A Table By the Window (9 page)

****

“I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed when you hear my appraisal,” Kay Chapman said after a tour of the warmed house. “The median home value here in Tallulah is seventy thousand dollars. Quite different from San Francisco.”

They sat in the living room, Mrs. Chapman on the toile-print sofa, Carley in the adjacent chair. The real estate agent looked to be in her early thirties. Brunette hair fell to just below her ears and fanned out a bit in a subtle flip. Her full figure was clothed in a business suit of gray with black trim and collar, and a knee-length skirt.

“I understand that,” Carley said. She envied Mrs. Chapman's full lips, obviously not the result of the collagen injections that were becoming somewhat popular among California women.
You can afford them,
she told herself and squelched that notion immediately. Her fear of needles was stronger than her vanity.

“But we can be very safe in asking eighty thousand for this one,” Mrs. Chapman went on. “And that gives prospective buyers room to negotiate. Everyone likes to feel he's had a hand in getting a good deal.”

She took a sheet of paper from her briefcase. “All I need is your signature on the contract.”

“Contract?”

Mrs. Chapman's smile did not mask the puzzlement in her eyes. “It's standard procedure, giving our agency the exclusive right to sell the house for six months.”

This was moving too fast.

“Um…I'm just not one hundred percent sure yet that I want to sell.”

Carley surprised even herself with this revelation. Perhaps the seed had been planted last night during the course of dusting, moving from room to room handling everything that her grandmother had handled. She had developed an affection for the house. Besides, she had not even had the opportunity to confer with Aunt Helen or the others she had yet to meet. Should she not consider their feelings? What if a relative wished to buy the house before it was put on the market? Didn't normal families ask for input before making permanent decisions such as this one?

“Would you rather rent it out?” Mrs. Chapman asked. “We could keep it filled. There aren't that many rental properties here.”

“I don't think so,” Carley replied. “I'll need the money to buy a house in California. But this is all too new for me, frankly. I only learned I owned this house a week ago. I should have thought about it longer before having you over. Sorry for wasting your time.”

“My time wasn't wasted.” Mrs. Chapman slipped the paper back into her briefcase and snapped it shut. “Why don't you sleep on it a couple of days? It's best to be certain anyway. Once you sign, you can't change your mind for the six-month period.”

“Really?”

“I take that back. Of course you may change your mind, but we would be forced to charge a penalty for our time and inconvenience. You don't want that, and we wouldn't want to have to do that either.”

“Have you ever had to?”

“Once, when someone backed out after we'd already found a buyer for his property.” She wrinkled her nose. “I feel guilty every time I run into the guy. But even
he
isn't immune to contract penalties.”

Carley was curious why the emphasis on the
he
. But there was no point in asking, as she knew so few people in Tallulah by name.

“As I said, it's best to be certain,” Mrs. Chapman went on. “You just call when you're ready. How is that?”

“Yes, thank you,” Carley said, and was swept with a great surge of relief.

Her visitor had stepped over the threshold when Carley remembered something she had intended to ask. “Do you know where I can get some boxes?” There were several things she wanted to ship home, such as the Blue Willow dishes.

“We actually sell them, for the same price we pay at Office Depot in Hattiesburg,” Mrs. Chapman said as cold air flowed in around her. “As a service to our customers. Just come by the office any time. You'll just have to assemble them yourself, but that's easy.”

“Thank you.” Carley hesitated. “But I'm not a client yet.”

“That doesn't matter. And besides, you'll probably be a client one way or the other, sell or rent. You can't very well chain the house to your car and drag it to California, can you?”

That made Carley laugh. “No, the Budget Rent A Car people would be very upset.”

Henderson's Grocery, west of the flashing light, was about half the size of a Safeway supermarket. Almost every customer Carley wheeled past gave her a curious smile or at least a shy nod. Canned beef stock was on her list, but on impulse she put a small roast into her cart. Being on the short road to freedom from debt was cause for celebration. That was also her rationalization for a half gallon of Breyers mint chocolate chip ice cream.

