Chapter Twelve
Kneeling in the dirt, Bailey Rae plucked a plump red tomato from a vine in Winnie’s garden even though her basket was almost overflowing with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers.
And of course, okra, okra, okra. Skeeter peered at her with his kind eye from a bed of pine straw, crunching a floppy carrot she’d tossed over from the garden.
With some luck, gathering up the last of the harvest before she left would help her sweat out the tension that kept her up half the night.
At least she hadn’t dreamed about Winnie again. In fact, the silence inside echoed—no Winnie, no Russell. So much so, the quiet had chased her out of bed early in the morning to the familiar concert of cicadas and rustling of squirrels racing along their deciduous tightropes.
The crunch of gravel alerted her to a car turning from the road onto the drive, the driver tapping the horn twice in greeting.
Bailey Rae squinted to see ... Thea’s sleek silver Lexus wove past the twisted oaks and stopped by the garden.
Thea slid from behind the wheel, the luxury car otherwise empty.
Surprising. Winnie’s friends usually traveled in a pack.
Bailey Rae pushed to her feet and dusted her palms on the back of her jean shorts. “What brings you out this way?”
Thea scratched Skeeter on the head, wearing leather driving gloves like an auto racer, a far cry from her job as bookkeeper at the paper mill owned by her husband’s family. “I’m only checking in on you. You seemed, um, tired at the market.”
“I’m not sleeping well.” She settled for the safer explanation rather than risk crying over Winnie. “My to-do list keeps me awake.”
“Well, I can help with that.” Thea peeled off her driving gloves and tucked them into her purse. “Pass me a pair of gardening gloves if you have them. Winnie always kept extras.” She nodded toward the bucket of tools beside the basket.
“You’ll get your beautiful clothes dirty. How about you sit on the glider and just keep me company,” Bailey Rae said, surrendering.
No doubt Thea had something on her mind, and no one deterred her once she set her course.
“This shirt is ten years out of fashion.” Thea smoothed a hand along her trouser jeans and picked her way down the row toward Bailey Rae. “I won’t cry if it gets a few stains. That will just give me an excuse to throw it away.”
“If you’re sure.” Bailey Rae squatted beside the basket of vegetables.
“But I insist that you take some of the tomatoes and okra home, as my thanks for your help and conversation.” A wave of nostalgia hit her as she remembered the many times Winnie had gifted houseguests with a sack of homegrown goods.
“It’s nice to see someone keeping Winnie’s tradition alive.” Thea scooted the basket closer. “Howard loves his tomato sandwiches for lunch. He says mine are even better than the ones his mother makes for her garden club.”
Thea’s refusal to join the garden club when she married into the Tyler family still circulated through the rumor mill.
“There’s no shortage of tomatoes around here.”
“But none like Winnie’s,” Thea said sentimentally.
Tears burned, even closer to the surface than she’d realized. Bailey Rae didn’t trust herself to speak, so she continued to pick from the overburdened plants while Skeeter nudged her in comfort.
Had nine years already passed since Skeeter was left at the top of Aunt Winnie’s drive? Kinda like the owners figured it didn’t matter if the pup got run over or rescued on a remote country road. Teenage Bailey Rae had understood the feeling and deemed the dog hers.
Thea shifted to a line of peppers, her own eyes suspiciously bright. “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave Bent Oak.”
Surprised, Bailey Rae sat back on her bottom. “I thought you loved it here. At least that’s what you always say during your husband’s reelection campaigns for town council.”
Thea shot her a wry grin. “Those aren’t my exact words. I tell everyone that this is my home and how welcome Bent Oak made me feel all those years ago.” Her gaze slid away, and her hands made fast work of pinching peppers free. “Truth is, when I first arrived, I hated it here.”
Bailey Rae hugged an arm around Skeeter, caught up in the revelation. “Why did you stay?”
“My friends and my job,” she said simply in that pragmatic Thea fashion. “Then later because of Howard too.”
Her job? “I never got the impression you particularly enjoy being a bookkeeper at the paper mill.”
Thea stared off in the distance, toward the cabin and maybe even past before returning her gaze to the ground.
She picked up a stone from the churned earth and placed the cool weight into Bailey Rae’s palm, closing her fingers around it.
