Sweetgrass (28 page)

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Nona said, untying her apron. “All that’s left is the eating.” She moved slowly after a long day of canning and dinner preparations.

“Thank you so much for coming in today,” said Mama June. “I’ve never seen so many strawberries.”

“You say that every year. Wait till the peaches start.”

“Lord help me, I can’t wait. It looks like it will be a banner year.” She sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Look at all this! Honestly, Nona, I couldn’t have managed it this year without you. Are you sure you took enough jam? Do you need another box?”

“I’m all set,” Nona replied, her eyes surveying the box of glass jars filled with bright red strawberry jam. This was a good batch, she thought. The strawberries were some of the sweetest she’d ever put up. As she counted the jars, in her mind she worked out that she’d give some to Maize, of course. And she’d keep some herself. The rest she’d set aside for gifts.

“Elmore should be along any minute to pick me up,” she said. “He’s out gathering more sweetgrass from the sacred spot. We’ve got a long line of folks that are waiting for grass. It’s getting scarcer than hen’s teeth. We can’t keep up with the demand.” She tilted her head as the front chimes rang out. “Speak of the devil.”

“Don’t run off,” Mama June said as she untied her own apron. “Why don’t you and Elmore stay?”

Nona paused, her apron in her hand. Slowly, she set it down on the kitchen counter. “Are you asking us for dinner?”

“Of course,” Mama June replied readily. She gathered her apron, stained with jelly juice, into a ball and tossed it on a chair. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with welcome. “Do you think you can?”

The women’s eyes connected. They both silently acknowledged that though they’d shared many meals in all the years, this was the first invitation extended for dinner as guests.

A slow smile spread across Nona’s face. “That’d be real nice. I believe we can.”

“Here he comes!”

Kristina maneuvered Preston’s wheelchair out onto the back porch while the rest of the family stood to greet him, calling out hellos. The family was in high spirits. Mama June helped settle Preston into his place at the head of the table, the first time since his return home. His eyes were shining with pride and the bone-deep contentment she’d often seen on his face when he was looking out over his beloved plantation. This time, however, he was overlooking the smiling faces of his family and she felt her chest puff up so full, she thought she would burst.

She joined him in the survey of the table. To his right, Nona was seated beside her husband. Next to Elmore sat Nan whose eyes were as large as dinner plates as she beamed at her sons across the table. Harry and Chas, with the ignorance of youth, had no idea how happy they’d made their mother this evening, nor how proud their grandparents. It would be many more years before they’d come to realize that the gestures from the heart meant far more to parents than something purchased from a store. Kristina took a seat at the far end of the table, and Mama June didn’t think it escaped anyone’s notice that Morgan took the chair beside hers. Blackjack was content sitting a few feet away from the table with his bone.

After Mama June took her seat beside Preston, the family gathered hands and she led them in the blessing. As she said the words, she felt a strong connection with the people in the
circle. Everyone she loved most in the world was gathered around her. Over the many years of her long life, she had met more people than she could remember, wonderful, charming people that she’d grown very fond of, as well as horrid, selfish, egocentric adults she hoped never to meet again.

Yet in the twilight of her life, she’d come to realize that the people who truly mattered were the precious few who had stood by her through the worst times and the best. They were at her table tonight. She felt Preston squeeze her hand, and looking up, she knew that his thoughts were running in the same vein. With a resounding “Amen!” hands were released and as one they reached for the serving bowls. Laughter sang out from the porch as the feast was passed from person to person as quickly as the stories.

Later that night, Adele and Hank pulled up to the house. The sleek lines of the baby-blue Jaguar hugged the curves and came to a smooth stop. Adele cut the engine and looked out at the house she’d grown up in. The lights were shining on the back porch, and even with the car windows closed they could hear the quiet broken by high-pitched laughter. Curious, Adele drove the car farther around the circle for a better vantage point.

“Sounds like a party,” Hank said.

