Lee.' Then she spun around, linked her 17 arm through her father's, and strode hastily toward the waiting black limousine.
Her scent seemed to linger at his jaw as his eyes followed the car along a row of bare forsythias, around a bend, until it was obscured by a line of gnarled cedars. He sighed, hung his head and stared at the toe of one shiny Italian loafer, then removed his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes. But her face remained, revived.
What good are regrets? Almost angrily he replaced his glasses, reached for his cigarettes, and lit up with the unconscious motions of the seasoned smoker.
The mockingbird was still singing. The click of the lighter was the only other sound in the deserted stillness. The smell of roses became cloying, and his nostrils flared, drawing in a diaphanous line of gray to obliterate the floral scent. Absently he studied the silver-spindled branches of a nearby crepe myrtle bush. Its leafless limbs appeared pearlescent, like the color of Rachel's mourning dress. Drawing on the cigarette, he turned back toward the
coffin of her husband.
Owen Hollis. What had her life been like with him? Had she been happy? Had he been good to her? What had she suffered during Hollis's bout with cancer? Why had they never had children? And, above all, had she ever told her husband about Tommy Lee Gentry?
He swung toward the only other stone in the Talmadge plot: Eulice, Rachel's mother, dead four years now. He hooked a shoe on the polished curve of marble, braced an elbow on his knee and squinted as the smoke drifted up, unheeded. Why did you do it, Eulice? You and that husband of yours… and my own mother and father?
He took one last deep drag, but the taste of the cigarette had grown acrid, so he withdrew it from his lips and with a fillip sent it spiraling through the air.
I never should have come here today. What the hell good did it do? He dragged his foot from the tombstone, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned sadly toward the car.
Nothing is changed. Nothing.
Rachel had been running on sheer willpower for
days now, months-for two years, 19 actually, ever since Owen had learned he had cancer. Though she'd kept herself from breaking down during the graveside ceremony, she was perilously near it as the black limousine pulled up before the house on Cotako Street where she'd grown up.
Stepping from the car, she raised her eyes to the familiar beige limestone on the double-gabled structure. The entry and portico were fronted by a deep overhang behind wide limestone arches that supported the arm of the house holding her upstairs bedroom. The diamond-shaped framework of the small casement windows matched the diamond pattern of the dark shingles. Her mother's narcissus still bloomed gaily out front, and the azalea and holly bushes were carefully tended, though by a gardener these days. The same English ivy climbed the side chimney. The same cedars flanked the north side of the house. And the same sweetgum tree dropped its spiked artillery on the high-pitched roof and sent it rolling earthward. How many times had she and Tommy Lee, barefoot, stepped on those sweetgum balls and gone howling to one of their mothers in pain?
Either mother. Whichever one happened to be nearby. In those days it hadn't mattered-the families were so close.
Unable to resist, Rachel glanced next door, but the view of the Gentry house was almost completely obscured by the high boxwood hedge that had been allowed to grow along the property line, untrimmed, for twenty-four years now.
Tommy Lee. But he wasn't there. He hadn't set foot on the place for years. As if he'd been watching, Everett took her elbow to guide her up the sidewalk, discouraging her from dwelling on the past.
Inside, the funeral party was gathered. Voices hummed and the scent of expensive cigars drifted above that of fresh-brewed coffee. The faces were those of people Rachel had known all her life: the town's elite. Half were close to her age, the other half closer to her father's.
When she'd weathered what seemed like hours of well-meant condolences until she felt she could stand no more, she slipped upstairs to her old bedroom. It was tucked beneath the gables, its ceiling following the roof peaks, creating a pair of cozy niches. The walls were papered with the same pink
daisies she'd chosen at age thirteen. 21 Her hand trailed over the flowers as she recalled that she had brought Tommy Lee up here to show him, the minute the paper was hung. That was in the days when they'd felt free to spend brief, innocent minutes in each other's bedrooms, where they'd often played as toddlers.
The bed was a girl's, a four-poster with a canopy of airy white eyelet to match the tiered spread and the tiebacks at the recessed windows. Though the room was cleared of mementos, the fixtures remained as they'd been years ago, dredging up memories of the days when her mother was alive and everybody on both sides of the boxwood hedge was happy.
At the south window Rachel held back the folds of white eyelet, studying the house where Gaines and Lily Gentry still lived. It was brought clearly to view from this high vantage point several feet above the hedge.
The shared history of the Talmadges and the Gentrys went back even further than Rachel's memory allowed. But what she couldn't remember was kept alive in old photo albums her father could never quite bring himself to throw
away.
The two couples had settled into these houses as young up-and-coming pillars of the community. The men had played golf, the women tennis, and together they'd made up a foursome at bridge. Then, in the same year, both Lily and Eulice had become pregnant. They'd compared their discomforts and hopes and, together with their husbands, the names they'd chosen even before their babies were born.
Rachel and Tommy Lee came into the world only two months apart. Side by side they'd had their diapers changed, been plunked into the same playpen while their mothers drank coffee, and into the same backyard splash pool-naked- while their mothers sipped iced tea and talked about their children's future. When one of the youngsters inadvertently hurt the other with a careless toss of a toy, the mothers taught them to kiss and make it better, and sat back to watch their offsprings' rotund bodies grow healthy and vigorous.
At six, Rachel and Tommy Lee had toddled bravely, hand in hand, up Cotako Street Hill to begin first grade at College Avenue Elementary. In second grade they'd lost their front teeth simultaneously, and in
third Tommy Lee, while trying to string 23 a tin-can telephone between his bedroom window and Rachel's, had broken his arm falling out of the pecan tree that intervened between the two houses.
Both dark, brown-eyed beauties, blessed with good health and sunny dispositions, Tommy Lee and Rachel had grown up knowing the pride of their parents' eyes each time they achieved the next plateau of maturity, and sensing their parents' approval as they ran off together to whatever pursuit called them at any given age.
The memories struck Rachel like an assault-so many of them.
Her eyes dropped to the hedge. From above, it was clearly visible where the single boxwood had been left unplanted to create a walk-through between the two yards. Not even twenty-four years had disguised its original intent; it seemed to be waiting for one of them to breach it and cross again into the neighboring yard.
She'd been reminiscing for long minutes, her head leaning against the window frame when Callie Mae found her there.
'Miss Rachel?'
At the sound of the familiar voice, Rachel
turned to find wide arms waiting to gather her in and tears glittering in the kind eyes.
'Callie Mae.' The black woman was shaped like a wrecking ball, her skin the color of sorghum syrup, and she smelled of the kitchen, as she always had. 'Oh, Callie Mae.' For a moment the two women comforted each other; then Callie Mae drew back, holding Rachel's arms tightly in her broad hands.
'What you doin' up here, hidin' away?'
Rachel sniffed and ran a hand beneath her eyes. 'Exactly that, hiding away.'
'Your daddy lookin' for you.'
'I just needed to come up here for a while. To think.'
Callie Mae's eyes roved to the window briefly. ''Bout Mr. Owen?'
Rachel turned aside guiltily. 'Yes. Among other things.'
'I seen you standin' there lookin' across the yards. Can about imagine what other things.' But there was no note of scolding in the older woman's voice. Instead it was reflective and sad. 'Don't seem right they don't come and pay their respects on a day like this. But then it's the
