Tea and Primroses (10 page)

“You’ll write to me, won’t you? Tell me all the details?”

“Of course.” We walked until we reached the big rock at the end of the beach. We stood together, facing the tide, arm in arm, watching the waves come in and go out. “You sure about Tim? About the wedding?” I paused, putting my head on her shoulder. “I need to know you’re sure before I leave.”

“I’m sure.”

“I wanted you to get out of here.”

Louise squeezed my arm. “Constance, that’s your dream, not mine. I love this town. And I loved Tim when I thought he’d have a football career and I love him now. I just want to have a little house and some babies and to be a good wife. I’m proud of him, for picking up and moving on, going to the police academy and all.”

I smiled, hiding my worries. I didn’t trust Tim Ball. I wished I did, but I didn’t. “I want every dream of yours to come true. You know that.”

“I do,” she said. “I surely do.”

“Do you ever think about being a teacher, like you used to talk about?”

She shook her head. “No, that was just when we were kids. Now I just want to be a wife and mother.” She paused. “Mom’s right, you know. You’re too big for Miller. He’s the only one who doesn’t know that.” She pointed up to the houses speckled along the coast. “See those places up there? Someday you’re going to be so famous and rich from your novels, you’ll be able to buy one and live there. We’ll have tea on your deck and watch the sunsets.”

I smiled, letting the daydream come into my mind as well. “I could have a writing desk that looked out to the sea. Can you imagine?”

“I can.” She turned to look at me. “Promise you won’t forget me when you’ve outgrown me and this town?”

“Louise, it’s impossible to forget your best friend, no matter how far away you move from them. You ever need me to pummel someone for you, I’m only a phone call away.”

“Long distance calls are so expensive, though.”

I laughed. “Now you sound like my mother. Don’t you worry, we’ll always have the post office.”

All the way back to her house, we talked compatibly of nothing and everything, as we’d done most of our lives.

An hour later, with Aggie and Louise’s encouraging words rumbling around in my head, I set out to see Miller. It was just before lunchtime and raining. I pulled my rain hood over my head as I walked over to Miller’s family’s hardware store. The store was quiet, empty but for a man looking at paint samples and Miller’s mother. She was at the counter, reading a magazine, dressed in her usual uniform of a sweet cotton dress and cardigan sweater, both in the colors of an Easter egg. Today it was a light pink dress and soft yellow sweater. Blond and pretty, she’d been the head cheerleader in high school (my mother hated her) and had married Miller’s father before she turned twenty. They had three sons; Miller was their baby and the only offspring interested in working at the hardware store and continuing to live in Legley Bay. The other two were, in the words of Mrs. Byrd, living Godless in Seattle and Chicago. “I always have Miller to console me,” she said to me one night when I joined them for Sunday dinner.

“Hi, Mrs. Bryd. Is Miller here?”

“Hello, dear. He’s in the back.” Mrs. Bryd was polite to me, always, but there was an inspective, suspicious quality about the way she looked at me, hidden behind her perfect manners. She made me feel immediately like a wild and wicked girl, prone to lascivious sex acts and skipping church to smoke in the alley. Of course, I did none of these things. But some people just made a person feel guilty. Mrs. Byrd was one of them.

Although I was never really sweet on Miller, I continued to date him for reasons I attributed to boredom and my inability to hurt him by ending it. He was just always there, asking me to dinner or walks on the beach. I was fond of him and in the spirit of the time, had allowed him to have sex with me on a regular basis during the last year. That was my mistake. Once you let a boy like Miller touch your bare skin on a blanket under the stars, he thinks you belong to him.

I knocked lightly on his office door, not wanting to disturb him if he was on the phone, but he said to come in. “Hey, doll. What a surprise.” His eyes went from my face down my body and back again. “You look delicious enough to eat, as always. Just give me a minute here. I’m ordering another batch of nails.” The office was chilly. I pulled my raincoat tighter. Miller wore his letterman’s jacket from high school with the sleeves pulled up to his elbows. His blond hair was combed neatly and his slightly pink skin freshly shaven. He waved an order form at me. “Not as easy as it looks.”

