He pulled the invitation out and read it. It had a chef on the front wearing a barbecue apron and holding a long fork. “Something good is on the grill!” exclaimed the print. When you opened it, it said, “… and you can share it with us on
“A little on the hearty side,” I said, as neutrally as I could. I didn’t want to seem uncharitable.
“I’m sure I can, but let me check.” Aubrey pulled a little black notebook out of his pocket. “The liturgical calendar,” he explained. “I think every Episcopalian priest carries one of these.” He flipped through the pages, then beamed up at me. “Sure, I can go.” I blew out a sigh of sheer relief. Aubrey produced a little pencil in disgraceful shape and wrote in the time and address, and, to my amusement, “Pick up Aurora.” Would he forget me otherwise?
Stuffing the book back into his pocket, he got to his feet and told me he’d better be going. “I have youth group in an hour,” he said, checking his watch.
“What do you do with them?” I asked as I walked him to the door.
“Try to make them feel okay about not being Baptists and having a big recreation center to go to, mostly. We go in with the Lutherans and the Presbyterians, taking turns to have the young people on Sunday evening. And it’s my church’s turn.”
At least it was too early in our relationship for me to feel at all obliged to take part in that.
Aubrey opened the door to leave, then seemed to remember something he’d forgotten. He bent over to give me a kiss, his arm loosely around my shoulders. There was no doubt this time about the jolt I felt clear down to the soles of my feet. When he straightened up, he looked a little energized himself.
“Well!” he said breathless. “I’ll give you a call this week, and I look forward to Wednesday night.”
“Me, too,” I said with a smile, and saw past his shoulder the curtains in the house across the way stir.
Ha! I thought maturely, as I shut the door behind Aubrey.
EIGHT
Monday turned out to be a much busier day than I’d expected. When I went in to work to put in what I thought would be four hours, I found that one of the other librarians had caught a summer cold (“The worst kind,” all the other librarians said wisely, shaking their heads. I thought any cold was the worst kind). The head of the library, Sam derrick, asked if I’d put in eight hours instead, and after a little hesitation I agreed. I felt very gracious, because now I had it within my financial power (well, almost within my financial power) to quit my job completely. There’s nothing like patting yourself on the back to give you energy; I worked happily all morning, reading to a circle of preschoolers and answering questions.
I did feel justified in taking a few extra minutes on my coffee break to call the phone company and ask them if the number I had at the town house could also be the number for Jane’s house, at least for a while. Even if that wasn’t possible, I wanted Jane’s phone hooked back up. To my pleasure, it was possible to get my number to ring at Jane’s, and I was assured it would be operational within the next couple of days.
As I was hanging up, Lillian Schmidt lumbered in. Lillian is one of those disagreeable people who yet have some redeeming qualities, so that you can’t write them off entirely-but you sure wish you could. Furthermore, I worked with Lillian, so it was in my interest to keep peace with her. Lillian was narrow-minded and gossipy, but fair; she was a devoted wife and mother, but talked about her husband and daughter until you wanted them to be swallowed up in an earthquake; she knew her job and did it competently, but with so much groaning and complaining about minute details that you wanted to smack her. Reacting to Lillian, I sounded like a wild-eyed Communist, an incurable Pollyanna, and a free-sex advocate.
“It’s so hot outside, I feel like I need another shower,” she said by way of greeting. Her forehead was beaded with perspiration. She pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table and dabbed at her face.
“I hear you had a windfall,” she continued, tossing the tissue into the trash and missing. With a deep sigh, Lillian laboriously bent over to retrieve it. But her eyes flicked up to take in my reaction.
“Yes,” I said with a bright smile.
Lillian waited for me to elaborate. She eyed me wryly when I didn’t say anything. “I didn’t know you and Jane Engle were such good friends.”
I considered several possible responses, smiling all the while. “We were friends.”
Lillian shook her head slowly. “I was a friend of Jane’s, too, but she didn’t leave me any house.”
What could I say to that? I shrugged. If Jane and Lillian had had any special personal relationship, I certainly couldn’t recall it.
“Did you know,” Lillian continued, switching to another track, “that Bubba Sewell is going to run for state representative in the fall?”
“Is he really.” It wasn’t a question.
Lillian saw that she’d made an impression. “Yes, his secretary is my sister-in-law, so she told me even before the announcement, which is tomorrow. I knew you’d be interested since I saw you talking to him at Jane’s funeral. He’s trying to get his house in order, so to speak, so he doesn’t want even a whiff of anything funny that might be dug up during the campaign. He’s going to be running against Carl Underwood, and Carl’s had that seat for three terms.”
Lillian had gotten to give me information I hadn’t possessed, and that had made her happy. After a couple more complaints about the school system’s insensitivity to her daughter’s allergies, she stumped off to actually do some work.
I remained seated on the hard chair in the tiny coffee-break room, thinking hard about Bubba Sewell. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to know what was fishy in Jane’s house! No wonder he had catered to her so extensively. It was good word of mouth for him, that he would go to such lengths for his elderly client, especially since he wasn’t gaining anything from her will-except a fat fee for handling it.
If I told Bubba Sewell about the skull he’d hate me for the rest of his life. And he was Carey Os-land’s first husband; maybe somehow he was involved in the disappearance of Carey’s second husband?
As I washed my mug in the little sink and set it in the drainer, I dismissed any urge I’d ever felt to confide in the lawyer. He was running for office; he was ambitious; he couldn’t be trusted. A pretty grim summation for someone who might be my elected representative in the statehouse. I sighed, and started for the check-in desk to shelve the returned books.
On my lunch hour, I ran over to the house on Honor to let the cat out and check on the kittens. I picked up a hamburger and drink at a drive-through.
When I turned off Faith I saw a city work crew cleaning the honeysuckle and poison ivy from around the dead end sign at the end of the street. It would take them hours. Vines and weeds had taken over the little area and had obviously been thriving for years, twining around the sign itself and then attaching to the rear fence of the house backing onto the end of our street. The city truck was parked right in the middle of the road down by Macon Turner’s house.
For the first time since I’d inherited Jane’s house, I saw the newspaper editor himself, perhaps also returning to his home for lunch. Macon’s thinning, brownish-gray hair was long and combed across the top of his head to give his scalp some coverage. He had an intelligent face, thin lipped and sharp, and wore suits that always seemed to need to go to the cleaners; in fact, Macon always gave the impression that he did not know how to take care of himself. His hair always needed trimming, his clothes needed ironing, he usually seemed tired, and he was always one step behind his schedule. He called to me now as he pulled letters out of his mailbox, giving me a smile that held a heavy dose of charm. Macon was the only man my mother had ever dated that I personally found attractive.
I waited, standing in the driveway with my little paper bag of lunch in one hand and my house keys in the other, while Macon walked over. His tie was crooked, and he was carrying his suit coat, a lightweight khaki, almost dragging the ground. I wondered if Carey Osland, whose house was not exactly a model of neatness, realized what she was taking on.
“Good to see you, Roe! How’s your mother and her new husband?” Macon called before he was quite close
