CHAPTER 29
Rebecca
The late afternoon was shifting slowly to dusk when she got home with the cinnamon and a few other items from the grocery store. As she pulled into the driveway, she saw Granny on her knees in the garden, pulling at a weed.
Rebecca set her leather briefcase and the grocery bag against the porch railing, slipped her slingbacks off, and padded over in her bare feet.
The soft grass felt good beneath her toes.
She wondered why she hadn’t thought to do that all summer—slip off her shoes and go barefoot, feel the earth on her skin, smell the trees and the flowers and the tangy summertime air.
“Stubborn fool,” she heard Granny mutter to the weed. Then Granny looked up. “Hey, sweetheart.”
“Hey Gran, got your cinnamon,” Rebecca said, kissing her on her hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail. A gardening hat rested on the ground nearby, along with a shovel, gloves, and a bunch of tools. She slipped on the gloves. “Here, I’ll give you a hand.”
“On three. One, two—” And with a tug the thick roots of the weed slid out of the earth.
“Now that’s teamwork.” Granny grinned. “Thanks.”
“Rebecca Chastain, fixer of newspapers, friend of the orphans, and puller of weeds, at your service.” She did a mock bow.
“And most wonderful granddaughter on the planet.” Granny stood, collecting the tools and placing them carefully in the bucket. “Light’s fading, but I sure could use a glass of tea. You want some?”
“I’d love some.”
Rebecca followed Granny inside with the groceries and pulled two glasses down from the shelf. Something was cooking in the oven that made the entire kitchen smell divine—onions and meat and spices and who knew what else—and Rebecca inhaled deeply.
“Is this for us or the church?”
Granny laughed. “Both! Mrs. Stewart’s son is coming to pick it up in, oh, about forty minutes.
” She eyed the clock, then snagged the cinnamon from the grocery bag, opened the oven and peeled back the foil to sprinkle some of the spice inside.
“My secret ingredient. Got to mix a little of the sweet in to counter the savory.”
“It smells amazing.”
“There’s enough for us to have our own supper, and then I’ll bundle the rest and send it over with the Stewart boy.”
“Let’s fix some plates and eat al fresco, then!” Rebecca said.
Five minutes later, they were settled around the small patio table on the screened back porch, a pair of fat citronella candles casting a warm glow on their meal.
“Seen much of Devon Robinson these days?”
“We had our weekly interview this afternoon,” Rebecca nodded and took a large forkful of stew. “He’s a good kid. I think I get more out of our weekly time together than he does.”
“He’s something else.” Granny shook her head. “It’ll be interesting to see what he ends up doing in life. People call him the young mayor these days, you know.”
“The young mayor,” Rebecca mulled. “Suits him.”
She eyed Granny. I’m probably making too much of it. He did give her his address readily.
Granny eyed her back. “You’re troubled.”
Rebecca shook her head. “I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s—well, Devon had a big bruise on his wrist today. When I asked him about it, he kind of panicked. Wouldn’t let me see, said something about hurting it on his locker at school.”
Granny looked thoughtful. “Maybe he was embarrassed.”
“Maybe.”
“But you think it was more?”
Rebecca pursed her lips. “I don’t know, Granny.
This sounds dumb, but it made me wonder if there’s trouble going on.
Like, at home or something. Or if he’s being bullied.
People don’t usually have bruises here.” She pointed to the underside of her wrist. “A week or so ago, he had some nasty bruising on his torso, too. Said he fell off his bike, but…”
She sighed, couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“I’d hate to think he’s having trouble.” Granny thought a moment. “Why don’t I take a look at school tomorrow, see for myself.”
Relief washed over her. “Thanks. I’m probably just making a big deal out of it, but …”
“But just in case.”
“Exactly.”
They finished their meal in silence, then Rebecca leaned back, sipped her tea and surveyed the land beyond. Dusk had turned to twilight, and the twangy staccato of katydids began to fill the air.
“Six more weeks,” Granny said.
“Huh?”
“When you start to hear the katydids again, that means six weeks till the first cold snap.”
“But it’s a hundred degrees outside.”
Granny laughed. “This town can turn on a dime. It’ll be in the hundreds one week, then we’ll get a week of rain and boom: the next week we’re in the eighties, then the seventies, then you wake up and it’s fall.”
Rebecca raised her eyebrows. “I always thought it was more subtle. In New York, seasons ease one into the next.”
