“No, it’s not all right. I love you, too, Clay, but it’s too soon. I’m not ready. And what if something happened? What if I got pregnant?”
“You won’t. Listen, I’ve got protection. I’ll take care of you. Nothing like that will happen, I promise.” Silently, Clay thanked his dad for the advice given more like a warning during one of their rare father-son moments.
She sat as if snapped by a rubber band and plopped her tempting bottom as far away as she could. “You mean you’ve been carrying around rubbers all this time? Clay Jarrett! I can’t believe the nerve of you—the conceit! What would people think if they knew you had those things?”
He hoped the darkness hid his smile. “I don’t wear ’em on a chain around my neck, but if they did happen to see them, I guess they’d think I was planning ahead.”
“Well, you can just plan ahead with somebody else! Take me home.” Prentice scrambled in her purse for lipstick and a comb. Her fair hair billowed to rival the moon.
“Prentice, look, sugar, I’m sorry. It’s just that … well, other people do it. I don’t see why we—”
“I’m not other people.” She dabbed on lipstick in the dark, and when she twisted her mouth in that funny little way, his heart turned to pudding.
“Besides,” she said. “I made a promise.”
“What kind of promise? Who did you promise?” But he already knew.
“Leola. I promised Leola I’d wait until I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”
“But Prentice, sugar, I know what I’m doing. Isn’t that enough?”
He made her laugh and she forgave him, and that was the end of that. But in all the time they went together, they never made love. Not once. Oh, they petted some, but after that night, Prentice always knew when to call a halt before they “went too far,” as she called it. And because Clay loved her, he would wait just as long as it took.
And then she had to go and tell him that.
CHAPTER THREE
When Elberta Stackhouse looked at Clay Jarrett with that hay-colored thatch so like his dad’s, her yearning cut deep and cruel. Not that he could have been her son, but that hers could’ve been much like him.
In a little while, she would have to collect Prentice and Delia from the Shed, and God forbid that she should run into Knox Jarrett. Bertie wasn’t comfortable with Prentice working for Knox; in fact, she didn’t like it worth a damn. Of course she couldn’t voice her objections without explaining why, and Bertie didn’t plan to explain why. Ever.
The romance between Bertie Stackhouse and Knox Jarrett had gone to dust long before Prentice was born, but the bitter aftermath of that affair cursed her every day of her life. It was hard to live in the same town all those years and pretend nothing had happened.
If the child had lived, he (or she—Bertie had miscarried at three months) would either be in the armed services or possibly married, with a child of his own, and Bertie would write to him faithfully or brag about her grandchildren. Instead, each year Elberta Stackhouse counted the would-have-beens. Her child would be twenty-six if she had carried it full term.
Her periods had never been regular and she had been over two months along when she told Knox about her suspected pregnancy. In his sophomore year at Georgia Tech, he was less than pleased at the news. “We’ll marry, of course, but first let’s be absolutely sure. I’ll need some time to decide how to tell my folks,” he told her with a face as bleak as a January morning. “I’m afraid this is going to kill them.”
“And what about mine?” Bertie had been carrying this all alone. Now, reaching for him, she needed the comfort of his arms. He held her stiffly and told her not to worry. They would do what they had to do.
They never told their parents about the pregnancy, and when she lost the baby a few weeks later, it was obvious Knox was relieved. For a short time, he consoled her as best he could, but when he came home for the summer, it was as though they had never been together. When Bertie saw him with Chloe Albright at a square dance on the Fourth of July, it was as if somebody had plunged a pitchfork right into her heart. Even after all this time, she would almost rather have a tooth pulled without anesthetic that be around Knox Jarrett, so when her niece Prentice broke off with his son, she was secretly relieved.
Yet in spite of that, Bertie smiled whenever she thought of Clay Jarrett. Everybody did. There was a Norman Rockwell innocence about him, a basic goodness. Lanky and good-natured, the boy reminded her of his father at that age, and he valued the same things: family, farming, and football—although not necessarily in that order. The Jarretts were a close-knit clan, content to live on the land that nurtured them and fill up three pews at the Methodist church on Sundays. Bertie had taught both their children and liked them in spite of herself. The older one, Loretta, went to work for a local florist after high school and married at nineteen. Her brother, two years younger, had always grinned and saluted her when they passed in the halls, calling her “Miss Peach,” after the fruit that shared her name.
