Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) (25 page)

“He had to be sedated before he complied,” Dirk mumbled.

“Doesn’t matter. He did what he had to do for the cause of justice. And,” she continued, “here’s to Bonnie Patterson, who can’t be with us today because she’s in bed, heavily tranquilized and highly distraught because she was informed that Caitlin Goodwin is going to inherit the bulk of her grandfather’s estate.”

“Hip, hip, hooray!” Alma cheered. “I never did like Bonnie, and Caitlin’s a cute kid. I hear Elsie’s going to raise her.”

“Here’s to Elsie, too,” Gran said, getting into the spirit of this suspicious act of toasting. “She’s gonna need good luck, raising another child at her age.”

When they had all drained their glasses, Gran cleared her throat. “I don’t mean to break up a good party,” she said, “and I don’t want to be disrespectful to these fine friends who helped us so much during our time of need. But I need to say some words and I need to say them to family alone. If y’all don’t mind excusing us, just for a few minutes.”

“No, of course not,” Dirk said, rising from his chair and nudging Tammy. “We’ll all go out on the front porch and finish off this sparkling crap.” He picked up the remaining bottle of apple juice and walked out the back door with Tammy and Tom.

Savannah sat down in the chair he had vacated next to Gran. “What is it?” she said. “What have you got to say?”

Gran folded her hands demurely on the table and stared down at them for a long time before speaking. “I have to ask forgiveness from my family,” she began. “I’ve done you a terrible injustice, and it took this terrible tragedy with Macon for me to come to my senses.”

Savannah looked around the table at her sisters. Marietta and Vidalia looked shocked, apparently clueless as to what their grandmother was talking about. So did Alma, Jesup, Cordele, and Waycross.

“You don’t have a thing to apologize for,” Waycross said. “You’ve never done a wrong thing to us in your life.”

“That’s not true,” Gran said. “I’ve stood in the way of you growing up and becoming independent adults. You see . . .” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “. . . I just enjoyed it so much, taking care of you all, tending to your needs, helping any way I could, that I wanted to keep doing it forever. And that’s not right.”

Alma reached over and patted her hand.

“I tried to justify it to myself,” Gran continued,

“telling myself that you needed my help. But you’re adults, every one of you. And by letting you live here for free, by cooking for you day and night, by doing your laundry and paying your bills when you asked me to, and minding your children more than I should have . . .” She gave Marietta and Vidalia pointed looks that caused them both to cringe. “. . . I crippled you. You needed to be doing those things for yourselves long ago. By doing it for you, I robbed you of the self-respect you would have gotten by caring for yourselves.”

Savannah realized she wasn’t breathing. Nobody at the table seemed to be breathing. Even the children were silent.

“So, I prayed about it and here’s what we’re going to do around here from now on. Anybody who lives here is going to chip in money the first day of every month. Thanks to your grandpa’s hard work, the property’s been paid off for years, but there’s taxes and utilities and upkeep and food to buy.

“And speaking of food. I’m going to cook a nice, big dinner every Sunday, but other than that . . . if you intend to eat supper here, you’d better be bringin’ along a bucket of chicken or a pizza pie—enough to feed you and me, too. And before you leave, every dish had better be washed and put away, the garbage taken out and the floor swept.

“This coming Saturday, I want you all here at one o’clock sharp, ’cause we’re going to have a little laundry lesson, right out there on the back porch. I’m going to show everybody, once and for all, how to sort lights from the darks and how to hang clothes on the line. And after that, I don’t want to see another bag of dirty laundry dumped on my porch. The only underdrawers I’m ever gonna wash again are my own.”

Savannah felt a surge of pride as she watched her grandmother, this quintessential steel magnolia, drawing her lines in the sand. No wonder she loved this woman, this lady who never stopped learning, growing, and showing them how by example.

“One more thing,” Gran said. “When the time comes for Macon to go on trial for stealing that stuff, we’ll all go on the stand and say how much we love him and how good he’s been to us. But other than that, no one is to lift a finger to try to get him out of this mess he’s gotten himself into. If I’d let him take his lumps long ago, it never would have come to this. He’s gotta learn, even if it hurts.” She sighed. “Learnin’ always seems to hurt, no matter how old we get.”

She looked around the table, loving each one with her eyes. “You mean the world to me, you kids. And that’s why I’m going to stand by everything I said here today. Those are the new rules of the house. Abide by them.”

There were silent nods all around the table and murmured assents.

The law had been laid down.

Granny Reid had spoken.

 

 

Savannah and Tom walked side by side down the dirt road that led from Gran’s house to the highway. With each step their shoes stirred small clouds of dust. And every step gave rise to another swirl of memories.

In the beginning of the walk, Tom had reached for her hand. But after briefly squeezing his fingers, she had released him. Now they strolled along with no physical contact except the occasional bumping of their shoulders.

Briefly Savannah wondered whether she had refused to touch her old beau because she feared that Dirk might be watching from the house. But she decided that her reasons were much better than Dirk’s jealousy. Her reasons were all her own, born of self-protection.

To their left and right, acres of cotton shimmered blinding white in the afternoon sun. Picking would soon begin, and Savannah wasn’t at all sorry that she would be home in California and miss the event.

Heat waves rippled in the air above the road, distorting the view of the black-topped highway in the distance. And she decided she wouldn’t miss the sweltering humidity either.

They hadn’t spoken, and the only sounds were the occasional rumble of a vehicle on the main road, crickets chirping in the weeds, and the plop of startled frogs leaping into the rain-filled ditch on either side of the road as they passed.

Crawdads—poor man’s lobster—wriggled through the thick red mud, and somewhere in the distance a cicada rattled furiously like a tiny maraca, serenading a prospective mate.

