Phantom of Riverside Park (36 page)

“I going to be very busy here catching up
after my long absence,” he told her. “To answer your question...I
really don’t know.”

She worried her bottom lip, but she didn’t
protest, and David thanked God for small favors.

“Maybe I shouldn’t move just yet. Maybe I
should stay here in case my lawyer needs me.”

“The farm is a great place for a child. You
and Nicky need to be there.” It was a gentle reminder that the move
was one of the reasons they had married.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s right. I almost
forgot.” She pushed her hair away from her flushed face. “There’s
so much to think about now. What’s going to happen next?”

“There will be a lot of legal maneuvering,
lots of motions filed, none of which will require your presence in
Memphis.” She still didn’t look convinced. “I’ll send Peter to
fetch you if you need to be here.”

“Peter?”

“Yes. Or you can come up with McKenzie.”

“I like your sister, David. I look forward to
getting to know her. I’ve always wanted a sister.”

Suddenly his marriage took on a life of its
own, sending out silken threads in all directions, wrapping its
tender tentacles around every member of his family as well as hers.
Soon it would be pulling in complete strangers off the street,
forcing champagne glasses into their hands and shouting,
look
at me. I am the legal union of Elizabeth and David Lassiter. Till
death do us part.

David had made that pledge, never dreaming
how it might become real, never imagining how much he would yearn
for it to become real.

The new lady Sally said, “You’re going home,
honey lamb, I’m gonna miss you, precious baby,” and she hugged him
and he liked her lots ‘cause she was nice and sometimes she smelled
like lemons. When he asked her, “How come?” she said, “Because I
use lemon paste wax.” She polished a lot, and if Nicky bent real
close he could see himself in the furniture. That was fun, but he’d
‘ruther go home.

“When’s my mommy comin’?”

“She’ll be here before you can Jack Robinson,
honey lamb.“

He said, “Jack Robinson, honey lamb,” and she
laughed and cried at the same time. Then he saw the car, and the
nice lady let him run onto the sidewalk, and when Mommy saw him she
said, “Nicky,” and picked him and squeezed him and squeezed him.
She was cryin’. Papa was cryin’, too, and when Nicky said, “How
come,” Papa said, “Bug in my eye.”

Nicky was glad he was goin’ home. He was
gonna chase all them bugs away.

It was the kind of golden glorious day
Mississippi is famous for, still warm enough to sit in the sunshine
in shirtsleeves but not so hot, sweat rolled over you in rivers and
made your clothes stick to you. A perfect day for new beginnings.
Like a benediction.

McKenzie was in the farmhouse kitchen
watching their lifelong housekeeper make cookies and trying to
prepare her for the change.

“I haven’t met the grandfather and the little
boy yet, but Elizabeth is delightful.”

“It’s been too long since we’ve had a child
in this house.” Puffs of flour rose from the dough she was pounding
as Lora Bea talked. “Lordy, it’s going to be good to see a little
boy running around here again.”

“Yes, it will,” McKenzie said, and she meant
it. She loved children and used to think she’d have a houseful of
her own. That hadn’t worked out, and now she was too old. Not
quite, but practically. Even if she started this very minute--which
wasn’t likely considering there was nobody who could hold a candle
to Paul and nobody was likely to ever come close--she still could
never hope for more than one or two, at the most. Unless she had
twins.

“Where are you going to put them?”

Lora Bea’s question jerked McKenzie back to
the task at hand: getting ready for Elizabeth and her family. David
had told her to put them as far away from him as possible,
naturally. And though he hadn’t said it in exactly those words,
McKenzie was smart enough to read between the lines.

He was scared to death. He’d swung his prison
doors open a bit, but he was terrified of stepping out into the
real world.

“Oh, I thought I’d put Nicky and his papa in
the east wing on the second floor. It’s got a great view and I
thought Mr. Jennings and the little boy would enjoy looking out
their windows and seeing the animals. Elizabeth, of course, will be
sharing the suite with David.”

He would have a conniption fit when he found
out, but by then it would be too late. The suite in the east wing
on the third floor was meant for the master of the house, and
that’s what David was, whether he wanted to admit it or not. The
spacious and sunny bedroom next to David’s hadn’t even needed
redecorating, which was a darned good thing considering the short
notice McKenzie had to get it ready. But more importantly, it had a
connecting door.

