Honeysuckle Season

by Mary Ellen Taylor

  After rushing to the foyer, she grabbed her hat, gloves, and the keys to the car.

  SADIE

  Sadie’s hands trembled as she thought about Sheriff Boyd doubling back. It would be like him to do something like that. He was good at tracking, but not much else.

  She lingered in the woods, drawing back into the shadows as the car came to a halt. The longer she stayed in the woods, the brighter the sun would become and the more time Sheriff Boyd would have to get word out to the law in the surrounding area.

  Sadie backed farther into the darkness and tried to figure out where she could hide while not freezing to death.

  “Sadie!”

  Olivia’s familiar voice had her halting. She hesitated, not sure if it was a trap. She stayed silent, not moving a muscle.

  “I’ve been looking for you for hours. Edward told me the sheriff was looking for you.”

  Sadie gripped the branch of a tree, searching for any signs of Edward or the sheriff.

  “You need to come with me now,” she said. “I’ll take you to the train station.”

  Sadie stepped out from the trees, pushing the branches aside as she moved slowly toward the road. Olivia got out of the car, and the headlights lit up her face, tight with tension.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I know your truck broke down on the road to Charlottesville. You couldn’t have gotten but so far on foot. I also saw the sheriff’s car coming the other way, and you weren’t in it.”

  Sadie hurried around the front of the car and got into the front seat. “Is my mama okay? She has my baby.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to check in on them. My first priority is to get you to Charlottesville and put you on a train.”

  “He didn’t arrest Mama?”

  “Not that I know of.” Olivia pushed in the clutch and ground the gears as she eased the car into first.

  “I think I killed Malcolm.”

  “He’s not dead, but you’ve done him serious harm.”

  Sadie hugged her arms around her chest. “He did his share of harm to me.”

  “He might not walk again.”

  She stared out the window at the dark trees rushing past. “He called me a whore. He said I deserved what I got.”

  “He’ll have the rest of his life to regret those words along with his limp.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m not a whore.”

  “No, you’re not.” Olivia leaned forward into the steering wheel.

  “You shouldn’t be driving this early,” Sadie said.

  A smile tugged the edges of her lips. “I think that is the least of my sins right now.”

  Sadie smoothed her damp palms over the rough fabric of her overalls. “Where is Dr. Carter?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  “Sleeping? Through all this?”

  “I might have slipped him some of my sleep medicine. It won’t hurt him. The poor man was exhausted anyway. I’ll be home when he wakes up.”

  “He’ll be mad as hell.”

  “Then I’ll attempt to tell him again that I’m pregnant, and all will be forgotten.”

  “You have a baby in your belly? You shouldn’t be driving like this!”

  The car rumbled over a rut in the road. “This little guy will just have to hold on tight.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing this for me.”

  “I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t.”

  Sadie gathered the folds of her coat together, too tense to ease back in the seat. She did not want to leave home. “What about Johnny and Danny? When they come home, they won’t know how to find me if I’m on the run.”

  “When you get to wherever you’re going, write them, and let them know where you are.”

  “What about Mama and the baby?”

  “I’ll look after them.”

  “I don’t deserve this kindness.”

  “You deserve much more.”

  Tears rolled down Sadie’s cheeks, but she did not have the energy to sob or cry. It took almost an hour before Olivia pulled into the Charlottesville train station. She parked out front and set the brake. “The train will be here shortly. All you have to do is wait.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “To Washington.” Olivia took a handful of bills from her pocket. “This will buy your ticket. There are plenty of jobs now in the factories. With your skill with machines, you’ll find work.”

  “I never figured it would be like this.”

  “Life rarely goes the way we’d like it,” she said as she pressed the money into Sadie’s hand.

  Sadie dug her hand into her pocket and reached for the money her mother had given her. “Give this back to Mama. She’s going to need it. I can’t take her money.”

  “If she gave it to you, she wanted you to have it.”

  “No. I ain’t taking her money. I took too much already.”

  Olivia accepted the money. “All right. I’ll see that she gets it.”

  “And I’ll pay you back.” She had always wanted to leave Bluestone but had never pictured herself running for her life.

  Sadie leaned forward and hugged Olivia. “You take care of that baby of yours. And if you ever need anything from me, all you have to do is ask.”

  A train whistle blew in the distance. “I’ll surely call on you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  LIBBY

  Tuesday, August 4, 2020

  The Woodmont Estate

  “How do you know so much about Sadie Thompson?” Libby asked.

  “She was my mother,” Margaret said.

  “Which means Malcolm Carter was your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to him?” Libby’s mind scrambled up her newly discovered family tree, trying to figure out where her family intersected with Colton’s. Thankfully, it went back three generations.

  “Malcolm always walked with a limp after what Sadie did to him. But when he got out of the hospital, he never went after my grandmother or me. I didn’t know until years later that it was Miss Olivia who kept him away. She threatened to leave Edward if there were repercussions against my grandmother or me.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “No, Malcolm Carter died in 2000. He married several times, had children by all his wives, but in the end died alone and broke in a nursing home.”

