huge graduation party for her, then they were going to go to Spain for a week. Mallory said he already bought their plane tickets and made reservations. This is going to kill him. Christmas is never going to be the same for them, is it?”
“Probably not,” I said.
She sighed again as she slid under the wheel of her car. “Well, at least Mrs. Johnson still has Charlie, but poor Mr. Johnson. He’s so upset, I heard he was out yesterday morning walking up and down the road where Mallory crashed, trying to understand how it could have happened.” She gave me a watery smile and said, “See you Saturday,” before closing the door and putting the car in gear.
She was halfway down the lane, her phone clamped to her ear, and I was inside my warm kitchen stuffing my gloves in my coat pocket and still thinking about Zach and Barbara, before Jessica’s words fully registered. I had almost forgotten that Sarah Johnson had eloped before she finished high school and that she was pregnant when she graduated. Six months later, her young husband had died in some sort of bad fall—while pruning some tree limbs? Roofing the house? Malcolm Johnson had been his best friend and everyone thought it was wonderful that he was there for Sarah.
Although…
I tried to remember the gossip. I’m pretty sure there was some. But that was around the time Mother was first diagnosed with cancer and everyone else’s troubles seemed insignificant compared to mine.
I vaguely remembered that he had adopted the boy and given him his name, yet his daughter had been headed to Chapel Hill? While his adopted stepson made do with Colleton Community College?
“Poor Mr. Johnson,” but “at least Mrs. Johnson still has Charlie.” Now what was that about?
Curiosity is an itch I have to scratch right away. I tried Jess, but her phone was busy, of course, so I ran a mental finger down the list of people who might remember.
Isabel’s name jumped right to the top of the list. Haywood’s wife is a gregarious, opinionated gossip. Whatever talk was going around back when Sarah and Malcolm married, Isabel would surely have heard it, and what’s even better, she’s always ready to repeat every detail, both the real and the speculative.
“Oh, hey, Deborah,” Isabel said cheerfully when she answered the phone on the first ring. “I was just about to call you. Haywood stopped by Miss Zell’s this morning to take her some of Mr. Kezzie’s peach brandy, and she sent you a fruitcake.”
Momentarily diverted, I said, “Tell me the truth, Isabel. Is Daddy still running moonshine these days?”
“Now, honey, you know I don’t know a thing about where his good stuff comes from. All I can say is that he sends your Aunt Zell about a gallon every winter, but he was a little short this year, so he had to poke around and find her another quart to finish off her cakes. And don’t you know that brother of yours had to go and cut hisself off a slice of ours before he could get it here? I’ve had to hide it under the bed in the guest room or there won’t be a crumb left for Stevie and Jane Ann when they get home tomorrow.”
Mother’s sister makes the best fruitcakes in Colleton County—easy on the citron and candied cherries and heavy on the fat meaty pecans. Early in November, she bakes about twenty, then wraps them in cheesecloth, gives them a periodic drenching with some of Daddy’s homebrew to keep them moist, and ages them till Christmas.
Daddy swears that the brandy is left over from the time he used to finance a few stills around this part of the state. He also swears that he quit doing that forty years ago. Swears it with a straight face, too. Yet every year, for over forty years, he’s sent Aunt Zell a gallon for her fruitcakes.
In half-gallon Mason jars with shiny new lids.
I’ve stopped telling him how embarrassing and politically damaging it would be for me if he’s arrested for moonshining, and Dwight keeps threatening to run him in if he catches him in possession of untaxed liquor. (Happily for me, Dwight turns a blind eye to the pint jar in our own pantry. I mean, I can’t let the fruitcake Aunt Zell always sends me dry out before Christmas, now can I?)
“You hear that Malcolm and Sarah Johnson’s daughter died?” Isabel asked. “That’s just going to tear their hearts out, ain’t it? And right here at Christmas, too. Not that it don’t ever
“Jeff?”
“Jeff Barefoot. Her first husband. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “They were both a little older than me. I remember that he died, but I don’t remember how. Didn’t he fall or something?”
“They were renting that little yellow house there on the left as you go into Cotton Grove. Right behind the Burger Barn? Cute little house but it has a real steep roof. He was stringing up Christmas lights in the dark, trying to put a Santa Claus on the ridgepole when his feet got tangled in the light cords and down he went. Banged his head on a rock and the ladder fell on top of him. Sarah was putting the baby to bed and by the time she missed him and went out to look, he was flat dead. Broke her heart. Malcolm’s, too. Or so we heard.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, him and Jeff? They were best friends all through school even after Sarah chose Jeff over him.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, they both courted her hot and heavy, but Malcolm went off to Carolina and Jeff stayed here and went to work in his daddy’s roofing business, so he got the inside track with her. Got her pregnant and that was that till he died.”
“I sort of remember people talking about how fast Sarah married Malcolm after that,” I said.
“Less than a year,” Isabel agreed. “Eight months in fact. His daddy won’t too happy about it neither. Taking on another man’s baby and him still two years from finishing up at Carolina? But Malcolm said he won’t gonna let her get away again, and if Mr. Johnson didn’t help them, he’d quit school right then and there. Jeff’s mama won’t happy about it neither. She was in my Sunday school class back then before the church split last time and—no, wait a minute. It was time before last when that preacher—what
Isabel’s church seems to split up every five or six years with great drama and many hard feelings, so it’s no
