Like Sweet Potato Pie (46 page)

Lee Ann the receptionist glanced up at me, face wrinkling into a scowl of dead hate, and turned stiffly back to her work. She swiveled her back to me in emphasis.

“Well.” I coughed back a laugh. “Thanks for the help.”

I don’t know why, but Lee Ann’s coldness struck me as funny. I should have been offended, but it had become a sort of game to me. Not a spiritual one, mind you. More of an internal bet. I kept a tally list on my cubicle wall of her jabs—and sometimes complimented her shirt or her hair just to add another tick.

Sick, I suppose. But that’s what served for humor in a setting where I wrote up custody battles and domestic disputes.

“Clarence?” I rapped on the mail-room door and pushed it open.

“Heya, Shannon.” He shut the microwave and punched in eleven seconds. I’d heard about this “eleven seconds” quirk; apparently it was true.

“Shiloh.” I held out my package. The second one I was sending to Ashley with, so far, no response. “Could you weigh it for me?”

“Oh, sure, sure.” The microwave dinged, and Clarence pulled out his cracked I’
M
-N
OT
-I
RISH
-B
UT
-K
ISS
-M
E
-A
NYWAY
mug. He grinned as he took a sip, his wrinkled cheeks bulging against wild whitish-gray hair. “Now we’re talkin’. Eleven seconds does it just right.”

“Root beer. You heat root beer in the microwave.” It came out as a statement rather than a question.

“Yep. Nothin’ better in the world. Wanna try some?”

“No thanks.” I handed him my box. “I’ll just … mail this and get back to work.”

“What’s in it this time? More baby stuff?” His grin widened into something bordering on a leer, and he shook the box.

“Yes.” I checked my watch. “If you don’t mind, I’m kind of in a hurry.”

The name
Clarence
conjured up images of a charming, elderly British gentleman, but Clarence Toyer was neither charming nor British. Although he did wear a bow tie. Every day. Each day’s uglier, if possible, than the previous. One so hideous that the office secretary spilled a cup of coffee when she saw him.

“You havin’ a baby, Sherry?” Clarence’s teeth gleamed yellow like an old piano.

“If I were, why would I be sending stuff to Chicago?” I slapped the bills down on the table as the meter rang up the postage. “And my name’s Shiloh.”

Big, big, big mistake.

I learned that day that Clarence was also the source of every major rumor that spread through
The Leader
staff.

“This is ridiculous!” I threw down my pencil when Meg the photographer came by to congratulate me on my supposed pregnancy. Meg, mind you, christened “Mary Margaret” by her staunch Irish parents in hopes of devoting her to the church as a nun. Fat chance for that. “Why would Matt say something like that?”

Meg tilted her head sideways, her nearly waist-length hair splaying over her rows of hemp-braided necklaces and beads. “I dunno. Said he heard it down in the mail room.”

I opened my mouth to spew out a torrent of threats when I caught a whiff of something pungent and foul drifting from Meg’s mug.

“What is that?” I turned my head to gasp fresh air.

“Sassafras and cayenne pepper.” Meg peered into the darkish depths. “Mixed with some homemade brew my boyfriend Cooter makes in a still.”

She shook the mug at me, making the tiny bells on her billowy bohemian-print skirt jingle. “Want some? It’s better for you than your Japanese green stuff. In fact, tea leaves are probably carcinogenic, too. And if you are pregnant, by any chance, then—”

“I’m not pregnant, Meg!” I gripped my head in my hands. “That package was for my half sister! Next time I see Clarence I’ll …”

“Did you deny it?”

“What? Of course not! I didn’t think he meant it!”

“You have to be really careful with Clarence.” She smiled down at me breezily as if this happened all the time. “Deny
everything.
You’re a reporter, Jacobs! You should know that. Even if you’re lying, there’s always some sucker out there who’ll believe you if you deny it.”

I threw back my chair and grabbed the marker under my white message board. And wrote I
’M NOT PREGNANT!
in big block letters. “There. Is that denial enough?”

I slapped the cap on the marker then refilled my green-tea cup and tried to focus on my newest crime story—a drug and firearms arrest in Verona. I was staring at the screen, trying to come up with a lead, when the desk phone rang.

