Chapter Forty-Two
A few hours later the house settled down. I’d returned Jackson’s car keys—but not his robe because I might never give that back—so he could scamper, probably off to work. A hot shower and two cups of coffee helped to get the day back on track.
First stop, the kitchen. A pre-lunch scone waited for me. So did Gram and Celia. They’d clearly attended the shortest church service ever or skipped out on the after-service gossip, which they never did.
“You’re back.”
I tried to make that sound like a good thing.
Celia smiled. “We are.”
An ambush. Great.
They’d retaken their seats at the table. Gram had made an early switch today from a hot beverage to her beloved sweet tea, which meant she planned to linger as long as it took for her to get the information she wanted.
Apparently no one in Winston-Salem needed fresh pastries anytime soon.
I made it the whole way to the table and my plate before Gram spoke up. “You certainly know how to liven up a Sunday morning.”
Celia nursed a cup of coffee, holding it close to her mouth but not drinking it. “Leave the poor thing alone.”
“She’s the one who came crashing in on our breakfast.”
Celia nodded. “We’ve all been there.”
Wait a minute. What were these two doing while I was in DC? “You’ve been caught wandering around town in a man’s robe?”
Gram snorted. “You’d be surprised.”
We’d hit on an interesting topic filled with messiness and mistakes that weren’t mine. Finally. “Let’s talk about that for a few minutes.”
“No.”
Gram’s tone didn’t leave a lot of room for disagreement. “So, what does all of this mean?”
“You and Jackson. Together.”
I figured out the context without Celia’s help. “Yeah, I know what Gram is referring to.”
Gram poured herself another glass of tea and hunkered down, ready to interrogate. “I’m still not hearing an answer.”
That was on purpose because there was a limit to the amount of sex talk I could have with my grandmother. Celia was Jackson’s aunt. This situation had ick written all over it. “I thought I could finish my scone first.”
Gram pushed a plate full of scones in my general direction. “You can do more than one thing at a time.”
Gram was not backing down. She wouldn’t be happy until I presented a PowerPoint presentation on yesterday evening’s activities. “You understand this is embarrassing, right?”
Celia crossed the room and picked up the jam and clotted cream. If she intended to force me to talk by stuffing me with scones . . . yeah, that would likely work.
“It shouldn’t be. We’ve all had sex with men before.”
She launched that bomb as she sat down again. “Admittedly, for me, not great sex. He had no idea what he was doing.”
“Men always think they’re so good at it.”
Gram delivered a well-placed snort. “All that fumbling and grunting.”
Celia made a face that showed how distasteful she thought that was. “At least it was over quickly. That was the one benefit of the lack of skill.”
Gram nodded. “Falling asleep right after as if only his pleasure mattered.”
The images that ran through my head would take years to forget. “I’m begging you to stop the conversation there. No details.”
“What did we always tell you?”
Gram brought out her angry nun tone.
We weren’t Catholic but I’d watched television and assumed this was how they sounded. The your time is up edge to Gram’s tone left little room for me to maneuver.
I gave in because they weren’t going to move from those chairs until I did. They’d spent hours giving me the sex talk all those years ago. This was not how I intended to use the information, but it was shaping up to be that kind of day. “You said if I wasn’t mature enough to talk about sex I shouldn’t be having it.”
Gram nodded. “And?”
There was a lot more, but this was the main point. “Always have safe sex. Don’t depend on the man and his promises. It’s your body.”
“Exactly.”
“Kasey.”
Celia’s approach was calmer and less confrontational. “We know this is private and none of our business.”
If true, they were hiding it well. “Do you?”
“We’ve noticed on this trip home that you might . . .”
Celia added to the drama by drawing this out. “Have feelings for Jackson.”
Gram snorted. “Wearing his robe after spending the night together confirmed that.”
Honestly . . .
“We love Jackson,”
Celia said.
Here it comes. I braced. “But?”
“That’s it.”
Celia spread a thick layer of jam on the nearest scone. “We love both of you. If you have feelings for each other, we’re happy for you.”
“Really?”
Could it be that simple? No concerns about how different we were or how we fought and snipped at each other growing up . . . and sometimes now. How he was a big-time lawyer and I was whatever the opposite of that was.
“Really,”
Gram said. “Although living so far away is a problem.”
There it was. Gram’s practical side had popped out. I appreciated the way she set out the problem. I knew better than anyone how confusing and potentially messy a relationship with Jackson could be. Unfortunately, we had more than one barrier to clear. “That’s only the beginning. I’m not sure I’m his type. Our lives are very interconnected, so what happens if this goes sideways? And Harlan. Enough said on that last one.”
Gram shook her head the second I said his name. “Only the last one is a problem. A big toad of a problem.”
