'Til Grits Do Us Part (21 page)

“What's bizarre?” Meg's voice came across the line in a burst of clarity. Little clattering scrapes in the background.

“Mom's letters. Wait 'til you hear this one.” I paused, hearing a spoon clink. “I'm bothering you, aren't I? Sounds like you're cooking.”

“Shrimp and grits.” Meg smacked her lips. “Soy shrimp, of course. I found some at Trader Joe's in Charlottesville last week. They taste like fishy cardboard, but it's the thought that counts, right? So much about food is mental anyway. You ever take a swig of milk when you're expecting orange soda?”

“Gross.” I grimaced.

“Exactly. And…” She shuffled, pouring something. “Organic grits. I just had a hankering. And no, you're not bothering me. Go on.”

“I read a couple of Mom's old letters that got…returned.” My face heated slightly. “I never read them. But she talked about some baldish guy in town with a bum hand asking about me.”

The clattering stopped, and I heard dead silence on the other end of the line, except for a distant laugh track from some sitcom. “You mean somebody from here asked about you…in the past? When your mom was still alive?”

“Around a year and a half ago. I'd never set foot in Virginia.”

“Well, maybe it was a friend. A buddy. Somebody who knew you and recognized your mom.”

“None of my high school or college friends met Mom. I made sure of that.” I drummed my nails on my teacup. “She was in and out of mental hospitals and just…a mess. Dangerous sometimes, too.”

“They recognized her name maybe?”

“She changed it when I started at Cornell. To Moonlight Sonata.” “No way.”

“Way.”

Meg snickered. “Cool. Your mom musta been pretty chill, Jacobs.”

“She wasn't all there, Meg.” I swallowed, my eyes slipping up to a photo of her smiling face on a side table. “At least for a long stretch of years. Anyway, she changed her name back a few years ago. But regardless, how could one of my friends expect me to arrive here—and ask for me? I never planned to come to Virginia.”

Meg stayed quiet, obviously trying hard to think of something to say. Finally she spoke. “You've never done any time traveling, have you?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, it'd be really cool if you have. I won't spill your secret.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “There's that time-travelers' convention, you know, at MIT. Is that why you're here?”

I sat there stupidly, speechless, and Meg gasped. “I'm right, aren't I? Did you come from the future or the past?”

“Meg! I haven't time traveled. Come on.” I sipped my tea irritably. “I just want to figure out who Mom wrote about. Her description sounds an awful lot like Jim Bob Townshend. I mean, it could be a coincidence, but he worked at that repair shop where I got my transmission replaced. The same place Mom took the Honda to get the transmission installed the first time. I found the warranty, remember?”

“So you really haven't time traveled?” Meg's voice fell to a bitter low.

“Of course not!” I banged my teacup down. “Stay with me, Meg. I wanted to see if you'll help me.”

“Help you with what?” Meg, miffed, started clattering bowls and spoons again.

“Help me find out about Jim Bob. Stella said he's come back to town. I'd like a good, hard look to see if I recognize him, or if he's just some loco crackpot.”

“Where does he live?”

“According to Clarence, on some mountain near Goshen, wherever that is.”

“Oh, I've been there. It's on the other side of Craigsville.” “The little town where I once saw seven jacked-up trucks parked in a row?”

Meg snickered. “That's the one. Keep going and you'll come over the mountain, and if you get on the interstate west, you'll hit the Allegheny range. Clifton Forge and Covington and all these little coal and railroad towns. After that, you'll run smack into West Virginia.”

“Which is where they say Jim Bob's been living.”

“Really. Hmm.” She paused. “Cooter goes hunting all over that area. I bet I could dig some info out of him.”

“Would you?” I let out my breath in relief. “I'd like to find out, Meg. Mom's comments bothered me. She said the guy had a weird manner, and…” I rested my head in my hand. “I really wish I could find some more of her letters.”

“Maybe she didn't write any more.”

“Maybe not.” I shook the tea in my cup, staring down into the glistening circle of chartreuse-green. “But she sent one letter every week like clockwork the last year or two of her life. I'd be really surprised if she suddenly stopped.”

