A Wedding Invitation (14 page)

I create posters that we place around the front door of the boutique, letting customers know that we’ll be gone. We also make sure to tell each customer who comes in before that week. Although Mom tells me her philosophy on not working, she contradicts herself by wanting people to think it’s a working week. To those who raise their eyebrows and say, “A whole week off?” she gives them the sense that she’ll be heading to our suppliers to check out new products. But the reality is that she drives to Virginia Beach with her friend Maralinda, another breast cancer survivor. They eat seafood, drink chardonnay from skinny glasses, and take walks on the beach in bare feet. They have been known to be noticed by single men. Perhaps, if the weather is cloudy, Mom might venture to a wholesaler in Richmond to see what they have in stock, allowing plenty of time for lunch along the way. But that’s the extent of her “working week.”

Five days before the fourth, Mom’s lab results from her annual physical are in.

“Well?” I watch as she places the shop’s phone in the cradle. My mind spins as the back of my neck grows clammy.

“I’m fine.”

“Really?” I swallow.

She pops a licorice morsel into her mouth. “Well, he says I eat too much licorice. Stains my teeth, you know. He isn’t happy about that.” She’s talking about her oncologist, Dr. Burgess.

“What else did he say?”

Mom looks at me with her hands in her apron pockets. “I suppose I’m going to live a while longer.”

My smile is broad. I dive into her arms.

She pats my back. “So,” she says, stepping back, “I guess we’ll be carrying on with our plans, then.”

“For what?”

“Take your dad’s old camera when you go.”

“Go where?”

Mom takes off her clip-on silver earrings and adds them to her pocket. “To Dovie’s. You always have fun there. Dovie loves having you visit. Take the camera and get some pretty photos of the butterflies.”

“What do you want them for?”

“I’ll put them around the shop. You know, spruce it up a bit.”

“I have to use Dad’s camera?”

“You have one?” Mom’s eyebrows rise.

“Mom, you gave me a Nikon for graduation.”

“That was ages ago.”

“I still have it.”

She watches me. I know she’s questioning whether or not it still works. I have been known to break a few items in my lifetime.

“Send Dovie my love but know that Maralinda is counting on me to join her at the beach house.”

Softly, I say, “I know.” Those two have a bond like glue. In fact, although I insist, Mom won’t let me drive her to her physicals; she only lets Maralinda do that. Dovie invites her to Winston, but Mom rarely visits. “She should come up here,” Mom tells me. “This city has so much to offer. I could take her to the Smithsonian, and then there’s Folger Theater.”

Once, just to play the devil’s advocate, I asked if I could come with her to the beach house.

“Of course, you are welcome.”

“I didn’t ask if I would be welcomed. I asked if I could spend a week there with you and Maralinda.”

“Oh, there are only two bedrooms.”

“I have a sleeping bag.”

“Her children usually stop over.”

I didn’t pursue it after that. Beanie told me, “Sometimes folk just want time away from their kids. Nothing personal, Sammie.”

On the third of July, after we close up the shop at noon, Mom leaves for Maralinda’s. She hands me a crumpled piece of paper with a phone number written on it. “The beach house has a phone, and if you need me, you can reach me there.”

I want to say, What if I just want to talk to you but don’t really
need
you? Will that be all right? But I just take the paper, give her a hug, and watch her take off her apron. She puts on a billowy hat that flops over her eyes. “You like it?”

It’s from a shipment we received the other day from a wholesaler my mother has been eyeing. “Looks good, Mom.” There are times I know Mom orders certain products because she wants them for herself.

I head home, can’t decide what to pack, make a turkey sandwich, clean out the outdated milk and sour cream from my fridge, and eat the sandwich. Within an hour I start my drive to Winston-Salem.

Leaving Falls Church, I say aloud, “If I were married . . . Yep, things would be different.” I’d fly to Cancun this week with my charming husband. But I’m not, and although Natasha invited me to her parents’ condo in Cape May, I’d rather visit Dovie for the holiday.

When I called Dexter last night to catch up, he told me that I should be glad that I have time off from work. From the sound of his voice, it seemed he was going to have to be working.

“So no time off for you, then?” I asked.

“No, and no sunny warm weather for me, either. Where I’m going, I’ll need my parka and lots of hot coffee.”

“Where is that?”

“Our team is headed to the Arctic to study the vocalizations of the beluga whale.”

One of the things I love about being friends with Dexter is that he has fascinating tales. His job as a marine biologist has taken him all over the world.

“I never even heard of a beluga whale,” I said.

“You’ve heard of white whales, right?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Beluga is a white whale.”

“Well, make sure your car is running well,” I tease, thinking back to the day of Avery Jones’s wedding. “And have fun.”