“It can be surprising where we find fulfillment. Now go find yours. You’ll always carry a piece of us with you. ”
Bailey Rae gripped the rock until the edges cut into her hand even through the glove.
Could leaving be that simple? She wanted it to be.
But her path to departure seemed littered with nightmares and death, which only served to amplify her concern for Gia and Cricket’s safety.
Fear of another hospital visit, or worse.
Could that be the real cause of the sleepless nights? Bailey Rae thought back to hearing at the market that Gia still hadn’t filed for an order of protection. Maybe one more phone call of support would make the difference, showing Gia she wasn’t alone with her own silence.
Bailey Rae pocketed the stone and hugged Thea hard. “What do you say we get some sweet tea before we tackle the rest?”
1978
The hospital elevator smelled as strongly of antiseptic as it had the day before.
But I’d come better prepared this time. I’d chewed two antacid tablets just before stepping into the air-conditioned lobby.
Just as a precaution. So far, the emotional high of successfully settling Thea in the boardinghouse had me tapping my foot to an ABBA tune piping through the speaker.
The elevator doors slid open in front of the nurses’ station, where Russell leaned his elbows on the counter, deep in conversation. Could he be flirting with the young woman? The jealous notion blindsided me. An irrational thought, no doubt fueled by Phillip’s incessant flirting with other women.
I needed to remember Russell was nothing like Phillip.
And Russell had made his interest in me clear.
As I looked closer, his intense expression showed concern rather than playfulness.
The green-eyed monster inside me retreated.
Such a distracting beast. I hauled my focus back to the task at hand—updating Annette on Thea’s arrival.
Had she said anything to Russell? I’d wondered before and was curious all over again about the layers of secrets that made up my life in Bent Oak. How much did he know? Was it okay to ask Annette? Or would even questioning knock me out of the running to help out again?
Or worse yet, what if I was relocated to another town?
About two years ago, I’d picked up paperwork from the paralegal for a woman in her fifties who’d been found by her ex and needed yet another new identity.
A horrifying prospect that still sent me reaching for the roll of Tums in my hobo bag.
Maybe I’d been too quick to believe I had a better handle on being in a hospital again.
My surroundings already seemed to have ignited all my deepest fears.
Russell glanced up, his golden-brown gaze holding mine for a handful of rapid heartbeats before he met me halfway.
I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and wished I’d had time to change out of my paper mill uniform, which smelled of chemicals even when freshly laundered. “How’s Annette doing today? Is she up for more visitors? I just wanted to pop in and give her an update on the errand she needed me to run.”
“The doctor just stopped in to see her, but Granny should be ready after that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you want to grab a quick cup of coffee? There’s a machine at the end of the hall.”
When I nodded, he palmed my back, guiding me down the corridor to the concessions nook and popping coins into the slot.
How did my relationship with Russell fit into the shift in myself that had happened with Thea yesterday?
Surely Russell must know something about what his grandmother did in that library, but how would he feel if I joined?
His NASCAR dreams would do more than take him out of town.
They could involve a level of recognition—fame even—that I couldn’t be a part of, even more so now than before.
I hadn’t forgotten about the local paper snapping a photo of us together after his last victory.
I couldn’t afford to court disaster that way.
“Winnie? Are you okay?” He angled his head into my line of sight, holding two Styrofoam cups.
“I can stay with Granny this afternoon. You don’t have to be here.
I’ll let the mill know they’ll need to find someone else to drive my haul.
You just came off a long shift. Go enjoy some of that fishing you love. ”
He’d noticed? Of course he had.
I took the warm cup from him, our fingers brushing. “You’re sweet to have picked up on that.”
“Winnie, I’ve made a point of learning everything I can about you. Like how you have cooking peach jam down to an art form. And how your eyes turn the color of bottled glass when you make your own jars. I can keep listing if you would like.”
His intensity stirred butterfly nerves in my stomach, just a hint. But not enough to scare me off. “Uh, that’s plenty. Thanks. I feel bad for not learning more about NASCAR stats.”
“You’re there cheering on my races. The world would be a boring place if we liked exactly the same things. Now, wouldn’t it?”