We sat without speaking, and I sipped my tea. “So I'll see you tomorrow at the city council meeting then?”

“I'll be there. Taking pictures of old, angry fat guys in an auditorium with horrible lighting. Try making those photos look like winners.” She clinked a spoon. “So are you going to tell Adam about the letters?”

“I guess so. But he won't like it.”

“Of course not! So maybe he's better off not knowing, huh?”

“I can't do that.” I shook my head. “I don't want to keep secrets. And besides, he's getting strange phone calls, too. It might be good for him to keep a lookout for Jim Bob himself.”

I started to say good-bye, but Meg stopped me. “You don't think it's that skinhead, do you? He certainly fits the ‘bald' description, unless he's grown his hair out over those tattoos.”

I took a deep breath, blowing it out. The rings of light in my tea shook. “I thought maybe so at first, but the timing sort of rules him out. I mean, the Confederate reenactment happened last fall, and Mom wrote these letters months before that.”

“You'd never seen the skinhead before?”

“Never.” I shook my head firmly. “It was a random mugging. A bunch of guys looking for trouble and extra cash.”

“So you think.”

I drew back. “What do you mean? It's impossible. I told you—I'd never come to Virginia until last year.”

“Maybe you did meet him. Maybe he wasn't in Virginia.”

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to make sense of Meg's words. But instead I came up with an image of sputtering Porky Pig on those old Looney Toons cartoons.

“I'm not following you, Meg.”

“Maybe the attack in Winchester wasn't random.”

I started to protest, but something cold flitted through me. “You mean…”

“Maybe he knew you—or only saw you—in New York. Japan, even. Maybe he followed you here.”

Her voice fell to an eerie tone. “Or he followed your mom here—hoping to find you.”

Y
ou should have seen the ruckus that went on in here, Ashley,” I said into my cell phone, my voice sounding lost in the now-empty elementary school auditorium in Waynesboro. “They're having another city meeting in two weeks, and you can bet that guy's going to find some way to weasel out of admitting all the bribes he took.”

I put my tape recorders away, my movements echoing against the hard, gold-curtained stage and rows of folding chairs. The local news truck had left nearly an hour ago, packing up its giant cameras and lights.

“Huh.” Ashley made a sound like turning pages. I rolled my eyes. She could at least pretend to be interested. But I'd done it. I'd called her and invited her to join my wedding party, which was as far as my half-sisterly duty went.

But that meant I had to…well, talk. About something. Something that Ashley couldn't take over, boss me around about, or blame me for.

And since this was rural Virginia, that left (1) cows, (2) llama fencing, or (3) the muddy Dodge pickup that dinged my fender while pulling out of the grain elevator behind the new Starbucks. The Starbucks that recently moved from the Staunton Mall, which stood—ahem—right across the street from J's Tractor Supply.

Unfortunately, none of these topics sounded conducive to conversation with Ashley.

“Kyoko sent me another package,” I tried again. “Since she's moving, she cleaned out her dresser and found some of my old things. No letters from Mom though. But something of Mom's that's pretty important to me.”

“A deed to another house?” Ashley sounded bitter. “I mean, she left you everything else, right?”

“I meant important for sentiment's sake. Nothing of any monetary value.” I said the last words carefully, trying not to arouse Ashley's jealousy again after she'd tried to horn in on my inheritance. Going so far as to claim she'd hired a lawyer.

But even Ashley Sweetwater wouldn't care about this package—stuffed full of Kyoko's weird-isms—or the little shrink-wrapped mini pecan pie Kyoko had pulled from my old apartment corkboard in Tokyo. It was beyond gross now; Mom had mailed it to me nearly a year before her death. I'd promptly skewered it by the corner with a thumbtack: a symbol of all the things I considered absurd about our relationship and her new life in the South.

But now, after Mom's death and my own changes, it felt unspeakably special. Priceless, even.

I'd pulled it out of Kyoko's smashed cardboard shipping box and tucked it carefully in my purse, grateful it had finally come home.

“Ashley?” I checked again for eavesdroppers in the auditorium and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Speaking of Mom. She didn't ever mention anything to you about a certain guy here in Staunton, did she? A guy who—”

“Interesting,” said Ashley with a breezy yawn, cutting me off. The thump of a book closing. “So, red roses?”

