Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (33 page)

“Won’t you always wonder if you don’t go ahead?” Cristy asked.

Georgia thought about her daughter and granddaughter. If she didn’t see this to its conclusion, how would she explain herself? Samantha would support whatever she did, but wouldn’t she also wonder what Georgia might have learned?

“Would you be better off if whoever left that bracelet on your desk had never done it?” Cristy asked. “Is it better just to leave things the way they are, even if a wrong’s been committed, especially if more than one person is affected?”

Georgia had a feeling the young woman was thinking out loud, and not strictly about Trish and the charm bracelet. While she wasn’t sure where Cristy was going with her question, she did know that for better or worse, she was watching to see what path Georgia chose.

She had no choice, and now she knew it. “I think we have to keep going. We’ve come this far, it wouldn’t be right to stop now.”

Lucas squeezed her shoulder. “Then I’ll see what I can find out.”

Cristy rose. “I’d better get going.”

Georgia thought the girl looked distracted. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. I just wonder why life can’t be simpler, that’s all.”

Since Georgia was wondering the same thing, she had no answers. She just told Cristy to drive safely, then she rested her head on Lucas’s broad shoulder.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

EVERY DAY CRISTY
checked the mailbox. She didn’t know how Kenny would feel about her letter. She wasn’t even certain he would get it. She was a known quantity at the jail and not because of the dozens of beautiful flower arrangements she had created for county officials.

Nearly two weeks after Dawson mailed the letter, she stopped at the mailbox on her way to the house. She was tired from a long day of scrubbing and organizing at the Mountain Mist, and she had to make herself get out. A letter with her own name on it was the lone inhabitant. The envelope was flimsy, stamped in the corner by hand, using an ink pad that had seen better days. She recognized the barely discernible graphic from her own weeks at the jail.

Her throat threatened to close, and for a moment her eyelids did, as if each lash was weighted down by dread. Was her letter being returned because it had been deemed unacceptable? Was she being warned not to communicate with Kenny again?

She thought of him, alone in jail—and there was no place in the world where a person could be surrounded by so many other people and still be so completely alone. About now he had begun to realize that the world, which had seemed so orderly and gratifying, was anything but, and that a man could be quickly smothered by circumstances, simply because his luck had changed.

She took the letter up to the house. When she unlocked the front door Beau bounded out to the porch, moving easier now than he had after the shooting. He greeted her happily, then took off toward the patch of woods beyond. She settled on the glider and finally, after a panting Beau had returned, opened the letter.

She could read the signature, which looked as if it had been written by a child. The letter was from Kenny, but once she was beyond “Dear Cristy,” which she could read since she knew what to expect, the rest was a jumble of words and sentences. She could puzzle out a number of them, but the connections evaded her.

She had come so far, but she still had so far to go.

She held the letter to her chest and closed her eyes, trying to decide the best way to find out what it said. She could call Dawson and spell words over the phone so he could tell her what they were. But there were so many, and most likely over the telephone, she would lose the meaning of one sentence after she had progressed to the next.

She could wait until she saw him again and ask him to read the letter out loud. Or instead of waiting, she could ask for help from whoever was driving up the driveway.

She didn’t have time to worry. She recognized the brightly painted VW and walked down to meet Samantha and Edna, the letter tucked into her pocket. Maddie slid out of the backseat, too, and both girls ran to greet her.

“We’re going to work on our garden,” Maddie said, just one notch below a shout.

Cristy was pleased when the girl stopped long enough to give her a quick hug. “It’s about time. The weeds are winning. You’d better make tracks.”

Edna, in turquoise shorts and T-shirt, stopped for a brief hug, too, before she followed her friend, curls flying as she ran. Samantha completed the hug cycle. “They’ll be okay out there alone?”

“Should be. I saw a black snake last week, but Zettie says that’s a good sign. I’ve been weeding their patch now and then, so nothing’s likely to be hiding.”

“It was hot down below, and we thought it might be cooler up here, which it is, but I’m going to let them have fun by themselves. Let’s make lemonade.” Samantha patted her fabric bag. “I bought real lemons so we don’t have to drink the powdered stuff. They’ll be back for some later.”

They started up to the porch and Cristy told Samantha the garden news. “Things are doing pretty well. I hand water the tomatoes and peppers. Marilla says we need a real drip irrigation system so we don’t waste water. But that costs money.”

“Let’s find out how much. Mom’s visiting Lucas’s family again this weekend, but when she comes back, I’ll talk to her.”

