Roses (24 page)

He brought her hand to his lips. “You were made for each other, Mary Lamb. You’re like oil and vinegar—you’re a perfect blend
when shaken. Perhaps that’s what you both need—a good shaking.”

She had always been amused by his way with words and smiled despite her sadness. “Seems to me we’re constantly being shaken,
but we resist blending.”

After everyone had left, Mary sent Sassie and Toby off to bed and carried the party dishes to the kitchen herself. She welcomed
the task of cleaning up to avoid lying awake thinking of her future without Percy. Though she’d told herself a hundred times
they hadn’t a chance together, in her heart of hearts she hadn’t believed it—and she’d counted on Percy not believing it.
Somehow, some way, things would work out. Percy loved her. He could never let her go. Time would take care of everything—if
he were willing to wait.

Apparently, he wasn’t.

She thought fleetingly of checking on her mother as she stacked the dishes, but the stairs seemed insurmountable to her leaden
feet, and she had no wish to explain her red-rimmed eyes. Besides, her mother’s bedroom door creaked loudly and she might
awaken her if she was already asleep. She’d wait until morning to peep in on her.

It was long past midnight when she finally climbed into bed. The gilded box was on her dresser. She would wait until tomorrow
to take out its treasure and spread it on her bed. Though exhausted, she expected to lie wide awake in her misery, rolling
from shoulder to shoulder; but sleep came immediately. She was dreaming of snow falling on cotton when she was awakened roughly
the next morning by Sassie shaking her shoulder. “Wha-what is it?”

“Oh, Miss Mary!” Sassie wailed, the wild roll of her eyes stark in the early morning sunlight. “It’s your mama—”

“What?” Mary tossed off the bedcovers, blurrily aware that Sassie had gone to the water bowl to retch. She stumbled down the
hall to her mother’s room and lurched to a dead stop at the open door. A scream tore from her throat.
“Mama!”

Still in the amber velvet dress, her mother hung from the ceiling by a noose of knitted cream-colored wool around her neck.
On the floor beneath her suspended feet lay a mound of pink satin ribbons. Slowly, understanding at last, Mary knelt before
the pile and gathered the ribbons in her hands.
“Oh, Mama…,”
she sobbed, the ribbons falling through her fingers like the stripped petals of pink roses.

S
he was still sobbing uncontrollably and clutching the ribbons to the bodice of her nightgown when Percy appeared beside her
and scooped her up in his arms. “Sassie, close the door behind me and go call Doc Tanner,” he ordered. “Keep Toby out of this
room, and don’t say a word to him about what happened here.”

“No, sir, Mister Percy.”

“And bring up some hot milk. We’ve got to get Miss Mary warm before she goes into shock.”

“Mama… Mama…”

“Shush,” Percy said gently, laying her in her bed and pulling the covers tight under her chin.

“She… hated me, Percy. She… hated me….”

He stroked her forehead. “She was a sick woman, Mary.”

“The… pink ribbons… You know what they mean….”

“Yes,” he said. “That was very cruel of her.”

“Oh, God, Percy… Oh, God….”

He stoked the dying fire and found other blankets and piled them high. When Sassie arrived with the milk, he helped Mary lift
her head from the pillow and put the warm cup to her lips. “Try to get this down. Come on now, Mary.”

“Doc Tanner’ll be here in a few minutes, Mister Percy. What you want me to do when he get here?”

“Send him up, Sassie. I’ll meet him in the hall.”

Mary grabbed his hand, staring at him out of eyes wide with horror. “What are you going to do? What will happen now?”

He wiped away the milk trickling down her chin. “Don’t worry. I’ll see to everything. This will stay between us and Sassie
and Doc Tanner. No one else—not even Toby—has to know. I’ll send a cable to Miles.”

“What… will you tell him?”

“Your mother died of natural causes. That’s what Doc Tanner will state on the death certificate. She went to sleep and did
not wake up.”

Mary fell back against the pillows and turned her head away. His distaste for dissembling was plain to see. He would lie to
Miles and call in an IOU from Doc Tanner that the Warwicks never expected or wished to be repaid for their many generous contributions
to his medical causes through the years. “Thank you, Percy,” she said to the wall, her teeth chattering.

