Simple Gone South

have that. She also makes dressing, some with oysters, some without. The oysters are the Charleston influence. I don’t like them. They are the only thing that swims that I can’t abide.”

“Now, Lucy,” Brantley said. “I ask you this—do oysters really swim so much as they lie around and make pearls?”

She wrinkled her adorable little nose. “I am not all that wise in the ways of oysters. But I am wise enough in the way they taste to know that I want to stay away from them.”

“Maybe you just haven’t had the right oyster,” he said. “Perfectly fresh, on the half shell, with just a little lemon and horseradish.”

Lucy shuddered.

“I quite agree,” Big Mama said. “I think they earn their keep best by making pearls.” And she wound her fingers around the triple strand at her neck—the same ones Brantley’s mother had borrowed for special parties. He found himself wondering how they would look around Lucy’s neck.

“Pearls are one of the finest things in life,” Annelle chimed in. “Though I do agree with Brantley about the right oyster, and Michelle’s oyster dressing is wonderful.”

Lucy shuddered again. “Good thing that’s not all we had to eat. My parents always invite a slew of people from the university—students who can’t go home, other professors at loose ends. It’s causal and chaotic. Everybody brings something and it can get really interesting, especially from the foreign students. Once we had a big vat of tamales. There’s always some Indian food. Mama tells them to bring what they think of when they think of holiday food so there’s never any rhyme or reason to it.”

Suddenly Brantley felt like the most selfish bastard on the planet. This was Lucy’s first major holiday away from her parents. They weren’t dead, but still.

“Are you sad?” he asked. “Do you miss them?”

“I miss them.” She smiled. “But I’m not sad. Missing is part of loving, and we talk often. And I have loved today.”

Everyone laughed again. What she’d said wasn’t funny but they laughed because they were delighted with her—something he understood.

“So, Lucy,” Charles said. “What food do you think of when you think of Thanksgiving?”

She laughed. “Again, like the lasagna, you’re going to think this is odd, but homemade vanilla ice cream. My daddy always makes it at Thanksgiving because they’re always gone summers when most people make ice cream.”

Then something happened that hadn’t happened in a long, long time—so long that Brantley had forgotten the special thing that used to happen between his father and him.

They looked up, locked eyes, and read each other’s mind.

Simultaneously they laughed and rose from their chairs.

“Excuse us from your table, Miss Caroline,” Charles said, placing his napkin by his plate. “We’ll be back soon. My boy and I have a mission.”

They ran out the back door like exuberant children. Brantley hadn’t felt this way in so long and it felt good —but not as good as seeing his dad like this.

“I’ll drive,” Charles said. “You look up on your phone how to make ice cream. Find one with stuff we can get at the minimart out by the highway.”

After just one day, Lucy had already made such a difference in Brantley’s family. Slowly, an idea came to him. What if Lucy became part of his family? He could see a high chair at that dining table, with Big Mama spooning mashed potatoes into a small mouth. He could see a little boy with dark curly hair sitting in his dad’s lap in a golf cart as Brantley drove them to the next hole.

What if he stayed here? What if he could put this family back together? Then, maybe he could confess what he had done and they would forgive him.

He shook his head. He couldn’t think about that now.

“I know right where the ice cream maker is at home,” Charles said. “We’ll stop by there first.”

Chapter Sixteen

Annelle Meade Interiors was the only shop in Merritt that had no Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. Maybe even Halloween. It was one of Annelle’s many eccentricities. The holly and the glitter would come out the day after Thanksgiving and not one second before.

Consequently, Black Friday started in a whirl and way too early for Lucy. She, Annelle, and Pam hit the ground running at five A.M. so they could decorate in time for the ten o’clock opening. Over the years, Annelle had become known for her unconventional attitude about the timing of her decorations as well as her unique approach. Just because she refused to decorate until after Thanksgiving didn’t mean she had not been working on her secret design for months. At the appointed time, people would pour into the shop for refreshments and to purchase the baskets of ornaments and rolls of ribbon that were duplicates of what Annelle used for her creations.

Annelle had gotten the idea for the Christmas Wedding theme last December when Tolly and Nathan had sprung on everyone, with three weeks notice, that they were getting married two days before Christmas. It had nearly killed all concerned, but the wedding had been a crystalline and velvet dream with the bride wearing her grandmother’s dress, the groom beside himself with joy, and three very tired attendants. Much of the work had fallen to Lucy since Missy had just given birth to Lulu and Lanie was very pregnant with John Luke. But it had been fun, though Lucy had wondered at the time if she would ever have a wedding of her own.

And she wondered it now, as she decorated the mantle with antique wedding veils, tiny white lights, silver bells, and gossamer ribbon.

In fact, it seemed even more improbable now. She knew that Brantley was no more a possibility than he had ever been, but now marrying anyone else seemed unthinkable. Because, God help her, she loved him, had loved him since her fifteenth summer. But that didn’t change anything. She just needed for her head to keep reminding her heart that this was temporary. She’d known that going in. But she was in deep. If she hadn’t been before yesterday, she would be now. Thanksgiving had been such fun and the capper was when Charles and Brantley came back with that ice cream maker, bags of ice, and rock salt. Annelle had left shortly after lunch to work on nosegays for today, but Lucy had watched football until almost midnight with Brantley, Charles, and Miss Caroline. She’d even given in and cuddled under a throw with him while they ate ice cream. And there had been nothing like it with his arms around her and the taste of happy vanilla childhood in her mouth.

She rearranged a bit of ribbon and aged ivory lace.

Annelle came up behind her. “Beautiful, Lucy. Absolutely magical.”

“It’s lacking something.” Lucy stood back. “I had thought to put nosegays at three strategic points but it’s too much. What do you think of this instead?” She randomly scattered little bunches of dried baby’s breath on the mantle shelf.

“Perfect,” Annelle said. “I think these are the prettiest decorations we’ve ever had.”

It was true. Lucy surveyed the shop. The trees, wreaths, and garlands were covered in little bridal bouquets, lace hearts, tiny top hats, silver doves, gold rings, blown glass wedding cakes, and sparkling snowflakes. White poinsettias were covered in crystalline glitter and their bases wrapped in white tulle. The refreshments for the open house were individual exquisitely frosted wedding cakes, and Champagne served in old-fashioned punch cups. Those cups made some of the older women nostalgic for their weddings from the days before everyone abandoned punch cups for wine glasses.

Lucy put the finishing touches on the mantle and arranged a dozen veils on a chair nearby. She would put baskets of the ribbon, lights, bells, and baby’s breath near the veils so that everything to recreate that mantle would be in one place. She carried her ladder to the storeroom. They opened in twenty-three minutes and she also still needed to set up the display of beeswax Christmas candles and lace gloves.

Missy came in as soon as the doors opened. “Annelle’s a genius,” Missy said, clutching a basket of merchandise.

“I used to doubt it,” Lucy said. “But by now, everybody’s tired of everything else in town. They are ready to