A Table By the Window (25 page)

“I've never been in a log home. It's so serene. And cool. Almost like being inside a cave.”

“That's because it's so well insulated. The boys built this themselves—my husband and Steve—from trees on our land. The fireplace was an extravagance, with our having to order stones from Tennessee, but I've wanted one ever since my family stayed at Old Faithful Lodge when I was a girl. And since the logs were free…” She smiled again. “But I didn't mean to go on so.”

“No, it's very interesting,” Carley assured her. “I would love to see the rest sometime.”

“I love to show it off. Why not now?”

“Don't you have to make lunch?”

“It won't take long, especially now that I have a helper. You'll stay, won't you?”

Carley was still not accustomed to such open hospitality from essential strangers. “Are you sure?”

“But of course.”

Vera led her through the wide doorway into the kitchen. The long table and chairs were so richly polished that they gave a mellow amber sheen. Vera said, “Clifford made most of the furniture.”

That included their four-poster king-size bed frame. A guest room with black iron bed frame was situated between the Underwoods' room and Steve's room. Steve lived here only during summers and university holidays, Vera said, for he had a Hattiesburg apartment for the academic year.

When Carley had seen even the bathrooms, she followed Vera down a hall and out the back door. A brick path led from the porch to a brown frame building with long screened windows. She could hear hammering as well as the buzz of a power tool. The inside smelled of freshly cut wood, machine oil, and varnish. Stacks of plywood rested against one wall. At a long worktable, Steve Underwood was running an electric router around the inside of a thick piece of oak. Several feet past the table, a man with a gray crew cut was rubbing stain into the unfinished wood of a massive pine bookcase.

Steve saw Carley first and switched off the router.

“Good morning!”

“Good morning,” she said back.

Vera introduced Clifford, who closed the lid on his bucket of stain and showed Carley a sketch of a deacon's bench that matched the bentwood café chairs.

“Steve said you might be by, so I went ahead and drew this up. Is about five feet wide what you have in mind? That would be a little longer than those in homes, but not too long to ruin the aesthetic appeal.”

“That sounds good,” Carley said.

“I can have one made in a week and a half,” Clifford said. “How does two hundred sound?”

“It sounds reasonable,” Carley said. Truth was, she did not have a clue how much a deacon's bench should cost. Perhaps she should have researched on the Internet. But Aunt Helen and Uncle Rory would not have recommended the Underwoods if they were not honest, and so she would have to rely on their judgment.

Vera showed her how far along she was with the sign. The letters were routered, and the figure of the woman outlined with pencil. Steve was correct in saying his mother was the artist of the family. “It's going to be beautiful,” Carley said.

“Thank you.” Vera took her arm. “Now, let's go make lunch.”

“Mother…” Steve said as Mr. Underwood chuckled.

“I'm happy to sing for my meal,” Carley assured both men.

Breakfast/lunch was simple: Mexican corn bread, and chef salads made with mixed greens, boiled eggs, garden tomatoes, cheese, and strips of leftover grilled chicken. Peeling eggs, Carley asked how the Underwoods had gotten into the business of woodworking. Vera told her that Clifford was a civil engineer and that she taught art history at USM until they both decided at age sixty to make their hobbies their avocation. “We had saved all our lives for this, and it just seemed the time to do it.”

“That took a lot of courage,” Carley said.

“And so does opening up a café,” Vera said, handing her a cutting board and knife.

“I've never thought of myself as courageous,” Carley told her.

“Hmm. So you have no fear about starting your own business?”

“Well, yes. Plenty of fear.”

“But you're doing it anyway. That makes you either courageous or foolish, and you don't strike me as being a fool.”

“Thank you, Vera,” Carley said, and once again thought about how glad she was to have moved here. Was Tallulah unique in its number of nurturing women? It was almost as if God looked ahead years ago and decided this was the place where she would get the most healing from the past.

