A Fool and His Honey

checkups. We paid for some of her groceries, so she’d eat the right food. We even went through Lamaze, hoping she’d let us be there at the birth, but she didn’t want us there. She’d rather have those two thugs there. At least she was sure one of them was the father of the child.

We just wanted the baby. We couldn’t kill Regina when it would have been so easy to. No one would have known. But she is my sister, and I just couldn’t. We believed her that night when she told us you and your husband had the baby. Margaret never could have imagined that Regina would leave her baby, even for a moment, under a bed.

What I want to let you know is, we never planned for any of this to happen when we first found out who my mother is. I wanted to know that, and I wanted a child of my own and Margaret’s. I had a right to those things. I still think so. If Craig and Rory had just stayed out of it, and I had been able to deal with Regina on my own, it would have worked out, since she’s my sister.

I’m sorry.

Luke Granberry

I looked at this letter for a long time after I read it. I wondered if Regina and Barby needed to know about Luke. I decided that wasn’t my responsibility.

I went outside into the cold dry air with a match from the box on the mantelpiece. I hadn’t had the spirit to build a fire all winter, from the wood Darius Quattermain had strewn around the yard, the wood that Martin and I had gathered up and stacked… I headed my thoughts off before I could tear up. I struck the match against a brick, and it ignited beautifully. I set the letter on fire, and when I could no longer hold it I dropped it into an empty flowerpot I’d never put away in the toolshed.

I thought about Darius again, though, about his singing and dancing in the chilly wind. I thought about the drug he’d been slipped, and about Rory’s unexpected sleeping jag after the woman at the liquor store had bought them beers in exchange for their help in getting her car out of a trough.

I grabbed my keys and drove back into town. Mostly these days I just drove to work and back, and the spontaneous errand felt very odd.

I knocked on the Lowrys’ door ten minutes later. As I’d hoped, Catledge hadn’t gotten home yet. Ellen was by herself.

“Come in,” she said instantly, all graciousness. “How’ve you been doing?” Everyone said that now. As if I’d tell them.

I stepped in, sure I was about to ruin my welcome for good, not caring. “You were the one doing it,” I said without preamble. “You put the pills in Mr. Quattermain’s bottle, and you drugged the beer you gave Rory Brown.”

“Rory Brown?” Ellen’s smooth brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “Oh, was he the scruffy blond boy at the liquor store?”

“Yes. He described you to me, and I remembered you coming in the garage door with that bottle of wine. You weren’t acting like yourself.”

“That’s funny,” Ellen said coolly. “I thought I was acting very much like myself.”

“Are you that cruel?”

“For a time, I was.”

I stared at her with something like hatred. Who knew how things would have turned out if Rory hadn’t been drugged?

“You’re pathetic,” I said. It was the worst thing I could think of to say.

“Yes, I am. I found all those pills in my son’s room this summer. I confiscated them. Of course, I should have flushed them down the toilet, but for some reason I didn’t. Catledge and I checked Tally into a drug rehabilitation program. You are the only person in this town who knows where he really is.”

I took a deep breath, let it out. Some of the rage seeped out with it.

“I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t talk to Catledge about it, he absolutely refused. The program Tally was in, the head therapist said it was important he not get any visitors for a while so he could concentrate on the agenda. Catledge didn’t want me to work.” She threw her hands up in the air. See how the world had frustrated her?

“Don’t give me that,” I said. My tone wasn’t pleasant. “You could have worked anyway, no matter what Catledge said. You could have flown to wherever your son is and told them you were paying for his stay and by God you wanted to see him. You could have taken space heaters to poor old people. Instead, you slipped drugs to the unwary.”

Ellen looked down at me coldly. “I won’t do it again,” she said. “For one thing, I’m out of pills. But I’ve got to say, I kind of enjoyed it.” She gestured toward the door and I left.

Driving home tired me out. So many things seemed to tire me these days. I spent a lot of time watching television in bed, which had involved buying another television, getting it installed in a special stand up in our bedroom, and paying a higher cable bill. Reading didn’t seem as interesting to me… Nothing did.

Again, I pulled in the driveway and got out, looking around me at the familiar landscape.

The wind had picked up again, and as I watched it snatched up the ashes of Luke Granberry’s letter and began to scatter them from the flowerpot. I looked at the weather vane Martin had installed on the garage roof and saw that the wind was blowing the ashes west. Toward the cemetery.

Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris is also the author of the acclaimed Shakespeare, Arkansas, mystery series featuring Lily Bard. She lives in Magnolia, Arkansas.

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