Yet there was an undercurrent of passion in this almost-man, a hint of something better left unstirred, and Bertie would be glad when Prentice left for college in September, putting some distance between them.
Now she stood in the doorway of the girl’s room and shook her head, hoping the college experience would change her niece’s living habits. Clothing tumbled from dresser drawers; more cluttered the bed. A trail of shoes led to the closet, where summer apparel fought for space with the winter things Prentice had promised to put away in April. Bertie sighed, but it was only a token sigh. She would never admit it to her niece or to anyone else, but it really didn’t matter to her if Prentice Blair carpeted the entire house with her underwear and painted the walls with iridescent glitter.
When her niece first came to live with her, Bertie’s heart had ached for the grieving and bewildered little girl as night after night she held the child and soothed her until Prentice finally slept. Then Bertie would go to her own bed and cry for the sister she had lost. Months would pass before Prentice stopped asking for her parents and came to accept her aunt’s home as her own. Now, at forty-three, Bertie couldn’t imagine what her life would have been like without her.
* * *
Bertie tightened the lids, wiped off the ten jars of peach preserves she’d put up earlier that morning, and treated herself to a second cup of coffee. This week’s Eagle had come in the morning’s mail, and she opened it to find Leola Parker’s face frowning at her from the obituary page. Leola had disliked having her picture made and would carry on something awful if anyone even aimed a camera in her direction. She’d have a fit, Bertie thought, if she knew her likeness was right there in the public eye for every “Tom, Dick, and Harry” to see. A soft-spoken, retiring woman, she’d had to be cajoled into letting Josephine Carr write her up for the Eagle when her apple pie took first prize at the county fair a few years back.
The photograph was not a recent one. Leola’s daughter, Mary Joy, must have dug it up from somewhere. Still, the younger dark-haired woman in the picture looked much like the Leola she knew: the same small brown face with eyes bright as buckeyes that never missed a thing behind those deceptive bifocals. The only thing missing was the familiar black felt hat with a jaunty green feather in the front that Leola had worn no matter the season. The first thing she’d done upon arriving was to place it carefully on its accustomed shelf in the hall closet until it was time to leave for the day. Bertie couldn’t remember when she hadn’t worn it.
Good heavens! The Eagle had published Leola’s age. She would be mortified if she were aware that everyone knew she was seventy-eight. Bertie had thought her much younger. Leola Parker’s death had cast a pall over the town. There was hardly a family she hadn’t cooked, cleaned, or baby-sat for, and a good many of Elderberry’s inhabitants, including Prentice, could thank Leola Parker for their raising.
At her funeral the week before, the small brick African Methodist Zion Church on Blossom Street, which Leola had
tended and attended since her mama brought her to the altar, overflowed with the local population, black and white. Prentice and Bertie sat in folding chairs in the aisle and latecomers lined the walls. The old woman’s death had been sudden, and Bertie felt cheated, even resentful, at not being able to tell her good-bye.
Prentice had refused to go with her when she took a pound cake to pay her respects to Leola’s family. It was Leola’s recipe and her favorite dessert. She’d been baking it for over sixty years, and as far as Bertie knew, not a one of them had fallen or “gone sad.” She hoped she had done it justice. Why, she wondered, did people take a favorite food of the deceased to their family? Leola wasn’t there to eat it, to brag on what a fine grain it had—why, even better than she herself could bake! Which wasn’t true and never would be. Still, Bertie felt somehow her old friend would know she’d let the ingredients come to room temperature, added the precious sugar a little at a time, as she had been taught, and she hoped the hordes of Leola’s friends and relatives who swarmed in and out of the small frame house would find some small comfort in eating it. She only wished she could find a way to comfort her niece.
Bertie set her empty cup in the sink and wandered outside through her small garden patch, hoping to find a ripe tomato for lunch. The tomatoes needed staking again and the gangling bushes drooped with the weight of green fruit the size of tennis balls, but not a one was ripe enough to eat. And she could just taste that good tomato sandwich—the kind you eat over the sink with the juice dripping down your chin. Be better with bacon if she had any, which she didn’t, of course.