“Is the chicken salad fresh?” she asked a bald, white-aproned man at the small deli counter.

“I mixed it up only two hours ago,” he drawled, spooning some on a melba toast round. “Here, try it.”

She chewed. Minced celery and egg as well as chicken, and not too heavy on the mayonnaise. Her own recipe called for a bit of curry powder, parsley, and sweet pickle, minus the eggs, but she would not have time to make a batch before lunch. “It's good. I'll have a pound. Um, make that a pound and a half.”

“You ever try it on raisin bread?” drawled a young woman with medium brown curls and a serious-looking infant strapped to her chest.

“Chicken salad?” Carley smiled at the baby.

“You'd be surprised how good it is. Even with tomater and lettuce. I like your hair. It's not dyed, is it?”

“Thank you. No, it's all natural. Boy or girl?”

“She's a girl,” the woman said proudly. “Her name's Megan.”

“Bye, Megan,” Carley cooed, and was rewarded with a gummy smile. In the small bakery section she thought,
Oh, why not?
She could always have the raisin bread with cream cheese for breakfast. But just in case, she also placed a loaf of whole wheat into her cart. The only item on her list not in stock was fresh oregano, so she bought a bottle of dried but asked about it at the checkout counter.

“Try Fresh Pickin's at the flashing light.” The clerk was about fifty, with dark blonde hair piled high upon her head and no makeup or jewelry. The badge on her smock read
Anna Erwin
. “Miz Bell grows herbs in her greenhouse.”

“Thank you. I'll do that.”

“I have two gin-nee pigs,” came from Carley's right.

While unloading her cart and counting out payment, Carley had not really looked at the young man bagging her groceries. But now she noticed his head was small for his body, and was made to look even smaller by the navy blue knit cap pulled down over his ears. The top button to his flannel plaid shirt was fastened, and he wore high-top black tennis shoes and corduroy slacks belted high around the waist.

“Do you?” Carley said.

Moss-colored eyes brightened in his face. His words came out thickly, as if formed by an oversized tongue. “My sister, Hayley, gave them to me for my birthday. I named them Bugs and Daffy. Do you know who Bugs Bunny and Daffy—?”

“Neal, honey, let me give the lady her change,” the checkout clerk cut in pleasantly. Into Carley's hand she counted, “Five…six…seven dollars and fourteen cents.”

Carley thanked her, dropped the money into her purse, and said to the young man, “Yes, I know who they are. Those are good names. And happy birthday.”

“It's not my birthday.” He wheeled the loaded cart around and took hold of the bar. “My birthday's March-the-first. Do you know my sister?”

“No, I'm new in town. But here, I can get those.”

He shook his head. “It's my job. I have on a termil shirt under here. What's your name?”

“Carley Reed.” She followed through the automatic door and caught up with him. Above the squeak of wheels on concrete she said, “And you're Neal?”

“Neal, yes. Henderson is my other name. What's your other name?”

“Reed,” Carley repeated. When he blinked at her, she realized his ears had picked up
Carleyreed
. More slowly, she said, “My first name is Carley. And my other name is Reed. Your father owns this store?”

“My daddy's store, yes. Grandpa did too, but it was littler and in a different place. I don't remember it much, just the candy. Do you like SweeTarts?”

She opened the Cavalier's trunk. “Sorry, not really. But I used to love Milk Duds.”

Candy was a major contributor to her need for extensive dental work in her teens. She was fortunate that money was tight most of the time when she was a child, or she would have diabetes by now.

Neal hefted a plastic grocery bag by the handles. “Milk Duds are good. I can't have too much candy. That's because of the sugar. If you eat too much, then you have to buy teeth like Grandma Milly. Do you know her?”

“I'm afraid I don't know a lot of people here.”

“Because you're new in town?”

“That's right.”

He shook his head at the five-dollar bill Carley offered. “Daddy says we don't make people pay extrey for service. I have to go back in now. G'bye.”

Carley smiled. “Good-bye, Neal.”

