“Sort of.”
“Ah. Is he married?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Grier said, eager to change the subject. “I won’t be seeing him again.”
“Too bad,” Amy said. “I thought for a second there you might be ending your dating drought.”
“I like my dating drought.”
“Grier, they’re not all like. . .”
“My last ten dates?”
Amy laughed. “They weren’t all bad.”
“Bad enough.”
“You just haven’t met the right one.”
“And I’m not looking.”
“Well, it’s been like
ages
since you went out with anyone.”
“Have you heard me complaining?”
“No, but. . .”
“All right then. Gotta go. Busy here.”
“It’s not normal!” Amy managed to get in before Grier ended the call, flopping back on the bed and folding herself around a pillow. She wasn’t lonely. She’d turn herself into the Sahara desert of loneliness before she ever gave Darryl Lee Randall the satisfaction of knowing she’d given him a second thought in the years since she’d last been home.
When the rumbling of her stomach began to disturb Sebbie, who made his displeasure known with breathing sounds that could only be equated to a heavy sigh, she got up and headed for the shower. She stood under the warm spray for a good twenty minutes, her feet finally coming back to life along with the rest of her.
She dug some running clothes out of her suitcase, opting for comfort over style, and then left Sebbie still sleeping while she went in search of food, heading out of the Inn and walking the two blocks that led to Main Street. At almost four o’clock, the sun was still hot so she pulled off her running shirt and tied it around her waist, the white tank top she’d put on underneath much more pleasant.
She dropped her head back and breathed deep. Amazing that a place could have its own scent, Timbell Creek’s signature blend of freshly mowed grass and honeysuckle. She thought she could identify it anywhere. These streets were familiar to her, too. She’d once known them as well as she now knew Manhattan. Better, actually.
Maple led to Sycamore. Sycamore to Hampton. And then across to Main where she turned right and headed toward the center of town, hoping Angell’s Bakery still sat in the same place. With the smell of fresh baked bread, she grew hopeful. But the name had changed. It was now the Maple Leaf Bread Company. The aroma promised good things though, so she went inside and stood at the front counter, reading the menu behind the register.
A teenage boy with a nice smile popped out of the back, wiping his hands on his white apron. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll have a tomato and Havarti on rye with a little mustard.”
“Anything to drink?”
“Iced tea, please.”
“Sweet tea?”
“Why not?” she conceded.
The front door opened, the bell hanging above it jangling once. Grier glanced over her shoulder at the tall blonde woman who’d just come in.
“Earnest,” she said, “you got any more of that cinnamon raisin bread y'all made up yesterday?”
“Just baked some fresh loaves, Ms. Randall.”
At the name, Grier’s ears perked up, and she gave the woman a sideways assessment. Darryl Lee’s Ms. Randall?
The woman turned and looked at Grier, her smile wide and white. Grier smiled back, trying not to show her curiosity, then glanced away.
But she reached out to press a hand to Grier’s arm. “Oh. My. Goodness. Are you the lady doing auditions for that show tomorrow?”
“Ah, yes,” Grier said. “I am.”
“Well I sure never expected to run into you here.” She stuck out a hand that featured perfectly manicured nails. “I’m Priscilla Randall.”
“Grier McAllister.”
“So nice to meet you.” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “My daughter is auditioning. Poor baby, her daddy is just dead set against it. I’ve been tellin’ him what an exceptional opportunity this is for her. She’s always been a bit of a wallflower, and to tell you the truth, I was more than a little surprised when she agreed to put herself in the running.”
“Ah, well,” Grier said, not sure what else to say.
“Any tips you could throw her way?” she asked, sounding hopeful.
Grier shrugged, forced a smile. “I’m sure everything will be covered tomorrow.”
Earnest returned from the back with her toasted tomato and Havarti sandwich. She pulled some money from her pocket and paid him, a little uncomfortable under Priscilla Randall’s continuing stare.
“I own the beauty shop just across the street,” Priscilla said. “Not to be nosy, but there was a rumor circulatin’ there today that your mama is Maxine McAllister. I said a woman who looks like you couldn’t possibly have a mama who. . .” She stopped there, as if suddenly thinking better of the remainder of her comment.
