Love Mercy (26 page)

While they ate, Love told her about what happened to August. She listened intently, not commenting until Love was finished.

“So, he’s got Alzheimer’s?” Rett said.

“We don’t actually know yet. He needs to be tested. I looked some stuff up on the Internet, and there are apparently many types of dementia. It could be any one of them.”

“But the problem is the same, no matter what kind he has?”

Love nodded. “About their living situation? Yes, it is.”

“That sucks.”

Though she’d never really liked that word, she had to admit it perfectly described the situation. “Yes, Rett, it definitely does.”

“So, how can I help?” she asked, cutting a pie wedge of pancake and putting it into her mouth.

Love inhaled deeply before answering. They were getting along so well, but her question demanded the truth. “Getting this situation with Dale straightened out would help the most.”

She scowled. “I’m working on it.”

“Telling him you’ll accuse him of child molestation is not working on it. It’s putting gasoline on an already huge fire.”

“He deserves to be the freaked-out one for a change.”

“I might agree with that, but you need to look at the larger picture. What would help the most is for you to give him back his banjo and let bygones be bygones.”

“That’s a stupid saying. What’s a bygone anyway?”

“Rett, don’t change the subject.”

“Whatever.”

Love bit the end off a strip of crisp bacon. “You asked how you could help, and I told you. What you really want is to dictate how you can help.”

She shrugged and didn’t answer, but the word
whatever
lingered unspoken in the air between them. Love wondered briefly if there was a way to vote a word out of the English language. Parents of adolescents everywhere would surely write their name on a petition to rid the world of that irritating word.

“Okay,” Love said. “Let’s just put all our cards on the table right now. Are you planning on staying for very long?”

She cut another piece of pancake and studied it for a moment before putting it in her mouth. “Don’t know.”

“That’s not a good enough answer. As you saw last night, I need to start making plans, and if you’re going to stay, you’ll need to be part of those plans.”

“I might go down to L.A. Or maybe to Nashville.”

Love’s heart dropped, but she was determined not to let her disappointment show. “You’re a grown woman, so you certainly have the right to go where you want. I just need to know so I can make plans.”

“I might, umm . . .” Her sentence dropped off into a garbled mutter.

“Excuse me,” Love said, leaning forward. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

She looked up, her round eyes unblinking. “I said I might have to get a job before I move on. I’m kinda broke.”

Was it horrible, Love thought, to be thrilled at her granddaughter’s financial dilemma? She would have to stay for however long it took her to earn the money to leave.

“That makes perfect sense,” Love said calmly. “You getting a job, I mean. Exactly how much money do you have, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Her eyes shifted to the side. “Some.”

Okay, she wasn’t going to give Love that. “All right, how about I loan you fifty dollars to tide you over while you look for a job? You’re welcome to stay here, free room and board, as long as you help out around the house.”

She considered Love’s words. “Like doing what?”

Love stood up and took her empty breakfast plate to the sink. “You know, help with the dishes, keep your room clean, walk Ace. I have a gardener come once a month to do the yard, and really, there’s not much maintenance to this house. You seem to be pretty neat . . .”

She sat up straight. “I am.”

“And so am I. So living together shouldn’t be very hard. The only thing I do request is that through the holidays you participate in things, like going out today to your great-grandparents’ and helping them decorate their tree.”

“Oh, that’s fun stuff,” she said, picking up her plate. “I don’t mind.”

“Then I’d say the first thing on your agenda is taking care of this problem with Dale—” Before Love could finish, the phone rang. Was she ever going to finish a conversation with Rett about this Dale?

“A happy Sunday morning to you, Love,” Clint said. “I call with glad tidings and good news.”

“Great,” Love said, watching her granddaughter rinse off the plates and open the dishwasher door. “I could use some good news.”