Right. Nails came in a lot of sizes. We’d discussed this before. I sat in the rickety wooden chair next to his desk and waited, fussing with my fingernails. I was prone to bite them, especially when I was nervous. Miller’s brow was creased and his lips moved silently as he worked through the order.

When he was done, he set the form aside and wheeled his chair closer to me. “You come by for lunch? Mama packed mine but I can save it for tomorrow.”

“No. I have some news.”

“Good news?” He smiled wide and touched my shoulder.

“I think it is.”

“You sure you don’t want to tell me over lunch? I’ll take you to get a hamburger.”

I took a deep breath. “I was offered a job in Vermont. At a newspaper.”

His hazel eyes were at first blank and then confused like when one is awakened from a deep sleep. He scooted the chair back an inch or so and picked up a pencil from the desk and tapped the rubber eraser on his knee. The muscle in his forearm twitched. “A job?”

“And I’m going to take it,” I added, as if that weren’t obvious.

“What do you mean? Move there?”

“Yes.”

“But what about us?”

“I want to see some things besides the view from this hardware store.”

He placed the pencil on the desk, steadying it with two fingers, and then crossed his arms over his chest. “But I thought we were getting married.”

“I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

His face turned red. “But we’ve been having sex.” He lowered his voice at the word sex.

“That didn’t mean I wanted to marry you.” I said this in a gentle tone, not wanting to hurt his feelings. But really, what era did he think we were living in?

“Of course it does.” He rose to his feet. The back of the chair smacked the wall.

“It’s 1981, Miller, not 1881.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I get to do what I want, with or without a man, including what job I take and where I live.” I was still speaking softly, trying not to hurt him further by showing my impatience with him.

“I can wait for you.” He plopped back in the chair, moving it close to me again. “Until you come to your senses.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“Well, like you, I get to decide things for myself. If I want to wait until you see that everything you need is right here, that’s my business.” He paused, his eyes pained, like a puppy just hit with a newspaper for reasons he couldn’t possibly fathom. “You want to get a hamburger?”

I sighed. “Sure. Thanks.”

***

When I returned home from lunch with Miller, my father was sitting out on the porch, sanding a piece of wood. Our house was built in the 1940s, a typical bungalow style that at one time had probably been quietly handsome. But the sea air had done its damage, year after year, making all the houses gray. Our house was no exception.

“Hi, Daddy. What’re you making?”

His eyes twinkled at me. “A letter opener for you. That way you won’t have any excuse not to read my letters.”

“I’ll rip them open the minute I get them whether I have an opener or not.” I laughed. “Promise me you’ll write?”

“As long as you don’t judge my grammar.”

“Don’t worry about that. Anyway, you’re the one who taught me how to be a writer no matter what you think of your grammar skills.”

“How’s that, Sweets?”

“By showing me how to look at the world with my heart, not my head.”

“Now don’t go making your old man cry.”

“Daddy, I’m going to miss you.”

“Me too, Sweets. Something terrible.”

I kissed him on the cheek and then sat on the steps, looking up at him, pulling my jacket tighter. The spring air was chilly. There were several dark clouds overhead that looked like they would dump rain at any moment. “I told Miller.”

He nodded, continuing to sand his piece of wood.

“It didn’t go that well.”

“I ‘spect it didn’t.” He looked up at me, his expression firm. “I don’t want you married to someone you don’t love. No matter what happens, you remember that.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” Several drops of rain speckled the steps. I looked up at the sky, holding out my hand. “Rain.”

“Yep.”

I moved onto the porch, sitting in the chair next to him. “Why is Mother so mad at me all the time?”

He stopped sanding and wrinkled his brow. In the way he had of searching for the right words, he hesitated before speaking. “She takes how you’re so different from her as a judgment against her life, her choices. Against her. Like a rejection, I guess is what you’d call it. If you don’t choose the same life she did, then somehow her life doesn’t seem to matter.”

I stared at him. “Daddy, how do you know that?”

“I’ve lived with her for a long time.”

