Riding Shotgun (43 page)

Hunter’s mouth dropped open.

“Days of Our Lives.”
Laura shook her head. “I hope Harleyetta does spill the beans. I hope Aunt Grace’s nipples shrivel up and fall off.”

“Laura.” A soft reprimand was in Cig’s fading voice.

“You know what’s really weird?” Hunter hunched his shoulders.

“What?” Cig replied.

“I feel older than Aunt Grace.”

“In many ways you are.”

“You two are too easy on her,” Laura said.

“Laura, the terrible thing about revenge is the time it takes. Leave her to heaven. Anyway, she’s still my sister and I love her. It’s hard sometimes but I love her.”

Laura studied her mother then asked one more time, “But why did Dad do it? Why?”

Cig shrugged. “Karma?”

A light rain rattled on the fall leaves. Cig, reading, put aside the Deyhle chronicles to get out of bed and open the window.

She stuck her head out and a fine mist covered her face. The night, so inky she couldn’t really see clouds, closed around her. She shut the window, thinking that three hundred summers, three hundred winters, lay buried in that night.

Peachpaws snoozed on the end of the bed. Woodrow lifted his head from his paws as he snuggled in the comforter.

Sliding back into the clean cotton sheets, Cig quickly found the warm spot where she’d been before.

“Woodrow, read with me.”

He trilled, rolled over and showed lots of striped tummy.

She returned to the part where the family was divided on whether or not to stay loyal to the Crown. This decision, once made, committed the fortunes of the Deyhles to that of the rebels. Had the colonies lost the war, the men might have been hung as traitors. As it was, even though she
hadn’t gotten that far, she knew some of the men were killed at the Battle of Saratoga.

She recalled Margaret’s face when she first told her America was an independent nation. Now she was reading about Margaret’s grandsons fighting for that independence.

She wondered, for an instant, if Lionel had sent some of his Indians to kill Fitz, and they’d made a mistake. But he couldn’t have known about the fog. She dismissed the idea.

She wondered, too, why he had been shot in front of the House of Burgesses. As no details were forthcoming in the family Bible or letters of the next generation she figured one deep winter day she’d drive down to William and Mary, invade the stacks of the library’s history section and see if she could find out.

Did he fool around with another man’s wife?

Did he cross someone in a business deal?

Was he late on a debt?

As there were few random acts of violence in those days, she knew there had to be a reason, however flimsy.

Her attention drifted back to the present. Laura’s pain hurt her because she felt helpless. Nothing she could do would restore her daughter’s innocence, faith and love for her deceased father and her beloved aunt.

Perhaps it was just as well that a mother couldn’t totally protect her children from the ways of the world. They had to learn to survive and be self-sufficient emotionally as well as physically.

She dropped back on her pillow. She didn’t remember life being this hard when she was their age. It certainly got harder later. Her father, not a cold man but a removed one, once said when she was red-eyed from crying over another of Blackie’s infidelities, “You made your bed, now you must lie in it.”

And so she did. The only life Cig could change was her own. If she had learned one thing from Margaret, Tom and Fitz, it was to celebrate life; the details of one’s inconveniences and miseries were irrelevant.

She could see Margaret sliding the long peel under the bread, the bricks warm to the touch, the smell of the sweet
burning hardwood mingled with the scent of fresh dough. She imagined the light in Tom’s dark brown eyes, his broad shoulders and his bull-headedness sometimes, but most of all she remembered Fitz, the taste of his kiss. If she closed her eyes she could smell him. He was as close as a heartbeat. And he died trying to save her.

Cig buried her head in her pillow to muffle the sobs. There’d been enough emotion today. Laura and Hunter didn’t need to hear her.

Woodrow, upset because Cig was upset, got up and licked her face. He reached out, patting her hair, purring loudly, offering his services. She wiped her eyes and rubbed his head. Gravely, he crawled up on her chest and rested his furry head under her chin, which only made her cry more. Love comes on four feet.

She felt the rumble of his purr throughout her body and then like a stiff wind clearing away a low-pressure system, she felt suddenly clear, crystal clear.

“My fears are petty,” she whispered to Woodrow. “I’m afraid that our memories, our lives, our emotions, will be forgotten like Tom, Margaret, Fitz—even Lionel.” She kissed his head as he crawled closer to her face. “Time erases nothing. Only the names change. We’re all riding shotgun on history.”

The Fincastles accepted the price hike on Harmon’s place, if he would carry a small second mortgage. What seemed like a thousand phone calls later Cig iced down the deal.

A deluge had washed out the promise of tomorrow’s hunting. With the memory of her disappearance so fresh, Cig was secretly relieved.

Max whipped up the sales staff with video management tapes. The flat voices, flat color, and droning emphasis on sell, sell, sell might have encouraged some staff, but Cig thought the tapes were about as innovative as Max and equally as repulsive.

She dreamed of those early plantations in the Tidewater. You carved out your acreage, your home, your life. A man like Max would have been sent packing.

After the staff meeting, she walked back to her office, picked up the multiple listing book to study when Jane rapped on the door. “Do you believe?”