“Remember when we used to walk along this road?” Tom said. “Until I got my car it was the only way to get away from your brothers and sisters, who were always pointing their fingers and giggling at us.”

Of course I do,
she thought.
I was a kid head over heels in love. I lived for those walks . . . for those stolen moments with you.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she murmured.

“And remember how we’d duck into those bushes there at the end of the road and make out?”

“We’re not walking to the end this time,” she told him. “We’re only going halfway, then turning back.”

“Okay.”

They continued on for a few more yards, then Tom asked, “You leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes. I’m going home.”

“Has
he
got anything to do with that?” Tom nodded back toward the house.

“With what? Me going home?”

“Yeah.”

“I live in California now, Tom. Have for years. I don’t belong here anymore.”

“I thought that maybe you’d miss . . . being here. That you’d wanna stay.”

“I’ll miss some things about here.”

He grinned, and the self-satisfied smirk grated against her nerves. Damn men and their egos, always thinking that everything was about them.

And, of course, it usually was.

“I’ll miss Gran and Southern cooking,” she added with what she hoped was just enough cool detachment in her voice. “I’ll miss the moss hanging from the trees. That’s about all.”

His smile sagged, and she mentally patted herself on the back.

“You really
are
mad at me, huh?” he said, stopping abruptly in the middle of the road and facing her, his burly arms crossed over his chest. “After all these years, you’re still pissed off at me for breaking up with you.”

“For breaking up with me?” she said. “If you’ll remember, you didn’t bother to break up with me, at least not officially, before you took Lisa Mooney up to Lookout Point, or Jeanette Parker out to
our
peach orchard, or—”

“Okay, okay.” He held up both hands in surrender. “So, I wasn’t a monk back then.”

She felt the sting of tears beneath her eyelids and cursed herself for feeling . . . feeling anything, after so long. “Hell, Tommy,” she said softly, “I never asked you to act like a monk. I would have settled for you acting like a gentleman.”

When his own eyes grew moist and red around the rims, she was surprised that it didn’t bring her any pleasure, perverse or otherwise. Mostly, she just felt sad for two young people who had grown older and wiser and would never be able to love so completely again. Only the innocent, the naïve, could love completely.

“I gotta know,” he said. “I’ve worried about it for years. Did you leave Georgia because of me? I mean, was it all my fault?”

Ninety-five percent,
she thought.
Maybe ninety-eight.

“No, it was mostly other stuff.”

He looked so relieved that she wanted to reach out and embrace him. But decided not to.

Again for reasons all her own.

“I’m glad,” he said. “I’d hate to be responsible for that. A lot of people miss you around here.”

She turned and started back toward the house. So much for strolls down memory lane. Some roads were best untraveled.

“You were special to me, Savannah,” he said, catching her by the arm and turning her to face him. “You still are.” He hesitated, gulped. “And I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to tell you something that I never told you before.”

Savannah tensed, not knowing what to expect. She had seen the same look on hardened criminals seconds before they confessed to first-degree homicide. “Okay. I’m listening. What is it?”

He choked as though his chest was tightening, squeezing out his breath. “I know I was your first . . . that is . . . when we made it there in my car in the peach orchard that night. You know . . . on your birthday.”

Her own throat clenched. “Yes. And . . . ?”

“I never told you, but . . . well . . . you were my first, too. That night I was a vir . . . I mean, I hadn’t . . . you know. Until you. That night.”

Her mind flew back to that moonlit orchard, fragrant with the rich sweet smell of the ripened fruit, and her legs went weak.

“I’m telling you this now,” he said, “because I want you to know that you’re special to me. Really special. Always will be.”

She remembered. The backseat of his ’56 Chevy, slipping on the plastic seat covers, his shaking sweaty hands, his awkward fumbles that passed for caresses, the act that was over nearly as soon as it began.

“So, that was your first time, huh?” she said, giving him an affectionate smile, mixed with what she hoped was a convincing hint of surprise. “Gee . . . I never would’ve guessed.”

She slipped her arm through his, not caring who might be watching from the house. For the first time in years, not caring about Jeanette Parker or Lisa Mooney.

“You’re special to me, too, Tommy,” she said. “You always will be.”

“Really?” He looked so grateful; she was glad she had decided to be kind.

“Absolutely,” she said. “Every time I smell ripe peaches, I think of you.”

They walked along in silence until they were nearly back to the house. Then he cleared his throat. Staring down at the dusty road, he said, “There’s not a lot of peaches in California.”

She chuckled and nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Oh . . . more than you think, Deputy Stafford. Far more than you think.”

 

 

“We’re going to have to go in soon or the ’skeeters are gonna eat us alive,” Gran said.

Savannah sat in the swing beside her on the front porch. They were watching the sun set in the cotton field across the road. Its crimson light stained the white puffs a pale pink, and behind the field the sky was turning steel blue.

“I think we’re gonna get some rain,” Savannah said, sniffing the moist, fresh smell in the air.

“Maybe some lightning and thunder.”

“My cats will be up on the pillows with us tonight. They hate the thunder.”

“That’s okay. I like ’em.”

Savannah put her arm across the back of the swing and pulled her grandmother closer to her. “I’m going to miss you when I go back tomorrow.”

“You, too, Savannah girl.”

“You’ve got to come see me soon.”

“Only if you take me to Disneyland again.”

“You’ve got it.”

They swung a few minutes without speaking, watching the cotton change from pink to dark gold, listening to the crickets and the creak of the swing’s chains.

“What am I going to do with all this free time I’m gonna have now?” Gran asked.

Savannah could hear the fear, the uncertainty, beneath her words.

“If I’m not y’all’s grandma, who am I?”

“Oh, you’ll always be our grandmother. But instead of mashing all those potatoes and folding all those towels, you’ll be doing things that feed your soul.”