A flash of last fall, walking with Peter in Central Park on a rare no-work afternoon, came suddenly, and sadness flooded.
Not for him, necessarily, but for all she’d once been, all she’d lost. She realized now if she did go back, it would be a different Rebecca who’d walk those streets.
One who looked a little deeper at the people she passed, one who cared a little more.
“I forgot you’d not been here for fall before. You always came in the summers. Wait till you see Christmas.”
They grew silent, the evening air settling around them like a shawl. If things didn’t turn around at the paper, Rebecca might not even be here at Christmas. It was hard to imagine.
“You look like you have the world on your shoulders, Becca.” Granny’s tone was light, but Rebecca couldn’t see her expression in the semi-darkness.
“I was wondering if I’d even see Christmas in Dahlia.
” She wasn’t even sure why that bothered her.
Not that she planned to stay here long-term.
But for Granny’s sake, not to mention her own, she wanted to say she’d been able to turn the Dahlia Weekly around and get it going in the right direction before she moved on to a bigger area.
“Oh, sweet girl. Surely the paper’s doing better. You said so yourself earlier this week, that things were picking up. Small growth is growth, after all.”
“The numbers are still dismal. And now that advertiser, Erik Wennerman, has me worried. He’s been coming by, being all charming, asking me out—” She held up a hand as Granny started to speak.
“No, I have no intention of dating him, or anyone, but now I’m wondering whether he’s more interested in luring me and the paper to his family business. ”
“A retirement home?”
“No, no, I mean his family’s other business. Turns out they own a media company.”
Granny’s eyes turned dark. “One that buys struggling papers, I presume?”
Rebecca let out a breath. “He insists he has nothing to do with it, only his dad and brother—”
“But you’re suspicious.”
“Very. Not to mention, Josh seems to think he’s rotten.”
Granny said nothing, just sipped her tea. Then she sighed.
“Would it be a bad thing? If Wennerman’s company bought the paper?”
“I guess not, not in the big picture. But they’re dirty, Granny.”
She relayed what happened in Lark Run, Littleton, Milltown.
“Granted, those papers were sinking ships, but I’m not sure how I feel about working for people who seem to feel no shame about cutting the dying competition at the knees.
I’m no stranger to buyouts, but after what happened with the Bannister Group in New York, after all Ed’s promises that my job would always be safe, look what happened.
Axed without warning in spite of all I gave. ”
Hot tears threatened, and she was glad for the twilight, glad she could swallow them back. She was done crying over the past.
Granny reached over, clasped her hand. “It sure wasn’t Christian the way they treated you. I bet all this, and now the Wennerman business, feels like a rehash of all you went through.”
“Yeah.”
The katydids chirped away as twilight thickened.
“Granny, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“You know how people are always saying ‘give it to God’—what does that mean, exactly? It’s something Devon and I were talking about recently, and it’s been on my mind.”
She felt more than saw Granny’s shoulders shift. “Ah, that’s just a fancy way of saying pray about your worries instead of letting them trouble you. You make a decision to give it to the Lord, who will handle it on your behalf.”
“So you get cancer and decide you’re not going to waste your time stressing about it. You just say God, handle this for me?” Rebecca raised her eyebrows.
“Pretty much.”
“Sounds fatalistic.”
“It’s not, really.” Granny sighed. “More like you’ve decided he’s in control of your ship and you’re going to rely on him to take you through the storm. Like when you’re on an airplane and it starts to sway—you know your pilot’s going to fly you out of it because there’s a vested interest.”
“That’s assuming God has a vested interest in us.”
Granny laughed. “I’d say he does! But yes, it’s making that assumption.”
They grew quiet again.
“So, how do you do this, exactly? Talk to God. Give him your troubles.”
“You just keep it simple. Sit down in a quiet spot and talk to God like you would anybody else.”
Rebecca made a face in the darkness. “Like how? Like, hey God, it’s me, Rebecca, and I know we haven’t talked in a while but I have a hangnail and it hurts and can you please fix it?”
“If that’s what’s on your mind, sure,” Granny said evenly.
“Seriously.”
“Seriously! That’s what I do, anyhow. For me, I like to talk to him during mundane tasks.
Like doing the dishes, or chopping celery.
I make a conscious effort not to get anxious and, frankly, I find it pretty liberating.
And it’s all right there in the Bible. Philippians 4:6: ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.’”
Rebecca rolled her eyes but smiled. “You’re like the walking Bible, Granny.”