Her cynical side asked that if God was that involved in her life, why had Huey Collins been allowed to torment her? She thought about Aunt Helen's words about free will. If her stepfather could be programmed, like a robot, that would mean she could be as well. Would she wish that?

The men came into the kitchen and offered to help.

“We should have company more often,” Vera said before reminding them to wash their hands.

“I can't find the salad dressing, hon,” Clifford asked at the open refrigerator.

Vera winked at Carley and crossed the room. “Perhaps I can.”

“Your parents are great,” Carley said as Steve opened a drawer for napkins.

“Thank you. I'm sure yours are too.”

Carley returned his smile. “Will you hand me those tomatoes?”

Over lunch the three asked about her plans for the café, even down to the colors the Stillmans were currently rolling on the walls. Over dessert of watermelon slices, Carley learned that Vera was one-quarter Choctaw, Steve therefore one-eighth, and that Clifford was the grandson of sharecroppers. She left with a bag of homegrown tomatoes and an invitation to come back and visit again. It was one of those niceties people said, of course, but she had enjoyed their company and the way the hands of the clock were not too much of an issue here in the piney hills.

****

She backed the GL out of her driveway that evening with the pans of warmed lasagna, wrapped in foil and dish towels, on the floorboard and Aunt Helen's gifts on the seat. Lights were still on in the café, so Carley parked behind Winn Stillman's truck. She could smell paint from the sidewalk.

“Perfect timing, Miss Reed,” John said, gathering rags into a bucket.

Winn smiled, folding a ladder. “Well, what do you think?”

Carley turned slowly, taking it all in. The olive green was even more soothing on the walls than in the sample square, and it balanced out the brown, red, and parchment trim work. Running along the tops of the four walls, in elegant script that must have been extremely difficult to stencil, were lines from the poem's final stanza:

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

The Stillmans were waiting. The first word to pop into Carley's mind was one she had grown sour on while teaching school, after hearing students use it to describe movies, earrings, the latest hip-hop song, even a brand of chewing gum. So she smiled at the two and used another adjective that was just as appropriate. “It's wonderful.”

She regretted not having left the house earlier, for the Stillmans were as eager as she was for her to see the rest of their handiwork. By the time she turned down Mill Creek Road, six vehicles were parked two-by-two in the driveway, and five were parked alongside the road. Along with family members were neighbors from Fifth Street, some members of the Hudsons' church, and fellow shop owners—including Marianne Tate. Almost everyone brought at least a token gift in spite of Sherry's having penned
No gifts please…Mom will consider your presence gift enough
on the invitation.

“Did you misspell
presence
?” Blake quipped while scooping ice into glasses, and Sherry assured him that she knew how to spell. Still, with worried expression later, she asked Carley if she had her invitation in her purse.

“It's on my refrigerator,” Carley said. “But you didn't spell it wrong. It's just that everyone loves your mother.”

Aunt Helen glowed with pleasure, but the fact that some guests had followed Sherry's instructions and some had not, posed a dilemma. “I don't think I should open them until everyone's gone,” she whispered to Sherry and Carley as people were settling into sofas and folding chairs with plates of food. “I don't want to embarrass anyone.”

“Well, you'll have to open
one,
Mother,” Sherry said, while Blake and Uncle Rory exchanged a secret smile. “Go look in our bedroom.”

The surprise was Deanna Hudson Wood. She was an older version of her sister, Sherry, but with brown hair and Uncle Rory's dark brows and lashes. Mother and daughter came up the hall arm-in-arm, Aunt Helen wiping her eyes.

When the guests were gone, Sherry shooed Aunt Helen, Uncle Rory, and Deanna from the kitchen to the den and shooed Conner and Patrick in the opposite direction. Carley was scrubbing pans at the sink when Conner came into the kitchen and asked if the painters had finished.

“Just before I came here,” she said.

“How does it look, Carley?” Sherry asked.

“They did a wonderful job.”

The kitchen clean and dishwasher humming, everyone rejoined the Hudsons and Deanna. Aunt Helen opened her gifts, and then Sherry divided the rest of the cake onto paper plates.

