Restless in Carolina (5 page)

“Something wrong?” Savannah asks as I snap my phone closed.

“You know them Pickwicks,” Georgia mutters from where she’s urging a hill of hair into a dustpan. “There’s always something wrong.”

That’s an exaggeration—mostly. “I need to get going. Mind if I square up with you tomorrow when you wrestle this mess into something presentable?”

Though worry remains on Savannah’s brow, she says, “Sure. Same time?”

Since three employees are scheduled to work the nursery tomorrow, I think I can manage to stay out of sight until then. “Same time. See you tomorrow.”

“Not me. I’m done.”

Georgia will get no argument from me.

“You be blessed, you hear?” Savannah calls as I push through the front door.

One foot on the sidewalk, I hesitate over those words that ought to roll off me like water off a duck’s back. Exactly how does one go about being blessed?
By recognizing a blessing when it’s staring you in the face
.

I turn and look from sister to sister. “Thank you, Savannah … Georgia. It was kind of you to stay after hours.”

Savannah breaks into a smile. “Our pleasure.”

Georgia shrugs.

Shortly, I leave the town square behind, point myself toward Pickwick Pike, and make a call to Piper, who’s on the verge of calling the police.

I
don’t expect to find my uncle on the pike, certain like Piper that he’s somewhere on the property. Thus, when I catch sight of a white-haired, orange-robed figure walking slowly alongside the road, heading in the direction I’m coming from, it takes a moment to react. Then I’m whipping a U-turn and fumbling for my phone as my headlights illuminate his backside and the slight limp that is back despite last year’s knee replacement.

“He’s walking down the pike,” I say. As Piper starts thanking the Lord, I talk over her. “I’ll bring him home.” More Lord thanking. I snap the phone closed.

“Uncle Obe,” I call as I step from the truck.

He turns and shields his eyes against the glare of headlights. “Who’s there?”

“Bridget.” I jog toward him.

“Bridget?”

I hurt for the question in his voice. It’s not the kind rooted in disbelief, but the “Bridget who?” kind. “Your niece, Bridget.” I halt before him.

“My niece. Niece?”

I put an arm around his shoulder, and frustration runs through me at how feeble this six-foot-three man feels alongside my five-foot-six frame. There’s about as much justice in that as there is in making a happily married young woman a widow. And Piper wants to praise the Lord.

As I urge Uncle Obe toward my truck, he says, “You don’t look like Bridget.”

“I ditched the dreads.”

“The what?”

“I changed my hairstyle.”

He squints at me. “You don’t wear it in a b-braid anymore?”

What year is he in? I haven’t worn a braid since long before I went into dreads. “It’s been awhile.”

“What’s this?” he says when I pull open the passenger door.

“My truck.”

“Yours?” Out from the headlights, there isn’t enough light to see his frown, but it’s in his voice.

“Yep.” I pat his back. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

He chuckles. “You’re funnin’ me. Now, come on, where’s that bicycle of yours?”

He’s certainly not stuck in any of my high school years. Maybe not even middle school.
See, God? You let stuff like this happen to good people and expect me to love on You. What do You take me for?

“Why, I don’t know the last time I rode in a truck.” Uncle Obe runs a hand over the worn seat. “She’s an old one.”

“But a goodie. Even gets decent mileage, all things considered.”

“Ford?”

“That’s right.”

He lets me help him into the cab, doesn’t appear the least surprised when his bicycle-riding niece climbs into the driver’s seat, and sighs as I swing the truck around. “I like ridin’ up high.”

“Me too.”

Though he doesn’t speak again until I pull the truck through the estate’s
gated entrance, the air thickens with his anxious thoughts, and I guess he’s back from whatever beckoned him onto the pike.

“I’m afraid, Bridget.”

Did You hear that up there? A grown man afraid. And he still believes in You. And why am I talking to You anyway?

As I negotiate the brightly lit driveway that winds upward to the mansion, I look at Uncle Obe. “No reason to be afraid. I’m here.”

“That’s the problem.” He rests his head against the window. “I don’t rightly know how I got here with you. One minute I’m in bed, the next …”

I try not to reach to him, not because of the issues I have with personal space, but because a show of sympathy can upset him when he’s in this state. Still, I put my hand on his arm.

“It will be too late,” he says. “If ever.”

As the incline increases near the top of the driveway, I give the Ford more gas. “What, Uncle Obe?”

“My little ones.”

Antonio and Daisy. But his children aren’t little. They’re in their early thirties like me. “You’ll hear from them soon,” I say, although I have no business doing so. After all, they’ve been estranged for thirty years. If my father had chosen an inheritance over me, could I forgive him? True, they were young when their mother wearied of waiting for Uncle Obe’s father to pass away so they could be a family, but it has to hurt that he placed money before them, especially if they’re unaware of his sacrifice—that most of his wealth was drained off to keep his three brothers, my father included, out of financial trouble when they were cut from my grandfather’s will for scandalous behavior.

“I don’t know,” Uncle Obe says as I brake in front of the mansion
where Piper and her fiancé, Axel, await us on the steps. “It’s been months since I sent them that l-letter. Maybe they wrote me off.”

Times like these, it would be merciful if the dementia had him fully in its grip so he wouldn’t know any better. But the disease is cruel, preferring to play with its food while it slowly eats him alive.

I open my door. “No, I don’t believe they’ve written you off. You’ll hear from them.”

Too bad saying it doesn’t make it so. Of course, my mother would disagree. She leans toward the “speak into existence”—say it again and again and it will happen—philosophy of life. With the caveat of prayer, of course. Unfortunately, her speaking into existence doesn’t have a very good track record, especially where my father is concerned.

As I come around the truck, Axel opens the passenger door and reaches in to assist my uncle. “Did you have a nice walk, Obe?” he asks as if it were an intentional late-night outing.