I answered with my usual “
News-Leader
-this-is-Shiloh-Jacobs” bit, still punching in stuff on my keyboard with my left hand.

“Uh … hey.”

The office froze to an eerie silence. “Ashley?”

“Yeah.” A weak laugh bleated across the line. “It’s me.”

I took a breath, willing myself to say something nice. Something civil, at least. “How did you get my work number?”

A baby jabbered in the background, filling in the dead weight of the line while Ashley stayed there, not speaking. “Do you want me to hang up?”

“No, no. I was just … curious.”

“Google search.”

We just sat there not speaking until I felt uncomfortable. “Did you … uh … get the …”

“The package? Yes. Thanks. That was really … you know. Nice. Of you.”

For goodness’ sake! We sounded like robots on an awkward first date. I scrunched my eyes closed and tried to think of something to say.

“I … uh … just sent another package for you.” I fiddled with my pen. Picked up my teacup and sipped it nervously.

“Really? Well, you don’t have to send it, you know. If you don’t want to.”

“Well, I want to. Is that all right?”

“Why, Shiloh? Why are you being so nice after everything mean you said in that horrible letter?”

“Mean? You were the one who called me a selfish monster, as I recall.”

“And pregnant,” tittered Meg on her way to the watercooler.

I glared at Meg and scooted farther inside my cubicle. Pressed the phone to my ear and quieted my voice, even though the Dilbert comic strip promised that attracted eavesdroppers in droves.

“Mom did write a letter about Carson and wanting to get to know him better,” said Ashley, her voice hard and reluctant, like pulling out splinters. “She said she’d changed and wanted to be different, and … Whatever. Maybe she didn’t mean to include him in her will. I must have … you know. Misunderstood her intentions.”

“Oh. Misunderstood.” I rolled my eyes.

“Anyway, I just want to know why you suddenly decided to be nice.”

I let out a long sigh, setting down my teacup so hard it almost spilled. “Ashley, it’s not that I suddenly decided anything. I just wanted Carson—and you—to know I still care about you.” It was hard, but I got it out.

“You didn’t sound like it last time.”

“Why, because I’m not going to fork over my inheritance to you? You lied to me. You forged papers. You have no idea what stress that’s caused me over the past few months.”

“Oh, please. You’re always so dramatic. I don’t want your inheritance or Mom’s dumb old … Mom’s house, okay?
Your
house. Forget it. Keep it. I could care less.”

“Then what do you want? What did you mean by all that lawyer garbage?”

“Nothing. Forgive me,” she said with a sarcastic laugh. “I didn’t know family had to hold a press conference to ask questions! But then again, you probably don’t consider me family anyway. So be it.”

Oh boy.
I put my head in my hands and offered up a quick prayer for God to FIX THIS, fast. For Him to make something out of our mess before it got any way worse because our conversation was already skidding downhill. Sort of like sledding at Mary Baldwin, but with sharks at the bottom instead of snow.

I tapped my pen on the desk as I racked my brain to think of something, anything, that could make sense of Ashley’s twisted logic. She had a scheme of some sort; and as usual, I had to figure it out.

Expenses. Expensive.
I recalled the way she’d repeated that word on the phone.

“Ashley, are you guys doing okay financially?” I blurted. “It’s none of my business, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. You just seem to be … Ashley?”

I heard what sounded like sniffling on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

“I’m here,” she snapped, voice choked.

“Well.” I scratched my head. “I don’t know what’s going on over there. Can you … um … help me out? Everything okay?”

If I’d ever believed in the power of God, it was right at this moment. The old me would have hung up on Ashley and thrown the phone out the window by now.

“Everything’s
not
okay!” she retorted angrily. “Wade lost his job. He got laid off six months ago and still hasn’t found a job. And I quit mine to take care of Carson. So for your information, no! We’re not okay. Wade’s going to run out of unemployment soon, and we still have nothing.”

I hesitated for a second to judge if Ashley was lying again. But my gut told me that for once, she spoke the truth.

“Wade lost his job?” I ran my hand through my hair. “Ashley, why didn’t you say something?” Fresh anger seethed through me.

“I tried to! But you didn’t want to hear it!”

“That’s not what happened, and you know it!” I shook my head. “Did it ever occur to you that if you’d just asked, maybe I’d help you?”