Buried beneath the blankets, she listened to the hushed voices and footsteps of Percy and Doc Tanner and Sassie going in and
out of her mother’s room. When the housekeeper reappeared, she reported that her mother’s body had been cut down and sewn
in a sheet. “The undertaker goin’ to come pick her up like that,” she said, adjusting Mary’s blankets. “Mister Percy, he goin’
to go with her to the funeral parlor and make sure the coffin be nailed shut. He goin’ to tell everybody that Miss Darla’s
long years of bad health left her
ravaged
—that Mister Percy’s word—and her daughter want her to be remembered as she was.”

Percy stayed at her side during the strain of making funeral arrangements and receiving visitors. He voiced no judgment, made
no accusations, but the significance of the pink ribbons writhed between them like a poisonous snake they’d tacitly agreed
to ignore but of which each was keenly aware. His grim silence expressed to Mary what she herself believed: She was responsible
for her mother’s suicide. It was another consequence of her pigheaded obsession with Somerset.

“What you want me to do with them strips and ribbons, Miss Mary?” Sassie asked when she was out of bed and moving about blankly
like a shell-shocked war victim. “Mister Percy say to burn ’em.”

“No!” Her cry felt scraped from her throat. “They are from my mother’s hands…. Bring them to me.” In possession of them again,
she compressed the pink ribbons into a ball and wrapped them in a casing of the cream-colored strips, then packaged the bundle
in tissue paper and hid it far back in her wardrobe.

At the funeral, she felt the same silent condemnation from the townspeople that she sensed from Percy. Even though none were
aware of the cause of her mother’s death, her demise was enough. Darla had died of a broken heart by her husband’s hand, unrectified
by his daughter. Mary even saw Emmitt Waithe shake his head as though he, too, believed this tragedy the result of Vernon
Toliver’s will.

A few days after the funeral, she said to Sassie, “I’m moving into the Ledbetter house temporarily. It will be easier for
me to manage things from there. Why don’t you take this opportunity to visit your daughter? Toby can look after things here,
and the house has a telephone. Here’s the number.”

“Miss Mary, how you goin’ to look after yourself alone out there?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Mister Percy and Mister Ollie ain’t goin’ to like this one little bit.”

“I know, Sassie, but I’ll enjoy the respite from their well-meaning concern.”
And Percy’s silent judgment
, she thought.

By April, the fields were planted. Mary shielded her eyes from the spring sun and gazed at the infinite stretch of neatly
mounded rows awaiting germination of their seeds. Behind her stood Hoagy Carter, the white overseer she’d inherited with her
purchase of Fair Acres, and Sam Johnson, one of Somerset’s tenants whose father had once tilled the same soil as a slave.
At ginning time, Sam and the others would receive one-third of the profits from the crop they surveyed today. Both men waited
with hats in hand for Mary’s pronouncement.

“They look good, Sam. The best ever,” she said. “If it all makes, we’ll have a bumper crop.”

“Oh, Miss Mary…” Sam sighed and shut his eyes in pleasure. “I can hardly stand thinkin’ about it. If the good Lord’ll just
keep the good weather comin’ through the pickin’, we goin’ have us some money in the bank.”

“We’ve been blessed all right,” Mary agreed. “Rain at the right intervals and no late frosts. But I’m like you. I won’t rest
easy until the last row is picked.”

“Then we can start worrying ’bout next year.” Hoagy chuckled, but his eye on Mary turned sharp and anxious. “That is, if a
good wind don’t come along and blow you away first.”

Mary made no comment as the men replaced their hats and got in step beside her to walk to Sam’s cabin. “Mister Hoagy’s right,
Miss Mary,” Sam said with the same expression of concern. “You got to start eatin’ ’fore you waste away. How’s ’bout stayin’
and havin’ dinner with us? Bella’s got a big pot a spring peas and backbone on the stove.”

They had reached the porch, where Sam’s wife was waiting for them. She had overheard her husband’s invitation and now added
her own: “And I just gone and taken a blackberry pie out of the oven, Miss Mary.”

Hoagy watched her with hope-filled eyes. Mary knew he wanted her to say yes. It would be another two hours before he sat down
to his own table, and then to eat a meal gone cold on the back of the stove. She could see the pie cooling on the sill of
the open kitchen window, smelling of bubbling blackberries and buttery crust.