Adele didn’t reply. She pressed a button and the window rolled down with a smooth hum. It was a balmy night with a brisk breeze, perfect weather for sitting on a porch. Over the song of crickets and the bellowing call of frogs in the marsh, she heard the sweeter music of family talk amid the clinking glassware.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she could just make out the people sitting around the long table. She recognized the small frame of Mama June. Who was that beside her? Nona? Why, yes it was! Beside her…

“Is that Nan?” she asked Hank.

Hank leaned forward and squinted. “Yes,” he said with an odd coolness.

“And Harry and Chas?”

He hesitated. “I didn’t think they were coming.”

She felt a small twinge of jealousy upon seeing the boys at Sweetgrass. “I thought you had your wife under control.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out the person sitting at the head of the table. She gasped when she caught a glimpse of the thick shock of white hair.

“Why, Preston’s sitting at the table! Did you know he was doing so much better?”

“He’s been sitting up for a long time.”

“Really?” Adele looked at Hank with a sharpness that belied her surprise. “I didn’t know. You never told me. I just assumed he was lying in bed, rather like a vegetable.”

“Oh, no. They had him up and out pretty quick. I have to hand it to Mama June. She’s fierce as a lioness about him being part of family life.”

“What a lucky man,” she murmured.

“Preston?” Hank scoffed. “Yeah, right. The man’s in a wheelchair, he can’t walk or talk, and you call him lucky.”

Adele studied the man beside her in the car. Hank looked younger than his forty years. He was a hard worker, had a good future, a great family. Anyone would think he was a fine specimen of health. But she knew that already he was on two different medications for high blood pressure.

“You never know,” she told him. “In a few years, that could be you in that wheelchair. Oh, don’t shake your head like that,” she said with a wry smile. “Preston looked fit as a fiddle the day before his stroke. What you have to ask yourself is, if it happens to you and you are stuck in a wheelchair, will your kids care enough to be sitting at Sunday dinner with you?”

The smirk slipped from Hank’s face. He didn’t reply but turned to look out at the porch as a fresh round of laughter sounded in the breeze.

Adele’s thoughts slipped back to nights just like this one when she was a young girl and this was her home. She’d forgotten what that kind of security felt like. Back then, no one in the parish had air-conditioning. Most summer evenings after the dinner dishes were cleaned, the family went out on the back porch for relief from the heat. The breeze blew in off the creek and the screens did their job keeping out the bugs. While the radio played, Daddy read his paper, Mama did needlework and she and Preston and Tripp might play a board game or cards and listen to the crickets sing. Nothing remarkable. She might have even complained about being bored.

“I almost hate to spoil their evening.”

“That’s not a good idea,” he replied testily. “The papers are signed, dated and ready to deliver. And lest we forget, our clients are eager to move forward. There’s nothing to be gained by waiting until tomorrow. We’re here. We’re ready. Let’s get it done and deal with the aftermath tomorrow.”

Adele knew what he said was true. She glanced again at the porch in indecision. There was movement and the scraping of chairs. The family seemed to be headed back indoors.

“All right,” she said at length. “You deliver them to Morgan. I’ll wait here.”

Adele sat in her car smoking a cigarette while Hank delivered the papers. She was fully aware that she was sitting alone in the dark, on the outside, looking in at a home that would never be hers.

The thought brought a deep pain that still had the power to make her wince. She’d spent a fortune on psychiatrists,
but the resentment was bigger than her. She couldn’t get past it. The resentment was so old and deep, it had formed who she was today.

She had never married, never wanted to give up her independence to a man, never wanted children of her own. With her dark, glossy hair, her lean good looks and her sense of style—not to mention her pedigree—it wasn’t because she didn’t have offers. Adele never felt the need to get married. She never desired what she thought was the boring, limiting life of a wife and mother. She’d been totally absorbed by her career; it was the top priority in her life. While she was growing up, her family had been land rich but cash poor. She’d been determined to make lots of money on her own, and in her coastal real estate business she’d succeeded beyond her imagination.

But money had nothing to do with her deep-rooted anger against her parents, her brother and especially Mary June Clark for cutting her out of the family circle.