Cristy was delighted, but she sobered quickly. “Maybe that’s not the best use of your money, though. When I leave, maybe nobody else will want to do a garden.”

In the house Samantha headed straight for the kitchen. “Are you leaving?”

“I can’t stay here forever.”

“I don’t know about forever. You’re pretty young, you might want to do something else, somewhere else, eventually, but I hope you know we want you to stay as long as it feels right to you.”

“Even if I bring Michael here?”

“Is that what you’ve decided?”

Cristy took a corner seat at the big kitchen table. “I haven’t. Decided, I mean. I went to see him again this week.”

Samantha occupied herself taking down the hand juicer and a pitcher and waited for her to go on.

“He’s always happy to see me. I can see he’s an adorable baby.” Cristy stopped, unable to continue.

“But you still feel conflicted when you’re with him.”

“I can’t separate him from everything that happened.”

Samantha began to open drawers until she found the knife she wanted. “He’s doing all right there, but you still feel the clock ticking.”

Cristy tried to explain. “The longer I wait, the harder it’s going to be for all of us. Every single one. Michael, me, Berdine and Wayne, the girls.” Tears flooded her eyes. The problem of Michael was always just below the surface, and it didn’t take much to bring it forward.

“I can only imagine how hard this is.”

“You didn’t have any of these feelings when Edna was born?”

Samantha started to juice the lemons, filling the pitcher as she worked. “I wasn’t in prison. I had my mother’s support, and I had very different feelings about her father than you have about Jackson. Every situation is unique. I was luckier than you were, although your good luck came in the form of Berdine and her family, who’ve bought you time.”

Cristy debated what she was about to say, but quickly, because she didn’t know when the girls would tire of weeding. As promised, Analiese hadn’t shared their conversation. Cristy had wanted to tell Georgia and Samantha about Jackson herself, but in the nearly two weeks that had elapsed, she hadn’t found a way. She couldn’t wait any longer.

“Michael’s not my only problem.” She recounted the stories of Jackson’s harassment.

As she watched Samantha’s expression grow more horrified, she hurried to finish. “So Sully’s spending nights here. I’m safe. Really. Jackson’s too smart to show up when someone else is here.”

Samantha was leaning against the counter now, lemonade temporarily forgotten. “Why on earth didn’t you tell somebody?”

“Analiese knows, but I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you and your mom. If I brought my problems straight to your doorstep, I was afraid you’d feel, you know, like you’d made a big mistake inviting me here.”

“
You
haven’t brought anything. Jackson Ford brought problems. We can ask for a restraining order.”

“Do you know how many women I met in Raleigh who got restraining orders and still had to take matters into their own hands? And those were just the ones who ended up in prison. Not the ones who got off...or died.”

“Do you want to come down to Asheville? We can make room at my house until we come up with something better.”

“I would lose my job, and there’s Michael, too. I want to stay close until...” She shrugged.

“You really think this Sully person will keep you safe?”

“My own personal restraining order with constant law enforcement all rolled into one. I’ll be okay as long as he’s willing to make the drive.”

Samantha got back to work, searching the cupboards, moving jars and boxes. “Will you at least promise to tell us if anything else happens? And in the meantime—”

Cristy remembered the stun gun, hidden in a canister in the same cabinet that usually contained the sugar Samantha was probably searching for. She got to her feet. “Sam, if you’re looking for sugar...”

But Sam had already pulled the hidden canister toward her and was now starting to pry off the lid.

“It’s here!” Cristy joined her at the counter and lifted the top off a large ceramic crock.

Samantha looked down. “Oh, I thought that was flour. No wonder I missed it.”

“It used to be.” Cristy pulled out the sugar, still in its bag, but her hands were trembling as she held it out.

Sam looked at her, then at the canister in her hands with the lid pried to a tilt. Cristy could see her debate whether to push the lid back into place to show her faith in Cristy, or to follow her instincts and continue opening it, to see what the issue really was.

She couldn’t watch Samantha struggle. It just wasn’t fair. She sighed, took the canister out of her hands and opened it, pulling the stun gun out for her to see. “Sully gave this to me after Jackson showed up here the first time. It’s not illegal, even with a felony conviction. He showed me how to use it.”

Samantha waited, as if she knew there was more.

“I guess you can tell I’m not real excited about having it here.”

“I would say that keeping a stun gun in this canister, with a lid that requires patience and a certain amount of brute force to open, isn’t exactly a rousing endorsement, not to mention much of a deterrent. In the same time it would take you to get it out and arm it, you could cook your intruder a nice chicken dinner and serve him dessert.”