“What’s she like, this woman David
married?”

“She’s very beautiful, but not stuck on
herself. In fact, I doubt she has any idea how lovely she is. She’s
intelligent and sweet, but spunky, too.”

“Good. That’s just what David needs. Somebody
with backbone. He’s stubborn as that old jackass you keep in the
barn.”

McKenzie laughed. Elizabeth had backbone, and
enough fire in her belly, McKenzie hoped, to swing open that
connecting door.

o0o

Here they were, headed back to Mississippi in
a brand new red Jeep Grand Cherokee--courtesy of David--going back
in style, even though they hadn’t done a thing to accomplish this
miracle except land in trouble. It seemed to Elizabeth that trouble
had followed her around all her life, and she couldn’t help but
glance in the rear-view mirror to see if it was trailing along
behind her, hiding around a curve on highway 78 just waiting to pop
out and yell
gotcha
at the moment she least expected
it.

Elizabeth wasn’t going to dwell on that,
though. She preferred to think she was leaving her troubles behind.
Papa was grinning from ear to ear, dressed in overalls he hadn’t
worn in five years. She couldn’t remember seeing him so happy.

And Nicky was practically bursting at the
seams, bouncing up and down in his car seat, asking questions a
mile a minute.

“How many cows they got, Papa?”

“Peter said a whole herd.”

“How many’s a herd.”

“Could be fifty. Maybe more.”

“Fifty pigs, too?”

“No, just a few, but they’ve got ‘em, they’ve
got pigs.”

“And horses?”

“So they say. And goats and geese and
chickens and a donkey. Not to mention the cats and dogs. Why, I
hear they’ve even got a peacock.”

“Wow! I
like
my new home.” Nicky was
already calling the farm home, in spite of the fact that Elizabeth
had explained how they would be staying only a little while.

As she followed Peter’s car down that shining
ribbon of road to the farm in New Albany, Elizabeth wondered how
she would ever tell her son after the case was over that the farm
wasn’t his home after all. That it was only a temporary resting
place. That they had to be moving on.

Elizabeth was so tired of upheaval in her
life, she didn’t know what to do. She wished just once she could
wake up in the morning and say
hello bedroom, hello kitchen,
hello trees and grass and flowers
and know for certain that it
was all hers, that nobody could take it away, that she would wake
up in exactly the same bed, in exactly the same house and look at
exactly the same trees for the next two hundred years.

She craved sameness the way an addict craves
a fix.

Up ahead Peter put on his blinker. “We’re
here,” she said, and Nicky let out a shout, but Papa was strangely
silent.

The farm opened up before them, a greening
place, and Elizabeth thought of the biblical phrase “splendor in
the grass” and how the writer must have been a farmer, for who else
could look at trees and grass backed by a patch of blue sky and
call it splendid.

It wasn’t the same patch of earth Papa had
called home, and yet the land reached out to embrace them the way a
farm will, and Elizabeth had the sense of coming home. One glance
at Papa told her that he was feeling the same thing.

The cattle stood in placid groups chewing
their cud and a curious colt left his mother’s side and gamboled up
to the split-rail fence to watch them pass by. As the land
unfolded, she glanced over and saw her Papa’s lips moving.

“Well, God, I reckon you showed me who’s the
boss. Forgive me for doubting, and thank You for loving me anyhow.
Amen.” He smiled at Elizabeth. “Lola Mae would have loved this
place.”

“I know, Papa.”

He would love it, too. That was the main
thing. Finally she was able to give back the farm he’d lost. If
only for a little while.

The road curved for nearly a mile. And then
she saw the house. Actually it was a mansion. Not one of those
austere places that looked as if nobody would be allowed to speak
above a whisper inside its walls, but a welcoming place with ferns
hanging on the verandah and quilts thrown over the backs of rocking
chairs and plenty of tall windows to let in the sun.