I heard more sniffling on the other end and then the baby gurgling morph into a cry. Plaintive at first then loud and angry. Ashley covered the phone, speaking to a muffled male voice I could barely make out.
Wade.
Indeed at home and not at work.

“No. The other one. Over there.”

“Huh?”

“Sorry. I’m talking to Wade.” Ashley sniffed again then made a nose-blowing sound.

“I’m really sorry, Ashley. I thought you guys had plenty of money. I mean, you have your own house.”

“Our own house? We’ve got a fixer-upper, Shiloh! Have you ever seen the pictures? And it needs more fixing-upping than we can deal with right now. We’re behind on the roofing payments. The furnace keeps going out.”

“What about Dad? Hasn’t he helped you at all?” I knew Dad had a fairly close relationship with Ashley—at least closer than I did. Which meant they actually spoke.

“Dad bought us this house,” said Ashley bitterly.

So Dad gave Ashley a house, and Mom gave me one. Funny. Perhaps Mom left me the house on purpose, to ensure I was cared for, too.

“Dad’s done a lot for us, Shiloh. I can’t keep asking for more, especially now that he’s putting Tanzania back through school. She’s decided to be a doctor. And of course he pays for Sam and Sarah to go to private school.”

“Who?”

“Tanzania’s kids.”

Wow. Ashley’d just told me more information about my paternal side in one minute than I’d heard in three years. I opened my desk drawer, still trying to take it all in, and pulled out a package of seaweed-flavored Japanese
osembei
rice crackers.

“What about Wade’s family?” I asked in midcrunch.

“They don’t have money. They gave us a sippy cup as a baby gift. Really, Shiloh. A plastic one from Wal-Mart.”

The baby wailed again, and Ashley blew out her breath angrily. “Listen, you can just forget all of this, okay? I don’t know why I called. I guess I just wanted to say I’m sorry and thank you. And … that’s it. Have a nice life, okay?”

And she hung up.

I sat there staring at my computer screen, unseeing, cursor blinking away at the end of my last line of text. The sound of tittering startled me.

“Congratulations, Shiloh!” Matt the intern poked his chubby head into my cubicle. His shoulder-length hair shivered as he reached for my limp hand and pumped it.

“Congratulations for what?” I bit into another rice cracker and glared. “Having my half sister hang up on me?”

He gave my crackers a look and stepped back, the way I did with Meg’s stinky tea mug.

“Well, if you think that’s a congratulatory event. By all means, imbibe in the festivities.”

Great. Matt the vocabulary show-off. I’m not in the mood for it.
“Rice cracker?” I held out the package.

He grimaced. “No thanks. But congratulations.”

Congratulations on what? Being the weirdest person on staff?
No, that would go hands down to Clarence.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to my crime story, but after the third or fourth person had giggled outside my cubicle and put presents on my desk (mostly junk around the office like paperweights and coffee creamer, but still …), I got worried. I went on patrol around my cubicle and found nothing unusual. Until I saw my message board.

Somebody had erased
NOT.

W
hen the snow finally melted in giant, gaping patches, I noticed the grass underneath: fresh and green, alive with glorious, tender life, all spangled with opening crocuses like fallen stars. Everything bloomed in an unexpected early warm spell—fragrant yellow daffodils, lacy pink redbud trees, peach and apple blossoms. The trees budded and began to unfurl delicate leaves, and I threw my head back to inhale lungfuls of fresh spring air. Joyful throbs of light after too-long winter.

Yomiuri Shimbun
called to tell me they’d resolved the housing issue and would send tickets within two weeks. I scheduled a meeting to give Kevin my notice Wednesday morning and begged Becky to take Christie for me until she could find a good home.

The mountains turned to green lace. Creeks swelled with melted snow.

And my favorite of all: grape hyacinths that poked up through the winter-bare earth of my flower bed, perfuming the air with their little purple-blue spires of chubby bells.

I told Faye if I ever got married I’d use nothing but grape hyacinths and Mom’s roses. Just thousands of them, stuffed in every vase, jar, and bouquet imaginable.

“Daffodils,” said Faye. “That’s what I want.”

Good thing because they’re everywhere. Rivers of yellow, spilling along the roadsides in butter-colored bliss.