Home Sweet Home (A Southern Comfort Novel) (6 page)

No matter how much they fought it.

G
race took one more look around her office in the Pembroke English Department building. Her own, real-life office. When she was teaching in California, she shared an office with two post-docs and an adjunct. She was the only full-time professor in there, but she was just an assistant professor, and it was her first year, and the department knew her because she’d just finished her PhD there, and Lou, as the head of the department, wanted to make sure it didn’t look like she got preferential treatment. There were many reasons Grace was glad to be out of that office, not the least of which was the one post-doc who refused to wear deodorant. It got pretty hot in California.

And, of course, Lou. That turned out to be a great reason to leave.

Here at Pembroke, Grace had a nice office in a quaint brick building with stairs that creaked. Her office—her own office—was small, but there was enough space for a desk, a floor-to-ceiling book case, and enough chairs for her and two students. The window looked out over the academic quad, and Grace looked forward to watching the seasons change. She missed seasons.

Grace secured the tie on her wrap dress one more time, just to make sure. She was nervous. She shouldn’t be nervous. Gatherings with strangers were not her forte, but she found that she could easily relate to other professors. But the last time she’d been to a faculty party, it was a holiday gathering in California. She wore a red dress and was looking forward to meeting Lou under the mistletoe. Everyone else was bringing their spouses or dates, but Grace didn’t care because Lou would be coming alone, too. He was separated from his wife, and the divorce was just about final.

Except that his wife showed up at the party. With Lou. They had decided to work things out, he told her in the hallway outside the bathroom. For the kids. Grace got on her bike and pedaled home and immediately updated her CV.

But, surely, this faculty party would be nothing like that one. For one, the party was at the dean’s house, which was just across campus. If she had to make a quick escape, it wouldn’t need to be by bicycle. And Grace hadn’t been here long enough to entangle herself with someone inappropriate. She was done entangling. She was going to be a lone wolf. She was going to be like Jane Austen, ward off suitors and focus on her work. That was probably a misrepresentation of Jane’s love life, but it suited Grace’s purpose. The comparison was just for a little pep talk. Besides, she didn’t really want to model her life on Jane’s. Nobody wanted to die of tuberculosis.

She coughed, then picked up her purse. This would be fine. She’d met a few of the other English professors on her tour of campus last spring, and they were great. The department secretary was friendly and helpful. Even the night janitor was nice. She and Grace had had a long chat when Grace had lost track of time working on a syllabus the other night, and Carrie had come in to empty her garbage can. Carrie had three kids, the oldest of whom was about to start her freshman year at Pembroke. Then, when Carrie found out Grace had ridden her bike to campus, she’d offered to drive her home. Grace declined, and Carrie only relented when Grace showed her the headlight she would attach to her handlebar and the reflective strips on her helmet.

She doubted she would see Carrie at the party. These faculty things tended to include only, well, faculty. It was too bad; she would have liked to see a familiar face.

“To new familiar faces,” she told herself as she strode across campus. Her wrap dress flipped perilously in the light breeze and she nearly tripped over her sandals as she tried to maneuver herself into decency. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took a deep breath. These were her people. She could relate to brainy academics. There was no reason to be concerned.

Jake dumped the last of the homemade potato chips into a bowl and handed them to the white-shirted undergrad who was probably being paid pennies to serve as a waiter at this thing. She smiled and thanked him in a breathy voice. He grunted in response.

“Charming the ladies, as always.”

Jake turned to Will, who was arranging tomato pastry things on a tray. Another undergrad came and swept it up as soon as he was finished.

“Can’t help it,” Jake said, snatching one off the tray as it left the kitchen.

“Hey, those are for the guests,” scolded Will.

“Mmm . . . what a waste. You got any more?”

“There’s a container of them at home. You’ll have to fight your mother for them.”

“Is she here? I thought this was a faculty thing,” Jake asked around a mouthful of tomato pastry thing.

“Yes, but you know how she likes to make sure everyone is getting along,” Will said with a smile. For a big guy, he sure had a soft spot for Jake’s mother. That was a good quality in a husband, Jake acknowledged, even though part of him wished his father would be that guy.