McKenzie came down the wide steps to meet
them. Elizabeth could tell she was a little nervous at first
because she was chattering on about who would sleep where and
sliding her eyes over at Peter as if she expected him to give her
some sort of invisible guidance. She was trying too hard. It was
often the way of women bent of getting somebody to like them, and
Elizabeth felt an instant kinship. Here was a woman who wanted to
be her friend. A part of Elizabeth that had been staggering for too
long, breathed a deep sigh. She didn’t have to stagger all by
herself in this new place. Here was a woman who would catch her if
she fell.

Papa said, “If you wouldn’t mind, I sure
would like to see the barn before I see the house.”

“Can I go, too, Mommy? Can I see the
donkey?”

McKenzie’s smile was one of pure relief. “At
last, two men after my own heart. Of course we can see the barn
first, Mr. Jennings.”

“Call me Papa,” he said, though he knew full
well about the terms of the marriage. Elizabeth wondered if he had
forgotten, which wouldn’t surprise her at his age and after all
he’d been through, or if he were being cagey.

Elizabeth thought McKenzie would be
embarrassed because she most certainly knew about the terms of the
marriage, too, but she acted as if she were tickled pink.

“Great. A person can’t have too many good
Papas.” She knelt beside Nicky, smiling. “And you must be Nicky.
I’m McKenzie.”

“Is that a boy name?”

“I dunno. Could be. But I’m a girl. Do you
want to hold my hand?”

“Sure.” Nicky held up four fingers before he
took her hand. “I’m this many.” He leaned over to whisper, “Nex’
birfday I’ll be this many an’ I like parties.”

McKenzie beamed at Elizabeth. “He’s
adorable.”

“Thank you. I think so, too.”

“Are you coming with us on this grand animal
tour, Elizabeth?”

“If you don’t mind I’d like to sit in that
wonderful rocker on the front porch for a while.”

“Great. We won’t be long.” Elizabeth didn’t
know who started it first, McKenzie or Nicky, but they stood there
with identical grins, swinging hands. “Are you coming, Peter?”

“You bet.” He winked at Nicky. “I like
animals.”

Elizabeth sat in the rocker nearest the steps
and set it in motion. Here she was, Elizabeth Jennings, going to
live in a house bigger than the Belliveau mansion, a house that
needed no invention whatsoever. She wouldn’t have to make excuses
for cracked linoleum and call chipped furniture rakish. She
wouldn’t have to wait for a bath because the hot water heater was
too small and Papa had used all the hot water washing dishes, a
ritual she’d named Bohemian. She wouldn’t have to put extra
blankets on the bed and call the wind whistling through the windows
romantic.

This house was hers--at least
temporarily--and she wasn’t going to let herself think beyond the
moment. For a little while she was going to sit back and breathe.
If she still remembered how.

o0o

It was nearly eleven when David’s cell phone
rang, and when he saw McKenzie’s name and number pop up, he
panicked. Peter had called earlier in the day to report that they’d
all arrived safely and that Elizabeth and her family seemed very
happy there. A late night call could only mean one thing: something
bad had happened.

As he reached for the receiver he pictured
Thomas Jennings blacked out again, or even worse, dead. He saw
Nicky cut and bleeding from a fall. Or Elizabeth... dear God, his
wife lying at the foot of the staircase, her neck broken.

“David.” It was McKenzie, sounding calm. He
breathed easier. Peter would have been the one to deliver bad news.
Or would he? He’d mentioned something about coming down with a
bug.

“What’s wrong?”

“Good grief? Why are you shouting? Nothing’s
wrong.”

“Do you know what time it is, McKenzie?”

“What does it matter when you have the
world’s most wonderful sister who has a bone to pick with you.”

“What’s so all-fired important it couldn’t
wait till morning?”

“You’re getting to be crotchety in addition
to being reclusive. That’s a lethal combination, David.”

“For who?
Whom
?”

“You, that’s who.”

David groaned. “Is this pep talk number one
where you say,
David, get your butt to a plastic surgeon,
or is it number two where you order me to get a life?”

“Neither. It’s a brand new pep talk, and I
would have called you sooner, but I’ve had so much fun with
Elizabeth and her family time got away from us. They’re all just
now tucked in bed.”

McKenzie’s voice sparkled with excitement. He
loved seeing his sister this happy. More than that, he felt puffed
up with pride that Elizabeth was the source.