She wasn’t wrong. The comment made me think about Savannah, Jackson’s mom. She’d married Harlan and stayed with him for years. I remembered her hugs. She wore this ever-present smile. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized her sunny disposition was a mask she wore to survive each day.
Pain and depression from a life spent dealing with repeated bouts of cancer and devastating test results. I blamed Harlan for the rest. His coldness. His dismissal. His inability to keep his pants on. His lack of empathy. “Was he always like this? Like, Savannah met him and was all he’s the one for me? That’s so hard to imagine.”
Celia hesitated for long enough that it looked like she might not answer. “We grew up in a religiously strict and insular household. We never had friends over. We weren’t allowed to participate in activities or on teams. No dating. No television. Our lives consisted of home and church and little else.”
Celia hadn’t grown up in a cult. Not exactly but close. I researched the church when Celia mentioned it years ago. The rules left no room for imagination or questions.
“My parents ran a hardware store. Harlan came in and announced he now owned the property and was their landlord. He was charming and handsome. He said the right things.”
Celia sounded sadder as her explanation went on. “I think Savannah saw a way out of a life she hated.”
Gram’s hand disappeared under the table, and I knew it was on Celia’s knee. Gram, so outspoken and fierce, had few weaknesses but Celia was one of them.
“It’s not an unusual story. It mirrors mine. I married because I wanted a child. Mags married to get away from her father. Sometimes escaping leads to a new kind of hell.”
Celia looked lost in her vivid memories. “We didn’t think we had a lot of options, which is part of the reason we made sure you did.”
“We’re hoping you break the cycle of the women who came before you. To do that you need to find your way,”
Gram said.
Celia nodded. “We’re here for you.”
I agreed but thinking about all of this right now felt like too much, so I tried to lighten the mood. “You still haven’t told me what you think I should be when I grow up.”
“Easy,”
Celia said. “You should write.”
Gram nodded. “Get paid for those wild stories you create in your head.”
They spelled out my dream. Make up stories. Write all those fantastical ideas that I shoved aside as soon as I entered the workforce. But I had to be realistic. “How do I afford to eat in this scenario?”
Celia leaned over and squeezed my hand. “You will always have a soft landing here.”
Always. I knew it, felt it. Saw it every day in how they treated each other and supported me. I messed up repeatedly and their only requirement was that I get back up and try again.
Jackson told me he was lucky about how he grew up. Actually, I was the lucky one. Not during the first six years but in every year after.
“I know it’s probably terrible to say but I’m happy both of your husbands died earlier than expected and you two found each other.”
I could admit that here, in private, at this table. Anywhere else would be a big no-no. Wishing people dead wasn’t the polite Southern thing to do.
Gram snorted. “It took them long enough to go.”
“Mags.”
“What? I’m not wrong.”
Gram took a sip of her tea. “It took so long in my house that I had to help the process along.”
Every thought I had screeched to a halt in my brain. I could hear the crash and pileup. “What did you just say?”
Celia gasped. “She doesn’t need to be burdened with this part.”
“She can handle it.”
That comment touched off a back-and-forth between Celia and Mags. One that didn’t include me. They continued with each throwing out an argument and the other one ignoring it or talking around it. I caught only pieces because they talked in code. Phrases rather than full sentences. At one point, Gram even used an acronym I couldn’t decipher.
All the bickering led to one conclusion. A fact that was both shocking and not. Their secret. It was all but set out in lights in front of me.
“You both poisoned your husbands.”
Yep. I said it. That was the answer we’d avoided until now.
“Not quite.”
Celia put up her hand as if to stop the runaway conversation. “Mine really did die in a car accident. That’s when I discovered he’d squandered all the money and used my name and social security number to acquire more debt.”
Gram pulled out a snort here. “He got lucky because he deserved a harsher way out.”
Okay. Wait a second. “Worse than dying in a fiery crash?”
Gram shrugged but Celia pushed on. “We don’t kill other women’s terrible husbands. The women decide what they need to do.”
Gram saved her biggest snort for right now. “We would if we could get away with it.”
Celia didn’t flinch. “Sometimes removing the threat is the only way out. Not always, not even most times, so we present all other options first.”
“If all else fails, we provide a how-to guide and the necessary supplies,”
Gram added.
Supplies . . . yep.
How in the world was I going to explain all of this to Jackson? Or keep these ladies from getting arrested? Those were two of the questions banging around in my head at the moment.
I needed this one answered first. “I don’t want the two of you to get in trouble. So, where are these necessary supplies now that they’re no longer in the locked cabinet?”
I was wrong. Gram had one snort left. “What did you think we kept in that locked shed in the backyard?”