Slow Dollar

“No, I sent them over to Seth and Minnie’s to spend the night and go on to school from there.” April was freckled all over, and now her face was red and splotchy as tears filled her hazel eyes and ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away with an impatient hand. “It’s Andrew.”

“What’s wrong? Is he hurt? Sick?”

“You tell me, Deborah. What happened over here Saturday?” she demanded. “He came back from seeing you and Mr. Kezzie and went straight to the bourbon. He’s been drunk ever since, cussing you and not too happy with Mr. Kezzie and sloppy maudlin over Ruth and A.K. He drinks till he passes out, then comes to just long enough to drink again. I haven’t seen him like this since before we were married and I’m scared, Deborah. What set him off?”

“He won’t talk to you?”

“No, and when I beg him to tell me what’s wrong, he just gets mad and starts cussing.”

Alarmed, I asked, “He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”

“Hit me, you mean?” Indignation stiffened her back. “No, of course not. He’ll never get that drunk.”

All this time, I’d been getting her seated, pouring two mugs of coffee, and pushing sugar and milk at her in hopes that small routines might calm her down. Suggesting that Andrew might knock her around seemed to have done the trick. As Andrew’s third wife, April’s only got a few years on me and there’s no submissiveness in that marriage. Not on her part anyhow.

I handed her a box of tissues and said, “April, you do know that Andrew was married before, don’t you?”

“To Lois McAdams. So?”

“Before Lois.”

Her brow furrowed. “Carol somebody. Carol Hatcher?”

“That’s right.”

“She claimed Andrew was the father of her baby and her father made them get married. But after the baby was born, she ran off with it and—oh my God!” Her face went white beneath her freckles. “She’s back, isn’t she? And the divorce was never legal, was it?”

“No, no, no,” I said before she could follow that train of thought right on into the station and start worrying that her children were bastards. “Carol’s dead. She died years ago. Before you and Andrew got married.”

Having never met the woman, I could speak easily of her death.

“Really? Does Andrew know? Is that why Mr. Kezzie called him over here? To tell him that? But why would that make him—?” She heard herself jittering and broke off with the first semblance of a smile. “And if I’ll shut up a minute, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Carol’s dead, but her daughter’s come back to Colleton County. Andrew’s daughter. She owns her grandfather’s farm over near Widdington, and she also has a share of the carnival that’s playing at the harvest festival in Dobbs.”

“Daughter? Olivia?” April was bewildered. “But Andrew said she wasn’t his. He wouldn’t lie to me about that.”

“Maybe he’s honestly believed that all these years, or maybe he’s just talked himself into it, but trust me, honey. She’s his. He can get a DNA test if it’ll make him feel any better about it, but it’d just be a waste of money. She’s his child.”

“You’ve met Olivia? Talked to her?”

“I told you. She and her husband own part of the carnival that’s playing Dobbs. Her name is Tallahassee Ames now and it was her son that got killed Friday night.”

April sat there numb and speechless, and I could almost see her brain working under that thatch of wild brown curls as she processed the data I’d just given her. I poured myself another coffee and brandished the pot toward her half-empty mug. She nodded and drank deeply.

“If that’s true, he’d be Andrew’s grandson? My God! No wonder he’s crawled into a bottle.”

“The funeral’s tomorrow morning at ten,” I told her. “Over at the homeplace.”

She was bewildered. “Does everybody in the family know about this but me?”

“No. Just Daddy and me. We were waiting for Andrew to talk to you before we told the others. Doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, though, does it?”

I descibed how Daddy had been keeping tabs on the situation all these years and how Andrew had gone into denial Saturday afternoon and told us to leave him and his family out of it.

“Well, that was pretty dumb of him,” she said in exasperation.

“Maybe he feels guilty for not trying to find her in all these years,” I suggested neutrally.

April is as practical as she is pretty and has more common sense than a farmer’s almanac. “Now, why would he feel guilty if he’s been sure all these years that the baby wasn’t his?”

I shrugged.

Her hazel eyes narrowed. “Carol told him she wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but Mother told him she was,” I said, and described the visit Mother had made to the Hatcher farm when I was too young to remember, and how, when she finally persuaded him to return with her, Carol and Olivia were gone again.

“In the end, which one do you think he really believed in his heart of hearts?” I asked her.

There was a long silence, then April said softly, “Poor Andrew.”