Home Sweet Home (A Southern Comfort Novel) (11 page)

And now here she was, prying into another woman’s private past. So what if Ree Summers had a fling before she was married? She realized she had the benefit of benevolent hindsight, but did the affair really matter anymore?

“That’s pretty steamy,” Grace said, trying to figure out how best to address Henry’s prudishness when it came to unmarried women having affairs.

“Yes, especially since David was married.”

“Oh,” said Grace. That put a slightly different spin on things.

“To Ree Summers’s sister.”

“Oh!” Love was nothing but trouble. Grace found more evidence every day.

“It was an unhappy marriage, by all accounts. Virginia Summers Tulley was considered to have married beneath her station when she took up with David, who was promising, but poor. What must have started as a love match was soured by the disapproval of her family and financial struggles.”

“So he took up with the little sister?”

“Who knows how it happened?” Henry said, gazing up at the stained glass. “The three of them often spent time together, and as Virginia had children, David and Ree were left on their own. It seems as if it just happened.”

Grace was all too familiar with that feeling. That, in fact, was how Lou had described falling in love with her. While he was still married.

“Poor Ree.”

“Well, the story does have a happy ending for her. She fell in love with a man who took her away from Willow Springs before any scandal could come out. And it seems her marriage was a happy one. She raised three boys and a girl in the Pacific Northwest. She was active in women’s suffrage, and was a great patron of the arts.”

Grace snorted. Then regretted it. That wasn’t fair. She didn’t know this woman. People did stupid things for love.

“She never came back here, though. And she seems to have lost contact with her sister.”

“What happened to Virginia?”

Henry shrugged. “Nothing. David’s career skyrocketed, and she was known for managing his affairs. He often cited her as being his muse. Of course, given this information”—he brandished the diary page—“I might call that into question.”

“Huh. Do you think you’ll pursue that?” She didn’t like the idea. On the one hand, even this little bit of information made her curious. But on the other, she wanted Henry to let the dead rest.

So she was relieved when he said, “I think David Tulley’s art speaks for itself. I’m not sure if it matters who the muse was. Well, not to me, anyway. I’m more interested in the house. Thank you for showing me around.”

She tightened her ponytail, which was threatening to spill, damply, all over her shoulders. “No problem. But . . . just to be clear. This
is
the Spinster House?” She wanted him to say no. She loved old houses, and the stories that came with them, but this was a little much.

“The windows confirm it, I’m afraid. Sorry.” He gave her a comforting pat on her shoulder. “But if it’s any consolation, I think the legend is wrong.”

“So it’s not the Spinster House?” She hoped she didn’t sound as desperate as she was certain she did.

He laughed. “The legend is partly true. This house has been sold exclusively to single women since the first woman bought it from Ree Summers. A quick dig through the public records proves that.”

“Great.”

“But I’ve been working on a different theory.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. Grace could smell the breath mint on him. “If you pair up the property records with marriage records—”

“Just another quick dig?”

“Right. It seems that this house inevitably goes on the market when the woman who owns it gets married. And the owner of the house
always
gets married.”

If Henry hadn’t still been standing in front of her, Grace would have sworn the floor fell out from underneath her. Married? She didn’t want to get married. Suddenly she wished there was a chair in this turret.

Henry gave her a teasing smile. “I can see by your nauseous look that that idea does not appeal to you?”

Grace did her best to laugh back. “I just don’t want to lose this house, that’s all.” And that was true, too. There had to be a finite number of things that would fall apart on her. Surely soon she would be on top of the repairs, and could do as she planned—to live in this house forever, to host dinner parties for her seminar students, to write books and rock on the porch and get fabulous silver hair and wrinkles, and soak her aching, arthritic bones in the claw-foot tub.

“And you won’t, as long as you don’t get married.” He took a step forward. “Unless, of course, you marry someone interested in old houses.”

Mr. Bingley slunk into the turret and hissed at Henry.

“Mr. Bingley!” she chided, and scooped him up. “Sorry, he’s never done that before.”

Henry took a step out of the turret into her office. “That’s okay, I’m not a big cat guy. Allergic. Cute name, though.”

She rubbed behind Mr. Bingley’s ears. “Thanks. He really is a wonderful cat, but if you’re allergic . . .” Henry was eyeing the cat nervously, and Mr. Bingley was growling softly, so Grace put him down. He scampered down the hall.