She watched him push the cart up the small parking lot at a half trot and then return the wave of a man climbing from the cab of a dusty white pickup. Fresh Pickin's was an open-air stand with wide strips of thick clear plastic hanging from sides of the roof to the concrete floor, to conserve some of the heat of the electric heaters set about.
Miz Bell
, blonde and thirtysomething in jeans and sweatshirt, looked nothing like the mental picture Carley had conjured.

“You ain't from the South, are you?” she asked as Carley dug her wallet from her purse to pay for the oregano and a red tomato that looked more appealing than the winter-anemic one from Henderson's. “Ah can tell by yore accent.”

My accent?
Carley thought as she handed over a five-dollar bill. “I'm from California.”

“I'll be dawg.” Gray eyes appraised her in a friendly way. “I'll bet you drink yore tea hot.”

Carley smiled. “Scalding.”

The woman laughed, counted out her change, and asked her to wait a minute. She disappeared into a wooden building connected to the back of the stand, then returned with a plastic bag of slender green leaves. “Lemon verbena. Try a few in yore tea.”

But when Carley started to take out her wallet again, the woman shook her head. “It's on me.”

“Why, thank you.”

The dashboard clock read 1:55 as Carley pulled into the driveway. She was buttering a pan when it struck her that, though she might not belong to Tallulah—nor did she really desire to—she no longer felt like an outsider.

It wasn't that San Francisco or Sacramento residents were not friendly. Far from it. The difference here was small town versus big city. Having tens of thousands of residents, tourists, and commuters stifled curiosity. There was little novelty to meeting an unfamiliar face when another would be coming along a second later.

****

A three-quarter moon sat above distant treetops in the dark sky as Carley walked out into the driveway with her grandmother's aluminum cake container in hand. On Main Street, lights shone down on empty shop fronts. Customers were visible through Corner Diner's well-lit windows.

A white Roadmaster station wagon with wood-grain side panels occupied the space beside the truck in the Hudsons' carport on Fifth Street. Behind that was parked a silver minivan. Carley knocked at the front door. A second later the sound of barking came from the other side.

“Hush, Tiger!” A woman's voice said as the knob turned.

Carley instinctively took a backward step. The door swung open. A woman in navy slacks and white knit shirt smiled up at her as she crouched to hold the collar of a full-grown collie. “See? She's not a burglar.”

That satisfied the dog, who stayed put when released. Straightening, the woman smiled and said, “I've been looking forward to this ever since Mom called. I'm Sherry, your first cousin once removed.”

Plump in a healthy sort of way, she had chin-length honey-blonde hair loosely parted on the right side and flowing back a bit from her face. Her aquamarine eyes were enhanced by blue frames running along the top of a pair of otherwise rimless lenses. She looked to be in her midforties, a bit older than Linda would be if she were still alive, though her unlined face bore none of the ravages of fast living.

“It's so good to meet you too,” Carley said, smiling as she stepped into the foyer.

“And this is Tiger, which proves Mom and Dad should never have let a grandson name their dog. You didn't have to bring anything. But I hope that's cake.”

“Italian creme.”

“Yum. Here, let me hold it while you take off your coat. Just put it on that chair right through that door.”

After surrendering the cake server, Carley took a couple of steps through a doorway into a dark living room, draped her coat over a chair back, and laid her gloves on top. Back in the entrance hall, the dog sniffed her hand.

“Tiger…” Sherry warned.

“It's all right. I like dogs,” Carley said, stroking the animal's head. The fact that he did not jump up on her raised his esteem in her eyes.

“Well, he's got to share you with everyone else.” Sherry took the container's top handle so that she could link arms with Carley. Tiger led, paws clicking on ceramic tiles. Unlike the living room, the den looked well used. It was large enough to accommodate two sofas, three chairs, and a recliner, lamp tables, a television, and a fireplace. Tan carpeting stretched out to mist-green walls. Savory aromas wafted from a kitchen door.

A man and teenage boy ceased watching
Cops
and stood—the man lowering the volume with the remote control. Sherry introduced her husband, Blake, and son, Patrick.