“I contacted Mr. Dale Bailey and, as they say in the legal biz, we cut a deal.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, we had a nice conversation with me doing most of the talking about things like how you should treat women, how the law might be interpreted in certain circumstances, and a few other things that randy young men should consider before jumping into relationships with girls under the age of consent. Offered to pay his hotel bill and meals for the next three days. That gives you time to talk your granddaughter into handing over the stolen goods.”

Love swore if Clint had been standing in front of her, she would have given him a bear hug. “That really is good news. I think we’re only inches away from that.” Rett walked out of the room, and Love lowered her voice. “I know where the banjo is, so if worse comes to worst, I’ll give it to him and face my granddaughter’s wrath.”

“But at least she won’t be a jailbird.”

“Yes and that’s my biggest goal right now. Having some kind of relationship with her might have to take a backseat to that.” She gave a big sigh. “Clint, I owe you forever for this. Thank you.”

“No problem. Got to watch out for my employees. What’re her plans after she gives back the banjo?”

“She’ll be here a little while because she just informed me she’s broke and needs to find a job.”

“I could have her work in the office here. Skye could use someone to help catch up on our filing.”

Love contemplated that a moment, then said, “No, I think it would be better if she found one herself. It would be too easy for me to smooth that path for her, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the best start to our relationship.”

“Wise woman. Just let me know if I can do anything else to help.”

“You’ve done so much already. Again, thank you.”

“My pleasure. Talk to you soon.”

She stared at the phone for a moment, listening to the dial tone. What Clint did truly was above and beyond the call of duty for a boss and a friend. It caused her to remember something that Cy had told her during the months before he died.

“That boss of yours,” he’d said. “You listen to him. He’s a nice fella. I like him a lot. He’s one to consider, Lovebug, when you start looking again.”

Her chest grew tight, remembering the silly nickname he gave her early in their relationship. “Don’t you dare talk like that, Cyrus Johnson,” she’d said. “You act like you’re trying to set me up.”

He’d given her his familiar lopsided grin. It seemed to reach from ear to ear, covering his face, which seemed wider and rounder with the loss of his thick, bushy hair. “I’ll put the judge on the list of possibilities.” He winked at her and mimed writing on his palm.

“Eat your banana pudding, you crazy man,” Love had replied, laughing through her tears, wondering how in the world she would ever live without him. “Or I swear I’ll throw it to the pigs.”

TWENTY

W
ould you like to come to church with me?” Love asked Rett. Her voice was neutral, but Rett could tell by her eyes that she wanted her to say yes.

“Okay,” Rett said, surprising them both.

“We’re pretty casual at Baytown Christian,” Love said. “You can dress any way you like.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “Well, I mean ...”

“No worries, Grandma,” Rett said. “I won’t wear anything that’ll make the front-row ladies call the prayer chain.”

An expression of surprise swept over her grandma’s face, then she smiled and winked at Rett, acknowledging the truth to what she said. Rett really liked her grandma’s smile. She probably thinks she hides what she feels, Rett thought, but she had a face like an open book. Then Rett chided herself and tried to think of something that wasn’t a cliché. Like Morro Rock. Her face was as open as Morro Rock, like something you couldn’t avoid seeing.

The minute they walked into the small brown and white wooden church—Baytown Christian Fellowship—Rett liked it. There were about seventy-five or eighty people there, most of them old, like her grandma, some even older, like in their seventies or eighties. They were a combination of white people and Hispanics, something that sort of surprised her, though she didn’t know why. This was California, after all. There was only one black person, a really old lady wearing a lavender hat with netting and fake flowers. She was playing the wheezy old organ.

The simple lines of the building and the smooth wooden pews reminded her of the little churches throughout the South where the Son Sisters sang when they first started. That was before Mom went all crazy and thought they had the potential to become famous and make tons of money. Those churches never paid them outright but instead took up a “love offering.” It was always exciting to watch Mom count it afterward, trying to guess the amount. It was never much and certainly never enough for Mom, but it helped with gas and sometimes a motel. Churches always volunteered housing, staying in someone’s den-turned-guest-room or the bedroom left vacant by a child off to college or the military, but Mama preferred a motel, where she said they could let their hair down, which meant she could smoke a cigarette.