“I hate guns. There are too many guns in the world. I’ve always hated them.”

“There’s a lot going on in your life, isn’t there?”

“It’s all connected.”

“Everything always is, eventually.”

Cristy had reached a point where she could no longer keep her fears to herself. She pulled out Kenny’s letter. “This came for me today. It’s from a friend in Berle, named Kenny Glover. Actually Kenny’s a friend of Jackson’s, or at least he was. But he’s in jail awaiting trial for murdering a man named Duke Howard, another friend of theirs. Maybe you could read it to me?”

Samantha took the envelope, but she didn’t remove the letter. “You’ll be able to read it yourself soon. Mom says you’re learning to read at least twice as fast as she anticipated.”

Normally that would have thrilled Cristy, but she was too focused on what she had decided to tell Samantha. “I wrote him, or rather I had someone else write him for me last week. I wanted him to see that not everybody believed he could kill anybody, much less Duke.”

“Is this something you need to be mixed up in now? Don’t you have enough on your plate?”

Cristy had to force out her answer. “I don’t want to be, but I think...I
know
I have to be. I
am
mixed up in it.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because this gun?” Cristy held up the stun gun again. “It’s not the first gun I was ever given to protect myself. The one that killed Duke Howard was the first one. And if I go to Sheriff Carter and tell him where that gun is and how I came to have it, I think I’ll be arrested for Duke’s murder. If I don’t? When his appeals run out, Kenny could end up being strapped to a gurney, and he’ll die for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

THE RAMSEY FAMILY
had never liked Lucas’s ex-wife. No one had ever said so, at least not to his face, and they had been supremely fair to Mary Nell, making certain she was included in everything. Even after the divorce, the family had remained silent, although at the same time, no regrets were mentioned, either.

Lucas hadn’t quite realized how distanced the family had been from her until he watched them interact with Georgia. He and Georgia had arrived in Norcross yesterday evening, and his straitlaced father had, without fuss or permission, put them together in a comfortable bedroom at the end of the hall. His niece and nephews had announced new categories for Name-It Ball. His mother had whisked Georgia away for a tour of all the old family photographs, along with the stories that went with them.

Now, in the midst of only her second visit, Georgia was in the kitchen learning to roll gnocchi dough down the tines of a fork, so his mother could do something else. The four women—Nonna was there, too, along with his sister-in-law Becca—were chatting nonstop. Georgia had slipped into the vacant spot in the family as if it had been kept that way just so she could fill it.

He liked the thought of that. He had spent the first years after his divorce more grateful than sorry. The next had been spent exploring the charmed life of the eligible bachelor. But this third phase, falling in love again, was far superior to anything that had gone before. Now he was just sorry it hadn’t happened sooner.

“I’m under orders to see if we have any ripe tomatoes.”

Lucas, who had been staring at an unopened newspaper, looked up and found his father standing over him, which was like getting a preview of himself in twenty-five years. Douglas Ferguson was wearing khaki shorts and the T-shirt he wore when he worked in his vegetable garden. One of his grandchildren had given it to him. The shirt was loose and comfortable, with a graphic of a globe and the slogan Plant It for the Planet.

The sentiment was great, but everybody knew Lucas’s father tended the small garden at the back of the property because Mia Ferguson took no prisoners when it came to fresh tomatoes.

“Isn’t it a little early in the season?” Lucas asked.

“If I can’t find ripe ones I’m supposed to see if we have half a dozen green ones to spare for spaghetti
con pomodori verdi
tomorrow.”

When Douglas didn’t move on, Lucas got to his feet. He had been summoned. “I’ll come with you.”

“You do that.”

They walked in companionable silence around the house and down the path to the garden. Years ago his father had framed it with a picket fence, and every August the grandchildren built an elaborate scarecrow inside the gate, just as their parents had as children.

“It was good to have you visiting again so soon,” Douglas said.

“I had some business at the university, and Georgia said she would come along.” The business had been with his friend Colleen at the registrar’s office. From his years as a journalist he knew that face-to-face, people were less likely to refuse a favor.

Douglas unlatched the gate. “I’m supposed to find out how serious this is.”

Lucas had been able to count on a good many things throughout his childhood. His father coming straight to the point was one of them.

“Who asked you? Mama or Nonna?”

“For once they agreed.”

“I hope it’s very serious. I love her. I think I fell in love with her the first time we met.”

“Did that happen with Mary Nell?”