  “Did you ever see Sadie again?” Libby asked.

  “When I was thirteen. The sheriff had died, and Sadie Thompson had become a bit of a folk legend, so Miss Olivia must have decided it was safe to take me to New York. You see, Miss Olivia hired my grandmother as her baby’s nurse, and I spent many of my early years in the nursery with their son, Stuart. Then as we reached school age, Stuart went off to boarding school, and I went to public school and then later to work in the Carters’ kitchen.”

  “You’ve been here ever since you were a baby?”

  “Miss Olivia saved my mother, my grandmother, and me. And when it came time for my Ginger to go to school, Miss Olivia saw to it there was scholarship money that got her all the way through medical school. She did the same for Colton.”

  “After all that, why didn’t she help Elaine?”

  Margaret sighed. “Miss Olivia wanted Malcolm arrested for what he’d done to Sadie, but Dr. Carter covered for his cousin, so of course charges were never brought. After that she didn’t trust her husband. He made her life here difficult even after she helped Sadie. Publicly he was always attentive to her, but behind closed doors he was distant and cold.”

  “They stayed married.”

  “Because of Stuart. She was free to leave, as her husband often said, but Stuart would always remain with him. She couldn’t leave her son, so she stayed. From what I could see, they always lived separate lives. Miss Olivia focused on her son and her gardens, and Dr. Carter kept working at the hospital in Lynchburg until it closed in the seventies. To the day he died, he believed he was doing those women a service.”


  “Miss Olivia protected Sadie but not Elaine.”

  “She knew Dr. Carter would have shunned his Elaine and you. And she feared he would have made your lives as miserable as her own.”

  “So where did Elaine go when she was pregnant? I know she was in New Jersey when I was born.”

  “Elaine went to live with Sadie on the Jersey Shore.”

  “Sadie?”

  “Sadie rode the train to New Jersey when she left Virginia and found work in a wartime factory. In those days, they were hiring women because there was such a shortage of men. After the war, she went back to school, and though it took her nearly a decade, she earned her college degree. She became a teacher.”

  “A teacher. Wow, that’s amazing. So Olivia must have kept up with Sadie?”

  “Miss Olivia took the train to New York every summer and stayed for a week. I didn’t learn until later that Miss Olivia always saw Sadie on those visits. As I said, she took me on my first trip to New York when I was thirteen and introduced us.”

  Libby wondered how the meeting between mother and daughter had gone, but Margaret did not offer, and she did not press. “Did Sadie ever marry?”

  “She did. A real nice fellow named Arthur. They never had children, but they were dedicated to each other until his heart gave out a few years before she died.”

  “Did she ever have any regrets about leaving you?”

  Margaret stared out at the long driveway. “It was the best for both of us. I knew that as soon as I saw her, and she saw me. I know when she looked at me, she saw Malcolm. And my grandmother was the best mother I could have asked for.”

  Libby released a breath. “When did Sadie die?”

  “When you were about five. Miss Olivia and I were with her when she passed.” Margaret laid her hand on Libby’s arm. “Sometimes there’s no choosing between right and wrong. Sometimes you have to pick the best of the worst solutions and hope for the best. Miss Olivia did that, and she’s the reason we’re all standing here today.”

  An engine rumbled in the distance, and she looked up to see Colton’s truck. The boys jumped up and down and started waving as their father approached. And for the first time in a long time, Libby was happy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SADIE

  Tuesday, April 5, 1994

  Trenton, New Jersey

  The worried expression on Miss Olivia’s face proved she too knew a secret held too long grew toxic and could poison any life. Sadie’s younger self would have pressed the matter, but now that she was dying, she did not want her last words to Miss Olivia to be harsh. “You do what you think is best, Miss Olivia.”

  “After all these years, why don’t you simply call me Olivia?”

  Sadie moistened her lips and allowed a slight grin. “It never felt right on my tongue.”

  Miss Olivia squeezed her hand in a strong grip. “Sadie. It’s good to see you again. I want you to know how much I’ve always appreciated you. I wish we could go to lunch as we used to do.”

  “I’m sorry that I’m feeling so poorly.” She tried to sit up but was hooked to so many tubes, and her body was so tired.

  “Don’t you worry about moving an inch,” Miss Olivia said. “You just relax.”

  “I was having a dream,” Sadie said. “I was remembering that time in the greenhouse when we were planting those shrubs.”

  “That was a fun afternoon. You were really clever about how best to arrange the plants in their beds.”

  “How is that greenhouse?”

  “It’s closed up. Too much for me.”

  “Never thought I would hear the day, Miss Olivia.”

  “Me either. But your name is still carved in the glass. It’s important to me that someone knows you were there when I needed a friend the most. Coming from London and the war, being a newlywed to Edward, and losing two pregnancies was almost too much.”

  Miss Olivia reached for a cup and straw and held it up to Sadie’s lips. She took a small sip, and though she craved more, she knew her stomach would not tolerate it.

  “You shouldn’t have come all this way.”

  “Like I told you earlier, I would not miss this for the world.”

  “Could I see Margaret?”