“I’d have to remember it for it to have been nice,” my uncle grumbles.

Axel looks at me. Midshrug, he widens his eyes. Before I can translate his reaction, Piper gasps, staring at me from the bottom step, a hand over her mouth.

The hair. I don’t know how I forgot, especially since my head hurts all over.

As Axel recovers sufficiently to lead Uncle Obe up the steps, I lean against the front fender and wait for Piper. Like me, she’s also cautious about setting off our uncle with a show of concern. She tells him she’ll be in to fix him some tea, then crosses to me and looks up from her three-inch deficit. Not that I’m tall. She’s just short, and shorter yet considering my thick-soled Crocs.

Her eyes pick at my hair in the light cast by the numerous bulbs that shine up the face of the mansion. And it annoys me, but as I’m about to say so, she shakes her head. “I’m wonderin’ ”—for once, she doesn’t wince at the return of her drawl—“what happened to my dreadlocked Barbie-doll cousin.”

Despite the circumstances that brought me here tonight, I feel a smile. Though she and I clashed when she first returned to Pickwick after trading in our hometown for Los Angeles twelve years ago—chalk it up to the pickled corn incident—I’ve gotten to like her. For the most part.

I smooth a hand over my hair and grimace at the oiliness of the conditioner. “I had myself undreaded. Came straight from the beauty shop to find Uncle Obe.”

She glances over her shoulder at where our slump-shouldered uncle is entering the mansion. “Thank you, Bridget. Lord knows what would have—”

“Yeah, well, he’s home safe and sound.” I push off the fender. “Which is where I ought to be.”

“I need help,” she says with unexpected force.

“With?”

“Uncle Obe. I won’t put him in a memory-care unit, but I have to do something.”

“I thought you hired someone.”

She nods. “Ida Newbottom.”

That’s right—ex-champion hog wrestler turned nurse, now retired.

“She’s odd, but does a good job. The problem is, she can’t give me more than twenty hours a week now that she has a new grandson.”

Although Piper sold her partnership in a prestigious PR firm in L.A. to move back home, she does consulting work that takes her out of town several times a month. Fortunately, Axel lives in a cottage on the property and can spend nights with Uncle Obe when needed, but during the day Axel is maintaining the estate grounds in his capacity as gardener or running his landscaping business. That puts Piper in a bind.

“This time of year, I’m puttin’ in lots of hours at the nursery, but I’ll help however I can. And if you and Axel want a night out, I’ll stay with Uncle Obe.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer.”

Enough to hug me, I’m afraid. I sense it. “It’s not as if I have anyone to go home to.” No sooner does my attempt to lighten the mood exit my mouth than it stings me. I can’t believe I said that. “Other than Reggie, that is.” I slide past her. “Call me anytime.”

As I start to climb in the truck, she says, “I will, but only until I find someone who can give me forty hours a week—a live-in, though it’s bound to be expensive.”

Whatever it takes to keep Uncle Obe in his home, even if only for a while longer.

“Good night.”

“Bridget?”

I peer across the hood. “Yes?”

“Your hair—does it have something to do with that J. C. Dirk you asked about?”

In her line of work, I thought she might have a connection to him that would get my foot in his door, so I showed her the magazine article. After noting he looked like Simon Baker, an actor who plays a body
language expert on one of the few shows Piper tunes into—something “mental” or other—she said she’d only heard of J. C. Dirk. However, she agreed that if the Pickwick estate were to fall into the hands of a developer, he looked to have decent enough hands. I told her that even if I had to storm his office, I would get in to see him.

“I needed a change, but the timing is good.”

“Then you are going after him.”

“I fly to Atlanta on Monday.” I lift my gaze to the impressive Pickwick mansion that, when my great-granddaddy built it more than a century ago, was his attempt to put him on par with George Vanderbilt and his Asheville castle. “I have to try, Piper.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“How?”

“I
am
a PR specialist.”

I narrow my lids. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Only that I’m familiar with the world you’re steppin’ into, and just as dreads don’t exactly fit there, neither do jeans or dirt under the nails.”

A firefly flits by, its little green bulb flicking on and off. I gently scoop the slow-moving creature into my palm. “What’s your definition of help?”

“The right clothes, the right body language, the right words.”

I could be offended, but it would only further prove how contrary I can be. I open my fingers and the firefly glows green against my skin before it lifts off and rejoins the night. It makes me smile. “You forget that I attended cotillion.”

Piper laughs. “Only the one time. Banned for life, I believe.”

“All because of a little old skunk.”

“Okay, admit it. You need me.”

I sigh. “Let me think on it. Good night.” As I slide into the cab, she hurries up the steps to Uncle Obe and Axel. And I head home to no one. Well, there is Reggie.

“Hey, you,” I coax. “It’s me. Come on out.”

In the darkness I strain to hear a response, but the only sounds are those of the night beyond the screened-in porch—insistent cicadas, cacophonous crickets, and the murmur and whisper of things high in the trees and low in the grass.

“I could use a little company.”

Still nothing.

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” I lower a leg over the side of the hammock and push off the planks. “Nice.” And it is, the cooling air stirred by the hammock’s sway—far better than my stuffy house that requires an enormous waste of energy to be anywhere near as comfortable in a short amount of time. In fact, though I only meant to hang out here until the windows I threw open cooled off the inside, maybe I’ll sleep out tonight.
If
I can get to sleep. Some nights I’m so restless it’s nearly impossible.

“Come on, Reggie.” I run fingers over the damp hair that took three shampoos to remove the conditioner, as well as built-up residue despite years of conscientious grooming. “Same old me.” I make kissing noises.

The screen door between the house and porch squeaks, and I hear the patter of feet. A moment later, a cool nose touches my ankle where it dangles over the side.