Her workday life had always been a whirlwind of paperwork, but now her at-home life had become that
too. The mortgage was in process. She’d given notice to her employer and her landlord, and she’d started her online search for jobs around Noble. Her apartment was a mess of moving boxes and piles of giveaways.

  She steered the cart toward the produce department in hopes of finding the produce manager. He always had boxes to give away, but she liked to ask him first. She didn’t want anyone to think she was taking them without permission.

  Passing a display of Valentine’s Day merchandise—a premature display, in her opinion, as it was still early January—she nearly ran into one of the Henderson brothers coming the other way with one of his little boys. Father and son matched from head to toe: John Deere caps, barn jackets, jeans, and brown boots.

  There used to be six stairstep Henderson brothers. Out of habit, not because she needed it anymore, she ran down the mental list that had helped her keep the brothers straight at first. This was Matt, who wasn’t quite as blond as his brothers. Hank was the one with the boyish, contagious laugh. Paul had curly hair. Ryan had the only big nose of the family. Rob was the short, studious one. And finally there was Stephen, the youngest. The one she’d loved.

  Matt’s son tugged on his arm and whined for a bag of Valentine’s candy.

  “No, buddy,” Matt said. “Your mom already bought plenty.”

  “Daddy, please?”

  “No, Alex. Sorry.”

  Tish felt herself softening, feeling sorry for the little tyke. At four or five, Stephen must have looked very much like Alex.

  Tears heated her eyes. If that stupid deer hadn’t run into the road and ruined everything, Alex would have been her nephew by marriage. She would have sent him a Valentine every year. With much love from Uncle Stephen and Aunt Tish …

  Laughing at something his son had said, Matt looked up and noticed her. “Tish, how are ya? My mom told me you’re moving to Alabama.”

  “Hi, you two.” Tish mustered up the biggest smile she could. “Yep. That’s why I’m here. Picking up moving boxes.”

  “It sounds like a real adventure. Why Alabama?”

  “A family connection.”

  Matt frowned. Maybe he thought she’d gone crazy.

  “My mother remarried and moved to Florida,” she said. “Now I’ll be within a long day’s drive of her new place.”

  Matt nodded. “That gets important as parents get older. It’s good to stay plugged in tight with your family.”

  Easy for him to say. He had family coming out his ears. But Tish only smiled and nodded.

  “I hope you’ll love it down there,” he said. “Best of luck to you.”

  “Thanks, Matt. Well, give the rest of the family my love. Bye, Alex.”

  The little boy gave her a shy smile, but he didn’t know who she was. He’d never known his Uncle Stephen, either.

  Tish continued toward the back of the store, finding it difficult to think about moving boxes.

  Stephen had moved on, leaving her behind. He was eternally young and carefree in her memory while she marched on toward middle age in her comfy Naturalizers. Wearing small, sensible earrings, with her hair pulled back tight. Driving a Volvo. She was even buying a house. An old house, frozen in time.

  Maybe she should have taken her mother’s suggestion and bought a brand-new condo in Tampa. Surrounded by senior citizens, she might have felt like a spring chicken in comparison. Or she might have sped up the process of turning into an old hen.

  December and much of January had blurred into a flurry of paperwork, e-mails, phone calls, and money transactions. The closing was just two days away in Muldro. Tomorrow morning, she’d begin her drive south, but she had one thing left to do before she could leave her life in Michigan behind.

  Aware that she reeked of cleaning supplies, Tish leaned against her grocery cart like an old lady with a walker. She’d promised her aching muscles a long bubble bath, but this was her last chance to buy flowers. She was cutting it close too. The gates would be locked at dark.

  Picking up her pace, she made her way to the floral department. She passed by the sedate arrangements in the cooler and stopped beside the random, cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers in big plastic tubs. Twelve stems per bunch. She just couldn’t decide which mixture she liked best. Each one included something she loved. A bright yellow spider mum, the softness of green eucalyptus, the vivid blue of a bachelor’s-button … How could she decide?

  Buy ’em all. You know you want to.

  Such extravagance! Exactly what Stephen would have wanted.

  Tish counted. Six bunches in one tub. Six in the other. At nearly ten dollars each? When she needed to be smart with her money?

  But she had a wad of cash in her purse for the trip. More than she needed.

  She wouldn’t be able to put more than a few of them in water, though, and what could she do with the rest? They’d wilt in no time without water.

  They would wilt anyway.

  She loaded the contents of both plastic tubs into her cart, balanced the flowers upright, then headed for the shortest checkout line. Through the window, she could see the sun breaching the horizon. Once the sun went down, it would be too late.