It was an interesting question, and Lucas tried to remember. “When you grow up in a family like ours, you tend to believe what you see. I missed all the signs. Mary Nell was a good actress.”

“
We
saw her for what she was. I should have set you straight.”

Lucas wondered if that was why they were in the garden now. Was his father about to set him straight, since he had failed him last time?

Lucas trailed behind as Douglas carefully examined what looked like a bumper crop of tomatoes interspersed with flourishing basil plants. “Maybe I wouldn’t have listened.”

“You going to listen now? This woman’s a keeper. Make no mistake, your mother feels the same way. We might adopt her if you don’t marry her.”

Lucas laughed. He hadn’t really been worried. “I know she is.”

“So, have you asked her?”

“She’s in the middle of trying to figure out who she is. I don’t want to complicate it.”

“She’s a little old for that, isn’t she?”

Lucas knew his father would keep Georgia’s story to himself. He told him about the bracelet and the clippings, and about Georgia’s early childhood.

Douglas waited until he had finished. “A mother who does something like that? This is a woman she wants to find?”

“Somebody left the bracelet and clippings for a reason. You can see why she would want some answers.”

Douglas pulled a plastic shopping bag from his pocket, shook it out and picked two tomatoes that were ripe enough to suit him.

“Families are tricky things,” he said, moving on to the next plant. “We think they’re made by blood, but that’s wrong. It about the way people treat each other, and their priorities. You go help Georgia find the woman who gave birth to her, then you bring her back here and show her where she really belongs.”

Lucas had always realized how lucky he was. His father’s words were no surprise, nor was the stiff hug that followed, but again, as he had so many times before, he knew he had been blessed by fate to be a part of the Ramsey family.

He hoped that someday soon, Georgia would be similarly blessed.

* * *

Georgia hadn’t seen Lucas all afternoon. She’d made gnocchi, then graduated to filling Nonna’s fried cannoli shells with a ricotta mixture rich with chocolate chips and orange zest. She had never had time to be much of a cook, but here in the Ramsey kitchen she had joined in the fun. Next time, Nonna had promised, Georgia could make the dough and fry the shells herself. Then she would have her own specialty.

“Lucas, he thinks his cannoli is perfect,” Nonna had confided, “but we’ll make sure yours is just a pinch better.”

Once the cannoli were ready to go into the refrigerator, Georgia wandered out to the porch. She had expected to find a large family exhausting and intimidating, but this one was just the opposite. People here were too engaged in doing the things they loved to feel slighted if someone else needed to recharge.

She found a chaise on the porch and made herself comfortable. Lucas would find her if he needed her, but in the meantime she was perfectly content just to close her eyes and enjoy the music of Tony Bennett drifting outside from the kitchen. Tony was Nonna’s favorite, and she swore he was the first ingredient in successful cannoli.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she felt the end of the chaise sag. Her eyes flew open.

“The sun shifted, and you’re going to burn if you stay there,” Lucas said.

She stretched and smiled at him. Sure enough the late-afternoon sun was lapping at her arm. “I didn’t plan to fall asleep, but it was so peaceful.”

“Anyone who thinks this is a peaceful house is suspect.”

“No, it is. Before I fell asleep I realized it reminds me of the house where I did my real growing up. Kids coming, kids going, Arabella coming and going. I was always busy, but when I had free time, I would find a quiet place and just enjoy listening to the commotion. I was never lonely there. I don’t think I could ever be lonely here.”

He took her hand and kissed it. “I hear you’re a whiz at stuffing cannoli.”

He didn’t let go of her hand, and she read something in his eyes that had nothing to do with dessert. “What’s up? I can tell something is.”

“Colleen got a hit on Trish P. right away.”

For a moment Georgia didn’t know what to say. She had suspected that Colleen hadn’t really wanted to be Lucas’s spy. Apparently reluctance had been an act.

Lucas filled in the conversational gap. “A freshman music major named Patricia Pinette withdrew from school the same November as the Trish from Zeta Chi. It was too late in the term to withdraw without failing her classes, but she left anyway.”

“Pinette. Peanut.” Her stomach did a funny little dance that had nothing to do with the good smells emanating from the kitchen.

“I spent the past hour doing research. With an unusual last name it was surprisingly easy to track her down.”

Georgia knew Lucas was waiting for her to tell him he could go on. The problem was that now, poised on the brink of answers, she wasn’t sure she wanted to make the leap.

He rubbed her hand between his, as if to pump courage into her.

“Let’s hear the rest,” she said, because it really was too late to back away.

