One More Knight

her throat filled and the tears welled up and ran down her cheeks.

Godforsaken. She’d called it that once, hadn’t she? Oh, yes, she had, long ago, the day she’d left it-she’d thought-forever.

If there was one place on earth Charly Phelps had planned never to set foot in again, it was Mourning Spring, Alabama. And as far as she was concerned, the fact that she was here on this lovely June afternoon was all Mirabella Waskowitz’s fault. Last Christmas her best friend in all the world had lost her mind, not to mention any sense of taste whatsoever, and had gone and fallen in love with the redneck Georgia trucker who’d delivered her baby on a snowbound Texas interstate. So now, if Charly wanted to be her best friend’s maid of honor and godmother to that sweet little Amy Jo-and she did, in the worst way-men there was just no getting around it; she had to come back to the South. She wasn’t about to call it home.

Only thing was, Mirabella’s wedding was in Georgia, and a whole week off at that. Charly couldn’t as easily explain what had possessed her to book her flight to Atlanta a week early without telling anyone, then rent a car and go driving off west to Alabama.

But then, Charly didn’t believe in explaining herself to anybody. Even herself. She’d sworn off that a long time ago.

She sat up straight, wiping her cheeks and checking her eyes and nose in the rearview mirror for telltale signs of her momentary lapse of control. Then she took a deep breath, turned the key in the ignition and pulled slowly out of the scenic overlook and onto the winding highway that, sure as God made little green apples, was going to return her to the town she’d run away from more than twenty years before. Call it Fate, or call it lunacy…she was going back to Mourning Spring.

“Are you sure?” Mirabella was asking for the third or fourth time. “I think we should go over it once more just to be on the safe side. Now, I want to make absolutely sure the ceiling fan switch and the lights are on that side of the cabinet. The intercom-”

“Marybell, honey.” Jimmy Joe’s patient drawl drifted up the stairs. “Come on, now, and leave the man alone. Twenty years in the navy, I think he probably knows how to follow orders.”

“I am not ordering,” said Mirabella.

Up on the ladder, her soon-to-be brother-in-law watched in silent appreciation as she bristled the way only a drop-dead-gorgeous redheaded woman can get away with doing.

“I’m just trying to make it clear, that’s all. After all, we’re not going to be here if he has any questions. I want to be sure-”

Troy grinned and touched his temple in a mocking salute. “Yes, ma‘am, and you can be. Swear t’ God, it’s all up here, and clear as a bell. You two just go on along, have fun in Atlanta, now, y‘hear? By the time you get home Sunday night, it’s gonna be all taken care of. Nothin’ to worry about.’

Mirabella had her hands on her hips and was staring up at him, giving him the look that always reminded him of a little cock robin. He watched it melt into a smile that would have just about knocked him off that ladder if it hadn’t been on the face of the woman who was about to make his baby brother the happiest man on earth.

“Troy, you are a lifesaver to be doing this. With the wedding only a week away, and Charly coming, I just have to get this nursery project finished. I cannot believe that contractor, flaking on me like that. Gets it halfway finished and just…disappears!’

“Well, now, you know, these things happen,” said Troy soothingly. Especially, he admitted to himself, in the South.

“Not to me,” snapped Mirabella, getting that feisty-robin look again.

Jimmy Joe appeared in the doorway with Amy Jo’s carrier seat in one hand and a suitcase in the other, and kind of a harassed look on his face. The look seemed to melt away the moment he set eyes on Mirabella, however, to be replaced by something that could only be described as a glow. It was a phenomenon Troy had observed before, and in a strange way, was beginning to envy.

“Hon, we need to be goin’. J.J.’s out in the car, and Mama’s waitin’ on us over at the house. We don’t want to be hittin’ Atlanta at rush hour.”