“She’ll get roped into cleaning up,” Jake said, crankily.

“No, she won’t.” Will leveled a gaze at Jake. “You seem to have this idea that just because your mother is nice, she has no backbone.”

Jake shrugged. “I just don’t want these people to push her around.”

Will shook his head. “Jake, you’re a snob.”

“I’m a snob?” Jake waved a hand at his jeans and T-shirt. “Does a snob wear work boots?”

“Thanks for dressing up, by the way,” said Will with a tilt of his eyebrow.

“I just didn’t want to be mistaken for a poor, underpaid, Pembroke scholarship student.”

Will rolled his eyes. “I appreciate your help all the same. I didn’t want your mother helping me load all this food in here. I know she wanted to be out there.” He waved his hands in the general direction of the party.

“Yeah, well, I’m doing everybody favors lately,” said Jake.

“Why is that, Jake? Housing market still that bad?”

Jake shrugged. “It’s getting better. I just haven’t found anything that calls out to me, you know?”

“And you’re enjoying being a bum?”

“Hey, if I could get away with being a bum, I would. But the women in this family have other ideas. Maybe I should take on a new project, even if I’m not inspired. It’d probably be less work.”

Will just smiled and chopped a pile of sundried tomatoes. When Jake stood there, watching him, Will tossed him a peeler and pointed him toward a basket of apples.

“I saw your father today,” Will said.

Jake gave Will a wary glance. Will and Jake’s father didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Maybe because they were both in love with his mother. And Will was the one married to her.

“He said he hasn’t seen you in a while.”

That was true. Jake loved his father, but he was hard to be around. If Grace thought
he
had a chip on his shoulder, she should meet Don.

Not that she’d be meeting Don. But in comparison, Jake was an angel.

Don had been an okay father, but he spent a lot of time in his shop. He would come home regaling them with stories of incompetent professors who didn’t even know that a car had oil, let alone that it needed to be changed, and how Don was happy to take their money. His mother always chided him—she worked for those professors, after all. Which always led to a fight, that Marilyn didn’t think Don was good enough for her, that she would rather be with one of those eggheads than a man who worked hard to provide for his family.

Of course, the fact that Don couldn’t keep his hands to himself didn’t help.

They finally split up when Mary Beth went off to college. It was amicable, as far as divorces go. Marilyn didn’t ask for anything from Don, and he just slunk back to his shop, where he could be a miserable bastard in peace.

And aside from the fact that Don drank too much at family gatherings and tried to pick fights with Will, it was fine. Will never took the bait. Well, almost never. A few Christmases ago, Don got into the whiskey and started saying not-very-flattering things about Marilyn, and Will laid him out with one swift punch. Jake didn’t blame him. If Will hadn’t been there, Jake would have done it himself.

So, no, he didn’t see his father much. “I’ll stop by this weekend.”

“Good. I think someone needs to check up on him every now and then, and I’d prefer if it wasn’t Marilyn.” Will wasn’t jealous, Jake was pretty sure. But they both knew his mother had a soft spot for sorry cases, and Don was about as sorry as they come.

“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me assemble canapés?”

“Ugh, no. I should go.” Jake didn’t really have any plans this evening, but beer and TV sounded a lot better than hanging around in the kitchen while a bunch of academics whipped out their degrees at each other.

The door swung open, and a third undergrad came in with an empty tray. As the door swung on its hinges, Jake got a look at the crowd. Standing in the middle of a group of stuffy cardigans, he caught sight of Grace, her hair swept up off her neck and wearing a dark red dress that clung in all the right places.

He could hang out for a minute.

Grace wanted to find the dean’s caterer and marry him or else get him to somehow cater her life. She’d been to faculty do’s before, although hers were mostly of the happy hour variety and involved paying for your own drinks. Here, there were actual waiters—students, she imagined—and a small bar with more than one choice of wine.

And the house was gorgeous. It was like her charming Victorian dollhouse on steroids. The details, such as sconces and window treatments, were impeccable. The furniture looked antique, and if the way the dean’s wife was walking around putting coasters under everyone’s drink was any indication, it was. The carpet was a gorgeous off-white, and Grace was torn between taking off her shoes to do a little comfy-feet dance or switching to white wine. The more she thought about spilling, the more she wished she had a coaster so she could put her drink down.