Dovie has a new boarder who sleeps in the little cove bedroom that has the dormer window. I expect my aunt to say that I’ll have to sleep on the couch in the den since all the bedrooms are currently filled, but she tells me that I can have the basement. In the sterile-white lowest portion of the house, I place my suitcase on the double bed that is covered in a floral quilt. Aside from the plaid sofa that sticks out like a wayward appendage, there’s a Kenmore washer, a Whirlpool dryer, and a set of sinks, their basins stained with rust. Above the sinks is a row of cabinets, also white, with little brass knobs that are in the shape of butterflies. The scent in the basement is a mixture of Pine-Sol and sweaty socks. I use the tiny bathroom off to the left, a room just big enough to hold a shower, a sink, and a toilet. Towels of red, white, and blue hang on the rack by the shower door.

Pearl, her new tenant, actually pays Dovie rent money. I asked Dovie about her when I arrived, and Dovie sat with me while I drank a glass of iced tea at the kitchen table. “She’s newly widowed, and her children wanted her to move into a retirement home, but Pearl fought that.”

“Really?” I said. “Not interested in a retirement place?”

“Not in the least.”

As Dovie swept the kitchen floor, she told me that she met the eighty-five-year-old woman at a gardening party, and seeing her need, invited her to live with her. Pearl crochets, tends to Dovie’s herb garden, feeds the chickens, and takes a nap every afternoon at three after drinking a cup of orange pekoe tea with three-and-one-half teaspoons of sugar.

Shortly after that, I met the short, plump woman with glossy white hair and she filled me in on her history, including that her husband had been in the Marines. I was about to ask a question about him when Pearl excused herself so she could catch
Jeopardy
on TV.

“I watch it every night,” she told me. “Then I take my vitamins.”

Seeing that it is almost dinnertime, I enter the aromatic kitchen. There is a plate of fried chicken on the counter, and my mouth waters. Beanie is making stuffed eggs, and my aunt is frosting a wobbly chocolate cake.

Dovie pours me a glass of iced tea and sets it on the kitchen table. She thinks I need iced tea all the time; a fresh pitcher of it is always available. “We’re having a dinner guest tomorrow,” she tells me.

My aunt likes to entertain. During the warmer months, she puts two tables together on the porch, covers them with pink linen, and serves a feast. Before I can ask who the guest is, the two pies cooling on the counter grab my attention. Each has a lattice crust just like you’d see in a fancy cookbook. “Who made those?”

“Pearl,” says Dovie. “That’s her specialty. Which is nice since neither Beanie nor I are any good at pies.”

“What kind are they?”

“Rhubarb with strawberries. Secret family recipe.” Beanie wipes her hands on a terry-cloth towel. “I think she puts nutmeg in it, and lemon juice.”

“And a pinch of tapioca,” Dovie says.

“Tapioca! Why would she put that in there?” Beanie arches her brows.

“Perhaps she knows something about pies that we don’t.”

“No wonder ours don’t turn out right.” Beanie covers the eggs with plastic wrap.

I take a sip of my iced tea and admire the cake.

“Thanks,” Dovie replies to my compliment.

“Can I help with anything?”

Dovie looks at the chicken. “That’s for dinner. We’ll have some biscuits, too.”

“And mashed potatoes are on the stove,” says Beanie, turning toward the Kenmore. “And green beans. Oh, I need to add some butter to those now.”

“We’re set then,” says my aunt as Beanie opens the fridge and takes out a stick of butter. “Dinner will be soon. First, we need to get some things taken care of for tomorrow.”

Beanie pours a glass of tea.

“Carson is invited.” Dovie says this like she says the day is overcast.

“Car . . . Carson?” My tongue trips over his name.

“Yes.”

“Carson?”

“Yes, that man you know.”

“But . . . How?”

“I hollered out the window. Would have used my phone I rigged up, the one made of soup cans, but the rope broke.” Dovie tries to disguise her smile by covering her mouth.

Beanie laughs, the glass in her hand shaking from her movement. “Does the city girl think Southerners don’t know how to invite folks over for dinner?”

Stammering, I say, “What I mean is—how did you get his number?”

“Carson’s?” My aunt licks the knife she’s been using. A dollop of icing drops from it to her chin.

“Yes. How do you know him?”

“He lives nearby.”

“You think I believe that you know everyone who lives nearby?”

“I could.” My aunt wipes her chin.

“She could,” says Beanie with a wink. “In theory, we could know everyone in all of Winston—one big happy Mayberry family!”

I leave them cackling like the chickens Aunt Dovie has running around her backyard. I head out to the porch, sit by Milkweed, let her flick her tail in my face, and read the first chapter of
False Identity in Finland
, the next mystery in the Busboy series.

Of course, at the end of the chapter I have no idea what the book is about. It’s hard to concentrate on a murder mystery when the past shoves its way into my thoughts.

nineteen

I
can’t sleep. At first I tell myself it’s due to the lumpy bed in the basement, the sheets that smell of cedar, and the dripping of a faucet, but I know better. I’m going to see Carson tomorrow. I don’t know what to wear. I don’t know what to say. My heart dances as I warn it to calm down. I wonder if he still looks like he does in my memory. I wonder how it will feel to talk while looking into his eyes.

In the kitchen, I forgo my usual iced tea and drink warm milk. When Milkweed purrs, I fill her white porcelain saucer that has
Spoiled
stamped on the side. I listen to the wall clock tick and watch its pendulum sway like a nervous cattail in the wind.