Cig motioned for her to come in and shut the door. “He’s maniacal. Too many elbows under the basket when he played center for UVA.”

“Nothing sadder than an old jock trading on his name.”

“Unless it’s a young one.”

“M-m-m. Hey, what do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an atheist?”

“I don’t know.” Cig sat on the edge of her desk.

“A person who knocks on your door for no apparent reason.” Jane laughed.

At that moment Harmon Nestle knocked on the door, which made them both jump. Jane opened it, winked at Cig and left.

“Got my price.” He shifted his chaw of tobacco into his other cheek.

“You sure did.” Cig slid the papers over to him. He flourished a leaky ballpoint pen and signed.

“There.”

“Congratulations, Harmon.” She smiled.

He smiled back, pushed his hands in his pockets. “Know what I’m going to do with the money?”

“No.”

“I’m buying a place in Naples, Florida, and when winter gets hateful they’ll see my tail feathers around here. And you know what else?” Her rapt attention egged him on. “I am not inviting that smartass son-of-a-bitch brother of mine, no matter what. I don’t give a damn if we have three ice storms like we did a few winters ago. He can freeze his ass. Not inviting Binky neither.”

“Oh.” Cig leaned forward as Binky and Harmon had been friends since Binky was a child, calling him “Uncle Harmon.” Harmon was in his thirties at that time.

“Not right the way he’s doing Harleyetta. She’s working to improve herself and he hates her for it. He’s clutching on to that bottle like it was momma’s titty.”

“Maybe he’ll snap out of it.”

“Damn fool will drink hisself to death. I made a big decision t’other day. Don’t know why, just did. I don’t want no one around me who ain’t doin’. No drunks. No bums. No troublemakers. I heard all their stories, and they don’t add up. Just made up my mind.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Well, thanks, Cig. You did a good job.” He held out his hand again, she shook it and he left.

She gathered up her papers and the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Will found out.” Grace was sobbing.

“Oh shit.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, I’d never do that and you know it.”

“Someone did.” Grace’s sobs downgraded to sniffles.

“Sit tight, you’ll find out.”

Later that evening, it was Cig who found out who spilled the beans: Laura. No matter how much Cig remonstrated with her, Laura was adamant that since Grace had hurt her mother, she was perfectly within her rights to give her a little of her own back. Hunter thought he’d seen and heard everything the last few days, but this knocked him over.

“You went to his office?” He repeated what he’d been told.

“Yep.”

“Laura, honey, this doesn’t solve anything.” Cig was distraught.

Laura’s eyes blazed. “It made me feel good.”

“But honey, you felt good at someone else’s expense.”

“So did she!” Laura slammed her hand on the kitchen table where they were sitting.

“How are you going to face her?” Hunter rubbed his chin.

“Her? How can she face us? Hunter, whose side are you on?”

“Ours. I just…” His voice trailed off.

“You’ll see her Saturday at the hunter pace,” Cig reminded them both.

“If she dares show her face.” Laura crossed her arms over her chest.

“Wonder if Harleyetta and Binky will be there, too? Everyone’s losing their marbles. Maybe there’s something in the water.” Hunter couldn’t understand the collapse of adult civility he’d been witnessing.

“Laura, pick up that phone, call your Aunt Grace and apologize for what you did.”

“Never!”

“I’ll call her then.” Cig walked to the phone.

“Mom, don’t. Don’t.”

“Jesus Christ, Laura, this kind of thing keeps the ball rolling. We can’t change the past. Let’s try to live a little better in the present.”

“I’ll never forgive her.”

“Never say
never”
Hunter said.

“You shouldn’t forgive her either,” Laura shouted at her mother.

“Oh, honey, what good does it do to carry around all that anger? I’m too tired. In the long run it would hurt me more than it would hurt her.”

“That’s bullshit.” Laura stomped up to her room.

Calling after her, Cig shouted, “You’ll find out when you have to find out, I guess.” Cig picked up the phone. It was dead. She remembered she had torn the cord out of the wall. She laughed. It was too absurd. She laughed until she cried. Hunter put his arms around her as she stood there, the phone still in her left hand.

“Mom, everything is a mess, isn’t it?”

“I’m telling myself that destruction leads to construction.” She hung up the phone then wiped her eyes.

“Mom, we can’t live without a phone.”

“The one in the barn works.”

“How do I know you won’t rip that one out like the others?”

She hugged him back hard then held him at arm’s length, “There’s always hope, Hunter.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe I’ll die of typhoid fever.”

His face paled. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I guess we’re still recovering from one death. We don’t need two. I’m making fun of myself. I’m rebelling against the twentieth century.”

“Is that part of your midlife crisis? I mean, am I going to act like this when I turn forty?”

“How do I know what you’ll do? Nobody knows. I think
midlife is an opportunity to make a grand fool out of yourself.”

“You’re succeeding, Mom.” A smile crossed his lips.

She exhaled through her nostrils then laughed. “Finally—at something. Tell you one thing, son. I have learned one important lesson if nothing else.”

“Yeah?”

“If you find yourself in a hole—stop digging.”