Grace was the only new English professor this year, but there were new faculty in other departments. She had a brief conversation with a fine arts professor, who talked about movement and story and string, and also how he had a student last year who crocheted an Andy Warhol-inspired Mona Lisa installation, which Grace thought sounded kind of cool. Then Grace got distracted by a cheese puff and she lost him.

She was quickly drawn into a conversation with Helen Lee, Pembroke reference librarian, who had read Grace’s book and admired it. But, like every woman Grace had ever met, Helen wanted to argue the importance of love in Jane Austen.

“I’m not saying that love is not important to the novels,” said Grace, almost by rote at this point. “It’s just that we get all distracted by the in-love-with-a-rich-man part, and we overlook the elements of her writing that truly make her a master.”

“I know you’re right,” Helen sighed. “I agree with everything you say in the book about form and character and plot. But the thing that keeps bringing me back to Jane is not her creative syntax.”

“It’s Mr. Darcy,” Grace finished. She was familiar with this argument.

Helen laughed. “Fine, you be the soulless academic, I’ll be the fawning devotee.”

Grace smiled and they were interrupted by a young man in a bow tie who wanted to know if Helen had heard that Professor Johnson had broken up with her husband, who was apparently a prominent journalist.

“It was the Oxford comma,” he said.

Helen smiled and rolled her eyes. “Hi, Henry. Grace, this is Henry Beckham, History Department.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Grace, shaking his outstretched hand.

“Grace Williams? I’ve actually been looking forward to meeting you,” said Henry. “I’m interested in local history, and I understand you bought the Spinster House?”

Grace choked on her wine. “The what?” she croaked out.

“That’s not the Spinster House,” said Helen. “The Spinster House is that one up on Walnut. The one that’s falling apart. Hey, Grace, if you need any work done on your house, you have to call this guy Jake. He’s terrific. And he’s gorgeous. Sorry, Henry.”

“Jake’s okay,” said Henry. “Not really my type. But you’re wrong, Helen. I believe the provenance has been purposely misdirected.”

“Because why would anyone try to hide the fact that they live in a place called the ‘Spinster House’?” Grace asked, sarcastic, but alarmed. She joked about being a spinster all the time, but first Mr. Bingley, whose opinion she was beginning to rely on, and now this? Was this town conspiring to keep her single forever?

And why wasn’t she happy about that?

“The realtor didn’t tell you the story? Who sold you the house?”

“Mary Beth Brakefield.”

“I know her,” Henry said. “I mean, I called her to tell her what a goldmine she had on her hands, but she was convinced, as you were, Helen, that the Spinster House is on Walnut Street. But it’s not, I can prove it if—”

“Hold on.” Grace reached for another glass of wine from a passing waitress. “What is this Spinster House anyway? Did I just buy an ancient home for decrepit single women? Please don’t tell me they’re buried in the back yard.”

“No, no,” Henry laughed. “Nothing so sinister. The house was built, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, in the very early years of the twentieth century. This area was in the middle of a logging boom. And with industrial booms come captains of industry and their families. Nelson Summers had a big family, and one particularly troublesome daughter, Ree.”

“Ree Summers was awesome,” Helen piped in. “She’s an icon. She did all the usual charity stuff women of her station were expected to do, but she didn’t quite follow the rules, you know? Instead of sitting on the board of the Foundling Hospital, she volunteered there. Instead of just giving money to workers’ charities, she threw the mill workers and their families a huge Thanksgiving party every year. And she wore pants.”

“Scandal!” Grace liked the sound of Ree Summers. She would like to have known her.

“She also had a reputation for being bull-headed,” added Henry.

Helen dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “That’s what they always say about women with opinions.”

“So she built a house.” Henry ignored Helen and continued. “She chose a less-savory part of town, although it was by no means dangerous. She had everything built to her exacting specifications, even though she was repeatedly told that they made no sense. I have several letters between her and the builder. They’re quite fascinating.”