  The man ahead of her didn’t seem to understand how to swipe a debit card. Hurry up, she mouthed soundlessly.

  Stephen had often picked up flowers at this very store. She would forever wonder what kind he’d chosen, that last time.

  Finally, the slowpoke finished his business and moved on. She handed one cellophane sleeve of flowers to the teenager at the register. “I have twelve of these,” she told him.

  “Got it.”

  Fast, efficient, and impersonal, he scanned the UPC code times twelve, handed the single bunch of flowers back, and gave her the total—all without really looking at her. She handed over the cash and took her change and receipt, all without really looking at him.

  “That’s a lot of flowers,” he said, as if he’d finally noticed. “Big party?”

  Wanting to cry, she met his eyes. He wasn’t as young as she’d first assumed. He was in his midtwenties, probably—about the age Stephen was when they’d met.

  Her phone rang. Glad for the diversion, she pulled it out of her purse, mouthed a thank-you to the checker, and answered the call as she walked out of the store. It was someone from the mortgage company in Muldro, calling to confirm that she’d be there for the closing at five on Monday afternoon.

  Tish decided not to mention the storms predicted for her first day of travel. She would get through it, one way or another.

  “You bet,” she said. “I’m leaving early tomorrow morning. I’ll spend the night in Kentucky and pull into town late in the afternoon.”

  “Perfect! Safe travels.”

  “Thanks. See you then.”

  Tish loaded the flowers gently into the backseat of her car. Climbing behind the wheel, she breathed in the scent of the flowers, then drove out of the parking lot and headed south on M-24. She tucked her phone in the console and ran down a mental checklist of everything she still had to accomplish before she left town.

  Lost in her thoughts, she’d missed the turn. She hadn’t been there in a while. Wasting precious moments of daylight, she drove to the next light, made a U-turn, and went back to the side road she’d meant to turn on.

  A quarter mile down, the metal gates still stood open. She pulled onto the narrow gravel road and followed it around three gentle bends, finally recognizing a cypress tree she used to use as a landmark. A few feet taller than she remembered it, the cypress swayed like a skinny dancer against the fading sunset.

  She climbed out of her car and looked out at the flat farmland. An earlier generation of Hendersons had settled in the county long ago, and most of their descendants still farmed. The joke was that you couldn’t walk through town without bumping into someone with Henderson blood, and you couldn’t drive through the countryside without passing Henderson land.

  She opened the rear door. Using the tiny knife on her key chain, she freed the flower stems from rubb
er bands and cellophane. Piled up in lovely abandon in the soft glow of the dome light, they did indeed look fit for a big party.

  She filled her arms with flowers and carried them to Stephen’s grave. Working quickly, she began to spread them out from the head to the foot. It took her three trips in the fading light before she finally held the last few stems. It was so dark now she could hardly make out their colors.

  A yellow lily. A stem of pale alstroemeria blossoms. A red rosebud.

  She brought the rose to her lips. She’d be two hours down the road by the time the sun shed its first light on her farewell offering—if the sun came out at all.

  A bird trilled in a nearby tree, and traffic kept up a steady hum on M-24. Life went on, as it had for over five years, without Stephen.

  “I’ll never forget you,” she whispered against the soft petals of the rose.

  She placed the last few stems close to the headstone, its lettering illegible in the twilight. She knew every inch of it, though. The dates bookmarked the life of Stephen David Henderson, who’d meant to marry her.

  “Good-bye, Stephen,” she said, her voice loud in the silence. She groped for something more to say, but there was nothing. Her heart felt empty. Swept clean, like her apartment.

  Straightening, she saw a trio of deer grazing in the distance. They looked peaceful. Graceful. Harmless.

  She returned to her car. It still smelled like flowers. She started the engine and backed up, shining the headlights on the small mountain of blooms. Then she drove slowly toward the exit, knowing she would never visit the place again. She was bound for Alabama in the morning.

  Mel wished she had one of those fancy backpacks so she could strap everything on it. She’d left Orlando in a hurry, though. No time to get organized. With her bedroll strapped to her back, she had to shift her duffel bag from one hand to the other. The jacket made the bag heavy. She’d known since last winter that she didn’t really need it in Florida. Still, she couldn’t just get rid of it. It was borrowed.

  Her legs were so tired. One foot in front of another, she’d made her way south, changing her name along the way. Melissa. Melinda. No. Too close to her real name. Belinda? Yeah, she’d be Belinda for a while. She felt safer that way, like she was protecting her identity somehow.