“Thanks just the same,” Mary said, “but we’ve got a few more houses to call on. Hoagy, you ready?” The sight of the pie and
its fruity smell turned her stomach. Since her mother’s suicide, she could hardly abide the thought of food.

Sam and Bella followed Mary and the disappointed Hoagy into the breezeway that divided the house, where they were met by Daisy,
the Johnsons’ fourteen-year-old daughter. “Mama, they’s a fancy automobile headed this way. I just seen it turn off the road.”

“One of them horseless carriages?” Bella said. “Who be comin’ out here to see us in one of them?”

Through the screen door, Mary saw the object of discussion draw to a stop beneath one of the pecan trees in the front yard.

“Why, it’s that Percy Warwick feller,” Hoagy said, his eye narrowing. “What you expect he’s doin’ out here?”

“I believe he’s come to see me,” Mary said. “You all remain here, and I’ll go see what he wants.”

He had finally run her to earth, Mary thought, already weary from the encounter to come. He’d apparently trailed her on her
rounds, going from house to house to find her here. He lounged with crossed legs and arms by a new Pierce-Arrow that had replaced
the one his father had held for him during the war.

“Hello, Percy,” she said, her greeting unenthusiastic. “I know why you’re here.”

“Ollie was right.” His gaze ran over her critically. “You do look more skeleton than flesh.”

“You’re making that up. Ollie would never say such a thing about me.”

“I’m paraphrasing, maybe. I believe he said ‘more bone than flesh’ after he saw you at your house the other night, but both
are apt.”

She knew he was referring to Ollie’s waylaying her when she returned home to replace a harness for Shawnee. With relentless
vigilance, he’d waited on her verandah each night hoping to catch her when she returned. “Ollie shouldn’t waste his evenings
waiting for me, not after working all day at the store. He needs his rest.”

Percy unwound his legs and straightened up. “Well, you can appreciate his concern. He doesn’t understand why you’ve put yourself
beyond the comfort of those who love you.”

But you understand, don’t you? Mary thought. He understood why she had cut herself off from everyone and lived like a hermit
away from the house. He’d been privy to a scene that had changed her forever, and seeing him only reminded her of it and added
to the crushing guilt she felt every waking minute. She was surprised to see him dressed in layabout clothes. It was a weekday,
and typically he’d be wearing a business suit. Still, as always, he shone like a Greek god under the noonday sun, and ordinarily
her pulse would be racing. But not now—not anymore.

“Ollie says you’ve moved into the Ledbetter house,” he said. “No wonder we never found you at home. Toby wouldn’t tell us
a thing.” He grimaced as if he could picture the emptied, dirty house she returned to every night, the cast-off mattress and
left-behind cans of soup she heated when she felt like eating. But at least she could enjoy the comforts of an indoor toilet.

“It was for convenience sake,” she said. “I sent Sassie to her daughter’s, and Toby has been looking after things at the house.”

Percy let out an exasperated sigh. “Mary, this has got to stop. I can’t stand what you’re doing to yourself.”

“You’ll have to.” She cast a nervous glance at Hoagy, impatient to get on with their rounds so he could have his dinner. “I
know you and Ollie and your families are worried about me, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I am where I want to be,
doing what I want to do. I don’t mean to sound like an ingrate after all you’ve done, but now I want to be left alone.”

“I can’t leave you alone.”

Conscious of Hoagy’s tuned ears, Mary hissed, “Percy,
listen
to me. There’s absolutely
nothing
you can do.”

“Yes, there is. That’s why I’m here. I have a proposal.”

“I’ve already heard it.”

“Not this one.” Percy moved closer, and a dogged flicker in his eye warned her not to step away. “Don’t you think you owe
it to me to hear what I’ve got to say?”

Ah, there it was. Something to hold over her head for the rest of her life. But he was right. She did owe him. Always.

“If you’ll keep your voice down,” she said, her teeth gritted. “I don’t want this conversation discussed on every front porch
in the county.”

“Then go tell Hoagy you have business in town and get in the car. I have a meal waiting for us. He can take your horse and
buggy to his place, and we’ll pick it up later.”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I will not! I’ve got two more rounds, and then Hoagy and I have to discuss weeding
schedules.”

He stepped closer. “You are coming with me or I will pick you up and throw you into the car. How would that be as a topic
for front porch gossip?”