She looked at the charming house that seemed to glow in the soft light emanating from the mullioned windows. Seeing it made her blood congeal. She was raised in that house, too. This was
her
family home. Every time she drove away and saw Mary June standing at the door waving her goodbye, she wanted to scratch her eyes out.

The business should be completed quickly, she thought, and took another lazy puff from her cigarette. Suddenly the front door of the house slammed open and Morgan came marching out on a beeline for her. He walked with angry purpose, and in his hands he clutched the opened legal papers.

“Hell,” she muttered, tamping down her cigarette. As he drew closer, she rolled her window farther down and raised her face in a starchy smile. “Morgan!” she exclaimed when
he stopped at the window and bent to peer in. His face was dark with fury.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded, shaking the papers in his fist.

“You’ve read them?” she asked calmly.

“Of course I did. But they don’t make a goddamn bit of sense.”

“Watch your language if you wish to discuss this with me.”

“I am watching my language! If you knew what I was thinking…”

Adele lifted her chin archly, but did not reply.

Morgan raked his free hand through his hair, reining in his fury, then took a deep breath. “Would you please come inside and discuss this in my father’s office, Aunt Adele?” he asked in a strained, polite tone.

“I’d rather not,” she replied. “It’s late and I should think there’s nothing left to discuss.”

“You think—” he blurted, then stopped before he said something he couldn’t retract. “You told me we owed you five hundred grand. But this says you’re buying us out!”

“That’s correct. The loan is in default, which you would have learned had you not stormed out of the restaurant. Your father failed to meet his interest payments.”

Her calm was like kerosene on an open flame. He struggled to maintain his fury.

“He never told me about it.”

Adele looked at him askance. “Should he have? Where do you come in here? Morgan, do you really think you’ve been privy to your father’s business arrangements? You’ve hardly spoken to your father in the past ten years.”

Morgan’s gaze sharpened. “What is this agreement, exactly?”

“It’s a loan with a partnership proviso activated upon de
fault. Or if one partner dies or is incapacitated. In either case, I’m activating the buyout clause.”

Morgan was thunderstruck. “So you’re telling me you will own part of Sweetgrass?”

“No. I’ll own all of it.”

“I don’t believe it!” he shouted. “Daddy would never deed away Sweetgrass for a loan. He’d put it up for collateral. That would make sense. But sell? No, never. Something’s not right.”

“It’s all there,” she said calmly, indicating the papers. She shifted in the car to face him more directly. “Now, listen to me clearly, Morgan. My partnership agreement is with your father, not you. And though this breaks my heart, your father is no longer capable as a partner. There is a buy-sell clause in that partnership that allows for me to buy out the ownership interest of this property—and I intend to do so. I have an attractive offer for this property. I’ll allow you, because you’re family, to sell to this buyer immediately. If you do, I’ll agree to split the profits sixty-forty. It’s a generous offer. You stand to walk away with a tidy profit. Everyone in your family does.”

“And if we won’t?”

“If you won’t, I’ll have no choice but to exercise my option to buy out the partnership according to the terms of the contract.”

He looked away, his jaw working.

Adele’s voice softened. “Morgan, dear, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But heroics now will get you and the family in trouble. We both love your father. However, I’ve faced the facts. I don’t believe you have.”

“You can stick your facts.”

Her face grew hard and she threw up her hands. “Enough is enough. I’ll have my lawyer send you a fair market price for the land in the morning.”

“What’s in it for you?”

She looked him in the eye. “What’s in it for
you?
”

“I’m doing this for my mother.”

“Ah, your mother. Well,” she said with a bitter smile. “That’s another story, isn’t it? I wouldn’t get involved with that if I were you. It goes too far back.” She turned the key to start the car. The engine roared with power, then settled into a gravelly purr.

Morgan pressed his hand on the door, as though to physically stop her from leaving. “I’m going to fight you on this.”

Suddenly the antenna snapped off in his hand. He looked at it dumbly; he wasn’t aware he’d been holding it so tight.