“Patricia Pinette was born in Jeffords, South Carolina—”

“Bingo,” she said.

He nodded. “Her father was a lawyer, then later a judge, and generations before that the Pinettes owned a small plantation in Aiken County, so the family has South Carolina deep in their bloodlines. She married five years after your birth, and became Patricia Merton. The Jeffords High School Chargers have had a rearing horse mascot as long as anyone I spoke to can remember.”

“You made the calls?”

“Talking my way into a story comes naturally to me.”

She waited for the rest of it.

“Her family is still well thought-of in Jeffords, even though both her parents are gone, but there’s a younger sister named Yvonne who never moved away, and lots of extended family.”

“Yvonne, not Dottie?”

“Not Dottie. Everything else fits, though. There’s a small weekly newspaper in town. I told them I was doing research on the Pinettes for an article about old South Carolina families, and the woman they called to the telephone, Mamie, knows everything about everybody. She writes a society column twice a month.”

“Did she want to talk?”

“I got the feeling she was afraid if she didn’t, she might die with all that gossip buried deep inside her. She said Patricia Merton married a wealthy businessman after she graduated from a small local women’s college.”

“Nothing about UGA?”

“It didn’t come up. But she was only there a few months, remember?”

“Sorry, go on.”

“Patricia’s husband was much older than she was, and he died a few years ago. Theirs was his second marriage. They had two sons. Mamie said that Trish—that’s what she called her—was one of those women who lived to spend money and make connections. She chaired the local chamber music society for years, but Mamie swore Trish never had any other interests.”

Georgia was so busy absorbing this that, for a moment, his use of the past tense didn’t penetrate. When it did she sat up a little straighter.

“You said
was.
Is she dead?”

“No, but she
is
in a rehab center after a stroke.”

“This is so odd. We’re talking about a stranger, but this woman could be my mother.”

“If Patricia Merton is your mother she made sure to remain a stranger.”

“The hospital?”

“There’s a little one in town, and it makes good use of volunteers, including teenagers, but of course, Mamie had no idea if Trish was ever one of them. “

“Let me guess. It’s called...Jeffords General.”

He didn’t smile. “J.G.”

“I think what we have is more than circumstantial at this point, Lucas. I think we’ve tracked down the bracelet’s owner, just the way somebody tracked me down and left it for me to find.”

“If Patricia Merton suffered a stroke and she’s now in rehab, it’s unlikely she’s the one who left it for you.”

Georgia had already thought of that. “Do we know
when
she had the stroke?”

“Mamie couldn’t say, and I didn’t want to ask too many direct questions about one person, since I was supposed to be checking out the whole family.”

“Maybe the stress of leaving the clippings and the bracelet helped her toward a stroke. Maybe she changed her mind and wished she’d left it alone.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid at this point, everything is speculation. The next step is a trip to Jeffords. Maybe tomorrow? But only if you’re ready for anything you might find out.”

Georgia mulled over the little she knew. Didn’t Mamie’s account of a shallow, self-absorbed woman fit perfectly with Georgia’s own birth story, and what they’d learned about Trish P. of Zeta Chi?

Yet somebody
had
left her the bracelet. Maybe the world’s view of Patricia wasn’t fair. Maybe her
own
view wasn’t fair.

And the moment that occurred to her, she realized that if she went to Jeffords expecting to find that Patricia had cared about her, even a little, she would be terribly disappointed. Nothing pointed in that direction.

The appearance of the charm bracelet was still a mystery, even if the owner’s identity no longer was.

She weighed that. Had she started the search because she wanted to know that her mother felt remorse for what she had done, or better, love? That at last the poor woman could tell Georgia the terrible circumstances that had led her to abandon her newborn?

“A lot to think about,” Lucas said.

She heard more than the five simple words. Lucas was still there. If she wanted to talk, he would listen. If she needed her hand held for the rest of the day and night, he would hold it. If she needed to cry, he would lend her his shoulder.

“I’m trying to figure out something. Have I been hoping my mother was a better person than she seemed?”

“And?”

The answer made her feel almost buoyant. “No, I’ve known all along there wasn’t going to be a joyous reunion at the end.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I wanted answers, and it looks like I’ll get those. But more important? I guess, without realizing it, I just needed to figure out what family means. I have Sam and Edna. If they were all I had, I’d still be rich. But when I opened the door to learning about my biological family, I guess I opened it wider than I thought. Because suddenly there’s family all over the place.”

His gaze was warm. “You’re going to let me walk through the door?”