left for the beach, but hot as it was, the air-conditioning stayed off and he wasn’t in and out like usual.”
Rob was barely listening. He lifted the lid on one of the plastic boxes and with his fingers fished out one of Bessie’s famous sausage-and-rice balls. Dwight and Nolan were right behind him, ready to follow his lead.
“Could y’all please wait for plates and forks?” asked Kayra, who had known Dwight and Rob for most of her young life. She rolled her eyes at me. “Men! Where are your plates?”
I pointed to the cupboard behind her.
“Omigod!” she said when she opened the doors and saw my mother’s collection of Royal Doulton in all its service-for-twenty glory, from serving bowls and meat platters down to the bread-and-butter plates and nineteen delicate cups hanging from their little individual hooks. “Don’t you have any everyday china? Or even paper plates?”
“Sorry.”
Dwight paused with a pecan puff in his hand. “Want to let’s bring my kitchen stuff over tomorrow?”
“Fine,” I said. “There’re still empty shelves in the kitchen.”
“I wasn’t paying attention last night.” Kayra turned a saucer in her slender brown hands and read the maker’s marks. “Is this what we ate pizza off of?”
I nodded.
“And you let us put these in your dishwasher?” She was clearly horrified.
“That’s what a dishwasher’s for.”
“But they’re Royal Doulton.”
“They’re dishes.” I pulled four plates from the shelves and handed them to her. “Dishes are meant to be used.”
“But what if we break them?”
I laughed. “You sound like one of my sisters-in-law. My mother used this for every holiday in a household filled with roughneck boys and the only time anything got broke was when a preacher’s wife knocked over a teacup. If it’ll make you feel better, I do have regular mugs and glasses in that cupboard by the sink. Feel free to smash as many as you like.”
I tucked the boxed cake topper in the shopping bag Rob had dropped on a chair and left them dividing the party food Bessie and Miss Emily had probably spent the day preparing.
Rob’s wife, Kate, was a freelance fabric designer, who had inherited the old Honeycutt farm from her first husband. Although a New Yorker by birth, she had chosen to have Jake’s posthumous baby here and then to stay on in the country to raise him. The Internet made it easy for her to work out of the farm’s original packhouse, which she had remodeled for a studio. After she and Rob fell in love and married, they restored the old farmhouse far beyond its original state of utilitarian comfort. In addition to Jake’s uncle, they had also taken in Mary Pat Carmichael, a young cousin of Kate’s, who has grown into a protective older sister for little Jake Junior.
The Honeycutt farmhouse is only a few hundred feet down the road from the Bryant farm and actually touches at one corner, so I didn’t have far to drive. When I got there, the circular drive in front of the house was lined with cars and trucks, but they had left me a space right in front of the door. The evening was now so mild that some of the guests lingered on the porch to greet one another before going inside.
Dwight’s sisters stood in the doorway to welcome us and they made a big fuss over me as I came up the steps. Except for similar family mannerisms, Beth and Nancy Faye look no more alike than Dwight and Rob.
Beth took my shopping bag and promised to see that Kate got it. Then I was swept up into hugs by half a dozen of my female relatives who pulled me inside with boisterous cries of “She’s here!”
The house could have served as an illustration of Christmas Past. Jugs of red-berried holly and nandina filled empty corners, while thick ropes of pine and cedar twined up the stair rails and filled the rooms with a woodsy aroma. Candlelight gleamed off the polished wood of antique tables and chests, and fires blazed in the hearths of the twin front parlors. A huge tree brushed the ceiling in one parlor and was decorated in dozens of old-fashioned glass ornaments and red velvet bows.
In the other parlor, some of my teenage nieces and a couple of my sisters-in-law had brought their instruments and were playing Christmas carols. As soon as Herman and Nadine’s daughter Annie Sue spotted me, she snapped her fingers and they immediately swung into a chorus of “Here Comes the Bride.”
Amid laughter and teasing, I was passed from hand to hand. Several of my in-state sisters-in-law and aunts were there, along with their daughters. Beth and Nancy Faye had teenage daughters, too. Aunt Zell had driven over from Dobbs with Nadine and Annie Sue, and Will’s wife, Amy. Counting Miss Emily and Bessie, there were over thirty women flowing through the rooms. Someone handed me a cup of cherry-flavored punch laced with vodka.
And then another.
Just as I was beginning to feel like a cork bobbing on the water at the end of a fishing line, Miss Emily and a heavily pregnant Kate led me to a couch seat near the Christmas tree. Paper and pencils were distributed for shower games that got funnier (and raunchier) with each cup of punch.
Eventually, it was time to open the many gifts. Minnie sat beside me with a legal pad to record who gave what—everything from one of Aunt Sister’s patchwork quilts to everyday china for twelve from Kate, Miss Emily, Beth, and Nancy Faye.
Before refreshments were served, Kate called across the room, “Okay, Minnie. Tell us what Deborah’s going to say to Dwight on their wedding night.”
Minnie looked down at her legal pad and began to read off some of the remarks I’d made while opening the presents—“Look how big!” “Feel how soft!”—and so on amid raucous laughter.
Still joking, we moved into the dining room to fill our plates and refill our cups. Talk became more general as the party wound down. My nieces packed up the gifts and carried them out to April’s car. She and Ruth had offered to drop them off on their way home through the back lanes.
Kate went up to make sure Jake and Mary Pat were properly tucked in, and when Bessie and Miss Emily