Henry sneezed.

“Wow,” she said, her eyes wide with alarm at Henry’s red eyes. “You really are allergic. Come on, let’s get you downstairs.”

But downstairs didn’t help. Despite her regular vacuuming—Mr. Bingley had a lot of black hair, and he liked to leave it on every available surface—the house was, apparently, not dander-free enough for Henry.

“I’m so sorry,” Grace said, plying him with tissues.

“It’s never come on this fast before,” he said with a wheeze. “I was fine until we went upstairs. I think—” he coughed, “I think I should go.”

“Okay, yes. Here—” She handed him the box of tissues. “Sorry again. And thank you for bringing that information by. It was really interesting.”

Henry took a deep breath as soon as she opened the door. “I’m glad. This house has an amazing history. I’m glad someone is finally living here who appreciates it.”

He was gone before she could ask what he meant.

W
ill was right; Jake hadn’t seen his dad in a while. And he was riding high from his night with Grace, so he figured now was as good a time as any. Of course, Don Burdette had the unique ability to bring Jake down. But then, until last night, so did Grace. Maybe this was his weekend to shake up all of his relationships.

Not that he had a relationship with Grace. She had made that clear, and he was fine with it. He liked sex, especially the kind that came with no strings. If she meant what she said, and he was pretty sure she did, they could have a great time together. If last night was any indication, they definitely would. He’d thought she was uptight, that she would insist on under-the-covers, lights-off sex.

Boy, was he wrong. She’d pounced on him, and it was all he could do to keep up. And that underwear. Just thinking that she’d been in the woods, changing out of her wet bathing suit into that cute bra and panty set made his jeans suddenly feel a little uncomfortable. She had said something about it being casual underwear. Once he got beyond the fact that there was such a thing as casual underwear, he started to think about what would constitute un-casual underwear. What would that look like? On Grace?

If he kept Grace on his mind, he was going to have to start wearing bigger jeans.

He wondered if he should call her later. She probably had school stuff to do. Did she even have classes on Mondays? Did she have to go to work even if she didn’t have class? He realized he had no idea what a professor’s workload was like. Maybe it was like his, relatively flexible, but when it had to get done, it had to get done. That might be nice, if she had some afternoons off. He could stop by, see if she had anything that needed fixing, maybe hang out and see what kind of underwear she was wearing.

Should he call first? Or just swing by on his way back from his dad’s? Or should he stop being such a girl about it and just see what happens? Maybe she would call him. He usually didn’t like it when a woman pursued him—he was, as Mary Beth said, kind of a caveman like that. But he wouldn’t mind if Grace called. She seemed to know what she wanted out of a relationship, which was not a relationship at all, so it would be kind of nice to know that she was thinking about him. That she wanted him.

He checked his phone. No messages. Well, it had only been a few hours. She’d call him. And if she didn’t, he would call her.

And then he’d go home and try to find where he’d left his balls.

Jake tried his best to put Grace out of his mind as he pulled into his dad’s shop. As usual, the Burdette Auto Body yard was clear of debris and parts and the usual crap lying around a mechanic shop. He went in through the bays, but no one was there—no surprise, it was a Sunday. He stuck his head into the spotless office and found his dad sitting at the desk, giving a mean look to the computer screen.

Don Burdette looked the same as ever—too-long gray hair slicked back, his tanned face a little rough and wrinkled from never wearing sunscreen. And perched on his nose was a pair of dark-framed glasses.

They suited him, in a strange way. Jake had never seen his dad with glasses before, and he was glad that after years of squinting over paperbacks, Don finally admitted that his eyesight might not be exactly perfect.

“Hey, Pop.”

Don jumped and yanked the glasses off his face and down onto his lap.

“Hey, son. How are you?”

“Great. Are those your glasses?”

Don pulled them sheepishly from under the desk. “Yeah. Just got ’em. For the computer, mostly. And for reading.”

“Good.”

“I thought it would make using this damn thing a little easier.” He waved at the computer.

“Is it working?”

“Nah. Now I
see
all the ways it’s screwing up.”