But she could get tomatoes. Hadn’t Prentice mentioned selling homegrown produce at the Shed? She would ask her niece to select a few for her when she went to pick up the girls.
Bertie was searching for her car key when she heard someone at the door.
* * *
Delia made her way across the porch, feeling much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Suddenly, her world had turned upside down and nothing was as it should be. She touched the delicate fronds of an asparagus fern that cascaded from a stand by the front door. It was the same plant that had been there all summer, but today it looked different somehow. “Miss Bertie, is Prentice here with you?” she asked. Please, oh please, say yes!
“Delia? What are you doing here? Of course Prentice isn’t here. Isn’t she with you?” It was then that Bertie saw Dimple Kilpatrick standing in the background, and it took her only a minute to assess the situation. “Miss Dimple, what is it? Is something wrong with Prentice?”
“She’s gone, Miss Stackhouse! It’s been over an hour now and we’ve looked everywhere!” Delia was crying now. “She just disappeared.… Nobody can find her.” She turned to Miss Dimple, who attempted to explain the situation in as calm a voice as possible. “There’s probably a reasonable explanation, but to be sure, the police are looking into it,” she began. “Chief Tinsley has already—”
Bertie stepped out onto the porch, letting the screen door slam behind her. “It’s that damned Clay Jarrett,” she said. “I just knew he was going to cause trouble.” Fumbling in her pocket for a handkerchief, she sank into a rocking chair with a sigh so dark and so heavy, Delia felt the weight of it envelop her.
There had been tears when Prentice gave Clay back his class ring a few weeks before. And anger. Shouting. Prentice had refused to talk with him since, but Delia couldn’t believe he would hurt her. How could he? How could anyone?
Prentice Blair was eighteen and so lovely, people often turned to stare. Sometimes Delia wished her friend would get a pimple right at the end of her nose or have to wear really thick glasses. It wasn’t fair for somebody to look like that, but it was hard to be jealous of Prentice, because she didn’t know how to be mean. Prentice liked everybody and everybody liked her. Who would want to hurt somebody like that?
Now the woman who had been a mother to Prentice, her face flushed from canning, stood as Bobby Tinsley pulled into her driveway and, hat in hand, started up the walk. She had taught Bobby Tinsley, as she had so many others, and knew he probably wouldn’t be able to remember Beowulf from Macbeth, but he had been well liked by his classmates and greased lightning on the basketball court. Bobby knew the people in his town: knew their parents, where they lived, what kind of car they drove (if any), and where they went to church. He also knew of grudges, old and new; of jealousies and resentments. And he cared in spite of them.
* * *
Dimple Kilpatrick stood with her hand steady on Delia’s shoulder and watched as Bertie waited on the steps to greet Bobby. On the woman’s face she saw the same pain she felt inside, and for a moment she closed her eyes. She didn’t like what she was thinking.
* * *
Chloe Jarrett wiped off her kitchen table for the third time that day and tossed the dishrag into a sink full of soapy water. No wonder Clay didn’t want to hang around more than he did. The whole house smelled of tomatoes from yesterday’s canning. The day before, it had been tomato sauce, then green tomato pickles. Chloe hated tomatoes. She saw them in her sleep. A never-ending procession of squashy red fruit spattered her dreams; the juice ran like blood, stained her hands, dripped onto her feet. And still they came, would keep on coming until late September or an act of God. Chloe prayed for an act of God. She sat at the table and sipped coffee—lukewarm now, but she didn’t even notice. They didn’t own the farm; the farm owned them.
She heard water running in the sink behind her but didn’t turn around. Knox. Her husband made that irritating little sputter as he dashed water onto his face, then fumbled for a towel. Why did he insist on washing his face in the kitchen sink when they had a perfectly good washbasin in the bathroom?
Now he opened the door of the Frigidaire, clanked things about. From where Chloe sat, she could only see his fanny sticking out. How tempting it would be to give him one quick shove and send him headfirst into the custardy tomato pie, or, better still, that green Jell-O salad with gooey topping. Chloe giggled to herself.