Rett and her sisters liked the motels because they usually had pools and Coke machines, though they’d stayed in some pretty weird ones. The funniest was the one in Alabama that looked like little cabins. Faith spilled Coke on the bedsheet, and when they pulled it off to wash, they discovered there was graffiti written with purple felt-tip pen on the mattress: Wanda loves Bobby. They laughed so hard their stomachs ached.

The food was always wonderful at those church gatherings: homemade angel food cakes, maple-cured ham and butter beans, oniony hush puppies, fried chicken and sour cream biscuits the size of compact discs. During the time between Mom’s second and third husbands, they struggled for money, but they had fun. Back then, Mom sometimes harmonized along with them on songs, though never in public.

“You babies will be the stars,” she’d tell them. “My time has passed.”

Rett followed her grandma to the third pew on the right and slid in next to her. She liked churches with permanent pews. They felt real, not like you were sitting at a school assembly like so many modern churches felt like now. She pulled out one of the hymnals and was humming the song on page one, “How Great Thou Art,” when a familiar voice called out her name.

“Rett!” Rocky said.

Her head came up, her bottom lip dropping open in surprise. “Uh, hi.”

“How wonderful to see you and your
abuela
on this fine winter morning.” He bent over and gave Love a hug, holding out his free hand to Rett.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” she said, shaking his hand. “I mean, to see you again.”

She was surprised, though maybe she shouldn’t have been. He’d given her an old church program, and she remembered sticking it in her backpack without a glance. If she had looked at the name of the church, she would have recognized it. But the church sign outside said the pastor’s name was Roberto Sanchez, and he’d introduced himself as Rocky. It was kinda spooky when you thought about it, the coincidence of this being her grandma Love’s church. There ain’t no kind of coincidences on God’s earth, Brother Dwaine would have told her. It’s Divine Providence. Maybe he was right.

“Hope you’re able to visit us here in Morro Bay a little while,” he said, then moved on to greet some old ladies behind them. She hoped that since he didn’t make a big deal about meeting her before, he wouldn’t make some kind of announcement from the pulpit about her visiting her grandma.

He didn’t, so she settled into the pew, thinking she’d just let her mind drift away while waiting for the service to end. But she didn’t. First, the special music was pretty awesome with two old guys on a guitar and a fiddle, the old black lady rocking out on the organ and a cute guy in his twenties with spiky black hair who was the real musician. He played a beat-up old Gibson guitar and performed a few unexpected licks that made her lean closer to watch his fingers. He was good, far better than the other musicians, but he was cool about it. He gave them their time, respected their ability and never stopped smiling even when the old fiddler dude fumbled the song’s timing and the young guy had to really think fast to recapture his own time and place in the song. They played a combination of old-time hymns and a couple of praise songs that weren’t all boring and singsong.

She was glad that Rocky was of the “if you can’t say it in a half hour, it probably isn’t worth saying” group of ministers. It was a group she thought was way too small. She’d endured her fair share of preachers who made their point the first twenty minutes of their sermon and then spent the next hour and a half repeating it over and over with slightly different words, like “Dueling Banjos” set on perpetual repeat.

“God often doesn’t answer our prayers, at least right off,” Rocky stated, once he took the pulpit. “And that really annoys me sometimes.”

Rett found herself fascinated by his gravelly Johnny Cash voice, one that sounded like a real person who’d been through tough times. He probably sounded like rocks in a washing machine when he sang.

“Here’s some reasons why I think he might do that. We’ll be studying this subject in depth through January, but I’ll just lay out the facts for you right now, so you can ponder them. Remember, my e-mail is always open to discuss anything I talk about. Or come on down to the barbershop. My coffeepot is always on. Don’t be afraid to give me your input. We’re all learning together here.”