“Well, that was fun,” Uncle Rory said, covering a yawn as Blake went around with a trash bag.

“Me, too, Dad,” Sherry said, covering her own yawn.

Carley managed to stifle hers. She rose, went over to Aunt Helen, and leaned down to wrap her arms around her shoulders. “I'm glad you had a good birthday.”

Aunt Helen touched her cheek. “Thank you, dear.”

Deanna rose to embrace Carley. “I'm glad we finally got to meet, cousin.”

“Me too.”

After farewells were exchanged, Carley was halfway to the door when Uncle Rory said, “By the way, Carley, did your painters finish?”

“They did,” Sherry said before she could answer.

Deanna got again to her feet. “I want to see it.”

“So do I,” said Aunt Helen.

The group loaded up into Sherry's SUV, with Carley following so that she could drive on home afterward. Proudly she unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and ushered everyone inside. As they wandered around the place, reading lines from the poem, marveling at the cleanness of the kitchen and bathrooms, and praising her choice of colors, Carley drank in their compliments and decided she had severely misjudged the word
awesome
.

Wednesday evening, Dale changed in the station bathroom to shorts and his
1999 Hattiesburg March of Dimes 10K
T-shirt, drove to the high school, and ran four miles around the track. At home, he showered and changed into jeans and another T-shirt, then ate two veggie burgers and several carrot sticks in front of
Law and Order
on cable.

Putting it off's not gonna make it any easier,
he told himself at the close of the episode. He switched off the remote and picked up the cordless telephone. The ten-digit Pascagoula number appeared several times in the caller ID. Pressing the
Dial
button, he leaned back in his recliner.

Stephanie answered during the first ring, as if she had been waiting.

“Dale?”

“Yeah, hon, it's me. Sorry I didn't call sooner. There was an overturned tanker truck on Highway 42, and I had to assist the highway patrol.”

“Really?” she said, her voice a mixture of hope and mistrust.

“These truckers take those curves like they're still on the interstate. He's lucky to be alive.” He softened his voice. “Did your sister drive you?”

“Yes.”

“How was it?”

There was a hesitation, then she barely whispered, “It hurt.”

“Really?”

“I'm still cramping. They sent me home with pain pills.”

“Poor baby!” He blew out an audible breath. “I feel like a major heel for not being there. When you only have two deputies, and one is out with the flu…”

“It's all right, Dale,” she said dully. “You explained.”

“I just want you to know I thought about you all day.” He waited one second, two. “Did you…get my check?”

“Yes, but I don't need—”

“Please, Stephanie. We agreed, remember? This was my problem as much as yours.”

He heard faint sniffling.

“Stephanie?”

“I just didn't know how depressed I would feel…afterward,” she blurted thickly.

“Well, that's only natural,” Dale soothed. “You'll feel better tomorrow, when you don't have this hanging over you. And as soon as I can get down there, we'll drive to Mobile and have dinner at Gambino's, then find you something special at the mall.”

There was another hesitation, another sniff. “Really, Dale?”

“Well, of course, baby. Why do you even have to ask?”

“You were…so upset.”

“I know.” He sighed again. “I acted like an idiot. But I'm proud of you, for being a real trooper. And we'll have a half dozen kids when the time's right.”

“I love you, Dale,” she said.

“I love you. But, hey, now that I know you're all right, I'd better get out of this uniform—the fumes are making me nauseous. Got some gas spilled on it at the wreck.”

“You should have done that first thing.” Worry sharpened her tone. “Will you be all right?”

“I'll be fine, baby. Don't worry about me. Just take what the doctor gave you and get some sleep. Promise?”

“I'll try.”

“That's my girl.”

Once the connection was broken, he held the cordless to his chest and closed his eyes, overcome with a great surge of relief. Shotgun weddings may be a thing of the past, but thanks to DNA technology, a man did not have to walk the aisle to be trapped. Just the thought of eighteen years of court-ordered child support gave him chills.