Don was definitely a slow adopter when it came to technology. He did okay with the computers in cars—there wasn’t much about a car Don couldn’t fix, even without technological training. He had a knack for understanding how a machine worked, and had been able to incorporate computers into his thinking pretty easily. He still preferred old cars, which was good since most of his customers had old cars—the ones with new cars tended to go to their dealership. But Don was much slower to adopt a computerized billing system. Jake remembered coming here as a kid and being fascinated by the pads of carbon receipt paper. He loved that he could draw a rocket once, and he would come out with two more underneath. Don wouldn’t have updated at all if Marilyn hadn’t insisted. She thought he was going to lose business if he didn’t step it up.

Don sighed and tossed his glasses on top of the keyboard. “How’s your mom?” They’d been divorced for ten years and Jake knew they saw each other at least once a week, but Don always asked about her.

“She’s fine.”

“And Will? He still treating her good?” Marilyn and Will had been married for five years, and Don saw him as often as he saw Marilyn. But he always asked Jake if he was treating Marilyn well. Mary Beth said he asked her the same thing.

“Will is fine, and he’s still treating her like she walks on water.”

“Good,” Don said gruffly. “Good.”

Jake shook his head. He had no idea what went through that man’s head.

“So what brings you here on a fine Sunday afternoon? Checking up on your old man?”

“Maybe,” Jake said with a shrug.

“Your mother put you up to it?”

“Will did. But I’m sure Mom put the bug in his ear,” he added quickly.

Don just grunted.

Jake rocked back on his heels. This was productive. As always.

“What’s that grin for?”

Jake was not aware that he was grinning. “Nothing.”

“I hear you’re seeing that professor.”

Jesus, word spread fast in this town. It had been less than twenty-four hours. And he wasn’t exactly seeing her. Just having a non-relationship with her. Which was probably a type of relationship anyway . . .

“Fran Wallace was in yesterday to get her oil changed, finally. She was chomping at the bit to tell me you’ve been hanging around. That might have been the only reason she came in.”

Great. If Mrs. Wallace knew, everyone in town knew. If she wasn’t a little old lady with a cute little dog, Jake thought he might wring her neck.

“It’s good, though. She was overdue,” said Don.

“Huh?”

“For an oil change. You got it bad, huh?”

Jake shook his head. “No, we’re just friends. And her name is Grace.”

“Then why did Fran tell me you were all over each other in her front yard?”

The front yard? Oh, the front yard. “That wasn’t what it looked like. It’s kind of funny, actually. She got stuck on her roof and she’s afraid of heights, so I had to talk her down—”

“Just watch out for her,” Don interrupted.

“What do you mean?” Was Mrs. Wallace threatening him? Through his dad?

“Watch out for that professor, that’s all. She’s not your type.”

“Dad, you’ve never even met her.”

“Don’t have to. Smart women like that don’t go for guys like us.”

“Guys like us?”

“Guys who work with their hands. Guys with dirt under their fingernails.”

“Dad—”

“You’re a good-looking guy, Jake, but trust me, she’s not in it for the long haul. You’ll have some fun, and then she’ll think she’s too good for you, and you’ll be out.” Don brushed past his son and practically stomped into the shop.

Jake was momentarily distracted by the Ford Taurus Don stopped in front of. “Is that Mrs. Flanagan’s car?”

When Don nodded, Jake said, “I can’t believe that thing is still running.” Jake remembered Mrs. Flanagan carting him and Missy and Kyle and usually a bunch of other kids around in that station wagon. Missy gave Jake his first kiss in the way-back. They were about seven years old.

“Bertie doesn’t want to buy another car. Can’t blame her. It doesn’t have that many miles on it, considering.”

“It’s got to cost more to fix it at this point,” Jake said, admiring the familiarly shoddy touch-up paint job on the hood.

Don shrugged and pulled a wrench out of his back pocket. He opened the station wagon door and started the engine, cocking his head toward the steering wheel as if listening for something. Then he shook his head—must have heard something he didn’t like—and turned off the engine. Don stepped around Jake and opened the hood.

It was strange. Don had earned his reputation as a fair and reasonably priced mechanic. If he thought it wasn’t worth your money to fix a car, he’d tell you. Unless. “Unless you’re not charging her.”

Don concentrated very hard on all those parts underneath the hood.

“Dad?”

“What does it matter to you who I charge or don’t charge?”

“Mom says she can’t see how you pay your bills if—”

This got Don out from under the hood. He stepped up to Jake, pointing the wrench in his face. “Your mother worries too much about me. I live simply, Jake. I don’t need a lotta crap to be happy. Just a roof over my head, something to get my hands dirty, and an occasional home-cooked meal. So you tell your mother I’m doing just fine.”