“Excuse me?” I froze, her words catching me unaware like a Frisbee in the throat.

“Wedding flowers. What colors have you decided on? Red to match the bridesmaids' dresses?” Ashley gave a stiff sigh, as if pained to have to deal with a simpleton like me. “You are getting married in something crazy like a month and a half, correct?”

“Yeah. Almost.”

“So what's it going to look like? Decorations, music, what?”

“Well, there's not much to tell.” I hesitated, nervous at Ashley's rapid-fire demands. “Adam lined up some relatives to play the violin and piano. My coworker Meg's doing the photos. You should see her work. Absolutely stunning.”

Even if she did shoot photos of partially clad hippies, clouds shaped like John Lennon, and a close-up of a cow with long eyelashes chewing a dandelion. Maybe I could use the cow on the cover of our wedding album.

If, that is, Meg actually remembered to show up for the wedding.

“Your coworker.” Ashley's frosty voice enunciated each word with calculated exactness.

“Sure. And for decorations, let's see…some Japanese lanterns, square candleholders, bamboo, and…you know…” My voice trailed off as I tucked my tape recorders in my reporter's bag, embarrassed. “We can't afford a lot, and we're busy, too.”

“
That's
what you call plans?”

Blood rushed to my face as I closed my notebook then flipped off the lights and closed the heavy auditorium door.

The gleaming, wood-paneled school lobby sat mostly empty, guarded by a long glass case displaying blue-ribboned student posters and glossy black plaques. A clump of people from the council meeting still mingled in the shadows, heads together as they gossiped in low tones.

School buildings always struck me as creepy at night, so lonely and empty, lit only by red fire-exit signs and dim fluorescent lights. I shivered as I capped my pen and slipped it in my reporter's bag.

“Hold on a second,” I whispered to Ashley, shouldering my stuff. “Let me go drop my stuff in the car, and I'll put you on Bluetooth. But I can't talk long. Adam's coming by the school here to meet me after his meeting in Stuarts Draft. He's kind of worried with this whole mystery-murder thing, so…Ashley? Did you hear me?”

I tucked the phone under my chin, Ashley's voice still yakking away. I waved good-bye to Meg, who was packing up her camera equipment and arguing over the phone with Cooter about the World Series.

“How can you not have any plans? Are you crazy?” Ashley hollered when I put the phone back up to my ear. “When I got engaged, Mama and I went shopping like a year ahead of time! She had my wedding dress altered by a friend who sews for the Vera Wang models in New York, and we hired a really famous caterer, and…” Ashley blabbed on, oblivious to my mom-less state.

A wedding at the gun range sounded better and better.

“Well, at least you had somebody to help you, huh?” My voice came out in equally cold tones.

“Sure I did! Everybody does. I don't know a mother who's not crazy about her daughter's wedding.” Ashley seemed to realize she'd blundered because she broke off abruptly. “Sorry. I forget sometimes that Ellen's gone, and…well, why don't you let Tanzania help?”

“Dad's belly-dancing wife who's practically our age? No thanks.”

“Tanzania's great. Stop being so cynical and give her a chance.”

Ha. I'd rather be spat on by one of Fred Brewer's llamas.

I slapped my notebook in my bag and zipped it up, throwing the strap over my shoulder in a huff and checking to make sure I still had my purse. Wait. I didn't.

I stalked back into the auditorium and flipped on the lights.

“Sorry to break it to you, Shiloh, but your mom wouldn't have been much help with a wedding anyway. She was too…weird. Okay. Let's call it ‘Bohemian.' You'd be getting married in tie-dyed robes or something.”

Stay calm, Shiloh. Breathe
. I inhaled deeply, reminding myself that I was supposed to be a Christian now and be nice, or something along those lines. Even to Ashley Boss-of-the-Universe Sweetwater.

I slipped through the rows of folding chairs where I'd been sitting, but no purse.

Wait a second. I whirled around, trying to locate my exact seat. I'd sat in the second row when I arrived, and when I moved up to speak to the president of the city council, I sat right there by the…