“What’s so funny? Phone’s ringing. Aren’t you gonna answer it?” Her husband backed out of the refrigerator, juggling platters of ham and sliced tomatoes. “Chloe—the phone! Didn’t you hear it, honey?” Knox added dill slices to his collection, jars of mustard and mayonnaise.
Chloe didn’t object to endearments—relished them, actually—but when her husband called her “honey” in that tone, it made her think of Miss Crenshaw, her piano teacher back in the fifth grade. No, no, honey, we don’t do it that way. I don’t believe you’ve been practicing.… Maybe we’d better stick to the easier pieces for a while, honey.…
Taking her time, Chloe picked up the receiver in the hall.
“Mama, there’s something going on over at the Shed!” Her daughter spoke so fast, she had trouble understanding her.
“Loretta, what’s wrong?”
“I just saw a police car down at the Peach Shed and there were people swarming all over the place!”
Chloe frowned. Sometimes her daughter exaggerated. “When was this?”
“Just now. I was coming back from the hospital—Alma Owens fell and broke her arm, you know, and her Sunday-school class sent her the prettiest gladiolas! Anyway, you’d better tell Daddy to get down there. Sure looks like something’s wrong to me.”
“Did you see Delia? And what about Prentice?” Chloe sighed. “Was she there?”
“Could’ve been, but I didn’t see either of them.” Her daughter paused. “Look, Mama, you’ve gotta get over this thing about Prentice. These things happen all the time. Believe me, Clay will live. Besides, whatever happened between those two is none of our business.”
Anything that happened to one of her children was her business, Chloe thought. She hadn’t been enthusiastic when Clay first started dating Prentice Blair. After all, she was that woman’s niece, and now here she was working at the Peach Shed. Knox didn’t think she knew about him and Bertie Stackhouse, but of course she did, and Chloe was tired of pretending. How could he thin
k she didn’t know? Didn’t everybody? And she’d heard rumors there’d been more involved than a hot romance, too. If there had, she didn’t want to know it.
In spite of that, it was hard not to like Prentice Blair. Such a pretty girl—nice manners, too—but she had hurt her son, hurt him bad. Of course Clay had never told her, but she could read it in his voice, his eyes, his every move. Chloe Jarrett felt his misery as though it were her own. And it was. She couldn’t forgive Prentice for that.
“Probably somebody stopped for speeding,” Chloe said. “You know how they come around that curve there, but I’ll tell your daddy.”
“Tell me what?” Ice cubes rattled as Knox refilled his glass with sweet tea.
Before she could answer, they saw a police car pull up behind the house.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nobody knew about the cave but her. Nobody knew what was in it. If they did, they’d be all over the place: police, soldiers, Yankees, Nazi spies. They’d want it. They’d want her.
Whenever Hattie McGee felt threatened, she hid in the bramble cave she’d hollowed out for herself in the thicket beside the creek. She hid there now. Something was wrong. The girl was in trouble and the enemy had taken her away, would probably torture her for her secrets. They did things like that, Hattie knew. But they wouldn’t do that to her! The Nazis would never find her here, and even if they did, she wouldn’t tell. Her secrets would die with her.
Now the police had come. Hattie heard them talking in their loud, coarse voices, listened to them poking about where they had no business—probably trampling her precious rosebushes, breaking off fragile blooms. If she stayed out of sight for a while, maybe they’d go away. They usually did, but this time things were different. Hattie didn’t know why; she just knew they were and that she’d be better off to stay where she was.
Hattie smoothed her stained taffeta skirt beneath her and made herself comfortable on a bed of grass. Ashley had always liked that dress. She remembered how he’d looked at her when she wore it to the ball at that big plantation house with all the stairs. She couldn’t think of the name of the place. Seems she couldn’t remember a lot of things lately. What would Ashley think of her if he could see her now? Old and gray and thick around the middle—her with a waist so small, Mammy’d had to take in all her dresses. Dear Ashley! He would love her anyway. Of course he would.
Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble: A Mystery (Miss Dimple Mysteries) Page 3