Just then, Reggie came walking down the street. Reggie worked down at the docks and was my father’s only friend as far as I knew. He was my father’s age, give or take a few years, and wore a patch over his right eye. “Lost it in Vietnam,” my father told me once when I asked about it. There was just a peek of scarred skin not covered by the patch. It hurt me to look at it. I’d loved Reggie all my life.

“Greetings, Harold.” He called my father Harold, instead of Harry, like everyone else. I don’t know why, but this amused me a great deal. Reggie tipped his hat without actually taking it off. I’d never seen him without his baseball hat. I didn’t even know if he had hair under there or not. “Princess, looking beautiful, as always.”

“Thanks, Reggie.”

“I hear you got yourself a new fancy job.”

I grinned. “I did. Leaving after Louise’s wedding.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue rabbit’s foot. “This here’s my good luck charm. I want you to have it.”

I held out my hand and he dropped it in my palm. The foot was clean but worn thin on one side. “Thanks, Reggie. But don’t you need it?”

“Oh, heck, if I get any luckier I won’t know what to do with myself.” He pulled on the straps of his overalls and rocked back on his heels.

“I’ll cherish it.” I fought back tears.

“Oh, now, don’t you get all mushy on me, Princess. You know I’m a marshmallow inside and no one wants to see a one-eyed man cry.”

“You want to stay for dinner, Reg?” My father always asked and Reggie always said no.

Reggie shoved his hands in his overall pockets, glancing at the door as if my mother might come out at any moment. “Oh, no thanks, now. I wouldn’t want to bother your missus. Anyhow, I eat over at Murphy’s on Thursdays. All you can eat chili. The boys expect me down there, you know.”

“The boys” were Reggie’s drinking buddies. Most of them worked at the docks with Reggie and my father. Once a year, on his birthday, my father went with him to Murphy’s. Other than that, my mother forbade drinking of any kind, at the bar or at home.

After Reggie said his goodbyes, my father and I sat in silence for a few minutes. The rain started in earnest, making pitter-patter noises on the porch roof. When I stood to go inside, my father grabbed my hand. “You go make all those dreams come true, Sweets. Don’t give up on those books of yours. And when and if you’re ready to come home, I’ll be here.”

“Thank you, Daddy.” My eyes filled and, embarrassed, I slipped inside.

The next week I stood up for Louise as she married Tim Ball. The week after, I moved to Greeley, planning on never looking back, only forward. But I didn’t know then that life is arranged in a circle.

A PAIR OF FEET,
suddenly in Sutton’s line of sight, pulled her out of her mother’s story. The feet, in expensive black pumps, were connected to well-developed calves. Gigi. She looked up. Gigi was next to her now, with a look of concern in her eyes. “You ready for wine?” Gigi held an open but full bottle of white wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.

Sutton glanced over at Declan. He nodded. “Go. We can finish this later.”

“What is this?” asked Gigi, pointing at the papers.

“Just something my mother was working on. Her life story as far as we can tell. They think she was murdered, Gigi.”

“I know, honey. Peter told me.”

“He asked us to look in her desk for clues. And we found this.” Declan tapped the manuscript. “But so far it’s not telling us much.”

“Dec, Louise was looking for you earlier,” said Gigi.

Declan stood. “I’ll go find her. You two should take a walk.” His eyes were soft as he offered his hand to Sutton. She took it as he pulled her to her feet. “It’ll help clear your head a bit.”

Sutton glanced at the manuscript, wanting only to read further.

Declan shook his head. “It’ll be there when you get back. We’ll read more tonight. Come on now.”

“Fine. Can we go to our spot?” Sutton asked Gigi.

“Is it still the same?” asked Gigi.

“I never go there anymore.”

“Why?” asked Declan, his gaze on the floor.

“Too many memories,” Sutton answered.

They were all silent for a moment. Gigi put the bottle of wine on the table and reached down and pulled off her pumps, setting them next to the sofa. “Take off your shoes too. It’s warm enough to go barefoot.”

Sutton slipped out of her sandals, setting them next to Gigi’s, and grabbed one of the beach blankets her mother kept in the chest near the French doors. “Bring the wine.” But she needn’t have bothered; it was already tucked into the crook of Gigi’s arm.