For a moment, Grier could think of absolutely nothing to say, her mind a complete blank. She had forced herself not to think about her mama on the drive down since she had no intention of seeing her while she was here. A wave of shame rose up inside her for the fact that her mother had chosen men and booze over her.
On the heels of that old shame, though, came another feeling. An unexpected desire to defend her mother. But as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again. After all, if Priscilla Randall knew her, any defense Grier had to offer would be so much smoke.
“My cousin Emma-Ann works out there where your mama’s stayin’. Somebody like you coming in there would sure cheer everybody up.”
“What place?” Grier asked before she could stop herself.
“The Sunset Years Retirement Home over on 38.” Priscilla Randall made the pronouncement with careful enunciation, as if Grier’s ability to process the information had suddenly become suspect.
“Oh,” Grier said, her face flaming with instant mortification.
Priscilla cocked her head and said, “You didn’t know she was there?”
“I—of course,” she stammered, hearing the lack of conviction in her own voice.
“I’m sorry,” Priscilla said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Picking up her sandwich, Grier turned to leave. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Randall. Wish your daughter luck for me.”
“I certainly will!” Priscilla called out.
Grier walked back to the Inn as quickly as she could, her hunger gone, and in its place, an absolute certainty that she never should have come back to Timbell Creek. Eagle be damned. Her decision to do so had been about nothing more than pride and a false sense of being so far beyond what she’d left behind that it could never hurt her again.
On that, however, she didn’t suppose she could have been more wrong.
This baby will be special. I’ve always believed that unexpected things usually are. I’ll be a good mother. Who’s to say we have to follow the example we’ve been given? I’ll give my baby what I never had. I’ll do better than my own parents did. I will.
First entry written in the baby book given to Maxine McAllister for her daughter Grier
CHAPTER FOUR
For a long time, Maxine McAllister counted the number of days. Then she counted weeks. Months. And finally, years. Nineteen, now.
Nineteen since Grier had left Timbell Creek.
Maxine stared at the newspaper photo, a glamorous headshot with a photographer’s credit in the lower right hand corner. She studied her daughter’s features. Wide green eyes, full lips so like hers, clear, unlined skin that spoke of a care she’d never given her own.
Grier. What a beautiful woman she’d grown up to be. In a way, Maxine felt as though she were looking at a stranger, even as she saw remnants of the little girl she’d once rocked to sleep at night.
An ache set up in the center of Maxine’s chest, a painful throb of remorse and regret. She let the newspaper collapse onto her lap, her right hand gripping the arm of her wheelchair in an attempt to steady against the sudden dizziness swamping her like an ocean wave.
She closed her eyes and fought it back.
“That must be your young’un.”
Maxine stayed as she was for a few moments, not answering. When she finally opened her eyes, Hatcher Morris stared at her from the seat of a wheelchair exactly like hers, arthritic hands laced together in his lap, his fingers so gnarled with the disease they were painful to look at. “Yeah,” she said, surprised. “How’d you guess?”
“McAllister’s not the most common name around,” he said, his voice coarse evidence of the decades of cigarettes to which it had been subjected. “And one of the nurses mentioned she thought you had a girl named Grier.”
“Had,” Maxine agreed, putting her gaze back on the picture.
“Don’t you ever see her?”
“Not for a very long time.”
“Mind if I ask why?”
Maxine shook her head, unable to answer. Hatcher Morris was about the only friend she had in this place. On the first day they’d met, he’d read her history in the lines of her face the same as she’d read his in the yellowed whites of his eyes and the distended stomach beneath his faded flannel robe.
“Well, I don’t expect it’s any of her business, anyway,” Hatcher said.
“It’s not that,” she finally managed, lifting a hand and waving it once.
Hatcher reached for the newspaper, looked at the article, and then in his gravelly voice, read, “Image Consultant Comes Home to Find Date for a Duke. Sounds like a big undertaking.”
“I would imagine,” Maxine said.
“She’s made it pretty big then, huh?” He lifted an eyebrow, looking impressed.