Don backed off, but he kept his eyes on Jake, daring him to argue.

Jake raised his hands in mock-surrender. If his dad’s face hadn’t been so serious, he would have laughed. Nothing got under Don’s skin more than hearing how much his ex-wife worried about him.

But something in what Don had said about the way he lived stuck with Jake. “Dad, are you still going to Mom’s for Sunday dinner?”

Don turned his attention back to the car, but he grunted in what Jake assumed was a “yes.”

“So that’s your home-cooked meal for the week? That and whatever leftovers they send you home with?”

Don fingered a wire in the engine.

“Or is someone else cooking for you?”

Don tightened a bolt.

“Oh, my—Dad, are you sleeping with Bertie Flanagan?”

That got Don out from under the hood and in Jake’s face again.

“You watch your tone, son.”

Jake did his best to wipe the smile off his face.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Don said, “but Bertie and I have . . . an arrangement. She’s been lonely since Frank died, and with Missy out of the house, she misses cooking for people, she said. I told her to get a job at a restaurant, but I guess she don’t want anyone bossin’ her around. So she cooks for me, I fix her car.”

Jake had a million more teasing questions to ask his father, but Don was blushing so deeply that Jake didn’t want to upset his blood pressure. So he left him alone. Mostly.

“Does Mom know?”

“No, and it’s even less her business than it is yours. Nobody knows. This is just between me and Bertie, and I aim to keep it that way. So don’t go flapping your jaw to anyone, Missy especially.”

“Missy doesn’t know?”

“No. Bertie thinks it’ll upset her. Missy doesn’t think Bertie should ever move on from Frank, even though it’s been several years.”

“But you didn’t think your son would get upset?”

“Are you upset?” When Jake shook his head, Don continued. “Didn’t think so. It’s a different situation. Frank died; your mother just had enough of me.”

And here we go, thought Jake. The part where Don started taking digs at Marilyn, then Jake blew up and stormed out and didn’t see his father for a few weeks. Right on schedule.

“I know, I know,” said Don, pre-empting the blow-up with raised hands. “I don’t blame her. I was a real jerk to her.”

“That’s one word for it.” Another word was cheater.

“I wasn’t good enough for her, Jake. And I knew that when I married her, but I believed her when she said it wasn’t true. Then she got that job at the college, made all those smart friends, and who’d she come home to but a guy like me who can’t ever get his hands clean?”

“So, what, now you’re saying all the drinking and the cheating, that was just self-sabotage? There were other ways to destroy your life, Dad, without dragging us down with you.”

Jake could see that Don wanted to give in to the anger in his eyes, to give in to the urge to have the row that both of them seemed to need.

Instead, Don said, “Just be careful with that professor, that’s all.”

Don turned back to Mrs. Flanagan’s engine. It wasn’t exactly the door-slamming blow-up Jake was used to, but he knew he was dismissed all the same.

Jake shook his head. He wasn’t going to fix his father, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to try to fix the weird relationship between his parents. Besides, it seemed that Don was finally moving on. With Bertie Flanagan. She was good-looking, Jake supposed, although he had a hard time thinking of her as anything other than Missy’s mother. Jake’s fingers were itching to dial Missy’s number, but he had promised his dad, and besides, that wasn’t fair to Missy, to find out through the rumor mill. Although with Mrs. Wallace coming into the shop, she’d find out soon enough.

But Jake had to tell someone. He thought of Grace. She didn’t know his dad or Mrs. Flanagan, and he was pretty sure he could count on her to keep it to herself around Missy. He’d have to explain the whole back story so she got why it was so strange, but he had a feeling Grace would understand.

He called Grace and left a message when her voice mail picked up. Then he swung by her house on the way home, but her bike wasn’t on the porch and no one answered when he knocked, though Mr. Bingley meowed at him from the living room window. Jake was starting to get mad when he got back into his truck. He tried to shake it off. She’s not ignoring you, he told himself. It’s been, like, six hours since you saw her. Give it a rest. She’ll call you when she gets home, then you can tell her your dumb story and maybe she’ll invite you over again.

Jake grumbled as he backed out of her driveway. It was just the amazing sex, rattling his brain. She’d call when she got home.