  “Of course.” Miss Olivia pushed open the curtain and spoke to someone. Seconds later a woman appeared. She was in her early fifties now, and gray streaked her hair, but Olivia still saw the child who had played with her Stuart in the nursery. “She’s been here the entire time. She just woke up.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded seeing her sleep. Reminds me of when she was a tiny little baby.” In those quiet moments, she had thought maybe she could forget about how she had come to be a mother and let loose the love the child needed. She had always believed in time she would have been a good mother to her girl. But time was the one thing they had never had.

  Margaret approached the bed. She smiled down at her birth mother, taking her hand.

  “Margaret,” Sadie said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you too, Mama.”

  “How have you been doing?” Sadie searched the face of the woman, seeing neither signs of herself nor him in her face. She saw only Margaret.

  She smoothed her hand over Sadie’s tissue-thin skin. “Just fine.”

  “And Ginger and Colton?”

  “Ginger has been accepted to the honors high school. She says she’s going to be a doctor.”

  “Is she?” Pride swelled in her as she thought about the grandchildren whose pictures covered the inside of her tiny apartment.

  “Miss Olivia saw to it she got the Carter Foundation Grant.”

  “My goodness.” The world turned in directions she never would have imagined. “And Colton?”

  “Still a wild guy.”

  “He’s the spitting image of your brother Johnny. Wild and looking for adventure.” Johnny had returned from the war and visited her once. It had been good to spend time with him, and she had mourned when he died fifteen years ago of a heart attack. He had been gone for so long now she couldn’t remember the sound of his voice.

  She turned to Miss Olivia. “How’s Elaine and her girl?”

  “Both are doing well. I see the girl in town from time to time. She reminds me of myself at that age. And Elaine had another girl. She wanted to be here, but the baby has a bad cold.”

  “Best she not be around me now. Better she just look ahead.” Sadie closed her eyes, feeling the weight of life on her shoulders. “I suppose it’s all worked out for the best.”

  “Not the best,” Miss Olivia said. “But the best we could manage.”

  EPILOGUE

  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  Libby went into ten hours of labor at thirty-six weeks into her pregnancy. As soon as she arrived at the hospital and the nurse examined her and declared the baby breech, the doctor was called and told to prep for surgery.

  In all the birthing scenarios, she had never considered that her child would be upside down and backward. Okay, that was not true. She had come up with dozens of ways this pregnancy could have gone wrong, but for some reason Baby stuck inside me hadn’t been one of them.

  Colton was at her side as the doctor pulled her baby from her womb and handed her off to the nurse.

  Sadie McKenzie Reese, a.k.a. “The Spud,” weighed in at seven pounds, one ounce, and when she opened her mouth to cry, it was the loudest, most earth-shattering shrill Libby could have expected from such a small thing. It was also the sweetest.

  Colton accepted the baby’s swaddled form and carried her over to Libby. She turned her face toward the child’s, wishing she could hold her. “Does she have all her fingers and toes?”

  “She does.” The child looked so small in Colton’s arms. “And she blew the doors off the Apgar score.”

  Tears welled in Libby’s eyes. “She’ll need to be tough to keep up with her older brothers.”

  “Won’t be long before sh
e’s running circles around those two.”

  Libby and Colton had married at Woodmont the day after Christmas last year, in the greenhouse with their family surrounding them. There had been Jeff, Sam, Ginger, Cameron, and Margaret. On Libby’s side had stood Elaine, Ted, and, to her surprise, Lofton, who had arrived minutes before the ceremony. Sierra had been Libby’s maid of honor, and Mrs. Mancuso had given her away.

  Colton had been asking her to marry him for months, but she had refused to bind him to her for fear she would lose the baby. She had been twenty-eight weeks pregnant the day she had said her “I do,” and though she had not told anyone, she had started to make the very smallest to-do list for the baby.

  “Jeff and Sam were hoping for a brother,” she said. She studied the little girl’s pink face, pug nose, and rounded lips.

  “They’ll get over it and figure out there are advantages to having a sister.”

  She was excited for the boys—her boys—to see their new sister. She would never forget the babies she had carried and lost and would see to it that all the bottled-up love she had had for them would be lavished on Sadie, Jeff, and Sam.

  “Elaine and Mom are outside,” Colton said. “Elaine was pacing the hallway when I went into the waiting room an hour ago. Mom was quiet, which is how she gets when she’s worried.”

  Libby adjusted the baby’s blanket, tucking it close to her chin. “Send them in so they can meet their little Sadie.”

  QUESTIONS FOR THE READERS

  What is the time limit on grief? Is there one?

  Did Dr. Edward Carter have the right to make the medical choices he did for his patients?

  Do you agree or disagree with Miss Olivia sending Elaine away to have her baby?

  Libby was disappointed and angry after she discovered her father was her biological father. In the end, she was able to forgive him. Do you think on some level she knew the truth?

  What do you think about Malcolm Carter’s fate? Was Sadie justified in her actions toward him?

  Do you see the greenhouse as a metaphor? If so, for what?

  RECIPES