“Yes,” she said, pride etching her voice despite the realization that she had absolutely no claim to any credit for it. “She has.”
He glanced at the paper again. “She resembles you, you know.”
Maxine forced a smile, unable to see any current resemblance between herself and the beautiful young woman pictured in today’s paper. “You angling for my chocolate pudding again tonight, Hatcher?”
He chuckled. “Naw. I wouldn’t fool you on something like that. Anybody could see she’s yours.”
Maxine could have hugged him then and there. Hatch had a good heart. Like her, he’d thrown away some of the best years of his life with nowhere better to go at the end than a place for people who’d made a practice of taking the wrong roads. “Except I’m the rode hard and put up wet version.”
Hatcher smiled, lines fanning out from his dark eyes. “She comin’ by to see you while she’s in town?”
Maxine forced herself to laugh so the tears gathering in her throat wouldn’t make their way out as a sob. “I doubt she’ll have much extra time. I guess a TV show would have something of a schedule,” she said, hearing how pitiful her explanation sounded, and at the same time, willing him not to pity her for it.
Hatcher nodded as if there were nothing to question. “You two ever talk?”
She could have lied. But she wouldn’t fool him. Hatcher was a sharp man. In fact, she’d begun to think he’d probably done more good as a therapist for some of the people in this place than the doctors who worked here. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t talk.”
He was quiet for a couple of minutes, rotating his thumbs back and forth, one over the over. The TV in the far corner of the room blared
Jerry Springer
reruns. Maxine had grown to hate the show, but Edna Gardner and Mish Caldwell sat glued in front of it every afternoon as if they might find the answers to their own screwed up lives on that twenty-seven inch screen. Somewhere along the way, Maxine had realized the only answers to be found anywhere were the ones that nagged low inside her in that place where she’d tucked the truth away so she didn’t have to look at it. Better not to look when there wasn’t a thing you could do to change any of it.
When Hatcher spoke again, his voice sounded far away, as if he were looking back down the tunnel of his own past and regretting what he saw there. “My kids don’t talk to me neither. ‘Course I don’t blame them. I was nothing but a mean son of a bitch to all three of them.”
“You?” she said, disbelieving. “Mean?”
“Nothin’ meaner than a drunk lookin’ for the next drink. Except maybe an out of work drunk. I was both.”
“I can’t imagine—” she began, then stopped there. Actually, she could imagine. She’d seen the change alcohol could bring over people. For her, it had been little more than a curtain behind which she could hide. A shade to pull when things got too gray.
“I wonder sometimes,” he said, “what would have happened if somebody had told me what the doctors are saying now. That some people have a gene that’s like a switch being thrown at the first sip. I wonder if I might have left the stuff alone. Never touched it.”
“Probably not,” she said, uncertain whether that was supposed to make him feel better or worse. She didn’t think it would have stopped her. Self-destruction was a powerful force to resist.
“’Bout the only thing I ever did for my kids was write them a letter a couple years ago telling them they might have that same gene I have. That one drink might be all it took to put them on the same path as me.” Probably too late, but it made me feel better to know I said it.
“That must have been a hard thing to do.”
He lifted a shoulder, glanced off to the side. “Not really,” he said. “I was kind of relieved to know a person might actually have a choice if they never touched the stuff at all.”
“They listen to you?”
He rubbed a thumb across his whiskered chin. “My oldest son sent me a letter that basically said I was an arrogant s.o.b. for assuming he’d ever make the same choices I’d made. I never heard from the other two.”
“I’m sorry, Hatch.”
“Hey, don’t be. If I were him, I’d hate me, too.”
Sad, but she couldn’t think of a thing to say to make him feel any better. Not when she could apply the very same sentiment to herself. There were just some roads in this life that could never be retraveled. Some choices that could never be remade. And if she were honest with herself, she’d admit that she didn’t want her daughter to come here. Didn’t want her to see how she’d ended up. Better to leave it all behind that door Grier had closed nineteen years ago. The only thing Maxine had to offer her daughter was an apology. And what good would that do? An apology didn’t change anything. Much as she wished that it could.