“Coming…” Troy noticed that Mirabella’s voice, which was normally California crisp and sort of bossy, had gone all husky and breathless, and that the smile she turned on Jimmy Joe was different from the one she’d dazzled him with. Softer, kind of misty. Then her gaze dropped to the carrier seat where her baby girl, having just recently found out what a terrific source of amusement a tongue could be, was raspberrying merrily away in a puddle of drool. The look on Mirabella’s face was a lot like the glow that had just lit up Jimmy Joe’s. It was almost embarrassing, Troy thought, watching those three together, as if he was intruding on something intensely private, some rare intimacy he could never share.

He waved them off with the screwdriver he was holding. “Go on-get! I never will get this job done if you keep standing around here jawin’ at me. Get out of here, y’all-have a good time. And don’t forget to write.”

Jimmy Joe chuckled and gave him a nod rather than a wave, since his hands were full, as he herded his bride- to-be out of the room. Troy could hear her hollering all the way down the stairs.

“…and we’ll call you with the number where we can be reached as soon as we get to the hotel. Oh, there’s plenty of that chicken left for salad or sandwiches, if you get hungry. Call if you have any questions…”

Troy waited where he was, shaking his head and laughing to himself, until he heard the front door, and a minute or two later the slamming of three car doors, one after the other. Then he put down the screwdriver and climbed off the ladder and went down the stairs and onto the front porch, just in time to watch a silver Lexus pull out onto the main road, spittin’ gravel. He noticed that Mirabella was driving, which surprised him some even though it was her car. In Troy’s experience, professional drivers like his brother Jimmy Joe didn’t usually give up that ol’ wheel to an amateur if they could help it. But then, most drivers didn’t have to deal with Mirabella.

“Bubba,” he said to the chocolate Lab who was just coming up the steps onto the porch, wet and stinking of pond muck, “I do believe my baby brother’s got his hands full…what do you say, old boy? Huh? What do you think?”

Bubba, who at ninety-five pounds was still a puppy and hadn’t figured out yet where he left off and the rest of the world began, was weaving his way ecstatically around and between Troy’s legs and leaving them well smeared with whatever it was he’d just been wallowing in. In spite of that, Troy gave him a good roughhouse and hug, partly to fill the lonely, empty place that always seemed to open up inside him when he watched his brother and his woman and her baby together.

And sometimes for no reason at all. In fact, he’d been having that feeling a lot in the past six months or so, pretty much ever since he’d made the decision to retire from the navy. It seemed all his SEAL training and experience hadn’t done a whole lot to prepare him for what came after that.

“Whoo-ee, you stink,” he said to Bubba. And now, of course, so did he. He gave the dog one last rub and went in to wash himself off. He had a nursery to rewire, and he figured if he tried he could probably stretch the job out to take up the whole weekend. Might as well, he thought. He didn’t have anything better to do.

Charly drove slowly, trying to take in everything at once and at the same time watch where she was going-not that there was any traffic to worry about; that much hadn’t changed. She didn’t know which was the greater wonder to her-the things that were different or the things that, even after twenty years, were still exactly as she remembered them.

She noticed that there was now a great big new Winn-Dixie on the outskirts of town, on a spot where there’d been nothing but a whole bunch of trees half buried in kudzu and a curb market that used to sell fresh honey, peanuts boiled or roasted and peaches and tomatoes and watermelons in their proper season. And praise the Lord, fast food had found its way to Mourning Spring! Both a Burger King and a KFC appeared to be flourishing, cunningly planted as they were, across the street from the high school.

But there was B.B.’s Barn, better known in Charly’s day as the Beer and Boogie, just as tacky as ever, still standing alone at the edge of town like the village outcast, with only the equally trashy Mourning-or Moanin’, as it was locally pronounced, with an implied snicker-Springs Motel across the road for company. And the big old redbrick and white frame Victorian houses on Main Street looked just the same, although Charly noticed that a few now had quaint, handcrafty signs like The Good Mourning Bed And Breakfast, and Mourning Glory Inn planted in beds of geraniums on their front lawns.